A Deadly Thaw

by Sarah Ward

  *

  What the hell am I doing? thought Palmer. Connie’s back was against the converted mill where she lived, and he was pressed against her. He slid a hand up the front of her jumper and under her bra.

  ‘I think we should stop.’ Her voice was muffled against his shoulder.

  ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘Of course not but we’re not having sex in the street. That’d be the talk of the station if we got caught.’

  ‘Can I come up then?’ It was the second time he’d asked. She’d said ‘no’ last time. He could see her mind assessing it.

  ‘It’s just sex though, right?’

  He laughed into her hair. ‘Definitely just sex.’

  She slid her arm inside his jacket and fumbled to find his skin. ‘That’s all right then.’

  59

  Sadler had slept badly. Two hours of fitful sleep and the rest of the night had been spent lying in the dark thinking about the case. Llewellyn’s behaviour had unsettled him more than he’d let on to the team. His superintendent was a local, a man rooted in the Derbyshire landscape, and he had been a presence at this station since Sadler had joined the force. Llewellyn was respected. He’d climbed the ranks, studying for extra qualifications at night school, and was still seen by ordinary coppers as ‘one of us’. So why did Sadler have the horrible feeling that Llewellyn was involved in something lacking the transparency he so advocated to his teams?

  When he arrived at the station, Palmer was already at work, typing information into the computer with expert fingers.

  ‘Where’s Connie?’

  Palmer looked around the room. ‘I haven’t seen her this morning.’

  ‘Was it a late one last night?’

  Palmer focused his eyes on the screen in front of him. ‘Not particularly.’

  As if on cue, Connie came through the door, balancing three cups of coffee in her hands. She put all three down on Palmer’s desk. Sadler picked up one. Palmer continued to look at the screen.

  ‘Today, can you both focus on pulling together everything we know about Philip Staley? There’s a potential rugby link between him and Andrew Fisher. If it exists, then we need to find it. Focus on all the material we have. Look for any particular links with Lena Gray. She worked in a florist’s and then as an artist. That’s more of a long shot but try it anyway.’

  ‘What about the fact that he’s a rapist?’ asked Connie.

  Now Palmer did look up. ‘He’s not been convicted.’

  Connie’s face reddened. ‘But we do believe Rebecca Hardy, don’t we? You were there, Palmer. Did it look like she was lying?’

  Palmer swung around in his chair. ‘I don’t think she was lying, no, but he wasn’t convicted of any crime. I’m simply stating a fact. You can’t go around calling him a rapist.’

  Connie put her hands on her hips. ‘Look. It’s the act that makes him a rapist, not the conviction.’

  Sadler looked at the two of them. They were bickering as usual although there appeared to be an edge to their disagreement. Time to intervene. ‘Connie, come with me. I’m going to interview Andrew Fisher’s mother. I’d like you with me. Bring the coffee.’

  Connie’s eyes were on Palmer as she nodded, and she followed Sadler out of the station. They both blinked as they stepped outside the front door and encountered sunshine, and not the weak watery kind that had graced Bampton since early April. There was warmth in the air.

  ‘I think spring has finally hit us.’

  ‘About time. Isn’t May supposed to be the last month before summer? Bet it doesn’t last though.’ Connie walked around to the passenger door and flung herself in.

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Everything is fine,’ she said, pulling the seat belt across her body.

  The drive to Andrew Fisher’s childhood home was brief, but even in that short time Connie’s mood appeared to brighten. She stopped looking out of the side window and instead turned towards Sadler. ‘Have you ever been here before? I mean, you knew him from school.’

  ‘We weren’t in the same circles. He was in the rugby crowd, I preferred cricket and I never drank like he did.’

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see Connie thinking it over. ‘You know, if you drink like that when you’re a teenager, I bet you like a good few when you’re older. I wonder how much of a drinker he was as an adult.’

  ‘Did Philip Staley’s mother say how much he liked a drink?’

  Connie humphed in her seat. ‘She didn’t tell me that much. She was anxious to protect her son. Except when the bit about the money came out. Then he wasn’t such a golden boy.’

  ‘Five hundred pounds is a lot of money for someone in her position to lose. It was probably all her savings.’

  ‘It’s not been touched. If we can prove conclusively it was Philip Staley who was killed in 2004 she could probably get it back somehow.’

  ‘True. But the bank account isn’t a priority. Don’t worry about that for the moment.’

  As they drew up outside Andrew Fisher’s childhood home, a shadow in the window indicated that they were being watched.

  ‘I rang ahead to say we were coming.’

  Connie looked up at the house. ‘One thing worth remembering. When I interviewed Jane Reynolds about seeing Andrew Fisher in Whitby, she poured scorn on our assumption about Pamela Fisher not knowing her son was still alive.’

  ‘It was Llewellyn who told me she had seemed shocked. I have him down as a good judge of character.’

  ‘I’m just passing on what Mrs Reynolds told me. She was a canny old bird in her own way too.’

  The front door opened to them as they walked up the path. Pamela Fisher didn’t even bother to pretend that she hadn’t been awaiting their arrival. She led them into the hall, which was stultifyingly hot. The heating needed turning down on this warm day. The woman was wearing a short-sleeved dress. Why doesn’t she save money by putting on a cardigan and turning down the heating? thought Sadler irritably.

  They followed her into an equally warm living room full of furniture. Connie squeezed past two sofas and sat in the only armchair, leaving Sadler to sit on one of the low sofas.

  ‘Would you like tea?’ Pamela Fisher had a clear voice with no trace of a Derbyshire accent.

  ‘We’ve just had coffee in the car, thanks,’ replied Connie. The woman frowned.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Sadler.

  Pamela Fisher sat slowly down into the sofa, old bones making her movements stiff. ‘I’m all right. It’s been an awful time, but it was kind of the Superintendent to come around to explain things and see if I was okay.’

  ‘It was a shock?’

  The woman smoothed her skirt with her hands. ‘I’ve never had a problem with my heart. Arthritis is my affliction. And low blood sugar. But when I heard what happened, I thought my heart had stopped. The woman who’d broken the news had to get me a sweet cup of tea. There was too much sugar in it.’

  ‘So in 2004, when your son was found dead, you had no idea that it wasn’t really him.’

  The woman screwed up her face in disgust. ‘No idea whatsoever.’

  ‘And what did you think when his wife, Lena, was charged with his murder?’

  Pamela’s face took on a mottled hue, a complexion that Sadler associated with repressed anger. ‘I liked Lena when I first met her. She was a bit airy-fairy, if you get my meaning, but better for him than his first wife, Gail. She never gave him any rest. Always wanted to know where he was. Lena gave him more space. Andrew did have to go and live in that big draughty house, although they seemed happy enough. That’s all anyone wants for their children.’

  ‘You said you liked her when you first met her . . .’

  Pamela looked down at her lap. ‘She was cold. It wasn’t shyness. It was her personality. You couldn’t get near her, emotionally. I used to wonder what was going on underneath that cool exterior.’

  ‘So you didn’t visit Lena in prison?’ asked Connie.

 
‘Why on earth would I want to do that? She murdered my son. She didn’t even make any effort to deny it. I couldn’t believe it. She was evil. There was no way I was going to visit her there.’

  ‘And you had no idea about motive?’ Sadler glanced over to Connie, who was looking around the room.

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  Connie had stood up and was looking at some photographs grouped together on the far wall.

  She pointed at a portrait showing a boy in a school uniform. ‘Is this Andrew as a teenager?’

  Sadler and Pamela turned towards the image and said ‘Yes’ in unison.

  Pamela Fisher looked at Sadler in alarm. ‘You knew Andrew? You never said.’

  ‘We were in a couple of the same classes at Bampton High.’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘Not really. We had different groups of friends.’ She relaxed a fraction.

  Connie looked at the two of them, frowning.

  Five minutes later, walking back to the car, she said, ‘She didn’t like the thought of you knowing Fisher as a teenager. What was that all about?’

  Sadler looked back at the house. ‘I have no idea.’

  60

  Francesca couldn’t sit still. She continually crossed and uncrossed her legs. Shuffled from one side of the chair to the other. Fiddled with her bra straps and the buttons on her cardigan. She lived in the High Oaks area of Bampton, and her well-cut clothes, blonde highlighted hair and well-applied make-up shouted money and time to spend on looking this good. Her husband was having an affair with a work colleague. She’d found text messages on a phone that he hadn’t even tried that hard to hide. ‘He keeps reassuring me it’s all over. He wanted me to find out. The spark had gone. He wanted to tell me that he still loved me, and the affair was a way of doing that.’

  You’ve got to be joking, thought Kat. Demonstrate your love for someone by having sex with a colleague? ‘Do you think he did that? Proved that he loved you.’

  Francesca shifted in her seat again. ‘No.’

  Well, no. That was the whole point of affairs. If anything, you’re only proving to yourself what you think you don’t have. Your youth, your sexuality, your outward attractiveness to the opposite sex.

  But when push came to shove, Francesca’s husband hadn’t wanted to end their marriage and didn’t want to leave the marital home.

  ‘Francesca.’ Kat had been wanting to broach the subject for some time, but, after eight sessions, the last few of which had been going nowhere, it was time to move things on. ‘What do you want? You’ve told me a lot about how you’ve been feeling. You’re very open about that. But I don’t get any sense of what you want from life.’

  Kat watched as her client sat still for a moment. She looked shocked, as if she was being asked a question that she’d never thought about before, but she answered without hesitation. ‘I want to be by myself.’

  After Francesca left, Kat made herself a cup of mint tea and sat on a stool in her tiny kitchen. So Francesca wanted to be alone. What was incredible was how many people were afraid of the solitude that they so craved. Francesca, shackled to a man she didn’t love, and who she probably despised, put up with the relationship not because of money, although that was probably a factor. No, she was afraid of being alone. The thing she most wanted.

  Solitude had never been a problem for Kat. In fact, she was desperate for it at times. She and Lena shared that need and it sounded like Daniel had learnt to be by himself, despite his yearning for Lena. She had left him in the house, making himself some coffee.

  And what about Mark? Kat once read an article in her counselling journal about therapists who had affairs with their clients. It made grim reading. In the likelihood of you falling for one of your patients, you needed to stop the sessions as soon as was appropriate. That went for former patients too. Two years was the absolute minimum before you were even supposed to meet an ex-client outside the therapy room. Of course, Kat knew of exceptions. Like teachers who fell in love with their students and prison officers who had affairs with their charges, there were therapists who found themselves desiring their clients. But she had never considered the possibility that she might, one day, be in this position. She was unlikely to be prosecuted, but her professional life would be in tatters.

  A noise outside in the courtyard interrupted her reverie. There was a click and a muffled sound. She shot out of the kitchen, and her heart nearly failed her. In the narrow hall stood the boy, with a carving knife in his hand.

  61

  Palmer had his head in his hands when Connie got back to the station. I’m not having this, she thought. She went up to him and leant over him. ‘Look, all we did was have sex last night. Let’s not make a big deal of it, right?’

  He looked up and grinned. ‘Right.’

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘I thought you were having an existentialist crisis. You’re sat there with your head in your hands like it’s the end of the world.’

  He put his hand on her arm. ‘We can’t do it again, Con. Not just because I’m married but because of our jobs here. There’s no way Sadler would put up with an affair in his team and I’ve no intention of screwing up my career.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’ He gave her arm a squeeze and let it go. ‘I was actually just concentrating. I can’t prove that Andrew Fisher and Philip Staley knew each other but I’d say there was a pretty good chance. They both played rugby for a start. I managed to speak to a massive rugby fan, and he’s given me the fixtures for over twenty years ago. Andrew Fisher played for Bampton’s team. Philip Staley for Macclesfield Blues. If you look at this list, where I’ve highlighted is when the two teams played each other.’

  Connie picked up the sheet with the highlights. He saw her frowning. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘The thing is, this is good. I mean, they may have known each other twenty years ago. Fair enough. However, Philip Staley died in 2004 when he was thirty-six. And the thing is, how many men do you know who still play rugby in their mid-thirties?’

  Palmer winced. ‘I wouldn’t fancy playing it now.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s a young man’s game. Most start playing it at school. We know Andrew Fisher did. He and Staley were the same age.’

  ‘But didn’t go to the same school.’

  ‘No, but I bet the schools also took part in tournaments.’ She thought back to the photos of Andrew Fisher on his mother’s wall and her discomfiture at the fact that Sadler knew him as a teenager.

  ‘I think we need to concentrate on the teenage Andrew Fisher. The answer lies there.’

  ‘This a hunch, Con?’

  ‘Listen,’ she hissed. ‘Will you bloody well stop calling me Con. Before, it was cheek; now, it sounds intimate. Do you want the whole team to know we had sex last night?’

  He looked up at her, laughter in his eyes, and shook his head.

  ‘Then stop calling me Con.’

  ‘Ms Childs?’

  She snorted with laughter. ‘Then they’ll definitely know. Just keep with Connie.’ She could smell his aftershave and the heat of his skin. After he’d left her flat, she’d taken a shower straight away, waiting for the shame to arrive. It hadn’t. Standing next to him, she wanted to reach out and touch him. It wouldn’t be him leaving the team at this rate. It’d be her.

  He seemed not to notice her presence. He was looking at the fixtures sheet again. ‘Concentrate on the teenage Fisher. Maybe. I’ll have a look. But it wasn’t the teenage Fisher who wound up dead, was it?’

  Connie took a step backwards. ‘No, but some secrets cast a long shadow. I think you, me and the boss are going to be taking a trip back to the past again.’

  62

  ‘I’m not going to use it.’

  Kat couldn’t take her eyes off the knife. It looked like a meat cleaver, the shiny metal gleaming in the light coming through the window. Its thick blade could do untold damage. Damage to her. She could also smell fear c
oming off the boy. Teenage sweat and a stale bready unwashed stink that made her want to heave.

  ‘I need to speak to you.’ He motioned with the knife, and they went together through to the counselling room, she leading the way and aware of the knife in his hand. Once there, the boy hesitated. The chairs were placed so that they faced each other. A small table in between contained only a box of tissues and a cactus plant. ‘Sit down.’

  Kat took refuge in her usual chair. The boy picked up the other chair and put it down next to hers. He sat in it and, clearly uncomfortable, stood up and kicked it out of the way. Instead he dragged the little table and sat on it facing her. Kat kept her eyes on the knife, conscious of the menace emanating from it. ‘I’ve a message from Lena.’

  ‘What? Is she okay?’

  ‘Oh, she’s all right.’ The boy’s hood fell slightly away from his eyes, and she could see dark-brown irises set in red-rimmed eyes. He looked like he’d been crying.

  ‘How do you know her? Lena?’

  ‘She’s my friend.’ The boy seemed proud.

  Friend? Kat felt that familiar pang of jealousy. How could Lena be friends with this boy?

  ‘You get my things?’

  ‘You mean the items you’ve been leaving for me? Of course I got them. You made sure of that. Did Lena give them to you?’

  ‘Maybe.’ The boy refused to look her in the eye. ‘They’re clues. Haven’t you guessed yet?’

  ‘Guessed what?’

  ‘Guessed what it’s all about.’

  Anger coursed through Kat. ‘What what’s all about?’

  But he didn’t seem to know. Or wasn’t going to tell her. He lifted up the knife and brandished it in triumph. ‘I’ve cleaned it, just as Granddad taught me to.’

  Kat’s stomach contracted in fear. She kept her eyes on the blade. ‘Your granddad?’

  ‘Yeah. His dad had shown him how to clean a bayonet. You use vinegar. Not the stuff you put on your chips, but the clear stuff. You wipe the blade like this.’ The boy pulled out a piece of material from his pocket and started to rub it up and down the blade with a leery look on his face. The sexual innuendo was unmistakable.