Martin started to laugh, deep from his belly and I couldn’t help but smile with him. Aaron frowned at the interruption. I clenched my teeth to stop myself from laughing with Martin. I could see Ross’s shoulders shuddering as he listened in from his desk.
‘They’ve seized the bus—’
‘Oh my God, that’s classic.’
‘Martin, do you want to know about CSU or not?’ Aaron asked him.
I stopped smiling.
‘Yes. Sorry, Aaron.’
Aaron told us about the seizure and examination that the CSU were going to do of the bus that Finlay had been found on. I’m sure the bus company would be calling very soon about that one. I might refer the call through to the Crime Scene Unit to deal with.
‘Guys, we need to find a connection between McDonnell and Lianne Beers. Jack is already getting an uneasy feeling about this and that’s before he has any results back. You’ve got the signed medical consent forms we obtained from Sean and Janine Beers to check their medical records as well.’ I started running through a list of actions on my fingers, starting with my thumb.
‘We need to visit the school and speak to all his classmates to see if Finlay was using any drugs or medications his parents weren’t aware of, or if he was in real trouble with anyone.’
Another finger. ‘We need to speak to his teachers with the same questions because they’ll see it from a different perspective.’
Middle finger. ‘Our thirteen witnesses need interviewing properly in an interview suite, because in quiet surroundings with a correct interview model, they could and probably will, remember things they haven’t yet said. You never know, someone of investigative importance could have been close by. Someone who wanted to see Finlay die on that bus.’
Ring finger. I was getting incredulous looks now. The amount of work that needed doing was long and time consuming and we didn’t have the staff. I knew this but it didn’t mean we could get away with doing half a job.
‘Ma’am?’ It was Martin.
‘Yes?’
‘Can you confirm you want us to start all this before the PM results are in?’
‘Actually, Martin, you jumped in, as my next action is to attend the PM. I know it’s a lot of work when the results aren’t in, but if Jack is already saying he’s not happy and we have a dead child, I think it’s safe to say we’re more than likely going to have a suspicious death than a death by natural causes and I’d rather get out in front of it than be trying to catch it up.’
‘Yeah, okay. I’ll do the PM if you want?’
‘Sounds good, thank you.’
‘I’m going to need everyone to work through the weekend as well, as with any other murder investigation. Though this is tentative at the minute, it doesn’t feel right. We can’t just knock off and go and relax for a couple of days when we have two bodies in the morgue and two families wanting to know what happened.’
Aaron and Martin nodded.
‘Also,’ I looked back at Martin, ‘the enquiries I had you doing on the Beers, where did you get to with them?’
‘Nowhere. As in, there was nothing we can really pick up. Yeah, they got divorced but there were no recorded domestics. Neighbours haven’t heard anything out of the ordinary. She kept to herself. As far as jobs, there’s nothing that would give the ex or his wife access to drugs of any description. I came up cold, I’m afraid.’
I nodded slowly as I took it in.
‘Okay. Ross, are you ready for court? Can you give us a dig out today with the list of enquiries we’ve now got running over the weekend?’
He looked up in surprise. ‘Er, yes Ma’am, I’ll finish off these few bits and pieces and I’m all yours.’
‘Great. I need a link between the two cases, everyone. It’ll help nail it all down. Find me that link please.’
I stalked out of the incident room and headed straight for the Ladies. One of the stalls was occupied so I went into the other one. I didn’t need to go, but I wanted the space to myself. Once I heard the outer door close I opened my stall door, washed my hands and scooped up cold water into my hands and then over my face, feeling my shoulders relax. I had to keep going, to show the team I was back and okay, and importantly, to show Grey and Walker I was still capable of leading them.
The mirror in front of me reflected back a pasty face with dark shadows smudged under each eye. It was to be expected. None of us were fully up to speed yet. How could we be? The pain in my upper arm nagged where the knife had sliced into me. I held onto my arm as the dragging pain deepened and dropped down to my elbows and rested on the counter. I could do this. I could.
My team were relying on me and I wouldn’t let them down again.
28
The room was small and narrow, but was carpeted and furnished with a couple of two seater sofas and an armchair. The walls were papered with tiny floral patterned wallpaper. It was a room that was trying to lend itself to being a place of comfort. There was nothing comfortable about being stood in there, the four of us together, too close with no escape. Aaron was pushing his back up hard against the furthest wall. He didn’t want to be here but if he were needed he would be within arm’s reach. The McDonnells were staring wide eyed at the vast window filling the long wall in front of us where a pair of dark blue curtains obscured their view. Their hands clung together, each taking from the other. Hoping, I expected, that we were somehow wrong and that this would confirm that for them and to us. Hope that their youngest son was not in fact dead. Hope that they had their lives to walk back home to.
I touched Miriam McDonnell gently on her arm. It quivered beneath my hand. ‘Are you ready?’
She jumped, forgetting I was there, in this room. Her face looked upwards to her husband. He nodded, his eyes still holding that vacant stare. I pushed the intercom button on the wall and simply said, ‘Okay.’ The curtains on the other side of the glass started to roll back, parting from the centre. A small sound escaped from Mrs McDonnell’s lips, her husband put his arm around her waist and pulled her closer, his other hand keeping a tight grip of hers. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Aaron push his shoulders further up the wall in an attempt to become invisible. The opening provided by the curtains showed a body covered by a clean white sheet. Eventually they were fully open and the face of the young boy was there for the couple to see. Mrs McDonnell threw herself at the glass. Both her hands open palmed as though pushing to get through.
‘Nooooooooo.’ Her knees started to buckle but her hands clung onto the glass.
‘No. No. No. Please. No,’ she begged.
My eyes welled and I swallowed hard, trying to stay professional.
Mr McDonnell, still close to his wife, had one hand covering his mouth now. Both of them as close to the glass partition as they could be. ‘My baby boy. My poor baby boy.’ She turned to me. ‘I want to go to him. Please. Let me go to him.’
I swallowed again before I spoke. ‘I’m sorry. We need to do a post-mortem on Finlay because we don’t know the cause of his death and in case there is any possibility that this is suspicious then we need to keep him away from anyone for the moment. But as soon as it has been done, then you can come back and spend as long as you need to with him.’
She turned back to the glass partition and a heart-wrenching wail sliced through the room.
29
2015
Her heart was failing. That’s what the doctor had told her. He sat there in numbed silence. The chair hard, beneath him. He could remember that. The feel of the kitchen chair.
Solid. Unforgiving.
They hadn’t even taken her into the living room. She had stayed in the kitchen with them and explained the medical terms to them once Connie had calmed and soothed her. All he had done was sit his behind on the hard wooden chair. A voice somewhere inside his head, screaming at him to move. To speak. To hug. To love. But he sat there. Listening to his beautiful daughter explain how weak her heart muscle was. That it had been a problem for some time but she had put off seeing the doctor,
thinking she was just burning the candle at both ends and needed to get some rest, but when that hadn’t worked, she had gone to see her GP.
Her eyes dried. Her voice levelled. She stared off into a corner of the room as she spoke. Focusing on a point just past Connie, whose hands were wringing. Her gentle soft white hands were wrapping and clawing at themselves as she tried to remain strong for her child. He could see it from his distant point.
He viewed the surreal scene in that kitchen. His kitchen. His daughter, his child, his very soul, and it was in the process of being ripped out of him, slowly but surely, piece by tiny piece.
He saw blood. Connie’s hand. She had scratched herself in her effort to remain still and strong. The blood sat there, vivid red against her pale skin. A streak of life. Just breaking the surface.
Emma talked on. For now she was being prescribed a drug. Diji-something. It wasn’t going in. His mind was deserting him.
She wanted to come home.
Of course he wanted this. This was her home and always would be. If that was the only thing he could do, then it was hers. No question. But it felt so ineffectual, in the grand scheme of what she was going through, saying she could return to the home that was already hers didn’t feel enough.
He wanted to do something of substance for her.
He wanted to do what he’d do when she was little and protect her from the world. Protect her from what she was facing. He wanted to rub the scrape better and stop it hurting, put some magic cream on the cut, turn the light on when a nightmare invaded the dark, but none of that applied here and all he had was a home, her home and he could continue to be her father.
And he’d do that with everything he had in him.
30
Grey’s office door was closed. His PA was outside. I couldn’t for the life of me remember her name but I liked her. She always had a smile and a bag of sweets on her desk.
‘Has he gone out?’
‘Oh no, he’s in, he asked that you go straight through.’
She proffered the bag from the desk at me. I peered inside and saw Murray Mints.
I smiled. ‘I’d better not, thank you. Can you imagine if I took one and was busy sucking on it while trying to talk to him? I wouldn’t be able to speak!’
‘Why do you think I eat them? It stops me interrupting him when he’s speaking to me.’ She winked. I couldn’t help but smile again. Such a stressful day but I was smiling again.
‘Here,’ she picked one out and held it up, ‘take it for later. You never know when it might come in useful.’
‘Thank you,’ I whispered to his adorable PA as I moved past her into his office.
She smiled in response and put her head back down.
Grey’s office was neat and sparse. Grey was neat and sparse. Saturday morning and I was sitting in front of him, having come into work because the job demanded that extra push of senior investigating officers. We didn’t have set hours. If a case was running, then we were running as well. With no extra pay. It was just the way it was. However, lower-ranking officers who came in were on overtime when a murder was being investigated. At the minute we didn’t know what we had, but it was suspicious so we were all working.
There was too much to do. Too much of a coincidence. Even if it didn’t turn out to be murder, people were dying. We couldn’t speak to the school this weekend, but we could interview the witnesses from the bus and we could access Finlay’s friends while they were out of school and their parents were off work. Better for them that they had parents around to support them at this time.
I waited for Grey to finish the email he was typing out, the concentration making his face frown. He was a man I rarely saw smile. At his level of command there was a lot more paperwork and meetings, more log keepings and oversight. It was a reason I didn’t want to go for promotion again. I would rather get my hands dirty and get out of the building with my team and get involved. Shuffling papers suited Grey. I couldn’t imagine him meeting members of the public in times of crisis. He’d be one step ahead wondering what papers needed filling in and wouldn’t have his full focus on the person he was speaking with. Pretty much like he was with his colleagues.
He dropped his finger to his keyboard with a flourish, which I took to mean he had sent whatever he was doing and he sat back and looked at me. ‘What is it, Hannah?’
‘I’ve had an uncomfortable phone conversation with Jack not ten minutes ago and now have the report we discussed printed out from the email he sent me. It’s the PM on the young lad, Finlay McDonnell.’
Silence.
‘The blood work came back from the toxicology screening. He pushed it through as urgent and with specific requests attached.’
Still nothing.
‘Sir, Finlay McDonnell died from digoxin toxicity.’
Grey leaned forward in his seat. ‘What are you saying, Hannah?’
He really wanted this spelling out to him. ‘I’m saying that we now have two people who have died of digoxin poisoning, neither of whom were on digoxin and neither of whom, it seems, had family on the drug either. Sir, we have two suspicious deaths by the same MO.’
‘So, other than the digoxin toxicity, how are the people linked?’
‘As far as we can see at this time, they’re not. We’ve a lot of work to do to try and find that connection. With Lianne Beers we had at least had her ex-husband with a motive to kill her because he gained custody of their daughter and his new family was complete, with his annoying ex-wife no longer in the picture. Now with a young boy dead by the same MO we have a problem, because we don’t have anyone immediately obvious who would want him dead. I mean, a lad of his age, who does?’
Grey studied me as I continued to lay it out for him.
‘With Lianne we didn’t even know if it was suspicious or if it was an accident or suicide, though we haven’t found any obvious ways she could have done it to herself and there’s nothing of concern on her computer or diaries. But now that Finlay is dead we can at least rule out suicide – even if we can’t rule out some kind of accidental poisoning.’
‘But accident how?’
‘That, I don’t know. Industrial accident of some description?’
‘So, how do you progress this?’
‘We look at who has access to digoxin. There will be pharmacies, distribution centres, hospitals and other places, I’m presuming. Maybe there was an accident at one of these places that managed to affect both Lianne and Finlay so we also try to find that link between them both.’
I paused for breath.
‘I also think we need to come up with a media strategy. We need to get ahead of this if we can.’
‘You’re right. We don’t have a good track record with the Today. See Claire and set up a press conference for later this afternoon, get out there and show the public we’re in front of it. Ask them for their help; see if they can link the two victims as well as asking for witnesses to the offences.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. Who did you think was going to do it?’
I ran my fingers through my fringe. ‘I hadn’t.’
‘Okay. You’ll be fine.’
‘What are we doing about disclosing the digoxin?’
‘Thoughts?’
‘We keep it to ourselves. If we disclose the information we risk copycats and we won’t know one offender from the other. Plus, if we withhold it we have that information to confirm the truth if anyone walks in wanting to make admissions. You know how weird people can be on high profile cases. It’s documented well enough.’
‘Right again. You know what you’re doing, Hannah, which is why I said you’d be fine with the press conference, you’re the obvious person for the job.’
‘If you think so.’
I didn’t want to do this. Ethan would be there. Mixing the personal with the professional again. But I knew I had to get a grip.
31
The nerves danced through me like small bolts of electricity having a party at my
expense. I was sure I could probably make a lightbulb glow if anyone chose to attach one to me at this point. I didn’t join the job to get myself in front of a bunch of cameras or a crowd of journalists. Including Ethan. I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that I was doing the press conference that was making me so jittery or that Ethan was out there in a chair waiting to throw a question at me at the earliest opportunity. We hadn’t talked since the evening of the inquest. Seeing him again had dredged up all the old feelings I had for him but it had also thrown me into a tailspin. Could I really have expected him to wait for me when it was an impossibility that we could maintain a relationship in the roles we held? It had still knocked me for six when he told me he’d been seeing other people, but I’d done my best to look pleased; was that the right word? Comfortable with it, may be a better way of phrasing it. He’d gone on to clarify that he wasn’t in a relationship but that he’d been dating, he wanted to be open and for me to know.
Well, now I knew.
Could I keep my cool and react to him as I would any of the other journalists or would I glow with this electricity gathering inside me?
On the whole, EMSOU didn’t do many press conferences unless they were a necessity, so the fact that we had called one had sparked interest. The room was full and it was noisy, the journalists and their photographers and cameramen talking among themselves as they waited for someone to appear. Like a pride of lions waiting for its kill.
And I was the gazelle, soon to be caught with nowhere to go.
‘All set?’ asked Claire, looking far too happy. But I couldn’t fault her, it was her default setting and this was her world anyway. She revelled in it, it made her buzz and gave her a permanent smile.
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘Of course you do. We can send them all home and they can make up their own stories.’
‘Okay, okay. I’m just saying.’
‘You’ll be fine. Think of them as a bunch of schoolchildren who are trying to get their teacher’s attention and approval.’
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