Duplicity

by Sibel Hodge

  I stepped closer, scanning the scene. A pile of paperwork sat neatly on the surface of the desk next to an open laptop, showing a screensaver photo of a couple on their wedding day. There was also a printer, a mobile phone, a pen tidy, and a calculator. ‘Was the laptop found like that?’

  ‘Everything’s the same apart from I turned the “Mute” button on. It was playing music which was really loud. You couldn’t hear yourself think over it.’

  I peered at the photo on the screen. The woman was stunning – long, wavy dark hair entwined with delicate white flowers, hanging loosely over one shoulder. Huge oval brown eyes, long lashes – eyes you could easily get lost in. A fine nose and full lips. She was holding hands with a man dressed in a perfectly tailored white suit. He had blond hair, his contrasting brown eyes dancing with happiness, speaking of a wonderful future as he looked at his bride.

  I glanced back at the body. Looked like that future was gone now.

  THE DETECTIVE

  Chapter 3

  I sat on the edge of my desk in the CID office as the briefing began. Detective Superintendent Greene stood at the front of the room, sipping coffee. Next to him stood Acting Detective Inspector Wilmott, perfectly primped in a purple shirt and navy blue suit that looked every bit as tailored as Max Burbeck’s wedding outfit from the photo. He reminded me of a preening peacock, strutting around with a superior look on his face. Even his tie was a peacock two-tone purpley blue. Yeah, I know I should let it go.

  DC Becky Harris sat at her desk in the corner. Her gaze met mine and I caught the slight eye-roll she gave me, aimed at Wilmott as he examined his manicured nails. DC Ronnie Pickering sat up straight in his chair, fingers laced in front of him, ready and waiting, eager as always, like a puppy seeking approval.

  ‘Right.’ Greene put his cup down and addressed us all. ‘As you know, we’re very short-staffed at the moment. DCI Tiller is heading up an in-depth fraud investigation, and until DI Nash returns, Acting DI Wilmott will be the senior investigating officer on this case.’

  Wilmott looked up from his nails and aimed a smug grin in my direction. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Greene stood back, letting Wilmott take the stage.

  ‘Right, people. Uniform arrived on scene at 1.20 this morning following a phone call to us from a Mrs . . .’ he peered at a printout of the incident log, ‘Mrs Downes at 12.58 a.m. Her next-door neighbour, Alissa Burbeck, awoke her by banging on the rear door in a hysterical state, saying there was an armed intruder in the house. Mrs Burbeck had managed to escape through a bathroom window and run, naked and barefoot, into the woods that border the rear of her property. Those woods also run the length of the back of the village. On arrival at the scene, PC Brightman and PC Summers checked the house, but no intruder was found.’ Wilmott went through the rest of the details we knew so far, finishing up with, ‘Alissa Burbeck was taken to hospital and a uniform has been stationed outside her door for her safety. She was in deep shock, and after hearing her husband had been killed, she had to be sedated.’ He glanced at his expensive watch. ‘She should hopefully be awake enough soon to be able to give us further details.’

  ‘Was it a burglary, guv?’ Ronnie asked.

  ‘DS Carter, you were at the scene, maybe you’d like to take this,’ ADI Wilmott said.

  ‘There were no signs of forced entry at the property,’ I said. ‘There was a good alarm system on the house, but it hadn’t been set. Either the offender had a key or got in through an unlocked door. It seems unlikely the offender was let in by Max Burbeck because he appears to have been working at his desk with the door to his office open. He was listening to loud music at the time, so it seems he didn’t hear the attacker approach him from behind. There are also no signs of a burglary at this stage, although we’ll need to confirm whether anything is missing with Mrs Burbeck when she’s able to, and we’re obviously still awaiting forensics, which will take a while. It was a big house, and due to the torrential rain and hail we’ve just had, SOCO might not be able to find any useful evidence from the grounds. I doubt very much this was a random attack, though. No murder weapon has been recovered at the scene so far. We don’t know yet if any knives are missing from the house, so it’s unclear if the offender brought it with them, but going on the assumption this isn’t a burglary, then it’s likely they did, which would suggest a planned attack.’

  ‘Do we have any reasons to suggest why Mr and Mrs Burbeck were targeted?’ Detective Superintendent Greene asked.

  ‘Not at this stage,’ Wilmott said. ‘There are no previous incidents logged at the address, and a check of our databases hasn’t turned up anything. But the scene would suggest the offender was not interested in the vast amount of expensive items in the house.’ He turned to Becky. ‘DC Harris, I want you to check whether any neighbouring properties have CCTV cameras. There are no council-run cameras in the village, but this is an affluent area; the surrounding houses to the Burbecks’ are exclusive and expensive, so I wouldn’t be surprised if any owners have their own security.’

  Becky scribbled that down on her notepad.

  ‘SOCO have recovered two laptops: one that Max appeared to be working on before the incident happened, and another one, believed to be Alissa’s, from the kitchen. A mobile phone on Max’s office desk has also been recovered, along with another mobile phone on the bedside table in the master suite, also believed to belong to Mrs Burbeck. The technical forensic team will work through them and see if they can find anything relevant. SOCO will get the documents from Max’s desk to you to check out this morning, along with anything else they discover.’ Wilmott nodded at Becky. ‘Also, dig into the background of Mr and Mrs Burbeck and see what you come up with.’

  More scribbling by Becky. ‘Do we know what they do for a living?’

  ‘I believe DS Carter has made some preliminary enquiries on that.’ Wilmott gave way to me again.

  ‘I found a few online articles about them. Max Burbeck owned a large property development company, Burbeck Developments, which is listed as one of the top six developers in the country, but I’m not sure if that’s relevant in any way at this stage.’ I circulated a printout of an article with a photo of the happy couple on it, announcing their engagement six months previously.

  ‘Must be worth a fortune!’ Ronnie piped up, taking his copy.

  ‘This is Alissa Burbeck?’ Becky stared at the photo. ‘Is she a model?’

  ‘Not as far as I can tell. She took a creative writing course and is apparently working on her first novel,’ I added.

  ‘What’s the age gap between them?’ ADI Wilmott asked, not taking his eyes from the photo.

  ‘Alissa is twenty-four, and Max is thirty-five.’

  ‘Lucky bugger,’ ADI Wilmott said.

  ‘Not so lucky now, though, eh?’ I said. ‘It seems they were married two months ago in Australia, and had a big reception at the house a couple of weeks ago on their return, so the forensic evidence is likely to be a mess up there. That’s all I really know about them so far.’

  ‘Married two months ago and he’s worth a fortune?’ Ronnie said. ‘I bet it’s the wife.’

  ‘We’re not making any assumptions at the moment. We’ll follow the evidence and see where it leads us,’ Detective Superintendent Greene said sternly, looking at me when he said it.

  A prickle of annoyance itched under my skin, and I had to hold back a sarcastic snort. I’d been stopped from following the evidence in the Mackenzie case by Greene. He should’ve rephrased his instruction: we follow the evidence, as long as it doesn’t lead to someone rich and powerful and we’re forced to shut down an investigation.

  ‘No, sir, of course not, sir.’ Ronnie shuffled in his seat like a chastised schoolboy.

  I glanced at ADI Wilmott, who seemed to still be staring at the picture of Alissa Burbeck. There was a brief pause in the air, broken by Detective Superintendent Greene clearing his throat, jerking ADI Wilmott’s attention away from the photo.

  ‘DC Pickering,
I want you to get a statement from Mrs Downes. Then do house-to-house enquiries and see if any of the other neighbours saw anything suspicious,’ ADI Wilmott said.

  Ronnie nodded vigorously. Bless him. He’d been promoted to detective constable six months ago and was what I’d affectionately call a jobsworth. Keen to make an impression. He was as excited as I’d been twenty-five years ago after I’d become a DC. A lot had happened along the way to dampen that excitement for me. Maybe I was getting too old and cynical for all the crap that went with the role, especially since it now wasn’t looking likely that I’d ever make DI before I retired.

  ‘Becky, I also want you to put in the usual requests for phones and financial records.’ ADI Wilmott glanced at her.

  ‘Yes, guv.’

  ‘DS Carter and I will be heading to the hospital to see Alissa Burbeck.’ ADI Wilmott paused, his gaze flitting to each of us in turn. ‘That’s it for now. Keep me updated.’

  In real life, Alissa Burbeck was every bit as beautiful as her photo. Maybe ‘beautiful’ didn’t even do her justice. She was the kind of woman you’d describe as hypnotising. Every little feature had been perfectly designed to make you unable to look away, to make you think, Is she really real? Surely, no one who looked like that could be. In some ways, she reminded me of a doll – a manufacturer’s idea of flawless perfection. Wide eyed, long lashed, cupid-bow lips, glossy chocolate-brown hair, all wrapped up in a delicate and fine-boned package. The kind of woman men wanted and women wanted to be like.

  She lay on her side, facing the door to the single, private hospital room we’d just entered, clutching the bedsheet in her hands. Even though it was obvious she’d been crying, she still looked stunning.

  ‘Mrs Burbeck, I’m Detective Inspector Wilmott and this is Detective Sergeant Carter.’

  I fought the urge to say Acting!

  Alissa forced herself into a sitting position on the bed, still clutching the sheet. Fresh tears snaked down her high cheek bones. ‘They told me . . . last night . . . that policeman on the door out there . . .’ She gasped in a deep breath. ‘Max is dead, isn’t he? He’s really dead?’ She blinked rapidly, her lashes glistening wet under the sickly lighting.

  Wilmott pulled out a plastic chair next to her bed and sat down. I stood at the end of the bed.

  ‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ Wilmott said.

  I half expected him to take her hand in his and stroke it. He had a look on his face usually reserved for when he caught glimpses of his reflection in mirrors or windows.

  She drew her knees up underneath the sheet and flopped her head on to them, wailing. Her shoulders heaved up and down as she struggled for breath.

  ‘I know this is very difficult, but we really need to ask some questions about last night,’ I said. ‘The quicker we can ascertain what happened, the quicker we can find the person responsible.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ She lifted her head and swiped at her cheeks with her fingers. She swallowed hard, the cleft in her slender throat rising and falling. ‘I just . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I . . .’ She gulped in some more air.

  DI Wilmott tilted his head. ‘Would you like me to get a doctor?’ He leaned in closer, watching her somewhat protectively.

  She closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was a quivering whisper as she opened her eyes and blinked at Wilmott. ‘I . . . I want to help, but . . . this is so awful. I can’t believe anyone would do this.’ Her face seemed to crumple.

  ‘Can I get you something? Some water, perhaps?’ DI Wilmott asked. Before she could answer, Wilmott’s phone rang. He glanced at it, then said, ‘Sorry, I have to take this.’ He stood up and headed towards the door, looking over his shoulder to me, saying, ‘Get Mrs Burbeck some water.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Alissa held out an empty jug that had been on her bedside locker.

  Wilmott left the room, walking down the corridor, and I filled the jug from a sink in the small en-suite bathroom in the corner of the room. When I walked back to her bed, Alissa was sitting up, reaching for a tissue from a pack on top of the cabinet next to an empty glass, and wiping her eyes.

  ‘Here you go.’ I poured some water into the glass.

  She took a sip and I stood at the end of the bed again.

  ‘Thank you.’ She replaced the glass and clutched the bedsheet in one dainty dolly hand while wiping her cheeks again with the other. ‘Ask me whatever you need to know. I want you to catch them, too. That policeman who was on my door outside . . . he said Max had been . . .’ She trailed off again, then blinked, composing herself.

  Wilmott walked back in and sat down. ‘That was the forensic pathologist on the phone,’ he told Alissa. ‘The post-mortem is being carried out shortly so we’re still waiting for the results, but it would appear at this stage that your husband died from a stab wound to the base of the neck.’

  Alissa sucked in a deep breath and fell back against the pillows. Her head wobbled slightly, as if she was shaking it in defence against the words.

  I pulled a digital recorder out of my pocket. ‘We need to record this conversation, Mrs Burbeck.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, not looking at me, vaguely indicating her agreement with a hand.

  I pressed ‘Record’, then announced who was in the room and the date, time, and location.

  ‘Can you tell us what happened?’ DI Wilmott asked.

  THE OTHER ONE

  Chapter 4

  It had been established from the start of school that I was the weird kid. When the teacher asked the class to do drawings of what they did at the weekend, the others scribbled colourful pictures of mums and dads and skippy little children with oversized smiles on their faces. Pictures of ice creams and shiny bright days where a huge sun shone down on perfect happy families.

  Mine depicted angry red faces, fangs, blood. A mum and dad whose mouths were slashes of black. Dark skies with thunderbolts raining down.

  Our teacher, Mrs Fuller, was ancient. At least she seemed so to me. Looking back, she was probably in her late forties. She would coo at the other kids’ drawings, but when it came to mine, her frowny face appeared, the one that she liked using on me. She told me I needed to brighten things up, that my pictures were too dramatic and nonsensical. I wanted to tell her that that was real life, but, of course, I didn’t. Mum said I could never tell anyone what happened at home. The things that went on behind closed doors were private, she said. All the times I was awoken at night with screams and bangs from my parents’ room were just ‘Mummy and Daddy having a disagreement.’ All the times I’d run into their room and shout and cry, just to make my voice heard over the noise, trying to tell my dad not to hurt Mummy any more. All the times I clung on to my dad’s legs to stop him getting near her, only to be flung aside roughly like one of the baby cows. When he marched me downstairs, gripping my arm so tight I thought it would snap, my feet barely touching the floor as he deposited me in the cupboard under the stairs and slid the bolt across with a sickening click! He said it was my fault. I was being disrespectful. I was wicked. I never listened. And he was going to drum some discipline into me because God said I was a nasty little bastard and needed to be taught a lesson. I didn’t know who this God person was, but Dad talked about him a lot, especially when Mum or I didn’t do something right and needed to be punished.

  At first, I was scared of the cupboard. I banged on the wooden doors with my feet and hands, screamed, cried, broke fingernails trying to scrape away at the hinges, but it didn’t make any difference. Dad wouldn’t let me out until he was ready, and Mum would never dare to defy him. I didn’t understand a lot about what was really happening then, but I knew that much. Mum defended Dad all the time: ‘He’s just exhausted,’ ‘He’s just stressed,’ ‘The pressure of looking after us is a lot,’ ‘He worries about having enough money.’ Blah, blah, blah. Looking back now, it was none of those things. He was just a horrible man who enjoyed inflicting pain and suffering on us, like he did with the animals. A weak, s
elf-centred, psychopathic bully. An ignorant, evil man. He was the bastard, not me.

  After it became a regular thing, I began to welcome the darkness and solitude of the cupboard. It was my friend, my silence in all the madness, my little haven. I even had a pet spider in there I called Freddie. Freddie was small and black, and the first time he scuttled across my foot, I shrieked and screamed and backed into a corner, not knowing what it was. But then one time, when Dad opened the door, I saw him in the corner as the light from the hall hit the interior wall of the cupboard. So, Freddie was my company in there. I talked to him a lot, and he was a great listener. I’d fall asleep in there, just chatting with my mate, the only one in the world I could actually talk to, because the kids at school avoided me like a dose of chicken pox. I didn’t know how to talk to those other kids. I’d never been to nursery, and we didn’t live near anyone else, so I’d never been around other kids. I thought shouting at people was the right way to communicate, but the others didn’t seem to like it. It made the girls cry and the boys want to punch me, which they did. A lot. They thought it hurt me but it didn’t. They couldn’t hit like Dad could. The raggedy second-hand clothes I wore made me look so different from the other kids, too, and I had holes in the soles of my shoes where my big toe popped out. I didn’t look right. I didn’t feel right, either.

  The number of times I was told to stop shouting by Mrs Fuller was too numerous to count. But I couldn’t stop. I know she phoned my parents to tell them about my aggressive behaviour, which, of course, had a knock-on effect in that Dad would tell me I was an ungrateful, nasty little bastard, and God needed to knock some sense into me. So then I had Dad and God and Mrs Fuller to contend with.

  But, despite that, I still thought of school as being like the cupboard. It was safe, my own space where I could get away from the black days at home. I stood in the playground alone, on the fringes of the other kids, while they giggled about me and called out rude names, like always. They thought it would upset me, but it didn’t, because that was nothing. What they could do to me was nothing like being at home. They thought they were clever, but they didn’t have a clue. School was my holiday. So, there I was, tuning out the taunts, laughing to myself because they thought they were getting to me, and I noticed a new little boy about to start his first day. I watched him cling to his mum’s legs, like I tried to do to Dad when I wanted to stop that God person ranting and raving, spewing nastiness from Dad’s mouth, and when I was trying to stop his hitting and kicking. I thought that little boy was stupid. Why wouldn’t he want to get away from home and spend a few hours without all that going on? Why wouldn’t he want to draw pictures and be free? But the more I watched, the more I realised that his mum wasn’t like my mum. She wasn’t telling him to ‘Stop that right now or Daddy will be angry!’ There was no ‘Just do as your dad tells you,’ or ‘If you’d only behave, he wouldn’t be so annoyed! It’s all your fault!’ No, this mum crouched down in front of her teary little boy and wiped the crying away. She hugged his body tight towards her and kissed his cheeks, ruffled his hair. There was a twinge of something hot and pulsating as a thought rammed its way into my skull: I want to be him. I want that mum.