by Lisa Cutts
He climbed out of the car without one word. She held a sad smile on her lips in case he looked back before he shuffled towards the diner.
She waved at his retreating back, more for effect than anything else, and drove across the retail park, pulled up out of sight and picked up her mobile phone.
A shiver of excitement ran through her as she reread the message. See you at the Grand. Room 524. 1 p.m.
Smoothing down her dress, she wriggled in her seat, realizing that her breathing had got that little bit heavier, her heart beating faster in her chest.
She refused to admit that her actions over the next hour or so would be wrong, Linda barely cold, Aiden not knowing what to do, Travis in turmoil. Jenny couldn’t change what had happened, only make the best of the situation.
With the air conditioning turned up, she put the automatic Mercedes into drive and headed in the direction of the seafront, aware of how little time she had before she had to return to collect her teenage son from his mid-afternoon meal, although not aware of the consequences of having sex in a hotel room with a man she had only known for six months.
Ten minutes later, Jenny made her way across the vast tiled floor of the East Rise Grand Hotel. It was a beautiful building, still living up to its name in spite of the declining economy of the local area. A dark-haired receptionist glanced up and smiled at Jenny, a businessman waiting at a lobby table peered at her over the top of his newspaper. Even though she wasn’t getting any younger, she knew that she still caught people’s eye. That wasn’t unintentional. People were easily manipulated, and Jenny was a master at it.
She called the lift, admired herself in the mirror positioned behind a beautiful vase of white lilies and gave her hair a superfluous ruffle.
Right at that moment, she pushed all thoughts of murder, torment and grief out of her head. This was about her.
Jenny got into the lift without giving anyone or anything else a second thought. Poised, one hand on her hip, she stretched out the other hand to jab at the button for the fifth floor. A crafty smile crept across her face as the lift doors closed.
Chapter 25
As soon as Travis was in the car, Hazel drove as fast as the black box recording her speed would allow. She wanted to get him away in case Aiden or Jenny returned before she could whisk him to the police station.
If the Bloomfields did come back, she certainly couldn’t stop him from asking if they could come along. It was clear for all to see that he was trying his best to hold it together, and right at that moment he still considered Aiden to be his friend.
‘How did you sleep?’ she asked, taking her eyes off the road for a second to look at his profile.
‘Like both of my parents just died,’ he said, leaning his head back against the seat rest and closing his eyes.
She bit her lip to stop herself saying that she would take him back to the Bloomfields’ for a couple of hours’ sleep, and then collect him later. Welfare she was good at but not at the cost of it getting in the way.
They drove along in silence, Hazel not sure if Travis was asleep.
She parked the car in the police station rear yard and turned off the engine. He opened his eyes, silently got out of the Skoda and followed her inside.
‘Been here loads of times as a kid,’ he muttered as they walked towards a witness-interview room.
‘Can I get you anything?’ she said as they took seats either side of a cheap rectangular table, crime-prevention leaflets and dog-eared blank statement forms adorning its surface.
‘No thanks.’
‘One of the things we need to go over, Travis, is your family tree.’
He gave a wry smile.
‘Am I auditioning for Who Do You Think You Are?’
‘No, I need to establish who everyone is and if there are any other family members we need to speak to or be aware of.’
‘OK. I’m not going to be awkward.’
He scratched the side of his face and looked as though he was giving the matter serious consideration. ‘Like I told you, Mum’s parents died young. Cancer, I think. She didn’t really talk about them, and she didn’t have any brothers or sisters. I don’t ever remember her telling me about any aunts and uncles, grandparents, so I suppose that there weren’t any.’
She gave him an encouraging smile and said, ‘Have you any idea why she’d go to Ealing?’
‘Ealing? What, like the film studios?’
‘I don’t necessarily know that she went there,’ said Hazel, trying to remain guarded about the investigation, and also not wanting to cause the young man any more worry than he was already going through. ‘She had a travel card in her handbag for London and bus times for Ealing.’
‘Ealing? I don’t think she’d ever been there in her life. She came from the West Country. You wouldn’t know it from the way she talks.’
He caught what he had said and his eyes welled up.
Hazel barely heard what he whispered next.
‘I meant, from the way she used to talk.’
Realizing that the family history could wait a little longer, she asked him if he wanted a case worker.
‘They work for the Home Office, Travis. I can’t talk you into having one, but they really are very good. It does take a number of days, about five or so as soon as I refer you. They’ll stay with you beyond any court case, and be with you for longer than I can stay in contact.’
‘You said court case.’
‘I did say court case. We’re going to find out who killed your mum, although I’m not promising you it’ll be today.’
She was aware that she might be telling him more than perhaps she should at this point. She felt herself torn as her job was to help him, all the while investigation and handling of the case management being her chief tasks. They didn’t include being his friend or giving away tactics.
Her phone beeped at her with a message. It read Aiden B in custody. Mum nearly nicked too for obstructing police. Want a hand?
They were in an area of the police station seldom used in the late afternoon. The patrols were out at calls and the CID office and incident room were a very long scream away. Hazel inched her chair closer to the panic button on the wall.
‘Travis, I have to tell you something.’
His head snapped up.
‘What’s wrong? There can’t be anything worse than what’s already happened?’
‘We’ve made an arrest,’ she said, leaving her words hanging in the still air between them.
‘There’s no easy way to tell you this: even though we make an arrest, and we don’t make an arrest for murder lightly, it doesn’t mean he’s guilty. We arrested him on suspicion of murder. I need you to understand that.’
She paused again, to allow Travis to catch his breath.
‘A few minutes ago, we arrested Aiden on suspicion of your mother’s murder.’
His face shut down as he stared at her, rapidly blinking, seeing nothing.
Then the red mist came down.
‘The fucking bastard,’ he screamed, jumping to his feet and grabbing the corner of the table.
‘Travis, don’t,’ she shouted at him.
The interview-room door slammed open back against the wall, and three uniform officers and DC Tom Delayhoyde filled the room.
‘Everything OK in here?’ said one of the officers Hazel didn’t recognize.
Travis looked down at his hands where they had the table by its edges, two of the table legs inches from the ground. There wasn’t a doubt in anyone’s mind, including his own, that he had been about to upend the furniture, and possibly he wouldn’t have stopped there.
That was the moment he crumbled. The tears came then and through them, Hazel heard, ‘Sorry, sorry, Mum.’
She gestured towards the two men and two women who had rushed to her assistance that they could leave them alone now.
‘I’m outside if you need me,’ said Tom, pulling the door shut behind him.
She gave Travis a couple of m
inutes while he battled before her to take it all in. His ashen face gave her a glimpse of the stress he was under. Eventually Hazel said, ‘I know it was probably the last name you were expecting me to give you.’
Even though he was rubbing his eyes, she worked out that he was shaking his head at her.
Travis looked up at her with bloodshot eyes and said, ‘Not really, no. He liked my mum, he liked her a lot.’
He banged his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. He spoke through his fingers, forcing Hazel to lean forward so that she could make out his words and not miss a thing.
‘It was stupid and childish. I know that now, I suppose I knew it at the age of fourteen. It was only mates messing about. You know how these things start?’
Hazel didn’t know exactly what he was talking about but she had a sinking feeling that she had a good idea where it was heading, and it wasn’t going to help matters in the slightest.
Travis finally took his hands away and looked up at the officer.
‘We had a bet to sleep with each other’s mum. I think Aiden won.’
Chapter 26
Once Doug Philbert and Sophia Ireland were some distance from their interview with Sasha Jones, the DI asked his DC’s opinion of the young officer.
‘Difficult to say really,’ she said, leafing through her investigator’s notebook as Doug drove. ‘Her breaking down in tears, wiping her eyes and sniffing uncontrollably certainly made it slow going. I got down everything she said in note form before you had her sign the statement. It seems she has little to lie about; we already know they were having an affair, so why not be upfront with us?’
‘Perhaps she’s keeping something back because she’s a murderer?’ said Doug.
‘You really think so? She didn’t strike me that way, although I’ve been wrong before.’
‘You, Soph? You got something wrong?’
‘Yeah, dealt with a bloke for attempted rape a couple of weeks ago. Had him down for a right sex case. Horrible bastard. Turns out that the victim had made the whole thing up as a cry for help, even though she picked him out on an ID parade. She was on CCTV with her mates the other side of town downing shots when she said it happened.’
‘Look on the bright side – he might have enjoyed the penile swabs. Still, chances are he’s done something else, only we can’t prove it at the moment.’
‘That’s very cynical, Boss.’
‘After all this time, do you know how to be any other way?’
‘No, no, I don’t,’ said Sophia. ‘And here we are at this probably completely innocent, yet suspended police officer’s house, an officer who has been arrested for headbutting a prisoner in handcuffs with six witnesses looking on.’
‘That’s a bit harsh, Soph,’ he said. ‘I like to think that I’d have behaved differently towards a prisoner doing something so vile towards me, although I suspect I’d have had a hard time restraining myself.’
‘Perhaps you’re right. Let’s see what he has to say for himself as regards the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend’s wife.’
They got out of the car and walked about two hundred metres back towards George Atkins’s house. It was a modest terraced house only a few streets from East Rise Police Station, the place where George had been stationed for the last two of his twelve years’ service.
He had been one of those officers who had slipped under the radar often enough, always a feeling about him that something wasn’t right: he’d cut corners before he had a full grasp of what he was doing, he drank in pubs with people he shouldn’t have been drinking with and he got away with his unorthodox behaviour because he arrested a lot of people. He didn’t only make arrests, he got prisoners charged and convicted, and so no one checked on what he was doing because he made the detected-crime figures look good. These weren’t spoken about because, officially, they didn’t exist.
George Atkins had been popular up to a point – he’d arrested a sixteen-year-old boy with hepatitis who spat in his face, so George headbutted him.
That wouldn’t go away: he found himself on his own, no longer looked after by those in authority because of the good results he had brought in over a long period of time.
They knocked at the door and were greeted by a weary face.
‘Suppose you want to come in,’ he said, turning and walking away, not even bothering to wait until they were inside to shut the door behind them.
‘Hello, George,’ said Sophia, wiping her feet on the mat, more out of sarcasm than a need to avoid traipsing filth through the house. It didn’t seem as though the floors needed any more help.
She cast an eye around the living room, which wasn’t much better than the cluttered hallway they’d walked down and dirty kitchen they’d glanced into on their way to his sofa.
‘How have things been then?’ asked Doug.
‘At least I’m still being paid,’ George said, sitting on the armchair nearest to him. It had a half-full ashtray resting on its arm. A matching one sat on the floor beside the sofa, only this one was overflowing.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said. ‘I haven’t felt like doing much lately.’
The room, perhaps the house, had been a neat and tidy place once, though it now had an air of despair, not to mention cigarette smoke. George certainly wasn’t going to expand on his situation to the two police officers, but when he had been suspended, everyone had severed all ties with him. The only people he ever spoke to were senior officers and Professional Standards Department keeping him updated on his impending court case. His day now lacked purpose, not to mention the chance to be the one thing he had truly loved being – a police officer. It had been taken away from him in a couple of seconds as he reacted to a boy spitting in his face. He was spiralling towards depression. He knew it but was powerless to stop it and didn’t know how to ask for help. So he stayed silent, knowing everyone expected him to be punished for what he did. No one expected it more than George himself.
‘We need to speak to you about something important,’ said Doug, sitting on the edge of the sofa. ‘We’re here about Milton Bowman and his wife.’
George sat looking from Doug on the sofa to Sophia where she stood in front of the television.
‘What about them?’ he asked.
‘Have you heard what’s happened to them?’ Sophia asked.
‘No, should I have?’
‘They’re dead.’
‘Fuck. What happened? Did someone kill them?’
‘What makes you say that?’ interrupted Doug.
‘You’re both Major Crime,’ he said. ‘You’d hardly be here unless it was suspicious. No one drops by for social calls any more so I’m taking a wild stab in the dark here that – oh fuck. They weren’t stabbed, were they, because this isn’t a confession. It’s an expression, a saying.’
‘We need to know where you were and who you were with between certain times, so shall we get started?’ asked Sophia.
George got out of his seat and started to clear the debris from the sofa so that the DC could sit down. Despite his bitterness over his arrest and suspension, he understood that, as serious as the whole episode had been, having his name associated with a murder investigation was a whole different matter.
‘What do you need to know?’ he asked when everyone was settled.
‘I’d like to start with what happened between you and Sasha Jones,’ said Doug, going straight to the heart of the matter.
George licked his lips and then rolled his eyes.
‘Sash and I were getting on. It was going well. As far as I was concerned, we had a future. Then all of a sudden, she tells me there’s someone else. I was angry, upset, and, of course, I wanted to know who it was.
‘This was all before I got suspended, although I’m not making excuses for what I did. Sasha and I were serious as far as I was concerned. Then she met Milton Bowman. I should have realized that something was different. She changed.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Doug.
George stared at him, unblinking.
‘You said that you’re not making excuses for what you did. So what did you do?’
George sighed, a deep, long sigh.
‘You’re going to find out, I suppose. I shouldn’t have done it. I went to his house to have it out with him only he wasn’t there. His wife was, though, Linda. I told her all about her husband and my girlfriend.’
Chapter 27
Feeling that for the first time that day they might finally be getting somewhere, Doug said, ‘When did you go to the Bowmans’?’
‘It was ages ago. Over three weeks ago and I haven’t been back since. Ask the son, Tony, Troy . . . Travis. Ask him. He was there too. He was interested to hear what his old man had been up to.’
‘OK, George. We need to know exactly what the three of you spoke about and when this was,’ said Sophia, getting her notebook ready.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake. How was I supposed to know what was going to happen? I can promise you that I didn’t kill either of them. I certainly wouldn’t have hurt her. She was an injured party, just like me, although I got the impression she could handle herself too. He was a real horrible bastard. He broke my leg once in a football match. Did you know about that? It was a so-called friendly game of five-a-side. He broke my leg, probably only because I’d scored three goals and he can’t stand to lose. Bloke’s a tosser.’
Sophia scribbled furiously to keep up.
George watched her write and they locked eyes as Sophia’s pen came to a stop.
‘I probably shouldn’t even be talking to you without a solicitor or Police Fed representative,’ said George.
He glanced up at Doug and then added, ‘But the look on your face tells me that I’m going to get into even more trouble if I don’t cooperate with you.’
‘Why don’t you go and put the kettle on and we can get this cleared up?’ said Doug, unfolding his arms, trying his best to keep a neutral look on his face.