At Your Door

by J. P. Carter

  She pulled them out now and carried them into the kitchen in order to throw them away. But as she approached the pedal bin she couldn’t resist reading them one last time. As she did so, tears clouded her eyes. Even now the shocking revelations were hard to take in. All the lies. The betrayal. The part she herself had played in the whole sorry saga.

  What had happened was a tragedy on so many levels. James was dead. Alice had lost her father. Anna Tate was trapped in a never-ending nightmare. And Sophie would always be looking over her shoulder no matter where she went.

  By now salty tears were streaking her cheeks and her blood was pounding in her ears. She got up and returned to her bedroom where she stripped off her clothes and left them on the floor.

  It was midnight when she finally slipped beneath the duvet. Its weight provided a small measure of comfort. But it wasn’t enough to halt the churn of destructive thoughts that were going to make it hard, if not impossible, for her to fall asleep.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Anna had another bad night. She only managed to sleep for a couple of hours and woke up at three a.m. There was no way she was going to drop off again because her mind started to run through all the things she wanted to do. By four a.m. she was showered and dressed and had downed a cup of coffee and two slices of buttered toast.

  It was another mild day outside, the air soft, the sky clear. At this time of the morning traffic was light so it was an easy journey to MIT HQ, and she arrived just after four-thirty.

  The night shift detectives were not surprised to see her since she had warned them that she would probably be in early. Before getting down to business she picked up the newspapers that were delivered every morning and carried them into her office along with a black coffee from the vending machine.

  Every single front page carried the story of Rebecca Blake dropping her bid to become Mayor of London. There were photos of her speaking to the media outside her home and some of her quotes appeared in large, bold type.

  Her dramatic statement jostled for position with coverage of the investigation into her daughter’s murder and the fact that Nathan Wolf, MP, was still being held in custody.

  Prominence was also given to Holly Blake’s ex-boyfriend being a suspect while at the same time languishing on suicide watch in hospital.

  The appeal aimed at taxi drivers had been issued too late to make it into any but two of the papers, the Telegraph being one of them.

  Police say that Holly may have travelled in a taxi across London on the night she was murdered.

  A witness has come forward to say he believes he saw her get into a black cab in Drummond Street, Camden just before eleven o’clock on Tuesday evening.

  Drummond Street is only a short walk from Holly’s flat in Stanhope Street.

  Detectives want to hear from any taxi drivers who were in that part of the city at the time and gave a lift to anyone matching Holly’s description.

  The Media Liaison team had done as instructed, which was not to attribute the sighting to Ross Moore. Anna did not expect a significant response. In order to reach most of London’s black cab drivers they would have to put far more effort into it. She made a note to mention it at the press conference that had been scheduled for later in the day.

  After reading the papers, she got the team to brief her on any overnight developments. It didn’t take long because there hadn’t been any.

  They were able to confirm that Theo Blake had told the truth when he’d said that his car had been in the garage on Tuesday and Wednesday. And they also reported that no new CCTV had come in that included footage of Nathan Wolf and Ross Moore, or the cars they’d been driving.

  Anna was disappointed. It was becoming clear that the investigation was losing momentum. They needed a breakthrough, or at least some new leads to follow up.

  She started to wade through everything that had been accumulated. The case notes, the interview transcripts, the CCTV logs, the forensic reports, the file on Holly Blake. She was hoping they had missed something that would shed at least a glimmer of light on the circumstances surrounding the young model’s death.

  She looked again at the photos taken of Holly’s body on the common, and was reminded of the ghastly wound that the killer had inflicted on her throat.

  ‘I would give anything to be able to communicate with you, Holly,’ Anna whispered, as she stared down at Holly’s face. ‘I’d ask you where you went on Tuesday night, who took your life and where it happened. Why did they do it and was it someone you knew?’

  If only the dead could speak, she thought. It would make her job so much easier.

  Anna looked at her watch. It was still only six-fifteen. She asked DC Fellows, who had worked through the night, to check on their two suspects. It didn’t take him long to establish that they had both had a rough night and were now awake. Ross Moore’s lawyer was demanding to know when his client would be released. Anna said she would talk to him later and Fellows gave her the brief’s contact details.

  ‘And who shall I pass these on to, ma’am?’ Fellows said, holding up a document wallet. ‘They’re the phone records for Holly’s parents and her aunt and uncle.’

  ‘I’ll go through them myself,’ Anna said, taking the wallet from him.

  She spent the next ten minutes ploughing through Rebecca and Theo’s mobile phone records, but nothing stood out as unusual. She was about to start on Freya and Robert’s when DI Walker appeared at her office door.

  ‘I gather you’ve already been in for several hours, guv,’ he said. ‘I take it you couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Too much to think about,’ she said. ‘I’ve been reviewing everything we’ve got.’

  ‘Have you come across anything we’ve overlooked?’

  ‘Not as yet.’ She glanced at her watch again. ‘Would you do me a favour and tee everyone up for a seven o’clock briefing? We need to decide what to do about our two suspects. I’ll be out as soon as I’ve finished here.’

  ‘Would you like another coffee?’

  ‘I’d love one, Max. Thank you.’

  Anna’s eyes felt dry and gritty as she returned her attention to the call logs. It was a job she would normally have delegated but she was half way through it now so she carried on.

  There was nothing to arouse suspicion in the calls and messages to and from Freya and Robert’s mobiles. But when Anna examined their landline list there was one call that jumped out at her.

  It was made at eleven-fifty-five on Tuesday evening but only lasted for five seconds and the caller didn’t wait for it to be answered.

  Anna felt a twist of alarm and was unsure what to make of it. But she was sure of one thing – it needed to be followed up asap.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  For Sophie it had been a long, unpleasant night. She wasn’t sure when she finally fell asleep, but it was well into the early hours.

  She was awake again at seven-thirty, and it took a mighty effort to haul herself out of bed and into the kitchen.

  She felt drained of energy and emotionally raw, and for a while it was a struggle to force air past the knot in her throat.

  She boiled the kettle and made herself a mug of tea. She would drink it and then get showered before waking Alice up.

  The day ahead was going to be tough. She was certain of that. She would have to try to keep the anxiety out of her voice, give the impression that she was upbeat because they were going on holiday.

  But inside she was an eddying mass of fear and self-doubt, and her brain felt scrambled. She knew she wouldn’t be able to relax until their plane touched down in Spain. Once there they’d be out of harm’s way and she could focus on the future.

  She sat at the table with her tea and switched on the television. The murder of the model Holly Blake was still the main story on the news.

  They showed her distraught mother talking to the press and announcing that she was giving up on her attempt to become the Mayor of London.

  Then they cut to a pho
to of the politician who had been arrested in connection with the murder. They said he hadn’t yet been charged but Sophie suspected it was only a matter of time.

  Her thoughts inevitably turned to the police officer who had collared him, the one who was in charge of the investigation.

  Detective Anna Tate.

  Sophie was curious to know how she managed to cope with such a high-powered job. The constant pressure. The seriously unsocial hours. Frequently putting her life on the line in a city gripped by an epidemic of violent crime.

  And all the while grieving over the loss of her child.

  The last ten years must have been so hard on her. Not knowing where her daughter was or even if she was alive. None of the news reports Sophie had read in the papers or online had alluded to Tate’s personal life. She wondered if she had remarried and given birth to any more children. Or was she a lonely singleton who spent all her spare time searching for her beloved Chloe?

  Sophie decided it was best not to go looking for the answers. The less she knew about the woman the better. Otherwise every new fact she discovered would no doubt feed into the sense of guilt that occupied a corner of her mind.

  She shook her head, took a long, deep breath and expelled it. Now was not the time to dwell on something that would make her feel worse than she already did.

  She got up from the table to pour herself another mug of tea, but just then the house phone rang. Her first reaction was to ignore it because it was probably a cold caller. But since it was mounted on the wall only an arm’s length away she lifted the receiver so the ringing wouldn’t wake Alice.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Is that Miss Cameron?’ A woman’s voice.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you this early. It’s Mrs Holland here from Oakfield School. I tried calling your mobile but I couldn’t get through on it.’

  ‘It’s switched off,’ Sophie said.

  ‘I thought as much. It’s just that I’ve received another message from that private investigator I told you about, the one who’s helping that police officer to find her missing daughter.’

  Sophie felt her chest contract like a fist.

  ‘I told you I was going to get in touch with him,’ she said. ‘What does he want?’

  ‘He says there’s been another sighting of someone who resembles the artist’s impression of the missing girl. This time it was yesterday at a hairdressing salon on Shoreditch High Street. It was one of the hairdressers who contacted the newspaper. She said her young customer told her that her name was Alice. So this Mr Keen is now trying to find out if it could be the same girl who was spotted outside the school. He’s asking if we have any pupils named Alice living near the High Street.’

  ‘What have you said to him?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve not responded because I don’t feel it’s my place to. It would be different if it was an official police enquiry but it isn’t. Of course, if you want me to …’

  ‘No, don’t worry, Mrs Holland. I’ll call him. And for your information my Alice didn’t go to a hairdresser yesterday. We spent the day together in the West End.’

  ‘Well, there you have it. Obviously another mistake. I’ll leave you to sort it then, Miss Cameron. Is that all right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That’s great. Thank you.’

  When Sophie came off the phone every nerve in her body was vibrating. She could not believe that someone else had noticed the likeness. She thought back to when she dropped Alice off at the salon. The hairdresser was a pretty Asian woman in her twenties who introduced herself as Jamila.

  ‘And what is your name, young lady?’ she’d asked.

  Alice had told her before going on to say that she wanted her hair cut short and dyed blonde.

  There had been two other staff members in the salon at the time so any one of them could have called the Evening Standard, who in turn must have contacted the investigator.

  It reinforced Sophie’s belief that she was doing the right thing by leaving London. It was obvious to her now that the net was fast closing on them.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  The morning briefing was put back to seven-forty-five so that Anna could make some enquiries in respect of Robert and Freya Gregory’s phone records.

  The call that was made on their landline at eleven-fifty-five on Tuesday evening had sparked a surge of curiosity. But before presenting it to the team as a potential new lead, she’d had to check it out. And once she’d done that she sensed that she was onto something. Thoughts started to take shape in her head, and she felt a rush of excitement.

  ‘I’m shifting the focus of the investigation,’ she announced when she stood before the team. ‘I’ve come across something that raises a lot of questions, and we need to move quickly.’

  Her detectives were at once alert. Eyebrows were raised, coffee cups put down, notebooks produced.

  Anna held up the Gregorys’ phone records and explained what they were.

  ‘On Tuesday just before midnight a 999 call was made from the Gregory household in Fulham,’ she said. ‘But the caller didn’t wait for it to be answered and hung up after only five seconds. It was therefore recorded as a silent call and an operator rang the number back some minutes later to see if it had been a mistake. The brief conversation that took place was recorded and has been played to me over the phone. You can all listen to it later, but basically the caller identified himself as Robert Gregory and said that his young son had made the call without his knowledge after he woke up and wandered into the living room.

  ‘Mr Gregory apologised profusely and said he would make sure that it never happened again. The operator gave him a polite but stern telling off and that would have been the end of the matter if we hadn’t requested the phone records.’

  ‘And as a result of that we now know that Robert Gregory is a liar,’ Walker said. ‘The couple don’t have any children.’

  Anna nodded. ‘Precisely. So what I want to know is why the call was made and why Holly’s uncle lied about it.’

  ‘Could it have been a domestic violence situation?’ DC Sweeny said. ‘We know Mr Gregory is not averse to using his fists. He demonstrated that when he laid into Nathan Wolf. So maybe his wife picked up the phone and dialled the three nines because he was assaulting her. But he got to it before it was answered.’

  Anna shrugged. ‘That could well be the case, but somehow I very much doubt it. I don’t get the impression that their relationship is an abusive one. Nevertheless we should check to see if there’s any kind of history of violence or if the couple have made a habit of calling the emergency service. For me it’s the timing of the call that’s significant. Eleven-fifty-five on Tuesday evening. It was around then that Holly Blake was murdered.’

  It dawned on everyone then what Anna was getting at, but it was clear from their faces that most of them were surprised.

  ‘So are you saying that you think the uncle and aunt had something to do with it, ma’am?’ DS Prescott said.

  Anna nodded. ‘It just strikes me as too much of a coincidence. We know someone called 999 and we know it wasn’t Robert Gregory’s son because he doesn’t have one. He must have made that up because he was suddenly put on the spot and couldn’t think what else to say.’

  ‘So it could have been Holly herself who made the call,’ Prescott said.

  ‘That’s what we need to find out. I’ve spent the last half an hour turning this over in my head and it occurs to me that this could be the first piece of the puzzle we’ve been endeavouring to put together. We haven’t been able to figure out where Holly was heading when she left her flat that night. So let’s now assume that her ex-boyfriend did see her get into a taxi. Well, it could be that she told the driver to take her to her aunt’s house in Fulham. Don’t forget we’ve already been told that Holly often went there. If she did so that night then there’s every chance she was there shortly after eleven.

  ‘That would have been fifty-fiv
e minutes before the three-nines call, in which case something might have happened during that time that led to her death. And that’s not all. Another missing piece of the puzzle that’s been worrying me is Holly’s driving licence and how it got into Nathan Wolf’s pocket. The general assumption is that he put it there after he killed her. But supposing he didn’t, and it was planted. We know that he left it on his office chair while he attended meetings, but I don’t think any of us believe that one of his colleagues placed it there. However, we’ve overlooked the fact that Robert Gregory turned up at Wolf’s house not long before we searched it and found the licence. Now it could be that he went there not just to give Wolf a hiding, but also to slip the licence into the guy’s pocket. It would have been a simple thing to do when he stormed out of the house after Wolf’s girlfriend arrived.’

  ‘That makes sense, guv,’ Walker said. ‘I can’t believe that didn’t occur to us.’

  ‘But then why would it have?’ Anna said. ‘We’ve not regarded Robert Gregory as a suspect. He and his wife are the grieving relatives. Perhaps an alarm should have gone off when his reactions proved more than a little OTT. Or even when we found out that Freya had known all along about Holly’s affair with Wolf.’

  ‘So what’s our next move, guv?’ Walker asked. ‘Do we bring them in for questioning?’

  ‘I’d rather go and see them,’ Anna said. ‘I wouldn’t mind having another look at the house. You come with me, Max, and while we do that I want the rest of you to dig up whatever you can on Robert and Freya Gregory. There were two cars on their driveway when we paid them a visit so get the registrations and see if they turn up on CCTV. And put a forensics team on standby. Robert told us that his wife is a teacher so find out which school she works at. He himself is an estate agent with a base in Mortlake. So we should gather some details on that.’

  ‘Did you say Mortlake, guv?’ DC Sweeny said.