Stolen Children

by Michael Wood

  She nodded and wiped her eyes again. ‘Daddy used to abuse me. He did it for years. He stopped when I started with my period. I didn’t know he was abusing Keeley too. I just thought he’d stop.’

  ‘The lying bitch,’ Matilda seethed in the observation room.

  ‘Did you tell anyone about the abuse?’

  ‘No. Daddy said if I told anyone he’d kill me and Keeley and Riley. I didn’t want him to hurt them.’ She choked on her tears and put her head down to her chest. ‘But he did anyway, didn’t he?’ She looked up at Scott with big, tear-filled eyes.

  ‘Are you saying your father killed your family?’

  ‘He must have done. He would probably have killed me next,’ she cried and wiped her eyes again.

  ‘Jodie,’ Rory leaned forward. ‘How do you explain what happened at your house last night when you stabbed DS Sian Mills?’

  ‘Oh God. I don’t know what came over me. I’m so, so sorry. Is she going to be all right?’ Her words were barely audible over her tears.

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘Daddy kept telling me that if I told anyone what he’d done to me, he’d kill me and that I should stop anyone who questioned me about him because he’d end up in prison and Riley would be put away in a care centre because Mum wouldn’t be able to cope on her own. I was so scared DS Mills and that other one were going to take Riley away.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Matilda uttered. ‘She should get an Oscar for this performance.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Finn asked.

  Matilda remained quiet as she chewed her nails. ‘Until her father turns up, there’s not a damn thing we can do. It’s her word against mine.’

  Chapter 60

  Three people were dead, murdered, Matilda assumed, by Jodie Armitage, and the only thing she could charge her with was the stabbing of DS Sian Mills. She kicked open the door to the HMET suite in frustration and charged to her office. Her face was red with anger. The Mercer case in November could collapse and the killer get away with four deaths. She was not going to allow someone else to get away with murder. There had to be some evidence of Jodie committing her crimes.

  Matilda looked out of her window at the uninspiring view of Sheffield’s grey and unimaginative buildings.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Christian asked from the doorway.

  ‘I don’t think they’re worth that much,’ she said without turning around. She could see Christian’s reflection through the window.

  ‘Jodie’s certainly given this a great deal of thought, hasn’t she?’ he said, sitting down.

  ‘She’s a liar, a manipulator, a murderer, and a psychopath, and she’s playing the part brilliantly.’

  ‘She’ll have made a mistake. They always do.’

  ‘Only in crime dramas when the writer’s looking for an easy way out. I doubt Jodie’s made a single error. Craig, on the other hand, he may have done.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Craig has managed to convince his daughter that they’re in love,’ Matilda said, going over to her desk and sitting down. ‘He’s been able to keep that going for many years. Now, when you’re in love with someone, and it’s an intense and passionate affair, what do you do?’

  ‘Please don’t tell me you’re asking for positions.’

  ‘No. But, to keep her quiet, Craig will have bought Jodie treats. The neighbours have said that they’ve seen Jodie in designer coats despite them having to raise money for Riley’s care. He’ll have been buying her silence with presents.’

  ‘But even if we find jewellery and designer gear in her bedroom, she could say they were Christmas and birthday presents. It’s not evidence.’

  ‘No, but love letters are. Don’t forget, they’ll have had to keep what they’re doing a secret from everyone. They won’t always have been able to have private time alone, so what better than sending each other illicit texts or emails.’ She was clutching at straws, she knew that, but there was nothing else to go on.

  ‘We’ve been through every device in the house: phones, tablets, laptops. We’d have found them.’

  ‘Every device that we know about. Like I said, she’s a manipulator, a liar, a psychopath; she’s not going to leave a mobile with sexual messages from her father on her bedside table, is she? She’ll have hidden it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I want that house torn apart. I want the floorboards lifted. I want false walls taken down. I want the garden dug up if necessary.’

  ‘We can’t do that without a warrant.’

  ‘We’re searching for Craig who we suspect of murder. We need to find him. We have every right to be in that house. I know it’s Sunday, but I don’t give a toss about overtime. Get Scott, Rory, and Finn and pull that fucking house down if you have to.’ Matilda’s voice grew louder with every word as anger and frustration took over her.

  ***

  A fleet of police cars, marked and unmarked, drove at speed into Acorn Drive. They pulled up outside the Armitage house, and, led by DI Christian Brady, they went inside to begin dismantling it from the floorboards upwards.

  The search of the house began in Jodie’s bedroom. As a great manipulator, she wouldn’t have kept anything incriminating so close, but if she believed she was in love with her father, surely she would have wanted something personal to hand, to hold, feel, smell, in bed at night. That was the assumption Christian was working on, which was why he sent the team upstairs.

  Wearing full scene-of-crime suits, Rory and Finn led the team by searching through the chest of drawers, taking them all out of the pine unit, before removing the chest itself to look behind it. They did the same with the wardrobe and the desk. They emptied the drawers in the single divan bed and searched through every pocket in every item of clothing, all to no avail.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ Rory said, slightly out of breath.

  ‘Take everything out of the room and pull the carpet up,’ Christian said.

  ‘Really?’ Rory frowned.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘But say if she has hidden something under the carpet beneath the wardrobe, how is she going to have been able to get access to it with something so heavy on top?’

  ‘It might not be under the wardrobe. And if it is, maybe there’s a tunnel she’s able to put her arm through to get to it. We’re dealing with a complete psychopath here, Rory. Everything out, carpet up, floorboards up. Do it,’ he said firmly and stood back as Rory and Finn took the strain of the wardrobe.

  Christian stepped out onto the landing to give them room. He looked across the hallway and saw Scott in Keeley’s room. He was tentatively looking in drawers and cupboards.

  ‘Scott, I need you to be more thorough than that,’ the DI said. ‘You need to pull this place apart, piece by piece.’

  Scott looked up. His eyes were red. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been in this room. Have you seen some of her things? She was just a child, nine years old. She watched Frozen and drew pictures. Why did he have to …?’ he trailed off.

  ‘I’ve no idea, Scott. Some people are pure evil. Look, I’ve been going through Ellen Devonport’s daily reports that she emailed to Matilda. She mentioned she saw Craig in the living room repairing the floorboards the morning after Keeley went missing. It could be innocent, but maybe he wasn’t repairing them. Maybe he was hiding something. Pop down and have a look.’

  Scott smiled. He knew DI Brady was allowing him an easier task than rooting through a dead child’s belongings. ‘Thanks, boss,’ he said. He couldn’t leave the room fast enough.

  ***

  Downstairs in the living room, Scott dragged the coffee table to one side, kicked up the rug and bent down to try to raise the carpet from in front of the window. A quick jimmy with a Stanley knife and the carpet came away with ease. Putting on a pair of blue latex gloves, he pressed on the boards to see if any were loose.

  ‘Sir?’ he called out over his shoulder.

  DI Brady appeared in the
doorway. ‘Found something?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I thought you might want to be here when I lift these up, just in case. The three boards in front of the window aren’t secured.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Scott lifted the boards and looked down into the dark and grime beneath the house. He turned on a pen torch he took from his pocket and pointed the light into the hole. He dug around aimlessly until his hand caught on something. He turned to Christian and smiled.

  ‘What have you got?’

  Scott pulled out a plastic zip-lock bag, inside of which were three iPhone 4s.

  ‘Bingo,’ Christian said with a grin.

  The phones were protected by either a PIN or a fingerprint. Without Craig Armitage, they’d be useless.

  ***

  Hillsborough Park was virtually empty. The storm last night had left the ground saturated and only the hardiest of joggers and dog walkers had decided to come out.

  Leslie Cox was on the wrong side of sixty. A recent heart scare had forced her to re-evaluate her lifestyle. She’d ditched the chips, the chocolate, the crisps and the fried food and adopted a vegetarian diet. She went swimming twice a week, had joined a walking club which met twice a month and at the weekends she went for a light jog in the park near her home. In the last six months she’d lost three stone in weight and had never felt healthier. With Bonnie Tyler singing loudly in her ears, she set off at a brisk pace, focussing on her breathing. She ran past the playground, turned right at the pond and felt the coolness of the air as she ran under the oaks and the birches and out of the sunlight. She looked up, saw a man hanging from a tree, and screamed so loudly she scared the birds from the trees.

  Chapter 61

  Matilda stood back from the hive of activity and watched as Craig Armitage was cut down. She had been hoping he would have turned up somewhere and confessed, chapter and verse, to abusing his daughters. At the back of her mind, she always knew it would end like this. Abusers were cowards; they targeted the vulnerable members of society to exert power over them, but when faced with the responsibility of their actions, they took the easy way out. Craig wouldn’t have coped in prison, especially when it was revealed he had raped two of his three children. She wondered what had gone through his mind as he tied a rope around his neck and jumped from the branch. Matilda blinked. She realised she didn’t care what he’d been thinking. His actions had led to his daughter killing her mother, little sister, and brother. He had destroyed his whole family.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Adele asked, walking towards her and pulling her gloves off.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You wanted him alive, didn’t you?’

  ‘I want all of them alive. People should face justice for their actions. He should have rotted in prison for the rest of his life. I suppose it’s too much to ask that there’s a note in his pocket admitting everything.’

  ‘We haven’t found anything. If it’s any comfort, it wasn’t a quick death. There’s no broken hyoid bone. His fingernails are torn and there are scratches around the neck. He’ll have strangled himself and every instinct in his body would have been telling him to get the rope off, but he couldn’t.’

  ‘It might be a comfort to me, but what about poor Keeley and Riley?’ she asked, turning and walking away.

  Adele followed. ‘We’ve sent samples from Linda Armitage off to be tested – blood and stomach contents. They’ll take a couple of weeks to come back.’

  ‘Your new gadget worked?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said with a hint of a smile. ‘Riley died from asphyxiation. There was a piece of food lodged in his throat.’

  ‘Accidental?’

  ‘I don’t know. Was he able to feed himself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I doubt it. Whoever fed him will have known how mashed up his food needed to be. On its own it could have looked like an accident, but when you take everything else into account, it was obviously murder. A clumsy attempt at a natural death.’

  Matilda shook her head. ‘What threat did Riley pose, for crying out loud? He was four years old and severely disabled. Even if he had witnessed something he wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone. Why the fuck did he have to die?’ She turned and walked away, her heavy shoes squelching on the sodden ground.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Adele asked, following and placing a hand on Matilda’s shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come in today.’

  ‘I need to see this through.’

  ‘You are not to blame for any of this. You were never going to find Keeley alive.’

  ‘I know. It’s just …’

  ‘Carl Meagan?’

  Matilda nodded. ‘I’m haunted by him every single day,’ she said, choking on her tears.

  Adele pulled Matilda into an embrace and held her tight while the DCI cried on her shoulder. For the first time since returning to work following the death of her husband, she didn’t care if anyone saw her crying.

  Chapter 62

  Scott Andrews tentatively pushed open the doors to the mortuary and stepped inside. He felt the chill straight away and shuddered. It wasn’t the cold; it was the thought of all those dead bodies stacked up in the fridges. He couldn’t understand how someone as warm, kind and funny as Adele could spend her working days elbow deep in organs and stomach contents.

  He walked slowly down the corridor. There was nobody about and he was hoping he’d had a wasted journey and would have to return to the station with his task incomplete.

  ‘Jesus, you scared the life out of me,’ Lucy Dauman said as she entered the corridor from a side room. She tucked her blonde hair behind her ear.

  ‘Sorry Lucy. Is Adele around?’

  ‘Yes. She’s just washing up. Anything wrong?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘You’ve got the look of someone who’s been caught with their hand in the till.’

  ‘Oh. I’m fine.’

  ‘Ok,’ she smiled.

  Adele smelled of soap and perfume. She was sitting at her desk peeling a satsuma and leaning in close to her computer screen, reading intently. She caught something moving out of the corner of her eyes and looked up.

  ‘Hello Scott. Have you come to ask for my son’s hand in marriage?’

  ‘Marriage?’ he asked, startled. His eyes widened. He even took a step back. ‘No. No. Nothing like that. No.’

  ‘Calm down, Scott, I’m only teasing,’ she smiled. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I need your help with Craig Armitage.’

  The only way to unlock the three phones found beneath the living room floor was by using his fingerprint on the home button. Unfortunately, as Craig was dead, his fingers would need bringing up to body temperature in order for them to work to unlock the phone.

  Craig was wheeled out of the fridge and Adele handed Scott a pair of latex gloves.

  He stood holding all three phones in his shaking hands.

  ‘You want me to do it?’

  ‘You’re the one who wants the phones unlocked,’ Adele grinned.

  ‘What do I do?’

  ‘You take his finger, wrap your hand around it, and wait until it warms up,’ she said in a mock tone as if talking to a five-year-old.

  ‘Which finger?’ he asked, glaring down at the blue hand with a look of revulsion on his pale face.

  ‘I don’t know. Shall we ask him?’

  ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’

  ‘Just a tad.’

  ‘You’re a ghoul, do you know that?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she smiled. ‘Well, come on, get on with it. Craig Armitage might not have anything else to do today, but I certainly have.’

  Scott hated dead bodies. He hated gruesome crime scenes and he would sell his own mother to get out of attending a post-mortem. He swallowed hard, took a deep breath and stepped forward. He put two of the phones on the side of the trolley, held one in his hand, and wrapped his
other hand around Craig’s solid cold thumb.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I think he likes that,’ Adele said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look, he’s smiling.’

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Scott screamed and jumped to the other side of the room, much to the joy of Adele and Lucy who were bent double laughing.

  ***

  Once the phones were unlocked, Scott changed the settings so they were permanently unlocked, then quickly left the mortuary. He didn’t even say goodbye to Adele and Lucy who he thought he could still hear giggling from Adele’s office.

  In the car, he took one of the phones out of the evidence bag and scrolled through it. There were very few numbers stored in the phone book and the one identified as ‘J’ he guessed to be Jodie’s number. There was nothing in the messages app either; all had been erased. That wasn’t a problem; forensics would always retrieve them. Craig had WhatsApp downloaded. There was only one conversation listed, but there was no name attached. He opened it and scrolled up. The conversation had been going on for years by the look of the number of messages. When he came to a photo, he stopped scrolling. The picture was a selfie Craig had taken of himself at the wheel of his van. He was smiling. It was an innocent enough photo. Scott pressed ‘All Media’ and every photo sent to and from this person came up.

  What he saw was worse than anything he’d seen at a post-mortem.

  Chapter 63

  ‘DCI Darke!’

  Matilda was in the kitchen of the Armitage house in Acorn Drive helping herself to a glass of water in order to take a couple of painkillers. The last time she was here, Sian was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. The smudge of drying blood was still there.

  At the sound of her name being called, she put the glass down and went to the bottom of the stairs. She looked up and saw Rory looking down at her.

  ‘We’ve found something.’

  Jodie’s room was a shell. Everything had been taken out and put in other rooms or abandoned on the landing. Matilda looked at the walls: posters of Stranger Things, Harry Styles, and Thor with his impressive arms. This was the bedroom of a normal fourteen-year-old. Teddy bears had rested on shelves, Harry Potter books were neatly in order, a dream catcher dangled from the handle on the window. Appearances were deceptive. The person who slept in here was no normal fourteen-year-old.