by J. P. Carter
‘So why didn’t you tell me?’
Emily looked at him. ‘Because your stepfather asked me not to. You see, he managed to find out their address in Camberwell and out of guilt he went there to see if there was anything he could do to help. But there was nobody at home. A neighbour told him she was in Guy’s Hospital. When he got there her son – who as you know, Mark, is also Isaac’s son – was at her bedside. He was furious apparently because they hadn’t heard from Isaac since he walked out on them and married me. He told Isaac to bugger off. When Isaac came home, he was really upset and didn’t want to talk about it afterwards. He did tell me a week later that she died in hospital, though.’
Anna was intrigued. She shot a look at Benning, who arched his brow and gave a little shrug. She took it to mean that this was news to him as well.
Taking out her notebook, she said to Emily, ‘Can you please tell me the names of your husband’s ex-partner and their son?’
‘Hilary and Joseph. Their surname was Metcalfe, but I believe it changed when she got married some years ago. Isaac never told me what her married name was.’
Anna made a note. ‘I didn’t realise that your late husband had a son of his own. And since his mother lived in Camberwell he’ll need to be eliminated from our inquiries. Do you have any idea how we might be able to contact him?’
‘None at all,’ Emily said. ‘Isaac never stayed in touch with them.’
‘In that case I’d like you to think back and tell me everything you know about your husband’s first family. We can’t ignore the fact that there’s a chance, albeit a slim one, that it could have a bearing on this case.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Isaac Rossi’s story was a familiar one. He met and fell in love with a woman named Hilary Metcalfe. After a year they moved in together and eighteen months later she became pregnant.
They often talked about marrying, but never got around to it, partly because they believed like millions of other couples that they could maintain a deep and loving relationship without having to get hitched.
Hilary gave birth to Joseph and the family lived in a rented house in Eltham for the next thirteen years.
But then Isaac decided that what he had wasn’t enough. He started an affair with a woman he met through his job in television. Her name was Emily Kennedy, a widower with a son named Mark who was only a year younger than Joseph.
The affair continued for another six months before Isaac decided to leave Hilary and embark on a new life with Emily. But like many fathers who adopt another family, he decided to cut all ties with the old one.
‘I bear some responsibility for the fact that Isaac didn’t stay in touch with his son,’ Emily said to Anna. ‘Back then I was insecure and jealous, and I knew that Hilary was trying desperately to win him back, so I discouraged him from talking to her. She reacted by making it impossible for him to remain in contact with his son. She even moved up north for a couple of years.
‘It suited me because Isaac then focused all his attention on Mark and became a devoted stepdad. I won’t apologise for what I did because if I hadn’t done it our relationship wouldn’t have been so strong and we wouldn’t have spent so many glorious years together.’ She turned from Anna and looked at her son, who seemed shocked and confused. ‘You had already lost your father, Mark, and I wasn’t prepared to see it happen a second time. And before you or anyone else seeks to judge me, I’d like to make it clear that Isaac didn’t need much persuading since he had never had a close relationship with Joseph anyway. In fact he told me once that he wasn’t even sure he was the father because the boy looked so very different to him.’
Anna half expected Rossi to admonish his mother for what she did all those years ago. Instead he rushed across the room to embrace her and they both broke down.
It was an awkward, yet touching scene, and Anna let it play out as she tried to decide how to move things forward. Emily’s impromptu confession had added to the cluster of emotions that had consumed the family.
And it had thrown another suspect into the mix – Mark Rossi’s stepbrother, Joseph.
Anna needed to find out if he was still living in Camberwell, and if he harboured any kind of grudge against his father’s adopted family.
It all got too much for Emily and her sobs turned into a raging coughing fit.
Her daughter-in-law seized control of the situation and offered to take her upstairs so that she could lie down.
‘Can you bring my bag?’ Emily spluttered between coughs as her son helped her up from the chair. ‘I haven’t taken my blood pressure tablet yet.’
‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right here by yourself when we go to see Jacob?’ Rossi asked her.
‘Of course. I’ll be fine. There’s no need for you to worry.’
Anna felt sorry for Emily, but nevertheless she was glad the two women were leaving the room. It gave her the chance to raise with Rossi the subject of his alleged affairs, and to ask him about Roy Slater.
She gestured for Officer Moore to follow them out, and after the kitchen door was closed behind them, Rossi sat on the chair at the dining table vacated by his wife. His eyes were swollen from crying and there was a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. He leaned forward, took a long, quivering breath, and balled his hands into fists on the table.
‘How much of what your mother just said did you already know?’ Anna asked as she went and sat opposite him.
‘I was told at an early age that I had a stepbrother,’ he said. ‘But I was led to believe that his mum didn’t want him to have anything to do with Isaac. As a teenager I was curious, but because it was never talked about, I eventually lost interest.’
Anna then told Rossi that she wanted to talk about the conversation they’d had with Gavin Pope.
‘Well I still can’t believe that it was him who took Jacob in order to punish me for not bailing him out after he lost his job,’ Rossi said.
‘Well actually that’s not the only reason he has it in for you,’ Anna said.
‘Oh?’
Anna was still holding her notebook. She rested it on the table and opened it up.
‘We also spoke to Mr Pope’s wife, Laura,’ she said. ‘And she told us about the brief affair you had with her.’
A flash of anger crossed his features. ‘Why the fuck would she mention that? It was a long time ago and when it ended we promised each other we would keep it between ourselves.’
‘That’s what she tried to do,’ Anna said. ‘But her husband found out about the affair a year later when he stumbled on messages on her phone between the two of you that hadn’t been deleted. She persuaded him that it would serve no useful purpose to let you or anyone else know about it, so he kept quiet. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to give you grief.’
‘Shit. So that’s why he created such a fuss over the bankruptcy.’
‘So it would appear.’
‘And you think that because he wasn’t able to screw me for money, he might have decided to punish me by taking Jacob.’
‘It’s one possible scenario,’ Anna said. ‘But there’s another involving another former employee of Glory Entertainment named Roy Slater. I gather you had a fling with his wife as well.’
Rossi’s breath faltered and his eyebrows climbed up his forehead.
‘Jesus, I’d completely forgotten about that slime ball.’
‘So it’s true then,’ Anna said. ‘About the affair, I mean.’
‘I’m ashamed to say that it is, but all that stuff is behind me,’ Rossi said. ‘It was a stupid phase and Clare knows nothing about either of them. Clare was aware that Slater and his wife worked for Glory and she met them a couple of times. But she was never told why they both suddenly left and if she finds out now it will kill her.’
‘Well let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Anna said. ‘But can you confirm that your father paid Slater to leave the company and keep quiet about it?’
He nodded. ‘It got
messy after Ruth, his wife, decided to leave him because she didn’t love him any more. She knew I’d never leave Clare so she planned to start a new life in France where her parents were living. But Slater overheard her talking to me on the phone. The next day he confronted me as I left the Glory Entertainment offices with Isaac. He was ranting and raving but when he finally accepted that Ruth wasn’t running off with me, he calmed down. Isaac gave him a choice – he could make a fuss and get the sack with no pay-off. Or be paid ten thousand quid to accept that I wasn’t to blame for the marriage breakdown and go quietly. He went for option two.’
‘And was that the last you saw of him?’ Anna asked.
He shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t. About five months ago he phoned me out of the blue and asked for more money. He said that the ten grand we’d given him hadn’t been enough to get him back on his feet. I knew all about his gambling addiction so I told him it was out of the question. I thought he’d threaten to go to the papers or get in touch with my wife, but instead he just hung up and I never heard from him again.’
‘We haven’t been able to talk to him yet, but do you think he would have it in him to do something like this?’
By now Rossi’s face was drenched in sweat and his eyes were glazed and haunted. His breath was coming in short gasps, and he looked to be on the verge of crying again.
‘I don’t really know much about him,’ he said. ‘But Ruth reckoned he could be a nasty piece of work when he was down on his luck. And that was much of the time because of the gambling.’
There was a box of tissues on the table. Anna reached across, pulled a couple out and handed them to Rossi.
‘You’ve been really helpful, Mr Rossi,’ she said. ‘Now you need to push Roy Slater, Gavin Pope and Joseph Metcalfe from your mind and let us worry about them. Focus on supporting your wife through what is going to be a tough ordeal for both of you.’
Rossi wiped his eyes with the tissues and nodded.
‘I’d better go and get ready then,’ he said.
After he had stepped out of the room, and the door was closed behind him, Anna asked Benning what he’d made of what they’d been told.
‘Well we’ve been given a lot to think about,’ the DI said. ‘If you like I’ll follow up the stepbrother angle. It shouldn’t be that hard to track him down, especially if he’s still living in Camberwell. We’ve got his name and we know his mother died in Guy’s Hospital.’
‘OK, but bear in mind that it might not be as easy as you think. Metcalfe was the mother’s maiden name. We don’t know what it changed to when she got married.’
‘Leave it with me, ma’am. I’ll crack on with it as soon as we’re finished at the mortuary.’
‘And what about Roy Slater?’ Anna asked.
Benning shrugged. ‘Well he’s got to be a serious contender. If he’s desperate for money again, then one plausible scenario is that he was planning to demand a ransom for Jacob and never intended to actually hurt him.’
‘So why send the photo and note?’
Benning pursed his lips and thought about it. Then: ‘That’s a good question, ma’am. It could be that his aim was to ratchet up the fear factor before delivering the punchline. That picture of Jacob chained to the wall would surely have prompted his father to stump up any amount of cash to get him back.’
Anna was about to ask another question when the kitchen door opened and Officer Moore reappeared. She was clutching her phone in one hand and looked a little flustered.
‘I’ve just taken a call from Detective Inspector Walker at MIT headquarters,’ she said. ‘He’s been trying to ring you, guv.’
‘My phone’s on silent,’ Anna replied.
‘Well he wants you to contact him right away. He says it’s urgent.’
‘And did he tell you what it’s about?’
Moore hesitated before answering. ‘He did, guv. It’s your partner, Tom Bannerman. Something has happened to him.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Chloe was back on the streets, running for her life. There was chaos all around her. Buildings and cars were on fire, shops were being looted, angry men in masks and hoods were throwing projectiles at each other.
She could see a mass of emergency vehicles up ahead, their lights strobing in the gloom. And she could hear the loud growl of a helicopter as it circled overhead.
Just as before she had no idea where she was going, but she told herself that she had to keep moving. She couldn’t believe that all of London had been taken over by the rioters. That surely wasn’t possible. There were simply too many streets and too many buildings. So if she ploughed on she was bound to reach a safe place eventually.
The trouble was she felt so weak and tired. Her legs were aching and every breath she took filled her lungs with more smoke and dust from the fires.
She ran past a man who was lying in the road with half his face missing. Then she watched a woman jump from a window above a blazing shop and impale herself on spiked railings.
Rather than stop to look, Chloe swallowed down her terror and picked up her desperate pace. But just as she was approaching the roadblock of emergency vehicles, a bottle landed on the ground in front of her.
Flames shot up as the glass shattered and Chloe was going too fast to stop herself running into them.
She came to a juddering halt and stood there as the fire grabbed hold of her dungarees and climbed swiftly up both legs. She didn’t move even though the pain was unbearable.
All she could do was let out a loud, high-pitched scream that drowned out all the other sounds around her.
*
It was the scream that woke Chloe up from the nightmare. Her eyes snapped open and it felt like a bolt of electricity was surging through her veins.
Several seconds passed before she realised what was happening and where she was. It took a few more seconds to get her breathing under control and force herself into a sitting position on the sofa.
She could see the night had ended because the sun was shining through the balcony window. The last thing she remembered was sitting there watching the television and thinking about her mother after Wesley had fallen asleep in the armchair. The telly was still on, but Wesley was no longer in the room.
She wondered where he was and if he had heard her screaming. Perhaps he was in the kitchen making tea or in the bathroom having a shower.
She needed a good wash herself. Her hands, face and clothes were still stained with grime and she smelled awful. And her head, knees and elbows were still sore.
She flinched suddenly as the last part of the nightmare replayed itself in her head. It made her think of Ryan and how he had burned to death in the gift shop. It was so sad, so tragic. She would never forget it as long as she lived. Just as she would never forget how she had watched her adoptive mother plunge to her death from the roof of the warehouse.
Death and destruction continued to dominate the TV news programmes. It seemed to Chloe as though her nightmare was being projected onto the screen. A female voice spoke over video footage of burning buildings and ugly confrontations between mobs of young people and the police.
‘It was another night of mayhem across London,’ the woman was saying. ‘The confirmed death toll has now risen to seven. The Prime Minister has declared a state of emergency and more soldiers are being drafted into the capital. Elsewhere the violence has become more intense, with major outbreaks in five other cities and several coastal resort towns.’
The newsreader then mentioned the areas of London that had been worst hit, including Vauxhall where no fewer than thirty buildings had been set on fire and scores of shops had been ransacked.
‘Police are now convinced that missing schoolboy Jacob Rossi was among those who have died in the riots,’ she said, and the photo of Jacob that Chloe had already seen was shown again. ‘Further details relating to his death were revealed this morning by the detective leading the investigation.’
This time instead of showing a photo o
f her mother they cut to her speaking to reporters outside Jacob Rossi’s home.
Chloe stared, mouth agape, and her mum’s words made her go cold.
‘His death is believed to have been due to smoke inhalation. Jacob was trapped in the cellar of the building when it was set on fire and he was unable to escape because he was chained to a wall.’
Tears welled in Chloe’s eyes in response not only to hearing her mum’s voice, but also to what had happened to that poor boy. Why would someone do that to him? How could anyone be that evil?
She refused to allow herself to conjure up an image of Jacob Rossi in that cellar. Instead, she focused on the fact that her mum was OK. It was a relief to know that she had come to no harm. She was out there doing her job and probably still didn’t know what had happened to Tom.
It was enough to force Chloe to her feet. She went looking for Wesley so that he could take her to Wandsworth police station.
But to her dismay she discovered that he wasn’t there in the flat. Not in the kitchen, the bathroom or the bedrooms. And he wasn’t on the balcony either.
A twist of panic wrenched through her gut. She was alone again, and it sent her sprits crashing to the floor. She didn’t understand why Wesley had left her in the flat. Had he gone back out onto the streets to join the riots? Or had he …
The sudden chime of the doorbell broke her chain of thought and made her jump. She froze, unsure what to do. When she did nothing it rang again and this time she rushed into the hall, thinking it must be Wesley who’d gone out and forgotten to take his key with him.
But it wasn’t Wesley who was standing there when she opened the door. It was a man and a woman, and they were both clearly shocked to see her.
‘Who the hell are you?’ the woman said. ‘Where’s Ryan? Where’s our son?’
CHAPTER FORTY
Anna’s mind was thumping out of control as she steered a course from Bromley to Camberwell in the pool car. This time her destination was not The Falconer’s Arms. It was King’s College Hospital, which was less than half a mile away from the derelict pub.