by Lisa Cutts
The investigation into her death was bound to unearth a few buried secrets.
Once more Jenny was lost in thought, staring out of the window. Her mind was burdened with the practicalities of what she would do next.
She chewed on a fingernail, an action she hated but which she found herself doing nonetheless.
A noise in the corridor immediately outside her hotel room snapped her back to attention.
It was the unmistakable sound of a number of people trying to keep quiet.
It was now her turn.
She heard a key in the door and waited for it to open.
Above all else, she had to admit, she was worried about her son. What mother wouldn’t be worried about her boy having been in a police station for over two days now, especially when he was under arrest for murder?
She would have been scared witless, were it not for one thing and one thing alone: she was going to get him out of custody by telling the police that she was responsible for Linda’s death. It seemed the obvious solution.
Chapter 52
Three of them huddled in Barbara Venice’s office wasn’t doing much to lower the already uncomfortable temperature, despite the open window. The noise of seagulls filled the room as Doug closed the door behind him.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Barbara, ‘I’m going to have to shut the window. There seems to be a nest on the next windowsill up. I’ll have to shout otherwise and this matter is a little sensitive.’
When the three of them were settled again, Barbara said, ‘Doug and I want you to do some work which won’t yet be common knowledge.’
‘OK,’ said Hazel and glanced at the DI and then the DCI. ‘What’s it relate to?’
‘Well . . .’ said Barbara as she folded her hands on the desk in front of her, ‘it’s more to do with Linda than Milton. You’re security cleared, same as the rest of us, but I have to trust you that this won’t go any further. There are only a handful of us who know about this so assume that everyone else should be told nothing except for myself and Doug.’
‘You’ve got me interested,’ said Hazel. ‘I admit that much.’
Doug shifted in his seat, adjusted his glasses and said, ‘We’ve been aware since Monday that Linda and her family were sent into Witness Protection in 1987.’
He paused, expecting Hazel to speak. He had correctly guessed at her expression of incredulity and so continued uninterrupted. ‘The woman you made enquiries about at Ealing Hospital, Gladys McCall, wasn’t only Linda’s mother, she and her late husband Alec McCall were East End villains, along with most of their extended family.’
‘We’re telling you this because you need to know,’ said Barbara. ‘The McCall family was a very violent criminal family in the 1970s and early 1980s. It was a time when armed robberies were on the increase and firearms were a common occurrence. Alec McCall, Linda’s father, was one of the most violent of the entire clan.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Hazel. ‘Oh, excuse me, ma’am.’
Her apology was waved away.
‘Anyway, Alec, Gladys and their two children, Kelvin and Karen, or Linda as we knew her, disappeared. Alec gave evidence against the rest of the family: brothers, uncles, nieces, nephews and the others were arrested and sent to prison.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Hazel again. ‘So what brought her to East Rise?’
‘It would seem the Bowman family,’ said Doug. ‘What we do know is that she was married to Milton in 1995 and Travis was born in 1998. Exactly how they met and whether Milton really knew who she was is something we’re going to have to piece together.’
‘Where am I going to start?’ said Hazel, feeling a little out of her depth. ‘All Travis knew was that his mum was from the West Country, met Milton and moved here. Why would she be stupid enough to do that? It was a very risky move.’
‘We can’t help who we fall in love with,’ said Barbara.
‘Point taken,’ answered Hazel with more of a miserable twang to her voice than she intended. ‘Is it likely to be another member of the family who found out she was visiting her mother in hospital and followed her?’
She watched the other two exchange a wary look.
‘We can’t rule it out,’ said Barbara. ‘We’ve got the intelligence bureau working on it, the informant handlers are tasking their sources and you’re to go and meet with Witness Protection to find out what they know.’
‘Witness Protection?’ said Hazel. ‘Not a department I ever thought I’d work with. Are you sure I’m security cleared for this?’
‘Definitely,’ said Barbara, ‘and above all, I, we, trust you to do a good job. I’ll email you the contact details and let you take it from there.’
Hazel took this as her dismissal and left the office, a touch bedraggled for the entire experience.
Tom Delayhoyde stopped to talk to her as he made his way towards the stationery cupboard. ‘You all right, Haze?’
‘Never been better. You?’
‘Fantastic. I’m off to interview Jenny Bloomfield. She just got arrested for murder.’
Chapter 53
Jenny Bloomfield found herself in an interview room at Riverstone Police Station. She hadn’t been given a reason why she’d been taken so far away from East Rise, but being level-headed, decided for herself that the police didn’t want her bumping into her own son in the custody area. She guessed their reason was to stop them communicating. If she had managed to speak to Aiden, she would have told him not to worry and that everything would soon be cleared up. Even though she maintained a cool outward appearance as if she was taking everything in her stride, she was petrified.
If she had seen Aiden, she would have broken down and told the police anything they wanted to know, confessed to any crime to get him out of there. Jenny was grateful that she at least didn’t have to worry about cracking under the strain of being fixed with a look that told her how much her only son hated her for allowing him to be in that position and doing nothing to free him.
What she had decided, however, was that she was going to cooperate and tell them everything. Well, she was going to tell them almost everything. She wasn’t completely stupid and had done her homework.
Jenny liked to manipulate people and she knew that police officers weren’t particularly intelligent. Those escorting her to custody and dealing with her so far hadn’t done much to change her opinion. The majority of people who committed crime got caught because they were stupid or lazy, or sometimes they were even both. It was the only reason the prisons were so crowded and the police caught anyone. Add someone with brains to a crime, they became untouchable.
That was what Jenny was thinking when Detective Constable Tom Delayhoyde and Detective Constable Pete Clements walked into the interview room to begin their first interview with her.
Jenny’s solicitor sat beside her. She got the impression that he hadn’t taken much of a liking to her and despite his advice being to make no comment to the questions put to her, she had said that she wanted to tell the truth, to clear her son’s name if nothing else.
‘Did you murder Linda Bowman?’ asked Tom.
‘I wouldn’t say “murder”, officer,’ she said, voice even. ‘I did hit her on the head with a hammer. I think I hit her a few times, although I simply lashed out and can’t recall it all. Definitely on her head somewhere, I think to the back, possibly the side.’
‘Why did you hit her?’
‘I’d gone to her house when I knew that her son and husband would be out so that I could talk some sense into her. I knew that she was toying with my son’s affections. He’s only nineteen years old. He doesn’t know any better. I wouldn’t dream of doing the same thing with her boy, Travis. What an unpleasant woman she was.’
Jenny sat forward in the chair and placed her hands on the desk. Long, delicate manicured fingers still on the tabletop.
‘I didn’t intend to kill her. I went to talk to her. That’s all.’
‘Where did you get the hammer from?’
asked Tom.
‘It was on the side in the kitchen. She wound me up so much.’
Jenny squeezed a tear from her eye and dabbed it away with her little finger.
‘You wouldn’t believe the things she was saying to me. At one point she slapped me too. I was scared of her. She was taller than me, and a couple of dress sizes bigger.’
She brushed her hands down the front of her sweatshirt. ‘I’m tiny by comparison. I thought she was going for the hammer, so I grabbed it first.’
‘Whereabouts was the hammer?’
‘On the work surface, next to her.’
‘When did she slap you?’
‘Does it matter?’ Jenny said, voice rising. ‘She slapped my face. Isn’t that enough?’
She had made the error of talking too much and too fast. Something she realized as soon as she opened her mouth and uttered the last sentence.
Jenny paused, cast her eyes down and said, ‘She slapped me hard around the side of my face. No one had ever hit me before. I was so shocked; I was out of control. I reached across to the hammer at the same time as Linda went for it. If I hadn’t got there first, she would have used it on me and I’d have been the one who was dead, and all through no fault of my own.’
Tom nodded at her, allowed her to talk. She didn’t need much encouragement.
An hour went by, filled with Tom asking questions and Jenny only too happy to answer them.
As far as she was concerned, she was talking her son out of getting charged with murder.
The rest of the murder inquiry team had different ideas.
Chapter 54
Afternoon of Thursday 8 June
Before too long, still reeling from the Witness Protection revelation, Hazel found herself back with Travis. At her suggestion, she went to see him at his aunt and uncle’s house, unsure of the welcome she would find but prepared to deal with it anyhow.
Once Una had made them cups of tea and left them to it, Hazel began to explain to Travis about the force’s latest arrest. She really wanted to get him talking about other matters first, for a split second weighed up whether she should ask him questions before explaining that Jenny Bloomfield was now in custody. It was a risky strategy not to tell him, and besides, he deserved to know. Hazel always put herself in the place of the bereaved and knew how badly she would react to having such news kept from her. After all, from when her father was killed, she had first-hand experience of how the handling of such news shouldn’t be done.
‘Something else has happened,’ she said, waiting until Travis had put down the mug of near-boiling liquid.
‘It can’t be any bloody worse than what’s gone on so far.’
She gave an empty smile and had the good grace to look embarrassed.
‘Again, Travis, this won’t be easy for you to take in. Today we arrested Jenny for your mum’s murder.’
The only indication of the rage inside him was the clenching of his jaw and his mouth as it fought for something to say.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said, spitting the words at her. ‘What else are you going to throw at me? This is beyond a joke. What’s happened to Aiden?’
‘He’s still in custody. We haven’t finished talking to him yet.’
In an attempt to get him to look at her again, Hazel moved forward on her chair in the dining room and lowered her face towards his bowed head. Eventually it worked and he looked straight at her, features hardened by the last three days.
Not expecting the news about Jenny to cause him as much angst as the news that his best friend had been arrested, Hazel nevertheless pushed her scalding-hot drink out of his reach; though he was less likely to cause a problem at his only remaining family’s home.
‘Do you want me to get your aunt in here to explain to her too?’ asked Hazel. ‘It’s a lot for you to take in and she’ll want to know what’s happening as well.’
A minuscule nod was her only reply.
Seconds later, as if Una had been standing feet from the closed door, she came in and joined them, taking the seat beside Travis and slipping her hand into his.
From the corner of her eye, Hazel saw Travis cling to his aunt’s fingers, dwarfed by his own. She wasn’t sure how much more one person could take. There were so many who wanted to help him but up to now he had taken little notice of anything Hazel had tried to tell him. Leaflets she had brought him only gave him the miserable news that one in twenty-five children and young people had experienced bereavement of a parent or sibling, all the while aiming to and wanting to help. The problem was that Travis seemed to be stuck in the well of misery and had no energy or inclination to get himself out. And why should he at such an early stage?
Every time Hazel spoke to him, she brought him more grief and bad news, and it was rubbing off on her.
‘Why did you arrest this woman?’ asked Una. Travis’s aunt was short, petite and, so far, had showed nothing less than a robust demeanour and was holding herself together very well under the circumstances.
‘All I can say at the moment is that we have DNA evidence that would suggest she had something to do with it,’ said Hazel. Forcing herself to avoid biting her lip, something she often did when she knew that she was talking utter nonsense, Hazel continued to explain what little she could.
‘Please understand that we now have two suspects in custody, so there’s only so much I can tell you. Feel free to ask me questions, absolutely anything. Some of them I can’t answer or I just don’t have the answer right now.’
‘The obvious one is did one of them do it?’ said Travis, face now ashen. ‘I’m not sleeping, I’m not eating, I can’t do anything. All I’m focused on now is knowing what happened and why. Then, I want them to go to prison.’
He put his hands up to his face, taking his aunt’s slender hands with him, crying fistfuls of tears.
From a very early age, Hazel had been good at keeping secrets. Passively she sat there, watching the torment before her, keeping to herself all that she knew and knowing exactly how devastated Travis was going to be by the end of all this.
Chapter 55
Sean had secrets of his own, and not only his affair with Jenny. He had done his homework and knew East Rise as if he had lived there himself. Mostly, he thought it was a shithole, sprawls of depressing run-down areas, now and again a small pocket of hope in the guise of people who took some pride in where they lived and didn’t feel it necessary to dump sofas and electrical equipment in their front garden.
For many weeks prior to bumping into Jenny Bloomfield in the Grand, Sean had found himself wandering the streets, perching on benches on the seafront, pretending to read a newspaper in a coffee shop. All the while he was running an eye over the town to weigh up whether it was right for his next business venture.
The day he saw Jenny striding out of the hotel’s restaurant was the day his luck really changed. He was about to check himself in for a two-night stay to see to some business and the sight of her almost took his breath away.
From top to toe, smooth bobbed haircut down to her black leather boots, red wool coat in between, Sean was smitten.
He smiled to himself when he remembered how he stepped in front of her and said, ‘Excuse me.’ She stopped walking, one eyebrow raised at him. ‘I’m new here and I just wondered if you could recommend somewhere to eat?’
‘The restaurant here is really very good,’ she said, smiled and made to step around him.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘give me a moment.’ He looked over her shoulder towards the dining area, gave her his best smile and added, ‘I know this is very forward of me, but is there any chance you’ll join me.’
He saw the hesitation in her eyes, a flicker towards the exit. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was wrong of me to ask you. I saw you come out of the restaurant and hated that you were alone. And I craved some company. Forgive me.’
He moved aside, hand gesture to indicate that she should pass by.
Five minutes later they were occupying the
same table Jenny had just vacated, she with a large glass of Sauvignon Blanc, he with a large measure of Scotch.
Once again Sean smiled as he thought about that very first drink with Jenny. Like he did with most parts of his life, he had taken a gamble. Under different circumstances, it might have turned into something more long-term. They both understood that couldn’t happen. Now he came to think about it, it possibly wasn’t a conversation that they had ever had: she was married and made no mention of leaving her husband, and Sean couldn’t see a future in it. Definitely not in his line of work.
Work was what he was now getting himself involved in. He leaned back against the wooden bench, flaky paint sticking to his jacket, one hand over his eyes to shield them from the glare of the afternoon sun, and he waited until he heard the sound of a three litre diesel Range Rover pull to a stop behind him. The noise of the passenger door opening propelled him from his seat towards the car. A similarly suit-clad business associate of his stood holding the door for him.
Sean jumped in the back, put his seat belt on, and once the door was pushed shut for him and he had the full attention of the other three, he said, ‘Best we get to work then, gentlemen. Who are we going to kick seven shades of shit out of first?’
Chapter 56
An hour after she’d arrived, Hazel left Una and John’s house, closing the front door behind her. Travis had cried so much that after six tear-filled breakdowns she had lost count. It was heartbreaking to see. A couple of times, she had felt her own eyes misting over and used rapid blinking to make it stop. Clearly, he was a young man who had adored his mum, and despite his anger towards his dad’s philandering, he still had loved him and wanted nothing more than his parents alive and well.
That was never going to happen. Hazel’s job allowed her more of a practical than a wishful approach. Not an altogether unrealistic outcome to all of this was someone being charged with Linda Bowman’s murder. This was something she was thrilled to be a part of: being actively engaged and utilized in a plan, not sitting on the sidelines watching the action as others took charge. She really got a kick from her job, she thought now, all her concerns about maybe having chosen the wrong career path faded from her mind.