by Lisa Cutts
Doug sat back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, ready to listen to the woman he’d tutored when she’d joined the police three years after him. He’d shown her the ropes and then watched her get promoted faster, and seemingly with less work, than himself. The truth was he was content with his role as detective inspector. He had thought about pushing for the next rank up. He had worked hard to get where he was, and was, quite frankly, fed up with jumping through hoops.
Completing projects for the sake of it had never appealed to him, and he realized he was never going to go any further in his career without carrying out meaningless tasks that didn’t improve policing in any way. Reinventing the wheel, the rank and file called it, with good reason too. Most of it was nonsense. No one said this though, they wanted promotion and telling the truth wasn’t the way to go about it.
‘Is there anything further coming from Aiden Bloomfield’s interviews?’ Doug asked.
‘Not so far. I’m not sure about him. There’s something not right – trying to sleep with his best friend’s mum, for a start. Why didn’t he just masturbate and buy computer games like normal teenage boys?’
‘I’ve got teenage sons. I think, from now on, I’ll give the Wii Fit a miss.’
‘OK, Doug. Apart from Aiden, there’s his mother, Jenny.’
He raised an eyebrow at this suggestion.
‘Really?’ he asked. ‘It’s not normally something a woman would do, is it? Smash another woman’s head in.’
‘I don’t know,’ she wondered, playing with the locket on the chain around her neck. ‘People never fail to surprise me, even after all these years in this job. I’ve lost my temper a few times over the years, and whilst I’d never do it, if you were really angry with someone and they turned their back on you, you just might do it.’
‘What reason would she have for going over there at that time of day and having any kind of conversation with Linda, let alone a row? It doesn’t make sense.’
Barbara let out a sigh and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
‘I suppose you’re right, but who else do we have? Travis?’
‘No, not Travis,’ said Doug. ‘He loved his mum. He wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head. He loved her.’
They both sat in silence, thinking over the possibility of Travis killing his own mother before Barbara said, ‘It wouldn’t be the first time someone killed one of their parents although I can’t think of any reason he’d have. Not unless he thought his mum really was sleeping with his best friend.’
‘Now you’ve said that out loud,’ he said, ‘it sounds even more unlikely. Surely he’d attack his friend rather than his mum. We know Travis and Aiden were out drinking together on Sunday and both at the Bloomfields’ overnight. Travis would’ve had every opportunity to attack Aiden if he knew what they were up to and was that angry with them both.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said. ‘One other thing that’s been bothering me, Doug. Was I right to get Sasha to reconsider about Wolfram Street? If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that Milton would never have got himself involved in unscrupulous activity with drug dealers.’
He smiled at her. ‘If there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that Milton played no part in anything underhand or corrupt.’
Chapter 45
‘All right, boy? It’s Jack,’ Sean heard the voice say as he pressed his mobile phone to his ear.
Sean had been relieved to come out of the shower and find Jenny gone, the feeling only fleeting as it was replaced with wondering what he’d done so wrong that it warranted a direct line to Jack McCall.
That concern didn’t give way to lethargy when it came to saving his own skin. ‘What number are you calling me from?’ he asked.
A chuckle sounded in Sean’s ear.
‘Don’t shit a brick,’ he said. ‘It’s easier to get a mobile phone in here than in a fucking branch of Carphone Warehouse. Relax, they won’t have your number on record or know what we’ve spoken about. I nicked this off some nonce. He’s not likely to breathe a word.’
‘I’m all set to visit you,’ said Sean. ‘We were supposed to talk then.’
‘Well, there’s been a development.’
Sean sat on the edge of his hotel bed, scent of Jenny still on the sheets. He listened to the sounds of prisoners shouting, their hollers and laughter echoing along corridors, metal doors slamming shut, and thanked his good luck that he wasn’t there too. Life was definitely better for him than for most of his family. A few were dead, a few were inside, those who were alive were criminals.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Sean, not knowing whether to panic just yet as he ran an eye over his few possessions scattered around the room and worked out how long it would take him to pack, check out and disappear from East Rise.
‘Just been told I should expect some visitors on Friday morning.’
‘Friday morning?’ said Sean. ‘I’m supposed to be seeing you in a couple of hours’ time.’
‘Let’s forget about that, shall we?’ Jack’s voice wasn’t giving much away by its tone, then it rarely did. Even and measured was how he had always been, no more so than when it came to business.
‘Who’s coming to see you?’ Sean closed his eyes as he asked the question, guessing the answer before he heard it.
‘If I was a gambling man, I’d put a couple of quid on it being coppers. You brought them to my door, boy?’
‘No, no, I haven’t. We’ve been careful, very careful. Business is going as we agreed with the right client base. I told you about the contact I made at Wolfram Street. He’s had his uses, and although sadly he’s not around any more, it was a clean break, no loose ends to tie up.’
‘That’s very comforting to know. Man of my age with only eighteen months left to go in here. If everything goes well, they’ll probably move me to an open prison. We can have a get-together. You, me and the boys. How about that?’
‘Sounds great.’ By the time Sean had finished his last word, Jack had hung up.
Chapter 46
As soon as DC Pierre Rainer and DC Sophia Ireland had halted Aiden Bloomfield’s interview for a break, they made their way to Doug Philbert. The DI was in his office with Barbara Venice writing up her file for Linda Bowman’s murder.
‘Hi. What did he say?’ said Doug.
They updated him on the last hour and a half of interview and gave him a second to digest the information.
‘We’ve got no blood, tissue or other obvious contact trace on Milton’s clothes or skin from Linda,’ said Doug. ‘Helpfully, he was wearing a brand-new suit that day, tags still on it, so any blood would have been recent. Apart from his own blood, and there was a lot of that, we have no one else’s on him or his clothing, so it would support Aiden’s version that Linda was still alive when Milton walked out of the house.’
‘The results from ANPR show that he didn’t go back there either,’ said the DCI.
‘Unless,’ said Pierre, ‘he didn’t use his own car to go back there.’
‘You missed the rest of the briefing,’ said Doug. ‘We went back to cover everything with Sasha Jones and get a complete picture from her, whereabouts she was, timings etc. Her car was in a local garage all weekend. That’s been checked out and she hasn’t got access to any other vehicle. It’s several miles from Sasha’s house to the Bowmans’, so she couldn’t have got there and back on foot.’
‘There may be a car, taxi or motorbike we don’t know about,’ said Sophia, who up to this point had stood and listened, trying her best to keep an open mind.
Doug and Barbara exchanged a look. She sensed something new was coming.
‘Good point and I like your way of thinking,’ said Barbara, ‘except there’s nothing else to indicate that Sasha or Milton left her house much before the accident just before half seven that morning. Plus, the neighbours have been spoken to about the noise.’
‘Noise?’ asked Sophia.
‘Yeah, noise,’ said Barbara.
‘Oh noise,’ said Sophia again. ‘You mean Sasha and Milton were banging—’
‘Oh yes and it was definitely two of them,’ said Doug, scratching at the side of his neck. ‘The neighbour remembers what day and time because he does shift work and only got into bed a little after six. He knocked on the wall several times between six and around seven until it stopped. He said it happens most Monday mornings but usually he’s on his way to work, rather than trying to get some shut-eye.’
‘Bearing in mind the estimated time of death from the post-mortem, it does help us rule out either Milton or Sasha as being responsible, providing Aiden is telling us the truth,’ said Pierre, closing his eyes and in his head running through everything they had spoken to their suspect about so far. ‘It would still be easier for Aiden to make up a story to explain away his DNA on Linda’s cheek which could only have got there on the morning of her death.’
‘That’s true,’ said Barbara, ‘and not forgetting Aiden had been out the night before with Travis so he couldn’t have seen Linda that evening. Travis has told Hazel in detail how his mother never went to bed without using cleanser, toner and night cream on her face, moisturizer in the morning. He didn’t realize the significance, and according to Hazel, shot her a look of utter bewilderment at being asked such a seemingly absurd question.’
‘There was a fair amount of saliva, according to the CSI,’ said Doug. ‘It’s unlikely so much of it would have remained on her face after so many beauty products had been rubbed around her skin. I can’t see that she would fail to wash a teenager’s drool from her cheek in any case, whatever toiletries she used.’
‘What’s next?’ asked Sophia. ‘We’ve covered most things, a few loose ends to tie up. The only thing he hasn’t told us is who it was at the door, and he’s claiming he doesn’t know. If, of course, anyone did knock on the door.’
‘That and who hit Linda Bowman on the back of the skull,’ added Pierre. ‘Talking of which, have we had confirmation of what the weapon could have been?’
‘It’s funny you should ask,’ said Doug. ‘Jo Styles, the senior CSI, went out earlier to a house in the next street to the Bowmans’ road. The couple had been away on holiday and only came home this morning. They hadn’t been seen on the house-to-house enquiries, but read the note put through their door, looked in their front garden and found what they thought was a hammer thrown into the rose bushes.
‘Jo went out herself to be on the safe side and she’s on her way back in with a hammer covered in what looks like blood and hair. It looks like we have our murder weapon.’
Chapter 47
Afternoon of Wednesday 7 June
Glad of a couple of hours to catch up on her paperwork, Hazel left East Rise Police Station and drove to a nearby coffee shop where she bought a takeaway latte, then headed for the coast.
She sat in her unmarked car at White Sands Bay looking out to sea, trying to clear her mind. Most days were fine; she could cope. All she had to do was keep a lid on her feelings, not let on that everything petrified her. Some days, she doubted she was in the right job. How she envied those who felt threatened, had problems with their neighbours, saw a fight and instead of running towards it to break it up made scarce and called the police.
Except she was the police. Didn’t she have to deal with all these problems so that everyone else could go about their lives unmolested and in relative safety?
Coffee cooling in her hands as she leaned against the steering wheel, she tried to recall what had made her want to join the police in the first place. It always came back to her dad’s death. She might have only been a teenager at the time, numbed by the shock of what the police told her, except what stuck in her mind so vividly about that evening was the stifled yawns of one of the officers and the lack of information from the other one. He didn’t seem to have a clue as to how the accident had happened, so all she was able to understand was that one of the two most important people in her world was now dead.
It left her with no doubt that she could do a better job. So she tried to.
Unwilling to slip into a state of depression, she gulped her coffee and started the car to make her way to Travis. Whatever she was feeling, it couldn’t hold a candle to his mental anguish.
There were so many things she needed to speak to him about, but she had never before been a family liaison officer for an only child who had lost both of his parents on the same day in separate incidents. She doubted if any other teenager anywhere on the planet could be that unlucky. That made her think about famine and war zones, where whole families or even villages were wiped out in a day.
She banished these thoughts, recognizing that she would have to keep a check on herself: Hazel could feel a gloom creeping into her working day and that would end with it bleeding into her private life. She glanced down at her file on the passenger seat where she had tucked her welfare questionnaire. She fully intended to be truthful when she completed it, but only in case she lost her mind and needed counselling, or even worse, wasn’t doing the best job she could for Travis.
He had done his best to put on a brave face. Having got to know him a little over the last couple of days, Hazel saw beneath the mask he tried to pull down. He wasn’t fooling anyone so full credit to him for giving it a go. He had called Hazel the night before for seemingly no apparent reason, although she got the impression it was to chat to someone who understood. He had few people he could talk to, and as much as his aunt Una was trying her best, she was also in mourning for her sister-in-law and brother.
Travis had ended the call when he choked up, and instantly sent her a text message that brought a lump to her throat.
It simply said, Alone and petrified. See you tomorrow. Thank you. xx
She parked the car a couple of houses up from where Travis was staying and took out her phone. He’d asked her to call or text him when she got there, rather than come in. Hazel knew that, sooner or later, she would have to see where he was staying but for now, the checks had been carried out on his aunt and uncle and their home, and there was no objection to it being a safe place for him to stay. In fact, it was the only place for him to stay, barring a hotel.
In her peripheral vision, she caught a figure walking towards the car and looked up.
Travis got into the Mondeo and sat staring straight ahead in the direction of where he had just come from.
‘She’s doing my fucking head in,’ he said.
The last thing Hazel needed on top of everything else was her witness disappearing. He was legally entitled to go wherever he wanted, but his absence would seem highly suspicious, and there were so many things she needed him to tell her.
‘Can I help?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. She means well. We’ve always got on OK and Uncle John’s decent enough. They keep on about my bloody feelings all the time. “You will tell us if we can do anything”, or “Let us know if you want to talk”, or “Please don’t think you can’t speak about them to us”. It’s fucking getting me down; people keep being so nice to me.
‘Trouble is, what I want to say is that my dad was a total prick most of the time. He cheated on my mum, at least three times I know of. The last one was a bloody copper. What a cliché. Do you willingly shag each other or is it in your contract?’
Hazel thought of Harry: very inappropriate under the circumstances.
‘Sorry, Hazel,’ he said through the hands that were now covering his face. ‘I don’t mean to give you a hard time, just there aren’t many people left I can talk to.’
‘Tell me how you knew about the affairs.’
He shifted in his seat so he was side on to her.
‘The first one, I didn’t exactly know, just I guessed that something was up. You know, rows, late nights, my mum crying, dad acting a bit odd. Then things seemed to pick up and at the time, I was only fifteen, I thought no more of it. About two years after that, I snuck out to the pub with a couple of older mates. Because of my age, we sat at
the back of the boozer, keeping out of the way with our pints of Hürlimann’s. It’s mental strong stuff and I wasn’t used to it, especially as I’d never really drunk alcohol. It was busy in there so we thought we stood little chance of them realizing I was only seventeen. There was a big group of people standing in front of us, so when they all suddenly left, it emptied out. I was on my second pint and when I thought I saw my dad, I put it down to beer goggles.’
He gave a small laugh and said, ‘Thing was, I was feeling a bit brave after a couple of drinks, so I got up to speak to him and say “You look just like my dad”. Only trouble was, as I got to the other side of the high-backed wooden seat, I realized that not only was it my dad, hiding at the back of the pub, but he had his arm around a woman who wasn’t my mum.’
She could see the hatred hardening his face as he told her his tale, which up until this week had probably been about the worst thing he’d had to deal with.
‘Yep, there was my dad, one hand on her shoulder, the other stroking her thigh. I’ve got to hand it to him, she was a looker. If I’d have seen her somewhere else, I might have tried to chat her up. If she wasn’t being groped by my old man, that is. I don’t know how my mum put up with him. He was quite a miserable sod as well. You know who she always liked, had a good word for?’
It was Hazel’s turn to shake her head, with a gnawing feeling of where this was going.
‘Harry, Harry Powell. Do you know him?’
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘He’s a decent bloke. I like him. When I was still at school, he took me out a couple of times with his own kids. He used to take his sons to rugby every week, and even went and watched his daughter’s dance competitions. I’ve got better memories being at his house, arsing around in the garden with his boys and Harry, than I have with my own dad.’