by Lisa Cutts
‘No, no, he went out,’ she said as she pulled the sleeves of her jumper down to her knuckles and backed away, backside pressed against the front of the cooker.
‘Don’t look so nervous,’ said Sean. He pointed to the toilet and Danny went inside and shut the door.
‘Everything as we spoke about?’ said Sean as he moved towards her. His black leather shoes touching the end of her bare feet.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said, turning her head from left to right, avoiding looking up into his eyes. ‘It’s all been fine. We’ve got everything set up, you see. It’s just as you said, just as you said, Tandy.’
‘Well that’s good then,’ he murmured in her ear, leaning down seven or eight inches until he was level with her face. ‘I don’t want anything going wrong now. A few things have gone wrong lately and it’s really fucked me off, Trixie.’
He watched her screw her eyes up and swallow as he ran a hand along the length of her face. She started as he raised his voice and added, ‘But don’t worry your gorgeous head about it right now, we’ve got a present for you.’
Danny had emerged from the toilet, something that Sean thought his hostess was unaware of in her petrified state. He looked round at his young apprentice who held out a bag of heroin to him.
This was met with a look of disgust. Sean knew where the drugs had been stashed and wasn’t about to handle them under any circumstances. He pointed to the worktop behind Trixie.
‘Look what we’ve left for you,’ said Sean as he waited for her to open her eyes.
Momentary indecision ran across her features until the screaming desire for Class A drugs became too much and she lunged for them.
He put his arm across to stop her before she could reach them.
‘And we’d appreciate your feedback about the quality. If you enjoy them, tell your friends, if you don’t, tell us.’
All three of them laughed and got ready to turn towards the door.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ said Sean. ‘After all, we know where you live.’
Chapter 60
‘I’ve never known a prison visit take place so quickly,’ said Hazel as she sat with DI Philbert in the visiting area of the Category A prison.
‘He’s got to agree to speak to us yet,’ said Doug as he glanced around the room.
They were in a large open area, dozens of low soft seats and twenty or so tables, bars at the windows and a high counter at one end with two prison officers keeping watch. Their attention was mainly drawn to the far corner, where six inmates stood at a shelf four feet from the ground, folding hundreds of pairs of jeans.
Hazel nodded in their direction. ‘Those jeans look designer. Imagine paying two hundred quid for a pair and later on finding out that they’d been packaged up by a terrorist.’
‘It’s no worse than the eight-year-old kids who made them in the first place.’
‘Look,’ said Hazel, someone at the security door to the left of the workers catching her eye. ‘Do you think that’s him?’
‘That’s him,’ answered Doug. ‘First hurdle over is he came out of his cell. Now we need to get him to talk about Linda.’
He thudded towards them, prison guard a couple of feet behind him.
‘Here are your visitors,’ said the guard. ‘Let me know when you’re done.’
Hazel couldn’t help but notice that all activity had ceased as soon as Jack McCall had come into view.
‘Jack,’ said Doug, ‘we’re police officers. Thank you for seeing us.’
He gave a snort of laughter. ‘I knew what you were as soon as I walked in.’
He sat down on the sofa opposite Hazel. He looked at her. ‘He’s in charge then?’
‘He’s a higher rank than me, but I only let him think he’s in charge.’
This time he gave what sounded like a genuine laugh.
‘All right then, what do you want?’
‘We want to ask you about your brother, Alec—’
‘Dead.’
Hazel persevered. ‘We know he’s dead but something recently happened to do with his family.’
Jack McCall raised an eyebrow, shifted in his seat, stretched his arms along the back of the sofa. ‘Go on.’
‘When did you last see Gladys?’ said Hazel, holding his stare.
‘Now, Gladys, I liked,’ he said. ‘When Alec decided that he was going to grass on the rest of his kin, she was the one I was most surprised by. You’ll know all this, cos you’ll have done your homework, but it was before your time. Probably not his.’
He jerked his head in Doug’s direction without taking his eyes off Hazel. ‘We were quite some family, mostly me and Alec. We did a bit of protection stuff, security work you could call it. We were the G4S of our time. Lot smaller scale but much more effective. Anyway, we started to make it big, take over and get a name for ourselves. Just as it all looked as though it was going really well, Alec decided that he didn’t want to be the enforcer no more.
‘His kids were getting older. Right little pair of sods, always arguing. Kelvin was showing potential, Karen probably more so, come to think of it, and then one day, they all disappeared. All four of them. Turned out that bastard had turned against his own and was going to bubble us all at court. So the last time I saw Gladys was right before they all done a moonlight flit in 1987. I saw Alec the next year at court. He got sent down too of course, but I never understood why he done it, and now he’s dead, I can’t say that I really give a crap. Water under the bridge.’
Hazel thought fast about what she was going to ask him next. He had given her a lot more than she had expected, so now she needed to keep him talking.
‘And Karen and Kelvin?’
This was met with an indifferent shrug.
‘I’m in here. I don’t get out much.’
‘Have you any idea where they are?’
‘No, darling, that’s the thing about Witness Protection, the witnesses get protected. Unless they’re stupid enough to go and do something that draws them to people’s attention, they could be anywhere in the world.’
Jack McCall folded his arms across his chest.
She wanted to see his reaction to her next question.
‘Did you know that Karen is dead?’
A look that she interpreted as mild interest.
‘Is that a surprise to you, Jack?’ she asked.
‘Well, I didn’t kill her.’
‘I didn’t say she was murdered,’ Hazel replied.
He smiled, unfolded his arms and palms outstretched to her said, ‘You wouldn’t have bothered coming all this way to tell me that she died peacefully in her sleep of natural causes, so come on, let’s not waste any more time. What exactly do you want?’
‘Karen McCall was given a new identity in 1987. She was given a new name, got married in 1995. They lived an hour’s drive from here until last Monday when someone murdered her. What do you know about her death?’
‘As much as you do. Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got arts and crafts in twenty minutes. I’m making a cigarette box out of matchsticks. It’s highly combustible, of course, but you have to get your kicks somehow in here.’
Jack held one hand in the air for the briefest of times, not a gesture that would have been out of place in a restaurant, only in this instance it wasn’t a waiter he was summoning but a prison guard.
He stood up, smoothed down his sweatshirt and said, ‘Fancy Karen marrying a copper. What was she thinking?’
‘I never said that Karen married a police officer,’ said Hazel, also now on her feet.
‘I must have seen it on the news,’ he said, gave her a wink and turned back towards the security door.
‘Hang on,’ said Doug, ‘how did you know?’
The officers tried to follow him until a second prison guard barred their way.
‘I’m afraid I can’t let you on the wing,’ he said.
Hazel and Doug stood and watched as Jack McCall slowly turned towards them, arms outstretched whils
t he was patted down and searched as he awaited his return to his cell.
‘We can’t stop him from leaving,’ said Doug to Hazel.
‘Do you think he was behind the murder in any way?’ said Hazel with a defeated air.
‘He clearly knows something,’ said Doug, ‘and he’s making utter mugs of us.’
They stood in the visiting area as Jack McCall waved his fingers at them in a parting gesture, and then for good measure, as the metal gate was slammed shut, the prisoner on the far side of it blew them a kiss.
Chapter 61
The atmosphere in the interview at Riverstone Police Station was unusual in that both the suspect and the police officers thought that everything was going well. The solicitor had considered walking out on Jenny Bloomfield as she was proving to be a very difficult client. He was far too much of a professional for that, but the woman had infuriated him. The officers were trying their best to handle her in spite of her repeated attempts to gain the upper hand every time they asked her a question.
Sometimes, it was a wiggle in her chair, and sometimes she appeared to flirt with them.
What was foremost in Jenny’s mind was that she had nothing to worry about as far as her son was concerned. Granted that, yes, his infatuation with Linda now meant that she had had to tell the police that she hit Linda on the head with a hammer, except she was careful to point out that it had been a temporary act of madness and none of it premeditated. All of this was for Aiden anyway, so the hope she’d held on to the entire time she’d been under arrest was that it would help him. She hadn’t ever expected to be in a police station explaining her actions that morning in the Bowmans’ kitchen. She had intended to go there early that day, on foot so that no one heard her drive away or wondered where her car was. She had even left her mobile phone at home on silent. Even now, the police would have a hard time proving she was there without her current explanation. Quite what it was the police were capable of finding out with mobile phones and electronic devices, she wasn’t entirely sure. What she did know was that many a criminal was caught through using one. She knew that she wasn’t a common criminal, simply a mother who loved her son and was pouring out her heart explaining that she had merely lashed out when taunted by Linda Bowman.
Linda Bowman was someone who had laughed at her. She had thrown her head back and laughed when Jenny begged her to leave Aiden alone. She had tried to appeal to her, one mother to another, but couldn’t bear to hear her mocking her. She definitely couldn’t stand to hear her ridicule Aiden and say what a stupid lovesick child he was.
She was tired of telling the police over and over again that both she and Linda had gone for the weapon simultaneously. She happened to get there first or it would have been her lying dead and Linda answering their questions. That was the moment she found the hammer in her grip and watched her own hand as it whipped out in front of her, straight towards Linda. She told them that she hadn’t intended to kill her; they were bound to show her some leniency. The worst was bound to be manslaughter and after only a few years she’d be allowed to go home and be with her family once more.
For now, all she had to do was keep up the repetition of her story.
‘OK, Jenny,’ said DC Tom Delayhoyde, ‘I want to talk about the hammer. Tell me where you got it from.’
She rolled her eyes at him and said, ‘I’ve told you this already. It was on the work surface next to Linda where we were standing in the kitchen.’
‘Yes, you did tell me. You drew me a diagram, didn’t you?’ Tom pushed towards her the piece of paper, complete with matchstick figures in biro, depicting the murder drama in Linda Bowman’s kitchen.
‘This is you here, and this is Linda here,’ said Tom, tapping the end of his pen on the drawing.
‘That’s right,’ said Jenny.
‘You’ve told me that the hammer was here?’ asked Tom.
‘Yes.’
‘And when was the very first time you touched that hammer?’
It was now Tom’s turn to allow his pulse to race a little as he waited for his suspect’s reply.
‘I’ve told you that the first time I picked that hammer up was in the kitchen. I hadn’t touched it up until then, and that’s why it’s now got my DNA on it.’
‘Your DNA,’ echoed Tom, pausing to enjoy the moment. ‘How did Aiden’s DNA end up on it?’
‘What?’ Jenny whispered. ‘What?’
‘My opinion counts for nothing, Jenny,’ said Tom, ‘although I think you’ve told us you hit Linda when it was Aiden who really did it. You’ve already explained how angry you were when she laughed about Aiden. You’d do anything to protect your son. Even if that meant confessing to murder.’
She began to make a moaning noise. It started small like a sigh and then it grew louder and louder before she wrapped her arms up over her head and began to rock backwards and forwards in her seat.
All eyes were on her for a couple of seconds before the solicitor collected himself and said, ‘My client can’t be held to account for how someone else’s DNA ended up somewhere. I wasn’t told of this earlier and I think that this will be a good time for a break.’
‘Yes,’ said Tom, ‘I think you’re right about that. Jenny, I’m going to turn the DVDs off. Is there anything else you want to say before I do that?’
She continued to make incomprehensible sounds and sway in her seat, all composure gone.
Chapter 62
Afternoon of Friday 9 June
Even though Hazel hadn’t wanted to go back and bother Travis so soon, there was still a lot she had to ask him. He had spoken to her at great length over the last few days, mostly about how he was feeling and coping, but she needed more detail about the last week or so of his parents’ lives.
One of the most pressing matters now, of course, was what had occurred at the Bloomfields’ house the weekend before his mother’s murder. The late grandmother he knew nothing about, not to mention his mother’s clandestine identity, were other contentious subjects she didn’t relish the idea of raising. One thing at a time.
When Hazel had left Travis at his aunt’s house, she had promised to return in a couple of hours to give him time to compose himself. In truth, she needed to go back over her paperwork and grab herself something to eat. She could hardly tell the grieving youngster that she was so hungry she couldn’t concentrate, so she made a discreet exit and took herself off to the nearest coffee shop with her notebooks and sat down to read through her pages of scribble to find what it was that was niggling her.
Forty minutes later, half-eaten BLT sandwich, mug of tea and notebooks in front of her, Hazel scanned page after page until she found what she was looking for.
In her neat black writing, she read the words she had written days beforehand that might make all the difference to Aiden Bloomfield’s future. If she was correct about her feelings, it would not only point towards his innocence, but highlight his own mother’s cold-blooded planning in a murder.
The coffee shop was far too busy for her to dial the number she was desperate to call. In a couple of seconds, she downed the mug of tea, wrapped the rest of her lunch in a paper serviette and rushed from the shop. As fast as she could manage with the food balanced on the top of her handbag, her notebooks under one arm and her car keys in her free hand, she hurried to the privacy of her unmarked police car to call Doug Philbert.
‘Come on, come on,’ she muttered as the sound of his mobile ringing came through on her phone.
‘Hello, Hazel,’ he said at last.
‘Sir, I’ve just gone over my notes and there’s something you should know.’
‘Go on.’
‘I made notes of everything Travis, Aiden and Jenny told me in the early hours of the investigation.’ She took a deep breath.
‘I think this is important: at the briefing, CSI Jo Styles told us about the mixed DNA profile on the hammer showing a match to Aiden and Jenny Bloomfield. So by that, Jo is saying that they both handled the hammer at some poin
t. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they both used the hammer to smash Linda’s skull to pieces.’
‘Go on,’ said the DI.
‘Well, I appreciate that Jenny could have handled it innocently before the murder, meaning her DNA was also on it. Don’t forget though, Aiden could have used the hammer at another time, couldn’t he?’ Without giving the detective inspector time to comment, she carried on. ‘There’s been so much going on, it only just dawned on me that when I very first went to the Bloomfields’ house, there were lots of photographs hanging on the wall. One of them was of Aiden and it was hung out of line with the others. You see where I’m going with this?’
‘I think so, Hazel, but go on.’
‘It was just a line, a comment that didn’t seem important at the time. Jenny asked Travis to hang a photo in the hallway when he was staying there. Aiden took the hammer and did it himself, then rowed with Jenny because she said that he didn’t hang it at the right level. It’s not unreasonable to assume it was the same hammer.’
There was a silence on the end of the phone before Doug said, ‘Are you on your own at the moment? I’ve got Barbara here with me and I don’t want anyone else to hear what I’m about to tell you.’
‘Yes, I’m alone in my car.’
‘Up until being told that Aiden’s DNA was on the hammer, Jenny repeatedly told Tom Delayhoyde in interview that the first time she had seen or touched that hammer was when she picked it up from the worktop in Linda’s kitchen. That’s obviously very convenient for her if she didn’t take the murder weapon to the scene. She’s making every attempt to distance herself from the planning aspect of killing her.’
Hazel rubbed her forehead and concentrated on what she was being told.
‘The thing is though, sir, that doesn’t add up if it’s got Aiden’s DNA on it. If the first time that hammer really was in her hand was when she picked it up and hit Linda with it, it could have Aiden’s DNA on it if either he handled it way before the murder, he took it with him for some reason, or this is a mother protecting her son. That could only mean he was there and used the hammer too.’