‘See that you bandage it properly,’ Tristan said finally. ‘We don’t want it getting infected.’
I nodded, gathering the boys with my good hand. And then I turned to leave. I felt both of your gazes bolting down upon my shoulders as I went. Such turmoil inside, a dervish of hatred and longing and fear. The wind rushed through the open door, scattering umber leaves across my path. I walked into the sunlight and then I was gone.
37
‘Mum?’
The figure was silhouetted at the top of the stairs leading down to the cellar. Whoever it was remained silent.
‘Mum, is that you?’
The figure began to walk slowly down towards Violet.
‘What’s going on?’ Violet jerked her head towards the light. ‘Why am I tied up like this? It hurts. Mum?’
The figure knelt next to Violet. She couldn’t see their face, it was so dark. But as a hand was put to Violet’s forehead, her daughter could smell the scent of her mother, as familiar to her as breathing.
‘Mum?’ she whispered. ‘Why am I here? Why have you hurt me? Was it you? Please . . .’ Violet began to cry, rasping breath punctured by dry sobs. ‘Mummy . . .’
‘Ssh,’ Sera whispered, stroking her face. ‘Ssh, baby. Mummy’s here.’
Martin splashed water on her face in the Ladies’, her brain racing ahead of her in too high a gear. Her phone beeped. They’d traced the car Sera had left in with Violet to a hire company on the outskirts of Durham, and the search was ongoing. They would find them soon . . . God willing, Martin thought, as she stared at her reflection.
What was Mackenzie talking about when he’d mentioned the twins? Had Sera harmed them? Martin had pushed him for details, for anything, but he’d stormed off, refusing to say more. What was he getting at? They’d checked Sera’s records in Lancashire and there’d been nothing. Fielding would need to go across to Blackpool and collect Jonah Simpson for questioning. While he was there, he could chivvy along the Major Investigation Team, see if anything about the twins’ death was relevant.
She looked down again at the Durham Chronicle she’d put on the edge of the sink. Sean Egan had told her the truth; his article blared from the front page. The accusations against Snow, and an interview with Nina Forster, the girl who claimed the Reverend had abused her when she was thirteen. She was thirty-four now, with a bosom as pendulous as her earrings.
Mercy . . . and now Nina. Was he a paedophile? Were they facing an investigation that could create the need for an inquiry, an investigation into why children were allowed to be supervised in a church that was covering up their abuse? Or was Nina Forster just searching for her moment in the sun, her own little piece of celebrity?
This case was like a festering sore, scabbed over – but did she have the edge of it now? Could she peep beneath its crust? If what Mackenzie alleged was true, was it as they’d suspected from the beginning, that Sera was the killer? But Mackenzie had his own reasons for wanting to set someone else up for the murder. Why was he always wandering round hotels late at night? Was he just pushing them to Sera to misdirect, to trick them?
Violet and her mother seemed as thick as thieves. Had they plotted Tristan’s murder together, perhaps? But that still didn’t answer the question of Violet’s nightdress, and why it had been found around the murder weapon. And yet, if they weren’t responsible for the killing, why had they run? If Sera were dangerous, would Violet go with her mother willingly, unless she was herself involved? Or was she crouching in her shadow, afraid? What was it that lurked in Sera’s background, that would open up a fissure? Enable Martin to squeeze her way inside her brain and see if she were culpable?
Martin left the bathroom and went back to her desk, looking despairingly at the mound of paperwork that surrounded her keyboard. Her mouth was dry and her hangover suddenly announced itself, postponed by the adrenalin of the discovery of Sera’s disappearance. Her phone beeped and she glanced down at the text. She closed her eyes.
She’d managed to push last night’s dinner with Jim far out of her mind with the whisky drunk with Egan. But now he’d texted. He would be filing the divorce papers this week. The news settled in her stomach like lead.
She would block it, she thought. Send it packing from her head. She would do what she always did when things got hard.
She would work.
She took a drink from the mug on her desk and grimaced at the cold coffee, remembering instead what she’d seen last night on the DVD. It burned inside her. All those children in that church, so vulnerable to adult monsters.
She swung her chair around and stared at the rooftops that fanned out from her window. She watched as a pigeon flew to a nearby building and hopped a few steps, pecking at the ground, jerking its head back and forth.
Pigeons, she thought, pushing her chair back and leaving the office and the heap of papers on her desk.
As she headed downstairs, she bumped into Fielding striding along, buzzing from the last hour of his time. He had done it, his first piece of detective work in a murder case. He had discovered the truth of the mystery of Mrs Quinn’s sideboard, and he had got it off his own bat, on his own initiative and with – dare he say it? – a little bit of charm and good looks. He swung into the reception area, heading for the lockers.
It was going to be a good day.
‘Ah, Fielding,’ Martin said, as she saw him open the door to the locker room. ‘Just the bloke.’
‘Guv?’
‘I need you to get on a train to Blackpool. Sera and Violet Snow have gone AWOL and everyone’s tied up with looking for them. So you’ve got to collect a Jonah Simpson from the Lancashire Major Investigation Team. And while you’re there, you can chase up on Mercy Fletcher’s whereabouts, because they’re being about as fast as drying paint in coming up with any info for us.’
‘Eh?’ Fielding stepped back into the corridor, his brain computing all of this information, and looked at his boss in bewilderment. ‘Who’s Jonah Simpson?’
‘Sera Snow’s dad. He’s a priest as well, and he might be able to shed more light on what was happening with Mercy. I think that’s the key to finding out whether we can eliminate Violet or charge her. Go to the MIT first and then pick him up. If anything comes from the meet there, let me know straight away. Got it?’
‘Okay,’ Fielding said, his triumph diminishing somewhat. Mentally, he said goodbye to the lunch in the Oak, where he had already imagined the round of drinks he’d have been bought in celebration.
‘You all right Fielding? You look confused.’
‘Yes,’ he answered, straightening his shoulders. ‘It’s just . . . I went to see Eileen Quinn this morning. You know, the landlady at Riverview? And –’ a smile broke out on his face ‘– I found out what’s in the sideboard.’
Martin raised her eyebrows.
‘The North East Digest,’ Fielding said.
‘The magazine?’
‘Yeah. She got a load of letters from the North East Digest. Saying they were going to take her to court.’ Fielding was almost jogging on the spot in his eagerness to relay the information. ‘She’d never ordered it, see? A subscription to the . . .’
‘. . . North East Digest.’
‘No. So she was befuddled. And upset. Thought they really would do it. She got scared that she’d forgotten she’d ordered it. Or that someone else had done it for her maliciously, like. They’re like that down her street, she says. Spying and playing tricks on each other.’
Martin looked as baffled as Fielding’s description of Quinn.
‘I know . . .’ Fielding went on. ‘So she just stuffed all the demands in a drawer in the sideboard. There were about thirty of them. Saying if she didn’t pay up – I think it was about six hundred quid all in – she’d be in front of a magistrate.’
‘So why were they doing it? The Digest?’
‘Oh, they do it all the time. About three of me mam’s sisters have had the same thing. They just scare old ladies into paying up money. It�
��s a scam basically. You just need to call them and tell them to shove off. But old Mrs Quinn fell for it. Then when Snow was murdered, and we turned up, she was terrified we’d find out and cart her off to prison.’
‘Why did she send us the photo? Why has she got it?’
‘Turns out she was having an affair with Snow, way back in the day. Says he treated her like Salome.’ Fielding frowned. ‘Whoever she is . . . She hated him. He’d dumped her when he got bored.’
‘Yet another motive,’ Martin observed.
‘Maybe . . . but then why send the photo to draw attention to herself, unless . . .’
‘What?’
‘I think she did it deliberately to bring us to her. I think she wanted the company.’
Martin leaned back on the wall in the corridor and put her head on one side. ‘Really?’
Fielding nodded. ‘Yeah. She’s had that photo for years. Stole it when she was in Blackpool. Kept it to remind her of the days when she was young. You know, when life was a bit better.’
‘Even though she isn’t in it? The photo?’
‘He is though . . . Tristan Snow.’ Fielding shrugged. ‘She’s just a lonely old woman, I think. Kept a souvenir of a time when she was young, when she had romance in her life.’
‘And the cross, Fielding? Did you notice the cross?’
Fielding blanched. What cross?
Martin sighed internally. ‘Draft up an arrest warrant, Fielding.’
‘For what, Boss? I told you . . . It’s just a red herring. The sideboard . . .’
‘No, no,’ Martin snapped. ‘The sideboard is irrelevant. We searched the whole place, remember? Come on Fielding, keep up.’ She hesitated before taking a breath, remembering his inexperience. ‘Around her neck, Fielding. Did you see it?’
‘See what, Guv?’ Fielding felt like crying.
‘Tristan Snow’s cross. The one that’s missing.’ Martin looked down the corridor, her mind already on the next thing. ‘Eileen Quinn is wearing Snow’s cross.’
38
Nina Forster’s voice was acerbic but no-nonsense. Hearing her down the phone, Jones was relieved by it; reassured that the plaintive, whinging pitch described by Sean Egan in his article was nothing but a fabrication of tabloid hyperbole. Nina sounded less screechy and money grabbing than weary and fed up.
‘They were opening up a memorial book, at the Palace Theatre in Blackpool,’ she explained. ‘A journalist was there, outside. He put me in touch with your man in Durham, that Sean Egan. I went to have a look because I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe people still thought he was a good bloke.’
‘Why couldn’t you believe it?’ Jones asked, scribbling a note of this conversation as they talked.
‘He’s disgusting,’ Nina muttered. ‘He was vile. Back then . . .’ She sighed. ‘But what’s the point of dragging it all up now? I said that to Egan. But he told me there might be others. That someone should be held accountable.’
‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ Jones answered. ‘So, would you mind, Nina? Telling me what happened? Often what’s in the press is less than accurate.’
‘All right.’ Nina sounded tired. ‘I mean, it was like twenty years ago now. I went with my mam. She was the one who wanted to see him really. I wasn’t that bothered. But I went ’cos, you know, I was thirteen. I did what I was told.’
‘What kind of show was it?’ Jones said. ‘What did Tristan Snow do?’
‘He did all this self-healing stuff. You know, like David Copperfield but . . . like, better. He’d just got on the telly and said he could change your life. Stop you eating so much, stop smoking . . . My mam was a bit overweight at the time.’ Nina paused. ‘She’s lost three stone since going on Atkins, though.’
Jones coughed. ‘And . . .?’
‘Ah, well. We went backstage afterwards. Mam wanted his autograph. We stood outside. I remember it as a really cold day. I was freezing. We were waiting, a whole bunch of us. The stage door opened and one of his bodyguards or his manager or something came out. He said Tristan would be a few minutes. And then he looked at me, and just sort of beckoned. Mam and I followed him in. We didn’t really get a chance to think about it. We were just in, all of a sudden, and up the stairs to his dressing room.’
‘And then what?’ Jones said, quietly.
‘He was ever so friendly. Of course.’ Nina’s voice was tinged with bile. ‘He was sat in front of the mirror. All these flowers and cards around. And he was drinking wine. He offered us some.’
‘He offered you wine?’
‘Yeah. Mam said no. She wasn’t that into him.’
Jones couldn’t tell if Nina meant her mother wouldn’t let her daughter drink wine because she was underage, or that she wouldn’t drink alcohol if Elvis himself had offered it to her.
‘But then the manager, or whoever he was, started talking to her, sort of pulled her over to one side, away from Tristan.’
‘Was there anyone else in the room?’
‘Yeah, a few people. I don’t know who they were. It was crowded. Stuffy.’
‘And then?’
‘I wound up standing near where he was at the mirror. He talked to me, looking at me in the reflection.’ She sniffed, but it was a hard sniff, Jones thought. Nina wasn’t crying. ‘He asked me how old I was. Where did I go to school? I didn’t really know what to do. I was embarrassed. Then . . . then he said I was really pretty, and that was when I felt his hand.’
‘Where was his hand?’ Jones asked.
‘I was wearing a skirt and he put his hand on the back of my thigh, underneath it. And then he put it into my knickers.’
Jones was silent.
‘He didn’t say anything, just stared at me in the mirror,’ Nina said.
‘Did you speak? Tell him to get off? Move away?’
‘I was shocked! I didn’t know what to do. He was an adult. My mam was right there. I was . . . I just didn’t know what to do.’
‘I understand, Nina. I’m sorry, it must have been horrible for you.’
‘Then his manager came over and said it was time to go, thanks very much. Before we knew it, we were bundled outside,’ Nina said. ‘My mam didn’t even get his autograph in the end.’
‘Did you talk to her about what happened?’
There was another pause. ‘Years later. We had a fight. She said I was distant, closed off. That I’d never loved her. I couldn’t answer her. It was such an awful thing to hear, for her to say. So the only thing I could do, was tell her.’
‘You told her, because – well, what she was saying to you, you think it was caused by what happened to you with Tristan Snow?’
Nina laughed; a rasping, bitter noise. ‘What do you think? Told how pretty you are and then assaulted. Makes you hate yourself, doesn’t it? That being pretty’s all you’re good for. That you can only be touched by people who are evil. That I should have stopped him. Why didn’t I, eh? How could I forget that? Course it had an impact. A massive one.’
‘And you never wanted to bring charges?’
‘What was the point? Everyone loved him. There was no proof.’
‘You never heard of this happening to anyone else?’
‘Who knows? But men like that, they don’t do it just the once, do they? Not when they’ve got that power.’
Jones hesitated, thinking it through. ‘And so, why, Nina? Why did you go to the theatre where the condolence book was?’
The woman laughed again, the laugh of a person who has known abject failure but has survived. ‘Because I wanted to be sure he was dead. I wanted to see that Tristan Snow would burn in hell.’
39
Fielding studied Jonah Simpson as they bumped along cross-country in the train. The old man was hooked over, his head curling on to his chest as if he couldn’t bear his face to be seen. His hair hung down in hanks either side of his head, but Fielding had noticed the wart on his cheek despite this. He had a stillness that was faintly unnerving. As he sat opposite him, Fieldi
ng found himself checking on a fairly regular basis that the priest was still breathing. Jonah had said little from the moment Fielding had knocked on his front door until now, when he merely stared out of the window, refusing Fielding’s sporadic offers of tea or biscuits.
Giving a mental shrug, Fielding thought back to his earlier meeting with the Major Incident Team in Blackpool, where he had looked in vain for Mercy Fletcher. He had managed to find her last known address, and before meeting Jonah Simpson he’d gone there, walked down the street filled with terraced houses, televisions shrieking from lace-curtained windows in the middle of the day. He’d stood outside a grimy green front door and knocked, but nobody had answered. Then he’d tried the neighbours who, after looking at him as if he were the Devil himself when they’d seen his police identification, had said they’d never heard of Mercy Fletcher and then slammed the door in his face. He didn’t have time to find out more before he had to head back to the MIT office. There, no further information regarding Sera Snow was to be found either. She had no criminal record and there was nothing about her on their files. In contrast to the triumph he’d felt this morning, he now felt an abject failure. So stupid, he thought, picturing that gold cross around Mrs Quinn’s neck: Eileen for nicking it and him for not noticing. Why hadn’t he spotted it, put two and two together? He’d looked like an idiot in front of the boss . . .
Even so, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Eileen Quinn was just an old woman, torturing herself with shadows in corners. It didn’t seem possible that she had anything to do with Tristan Snow’s death. The cross was a souvenir she’d stolen, along with the photograph. Fielding was sure of it.
He sank back in his seat, feeling suddenly cold.
Jonah glanced over at him. ‘You all right, boy?’
‘What? Er, yes, fine thanks.’
‘You’ve gone a nasty shade of green.’
Fielding now felt burning hot. His head seemed to loom above his body, his mouth was loose: it felt as if it were moving from side to side, out of control. He could taste something familiar on his tongue. He lurched to his feet, placing his hands on the train table to right himself.
The Taken: DI Erica Martin Book 2 (Erica Martin Thriller) Page 18