Dead Weight

by Frank Smith

She refilled the glass and sat down again. Her body might be here at home, but her mind was still at work, or, to be precise, in the house in Cogshill Lane.

  Tregalles had left the questioning of Linda Carr to Molly while he arranged for Gary Mullen’s van to be towed in for forensic examination. ‘I know it only arrived there well after Justine had left the house,’ he’d said when Molly asked why, ‘but that van has to be connected somehow. Mullen, or whoever it is in that video, was up to no good, so I want Forensic to go through it from stem to stern.’

  Molly found Linda in the garden at the back of the house. She was weeding. ‘It’s not much of a garden,’ she said apologetically, ‘but we’ll get a few vegetables off it, and I enjoy coming out here.’ She flicked a nod in the direction of the house. ‘They’re a good bunch, by and large, but they’re all quite a bit younger than me, and I like a bit of peace and quiet now and then.’

  She stood up and dusted her hands off. ‘But I’m sure you didn’t come out here to chat, so what is it you want? Is this about Gary’s driving the other night? Did something happen on his way home?’

  ‘Let’s just say we are more interested in what he did after he came home on Sunday morning,’ Molly said. ‘He claims he passed out in his room and remembers nothing until you came in to see how he was on Sunday afternoon.’

  Linda sighed. ‘He’s his own worst enemy, that boy,’ she said. ‘He knows how drink affects him, yet he will go out and drink more than is good for him. My room is at the back, but I still heard him come in. It’s a wonder he didn’t do himself a serious injury on those stairs. He insisted later that he hadn’t hurt himself, but he had a pretty good scrape on both knees when I took his jeans off him.’

  Molly’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You took his jeans off him?’ she said. ‘When was this?’

  Linda laughed. ‘I couldn’t go back to sleep without checking on him,’ she said, ‘and it was a good thing I did because he would never have made it to his bed. He was out cold on the floor. So I stripped him off and got him into bed.’

  ‘By yourself?’ Gary Mullen was no lightweight.

  ‘I am a trained nurse,’ Linda reminded her, ‘and I’ve wrestled bigger men than Gary into bed.’ Her expression changed as she caught the amused look on Molly’s face. ‘I could have put that better, couldn’t I?’ she said. ‘But you know what I mean.’

  ‘You didn’t happen to look in on him later, did you?’

  ‘Of course I looked in on him,’ she said. ‘I checked on him when I got up about seven thirty, and then later in the morning around ten.’

  Molly took another sip of water and thought about Tregalles’s reaction when she told him what she’d learned. ‘And you’re buying that?’ he’d said. ‘Stripping off his clothes and putting him to bed like he’s some little kid? And then saying she checked on him in the morning?’ He’d shaken his head. ‘Can’t see it myself. Mullen’s not exactly an attractive specimen when he’s sober; God know what he looks like when he’s drunk. They aren’t related, are they? I mean she’s not his mother, is she?’

  Molly assumed it was a rhetorical question, but she answered it anyway. ‘Mullen is twenty-three and Linda Carr is thirty-seven,’ she said. ‘She’s a registered nurse; she cares for people. And I think it has less to do with Gary needing someone to look after him than her need to look after someone.’

  Tregalles grunted. ‘So why is she living there with a bunch of students? Registered nurses are paid a decent wage, aren’t they?’

  ‘Decent wage or not, she’s there for the same reason as the others,’ Molly told him. ‘Low rent. After fifteen years of marriage, her husband, a doctor, cleaned out their joint bank account and took off with a nurse ten years younger than Linda. She can’t afford anything better.’

  ‘But we know it’s Mullen’s van in the video,’ Tregalles persisted, ‘so if Mullen wasn’t the driver, who the hell was it? And what was he doing there?’

  ‘According to Maria, the van was sitting there when she and Brigit went to work that morning,’ Molly reminded him. ‘Later, when Wheeler went out to check his own car for petrol, he said the van was in the middle of the drive; the keys were still in it, so he moved it on to the grass and left the keys on the hall table. But that was sometime around ten o’clock, so – in theory at least – anyone could have taken the van between the time Maria left and Paul Wheeler moved it from the driveway.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Tregalles said stubbornly, ‘but my money’s still on Mullen, and I think the Carr woman is covering for him.’

  There had been no point in continuing the discussion, so the rest of the journey was driven in silence. Molly had worked with Tregalles long enough to know that once he’d made up his mind about a suspect, he hated to let go. But, given time to think about it, reason usually prevailed, and they would start afresh tomorrow.

  Molly stifled a yawned. Give it a rest, she told herself, and settled down to watch TV. She was asleep in less than twenty minutes.

  ELEVEN

  Friday, 6 April

  Tregalles was busy writing on the whiteboards as Molly fed him information from her own handwritten notes on Friday morning, when Paget came looking for a progress report. ‘I have a meeting with DS Pierce in about twenty minutes,’ he explained, ‘so how did you get on yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘We’ve tracked down the owner of the Ford Transit van that was sitting out there on Edge Hill Road last Sunday,’ Tregalles told him. ‘His name is Gary Mullen; he’s not much more than a kid really, but according to Linda Carr, a registered nurse, he spent the morning in bed with the mother of all hangovers, after crashing a wedding party and drinking himself legless the night before. We’ve checked and verified that he was at the party with two of his mates, who both spent the best part of Sunday in much the same condition. They both live at home, and their parents confirm their story.’

  Molly, who had moved back to her desk to take a phone call, rejoined them. ‘That was a callback from the Birmingham police,’ she told them. ‘They’ve given me the names of thirteen witnesses – aunts, uncles, cousins and friends – who are prepared to swear that Chandra Lali was with some or all of them throughout the Easter weekend, so I think it’s safe to say it isn’t him on the tape.’

  ‘So, with Maria Navarro and Brigit Lystrom both at work, that only leaves Linda Carr and Paul Wheeler,’ said Tregalles. ‘The van was sitting there in the yard; the keys were in it, so, theoretically, anyone could have wandered in and taken it. But it had to be someone who knew where Justine lived, and also knew that she usually goes to mass at nine on Sunday morning. Wheeler admitted to driving Justine home on one occasion, so he knew where she lived, and he could have learned about Justine’s regular attendance at church from Maria. He volunteered the information that he had moved the van from where Mullen had left it, but he may have done that deliberately to account for any prints he might have left behind.’

  Tregalles picked up a marker pen and put crosses against the names of everyone living at The Larches in Cogshill Lane, except Wheeler’s, then stepped back and folded his arms. ‘It has to be him,’ he muttered, more to himself than the others, ‘but I’ll be damned if I can see the connection between him sitting out there in Mullen’s van, waiting, we assume, for Justine, and her disappearance an hour earlier.’

  ‘I wonder if Wheeler was stalking her,’ said Molly. ‘Maybe he’d tried it on with Justine at some time in the past, perhaps when he drove her home, but when she told him she wasn’t interested, maybe he started stalking her. We’ve been told that Justine appeared to be worried about something, yet she wouldn’t talk to anyone about it. If she was being stalked by Maria’s boyfriend, she may have been trying to find a way out of the situation without hurting Maria. But if Wheeler was persistent, perhaps even threatening, Justine might have suspected that he would be waiting for her on Sunday, and decided to leave earlier to avoid him. And, just to be sure, she went down Edge Hill Crescent instead of taking her usual route, which is why she do
esn’t show up on camera.’

  ‘To where?’ Tregalles demanded. ‘It would take her half an hour or more to get to St Joseph’s that way, if she was going to church at all.’ He stood back to eye the board. ‘Do you know what I think?’ he asked, then went on to answer his own question. ‘I think Justine Delgado set this whole thing up. I think she’d arranged to meet someone – probably a man she didn’t want anyone to know about. She probably knew about the traffic camera just up the road from Lorrimer Drive, because she’d pass it every time she went into town, so she arranged for this person to pick her up in the crescent. The question is: did they ride off into the sunset together, or was the boyfriend just bait for an abduction?’

  ‘We have people tracking down the owners of the cars that appear on camera around the time Justine disappeared,’ Molly reminded him, ‘but no luck so far.’

  ‘I’d like to see if there is anything to this stalking theory of yours,’ said Paget, ‘so I think the sooner you talk to this man Wheeler, the better.’

  Paget climbed the stairs to the second floor and was heading for the partly open door of DS Pierce’s office, when he was stopped by Fiona McRae, Pierce’s secretary.

  ‘She’s on the phone,’ she said. ‘I don’t think she’ll be much longer’ – Fiona indicated one of the lights on her phone and lowered her voice – ‘it’s Chief Superintendent Brock,’ she said, ‘and he doesn’t usually stay on very long.’

  Just long enough to tell you he was displeased with something, Paget thought. He couldn’t remember having a conversation with Morgan Brock when the man wasn’t complaining about something.

  ‘Any news about the missing girl?’ Fiona asked. ‘They had her picture on TV again last night. Such a pretty girl.’

  ‘Afraid not, but we’re still hopeful,’ he said.

  Was he still hopeful? Or was it just something you said, when all the time that inner voice was telling you that the chances of a happy outcome were fading rapidly with every passing hour?

  ‘But five days …’ Fiona shook her head. It was as if she had read his thoughts. The light on the phone went out. Paget tapped on the door and went in.

  The sun had broken through, and Amanda Pierce had risen from her desk to adjust the Venetian blinds to make the most of it. Impeccably dressed as usual, this morning she was wearing a two-piece suit in soft greys with contrasting touches of charcoal on the collar, pockets and cuffs of the jacket, over a plain white blouse and straight skirt. And with the sunlight on her face, Paget was transported back to when he’d first set eyes on her almost twenty years ago. Amanda Pierce and Jill Hambledon were two young, enthusiastic probationers, and he’d been attracted to them both. In the end, he’d married Jill, and it had been the right decision, but as he looked at Amanda now, he couldn’t help thinking how easily it could have gone the other way.

  ‘Anything new on the Justine Delgado case since this morning?’ she asked as she returned to her seat and motioned for him to sit down.

  ‘We have one new line of enquiry regarding the driver of the Ford Transit van,’ he said. ‘We think it could be Paul Wheeler, Maria Navarro’s boyfriend, and Forsythe wondered if he was stalking Justine. If she’s right, and Justine knew or suspected that Wheeler – assuming it was Wheeler – was waiting for her out there, that could be the reason she decided to leave early and take evasive action to avoid him. But that doesn’t explain why she is still missing.’

  Pierce’s blue-grey eyes held his own for a long moment. ‘Do I detect a change in tone in this investigation?’ she asked.

  Paget nodded slowly. ‘The trouble is, I don’t know whether this is something Justine planned, or if it’s something she thought she’d planned, but it all went wrong.’ He hunched forward in his chair. ‘You see, the thing I keep coming back to is this: apart from the clothes she was wearing, and a handbag, Justine Delgado took nothing with her that suggests she intended to be away for more than the day. In fact, given what we’ve been told about her attachment to the boy, everything suggests that she had every intention of returning to the house that evening. Forsythe mentions unfinished knitting on the girl’s bed, which is another indication that Justine intended to return. So, what may have started out as a secret assignation, or whatever you wish to call it, something or someone prevented her from coming back as planned.’

  Amanda Pierce was nodding her agreement even before he had finished speaking, but Paget had the feeling that there was something else on her mind. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from Mr Brock,’ she said, confirming his suspicions. ‘He is questioning the use of our resources on a missing persons case, and I’m afraid I didn’t have much of an answer. I did point out that it was Mrs Lorrimer, wife of our MP and friend of the chief constable, who had appealed to you directly, but I had to agree: it’s not really our case.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ said Paget. ‘I think this young woman could be in danger, if she isn’t already.’

  Amanda Pierce slid her glasses into place. ‘Sorry, Neil,’ she said, sounding as if she really meant it, ‘but this is not negotiable. So, as we’re coming to the end of the week, I think this would be a good time to start getting the paperwork together so that Missing Persons can be fully briefed on Monday morning.’

  Paget had been gone for several minutes, but the image of him lingered in Amanda’s mind. For one brief moment when he’d first come in, it had seemed as if all those years apart had disappeared, and they were back to a time when things were different. There had been something about the way he had looked at her. It was gone in an instant, but, in that fleeting moment, memories and feelings she’d long thought dead had shouldered their persistent way into her consciousness … again.

  She closed her eyes, but if she thought by doing so she could shut out the past, she was mistaken. Images long suppressed came back to life: images of herself and her best friend Jill, and Neil and Matthew, Jill’s younger brother. The four of them had been almost inseparable back then, but while neither she nor Jill would ever admit it, it had always been a contest for Neil’s attention. Jill had won, and Amanda had been her maid of honour at the wedding. A short time later, she’d married Matthew, convinced that she was in love with him. It was only later that she realized her mistake.

  Amanda shook the image away, annoyed with herself for allowing her mind to drift. So much had changed since then: Jill was dead, Matthew was dead, and Neil was married to Grace Lovett … well, living with, which amounted to the same thing, she supposed, suddenly irritable.

  This was her life now, she told herself sharply, and the sooner she stopped thinking about what might have been, the better.

  TWELVE

  ‘He should be out in about fifteen minutes,’ they were told when Tregalles and Molly finally tracked Paul Wheeler to one of the lecture rooms on the second floor of the hospital. Tregalles was all for having Wheeler called out, but Molly persuaded him to wait. ‘We don’t know for certain that it is Wheeler in the video,’ she said, less confident now than she had been when she had first voiced her suspicions about the doctor, ‘and pulling him out in the middle of a lecture could make us look bad if we’re wrong. And it is only fifteen minutes.’

  In the event, it was closer to half an hour before the door opened and a stream of young men and woman filed out. Wheeler spotted them as soon as he came out, but quickly averted his eyes. He began talking animatedly to the young woman beside him, and would have walked past them if Tregalles hadn’t stepped forward to intercept him.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said, feigning surprise. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here at the hospital.’ His expression changed to one of concern. ‘I hope everything is all right?’

  ‘That rather depends on your answers to some questions we have,’ Tregalles told him. Wheeler turned to the young woman beside him. ‘You go ahead,’ he said, lowering his voice to a confidential tone. ‘I’ll be along in a few minutes.’ He reached out, and for a moment it looked as if he was about to pat the young woman on the bottom, then c
hanged his mind and moved his hand up to rest lightly on her shoulder. ‘Really, it’s all right, Jenny,’ he assured her. ‘I’ll be there in a few minutes.’

  ‘We’re running late as it is,’ she warned, looking at her watch and then at Tregalles to make sure he got the message. ‘I’ll save you a seat.’

  Wheeler watched her go, then turned back to Tregalles. ‘That’s quite true,’ he said, ‘we are running late, so if you could be brief …’

  ‘We’ve taken a closer look at the tape taken last Sunday of Mr Mullen’s van and the driver on Edge Hill Road,’ Tregalles said. ‘We now believe that the man on the tape is you, Doctor Wheeler, so we would like you to come with us to the station to answer a few questions.’

  Wheeler drew back, brow furrowed as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, then shook his head. ‘That’s quite, impossible,’ he said. ‘I can’t just leave the hospital. I’m part of a team, and we still have some practical work to do.’ He moved in closer and lowered his voice as three young nurses walked by. ‘As for your tape, I was nowhere near Edge Hill Road last Sunday, so I’m afraid you must be mistaken.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think we are,’ said Molly. She had been watching Wheeler closely, and she’d seen the way the young nurses had looked at him as they went by, and how their heads went together to whisper once out of earshot. ‘The images on the tape itself were a bit grainy, but Forensic has a programme that enhances images, bringing everything into sharper focus. The driver of the van is wearing a hooded jacket, and I suspect we might find one to match it if we were to search your room. Or perhaps you have it here today?’

  Wheeler’s eyes narrowed, moving from Molly to Tregalles and back again. ’Let’s go and find out, shall we?’ Tregalles said. ‘Where do you keep your street clothes, Doctor?’ He reached out to take Wheeler by the arm, but the doctor stepped back and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘All right, all right!’ he said. ‘So perhaps I did hold out on you a bit yesterday, but there’s no need to go all officious about it. I had a good reason. I can explain.’ He glanced up and down the hall, then moved in closer. ‘But not here.’ He nodded in the direction of the lecture room behind him. ‘This room is free now, so why don’t we go in and clear up this misunderstanding like civilized people?’