by J. P. Carter
Anna had no idea how long the woman, whoever she was, had been a part of their lives, but she suspected it was a long time before they turned up in the South Coast city.
She wondered yet again if Matthew had known the woman before he abducted their daughter. Was she someone else he’d been having an affair with? Someone the bastard had charmed into his bed with his good looks and unflinching self-confidence? And did he take Chloe straight to her so that she could assume the role of her mother? Or did he meet her weeks, months or years later?
And where was the bitch now? Did she take Chloe abroad after she fled Southampton the night Matthew was murdered? Back to where they’d been before?
There was another scenario that in many ways was even more disturbing – that the woman had abandoned Chloe because she didn’t want to be responsible for her.
Whatever the truth, Anna was sure that the woman must have been aware all along that James Miller was really Matthew Dobson and that his daughter’s name was Chloe and not Alice. Which made her complicit in what the bastard had done. An accessory to his crime. As morally corrupt as he was.
Someone Anna hated with every fibre of her being even though they had never met.
Anna eventually snapped out of the thoughts she’d been losing herself in and climbed out of the bath. When she was towel-dry, she slipped into her robe and went downstairs. It was perfect timing because Tom was ready to serve up dinner.
They tucked in while sitting next to each other on the sofa, and after a while of trading small talk Anna began to relax. But it only lasted until they finished eating and she turned on the TV news while Tom went to refill their glasses with wine. Within seconds she was wrenched back into work mode and she knew that for the rest of the evening she wouldn’t be able to switch off.
Holly’s murder and Nathan Wolf’s arrest dominated the news agenda. There was wall-to-wall coverage, and the most used clip was the one in which Anna led the MP out of his house to the waiting police car. She cringed at the sight of herself, the tousled hair, the dirty looks she gave reporters, the fact that she always appeared ill at ease.
It brought to mind something her late father once told her. He was a copper himself before he was so badly beaten by drug dealers that he was forced to resign from the force as a result of his injuries.
‘It got to the stage, Anna, where I wouldn’t watch the news if I knew I was going to be on it,’ he said during one of the heart-to-hearts they had while he was in a hospice dying of cancer. ‘It just served to make me feel bad about myself, which in turn made me avoid the cameras, and that sometimes hindered an investigation.’
Thankfully Anna was less troubled about how she came across on screen, and she had long ago accepted that it didn’t pay to be camera shy, especially on the high-profile cases.
And they did not come much more high-profile than this one. The story was like manna from heaven for the news outlets. The victim was a young, attractive model and daughter of an ex-police chief who was hoping to be London Mayor. The suspect under arrest was a Member of Parliament who’d been having an affair with the model, despite her being half his age.
And there were two other suspects in the mix – the ex-boyfriend and the stepdad.
As if that wasn’t enough, another explosive development beefed up the story even further as the evening progressed. This was the exclusive Holly Blake interview in the Sunday Mirror, which every other news organisation picked up after the early edition of the paper was rolled out. Anna read the online edition on her phone.
In it Holly laid bare the nature of her relationship with Nathan Wolf. The paper pointed out that they didn’t get a chance to do a full interview with her, but she told them enough at a preliminary meeting to fill the front and two inside pages. Anna suspected that they had made up a few of the quotes, or at least exaggerated some of what she’d told them.
The headline read: ‘I was MP’s secret sugarbabe,’ revealed Holly Blake in an exclusive interview before she was murdered.
There were photographs of Holly and Nathan, although they weren’t seen together in any of them. There were also two photos of the playroom in her flat, taken by Holly and given to the paper.
‘Nathan chose and paid for everything in the room,’ she told the Sunday Mirror. ‘And we’ve been enjoying ourselves there two and sometimes three times a week for more than a year. He preferred being the submissive partner during our sex sessions and would like me to spank him and use the restraints to cause him excruciating pain.’
Holly also disclosed how she fell in love with Wolf and believed him when he promised that they would eventually get married.
‘But I realise now that he didn’t love me and that he was lying all along,’ she said. ‘He was just using me for sex, and when he told me he was going to marry someone else it broke my heart.’
The paper’s editor, Ralph Fleming, was quoted as saying, ‘Holly came to us because she wanted the world to know that the man who was supposed to be a respectable and honourable Member of Parliament was nothing of the sort. She was going to tell us more about Mr Wolf and their time together but she didn’t get the chance to give us a full interview.’
Further down the page the report included the line: ‘We now know that Holly told Mr Wolf that she was going public with her story just days before she was stabbed to death.’
They were sailing close to the wind with that, Anna thought, because the clear insinuation was that he had killed her.
The paper also devoted space to the investigation itself and to the fact that the police were planning to question Holly’s ex-boyfriend. There were sidebars that focused on Nathan Wolf’s career and Rebecca Blake’s bid to become London Mayor, which the paper said would most likely be put on hold. And there was a collection of quotes from various people, including politicians from all the main parties, who were calling on Wolf to step down as an MP.
One of them reportedly said, ‘If it’s true that this man has been leading a sordid double life then he should think seriously about his position. He’s brought disgrace on himself, his party and those people in his constituency who voted for him at the last election.’
As Anna watched and listened to what amounted to a brutal hatchet job, she couldn’t help thinking that even though Holly Blake was no longer alive, she had succeeded in doing what she had set out to do: to get her own back on the man who betrayed her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Anna had a restless night. She was jolted awake several times by dreams about Chloe that brought tears to her eyes.
In one of them she was transported back to the day her daughter walked for the first time, in the garden. Chloe managed to stay on her feet for about five yards before falling on her face. But she didn’t cry. She just giggled, and carried on giggling even when she tumbled sideways onto a flower bed and cut her knee on a thorny bush.
In another dream Chloe was older, eighteen months or so, and she and Matthew had taken her to a local leisure centre for her first swimming lesson. She was wearing armbands and goggles, and she took to the water like a fish. She splashed about for almost an hour and cried when it was time to get her out. Anna promised her that they would go again, but it never happened because soon afterwards Matthew’s affair came to light, followed by the break-up and divorce. And then the bastard took their daughter away and broke Anna’s heart.
She finally got out of bed at seven. Tom had downed quite a few drinks the previous evening so she left him there nursing a mild hangover.
Her first task on Sunday morning was to front the press conference at New Scotland Yard alongside DCS Nash and Simon Thackery, head of media relations. It kicked off at nine and was attended by journalists, photographers and camera crews from around the world. Anna recognised several reporters from the American networks and European news channels.
The story had continued to gather momentum overnight with the revelations in the Sunday Mirror. Now everyone involved in the case was being chased for interviews
by desperate journalists, including Holly’s family, Jennifer Rothwell and anyone who was acquainted with Ross Moore.
This was the first time the hacks had been given the chance to put the police on the spot and get on-the-record answers to their questions. Much to Anna’s surprise it turned out to be a fairly orderly event, unlike some of the big press conferences she had fronted. Most of the questions that were thrown at them they’d been primed to expect.
Why was Nathan Wolf arrested?
Has he been charged with Holly’s murder?
Is he denying the claims attributed to Holly Blake in the Sunday Mirror?
Can you confirm rumours that Rebecca Blake will now withdraw from the Mayoral race?
Was Mr Wolf badly hurt when he was attacked in his home yesterday?
Is it true that another suspect is in hospital after trying to kill himself?
Nash answered most of the questions, but that was normal since he relished the sound of his own voice.
‘Mr Wolf is being questioned about Holly’s murder because we know he was in a relationship with her,’ he said. ‘However, I must stress that he has not been charged at this time or even formally interviewed. His properties have been subjected to a search as you all know and so has Holly’s flat in Camden. I am not at liberty to disclose what, if anything, was found that is relevant to our enquiries.’
He went on to reiterate what he had said earlier, that Holly’s body had been left on Barnes Common but she hadn’t been killed there. He then handed over to Anna, who explained that her team were still trying to establish a timeline for Holly on the day she died.
‘We’d like to hear from anyone who was on or near Barnes Common on Tuesday evening or early on Wednesday morning,’ she said. ‘We believe the person who placed Holly’s body there would have done so when it was quiet. So it’s possible someone was seen acting suspiciously in the area around the old cemetery, or perhaps a car was noticed parked in a spot not usually frequented by vehicles.
‘We’re also keen to know where Holly spent most of that day. She had no official modelling assignments and the people who work with her have no knowledge of her movements. The last recorded sighting of her was at ten-forty-five that evening when she left her flat on foot. She was never seen alive again. We want to know where she went and who she met.’
Nash wound up by reading out a statement from Holly’s mother. ‘We’re still trying to come to terms with what has happened to our precious daughter. We can’t believe she’s gone and we find it hard to accept that somebody took her life. My husband and I, and other family members, are shocked and grief-stricken. So I appeal to you all to respect our privacy. In time I’m sure I’ll feel strong enough to face the media, but right now we all just need to be left alone.’
After the press conference, Anna went straight back to Wandsworth, where DI Walker had been holding the fort.
Her next task was to interview Nathan Wolf, but first she needed to get a handle on what progress the team had been making. She asked Walker to start the briefing so he took up position at the front of the room between the whiteboards.
‘Firstly I can report that forensics have confirmed that it is Holly’s blood on her driving licence,’ he said. ‘The licence also contains prints and DNA, but only hers. There was nothing on the knives taken from Wolf’s house except his prints but he’s had a lot of time to get rid of any trace evidence.’
‘What about his Range Rover?’ Anna asked.
‘Sweet fuck all,’ Walker said. ‘But the officers who examined it say that without a doubt it was cleaned both inside and out at some point in the last few days. The boot is spotless, apparently. It’s been tidied up and vacuumed, so if a body was carried in it then no clues have been left behind.’
Walker went on to say that Devon police had found nothing of interest in Wolf’s Bridgewater home.
‘Same outcome in respect of the clothes we took. There’s no blood on the jacket that contained the licence, but we do know that he wore that particular jacket while he was in his constituency on Tuesday and possibly when he drove home.’
‘How do we know that?’ Anna said.
‘A local newspaper carried a picture of him that was taken when he opened a new community centre that afternoon. It’s a distinctive beige jacket with a badge pinned to the lapel and he had it on then.’
Anna asked if the SOCOs had turned up anything more at Holly’s flat.
DC Niven answered that one. ‘Nothing that points to it being the scene of a crime. And I’m afraid the same goes for the ex-boyfriend’s flat. We obtained a warrant to search it. The techies found plenty of photographs of Holly that had been uploaded from his phone to his computer hard drive, including some of her out walking that in all probability she didn’t know he took.’
‘So what’s the latest from the hospital?’ Anna said. ‘When can we get to question him?’
‘We should know within the next half an hour,’ Niven said. ‘The doctor is about to do his rounds and I’m expecting a call straight after.’
Anna then asked DS Prescott for a progress report on the CCTV trawl.
He began by saying they’d had no further luck tracing Wolf’s Range Rover on the journey he took from Somerset to London.
‘We still only have the one shot when the vehicle was captured on camera close to his home just after midnight,’ Prescott said. ‘The problem is he’s being vague about the roads he used after he arrived back in the capital. He says he was forced to deviate from his usual route because of road works and heavy traffic. As you know he insists he went nowhere near Barnes Common and so far his Range Rover hasn’t turned up on any of the cameras in that area.’
‘And do I take it we’re still seeking footage of Holly after she left her flat?’ Anna said.
Prescott nodded. ‘We’ve got tons of it to go through and it’s time-consuming. For all we know she hopped in a taxi or got a lift to wherever it was she was going.’
Anna knew that if that was the case then it was going to make the task of tracking her movements much more difficult, if not impossible.
‘We have had one interesting result, though,’ Prescott said. ‘But it relates to Holly’s stepdad, Theo Blake.’
‘Oh?’
He checked his notes. ‘If you recall, he told you that after Holly left their house in Pimlico following the row with her mother, he went looking for her.’
‘He claimed he went to her flat and got no answer there,’ Anna said. ‘Then instead of returning straight home he went for a drink at the King’s Head pub in Chappell Road. He reckons he stayed for about an hour before walking back to his house, which is why he didn’t arrive there until almost midnight.’
‘That’s right. When we checked the pub the proprietor told us the security cameras weren’t working. But there’s a shop across the road from the pub with an external camera and the footage gathered is kept for nine days.’
‘So what does it show?’
‘That’s the thing, guv. It confirms that he did go there on Tuesday just like he said. He arrived by taxi and left on foot.’
‘So he told us the truth then?’
‘Well, not quite. You see, he claimed he stayed in the pub for about an hour. But he lied. It was more like two minutes. And when he came back out he was no longer alone.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It was eleven a.m. and Sophie was on her third cup of coffee. She felt dreadful. Her eyes were sagging with exhaustion and she was struggling to think straight.
She had gone to bed the previous evening at a quarter to twelve, two hours after Alice. But she’d hardly slept, and had lain awake fretting over the contents of the email she’d received.
It was from Mrs Holland, the headmistress of Oakfield Community School in Bethnal Green, where Alice was a pupil. Attached to it was the age progression photo of Detective Anna Tate’s daughter Chloe that Sophie had already seen in the Evening Standard.
Hi Miss Cameron
I’
ve been approached by a private investigator named Jack Keen. He’s working on behalf of a Metropolitan police detective named Anna Tate.
You might have seen a newspaper story relating to her twelve-year-old daughter who has been missing for ten years.
As part of her efforts to find the girl, Miss Tate commissioned someone to produce an age progression photo of her which Mr Keen sent to me and which I’ve attached.
Apparently someone contacted the newspaper in question to say that a young girl resembling the child in the photo, and who is named Alice, goes to Oakfield Community School.
Mr Keen is now asking me to confirm that this is so.
As you may or may not know we have three girls here whose first name is Alice. And they’re all aged either twelve or thirteen.
However, you’ll note that your own daughter does look quite similar to the artist’s impression, which I’m sure is simply a bizarre coincidence.
I haven’t yet responded to Mr Keen because I’m reluctant to provide him with personal details about you and your daughter without your permission. But having thought it through I believe that given the nature of the enquiry it would be best if you contacted him directly yourself. You can then explain that despite the similarity between your daughter and the girl in the photo, they are not one and the same.
Mr Keen’s email address and phone numbers are below, and if you want to chat to me about this matter then don’t hesitate to call.
Sophie’s reply had been short and to the point.
No problem, Mrs Holland. I’ll get in touch with Mr Keen asap and tell him he’s quite welcome to come and visit my Alice so that he can see for himself that she’s not the girl he’s looking for.
Sophie was well aware that all she had done was buy herself a little time. She had no intention of contacting the investigator, but when he didn’t hear from her he was bound to call Mrs Holland again, or maybe even turn up unannounced at the school to see if he could spot Alice himself.