The Essence of Evil

by The Essence of Evil (retail) (epub)

  ‘Mary!’ Grant shouted out again. There was still no response but Grant now heard a creaking floorboard directly above, in his and Mary’s bedroom.

  Grant turned and headed for the staircase. He took the steps two at a time and then bounded along the landing to the master bedroom. The door was closed. He reached out and turned the handle. It was locked. He banged on the door.

  ‘Mary, it’s me. Open the door.’

  He heard nothing for a few seconds.

  ‘Mary?’

  Then there was the sound of shuffling inside. It took an age for her to come from wherever she’d been. The bed, the en suite? Eventually he heard the lock being pulled back and the handle came down. The door inched open and Mary peeked out, holding the door open only a crack as though she was dubious of who was really on the other side and was ready to slam it shut if needed.

  ‘Mary?’

  He saw Mary’s shoulder’s slump, not in dejection but in relief. She opened the door and Grant could now see her fully. Tears were running down her cheeks, her eyes were bloodshot. The skin around her left temple was deep red and heavily swollen.

  Grant’s heart jumped in his chest. He grabbed his wife and pulled her to him.

  ‘What’s he done now?’ Grant asked. His question was rhetorical, and Mary must have sensed that because she didn’t even attempt to answer.

  Although Grant wanted to stay and comfort his wife, his anger got the better of him. He let go of Mary. She took one look at his face – the fury on it – and knew what was coming.

  ‘No, Steven, please. Don’t!’

  It was too late. Ignoring her pleas, Grant stormed back out of the room, down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  Out in the garden Ethan was still yakking away on the phone. Grant flung open the patio door from the kitchen and Ethan spun around at the unexpected noise. His eyes narrowed when he spotted Grant.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘You little—’

  Grant swiped at the phone in Ethan’s hand and it clattered onto the patio slabs, breaking into pieces.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Ethan shouted.

  Grant grabbed his son by the neck and pushed him back two steps, more or less taking him clean off his feet. For a couple of seconds a panicked look swept across Ethan’s face, but it was more surprise than real fear.

  ‘Get the hell off me!’ Ethan yelled, finding his feet. With one hand he yanked Grant’s knuckles from around his neck and with the other he sent a balled fist towards his father’s face.

  Grant saw the punch coming and was able to duck enough to dodge the blow. He barrelled forwards and slammed into Ethan’s chest. Ethan stumbled back and fell to the ground, landing on the pieces of his shattered phone. Grant got to his feet and stood over his son, snarling like a dog.

  Ethan gritted his teeth, his eyes pinched with disdain. He was exactly the same height as his Dad at five ten, and he weighed about the same too. At only nineteen, though, he was lean and muscled in comparison to Grant, in his mid-forties. Yet as he stood over his son, what Grant lacked in youthful athleticism and strength he more than made up for in bubbling anger that seemed to be growing with each escalating indiscretion his son delivered at their door.

  ‘Stop!’

  At the sound of the shriek both men froze, but they didn’t turn. Their eyes remained fixed on each other, both prepared for an attack.

  ‘Just stop! Both of you.’

  The exasperation in his wife’s voice knocked the edge off Grant’s rage. Really, what was he going to do? Pummel his son into the ground? It was hardly the best reaction, given it was his son’s anger and miscreant nature that had catapulted them into this position in the first place. But someone had to put Ethan in his place.

  ‘You’ve gone too far this time,’ Grant growled.

  ‘Me? What the hell about you?’ Ethan clambered back to his feet and dusted himself down. ‘You just assaulted me!’

  ‘Are you taking the piss? Look at her!’

  ‘I should call the police,’ Ethan said.

  ‘Maybe you should. Then you could explain why your mother has a black eye.’

  ‘She came at me! Just like you did. You’re mad, both of you.’

  Grant turned around and looked over at Mary. She didn’t react at all to what Ethan had said. Her lack of protest suggested maybe Ethan’s words weren’t entire fabrication.

  ‘See? Told you. Self-defence, that is.’

  Ethan was now smirking, though how he could find the situation in the least amusing, Grant had no idea. Did he actually get off on doing this sort of thing to his parents, who’d only ever loved him and wanted the best for him?

  ‘If you ever touch her like that again…’

  ‘You’ll what?’ demanded his son.

  ‘I’ll tear your damn head off.’

  Ethan scoffed at that, and Grant clenched his fists again, trying not to rise to the bait.

  ‘You know what?’ Grant said, fighting to regain his cool. ‘Just get out of here.’

  ‘I only came for some of my stuff. You can’t keep my stuff.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘My clothes. My things. You can throw me out but you can’t just take everything off me.’

  Grant once again looked over at his wife for confirmation.

  ‘Seems you’ve already given most of it away, though,’ Ethan spat.

  ‘We thought you didn't want it,’ Mary said. ‘It was just a bunch of old clothes.’

  ‘Ethan, just get the hell out of my sight.’

  ‘Fine, whatever. But you two owe me.’

  ‘We don’t owe you anything.’

  Grant reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his son’s jacket to pull him away. Ethan snatched his arm back and then turned and trudged towards Mary and the house. She was still crying and she moved to the side and hung her head as her only son stomped past her.

  Grant kept pace behind, determined to see Ethan off the property before he went back to comfort Mary. He followed his son through the house and out the front door. Ethan began moving towards his motorbike but at the last second he stopped dead as though having a sudden change of heart. Grant stopped too and felt himself tense up again. Ethan turned around.

  ‘Look, Dad, I need some money. Just a couple of hundred quid. I was going to sell my old things for it, but I can’t do that now, can I?’

  ‘Go, Ethan.’

  ‘You’re such an arsehole.’

  ‘Takes one to know one.’

  Just then Mary pushed past Grant and went up to Ethan.

  ‘Here. Take it, then leave,’ she said. She grabbed Ethan’s hand and smacked a bundle of notes into his palm. Ethan didn’t even thank her; he just looked at Grant and gave him a knowing smile.

  Grant couldn’t hold it together any longer. He went for his son. Leaping forwards, he balled his fist and swung back his arm and… never saw the punch from Ethan coming. Ethan’s fist crashed into the side of Grant’s head and before he knew it he was on his back, staring up at the blue sky.

  ‘No!’ Mary screamed, running over to her husband.

  ‘You two are both fucking mental,’ Ethan shouted.

  Grant propped himself up on his elbow as Mary crouched down by his side. Ethan jumped onto his bike and fired up the engine. The raucous exhaust spat out a cloud of fuel vapour onto Mary and Grant, and Ethan tugged on the throttle, making the back wheel skid and kick up gravel as the bike lunged towards the front gates.

  Only then, with Grant prone on the ground, did he notice his neighbour, Ed Francis, out across the street, doing a pretty bad job of pretending to prune a bush.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Grant said, turning away from Francis in disgust. He and Mary were already the talk of the street because of the numerous ‘incidents’ caused by their son recently, when he’d still been living with them. Even now he had supposedly left, he was still causing embarrassment at every turn. But being embarrassed in front of the neighbours was the least concerning aspect of the s
ituation. Their son was out of control and becoming a bigger problem by the day.

  ‘Are you ok?’ Grant asked Mary, when Ethan’s bike was out of sight.

  She just shook her head and broke down once more. Grant got to his feet and pulled his wife into him, cradling her right there on the gravel. The neighbours could stare all they wanted. Sod them. None of this was his doing, or Mary’s – it was Ethan’s.

  ‘I hate him,’ Mary said. ‘God, sometimes I really hate him. My own son.’

  Grant just shook his head, not knowing how to respond to her words which cut right into his heart.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘But I do,’ Mary pulled her head back and looked into Grant’s eyes. ‘And do you know the worst part? I hate myself even more for feeling like this.’

  Grant didn’t say anything to that. What could he say?

  He heard sirens. A few seconds later the flashing of blue lights was visible over the garden wall. The police car came into view at the gates and crunched to a stop on the road outside. Grant felt himself deflate further, if that was even possible.

  His line of sight passed from the two police officers who emerged from the car and back across to the other side of the road. Ed Francis’s hedge clippers lay on the tarmac, next to a pair of garden gloves, and Grant watched as his neighbour scuttled back towards his front door, glancing over his shoulder in disapproval as he went. Whether it was Francis or one of the other neighbours who’d called the police, Grant didn’t know. One thing was for sure, though: within seconds there would be curtains twitching everywhere.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘What the hell was that all about then?’ Easton spouted as he and Dani drove away from June Staunton’s house.

  Forensics had combed through the old lady’s home and garden, taking whatever pictures and samples they saw fit. A technician had swabbed Mrs Staunton’s neck, checked her body for other unusual marks, and taken a sample of blood and urine. The investigators had remained on site for several hours, by which point Mrs Staunton was not just terrified but shattered as well. Her son, a not exactly spritely young man himself, had been there when Dani arrived the second time around, giving his mother some much-needed comfort.

  ‘I really don’t know,’ was all Dani could say to the question.

  ‘It has to be the killer, don’t you think? He was in there. With her. But why?’

  Dani shivered at the thought of that shadow at the window. Had the killer of the Jane Doe really been so brazen as to have gone from the murder scene and broken into the home to drug an old lady so he could spy on the police?

  And was spying really his plan or had there been another reason for drugging Mrs Staunton?

  ‘He had the sedative with him already,’ Dani said, thinking out loud.

  ‘You’re assuming that’s what Mrs Staunton was injected with.’

  ‘To be precise, we’re assuming she was injected. We don’t know that for sure yet either.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘But if she was, and if the culprit is the same person as who killed our victim, then…’

  Dani lost the train of thought. As focused as she was, her brain simply wasn’t yet used to working this hard again. But what on earth had they stumbled over?

  They arrived at the gated address in the upmarket area of Little Aston, several miles north of Birmingham, an enclave of serious wealth just beyond the border of Birmingham City Council, but well within West Midland Police’s jurisdiction. Grand residences on private roads were well hidden behind security walls and fences and sweeping manicured gardens.

  ‘You sure this is the right place?’ Easton quizzed, looking out of his window.

  ‘Sat nav says so.’

  ‘I heard Julio Romeu lives around here somewhere.’

  ‘Julio who-lio?’

  ‘New signing for Villa. You’re not a football fan?’

  ‘A big fan in the past. Kind of lost track recently, though, for obvious reasons.’

  ‘Yeah. A lot of my mates were the same after we got relegated.’

  Dani smirked but didn’t say anything about the fact that he’d misunderstood what she’d thought was a pretty clear point.

  ‘I still make appearances, though,’ he continued. ‘Habit as much as anything. Nice to do something with my old man too.’

  ‘Probably half the team live around here somewhere,’ Dani said. ‘They’ve certainly got the money for it.’

  She pushed the button and the window slid down. She pressed the intercom on the redbrick wall. After a few seconds a croaky male voice answered.

  ‘DI Stephens from West Midlands police,’ Dani said. ‘We spoke earlier. About your daughter.’

  ‘Come on in.’

  The intercom clicked off and a moment later the wrought-iron security gates effortlessly swung open. Dani slowly turned the car along the twisting tarmac. After a hundred or so yards a glorious mock-Tudor house came into view.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Easton said. ‘He does what again?’

  ‘Her, I believe,’ Dani said. ‘He’s a property developer but apparently she was chief exec of some pharma start-up back in the nineties. Sold it for nearly nine figures to one of the big boys about ten years ago.’

  Dani vaguely remembered reading about it in the local press at the time. The story of a self-made mega-rich local businesswoman was one that had hit a note with Dani at the time, given her desire to make a name for herself as a young female, even though by that point she’d already decided to dedicate her career to the police force rather than to the corporate world.

  ‘I wonder what they’ve got in there,’ Easton said, nodding over to the quadruple garage that was separate from the house, and which, with its dormer windows in the sloping eaves, was probably bigger than most regular detached homes.

  ‘Dead bodies?’ Dani said.

  Easton gave her an eye roll.

  ‘I was thinking more like Ferraris and Bugattis.’

  ‘Yeah. Those too.’

  Dani parked on the gravel turning circle next to an elaborate fountain, though the water was switched off. She grabbed the papers as she and Easton got out and crunched across the yellow stones to the canopied front door.

  ‘Butler or maid?’ Easton said, quietly.

  Dani didn’t answer. She pressed on the bell and a couple of seconds later the front door swung open to reveal a smartly dressed, pot-bellied man, with deeply tanned skin and cropped silvery hair and beard.

  Dani glanced to Easton who just shrugged.

  ‘Peter Agnew?’ Dani said.

  ‘Yes, yes, please come in.’

  Dani and Easton did as they were told, heading into the expansive wood-panelled hallway that was topped off by a five-foot-high polished suit of armour, complete with ornamental sword.

  ‘Please, come through to the drawing room.’

  Dani was sure she heard Easton snigger but she just kept her eyes ahead as they followed Agnew through into the thirty-foot-long drawing room. Basically a posh lounge, Dani decided.

  A bleached blonde lady with a skin tone slightly darker than her husband’s, suggesting many weeks spent somewhere a lot sunnier than England, got up from the sofa and came over. In figure-hugging cream trousers and a sequinned top she walked with the confidence of someone who was worth as much as she was.

  ‘Linda Agnew?’ Dani said, holding out her hand. The woman nodded and gave her a firm handshake. ‘I’m DI Stephens. This is my colleague DS Easton.’

  Formalities were briefly completed before all four took a seat. The Agnews sat together on a three-piece brown leather sofa. Dani and Easton took opposite armchairs.

  ‘I explained briefly on the phone what this is about,’ Dani said.

  ‘About Grace, yes,’ Peter said.

  ‘I’ll get right to the point. Last night we found the body of a young female in the Moseley area of Birmingham.’

  ‘You think it’s our Grace,’ Peter said. His wife sniffed and dropped he
r head onto his shoulder.

  ‘It’s possible. The pictures I’m about to show you are quite graphic, but please, if you could take a look and tell me if you think this is your daughter.’

  Dani leafed through the photos she had in her hand and took out the two least gruesome – head and shoulder shots that showed the victim from slightly different angles, and gave little indication of her horrific injuries. Unpleasant as it was, showing the Agnews these carefully selected photographs was the least distressing way at this stage for them to either identify their daughter or rule out the possibility that the body was Grace.

  She got up and handed the pictures to Peter. He took them with shaky hands and his brow furrowed as he stared at the pictures. Linda whimpered. Peter seemed frozen.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Agnew, is that your daughter?’

  ‘No,’ Linda said, her bloodshot eyes looking up from the pictures to Dani. ‘No. It’s not. I’ve never seen her before.’

  ‘You’re positive? If there’s any doubt, we can arrange for you to view the body, so you can be doubly sure. We’d have to do that anyway in order to complete a formal identification.’

  ‘No,’ Peter said. ‘We’re absolutely sure. That poor woman is not Grace. I’ve never seen her before.’

  He put the pictures down onto the coffee table and took his sobbing wife in his arms.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later the crying had stopped. Mr and Mrs Agnew had taken on a hard-nosed resolve as the four of them sipped coffee in the country-style kitchen that looked out over the enormous rear lawn.

  ‘I’m sorry we had to put you through that,’ Dani said, before taking a sip of rich coffee.

  ‘You’re just doing your job, Detective,’ Linda responded. ‘We’d already built ourselves up for the worst.’

  ‘We’re both just in shock,’ Peter added.

  ‘You’ve probably been over this with the Missing Persons team, but can you think of any reason why your daughter has gone missing? Anywhere she might now be?’

  ‘I’ll be honest with you, we haven’t always gotten along,’ Peter said. ‘We loved her dearly, but she wasn’t an easy child. We haven’t been close for some time.’