by K Leitch
I don’t know what to do, lord help me… who to turn to for help…I don’t know what to do…
CHAPTER 28 - TRACY
‘She’s a funny one…that Rebecca, don’t you think?’ Tracy said to Juno as they were ushering the reception class back into the school after their visit to the mobile library. ‘…Er…Josef Dawe…I saw that, leave Marion alone…well you should have chosen that book if you wanted it so badly. Maybe if you ask Marion nicely she’ll let you have a look when she’s finished…or maybe not,’ she muttered as Marion tried to swipe Josef around the face with the book.
‘Oh I know what you mean Trace,’ Juno replied a moment later. ‘She’s always struck me as a real cold fish, never a smile for the kids…or for us for that matter. I sometimes wonder why she took on the mobile library, I mean it’s not like she couldn’t do other stuff...after all “she went to Oxford you know” Juno finished, mimicking Shauna Gerrety and laughing.
‘I know, it’s a funny job to choose isn’t it, especially if you don’t like people very much,’ Tracy mused. ‘Is she married…she must be in her forties wouldn’t you say?’
‘Hillary Shucker!’ Juno was shouting. ‘If I see you do that one more time you’ll have to go and see Miss Gerrety…I don’t care if he wiped his snot on you, that is no reason to kick him in the b…Bertie use your hanky in future, that’s dirty! Oh all of that I’d say,’ Juno carried on turning back to Tracy. ‘I don’t know if she’s married…I don’t think so, although she does live with someone I think. I know it’s hard to believe but Jenny Clover has seen her out and about a few times and she said that she is always with the same chap. Big tall bloke…looks a bit gormless apparently.’
‘Oh well there’s someone for everyone I guess,’ Tracy said over her shoulder as she rushed past Juno and picked up little Natalie Frimly, who was jumping up and down with her hands between her legs, and whisked her off to the loos just in the nick of time.
When she got back to the office a bit later Rebecca Sheenan, the mobile librarian who had been the focus of their earlier speculation, was sitting at Juno’s desk.
‘Oh hi,’ Tracy said, ‘are you waiting for Juno, she’ll be along in a minute… bit of a treacle sponge crisis in the kitchens.’
Rebecca looked up at her unsmiling and then went back to looking at the phone she was holding.
Tracy tried again, ‘Have you been doing this long…the mobile library I mean, not the sitting at the desk…’ she trailed off.
‘Not long…about two years I suppose,’ Rebecca said and then went back to her phone.
‘The kids love it,’ Tracy went on undeterred, ‘some more than others though,’ she finished rolling her eyes and giggling. The reception class’s trip to the mobile library earlier this morning had been rather eventful. Thomas Lee had managed to pull over a whole shelf of books, in his desperation to get a copy of ‘The Tiger That Came to Tea’, which was just out of his reach. ‘Er sorry about the shelf incident,’ Tracy said to Rebecca grimacing, ‘hope it didn’t cause too much damage to your tights.’ The shelf and the books had landed on top of Rebecca causing several ladders and a large whole in Rebecca’s rather severe navy tights, as Tracy could now clearly see.
Rebecca sighed irritably, ‘Yes well that’s why I need to speak to Juno. Obviously the boy wasn’t being supervised properly…’
‘Um hang on a minute…if your shelves hadn’t been stacked so high he wouldn’t have had to climb would he,’ Tracy said in her own defence.
Rebecca stood up impatiently at that and started walking to the door. ‘I think I’ll wait for Juno outside,’ she said irritably. ‘If you could just tell Juno…’ she started to say but as she passed Tracy the phone she’d been holding slipped out of her hand and slid under Tracy’s desk.
‘Don’t worry I’ll get it,’ Tracy exclaimed, as she jumped up from her seat and scrabbled down on all fours under her desk looking for the phone, emerging red faced a few seconds later holding it up triumphantly before her.
Before handing it back to Rebecca however she glanced at the screen, on which was a picture of Rebecca herself and a very tall dark haired man. ‘Hmm he’s nice…is that your fella?’ she asked as Rebecca practically snatched the phone from her hand.
‘My brother,’ Rebecca said as she wiped the screen clean, as though Tracy had contaminated it with one touch.
‘Oh, do you see much of him? Does he live round here?’ Tracy asked.
‘We share a house actually,’ Rebecca said through gritted teeth. ‘In Whitefield if you must know,’ she finished as she strode out of the room with a scowl on her face.
‘Well that answers one question,’ Tracy thought to herself smugly. ‘That’s why she’s such a moody cow… she can’t get a man and she’s living with her brother. I’ll have to fill Juno in when she gets back. Bloody hell though, the woman is hard work…who’d have her… that’s what I’d like to know.’
CHAPTER 29 - MAGGIE
Maggie put the phone down with shaking hands and a feeling of dread. Duncan had just called, his grandma, Martha, had had a fall. A nasty one by the sounds of it; she’d been taken to Redbank General, Duncan was with her. He asked if Maggie would come and be with him…he had sounded frightened.
Maggie got her things together, left a note for Dom who would be home later and made her way to the hospital.
She found Duncan pacing about in the A&E department; he came over and gave her a kiss.
‘Thank you sweetheart,’ he said shakily.
‘What’s happened…do you know anything yet?’ Maggie asked squeezing his hand.
‘I don’t know…could be her hip. She’s been taken down to X-ray…she’s in so much pain Maggie, I feel so useless.’
‘What happened,’ Maggie asked gently, pulling him over to some chairs and sitting him down.
‘I only left her on her own for two minutes,’ Duncan said shaking his head. ‘Poppy had helped her dress and I was fixing her breakfast. I went to answer my mobile which I’d left in the living room and then I heard this crash and when I went back into the kitchen she was lying on the floor in agony. Silly old bat had tried to reach the cocoa pops…she’s not allowed them, too much sugar. I shouldn’t have left her…’ his voice broke and he put his head in his hands.
Maggie put her arms around him and kissed his head. ‘Oh darling don’t start blaming yourself…she’s a stubborn old lady, if she wanted cocoa pops she was bloody well going to have cocoa pops, you know that. And remember that she is a fighter…look what she’s overcome in the last few years, enough to have destroyed women half her age so….’ she broke off as Martha herself was wheeled back into the room. Maggie swallowed down a gasp of horror, Martha really did look awful, pain was etched on her face and she was barely conscious.
They waited while her bed was wheeled back into place and the nurse that was with her connected her back up to the various drips and equipment that was monitoring her heart rate etc. Then Maggie went round and took her hand. Martha opened her eyes and stared up at Maggie.
‘Hello darling,’ Maggie said smiling down at her. ‘What have you been up to this time?’
She was shocked and alarmed when Martha’s eyes filled with tears as she stared back up at her.
‘Oh darling…don’t try and talk, I expect they’ve given you something for the pain haven’t they?’ she said holding back her own tears. Despite her diminutive size Martha was such a large character and it upset Maggie more than she could say to see her brought so low.
Duncan had brought the doctor over, Dr Kahn, a small Asian man with a kind face and a reassuring smile.
‘As we thought, Mrs McKinney has dislocated her hip,’ he was saying. ‘We have given her some morphine to help with the pain and we will be trying to manipulate it back into place in a little while….’
‘She will be out when you’re doing that I presume,’ Maggie butted in.
Dr Kahn smile at her. ‘We don’t think a general anaesthetic would be suitable in thi
s case, but she will be given gas and air and of course the morphine. We will try and get it done as quickly as we can, obviously the less stress we can cause Mrs McKinney the better…’
‘So when is all this going to happen doctor?’ Duncan asked before Maggie could jump in again.
‘I’m just waiting for another doctor to join me; it is a difficult procedure and it will take a couple of us to do this, so probably in about an hour or so. She should sleep till then; I have given her quite a strong painkiller. I will let you know as soon as we are ready,’ and with that he went on to another patient.
Duncan and Maggie sat either side of Martha as she lay sleeping. Maggie looked over at Duncan, he looked terribly shaken, and she hadn’t seen him this worried for a long time. Not since he had been coming back and forth to this very hospital for all his various skin grafts and reconstructive surgeries. About a year ago Duncan had nearly died at the hands of a maniacal serial killer. Fortunately help had arrived before she could finish him off but not before she had inflicted some awful injuries on him, the scars of which he still carried with him and would for the rest of his life.
Maggie squeezed his hand. ‘She’ll pull through darling…she’s in the right place, they’ll take good care of her.’
‘She has to Maggie,’ Duncan said looking at her with desperate eyes. ‘I can’t imagine life without her.’
Maggie brought his hand up to her lips and kissed it, she didn’t say any more…she couldn’t. Truth was Maggie didn’t even want to think about losing Martha…that was too terrible a prospect for her to contemplate.
CHAPTER 30 - CARLA
‘Right, our man is Jonas Silco. The DNA that his nephew provided was pretty conclusive and now we’ve had it confirmed by his dental records,’ Carla was saying to her team who had assembled in the briefing room. ‘Mr Silco is known to us, he was accused of the rape and possible murder of a young girl that worked with him at the…’ Carla flicked through her notes, ‘Linden Hotel. Mr Silco was the manager of the hotel, Missy Gattoré, aged 15 worked in the kitchens. She was reported missing by her brother, Jacob Gattoré in 1969. The hotel owners a Mr Oliver Hanley and his partner Ingrid Delaney said that the girl just left the job and the hotel (she lived in a room in the hotel) without giving them notice. They said that she had taken all her things and run away, Mr Silco also stated that she had stolen money from his room.
‘What evidence did the bother have for suspecting that she’d been done away with Ma’am?’ Mandy asked.
‘Well apparently he’d received a letter from her saying that she was being badly treated by Silco and that she was scared that he was going to rape her. She wanted to go home but it seemed that the money that she sent the family was too important and her mother had told her she was to stay where she was and keep out of Silco’s way.’
‘Bloody hell that’s a bit harsh isn’t it, poor girl no wonder she did a bunk,’ said DC Sam Tranter, ‘it sounds like something out of Charles Dickens…not the 1960’s.’
‘Yeh well things were pretty different then,’ craggy old desk sergeant Robert Finlay said with a chuckle. ‘Wasn’t quite so easy to get benefits, so if you were poor your kids had to work as soon as they left school and they had to contribute to the family income. When I was a boy…’ A groan went up around the room as Robert began one of his ‘when I was a boy’ stories, he smiled good naturedly and held up his hand. ‘I was just going to say that when I was a young electrician’s apprentice in the 60’s, I only brought home about six pounds a week and I had to give four to my mum…that’s just how it was.’
‘Yes we know,’ teased Frank, ‘and you were lucky to have one slice of bread and dripping for supper…slept ten to a bed. But Robert, I bet if you’d said to your mum that someone at work was threatening you, she would have tried to get you to change jobs…no matter how much she needed the money…’
‘Um…we seem to have gone off at a tangent here folks,’ Carla said hastily before sergeant Finlay could answer. ‘Can we get back to the subject in hand…thank you. Anyway the long and short of it is that Silco was never charged for any of it. Although the papers did get hold of the story…probably from the brother and they more or less tried and convicted Silco before he was cleared. Almost certainly because of that Silco was eventually dismissed from the Linden in 1971. At which point he changed his name and moved to Redbank as Philip Crowe. Interestingly enough the Linden Hotel was destroyed by fire in 1972, arson was suspected, and eventually Jacob Gattoré was charged, he served four years of an eight year sentence. ...’
‘And are we thinking that he could be responsible for the murder of Jonas in 1997? That’s a long time to bear a grudge Ma’am,’ said Midge, ‘if he was still even alive then, do we know anything about this Jacob Gattoré fellow?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Carla. ‘He has got a record as long as your arm. He served in the Army for five years until he was discharged in 1971. Then begins a list of petty crimes, theft, muggings that sort of thing, he’s been in and out of prison a few times too so I think he’s worth checking out. Sam can you and Midge try and find out where he’s living now, you can start by visiting his mother who apparently is now living at Fernley Hill retirement home….’
‘I don’t see how Gattoré would tie in with our second victim though Carla,’ Frank said when they had settled back in her office. ‘And I do think there are too many similarities for us not to link them. Any news from Dorothy yet?’
‘No,’ said Carla checking her desk to see if a report had arrived in her absence. ‘Can you give her a call Frank, see if we can’t hurry her up a bit? I’m going to see if Mandy’s got anything for me on Albie Wiseman. Until we know for sure that Wiseman and Silco were killed in the same way we have to deal with them separately, so we need to find out more about Wiseman’s movements over the last week or so. How long has he been back in the country? Is he involved in any business deals that might have been a motive to kill him? When does Imogen get back…did Luke say?’
‘She should be home by now I think,’ said Frank as he dialled Dorothy’s number. ‘Maybe we should head over there first, see if his widow can shed any light on his death.’
‘Right, just as soon as I’ve spoken to Mandy,’ Carla said leaving the room.
Mandy was as usual ensconced behind her desk, her eyes glued to her computer screen.
She looked up and smiled as Carla came into the room, ‘I’m ahead of you Carla; I assume you want to know about Albie Wiseman.’
‘You’re a mind reader love,’ said Carla sitting down next to her. ‘So what have you got for me?’
Mandy sighed. ‘Well nothing much I’m afraid. Um, he owns several businesses, namely A.I. Shipping, G.W.T. Transport…um… Hilliers building contractors. They all come under the umbrella of the holding company, which is called The Hanley group. There’s a list of shareholders and the company seems to be in good shape so nothing out of the ordinary I’m afraid. I haven’t found any legal disputes going on, nothing that would be a motive for murder so…’
‘Ok love, keep looking can you? And can you check out the rest of the family while you’re at it? There are two sons I believe, Luke and David, and of course his wife Imogen. I presume they are all set to inherit quite a bit which might just be a motive, could be worth looking into their finances see if any of them are in desperate need of an injection of cash.’
Carla left Mandy to it and went back to join Frank who was still talking to Dorothy on the phone.
‘Okay, right so nothing on the body? No finger marks, hairs anything to give us a clue?’ He heaved a sigh. ‘Seems unbelievable that someone could have inflicted that much damage and not have left something behind…I know, yes I’m sure you have…but that’s definitely what hit Helen on the head…yeh thanks I’ll tell her…ok speak soon.’
He looked up at Carla when he got off the phone. ‘Well the mallet found at the boathouse was definitely what smashed Helen over the head, the blood and hair found on it were Helen’s, nothing
else found though I’m afraid. And cause of death on Albie Wiseman was, as suspected, bleeding out due to his carotid artery being cut. Dorothy said his head was held back exposing his throat before it was sliced through with a single stroke using a very sharp blade, smooth not serrated. The knife penetrated so deep into the throat that once again it left small cut marks on the bones at the back of the neck…and she is pretty sure that the marks on Albie Wiseman and those on Jonas Silco were made using the same type of knife. Get this though; a ten inch kitchen knife was what had been thrust into his anal passage.’ Frank shuddered and shook his head in horror at the thought. ‘As you can imagine it caused massive internal bleeding,’ he went on, ‘he would have eventually died from those injuries, but they cut his throat anyway.’ Frank stopped and gave Carla a look.
‘OK, OK,’ said Carla holding up her hands, ‘it is beginning to look like there are some connections here, but I’m buggered…no pun intended…if I can think of how Jonas Silco, a sixty year old man killed nearly twenty years ago, could have anything to do with multi-millionaire businessman Albie Wiseman.’
‘Ah well that’s what we’ve got to do,’ said Frank as he got his coat, ‘find the connection, and we find our killer.’
CHAPTER 31
Andy Hunt kept staring at the woman that was standing behind the wire fence which bordered the school playing field. It looked like her…but then Andy was always seeing women that he thought looked like her. In the supermarket, walking along the street as he drove past in Helen’s car, he saw a lot of lookalikes, but they were never her.
He moved a bit closer, his class were playing cricket and he was fielding, so he could easily edge out towards the fence without being noticed. She was still there, just standing there watching the game. Andy turned and looked straight at her, his breath caught in his chest…she waved at him…it was her, it was Mum.