by Sarah Hilary
‘You’re not telling me they’re scared of him,’ Ron objected. ‘Inmates like that, and a kid like Quayle? What about Vokey’s anger? That’s well documented up in Leeds, and at Cloverton. Highly manipulative and aggressive. How’d they put it? “Like an outbreak of rabies.” He’s on record for losing his temper, shouting at night, smashing his cell, you name it.’
‘That could be night terrors,’ Noah said. ‘We jumped to rage, didn’t look for the causes of it.’
‘All right, Doctor Phil.’ Ron rolled his eyes. ‘Aggravated burglary, how about that? He sat on Julie Seton.’
‘Yes.’ Marnie nodded. ‘Put it on the board.’
‘The grave in the cellar.’ Ron folded his arms, planting his feet apart on the floor. ‘We don’t know who dug it, but the Polaroids in that room. Those are his photos, Alyson confirmed that.’
‘What’s the offence?’ Debbie challenged. ‘We can’t do him for taking photos and pinning them to his walls. The best we’ve got is trespass, since the house’s in probate.’
‘If he didn’t dig that grave then who did?’ Ron demanded.
‘Maybe it wasn’t dug by him,’ Debbie said. ‘Maybe it was dug for him. This whole thing might be about revenge.’
‘Whose? You’re not saying Julie dug a grave.’
‘Maybe, if she felt threatened by him. We know she doesn’t trust us to keep her kiddie safe.’
‘When would she find the time to mess about breaking into houses and digging graves? If he came at her in the street, maybe. If he went into the chippy, I can see her chucking hot fat in his face. But that pit was a proper job, professional.’
Marnie was silent, watching Ron and Debbie thrash through the possibilities. It was good for the team to look at this from other angles, refresh their thinking. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d fallen into the trap of believing Vokey was to blame for everything. Whose trap, she didn’t know.
‘I still say it’s about revenge.’ Debbie put her hand on Alyson’s photo. ‘We’ve been assuming he’s the one after it, but what if it’s one of them?’ She nodded at the women’s faces. ‘What if they wanted to punish him, pay him back?’
‘Alyson can’t manage her own stairs without falling down. She’s sick, remember?’
‘Then Lara or Ruth, or the two of them together. What about that letter to Alyson: “We won’t warn you again.” We thought that was Ruth and Lara doing his bidding, but what if that’s never what they were doing, if they wanted him out of prison so they could get revenge?’
‘Revenge for what? Ruth doesn’t give a stuff what he did to Julie.’ Ron juggled the marker pen impatiently. ‘And Lara’s too busy having a midlife crisis to figure out which way’s up.’
‘Who had access to the house?’ Marnie said. ‘Alyson, and Michael. Who else? Let’s trace the keys, this set that Alyson said their mum hid at the back of the house. You’re right about the pit. We need to know who dug it, and why.’
Ron scowled at the pictures of Vokey. ‘He started the fire at Cloverton. The T-shirt with the cooking fat, that was his.’
‘Put it on the board.’
‘Whoever blinded those blokes was off his head, that was savage.’
‘Yes, it was.’ Marnie nodded. ‘But Aidan doesn’t believe it was done by Michael Vokey.’
Ron moved his head like a bull negotiating a narrow corridor. ‘This’s the problem, isn’t it? All our witnesses are either bent, blind or dead. Without CCTV, we’re sunk.’
They studied the two boards. Noah could taste the defeat in the room. Everyone was tired, under pressure to get results, but the case was slipping away from them. It had been slipping for days.
‘The suicide in Leeds,’ Debbie said. ‘Everyone’s certain that was Vokey’s work. Not murder, but inciting suicide. Not enough evidence to convict, but he’d tried it more than once.’
Marnie nodded at her to add this information to the clean board. ‘Colin’s running checks for us on the suicide in Leeds. DS Kennedy’s traced a connection between the firearm found on the allotment and the young man who hanged himself, Charlie Lamb.’
‘Bent prison officers?’ Ron suggested. ‘Not just Quayle, up in Leeds too?’ He scowled afresh. ‘I don’t like that we’re pointing fingers at everyone except the bastard who ran. It doesn’t feel right.’
‘We know he’s sadistic, and obsessive,’ Marnie said. ‘We know there’s something very wrong with him, but we’ve been assuming too much and it’s getting us nowhere.’ Her stare scanned the boards. ‘Lara never met him. Neither did Ruth. His sister hasn’t seen him in months. Julie saw him, up close and recently.’ She turned to Noah. ‘What was the word she used to describe him?’
‘Pathetic. She said he was pathetic. We thought she was being brave, understating her fear. We know she’s angry, feeling let down by us.’
‘She’s not scared of him or she wouldn’t leave Natalie in that house, or walk back from work alone at midnight.’ Marnie shut her eyes briefly before meeting Noah’s gaze. ‘What if we’re searching all the dark corners and missing what’s in plain sight?’
‘Like what?’ Ron grumbled. ‘I can’t see anything in plain sight except these bloody pictures, his creepy obsession with taking photos. Remember how it felt in that house?’ He nodded at Noah. ‘Like a punch in the gut. That was instinct. We knew we had a nutter, we need to keep hold of that.’
‘I’m not saying he isn’t a monster,’ Marnie said. ‘I’m questioning our monster, the one we’ve built from bits and pieces of soft evidence which, if we caught him today, wouldn’t be enough to secure any conviction beyond the escape, and possibly arson.’
‘Well that’s enough to put him away, isn’t it?’ Ron argued. ‘For a long time.’
‘And if someone else did the worst of that damage at Cloverton? Don’t you think we should be looking to convict that person?’
Ron wiped the sweat from his forehead with the cuff of his shirt. ‘If he even exists.’
‘Vokey didn’t tweak Aidan’s antennae—’ Marnie started to say.
‘It’s come to this, has it?’ DCS Ferguson had entered the room, standing with her arms folded and her head cocked. ‘Taking our cues from an Irishman with too much time on his hands and a nose for mischief? We need results, people.’
‘Aidan has a point, one we should have noted,’ Marnie said. ‘One man doing all that damage while he was busy trying to escape? It makes no sense. Either you’re running or you’re wreaking havoc. Hard to do both with such a narrow window of time before you’re reported missing.’
‘Forensics turned up his DNA at the shed, that’s right, isn’t it?’ Ferguson nodded at the new evidence board. ‘Not to mention a firearm. He had an escape plan, in other words. Knew exactly where he was headed, and how to get there. Plus I’d ask why Aidan’s so forthcoming all of a sudden.’ Her eyebrows rose in a challenge. ‘You’re clearly buying it at any price, DI Rome, but why wasn’t he sharing these great insights a week ago?’
‘He was being treated for smoke inhalation a week ago,’ Marnie said. ‘He didn’t witness the riot but he’s been asking questions, finding out what he can and piecing it together.’
‘Detective Inspector Duffy?’ Ferguson gave a humourless laugh. ‘With his little grey cells . . . Or should I say black cells, after the fire.’
‘He smuggled in a pair of shoes for Vokey.’ Marnie kept her tone bland, non-combative. ‘He’s been feeling guilty about that.’
‘He wouldn’t know guilty if it sat down next to him.’ Ferguson treated Marnie to the hard stare for another moment before she sniffed. ‘What sort of shoes?’
‘Running shoes.’
‘Right, that goes on the board.’ Ron picked up the marker pen. ‘No way Vokey wasn’t planning this escape. Running, and hiding.’
‘We know he’s good at hiding,’ Ferguson agreed. ‘What’s to say he’s not skilled in other areas, such as managing to maim a couple of inmates along the way?’
‘It i
sn’t just Vokey who’s good at hiding.’ Noah nodded at the first board. ‘Every one of these people, everyone who got close to him, has surprised us. We expected Julie to be intimidated. We thought Lara would be another bored housewife, that Ruth was a religious zealot. Every assumption we’ve made has been upended.’
‘Is this heading towards a revelation,’ Ferguson asked, ‘or are we self-flagellating for a bet?’
‘What if one of these women was only pretending to be close to Vokey, in his thrall like the rest? As DC Tanner said.’ Noah nodded at Debbie. ‘What if she got close to him not because she craved attention, but because she wanted to punish him?’
‘I’m warming to your theme, but which one? Not Lara, or Alyson. Julie?’
‘Maybe. She’s the one with the motive for revenge.’
‘Back up a bit,’ Ferguson said. ‘These letters that look like being forgeries. Who’re we saying wrote them? Because Darren doesn’t strike me as the literary type. The easily swayed type, that’s another matter. If one of these women set out to seduce him for whatever purpose, I can buy that.’ She clicked her tongue at Noah. ‘Still no-commenting, is he?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Lara said Michael’s last letter arrived a fortnight before the riot. This is the last letter she’s certain he wrote.’ Marnie pinned Colin’s chronology to the board. ‘She’d stopped writing as soon as she began to suspect the letters coming from Cloverton weren’t from Michael. But we found recent letters in the post room, pretending to be from Lara. So the forgeries were running both ways. Into the prison and out of it.’
‘Who’d do that?’ Ron squinted at the chronology. ‘I mean what’s the point? If you’re forging stuff it’s to extort money or influence. These were what, love letters? Who forges love letters?’
‘Maybe Vokey liked the letters.’ Noah was thinking out loud. ‘We know he’s obsessive. What if the letters were a way of keeping him in line?’
‘Or someone wanted him thinking he’d a place to hide if he ever got out.’ Ferguson narrowed her eyes. ‘Happen the letters were a trap and our friend in the cells was in on it. He’s got mates up in Leeds, hasn’t he? He could be covering his tracks, arranging for Lara’s letters to be posted up in Keswick, setting her up nicely should the police start poking their noses around his allotment.’
‘I don’t know.’ Ron pulled at his bottom lip. ‘Sounds a bit far-fetched to me.’
‘As the person sent on the wild goose chase,’ Ferguson replied acidly, ‘I get to say what’s far-fetched or otherwise. It was certainly far. Hauling us up to Cumbria just when it looks likely Vokey was in Harpenden all along, what with the evidence stacking up against our bent prison officer.’
Ron knuckled his nose. ‘So we’re really looking at Darren for this? He gives that interview online, like a boy scout with a crush, then he what? Ups and tops his hero?’
‘He’s the one with the firearm, and the matching residue,’ Ferguson reminded him. ‘Tell me you didn’t swallow that story about shooting at squirrels in the wood.’
‘I can see him showing off. Protecting Vokey, even hiding him. But killing? Nah. He’s too nervy, a proper mummy’s boy. And where’s the motive? I’m not buying the seduction routine.’
They turned when the door opened.
It was Colin, looking pink. ‘The man who hanged himself in Leeds, Charlie Lamb? You asked me to see what I could find out, boss.’ His eyes were big with news. ‘You’ll want to hear this.’
The phone rang at the other end of the room, and Debbie moved to answer it.
Colin pinned a new mugshot to the clean evidence board. ‘Charles Eric Lamb. Father deceased. Leeds had his next-of-kin listed as Anita Elisabeth Lamb. His mum.’
The image showed a young man with dark hair and eyes, cut-glass cheekbones and a freckled nose. Noah felt a jolt of recognition, his memory serving up an earlier version of the same face in a cheap frame, one of many in the ugly room with a white smell of lilies.
‘Wait,’ Ferguson was saying, ‘Anita Elisabeth?’
‘He’s Darren’s brother,’ Noah said to Marnie. ‘She had a photo of the pair of them, remember? Darren in his school uniform and as a baby, with an older boy. That was Charlie.’
The boy in the photo, too young to be Darren’s father. Charlie Lamb.
Colin nodded. ‘He’s Darren’s older brother. They don’t share the same surname as Anita reverted to her maiden name after she was widowed. Charlie was convicted two years ago of possessing a gun. He’d fallen foul of a Luton gang, argued the gun was for protection. He was sentenced for possession, sent to Leeds. Where his cellmate was Michael Vokey.’
‘Shit,’ Ron said. ‘This’s that suicide, the one Vokey talked into topping himself?’
‘If Darren blamed Michael for his brother’s death—’ Colin began.
‘He wasn’t helping him to escape,’ Ron said. ‘He was getting him out of prison so he could kill him. He had him in his shed. He had a gun and several miles of woodland for burying the body.’
Noah couldn’t take his eyes from Charlie Lamb’s face, imagining how it must have felt to be locked in a cell with a man like Michael Vokey, so far from hope you had to take your own life. ‘The police dogs didn’t find anything in the woods.’
‘They weren’t cadaver dogs,’ Ferguson pointed out. ‘We weren’t looking for a dead body.’
‘Oh, shit.’ Ron folded his hands on his head. ‘Deb called it. Revenge.’ He looked for her across the room. ‘You called it, Tanner!’
Debbie set the phone down, coming back towards them. ‘That was Julie Seton.’ Her face was full of worry. ‘Little Natalie’s gone missing.’
Marnie’s attention switched from the evidence boards to Debbie’s news. ‘How long?’
‘Not long, an hour maybe. Julie was at work and her mum was babysitting. She let her in.’
‘Let who in?’ Ferguson asked sharply.
‘Ruth,’ Debbie said. ‘Julie says Natalie was taken by Ruth Hull.’
37
Julie’s mum was ashen, her mouth shrunken, voice shaking, ‘I thought it were Perry. He said he’d bring sweets for Nat. Julie don’t like him coming round here, but he’s good with kiddies and Nat loves him. Only it weren’t Perry, it were her.’
‘Ruth Hull.’ Marnie held up the image. ‘Is this the woman?’
‘That’s her, Ruth. Victim Support, she said, asking for Julie. I told her Julie’s at work, so she asks to check on Nat. I didn’t think anything of it with you lot traipsing in and out all this time.’ She fretted the unlit cigarette between her fingers. ‘Nat liked her, that’s how it looked. She’s a clever girl, ten times smarter than me.’ She started to cry, tears trapped in the lines under her eyes. ‘I should’ve fought her. If it were a bloke I’d have gone for him, I swear. But she looked all right, dressed nice, talked proper. I thought she were one of you.’
‘Did she have a car?’ Noah asked. ‘How did she take Natalie?’
‘On foot—!’ It came out as a wail. ‘They walked off up the street together. I let them go!’
‘Mrs Seton. Lisa.’ Marnie put a hand on the woman’s arm. ‘Try and stay calm. We need your help. Was Ruth with anyone else? Did you see anyone else?’
‘Just her. And Nat, my little nut, skipping up the street with her.’ Her face worked, fighting back the tears. ‘Julie’s in a state, she’ll never forgive me. I let her go, held the bloody door open for her!’
‘Ruth was on foot. Headed in which direction, towards the shops?’
‘Up the bypass, where the buses go. There’s an ice-cream van up there, she said, “Let’s get you some fresh air and a lolly,” and I let them because Nat were that excited and she looked like one of you, an ID card round her neck and everything. Made me feel like I’m the one breaking the law, doing a bad job of looking after Nat with the curtains drawn and her stuck inside on a day like this, and then there’s those two in the car, isn’t there? They missed it. It weren’t just me making a muck
of things. It were them too.’
The police officers in the patrol car had been searching for Natalie and Ruth since the alarm was raised seventy minutes ago. They’d missed Ruth’s arrival at the house, and her departure with Natalie. They didn’t have an excuse, other than to say they’d been watching a gang of kids at the other end of the estate who looked like they might be trouble.
‘Where’s Julie?’ Lisa Seton dried her tears with her sleeve. ‘I should be with her, if she’ll let us. I want to be with her, not sat here doing nowt.’
‘We’d rather you stayed here, in case Natalie comes home.’
‘How can she when that cow’s got her? What’s she even want? Who takes a kiddie unless they’re a pervert, and you said she’s not a pervert so what’s she want?’
Julie’s expression was unyielding – no tears, only fury. ‘She walked her out of there like a dog, right under the noses of those bastards you put in the car to protect us. Up the street – our street – and not one person stops to ask who she is or what she’s doing with Nat. They just let her go.’ She was wearing Natalie’s hairband around her wrist, snapping the elastic until the plastic bobble left a mark on her skin. ‘That bastard sells her an ice cream out of his van and doesn’t ask who that cow is, when he’s only ever seen Nat with me or my mum. The whole lot of them just let it happen. Our friends. Our neighbours.’
Noah waited until she was quiet before he said, ‘We know who she is. Ruth Hull. We think we know what she wants.’
‘I know what she bloody wants!’ Julie balled her fists in her lap. ‘She’s his. That’s why she gave her name to my mum, wore it round her neck on a badge, so I’d be in no doubt. One of his cows from the court steps, writing letters. I know what she wants because she told me, but she never said she’d take my kid if she didn’t get it. I knew she was crazy but not like that. Not like this.’
‘You’ve met her?’ Marnie asked. ‘On the court steps, or more recently?’