Playing with Bones

by Kate Ellis

  ‘You didn’t tell us that you knew one of the women murdered in Singmass Close – name of Natalie Parkes.’ She tilted her head to one side and gave him another disarming smile.

  Selly swallowed hard. ‘I didn’t know her. Never saw her in my life. What makes you think I knew her?’

  Joe had kept the still photograph from Philip Derby’s DVD face down in front of him on the table. He turned it over slowly and pushed it under Selly’s nose. ‘You and Natalie Parkes. Looks as though you knew her pretty well. Intimately, I’d say.’ He looked at Emily and she nodded in agreement. ‘Ever drunk in the Black Lion?’

  ‘I go in there from time to time. Not a crime is it?’

  Joe presented him with a second photograph. A smiling Abigail Emson in happier days. ‘This girl worked as a bar-maid at the Black Lion. Recognise her?’

  Selly stared at the picture and nodded. ‘I think I’ve seen her. But I’ve never talked to her. She was just a girl behind the bar. Look, I’ve got an alibi for the time of the first murder. I was at the hospital.’

  Joe leaned forward. ‘We’re checking it out.’

  ‘I knew you would,’ the man said defiantly. ‘That’s why I’m telling you the truth. And that second murder, the bar-maid, I was home with my wife. She’ll vouch for me.’

  He sat back, arms folded, looking smug.

  There was nothing else for it. Unless they could disprove Brian Selly’s alibi and find something incriminating at his home, they had no reason to keep him there so, with some regret, Joe told him he was free to go but they might need another word with him. He was about to say ‘Don’t leave town’ when Emily spoke the words instead.

  ‘Don’t leave town, Mr Selly. We’ll need to speak to you again. And we need to see your father.’ She looked at her watch. ‘He’ll be at home, I take it. And we’d like to conduct a search of your house. Do we have your permission or do we have to get a warrant?’

  Selly considered the question for a while. ‘You can get a bloody warrant. But you won’t find anything, I can tell you that for nothing.’

  Selly wasn’t going to make life easy for them. Now they would have to track down a magistrate to obtain a search warrant, which would take up more valuable time. However, in the meantime they could see what Philip Derby had to say for himself.

  When Selly had gone, Derby was brought in. Unlike Selly, he had elected to bring his solicitor, a seedy-looking man in a shiny suit with a large beer gut. Like Selly, he denied everything. This was getting tedious.

  Yes, he’d known Natalie from the parties. He’d made no secret of that. And yes, he’d helped Abigail with her work. He’d invited her to the parties but she’d never accepted the invitation. Perhaps, with hindsight, that was a good thing, he said. She looked as though she might be a bit of a prude. But pretty. Abigail Emson had been very attractive. And he’d tried his best to help her.

  In the end Joe had had enough of Derby’s oily protests. One man’s helpfulness is another man’s lecherous stalking. And he knew from her fellow student, Harry Wilde, how Abigail had interpreted the author’s attentions.

  They had nothing on Derby so they let him go for now. They would always reel him in again if necessary. Joe noticed that Emily had lost her initial bounciness and there were dark rings beneath her eyes.

  ‘You OK, boss?’ he asked as soon as they were alone.

  Emily shrugged. ‘Jeff ’s been having more trouble with our Sarah while I’ve been working these late nights. She’s stopped eating now because she says Grizelda’s told her not to. It’s just attention seeking, I know that. Maybe when we’ve got this case sewn up …’ She didn’t finish the sentence. Her guilt was almost palpable. Sarah wanted her mummy but Mummy was too busy chasing after bad men to spend any time with her.

  He left Emily’s office, intending to see what progress had been made with the warrant to search Brian Selly’s premises. As he entered the incident room his mobile bleeped. It was a text message from Maddy telling him what time she expected to be back the next day. And to say that she had something she wanted to discuss with him.

  Emily wasn’t the only one with problems.

  Gordon Pledge had set off just before dawn in the car he’d taken from his parents’ place. He’d wanted to arrive early to make sure Jones was in. He needed to see Harley Jones. He needed to make him tell the truth.

  Only a close neighbour could have planted the dead child’s shoe in his garden shed; someone who knew Gordon’s movements and knew how to get into the garden. And Jones had been used to walking in whenever he wanted. Gordon hadn’t liked that, not with Polly and Daisy about. Jones had given him the creeps sometimes, staring at Polly like that.

  Francesca’s murder had shocked the whole neighbour-hood. But Gordon hadn’t voiced his suspicions about Jones at first, thinking that Francesca – that forward little madam over the road – must have been the victim of some random killer. People you know, people you pass the time of day with, couldn’t possibly be capable of murdering a child. But Jones had been sly when he’d pushed all the blame onto Gordon.

  Jones had told the police that he had seen Gordon talking to Francesca. It was a pack of lies of course. He had never said two words to the silly girl in all the time he’d lived in Almond Crescent.

  But by the time he realised what Jones was up to, it was too late. Jones’s carefully engineered evidence against him stood up and eventually even Polly had come to believe the lies.

  During those long days locked in a narrow cell, Gordon had pieced the whole thing together. But all his efforts to lodge an appeal had failed because of a lack of new evidence, and the only hope he’d clung to was what he’d heard on the prison grapevine – that Jones was now a reclusive drinker who might be vulnerable enough to make a confession and tell the world how he had killed Francesca and lied to throw suspicion on his innocent neighbour.

  He’d sat in the car for a while going over and over what he was going to say. He’d prepared it all in his head and when he’d knocked on Jones’s door and there’d been no answer he’d felt numb with disappointment. But even though Jones hadn’t answered the door he wouldn’t give up.

  He climbed back into the driver’s seat. It was a cold day; too cold to hang about outside and there was a chance that some neighbours might look out of their windows and recognise him. The car at least gave him cover.

  He looked round the crescent with its small semi-detached houses behind their neat front gardens, some of them paved over to give extra off-road parking. This was where he and Polly had brought Daisy home to from hospital. Number five had been their first home together and they had been happy there for a while. Until the bomb of Francesca Putney’s murder had been dropped in their midst, shattering their lives.

  As he closed the car door he suddenly heard a noise. A scratching, shuffling sound. He listened for a few seconds and heard it again. It was coming from somewhere behind him. Something was moving in the car. But there was nothing in the back so perhaps it was in the boot. He listened for a while, wondering what to do. Then he made a decision.

  After looking around to make sure nobody was watching from any of the windows around the crescent, he got out and walked to the back of the car, keys at the ready. Then he unlocked the boot and stood back, as though he expected a wild animal to spring out. But as the lid lifted slowly, he saw a face looking up at him, terrified.

  ‘Michele. What the hell …’

  ‘Don’t hurt me … please,’ she whispered, her eyes wide with fear as she cowered there like a wounded beast.

  When Joe next saw Emily she was clutching a search warrant triumphantly like an archaeologist showing off some rare and precious find. Brian Selly’s place was about to be searched thoroughly, torn apart.

  They took some uniformed officers along with them. In Emily’s opinion there was nothing like the sight of a couple of patrol cars screeching to a halt outside your front door to engender co-operation. Selly’s alibis had been checked and the one for Natali
e Parkes’s death wasn’t as watertight as it first appeared. Brian Selly had indeed been at A and E in Eborby General that night with his son, Craig, but, according to the hospital’s records, Craig had been seen and treated by midnight. He’d been dealt with quickly to clear capacity for the expected influx of Friday-night drunks. And as for the second alibi, that he was having a cosy evening in with his wife, it was hardly worth the trouble of writing down on the statement sheet.

  Alice had named Brian’s father as her attacker and Caleb’s alibi for Marion Grant’s murder, provided by Peter Crawthwaite, had now been blown to pieces. Alice had claimed that he’d mutilated her foot because she’d refused to dance with him. Had this rejection been the last straw in a life spent enduring mockery and revulsion? Had it really sent him over the edge and made him a killer? Joe knew that people had killed for less – for a few coins or a hostile stare.

  Caleb Selly was the prime suspect for the Doll Strangler murders in the 1950s and now they needed evidence to link his son with the recent deaths. But Caleb, Emily observed, had been living with his secret since the 1950s, so he’d keep for another few hours. His son, Brian, on the other hand, was far more likely to do a runner or claim another victim. Joe couldn’t argue with her logic. But a small voice somewhere inside him was still telling him that she was wrong.

  When they arrived in Abbotsthorpe, Brian Selly and his wife stood there side by side, saying little, the wife on the verge of tears. There was no sign of young Craig: perhaps he was up and about already and had gone to see friends. Or perhaps he was one of those children who could sleep through an earthquake and he was having a lie-in.

  Emily’s plump face looked smug as she waved her precious search warrant in front of Selly’s nose. When the team set to work Joe stayed with the Sellys while Emily hurried upstairs to supervise the search.

  Joe couldn’t help wondering whether Mrs Selly had any inkling of her husband’s sexual tastes. Brian Selly was the type you’d pass in the street without a second look, but he shared an interest in sex parties and young girls with Benjamin Cassidy and Philip Derby. Brian Selly had a dark side that his wife probably knew nothing about. And seeing the tears trickling down Mrs Selly’s face, he didn’t feel inclined to enlighten her.

  He had been sitting in silence with the Sellys for ten minutes when a boy joined them: he was about nine years old and he’d been frightened by the policemen who’d barged into his room and woken him up.

  Joe was trying to think of something to say when Emily burst into the room. From her expression he knew that something had been found. Brian Selly hid his face in his hands while his wife put a protective arm around her son.

  ‘Mr Selly. I’d like a word,’ said Emily in a voice that didn’t invite any argument.

  Selly stood up and Joe followed him out into the hall where a burly uniformed sergeant was holding two dolls at arm’s length as though he didn’t wish to be associated with them. They were Victorian dolls in dirty white smocks with painted porcelain faces and matted curls, remarkably similar to the ones that had been discovered beside the bodies of Natalie Parkes and Abigail Emson.

  ‘Where did you get these, Mr Selly?’ Emily asked.

  Selly’s eyes flickered from right to left, as though he were seeking an escape route. ‘They came from me dad’s place. He used to have a job mending the things.’ He paused and Joe could almost hear his brain ticking. ‘The wife took ’em. That’s right. She fancied having a couple on display then she changed her mind.’ Mrs Selly nodded vigorously while her husband looked from Emily to Joe, pleading with them to believe him.

  Joe could predict Emily’s next words. They were ones he’d used himself many times.

  ‘Brian Selly, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murdering Natalie Parkes and Abigail Emson. You do not have to say anything …’

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ Selly shouted in the direction of the lounge as he was led away. But either his wife and son hadn’t heard them or they had chosen not to witness the spectacle of his arrest. They stayed on their sofa quite still, cuddling together for comfort as the tears began to fall.

  CHAPTER 24

  Gordon Pledge put out his hand to help Michele out of the boot of his mother’s car. ‘You OK?’ he asked.

  Michele was still cowering there, too frightened to speak.

  ‘Look, I’m not going to hurt you.’ He held up his hands, as if to prove he wasn’t intending to touch her. After what he’d been through, the last thing he wanted was a false accusation of sexual assault on his hands … and this girl’s eyes were wild. She could do or say anything and he just hoped she wouldn’t ruin the moment he’d been anticipating for months. The moment when he’d confront Harley Jones.

  But Michele just lay there quite still with her mouth tight shut, suspicion clouding her face.

  Gordon tried again. ‘I’ve got to see someone but after that I’ll give you a lift anywhere you want to go.’ He hesitated. ‘OK?’

  There was no answer. The girl was obviously traumatised and again he wondered how she had come to be looking after Alice. And how she had ended up in the car boot.

  ‘OK. You wait for me in the car if you want. I won’t lock it. You can walk away any time you like.’

  The girl shifted, a glimmer of hope in her bloodshot eyes. When he’d first met her he’d thought she might have been on drugs, or maybe a little slow, and he wished he’d pressed his parents for some honest answers. But now all he knew was that he had to get rid of her somehow. This business with Jones was too important to allow this strange girl to get in the way. His freedom was at stake.

  As he helped her out of the boot he felt her body shaking. She looked so thin, like a fragile flamingo, all legs. He opened the passenger door and as she climbed in he uttered more reassuring words. Where the hell had his parents found a specimen like this? It was just like them to employ some junky straight out of rehab to look after Alice if she came cheap. The cheaper the better for them.

  Once the girl was safely in the car, he turned his attention to Jones’s house. He knew the layout of these houses only too well – the claustrophobic dark hallway with the narrow stairs; the through lounge and the kitchen across the back of the house with a back door leading to the small square of garden. He walked round the side of the house, his heart pounding in his chest. In the noisy isolation of his prison cell the image of his final confrontation with Jones had been magnified to epic proportions. This was going to be the climax. This would give him back his freedom.

  He reached Jones’s kitchen window and he stood there, staring in. He could see the man inside, sitting at the breakfast bar. Jones wasn’t tall but he was overweight with a gut that spilled over his ill-fitting jeans. At almost sixty Jones should have known better than to wear a T-shirt with a risqué logo on it. He looked haggard, like a man with a great weight on his shoulders, and many years older than when they’d last met.

  Suddenly Jones looked up and when he caught sight of Gordon his eyes widened in terror. The two men stared at each other for what seemed to Gordon like an age before Jones shuffled to the back door and undid the lock. His face was ashen, like a man who had seen his own death and, for a split second, Gordon almost felt pity for him.

  ‘When I heard you were out, I knew it wouldn’t be long,’ Jones whispered as Gordon stepped inside. Gordon opened his mouth to speak but Jones carried on. ‘The wife guessed after I asked her to give me an alibi. She buggered off after the trial so I’ve been on my own with it … with that girl’s ghost since …’

  ‘So you’ll tell the police what really happened?’ Gordon hadn’t expected it to be this easy. But, looking at Jones now, he knew that living with what he’d done had destroyed him. He hadn’t gone to prison but, somehow, Jones had come off worst.

  Jones grasped the material of Gordon’s shirt. ‘She said she’d tell everyone I tried to touch her. She kept on and on and in the end I just put my hands around her neck and squeezed.’ He spoke vehemently, his face so close that
Gordon could smell onions on his breath.

  ‘You should have heard the filth she was coming out with. I just wanted her to stop. I’m not a pervert. I’d never have … She said if I didn’t give her money she’d tell everyone I …’

  Gordon took a step away, wondering why it was that all the bitter hatred he had felt in prison was melting away, only to be replaced by a sort of pity. ‘Why me?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘What had I ever done to you?’

  Jones shook his head, avoiding Gordon’s eyes. ‘It was nothing personal. You were just there and I was shit scared.’

  Gordon saw tears streaming down Jones’s face and he was torn between a desire to punch him and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jones sobbed as he sank to his knees, as though he was begging Gordon’s forgiveness.

  ‘You’re going to tell the police.’

  Harley Jones nodded meekly and a shudder went through his body.

  Jones made no protest as Gordon picked up the telephone fixed to the wall nearby and dialled nine nine nine.

  After the call was made, Gordon couldn’t bring himself to stay there any longer with his betrayer. The police would sort out the mess from now on. That’s what they were paid for. He walked out without another word, leaving Jones weeping pathetically on the hard, cold, kitchen floor.

  When he returned to the car, Michele was still sitting in the passenger seat. Somehow he’d expected her to flee back into the underworld he’d imagined she came from. No questions asked, no explanations given.

  ‘The police are coming,’ he said to her gently. ‘Do you want to wait or what?’

  Michele nodded. And when the police turned up fifteen minutes later, they found Gordon Pledge sitting in his mother’s four by four with a young woman, both staring ahead and not exchanging a word. And inside the house they found the body of Harley Jones hanging from the banisters.

  ‘We need to see Caleb,’ Joe said as they arrived back in the CID office. ‘This whole thing revolves around him, I know it.’