by Anita Waller
‘Mais oui. Please, follow me. But what is this about?’ Her French accent was strong, although she spoke perfect English.
She led them into a small lounge with pale grey walls and bright yellow curtains and cushions, a welcoming room that impressed both police officers.
‘Please… take a seat. What is wrong?’
They waited until the three of them were sitting on the chairs indicated by Bibi, and then Tessa spoke.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs McLoughlin, but we have some bad news for you. Your husband, Danny, died this afternoon.’
Bibi looked at Marsden first, then Hannah. ‘What? He is working. At Kat’s house. Then he was going to do a quote in Bakewell. He can’t be dead.’ Her eyes opened wide, and Hannah could see she was struggling to accept what they were saying.
‘Can I get you something, Mrs McLoughlin? Cup of tea? Glass of water?’
Bibi shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine. You must have the wrong person. My Danny is at work.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs McLoughlin, but we are sure it is your husband. He was at work at Mrs Rowe’s property. We believe he saw an intruder and gave chase. The intruder shot him.’
Bibi’s silence stretched on and on, until finally she spoke. ‘Maybe a glass of water…’
Hannah stood and went to find the kitchen. She returned to see Marsden holding Bibi’s hand, and the woman shaking uncontrollably.
‘How will I live without him?’ she whispered.
Nobody answered her. Nobody could.
Bibi let go of Tessa’s hand and took the glass of water.
‘Merci,’ she said, and sipped at it.
‘Do you have anyone we can contact? You shouldn’t be on your own.’ Platitudes, all platitudes, Tessa thought. This woman is struggling.
‘Our daughter, Petra Hunter. She lives in Grindleford. It will only take her ten minutes to get here. Please… be gentle when you tell her. She adores her father.’
Petra and Iain Hunter took over, comforting Bibi, promising they wouldn’t leave her, allowing Tessa and Hannah to head back to Kat’s house.
Two officers were stationed at the front, and two in the back garden. Photographs had been taken of the lawnmower, garden fork, and Danny’s flask and sandwich box; the tools had been fingerprinted and put away, and the flask and sandwich box bagged in evidence bags.
Marsden and Hannah went into the house through the garden door. Kat was feeding Martha, and the other two women were on their laptops. Both closed them as the police officers entered the room.
Kat lifted her head. ‘You didn’t find him?’
‘We confirmed he had been hiding in the loft of the pharmacy, but he’s gone now. He can’t have gone back there; his sleeping bag and blankets were still on the floor. I think he would have taken them, he has to sleep somewhere and it’s still damn cold at night.’
‘Was there a large brown suitcase?’
‘No.’ Marsden shook her head.
‘Then he has somewhere else set up. When he broke in here,’ Kat said, ‘he took a suitcase full of his stuff from the wardrobe. He has a back-up hiding place, DI Marsden. I know the way my husband thinks, particularly about me. He only stayed at the pharmacy once he realised I was pregnant.’
Chapter 8
Marsden, back in her office, called in reinforcements. She led the briefing, filling everybody in on the events of the day, and added that nothing was more important than catching Leon Rowe.
Full protection had been afforded to Kat Rowe, Beth Walters and Doris Lester, and Marsden was confident that it would be sufficient to keep them safe.
‘Where do we start, boss?’ Tessa heard the question from three different places.
‘We start with every piece of available CCTV in that village, and every house on every road out of the village must have a visit. Ray, can I leave you to organise a map and allocate officers to the visits, please? Leon Rowe is very recognisable; his dark, dark skin is obvious, and I would imagine everyone in Eyam knows him, through the pharmacy. I want full reports of every visit you undertake by tomorrow, then go out again and carry on. Somebody must have a clue where this man is, he’s too well known to just disappear.’
Marsden left the briefing room, and sank into her own leather chair behind her own desk, in her own office. Exhausted. Her mind was full of Leon Rowe. Where had the bastard fled to this time? She briefly closed her eyes and tried to envisage him, running across the Derbyshire landscape, heading for sanctuary before anyone saw the black face and connected him with the missing man.
Five minutes later she was outside the station, a bank of cameras and microphones in front of her, talking to the people who were at considerable risk. ‘Do not approach this man; we believe he has already killed today and is in possession of a gun. If you see him, we need to know immediately. And now I have a special message for the owners and staff of camping and hiking gear shops in the entire region. He no longer has the survival gear he had, we have that. It may be that he tries to buy more. Please study his photograph. If he comes into your shop, don’t challenge him, he is dangerous. We need it reporting as soon as you can get to a phone.’
As she spoke the words she knew that every black male who walked into any sort of shop in Derbyshire would be reported. But there just may be that one…
She thanked the public and stepped away from the microphone.
Leon Rowe watched the broadcast on his mobile phone and smiled. Smart arse, he thought. He recognised the picture that had been displayed; Kat had taken it in the days when they were happy, loved each other, hated being apart.
Leon still hated being apart. Brian King’s greed had led to Leon’s present predicament; wanting more than he was prepared to offer from the business. Brian’s sentence had pleased Leon. He had proved not to be the loyal friend Leon had always thought he had, and the stupid man had talked.
Leon smiled to himself as he thought of the others that Brian had taken down with him, all equally incarcerated and gunning for the ginger-haired idiot. If Brian lasted another year, he would be lucky.
Leon’s phone was losing power so he stood and plugged it into the charger, His bolthole looked nothing from the outside and had served him well for a few months while he made his plans to leave the country, and recuperate from the loss of his left hand brought about by Doris, the gun-toting granny. Obviously her admiration for him had died a death that day.
The old petrol station was well set up for his everyday needs and had been bought for the specific reason it was now being used. The large front doors hadn’t been opened for years, and he needed to get them to open… just in case. The small back door – very small, he had to duck his head to enter – was his preferred method of accessing his property. Long before he met Kat he had recognised he might need an escape one day.
An efficient generator took care of his electrical needs and the building itself was perfectly positioned away from any other properties. He could take time to work out what to do next. Until he had seen the baby, he could make no decisions.
He spent the evening cleaning his gun, regretting that it had been Danny McLoughlin who had taken a bullet. He liked Danny, one of the good guys. He guessed Danny hadn’t thought the same about him.
Leon left a candle burning through the night. If anything happened he didn’t want to be fumbling around in the dark, he needed to be able to see. He sank down into his sleeping bag and grinned. It’s okay, Marsden, he thought, I don’t need a new one. Stand down your army of shop assistants.
Nobody really wanted breakfast, and yet all three knew they should have something. In the end they settled on cornflakes, so their stomachs knew they had eaten.
Doris tilted the teapot, poured out the tea and they all picked up their cups at the same time. Speech wasn’t coming easily.
Eventually Mouse took out her diary. ‘Okay, we can’t sit around here moping. If we do, bloody Rowe will have won.’
‘Don’t swear, dear.’
‘Sorry, Nan.’ The res
ponse was automatic. ‘I’m going to see Keeley Roy, see if I can get anything out of her. I can’t just say, “is Henry the love child of Tom Carpenter”, so I’ll cobble together an invoice that says it was a pro bono job, but I need her signature for our accountant.’
Doris held up her thumb. ‘When in doubt, blame the accountant.’
‘You three are staying here,’ she said. ‘Please don’t go out. This is the safest place for you at the moment.’
‘Martha promises she won’t walk out of that door, not for all the tea in China,’ Kat said solemnly.
‘Kat, I’m serious. Leon killed yesterday, outside here. Nan, I’m trusting you to control Kat. Make sure she rests.’
‘Don’t worry, she will.’
And Kat knew she would.
Keeley looked surprised to see Mouse. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yes, it’s all good. I need your signature on an invoice that basically says no charge, but we need it for our accounts.’
‘Okay, come in.’ Keeley held the door open. ‘Tea?’
‘That would be lovely.’
Mouse followed Keeley into the kitchen and sat at the table. ‘You’re okay after yesterday?’
Keeley smiled as she switched on the kettle. ‘I’m fine. I can’t believe I sat on the floor and cried. I’m such a wuss. I just felt… overwhelmed.’
‘Natural reaction. You’d had your money stolen. It can’t be easy bringing a child up on your own, and I presume you only work part time?’
‘I do. It’ll get easier as Henry gets older, but it’s a struggle at the moment. We get by, but it’s the extras in life that floor me.’
‘What happened to Henry’s father? Don’t answer if I’m being nosy. I don’t mean to be.’
‘He died last year. Cancer.’
‘I’m so sorry. That must have been hard for you both.’
‘It was more than hard for me, but Henry didn’t know he was his father. He thought he was simply our neighbour.’
The kettle clicked off and Keeley poured water into the mugs. There was silence while she made the drinks, and then she sat down at the table with Mouse.
‘He was older than me, by about ten years, but we got on so well. Three years after we met at our front gates, we had Henry, but Tom didn’t have the courage to leave her, his wife. She’s a bit of a psychopath. I know he was scared how she would react, he thought I would be in danger, and possibly Henry. I said it didn’t matter, I loved him anyway, and I was prepared to wait.’
Mouse sat quietly. This was more than she could have hoped for, and it seemed ridiculous that she had worried all the way over to Hope how she would approach the subject. She suspected Keeley didn’t have many people she could talk to about the tragedy that had hit her; Mouse was happy to listen.
‘He died the width of a wall away from me. I saw the doctor come, and I knew. The next day his wife came around and told me. She actually smiled. I’m sure she knew about us. But, it didn’t matter, we loved one another and we had the child he longed for. Tom’s mum and dad couldn’t have children and they adopted him. Tom was so happy when Henry was born. It added something to our relationship, and it gave him a blood relative. Henry looks a lot more like his daddy than he does his mummy,’ Keeley added, pride in her voice.
‘That must compensate in some way. However, you’ve taken me a little bit by surprise.’ Mouse hadn’t anticipated Keeley being quite so forthcoming, and knew that she had to tell her that Judy Carpenter had employed them. If it came out later, it could be catastrophic.
‘Tom’s wife, Judy, is our client. Everything you’ve just told me hadn’t occurred to me at all.’ She offered up a silent wish that the lie would never be discovered. ‘I obviously can’t tell you why she is our client, but I promise I will never speak of you to her. The case she has asked us to check out doesn’t impinge on your life.’
Mouse saw Keeley’s face relax slightly.
‘That’s a relief. It’s all very well me saying she suspects, but she doesn’t know for definite. And I’ve no intentions of admitting anything to her. She’s a nasty piece of work. If she found out, I would have to move. I don’t want to leave my memories of what I shared with Tom behind, and those memories are all linked to this house.’
Mouse breathed a sigh of relief. She felt she had covered the bases; Keeley trusted her.
They talked of inconsequential things, including how Tom visited her by going up into his loft and down through hers. The whole row of six terraced cottages, typical Derbyshire homes, had a huge shared loft space.
Keeley’s tone was wistful. ‘I remember the night he told me about the cancer. We cried together. That was the last time he used the loft route to see me, he wasn’t well enough. He tried to spend time with Henry, but Judy was always there, watching his every move. He only lived eighteen weeks after getting the terminal diagnosis. I loved him so much, but he didn’t have time to make provision for Henry, and to be honest, I didn’t even think about it until Henry needed new school shoes. Tom had bought his shoes right from the very first pair of Clark’s, and I had to think twice about whether I could afford Clark’s for him any longer.’
‘I’m pretty sure you would be able to make a claim against Judy, but it would mean having a DNA test done.’
Keeley shook her head. ‘Not an earthly. I’ll manage.’
Mouse smiled. ‘I knew you’d say that.’ She finished her drink and stood. ‘I’ll head back now. Thank you for the cuppa, and have a lovely holiday.’
Keeley walked Mouse to the door, and watched until she had driven away. Keeley wondered what the invoice was that Beth Walters had brought her to sign. She certainly hadn’t signed one; hadn’t even seen one.
Chapter 9
Kat laid Martha down in the crib and just for a moment, Kat stood and gazed at her perfection. All the bad things that had happened over the last year were still hovering over them, blighting their lives, but this one tiny individual had brought sunshine.
Doris came and stood beside Kat.
‘Look at us,’ Kat said. ‘Grinning like Cheshire cats. I’ve been up twice in the night with her, and smiled through it all.’
‘She seems to be a good baby so far, Kat. You go and have a rest while she’s sleeping, we can take care of her if she wakes. I’m working on the Carpenter case, hoping some information has come in, but until it does I can multi-task and listen out for this little one. I left a programme running overnight, so it should be delivering something soon.’
Kat held up her hand in mock horror. ‘I don’t want to know. Just tell me the results, not how you got them.’
The front door opened and they heard Mouse speaking to the officer stationed on the driveway. She walked through to the lounge, crossed the room and looked down into the crib. ‘Perfect,’ she said. She turned to Kat and Doris. ‘I have news.’
‘Good. I’m hoping I do, as well,’ Doris responded. ‘But let’s move into the kitchen, then we won’t wake Martha. Kat, go and rest.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Kat raised her eyebrows. ‘I’m going nowhere if everybody has news. I promise I’ll not do anything, but I’m staying down here.’
Doris gave in, and made coffees for all four police officers tasked with keeping them safe, before joining Kat and Mouse around the kitchen table, cradling their own drinks. Both Mouse and Doris opened their laptops.
There was a sharp intake of breath and Doris punched the air. ‘Tom Carpenter’s birth mother, Pamela Bird, lives or lived in Buxton. I’ll do the electoral check, find out if she’s still alive, where she’s living now, that sort of minor detail,’ Doris added, a huge smile on her face. ‘Then we need to tell Judy Carpenter we will make the initial contact by letter, not just go in with heavy boots on.’
‘And now, of course, there’s a further complication.’ Mouse’s face held no smile. ‘Little Henry Roy is Tom Carpenter’s son. He would have a very legitimate claim on his father’s estate, and it’s quite possible Tom’s birth mother will wan
t to be a part of her grandson’s life. She loved Tom very much, we could tell that by the letter she left for him. It’s too late for that relationship, but it’s not too late for her to bond with his son.’
Kat sipped slowly at her coffee, her thoughts playing with the information rolling around the table. ‘Why does Judy Carpenter want to know who Tom’s birth mother is? There’s something not right here.’
‘Hey,’ Mouse said with a clap of her hands. ‘Our thinker is back. Talk us through what you mean, Kat. I also feel we need some brainstorming on this one, something’s not sitting right, as you said.’
Kat marshalled her thoughts. ‘I just can’t see what Judy gains from knowing who the mother is. Judy and Tom had no children, so it’s not even as though she wants a grandmother figure for anybody. I think we need more facts on Pamela Bird before we let on to Judy that we’ve found out anything.’ Kat leaned back. ‘And all that is without recourse to a laptop.’
‘You’re right. We’ll send her an interim report telling her we’re following several leads, and we’ll get back to her with full results as soon as we can.’
Doris exhaled slowly. ‘Wow…’
‘Nan?’ Kat stood and moved behind Doris to look at her screen. ‘Wow is the right word. Where’s that?’
‘It’s where Pamela Bird lives,’ Doris said. ‘My thoughts, for what they’re worth, are that Judy Carpenter knows this. She simply doesn’t know how to approach Pamela Bird without it looking as though she’s in it for Pamela’s money. If the initial approach comes from a reputable agency, it makes it so much more official and acceptable. I’ll bet anything that when we tell her we have nothing to report yet, she just accepts it. All she has to do is wait for us to furnish her with Pamela on a plate, and she’s in. There’s no rush, as far as she’s concerned, as long as it all looks above board. Do you two agree?’
‘Unfortunately I do,’ Kat said.