Much to his amazement, when he reached the long straight road towards the M56 there was nobody behind him. His suspicions must have been wrong. The roads were empty at one o’clock on a Saturday morning, and he would have easily spotted a car tailing him.
He had a couple of hours’ driving ahead of him, but in spite of his exhaustion he felt totally awake. It was an effort, but he forced himself to stay within the speed limit. He wanted no undue attention tonight. He didn’t know how all the systems of the police worked together, but if his name was down on some list of ‘persons of interest’ he didn’t want to be flagged up. It was a rough night, though. Following such a sunny day, a fierce wind had blown up from nowhere, and the trees were swaying violently from side to side.
An hour and fifty minutes later, courtesy of the total absence of traffic at this ungodly hour, Robert arrived at his destination. At just before three o’clock in the morning it would be entirely inappropriate to ring the doorbell – at least if he wanted to get the right result. This had to be handled well, and he was going to have to bide his time and keep his temper in check. He imagined that people who ran B&Bs had to be up at a reasonable hour to start preparing the guests’ breakfasts, so he would just have to wait. It might have been an impulsive decision to come here in the middle of the night, but he needed to be sure he was the first person to speak to the landlady today.
At this hour of the morning the guest house was in darkness. A wide drive led to the front door of the property, and a single outside lamp created a halo of light around the main entrance. Robert could just make out a number of tall chimney pots silhouetted against the starlit sky, and the white painted window frames standing out from the traditional grey limestone of the building.
He pushed the soft leather seat of his Jaguar XJR into recline and leaned back, closing his eyes. He couldn’t sleep, though. All he could see were vivid images of Olivia – from the moment he met her up until the last time he saw her.
Checking his watch every few minutes, time dragged and he tried to close his mind to all thoughts of his wife. But it was impossible. By five o’clock, his limbs were twitching with inactivity and his emotions had run the gamut from rage to fear. He had to get out of the car.
As he pushed the door open he was hit by the tang of sea air, and he could hear the waves gently lapping on the sand. He turned and looked at the beach, bathed in the early dawn sunlight of a June morning. And he looked again. Something was wrong here, but he didn’t know what it was. He gave himself a mental shake, and set off on his walk, away from the small harbour. He strolled to the far end of the bay and sat on a smooth rock looking out to sea, his thoughts coming in waves to match the ebb and flow of the tide. He had hoped the cool morning breeze would have blown away the cobwebs and allowed him to think rationally about his next move, but he was wrong.
By five thirty he thought he should return to his vigil, and he made his way slowly back to the car as an orange sun began to melt away the shadows.
Finally he saw a chink of light through some closed bedroom curtains. Somebody was awake. Time dragged, and it was a full twenty minutes before he saw the curtains pulled back and the light switched off. He left it a further five minutes before he felt it might be safe to approach the house. He pushed open the car door and closed it quietly behind him.
He walked towards the back of the house where he hoped the kitchen would be. A window was open, and he could hear a radio playing quietly. The presenter announced the next song. Michael Bublé. He almost smiled. Olivia hated Michael Bublé. She said his music was anodyne. How appropriate for today.
There was a smell of frying bacon – and Robert realised that he had eaten nothing for nearly twenty-four hours. He hadn’t even stopped for lunch on the way home the day before. The idea of food made him feel slightly nauseous, and he swallowed the saliva that threatened to choke him.
He gave three sharp raps on the back door and heard a voice call quietly, ‘Coming,’ with that hint of a warm Welsh accent, and a clatter of pans as if she were moving the frying pan off the hob.
Robert realised that he probably looked like a tramp, with his crumpled shirt and the dark shadow of his unshaven face. Maybe that was a good thing.
The lady who opened the door was exactly as he would have expected. Probably in her early sixties and looking all of her age, she nevertheless had a relaxed expression that said all was well with her world. Her grey hair was cut short in a practical, no-nonsense style, and she wore a too-pink lipstick. She smiled pleasantly, but beneath the smile he could sense a hint of wariness.
‘Good morning,’ she said, maintaining the welcoming air. ‘What can I do for you, dear?’
Robert returned the smile and held out his hand.
‘Mrs Evans, my name is Robert Brookes. Do you think I could come in for a moment? I’d like to talk to you about my wife.’
13
‘What?’ Tom Douglas was not given to yelling at people down the phone, but then he’d rarely had people on his team as daft as Ryan Tippetts. ‘Ryan, we waited until you said you were in place before we left. We’ve no idea what’s happened to Olivia Brookes and her children. They could all be dead, or he could be holding them somewhere. We don’t know, so I wanted you to keep eyes on the house in case she came home or he went out. What part of that did you fail to comprehend?’
Tom listened impatiently to Ryan’s explanation, and didn’t believe a word of it. Some rumpus at the end of the road that he had felt obliged to investigate? Not a chance. He was probably asleep. And how come he’d realised only now – hours later – that the Jag was missing from the drive?
‘Yes, I do accept that he could have put the car in the garage, but did it not occur to you to check as soon as you realised it wasn’t visible? We can’t justify formal surveillance on Robert Brookes at this stage, but it’s common sense to let us know if he leaves, isn’t it?’
He listened to more excuses for about ten seconds and then noticed Becky was signalling him from outside the door of his office, clearly with something that she urgently needed to tell him. He’d had enough of DC Tippetts for now.
‘Ryan, watch that house like a hawk – understand? And let me know the minute he gets back, if indeed he ever gets back.’ Tom put the phone down carefully. Early in his career he had learned that slamming the phone down did no good to anybody, and the person at the other end heard nothing more than a click, the same as if the phone had been replaced normally. So it was his first step to restoring calm after a frustrating call. He took a deep breath and beckoned Becky to come in.
‘We’ve just heard from the police in Anglesey,’ she said. ‘They got to the guest house, B&B – whatever – at about eight o’clock. They thought it would be early enough, but they were wrong. The landlady had already had a visitor. Robert Brookes was there just after six this morning.’
Shit. This was all they needed: a suspect in what may or may not be a crime going on the rampage and trampling over potential evidence. He’d crucify Ryan when he got hold of him.
Becky was still hovering just inside the doorway, so Tom signalled her to sit down, glad to see she was looking slightly better today. Perhaps the excitement of a new case had driven out some of her demons, whatever they were.
Becky gave an exasperated shrug. ‘Bloody witnesses. Sometimes I could string them up. The police said that Mrs Evans seemed really uncomfortable talking to them, but she apologised. She said she’d been completely wrong. Robert Brookes hadn’t visited his wife last week. In fact, she’d never met him until this morning.’
‘So why did she tell us he was there, then?’
‘Well, she now says she was probably a bit confused. There had been a visitor one night, and she’d been sure it was Mr Brookes. But perhaps it was one of her other guests who had somebody to stay over for the night. She says she has so many that sometimes she gets muddled.’
Tom thought for a moment. ‘Did the local guys believe her?’
‘I’m not s
ure they did. They said she seemed flustered and keen to move on. They tried to push her, to find out why she’d changed her story, but she just got upset. She was adamant that she’s never seen Robert Brookes before, though, and that bit they did believe.’
‘All a bit too convenient, if you ask me. What did Brookes say to her? Anything significant?’
‘Not really. He asked if he could see the room Olivia had slept in, but when she showed him he just stared at the bed, then walked over to the window and looked out at the beach. She said he was muttering about the colour of the sand, but she didn’t know what he was talking about, because it’s just, well, sand coloured. And that was it. Oh, and he kept looking at his watch. He probably realised the local police would be coming round any time soon, because we told him that last night. We don’t know where he is now, though. Very possibly on his way home, or at least, we can hope so. I’ve got somebody checking the cameras, see if we can pick him up on the A55 or the M56, but if we don’t spot him soon we’ll need to widen the net.’
‘Keep me updated on that. I want to talk to Robert Brookes the minute he’s back.’ Tom pushed his frustration to the back of his mind, and leaned back in his chair. ‘What do you make of it all, Becky? Give me your gut reaction.’
Becky shrugged. ‘I think Brookes is as guilty as sin.’
‘Of what, though?’
‘I’m not sure. I keep going back to the fact that he took the children once, so has he done something with them and killed Olivia? There was the whole bit about the kids being taken out of school, which he claims he knew nothing about, and then the schedule we found in the bin. He had no real explanation for that, did he? But he seems to have kept tabs on every move Olivia made.’
Becky was right. They had quizzed Robert about the need for such a detailed timetable, but he was adamant it was designed to help Olivia, although Tom couldn’t see how. It also suggested that Olivia was there until just before Robert got home, but the timings for picking the kids up from school were nonsense.
‘It’s the whole idea of the thing that creeps me out,’ Becky said, pulling a face as if she were eating something unpleasant. ‘If it was just a diary of events, in case of forgetting things, that would be one thing. But it’s got everything on it. I’m surprised it didn’t say when she’d been to the toilet, to be honest. Then there was the locked study door. We need to get a better look at that computer. He wasn’t at all keen on us looking too closely last night. My every instinct is screaming that there was a complete lack of trust between the two of them.’
‘And the missing sheet?’ Tom added. When the house had been searched, PC Mitchell had noticed there was no bottom sheet on the bed in the master bedroom, so he checked in the laundry bin on the landing and there was nothing in there either. A utility room housed the washing machine and tumble dryer, but they were both empty. Of course, the sheet could have been washed and put back in the airing cupboard, but the rest of the bed was made, so it had seemed a little odd.
Becky shook her head. ‘No idea what that’s about, but we’ve flagged it, of course.’
‘No joy from hospitals, I gather, and nothing on any local CCTV?’
‘No sign of a woman and three children on foot, and as she wasn’t in her own car there’s not much else we can check there. We’ve looked at the recent calls on her mobile as well. Nothing – she doesn’t seem to use it.’
Tom put his clasped hands behind his head.
‘Robert Brookes says he spoke to his wife every day, and she was at home. But I don’t think anybody’s been in that house for days. There was the dust, which could be down to bad housekeeping. But who disinfects their bins, and doesn’t dust? More to the point, the dustbin was empty of any household waste. The bin men come on a Tuesday – three days before they went missing.’
‘I know, and I checked the fridge,’ Becky said. ‘There was nothing out of date, and there was no milk – the one thing guaranteed not to last. And not a single vegetable to be found anywhere.’
‘In other words, we have a schedule full of lies, and we have Robert Brookes swearing she was in the house until Friday. But nothing, absolutely nothing, is missing from the house.’ Tom leaned forwards again. ‘Apart from a woman and three children, of course. What’s the plan you’ve drawn up?’
Becky pulled a sheet of paper from the pile she was clutching and handed it to Tom.
‘An incident room is being set up. We’re going to interview the neighbours to see if anybody has seen Olivia Brookes in the past two weeks. Somebody’s going to talk some more to the head teacher, just to try to get a better understanding of the whole “homeschooling” malarkey. And we’re going to take a look at those computers – all three of them. For now we’ve just got the laptops. We’ve alerted the press, although the absence of photos is a bit of a nightmare. We’ll issue an urgent plea for Olivia to get in touch with us, if she’s still alive and kicking – promises of confidentiality and all that, of course. We’ll try to see if anybody at all has recent photos of the children from kids’ parties, school trips and so on. We were going to look into CCTV from the hotel where Brookes was staying – the garage in particular – to see if he was lying about visiting his wife in Anglesey. But that seems irrelevant now. What do you think?’
‘I want it checked anyway. I don’t trust Robert Brookes, Becky. There’s something not right about him. He’s hiding something, but I don’t know what.’
‘If my theory’s right and he’s killed her, what about the flowers, and the other presents? They suggest he was expecting them to be in the house when he got back, don’t you think?’
‘Not necessarily.’ Tom was about to put forward an alternative, infinitely more sinister theory when his mobile vibrated on the desk. He was at a loss to know why this was ever called ‘silent mode’ as to him it was even more distracting than a subtle beep. He saw it was his boss.
‘Philippa, what can I do for you?’ he asked, groaning inwardly because he was sure that given her interest in this case, Ryan’s spectacular performance last night would by now have come to light.
But he was wrong.
‘When Robert Brookes took the children off for that holiday or whatever it really was a couple of years ago, naturally I wrote my report based on the facts, but at the time I thought there was something odd about it all and I decided to attach a note of my own impressions of the family – a nice trick that I seem to remember you taught me, Tom.’
This was rare praise indeed from Philippa, but Tom decided to say nothing and let her continue.
‘I wrote down a couple of things that may be relevant now. One was the fact that I felt Brookes somehow seemed rather pleased with himself, although outwardly his response to his wife’s obvious distress and confusion was sympathetic, and the other was the fact that we learned from the school that Jasmine had retained her real father’s name and talked about him as if she knew him. She always spoke of him in the present tense. We didn’t think much about it then and I don’t know if it’s still the case, but before we become obsessed with the notion that all four of them are buried in the back garden, I think you should see if you can track down Danush Jahander.’
14
‘I shagged the boss.’
Tom Douglas was about to take a sip of espresso from a dinky little cardboard cup as Becky made her pronouncement. Coming as it did, as a complete non sequitur, Tom could only think that she had been slowly plucking up the courage to reveal the source of her obvious melancholy.
He took a mouthful of his coffee and waited.
‘That’s why I’m so miserable. I shagged the sodding boss,’ Becky repeated, a slight tremor in her voice. Tom glanced at her, and she looked away – out of the side window.
They were parked down the road from the Brookes’ house, waiting for Robert to return home. He’d been clocked on the M56 heading in this direction so they were fairly sure he was on his way back, and they’d decided to be ready for him. In theory, while they waited and drank
a much needed cup of coffee purchased en route, they were trying out a few different ideas on what could have happened to Olivia Brookes, although Becky had made her opinion very clear.
Tom turned in the driver’s seat so that his whole body was angled slightly towards her. He wanted her to know he was listening. He gave her a moment. He saw her shoulders rise and fall, as if she had taken a deep breath, and she turned back to face the front, staring straight ahead through the windscreen. Tom looked at her worried face, her lips clamped tightly together.
‘I thought it must be something like that,’ he said, keeping his voice neutral.
Becky spun round towards him. ‘What? Had you heard something? Did somebody tell you?’
‘Don’t worry – nobody’s said a thing to me. Do you want to tell me what happened? Like which boss for example?’
Becky turned back to face the window.
‘Peter Hunter.’
A Detective Chief Superintendent, no less. That really was the boss. Tom had never been a big fan of Peter Hunter since he’d taken over from James Sinclair while Tom was still working for the Met in London. He was a good copper, no doubt about it. But as well as his obsession with treating crimes as items on a spreadsheet, he was the sort of guy who thought he was still young and hip despite being in his mid fifties. He always pretended to be up to date with the latest music, not quite getting the fact that he just wasn’t. And he liked to use what he believed to be trendy words, which just made him sound ridiculous in Tom’s view. He had an impressive career behind him, but instead of winning respect within his team for his undoubted ability, recently he seemed to be losing it as they quietly scoffed at his posing. An affair with a junior officer won’t have helped either, and it was a sure thing that it wouldn’t be a secret.
Tom Douglas Box Set Page 87