by Lisa Cutts
‘We need to ask you about Milton and your relationship with him. Clearly you’re not under arrest or we’d now be having this conversation in custody.’
Sasha froze mid-nose wipe at the word ‘custody’ and gave Doug an intense stare. One that allowed him a glimpse of another side to her. There was something very telling about the look she flashed at the inspector, full of defiance and challenge.
‘Tell me about your relationship with DI Milton Bowman,’ said Doug.
Sasha shrugged, sighed and removing the damp tissue from her face said, ‘We worked together on a fatal stabbing in Wolfram Street. We got to know each other then and he asked me out. Not much to tell.’
This simple statement got to Doug. In only three sentences, Sasha had made three mistakes: as a uniform PC with only a short time in the police when the Wolfram Street stabbing occurred, Sasha would not have worked with a DI. Her role had been to stand guard on the scene in the pouring rain and stop anyone entering the house where a young man had been stabbed in the neck over a drugs deal. Doug had been the late-turn DI that night and recognized the face of the young officer trying to shelter from a downpour.
The second error she made was saying the two of them had got to know each other during the investigation, when Milton had in fact only worked on that particular murder for a day. Something Doug was well aware of because Milton spoke to him about having to hand it over to another SIO in time to take his wife to Rome the following morning.
Thirdly, starting an affair with a married man, especially a work colleague, was never ‘Not much to tell’. That part might have been simple shame or modesty.
This was a young woman, who, when all was said and done, had been doing what hundreds of thousands of men and women the world over had been doing throughout history – having sex with someone they shouldn’t.
All of these thoughts flew through Doug’s brain where he put them to one side and continued with the plan he had in mind.
He left Sophia to ask about the affair, when it started and who else had known about it, feeling that the questions would be better received, not just from another woman, but from someone of Sasha’s own rank.
‘Where were you yesterday morning?’ Sophia at last asked, feeling herself starting to get somewhere.
The question was met with a shrug and then Sasha said, ‘I’ve been upset. I couldn’t think straight. I only spoke to Milton the night before his accident.’ Tears ran down her face, still she continued to talk. ‘He’d locked himself in his bathroom at home to talk to me. It was very awkward to get any time to talk to one another in privacy, though I suppose that’s what I get for having affairs with married men.’
Sophia took note of the plural.
‘We didn’t see that much of each other although we spoke every day. I’d have to wait for him to call me. I didn’t like that part.’
‘So where were you yesterday morning?’ Sophia asked again.
‘Oh yesterday. I’d stayed at a friend’s overnight.’
‘Who’s your friend?’
‘I’d rather not say. I don’t want you speaking to her.’
Sophia leaned forward towards Sasha but was interrupted by Doug. He’d seen the look on his DC’s face and thought he’d better step in.
‘Sasha,’ he said, ‘this is important. It’s a murder investigation. You’re a police officer so you must understand that we need to speak to anyone connected with the victim. You were having an affair with her husband. We need to know where you were and who you were with at the relevant times. If we can’t do that, you’re no longer a witness, you’re a suspect. Then the rules change.’
He watched her take a deep breath, look from his face to Sophia’s and back again before she said, ‘I was at my mum’s. She’s going to go mental when you talk to her. My dad was always having affairs. She threw him out when I was six so she brought me up alone. And she brought me up to behave better than this. I’m so ashamed.’
Then the tears were joined by racking sobs.
Chapter 21
‘What I want to know,’ he said, ‘is why you get to use the name “Milo” and I get such a shit one.’
‘Stop moaning,’ said Milo. ‘We’re almost there and we don’t get to pick the names, the boss does. If he decided that you should be referred to as “Diva”, that’s his choosing.’
‘Are you both fucking laughing at me?’ he said, eyes flicking back and forth between his two associates.
‘And are you having a little tantrum, Diva?’ said Milo.
‘Even he gets to be called “Parker”, just because he’s the driver.’
Parker looked over his shoulder towards the back seat after pulling the Range Rover to a stop in front of a small children’s play area. ‘As you always sit in the back, we can put in a request to have it changed to “Lady Penelope”.’
‘You’re such a pair of funny fuckers. Let’s go, Milo.’
The two of them climbed out of the car leaving Parker to stay with the vehicle as was their usual plan, and made their way to the rear stairs leading to half a dozen flats positioned above a short row of local shops. When they got to the third flat along the balcony, they assumed their usual positions, Milo to the left, Diva to the right.
It took a little longer for the door to be answered than they’d have liked. The balcony was open to the road and passing traffic. The plan for premises such as these was to walk the last couple of hundred metres if need be because of shop-front CCTV. This was the sort of area prone to criminal damage, nuisance teenagers and the odd night-time ram raid of the off-licence and post office. It made Milo and Diva’s job that little bit harder. Something that rankled Diva.
Without waiting for an invite, both men barged their way inside once the beginnings of a crack appeared between the door and its frame. The six-stone drug addict behind the door was knocked off her feet.
Milo peered down at her face as she lay prone looking up at him. Terror was written all over it. Her skinny body trembled from the top of her greasy hair to the soles of her feet and every needle track in between.
‘He’s, he’s not here,’ she said. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ she called after Diva as he ran towards the bedroom door.
One kick against the cheap hollow door and Diva was inside the room, across it and had the gaunt partially clad man who had been about to climb out of the window by his throat. ‘Not how I wish to start my day, Greg,’ he shouted in his face.
Dragging Greg behind him like a rag doll, Diva pulled him back into the hallway where Milo still stood over the petrified woman.
‘I really thought he’d gone,’ she said, unblinking, dead eyes locked onto Milo’s.
‘You must think I’m stupid,’ he said as he grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.
‘Please, please,’ she said. ‘We didn’t do anything, did we, Greg? Tell Tandy that we didn’t do anything.’
‘That’s the problem, see, you didn’t bloody do anything.’ He sighed as he threw her to the corner of the kitchen and glanced over the small room. ‘Look at the fucking state of this place. It’s a disgrace. There’s crap piled everywhere, doors pulled off their hinges and it’s taxpayers like me and Diva here who have to pay for you to live like this. I don’t know.’
As he spoke, he moved around the kitchen, picked up the kettle and filled it with water before setting it on to boil.
‘What’s this about?’ said Greg, panicked look in the direction of the kettle. ‘Business has been slow, that’s all. I’ll get the money.’
‘We had a deal,’ said Milo. ‘You two haven’t fulfilled it. Where’s the money?’
‘I’m telling the truth. We don’t have it but we will by the end of the day. We were just about to go out, Sam, weren’t we?’
The young woman on the floor nodded her head, although from the panic on her face it didn’t seem that she really appreciated what the question had been. She was too transfixed by the steam coming from the kettle’s spout.
By the time the water was at boiling point, the stench of urine was unmistakable in the small kitchen.
Without a word, Milo picked up the kettle by its handle and held it over Sam’s head. Her immediate reaction was to bring her skinny bare arms up and over her skull. A frenzied sob came from her and she tried to fold herself into a ball. The only purpose it served was that when Milo poured the boiling water over her he managed to scald her left-hand side. The flesh bubbled, surface rising up in angry blisters.
There was a momentary silence before her nerve endings kicked in and she began to scream.
All it took was Milo to step towards Greg and he said, ‘Please, please don’t hurt me. I’ll have the money by tonight.’
‘It’s funny, Diva, ain’t it?’ he said, looking past Greg. ‘He didn’t ask us not to hurt his girlfriend just then.’ He glanced back down at the floor where Sam was taking shallower and shallower breaths, her body writhing in agony. ‘You could do better than him, love. Get yourself a decent bloke.’
He peered down at Greg. ‘And you, dipshit, get yourself our money by 10 p.m. tonight, or I’ll do the same to your bollocks.’
The two men made their way back out of the flat, slowly strolling along the balcony until they reached the staircase.
‘You’re going to have to watch yourself,’ Diva said as they walked down the stairs, ‘word’ll get around you’ve got a bit of a testicle fetish.’
‘I’ve never known a threat to a bloke’s nuts fail to work. So, where are we off to next?’
Chapter 22
Once she was back in the car, Hazel tried to put the revelation from the oncology sister out of her mind. She had come away with nothing more than the sister’s number, the full name Gladys Anne McCall, and the details of who she would have to contact to gain access to Gladys’s medical records.
Usually, Hazel would have waited around until she could get the paperwork herself. As she was under time pressure and had been told that Linda’s mother, or whoever she was, had passed away the week before, she weighed up the importance of waiting for what could be hours for the notes of a dead woman against getting a traumatized nineteen-year-old to the mortuary to say goodbye to his mum.
She was having trouble understanding why Linda would keep her own parent a secret from her family and wondering exactly how Travis would react to knowing he had missed out on a grandparent on top of everything else. Why the DCI had been so coy was also irritating her. Clearly, Barbara knew more than she was letting on.
She waited until her phone connected to DCI Venice. It went to voicemail so she left a brief message, keeping her tone neutral.
‘Ma’am, it’s Hazel. I’ve just left Ealing Hospital. Linda’s mother, Gladys McCall, died of cancer last week. It seems that Linda’s real name was Karen McCall. I think you already know about the McCall part. I’d appreciate a call back.’
She hung up and made her way out of London.
Barbara Venice sat at her desk, mobile phone in front of her. She had no desire to answer it and speak to Hazel before finding out what the officer knew.
She drummed her fingers on the table, waited a couple of minutes and then played back the message.
If she was being honest, it was a relief that Hazel had found out the family name McCall. The name was the subject of a furtive phone call that Barbara had received very early after she learned of Linda’s murder. The person she would normally have turned to for advice was Harry Powell, only she knew how devastated he was going to be when he found out that a very old friend wasn’t who he thought she was.
Right at that moment, Barbara had slightly more pressing matters to attend to. She regained her composure and called Hazel back.
‘Hazel, sorry I missed you.’ Without waiting for the DC to speak again, she said, ‘I’m glad you’re on your way back. There’s been a development and I need you to do something.’
She heard the hesitation and then a voice said, ‘OK. What’s that?’
‘We’re in the process of having a Section 8 PACE warrant sworn out via live link at the Magistrates’ Court and it would be very helpful if you could find out where Travis is so we can keep him out of the way.’
‘What’s the search warrant for? Travis’s house?’
‘No,’ said Barbara, ‘I don’t need you to keep him away from his own house. It’ll be much easier for everyone if he isn’t there to see his best friend get arrested and then the search team traipse all over the Bloomfields’ home.’
The pitch of Hazel’s voice got a lot higher. ‘Why are we arresting Aiden?’
There was a pause before Barbara added, ‘We had the DNA results back from the lab. Aiden Bloomfield’s saliva was on Linda Bowman’s cheek.’
Chapter 23
Afternoon of Tuesday 6 June
‘Hello, Travis. It’s Hazel. Is this a good time to call?’
‘Yeah, it’s fine. I’m here on my own. They went out for something to eat. I can’t face food at the moment.’
‘Can I come and get you and bring you to the police station in about an hour?’
There was a pause and what sounded like Travis taking a drink of something.
‘There are a few things I need to go over with you. I know it was a lot to take in last night.’
‘OK. I’ll get ready and see you here then.’
She breathed a sigh of relief: Travis was no fool and would soon work out that if they were searching Aiden’s house that afternoon with a warrant signed out that same day at a Magistrates’ Court, Hazel would have known what was about to happen. The search team were to enter the house in only two hours’ time. He was the son of a detective inspector and while he might not fully understand how everything worked, he would eventually guess she had known that police officers were about to swarm all over his temporary residence.
She felt her skin prickle as she made a note of their conversation, before pulling out of the service station. Hazel knew the rest of the day was not going to be a pleasant one. Whatever her personal feelings about what she was doing, it was the safest option too. She didn’t relish the idea of Travis trying to throttle Aiden when he listened to the arresting officer say he was suspected of murdering Linda. They already had enough dead bodies on their hands.
She also wanted to ask him some more background questions about Linda. Something clearly wasn’t right about her past and the thought that there was more to Mrs Bowman than everyone knew was playing on Hazel’s mind. Barbara Venice had cut their telephone conversation short, giving Hazel very much the impression that she would have to press her for further details the next time they spoke face to face.
Her phone rang, coming through on the hands-free as she indicated left at a roundabout. Harry Powell’s name appeared on the screen and she surprised herself by hesitating as her hand moved from the indicator to the call accept button. There was no doubt about it, she liked Harry, although she felt a little concerned that he was calling her.
At the end of the day, he was also a DI and a witness so she answered the phone and with a clear voice announced, ‘Hazel Hamilton.’
‘You on your own?’
‘Yes. What makes you ask that?’
‘You’ve got my number stored in your phone. I watched you do it. Why didn’t you say “Hello, Harry”?’
‘Because you’re a DI and I didn’t want to sound too formal by saying “Hello, sir”.’
‘Well, saying “Hazel Hamilton” when you bloody well know it’s me is fucking ridiculously formal.’
‘As lovely as it is to have you ring me up and shout expletives down the line, is there a reason you’re calling me?’
‘Shouting? I was not f— well I suppose I am a bit loud. I just wondered how you were. How it’s going . . . Well, how you are more than anything.’
‘I’m good, thanks. The usual type of murder-investigation tired. Anyway, how about you?’
‘Yeah, I’m OK,’ said Harry, but the feistiness in his voice that had been there only a second before was g
one. Whether the brashness was the lie or whether it was the vulnerability, Hazel couldn’t decide. Perhaps it was neither and the years of policing were working their powers and making her see negative aspects of people that didn’t actually exist.
‘You sure about that?’ she said. ‘Is anyone looking after you?’
‘People don’t tend to look after me. I tend to look after them. That’s why I’m calling: I wanted to check you were OK.’
‘I’m fine, Harry, just fine.’
‘How about we go out some time for a drink or dinner or something? I’ll even pay.’
‘You’re too good to be true,’ she said. ‘All right, I’ll call you later. It’s likely to be a long day.’
‘Look after yourself,’ Harry said before ending the conversation.
In those last three words, Hazel heard that the spark was well and truly back.
Chapter 24
The problem with Jenny Bloomfield was that she simply couldn’t help herself. She loved her husband, and of course, her son. The problem was that she loved herself more.
And that involved taking care of her own needs first.
As much as she wanted to make sure that Travis was doing as well as he could under such terrible circumstances, his moping about was depressing. Aiden wasn’t much better. At her suggestion to Travis that Aiden could do with getting out of the house, and her suggestion to Aiden that Travis could do with some time on his own, both boys had agreed to her plan. Mother and son left the house together.
She dropped her son off at the out-of-town retail park, largely because he was partial to the Italian food chain’s all-day breakfast, though mostly as he had little option but to wait for her return, so the risk of her being caught was minimal.
Jenny leaned across, gave Aiden a kiss on his cheek and waited for him to unbuckle his seat belt. As he put his hand on the release, she said, ‘Darling, you have to trust me. Everything will be all right.’
He opened his mouth to speak.
‘Aiden,’ she blurted before he had a chance to utter one word, ‘I know that this is making you miserable, but you have to carry on as normal. Neither of us should ever talk about this. It’s for the best. That way, there’ll be no lies.’