The Keeper of Secrets: A stunning crime thriller with a twist you won't see coming (Detective Arla Baker Series Book 2)

by M. L Rose

  “Any of this. I’m innocent.”

  “Then tell us what happened, and we can let you go.”

  He stared at her and she held his eyes. Paul rubbed his face, then stared at the floor before replying. “You’re going to twist my words. Make me out to be the bad guy. You guys plant evidence to convict people like us, don’t you?”

  Arla was shocked, but she tried not to show it. But the indignation she felt was tinged in her voice. “No, Paul, we don’t plant evidence. We want to catch the real bad guys. And I don’t know what you mean by ‘people like you’. You go to one of the best private schools in the whole of South London. Is that the kind of people you mean?”

  Paul was silent. After a while he said, “Leave me alone.”

  Arla stared at him, then got up. As she was leaving, Paul said, “I want a lawyer.”

  Arla nodded, and walked out with the chair, shutting the door. She waved at PC Dickson at the end of the corridor, who stood up and walked over.

  “Bring him up to the interrogation room at 8.45, as soon as we have a legal aid solicitor ready.”

  “Yes, guv.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Cindy was sweating underneath the black hoodie. Thank God it was cotton. She shrank further back into the awning of the shop as a car whizzed past Balham High Street. The street was deserted at this time. It was still warm, that early predawn summer chill still a few hours away. A train creaked noisily over the bridge to her left.

  Cindy had covered her face with a balaclava, not visible when she had her hoodie up and over half her face. It was a man’s size, XXL, and, although she wasn’t thin, it covered her adequately. She also had a pair of sunglasses to wear when she walked out into the high street, where the CCTV cameras could pick her up. She walked with a limp as well when she was in public. The cops would be looking for a sexless invalid if they did manage to pick her up on CCTV.

  Cindy looked at the row of shops opposite, and right next to the bridge, the tall, once stately Victorian house that was now a dilapidated block of flats. All owned by the council as well. There was one window she was focused on. On the third floor, facing the street. The old man lived there, and one day, Cindy knew, they would meet each other. She had followed him around a few times, and once, he had turned around to look, sensing her behind him. Cindy had enjoyed that. He hadn’t seen her face, covered under her hoodie.

  The shadow of the shop’s awning hid Cindy effectively. A drunk lumbered past, and she could easily have leaned across and struck him over the head with a brick…

  She stiffened as a flash of light caught her eyes. She looked up, and her heart beat faster when she saw the third-floor window lit up. It was prominent, as the other flats around it remained in darkness. Cindy stepped forward. She wanted him to see her. Let him realise that he was being watched.

  The blind on the window lifted slowly, and the shape of an old man was framed against the window, lit up from inside. He looked down, and for a moment Cindy was sure that their eyes met. She made no effort to move or hide away. She stared up at him, and watched him looking down.

  After a while, he lowered the blind and retreated into the room. The light went off, plunging the window into darkness.

  CHAPTER 31

  Harry was at his desk when Arla walked back into the open-plan detectives’ room. He rose from his desk. She smelled woodsmoke and burned spice, and saw a questioning look in his chestnut eyes. His coffee-coloured cheeks were smoothly shaven as usual. He towered over her as she got closer.

  “My office,” she said. She had hesitated about telling him. But the discovery of Nicole’s earring had put a different twist on everything. Now she knew whoever had left the note at the Burroughs’ residence was playing a strange, dangerous game.

  Harry’s eyebrows were knitted together as he leaned against the closed door of her office.

  “You sure they are the same earrings as your sister’s?”

  Arla went to her coat and slipped on some gloves. She took the box out and showed the earring to Harry.

  “In the early 90s they were all the craze. All sixteen-year-olds wore them. Nicole was no exception. And only I had these. I looked last night, and both of mine were present. Mine and Nicole’s.” She dropped her eyes. She only ever had one of Nicole’s. Harry knew the grisly details of how she got the other one. Only because he had been there.

  Harry looked at the rings critically. “What about your father?”

  “What about him? Even if I did contact him, what would he be doing with his daughters’ earrings?”

  “So you have both pairs? All four of them?”

  “Yes. And none of mine are missing.”

  Harry frowned. “So, let’s assume this is a replica. Whoever did this knew what earring Nicole wore.”

  “Yes, and that’s what is scary. No one apart from me, and now you, knows.”

  “Johnson might do.”

  “Yes, but he won’t know the exact type.” Arla got up and started to pace her office. “Either they found my pair, or they knew…” Arla stopped. Her sister’s life after she had run away from home had always been a mystery to her. When her remains were found some of the gaps were closed, but not all. She gripped her forehead.

  Why was this coming back to haunt her now?

  “Hey,” Harry said in a soothing voice. “Don’t let this get to you. Let’s take this one by one. We need to send an SOC team down to your house to look for clues. And we send this box down to the lab for the same reason.”

  Arla shook her head. “I don’t want this to become a distraction when we are in the middle of a big case. And I need to tell Johnson about this in order to get the SOC guys in.”

  Into my flat, she thought. My own home, now a crime scene.

  “I don’t think we have a choice,” Harry said. “If you don’t want it to become a distraction, then deal with it properly. Otherwise you’ll keep thinking about it.”

  Harry was right. She didn’t have much time. Arla looked behind Harry. Detectives were beginning to drift into the office.

  “OK,” she said, “hold the fort here while I speak to Johnson.” She rang her boss while Harry went outside to prepare the incident room for the morning brief.

  In his office, Johnson listened to her carefully, a troubled expression on his face. “And you think this is the same person who left the message at the Burroughs’ residence, about you?”

  “I have no proof of that, sir. But leaving my dead sister’s earring, something I kept for years till I found her body, definitely fits a pattern. If this person wants to torture me, then…” Arla looked away, embarrassed by her use of the word “torture”. She certainly felt tortured now, and the word had just slipped out.

  Johnson tapped his finger on the green felt of his desk. Above his head, photos of himself with David Cameron, the ex-prime minister, smiled back at Arla from the glass cabinet.

  “This person knows a lot about you. Don’t they?”

  “I would say that’s an understatement, sir. We kept the real news about Nicole secret from the media, the bit about us being related. How the hell this person knows, I have no idea.”

  Johnson said, “OK, open a case, and send the SOC guys to your place for prints etc. And the box to the lab, with its contents.”

  “Yes, sir.” Arla rose to leave.

  “Just a minute. I heard about the fracas in Brixton last night. I thought we were going to tread carefully.”

  “We are, sir.” Arla shrugged. Johnson nodded, a sympathetic look in his eyes. “Keep me posted. Are you interrogating the main suspect today?”

  “Definitely.”

  It was 8.20 on the big white clock on the wall in the incident room, and everyone was present. A smell of coffee and doughnuts was in the air. A hush fell across the room as Arla entered. She glanced at Harry and gave a slight nod. The look of relief on his face was palpable.

  Arla looked at the whiteboard, where a photo of Mark Dooley had appeared next to Paul Ofori.
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br />   “OK, people.” She turned to the room. “We have some news about Maddy. She has another social media account which shows a different side to her.” Arla told them about Maddy’s alternative lifestyle, and whistles and catcalls filled the room.

  “OK, that’s enough,” Arla said. “Have we interviewed the pub employees and punters who were present that day?”

  Lisa said, “As many punters as we could. I showed photos of all her friends to the pub staff. Only a handful were there.”

  Arla asked, “And they remembered Maddy?”

  “They did when I showed them the photo. She left the pub at 20.00, going to wherever. According to her friend Maya, she had an appointment with Paul Ofori.” Lisa looked up. “He’s in today, right?”

  “Speaking to a lawyer right now,” Arla said. “I’m taking the official statement in fifteen minutes.”

  Arla asked, “Did the phone logs from the parents’ handsets show anything?”

  “On the night, they made multiple calls to her phone,” James piped up from the front row. “Before that, occasional calls from her mother’s phone to hers.”

  Arla said, “As far as I remember, Maddy made some calls to the same number the night before, right?”

  James said, “Yes. We got the IMEI details of the number. It’s a pay-as-you-go. We’re trying to find out which phone mast it connected with. That should give us an approximate location, within 500 metres.”

  “Alright,” Arla said. “We need to keep an eye out on this number, then. Any news on Maddy’s phone?”

  James groaned. “Boss, do you know how much CCTV I have to go through? It’s me and Rob, and there’s no way we can get through it all even in one month.” Arla knew he was referring to the motorway CCTV images.

  “Our approximate time of Maddy’s abduction is 21.00. Any CCTV images of a car coming out of the cul-de-sac?”

  James face brightened. “Yes, that we do. There are three cars that left the pub car park, it seems. Unfortunately, all of them went in the same direction, between 9 and 10.”

  “Which direction is that?”

  A map of Greater London and South-East Surrey was up on the wall. James got up and walked over. The map was large, ten by ten feet, and the cul-de-sac where the pub was situated in Brockwell Park was marked with a red pin.

  James pointed with his finger. “From here, they went down towards the A23, heading south.”

  Arla felt a clutch of excitement. “And the phone was last on while it was on the M23?”

  “Yes. But which one of the three cars went down that route?”

  Arla fixed James with a stare. “You will have three more pairs of eyes now, to help you look. All three cars couldn’t have headed down in the same direction. Even if they did, not all would be on the M23, unless we are really unlucky. So find out which one of those three cars went all the way down to the M23, and we probably have our man.”

  Arla raised her voice. “Anything from the SOC guys?”

  Dean Lambert, one of the technical officers from SOC stood up. “It might be nothing, but we found some fibres where we found her blood and DNA. Now, the fibres could have come from anyone’s clothes.”

  “Get to the point, please,” Arla said impatiently.

  “Sure.” Dean, a senior technical officer, didn’t look pleased at being rushed. “There are some pollen grains on the fibres that we have sent to the forensic botanist at Kew Gardens. She will shed some light on if these pollens are native to Brockwell and Clapham, or from further afield.”

  Arla asked, “And these fibres were found where we got Maddy’s DNA?”

  Dean nodded. “Good work, team. We’re getting somewhere. OK, you all know what to do.”

  The meeting broke up, and Arla headed to the interrogation room with Harry.

  CHAPTER 32

  Paul Ofori looked scared. He glanced at Arla, then at Harry, and back at Arla again. Harry checked the camera and the DVD player were on. He pressed the remote to turn the recorder on, then introduced everyone present. Next to Paul, a bespectacled older man in a pinstripe suit sat impassively. Derek Smith was a veteran solicitor. He had his notepad out, and Arla knew he would have had his ten-minute chat with Paul in private already. Derek was also the legal aid solicitor for Mark Dooley. Arla had no time for solicitors, who acted in their clients’ best interests, even when it was bloody obvious they were guilty. She was tired of seeing seasoned criminals get off the hook on technicalities – a lack of evidence in most cases.

  Arla started. “Paul, where were you on the night of 3rd June?”

  “With my mother, watching TV. You can ask her.”

  “We have already, but we need to ask you as well. If that is the case, then why do Maddy’s friends say that she was supposed to meet you that night?”

  A look of annoyance flitted across Paul’s face. “Maddy and her friends.”

  “What about them?” Arla asked.

  Before Paul could speak, Derek leaned over and touched him on the arm. They spoke in whispered tones before Paul straightened. “They always made things up about me,” he said.

  “In what way?”

  Paul glanced at Derek and the lawyer gave him a slight nod. Arla concealed her irritation and focused on Paul.

  “That we were close and that. It wasn’t true.”

  “Really?”

  Paul nodded. “Yes.”

  Arla picked up the A4 envelope in front of her, and shook out the photos she had enlarged from Maddy’s other Facebook page. She picked up one that showed Maddy and Paul showing off their tattoos in each other’s arms, and turned it over to Paul.

  His eyes widened, and a look of panic overcame his face. He leaned back in the chair. Derek leaned towards him and whispered something in his ear. Paul appeared not to have listened.

  Arla said, “Is your answer still the same?”

  Paul didn’t answer. Arla asked, “I’m going to ask you again. Where were you on the 3rd of June evening, between 8 and 10 pm?”

  “I told you,” Paul said, his nostrils flaring. “In the house watching TV. Ask my mum!”

  “You were not in the Wrangler’s Arms pub, outside Brockwell Park?”

  Arla already knew from Lisa and Rob that the witnesses who had seen Maddy didn’t recall seeing Paul.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “So where were you?”

  Derek Smith cleared his throat noisily. “I think my client has already answered that question, DCI Baker. Can we move on now, please?”

  Arla ignored him and stared at Paul, who avoided her gaze. Arla needed to know if Paul had seen anything that night. But he could only do that if he had been at the park. The way in which he was sticking to his guns didn’t bode well for that theory. And Miss Ofori had already provided his alibi.

  Arla flexed her jaws. If Paul had been a witness to Maddy’s abduction, then she would have hit the jackpot. Right now, she was losing cards. She decided to change tactics.

  “Did you love her, Paul?”

  Startled, the youngster raised his eyes to hers. He looked surprised, then a stricken look came over his face. His eyes darted around like a trapped animal, and he swallowed.

  Arla said, “You did, didn’t you?”

  An expression of pain flitted across Paul’s face, then he looked away. Derek leaned over to him again.

  Arla said, “Where is she, Paul?”

  Paul craned his neck back and shook his head, staring at the ceiling. “If I knew, I’d tell you. God, just leave me alone!”

  “Why did you run the day we came to see you, Paul?”

  Again, a quick whisper between lawyer and client. Paul seemed to have some difficulty in getting the next words out. Arla noticed Derek staring at his client, then giving him a nudge. Paul nodded, looking resigned.

  “Kids in school got money, right? Go to five-grand ski trips twice a year, and even more expensive holidays in the summer. School arranges trips once a year abroad. I can’t go on any of them.”

  “B
ecause you don’t have the cash?”

  Paul nodded, a doubtful look on his face, like he didn’t know if he was doing the right thing. He glanced at Derek, who encouraged him to speak.

  “So, I started selling dope on the side at school,” Paul said. He looked as if he had got something big off his chest. “I told the right people I was their man, and pretty soon I had regular business.”

  “And one of these right people was Maddy?” Arla asked.

  “Yes. She was the first one I spoke to, ’cos I knew she was cool. Her friends, too.”

  “Maya and Emma?”

  Paul nodded. Arla exchanged a glance with Harry. A dope-dealing gang inside the exclusive Brunswick High School. Wonders would never cease.

  Harry spoke up. “What sort of dope?”

  “Cannabis.”

  “Maddy got into this, didn’t she? Both of you were members of the gang, Z14.”

  To her surprise, Paul shook his head vigorously. “I never wanted to become a member. Sure, we had the tattoos to look hard, you know. It’s good for street cred. But to actually become a member you have all this bullshit initiation stuff to do – like beat someone up, steal a car, all that rubbish.”

  Paul said, “Maddy wanted to become a member. But then she realised it was crap.”

  “What about Mark Dooley?”

  Paul became quiet. Derek leaned over again. Their chat went on for longer this time. Paul looked unhappy, but he talked.

  “Mark was supplying me. He made a gangbanger’s life look like Heaven. I sort of went along with it, but I always knew it wasn’t for Maddy or me.”

  “Is that why you ran, because you thought we were there to arrest you?”

  Paul looked shamefaced. “Yeah. And I knew that Maddy was missing so I figured you were out to get me for that as well.”

  “Did you and Maddy ever talk of running away?”

  A faraway look came into Paul’s eyes and then he blinked. “Bitch!” he suddenly said with venom.

  Arla and Harry looked at each other, surprised. “Excuse me?” Arla asked.

  “It all changed later on. Things fucked up. She started two-timing me.”