Tom Douglas Box Set

by Rachel Abbott

  26

  Although he had already been inside this house more than once and traces of him might be found anywhere, Tom decided to don the requisite outfit to protect the scene from further contamination before stepping into the house. His disposable polypropylene suit and shoe covers crackled as he walked, and he noisily made his way towards the kitchen where he was sure he would find Becky. She was talking to the crime scene manager – a huge black guy with a perpetual grin on his face. As Jumoke Osoba, commonly known as Jumbo, would tell anybody who asked, he’d always loved the sense of the unknown, of a surprise waiting round every corner. A new crime scene to him was the equivalent of a six-year-old delving into their Christmas sack of presents. With each new piece of evidence that he discovered his grin widened, and his enthusiasm was contagious. Naturally, he toned it down if there was a body, but this was the perfect scene for him. No obvious evidence at all, and no bodies to worry about.

  Tom couldn’t help thinking that the word ‘yet’ was hanging in the air, but he pushed the thought to the back of his mind. He noticed Becky was drinking from a bottle of water and she looked a little flushed. He’d have a quiet word later to check she was okay, but first he needed to talk to Jumbo.

  ‘Hey, Jumbo – good to see you. We’ve got the A team today, I see.’

  Jumbo let out a bark of laughter.

  ‘Yeah, Tom. Only the best for you, my friend. I am so looking forward to this.’ He laughed again, a slightly high-pitched sound that seemed so incongruous coming from a large black man. Tom couldn’t help smiling as Jumbo continued, rubbing his enormous gloved hands together in barely suppressed glee. ‘There’s nothing obvious. We’re going to get cracking now, and see what we can dig up for you.’ Jumbo’s eyes drifted towards the terrace and he turned back to Tom with eyebrows raised in a silent question. Neither saw the necessity to speak, but Tom was sincerely hoping that it wouldn’t come to an excavation.

  As Jumbo strode purposefully out of the kitchen to brief his troops, Tom made his way over to Becky.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked. She looked at him vacantly and then appeared to shake herself.

  ‘Yes, sorry – I’m fine. I’m being unusually fanciful, that’s all. When I came into the house, I got this weird feeling, as if I were entering a morgue, for some reason. The quiet was almost deadly, and I genuinely expected to stumble over a corpse at any moment. It was quite a relief when the crime scene boys got here, although Jumbo himself was a bit of a turn up for the books. Where did we find him, then?’

  ‘He’s the best there is, just wait and see,’ Tom said, walking over to the window and peering out into the garden. ‘Do you think Robert’s really done a runner, or has he just gone for a long walk?’

  Becky shook her head. ‘He’s gone. I can feel it. We’re pretty sure he went out the back way, and it seems a bit extreme to climb over a fence if you’re just going for a walk. There’s a shoe print in the soft earth, and he dragged one of the kids’ plastic chairs from their play area over to the fence too.’

  ‘So why did he do it now? What piece of information have we got that made him so afraid that he had to up sticks and go? Was it that we know Olivia wasn’t where he said she was? Was it the photo of the other woman? Are we getting too close? I bloody hope we are – we need to find these kids.’

  ‘He’s running scared, Tom. He knows we’re on to him,’ Becky answered. ‘We just don’t know what he’s done with her – or the kids.’

  Tom shook his head. It had made more sense when they’d thought Olivia was having an affair with her dark-skinned visitor at the B&B, but the fact that this other woman had been pretending to be Olivia for the last three holidays suggested duplicity of some considerable magnitude. But on whose part? Had Robert known before this week that Olivia had never been to the new guest house in Anglesey?

  Becky held up her empty bottle of water. ‘I’m just going to dump this, and check where we’re up to. There’s a hell of a mess upstairs. It looks like there was a fight in the bedroom, but when I showed Jumbo round he didn’t think so.’

  As Becky walked off towards the front of the house, Tom heard the unmistakeable sound of Gil Tennant’s voice, obviously here to do some investigating into Robert Brookes’ computer before it was carted away.

  ‘DCI Douglas, good morning,’ he said as he walked into the kitchen. Tom was pleased to see that Gil hadn’t disappointed on the shoe front once again. Despite the overshoes, Tom could just make out the edge of some dark red trainers, and was certain that once the coverall was removed these would be a perfect match to either his shirt or trousers.

  ‘Morning, Gil. Sorry you’ve been dragged out on a Sunday. Did you catch Becky on your way in?’

  ‘I most certainly did. She told me Mr Brookes normally keeps his study door locked, so I’m looking forward to finding out what secrets are lurking in there.’ Gil rubbed his hands together.

  ‘Brookes told us his computer was password protected. Is that likely to be a problem?’ Tom asked.

  Gil simply raised his chin and looked smug, which Tom guessed was all he was going to get for an answer.

  ‘At least the power’s back on. I gather the plonker next door cut through the electricity cable yesterday afternoon, so let’s hope he restricts his digger activity today,’ Gil said.

  ‘Tom? You got a minute?’ Jumbo’s voice penetrated the general hubbub of the house. Everybody instantly fell silent – certain that something significant had been found. Tom dodged around Gil and took the stairs two at a time with Becky in hot pursuit. The voice led them to the master bedroom.

  ‘That was quick, Jumbo, even by your standards. What have you found?’

  Jumbo clearly had something in his hands, but for a moment Tom was stunned by the total chaos in the room.

  ‘Christ, was there a tsunami and I missed it?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah, yes. That’s the first thing. Becky – okay if I call you Becky, DI Robinson?’ Jumbo didn’t pause for permission, but carried on. ‘Becky wondered if there had been a fight in here, but I think this has all been created by one person. I would guess he stood here,’ Jumbo took a massive step to his left, ‘and pulled out drawers, flinging them round the room. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence of anything being thrown back. There’s one imprint of somebody sitting on the bed, and only the women’s clothes have been ripped off their hangers. I would say that this is our Mr Brookes having a bit of a paddy.’

  A paddy was the understatement of the year, if the condition of this room was anything to go by.

  ‘Do you think he was looking for something?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I doubt it, because he certainly wasn’t methodical. However…’ Jumbo paused and flashed his trademark grin around the room, ‘if he had been looking, he did a rubbish job. As you can see, some of the drawers he pulled out ended up upside down, but some were just flung and righted themselves. And just lookie here at what we found taped to the bottom of one of these drawers.’

  Jumbo passed two plastic evidence bags to Tom, and in each one was a passport. He looked up at Jumbo, his expression framing his question.

  ‘One British passport in the name of Olivia Brookes. One in the name of Jasmine Jahander. And I don’t know if it’s relevant, but there are Iranian visas in both of them dated last October.’

  *

  As they both had cars at the scene, Becky and Tom had to travel back separately to the incident room – a fact that frustrated Tom because he really could have done with using Becky as a sounding board. They already knew Olivia and Jasmine had passports, in spite of the fact that Robert had specifically said they didn’t, but Olivia had obviously hidden them from him. If they had both travelled to Iran last October, though, who had looked after the boys?

  Tom hadn’t detected any hint of a lie when Robert had said that Olivia didn’t need a passport, and neither did the children. So Olivia would have had to hide them because he was certain Robert would know nothing about the Iranian visas. And Jumbo had fou
nd them in about five minutes, so goodness knows what else he was going to unearth in that house. Tom didn’t have long to wait to find out. His phone beeped and his screen flashed up with the word ‘Jumbo’.

  ‘Hey Jumbo, don’t tell me you’ve solved the whole crime inside an hour?’ Tom said, not entirely joking.

  ‘Ha – you would be surprised at all the little slimy bits we’re finding hidden under stones here. Just wait until you speak to Gil. He’s been jumping up and down in excitement, and had my guys climbing ladders all morning.’

  ‘Ladders?’ Tom said in amazement. ‘What the hell have ladders got to do with his computer?’

  ‘I’ll leave that to Gil. I won’t steal his thunder. But seriously for a moment, Tom – I don’t like the feel of this. I don’t know why yet, but I just get the sense that we’re going to peel back layer after grimy layer until we get to the bottom of what’s been going on in this house.’ Jumbo paused, and Tom heard him take a deep breath, as if to clear his mind of distracting speculation. ‘Anyway, back to facts rather than conjecture. Have we managed to get credit card and bank records yet?’

  ‘No. We’ve only just requested them. Why?’

  ‘I’m particularly interested in purchases made from John Lewis recently. We found an empty John Lewis carrier bag in the dustbin – just about the only item in there, which I know you had already picked up on. There are a couple of things upstairs that are still in their packaging with John Lewis labels on – in the boys’ room there’s a duvet cover with a train on it and some pink pyjamas, which I presume were for the daughter.’

  ‘And these are suspicious items?’ Tom said, not quite able to keep the puzzled note out of his voice.

  Jumbo’s booming laughter came down the phone.

  ‘Ha – you must think I’m losing it, Tom. No, but they may have been bought at the same time as something else. One of my girls was checking out the kitchen, and she noticed that all the knives in the knife block were present and correct. However, being an eagle-eyed, obsessive sort of girl – just the kind I like – she took them all out individually to fingerprint them. She noticed that the knives are Sabatier knives – you know, they usually have three circular steel rivets on the handle? Well, all bar one of them are Sabatier Diamant knives. The extra one looks almost identical, but is actually a John Lewis knife.’

  Tom was impressed. The girl must have been very observant, not that it was necessarily significant.

  ‘I can hear your brain whirring, Tom,’ Jumbo yelled down the phone over the sound of what appeared to be drilling in the background. ‘But the most interesting thing was that all the knives had Olivia’s prints on, and nobody else’s. With the exception of this one, which only had Robert’s prints on it. And only one set of prints. It had either been very thoroughly washed and he was the only person to touch it afterwards, or it’s brand new.’

  Tom knew what was coming before he spoke.

  ‘There’s not a trace of blood on it, or on any of the other knives. We’ve checked. But I think this is a replacement, and a very recent one. Which is why I want to check if Robert bought it and, if so, when. Once we’ve done everything else, I think I’m going to be getting the luminol out in this house. I don’t think we’ve got much choice, do you?’ Jumbo wasn’t smiling any more. Tom could tell from his voice.

  ‘You think you’re going to find blood?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Don’t know, if I’m honest. But that knife has got me wondering. Where is the original from the set? Then there’s the fact that nobody has seen or heard from Olivia Brookes in over two weeks – with the possible exception of her husband, whose word I don’t think we can exactly trust.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Tom responded.

  I’ll keep you informed.’ Jumbo rang off just as Tom pulled into the car park.

  Christ, he thought. Don’t let him have killed them all, if I’ve let the bastard get away.

  27

  Becky stormed into the incident room on a blast of nervous energy. She couldn’t believe how pathetic she had been at the house that morning. She’d been known to take down two men at a time when she’d needed to, and yet she was spooked by an empty house. How the hell did personal emotional turmoil manage to sap a person of all their strength and determination? Well, bugger that. She was going to get it back. She wasn’t going to wimp around like some feeble eighteenth-century noblewoman, swooning at anything that made her jump. Bugger that.

  She strode over to her desk, her mouth set in a grim line of decisiveness and saw Tom glance at her, and nod his head slightly. He’d be pleased she was getting her confidence back. Everybody here had seen the sorry-looking wreck who had turned up a few weeks ago, but now they were going to see the real Becky Robinson.

  ‘I want to get everybody together and run through where we’re up to, given what’s happened this morning. Is that okay with you, Tom?’

  Before Tom had time to answer, Becky’s phone signalled an incoming message and she heard Tom’s vibrate at the same time.

  Jumbo.

  ‘You both need to see this – found in a notebook in Jasmine’s bedroom,’ the message said. There was an image attached. Becky opened it and stared at the screen. She glanced up and her eyes met Tom’s.

  ‘Shit,’ Becky muttered. She sent the image to her computer and bent over her desk, blowing the picture up to a sensible size. It didn’t look any less disturbing, and she quickly printed a few copies and passed one to Tom.

  ‘What’s he done to them, Tom?’ she asked, knowing that he had no more idea that she did. Without waiting for a reply, she walked over to the evidence board and pinned a copy of the picture on it.

  The room fell quiet. Every head turned towards Becky as they sensed something had happened.

  The image taken from Jasmine’s notebook had done nothing to diminish Becky’s determination, but she felt a heavy weight in her chest now as the suspicion that she had failed these children shattered her new-found confidence.

  Without a word, members of the team walked up to the board, and Becky handed out a few copies of the picture. Tom pushed his chair back and moved closer, perching himself on the edge of a desk.

  Becky stood and looked at the image once more before speaking. They had already been told that Jasmine was a child who was meticulous in her school work, and if this picture was anything to go by her drawing skills were probably slightly above average for her age, as each element of her composition had been painstakingly detailed.

  The picture showed a tiny room. They could see the two back corners, and three walls that Jasmine had shaded a dark grey colour. There were no windows, and nothing in the room apart from a red box. Nothing, that is, except three children, huddled in the corner. They appeared to be sitting on the ground with knees bent. In the centre was a girl with long dark hair, and on each side of her was a little boy, both of whom had yellow hair that Becky interpreted as blond. The girl had an arm around each of them. There were tiny black oval shapes on the face of the youngest child, which could be tears. On one of the walls there was an open door, but it was high off the ground.

  Underneath Jasmine had written: ‘Hiding from the enemy’.

  There was silence as the team absorbed the implications of the image. Becky gave them a few moments.

  ‘Okay, we weren’t expecting this, but let’s have your ideas,’ she said to the hushed room.

  ‘Is there a cellar in their home?’ Ryan asked.

  ‘No, and not even a large enough cupboard for this to be somewhere else in the house. We need to get Jumbo to shift Olivia Brookes’ car to make sure there is nothing in the garage floor, but I doubt it.’

  ‘Does he own any other property – a lock-up or anything?’ Nic added.

  ‘Not that we’ve found. But maybe we need to dig a bit deeper. The thing is, Jasmine drew this before they went missing, or it wouldn’t have been in the house. So this is somewhere they have been before, unless it’s all in her head. Does anybody believe that?�
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  The silence said it all.

  ‘We’re assuming the enemy they’re hiding from is Robert – but is that too much of an assumption? Could this be something to do with their mother? Ryan, you were there when Robert took the children for the supposed weekend away without Olivia’s knowledge. Did she strike you as somebody who would hurt her children, or lock them up somewhere?’

  For once, Ryan was looking anything but cocky. It was the most serious Becky had ever seen him.

  ‘I might be wrong, but I’d say she was absolutely terrified of what Robert had done to the children. I honestly can’t see her hurting them, but it might be worth asking Superintendent Stanley for her view.’

  Becky looked at Tom and he nodded his silent agreement to speak to Philippa, although Becky was fairly sure that the answer was a given.

  ‘Could it be somebody else? Has any other name come up that nobody has thought to mention?’

  Once more there was silence, and Becky wasn’t surprised. Robert had hinted that there might be something Olivia and Jasmine were worried about, but this was major – not a slight concern that somebody might be making a nuisance of themselves.

  ‘Okay. Nobody needs telling that we have to find this place. It has to be our number one priority. Whatever has happened to Olivia, there is a possibility that these children have gone to this hiding place – they might be safe and desperate to be rescued, or they might be locked in and unable to escape. Any hint, any suggestion, we need to know. What about neighbours? We need to check them again – but not just for information. Look for sheds, cellars, attics. Has one of them taken in the children? Nic, can I leave that to you to organise, please?’

  Nic nodded and turned back to his desk.

  ‘Right – let’s talk about this woman.’ Becky banged her finger three times on the blown-up photo on the board of the woman who had been posing as Olivia Brookes at the guest house. ‘We don’t know who she is and, although we know Robert has seen her picture, he omitted to mention to us that somebody has been impersonating his wife. Why did he do that?’