Sleep Tight

by Rachel Abbott

  Tom stood up and shook Jumbo’s giant hand. ‘To what do we owe this honour, Jumbo?’

  Jumbo’s mouth was set in a grim line, and there were deep furrows between his eyebrows.

  ‘I like to be right, Tom. You know that. But sometimes, particularly when it involves a murder that until now we weren’t sure about, it doesn’t feel so good.’

  ‘Sit, Jumbo. Tell us what you know.’

  Jumbo grabbed Tom’s chair, which creaked a little as he squashed himself into it. Becky was about to offer Tom hers, but he waved her away and perched on the desk, one foot on the floor and one leg swinging in a casual style that belied his true feelings. Jumbo leaned forwards and clasped his hands, turning his head from one to the other, as if to decide whether they were ready for this.

  ‘Okay – first things first. I had the blood samples rushed through for DNA analysis, as you know. The tests showed the blood was from a male, but that’s all. We checked against the two little boys – we picked up various items of theirs around the house to test against. I’m very relieved to say they came up negative. We also checked against Robert Brookes, in case he was the victim rather than the perp. Again, negative.’

  ‘Pretty much as we expected,’ Tom said, but he could see from Jumbo’s face that there was more.

  ‘Do you remember I told you we’d found an old sealed box in the attic? It was mainly papers covered in handwriting, but I couldn’t make any sense out of it. Lots of complex calculations, printouts from a computer and so on. We’ve had somebody look at them. We don’t believe they’re relevant to our investigation, but we’ll pass them over to you. However, the box was marked “Dan” and the name on the top of the documents is Danush Jahander. At the bottom of the box we found a few odds and ends belonging to him – some with his name on, some just oddments. It was as if somebody had grabbed everything of his in their arms,’ Jumbo demonstrated by spreading his arms and then pulling them to his chest, ‘and thrown it all in,’ he said, flinging his arms wide.

  Tom glanced at Becky. He knew what was coming, and from Becky’s expression, so did she.

  ‘In the box we found a large pair of men’s leather gloves,’ Jumbo continued, ‘fairly battered and well worn, originating from a company in Iran. We managed to extract some DNA and we got a match. The DNA from the gloves is a match to the blood we found in the study. It looks like the person who died there was Danush Jahander.’

  Even though he had been expecting Jumbo to say this once he had mentioned the box, Tom paused for a moment to think about this young man who had been so central to the enquiry, but whom Tom had never met. He had been concerned about Danush since they had found out he was back in touch with Olivia and had used Sophie’s phone to set up a meeting with Robert. Now it was confirmed that the blood in the study belonged to him, it meant they had to open up a whole new channel of investigation.

  ‘Thanks, Jumbo,’ Tom said quietly. ‘Are you certain there was enough blood spilled in that room for a person to have died?’

  ‘It had been cleaned up, so I can’t tell you for sure how thick the blood was lying. But it covered a wide area and I’m sure it was arterial blood. So yes. Somebody died in that room.’ He looked down at his hands, clasped between his knees, and paused for a second as if in silent acknowledgement of a life lost. Taking a breath, he looked up and continued. ‘There’s more. We took both cars if you remember, and inside the boot of Robert’s car we found traces of blood – and it matched the blood in the study.’

  Becky frowned. ‘If Jahander had bled that much, wouldn’t there have been more than a trace?’

  Jumbo shook his big head. ‘Not necessarily. If Brookes had lined his car boot well with plastic – a waterproof cover for some garden furniture maybe or even good-quality bin liners – it would have been okay. My guess is that the body bled out in the study, based on the spatter pattern. We’ll get some more feedback on that, but I’m still backing a slashed carotid. Your PC spotted that a sheet was missing from the bed, and there were cotton fibres found in the boot as well. They’re a match with the other bed linen in the master bedroom.’

  ‘Shit,’ Tom muttered. If the body had been taken from the house, it could be absolutely anywhere now. But something else was bothering him.

  ‘We know Brookes returned to his home on Wednesday night, or the early hours of Thursday morning to be precise. We can only assume he had agreed to meet Jahander there, expecting Olivia to be home too. Maybe he wanted a showdown between all three of them, and in theory she would have been back from holiday by then. Or maybe Jahander had said that he was going to see Olivia to persuade her to leave with him, and Brookes went to make sure that didn’t happen.’

  Tom could see from Becky’s eyes that not only was she following him, she was probably ahead of him.

  ‘So Robert came back to meet Danush and killed him,’ she said.

  ‘Danush Jahander died in that study,’ Tom said. ‘There’s evidence that he was then transported in the boot of Robert’s car, and we mustn’t forget the missing knife, which I suspect we’ll never find. Robert was back in Newcastle for the first morning conference session. The dog walker saw him leaving home at five fifteen that morning, so Robert didn’t have enough time to faff about on back roads driving back to Newcastle.’

  ‘I’ll get a map and check out his likely route,’ Becky said.

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘No need, Becky. I know it well. Given the approximate time he drove off from his house and the time his car was back in the garage in Newcastle, he would have had to go the most direct route. He’d have taken the M60 to the M62 to get him across the Pennines, and then up the A1.’

  ‘Well, bugger me,’ Jumbo mumbled. Tom waited expectantly for him to say more. ‘What if I told you that our friend Robert had a bit of an obsession with Myra Hindley and Ian Brady?’

  Tom’s eyes met Jumbo’s and no words were necessary. Becky was staring from one to the other with a quizzical expression.

  ‘Come on, Becky, where’s the obvious place just off the M62 that’s totally deserted in the early hours of the morning – the perfect spot to dump a body?’ Jumbo asked.

  As a young southerner, it was clearly taking Becky a little longer than Tom and Jumbo to get it.

  ‘Saddleworth Moor, Becky,’ Tom said, putting her out of her misery. ‘Back in the sixties, Brady and Hindley killed five kids, and four of them were buried on the moor, although one has never been found.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry, I didn’t make the connection,’ Becky said, flushing a little. ‘But would he have had time to dig?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Unless you’re going to say you found a tell-tale spade encrusted with peat while you were searching, Jumbo?’

  Jumbo gave him a look.

  ‘I didn’t think so.’ Tom pushed himself off the desk and stood up, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets.

  ‘You’d better take your pick of the reservoirs then,’ he said, ‘because we certainly can’t drag them all.’

  44

  Sitting here on my beach watching my children play, I feel a small burst of happiness, and I realise it’s the first time I have felt free to be happy since I lost Dan and two months later, my mum and dad.

  Accepting my parents’ death was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I can remember ranting and raving at the police inspector who came to the scene. The police tried to explain what had happened. They told me it would have been a very peaceful way to die.

  But they were wrong about it all. They had to be.

  They told me there was a carbon monoxide monitor in the house, but that unfortunately there were no batteries in it. Perhaps my father had taken them out to replace them, and just forgotten?

  This didn't make any sense to me at all. My dad kept spares of every size of battery known to man. He was obsessive about stuff like that. I took the inspector and showed him the drawer where they were kept. Why would Dad not have replaced the
bloody battery?

  The police weren’t listening.

  I can remember that once the fumes were gone and the house was considered safe, a kind woman police officer had taken Jasmine into the spare bedroom and laid her on the new activity mat my parents had bought her as a ‘welcome to your new home’ present.

  And then my phone had rung. I couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t speak to anybody. I didn’t know if I was capable of uttering the words: ‘My parents are both dead.’ I was sure every syllable would stick like glue to the roof of my mouth.

  The inspector had taken the mobile from me and answered the call. I don’t know what he said, but when he gave me the phone back I remember him saying, ‘Robert Brookes says he’s coming.’ I had forgotten all about Robert. He was waiting for me at the flat. When my dad hadn’t turned up with the van he’d hired, Robert had suggested that I drive to their house to see what was keeping him. I was supposed to call Robert to let him know when I’d be back.

  I remember feeling a sense of relief that somebody other than the police knew what was going on. The news was now outside of those four walls, and it seemed somehow to make it more real. And I was glad Robert was aware of what had happened. I didn’t know him well, but since he’d first arrived to look around the flat – the very day it went on the market – he had been kind to me. I immediately felt he was strong and capable. I couldn’t wait for him to come and help relieve me of some of this burden.

  It seemed to take forever for him to get there, but he has told me since then that he did the journey in record time. By the time he arrived, the crime scene team were crawling all over the place, but they weren’t turning up anything surprising. There was no sign of forced entry and no indication, other than the rather paltry evidence of the missing batteries, of foul play.

  A specialist gas engineer came to take a look at the boiler, and he was quick to point out one of the problems. He explained about the importance of an air vent to let cold fresh air in to replace the gases that would be rising up the chimney. For once, I’d snapped out of my zombie-like state, and was prepared to listen. I needed to understand this.

  When he pointed out that the air vent coming into the house was blocked with an old towel, I nearly went ballistic.

  ‘There’s no way,’ I shouted repeatedly. ‘Why would he do that?’

  The engineer simply pointed out that as far as he could see, every window in the house was triple-glazed and every door, including the internal doors, had draught excluders on them. He asked if my father was a bit obsessive about keeping bills low, and I had to admit that he was. The cold air vent would have been against everything my father was working towards in his draught-free environment. But would he be so stupid?

  They had all looked at me sadly, and Robert had put his arm round my shoulders. I remember shaking him off with frustration; I didn’t want comfort. I wanted somebody to believe me.

  Only it wasn’t just the air vent, apparently. There was a damaged joint on the flue of the, admittedly old, boiler. The toxic gases had been escaping from there. They made it sound like it was all my father’s fault.

  I remember my legs giving way as a black fog engulfed me. Somebody caught me and helped me to a sofa – I can’t remember who – but I fought my way back from total collapse because somehow I had to convince the police they were wrong.

  At the time, I thanked God for Robert, even though I didn’t want hugs and comfort from him. It wasn’t his fault the police were being so completely useless. Robert was the only person who kept me sane, and even in the midst of such chaos, he reminded me to feed Jasmine.

  When I had run out of arguments, he was the one who apologised on my behalf to the police. I didn’t want him to, but yelling at them wasn’t achieving anything. I had to accept there was no evidence, and anyway I couldn’t think of a single person who would want my parents dead.

  The inspector knew something was wrong, I’m sure of it. I heard him talking to the crime scene technicians. I walked over to the door of the utility room where they were huddled, and heard him asking them to go over everything again, to make sure there was no way anybody had been in the house. I suppose there was just a chance that my dad could have blocked the cold air vent, but the batteries were the one thing that would never make sense to me. Not unless my father had had an abrupt change of personality or was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s.

  The thought of staying in their bungalow that night sent me into a panic. Could I sleep in a house where my parents had lain dead just hours before? I didn’t think I could. I never wanted to come to this sad home ever again. But I didn’t own the flat any more and my best friend was somewhere in the Middle East, so I just slid down the wall to the floor, wrapped my arms around my knees and cried and cried. I heard the policeman ask Robert if he knew of anybody who could help me, and he told the inspector not to worry. He’d take me back to the flat – his flat now – and he would look after me himself.

  The policeman seemed surprised that Robert would do this for me, and I probably should have been too, if I’d been able to think straight. At the time, though, the only thing I cared about was curling up in bed and crying some more, trying to hold the pain inside me, because if I allowed it to escape it would shatter me into pieces. So I let Robert take over. He had already proved himself to be good with Jasmine, and he was so attentive. What else could I do?

  First Dan, and then two months later my parents. It was no surprise that I was totally numb. I was grateful to Robert. So grateful that, after six months, when he asked me to marry him, I said yes. It was the easiest and most obvious thing to do.

  What a fool I was. I walked straight into his trap, and the cage door slammed shut behind me.

  45

  At the end of the day, Tom was ready to go home. He needed quiet thinking time, and his home had an air of tranquillity that he had noticed the very first time he’d come for a viewing. His mother used to say that houses absorbed the personalities of the families that had lived in them, and he had teased her about it unmercifully. If she was right, though, this house must have seen some very happy, peaceful times and it was just what he needed now.

  Of course he had the cottage in Cheshire, which was wonderful for the occasional free weekend, especially when his daughter Lucy could join him, but it was just that bit too far for a daily commute. Fifty miles with no traffic was okay, but the roads around Manchester were chock-a-block in the rush hour, and he needed to be able to get to HQ quickly if necessary.

  It had taken him a bit of time to find this house, because he hadn’t been prepared to settle for another cold shell of a home after the one he’d had in London, and he knew that as she got older Lucy was likely to want to spend more time in Manchester – the shops, the cinema, places to meet friends. The word ‘clubs’ jumped into his brain and he shuddered, thanking goodness that it would be a few years before he had to worry about that.

  It was his intention to stay in Manchester for the foreseeable future, so he had decided that, since money was no object, he would buy a house. It was far too big just for him, but once he had seen it, he had fallen in love with it. Although it was a red-bricked semi in south Manchester, it had some unusual Edwardian features that grabbed him from the word go. The rooms were spacious with high ceilings, and in the sitting room there was an arched feature in front of the two bay windows, both of which still had their original stained glass. The hall was big enough to house his desk, and with its own small fireplace it made a cosy place to work. Two low bookcases crammed with every sort of novel known to man and stripped floorboards with colourful rugs created a welcoming entrance.

  As he opened the front door and stepped inside, he felt his taut limbs begin to relax, and he put his briefcase and keys down on the desk, took his jacket off to fling over the back of a chair, and made his way to the kitchen. It was still light outside at the end of a glorious June day, so he grabbed a bottle of cold beer and took it into the garden.

  Garden
ing wasn’t really Tom’s thing. Somewhere at the back of his mind he thought he might in the future get interested in growing fruit and vegetables, but only so that he could cook with them. For now, he paid a gardener to keep on top of things. Shameful, but necessary. If he hadn’t taken the easy way out, he would have to spend every day off armed with a lawnmower and a weeding fork, and that wouldn’t leave him much time for Lucy or Leo.

  As he stood surveying his beautifully maintained flowerbeds, Tom’s mind turned to the break-in at his Cheshire cottage, and to Jack. Without his brother, Tom would never have been able to afford this house or the one in Cheshire. He was still maintaining his ex-wife who seemed to feel under no obligation to work for a living. He sometimes wondered how he would have coped without Jack’s money, although he would happily live in a bedsit if it would bring his brother back.

  What he couldn’t imagine, though, is why anybody would want Jack’s papers. He had been dead for over four years now, and Tom had only just retrieved the papers himself from the solicitor’s office. He had been determined to go through them when he was taking his sabbatical, but in the end that period was cut short by the unexpected offer of a chief inspector’s job in Manchester, so he had run out of time. According to the solicitor, Jack’s estate had all been in order, and these were just personal papers, so there had been no sense of urgency.

  A memory sprang into his mind. When Jack had died, his girlfriend had tried to claim that she was the rightful heir to Jack’s millions. His brother’s will had been clear that the money had to go to Tom, but the girlfriend, Melissa, had contested it and lost. She’d only been with Jack for about six months, and she had been a very unlikely choice. Jack was a slightly mad genius, and he needed calmness and serenity around him. Melissa reminded Tom of a Burmese cat – slinky, beautiful, purring and rubbing up against you, desperate for attention. Until she was angry, and then the fangs showed. In fact, Tom remembered asking Jack what the hell he was playing at. Prior to meeting Melissa, Jack had been in a relationship for a few years with a woman called Emma. She was the polar opposite of Melissa. She had a smile that would light up a room. Their relationship had seemed rock solid, and then suddenly it was as if he had lost his mind.