by Lisa Cutts
‘No, I’m on my own. I’ve been called in early to Riverstone as I’m covering for Doug Philbert. There’ve been a series of overnight creeper breaks and one poor sod just got a severe beating in his own home for trying to defend his family as they slept.’
She felt her heart sink. ‘Does that mean . . . Are you away for . . .’
‘You’ll have to speak up a bit. This hands-free thing is total shit. What are you saying?’
Unsure of whether to go ahead with her plan of asking him to go away with her, she felt her opportunity slipping away as he said, ‘I think there’s another call coming through.’
‘It’s what you were saying the other day,’ she all but shouted at him, so desperate was she to make him hear what she wanted to ask. ‘You were talking about a trip somewhere. I need to take some time off, and well, I want to spend it with you.’
All she could hear was static. Even though she had no idea if he could still hear her or not, she continued, ‘I’m sorry I had to rush off last night, but I’d really love to spend more time with you. Get to know you better and not get distracted by other people or work. What do you think?’
The problem with putting your heart on the line was that it was scary.
Hazel sat with the phone to her ear, eyes squeezed shut as she waited for his answer.
‘I love the idea. Wherever you want to go. I’ll leave it to you to find somewhere and we’ll book it.’
Her spirits lifted, her eyes still firmly closed, but her mouth now set in a grin. Hazel felt better, she realized, than she had in a very long time.
Harry brought her back down to earth when he said, ‘I need to get off the line and return that last call. It was the chief superintendent and the bloke’s a wanker at the best of times. I’ll call you later.’
Trying not to allow her mind to wander far from thoughts of Harry and a couple of days away together, she started on making herself some breakfast before she got ready for work.
It had been over two years since she’d had a boyfriend and she had enjoyed being single, going out whenever it suited her and not having anyone else to fit into her plans. She went to the cinema to see the films she wanted to see and most importantly of all, her remote control was always where she left it. But Harry was different from any of the men she’d been out with before. He was still married and a father for a start.
He also seemed to be refreshingly upfront, as well as decent. She had her own perceptions of him, and nothing so far had shown him to be anything but straightforward.
Harry Powell was definitely a man Hazel could spend a considerable amount of time with. For now, she’d start off with a couple of days in a nice country hotel and cross her fingers that the relationship was heading in the direction she hoped.
Chapter 74
Harry had been expecting a call from Doug Philbert so he wasn’t too surprised to see his name come up on the screen.
‘Hello, Dougie,’ he shouted over the hiss on his car’s hands-free. ‘Really glad I’ve covered your bloody on-call. I’ve been sent to Riverstone for some fucking creeper breaks. That’ll teach me to help out a mate.’
‘Sorry, Harry. I did hear this morning that things had developed on that one and it’s now all hands to the pump. I’m grateful to you for helping out. Part of the reason I’m ringing you is to tell you that we’ve charged someone with Linda’s death. Did you hear?’
‘I did hear. Bloody Jenny Bloomfield. What a turn-up for the books. I’m pleased that you got someone for it.’ He paused to check the road was clear as he pulled up to a roundabout and then said, ‘You said “part of the reason” you were calling. What’s the rest of it?’
He heard a sigh and noticed a drop in the volume from the other end of the line. ‘Thing is, Harry, I’m a bit worried about Hazel. I don’t want to speak out of line, but if you and her are getting serious and there is something happening between you, I’d ask a favour.’
Unsure where this was headed, Harry simply said, ‘Go on.’
‘She’s been under a lot of pressure with this particular job. I must admit, I had my doubts about using Hazel, what with her own dad dying in a car accident when she was a teenager. Add to that the pressure everyone’s under with all the problems and cutbacks and over one in twenty officers going off with stress or depression. I’m worried about her. I’ve asked for more staff though as usual it’s fallen on deaf ears for now. Promise me one thing, Harry?’
‘What?’ said Harry, now giving him his full attention.
‘Make sure she’s OK?’
‘Of course I will,’ he replied. ‘She’s never far from my mind.’
‘Give me a ring if you think there’s a major problem.’
Harry said goodbye and sat staring at the steering wheel. He had pulled the car over as soon as Doug told him about Hazel’s dad dying. Not only was it something he hadn’t known about her, but it made him realize that he hadn’t even asked her about her family.
For the first time ever, he wondered if he was doing the right thing. He hadn’t asked her much about her background and, now he sat and thought about it, perhaps he had let it all go to his head and the affections of a younger, very attractive woman had blind-sided him into a relationship he wasn’t ready for.
The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her feelings, but better he did it now than six months down the line.
It hadn’t passed him by that only a few minutes earlier he had told Hazel to look at romantic getaways for the both of them for the following week. He had a problem on his hands: spending time with a woman he wasn’t married to hadn’t been an issue for nearly two decades, he wasn’t sure he was qualified for the new job.
Chapter 75
That morning, Aiden and Travis both lay awake in their beds longing to hear the sounds of their mothers moving about the house, preparing for the day, hoping to gain a few minutes’ advantage by arranging cereal bowls and teacups for their family, before getting themselves dressed and ready.
What they would give to have their mum creep into their room and steal a look at her sleeping son.
All Travis could hope for was that his mum had known how much he loved her, because he knew he’d never get the chance to tell her again.
For Aiden, it was very different. He could do something for his mother so she would know what she meant to him and how grateful he was to her. He’d hardly slept and had watched the morning light slip into the room.
He was up and dressed before his dad, picking up his keys and rucksack and going quietly out of the house before most people were awake.
Unfortunately for Aiden, not everyone was asleep. Several pairs of eyes were watching him. They saw where he went, how he looked over his shoulder every so often, mostly keeping to the edge of the path, trying to stay hidden. It was far too late for that, except he couldn’t possibly know it.
When he reached the rented garage in the detached block about half a mile from his house, he stopped and glanced up and down the deserted street, making sure that he was alone. He took the key from his pocket and unlocked the door.
The police had no idea that his family had access to a temporary lock-up so close to their home. It didn’t appear on the Bloomfields’ council or tenancy records because it belonged to an elderly neighbour who had been in hospital for some months and had asked her kind next-door-but-one neighbours to look after it for her.
Mostly, it contained old lamps and chairs that Mrs Millett couldn’t bear to throw away, and had asked her son to carry to the garage for her, but for the last several days it had also contained a black bin liner of clothing dumped inside an old tea chest.
He shoved the black bag and its contents into his rucksack, hauled it over his shoulder and slipped back outside, locking the door behind him. The whole thing had taken him less than ten minutes. Even though his heart was pounding, Aiden felt a huge wave of relief that the police would never have his mum’s dress that had so much of Linda’s blood on it. He knew that he was clinging to
hope and doing the only thing he could think of to help her. If he could do this for her, she might stand a chance at court. Desperate. He needed it to be enough.
Then she could come home and they could put their lives back together.
During his almost sleepless night, Aiden had thought of the best thing to do with the clothing. Burning it would draw too much attention and neither he nor his mother had been entirely convinced that putting it in the washing machine would completely remove the blood. Leaving it where it was in the garage wasn’t an option now that his father was home: he couldn’t risk him telling the police about it, and confiding in his dad was definitely out of the question.
Had he been thinking clearly, Aiden might not have settled for walking to the local corner shop and stuffing the black bag down the chute of a charity clothing bank. Had he been thinking clearly, Aiden would have noticed the CCTV camera that watched his every move.
By now, he was dripping with sweat and shaking uncontrollably. He couldn’t go home in the state he was in just in case his dad was awake. He would know that Aiden had been up to something and he couldn’t face any more questions from anyone right now.
After spending so long in a police cell, he made the most of being free and took the long way back to his house.
At least his actions served a purpose, other than giving him a break from being cooped up. It gave the police time to contact the owner of the charity bin and get it opened up, and it also gave them time to assemble an arrest team for him.
Chapter 76
When Aiden got home, he could hear sounds of his father stirring upstairs. He took the opportunity to put his rucksack in the cupboard in the hallway, kick off his trainers and get himself some breakfast. It was important that now he maintained an air of getting up and going about his normal morning routine. Only of course, this morning brought his mum’s first appearance at the Magistrates’ Court. The officer who had showed him out of custody the previous evening had told him that his mum would be at the first available court the next morning in East Rise. He wished that he hadn’t asked the officer if his mum would be coming home after she went to court. The reply he heard was, ‘Don’t hold your breath.’
He kept as quiet as could, stealing around his own home, all the while trying to act normally. His usual routine was to make tea, so that was the first thing he did, hands still trembling as he filled the kettle from the tap. In the silence after he finished sloshing water into the kettle, his father’s footsteps sounded on the staircase. Aiden froze as he heard them stop halfway and, curious as to what had caused him to pause his descent, he put the kettle back down without switching it on. He knew that something was different to how it had been a couple of seconds ago, but exactly what it was, Aiden failed to fathom.
Then he realized what it was: the sound of several cars pulling to an abrupt stop in the street outside his front door. It made his blood run cold.
They were coming for him once more.
Slowly, he walked from the kitchen to the hallway, looking up at his dad’s face as he peered down at him.
There were shapes moving the other side of the frosted glass of the front door, followed by banging and a voice shouting, ‘Open the door. It’s the police.’
‘Don’t open it, Dad,’ said Aiden.
Ron Bloomfield placed a foot on the next step down.
‘Please, Dad,’ said Aiden.
‘What in God’s name have you done?’ said his father.
‘Please. I’m sorry. I was only trying to help.’
The banging on the door continued. Another voice called out, ‘Aiden, we know you’re in there. We’ll force the door if you don’t open it now.’
He watched as his dad ran down the last few stairs, pulled open the door and stood aside.
Five police officers in uniform filled the hallway, and were followed in by two plain-clothes officers, whom Aiden recognized as the two detectives who had spent several days interviewing him.
‘Hello again, Aiden,’ said Pierre. ‘I’m arresting you for attempting to pervert the course of justice. You do not have to say anything but it may—’
‘Will someone please tell me why you’re doing this to my family?’ shouted Ron.
This was the moment that Pierre and two of the other officers went into the kitchen with Aiden so that Pierre could finish what he started, and Sophia attempted to calm down the irate parent demanding to know what legal powers they had to come into his home and arrest his son.
It was some considerable time before Aiden was led away in handcuffs to a waiting patrol car that would take him back into custody once more, the officers finished searching the house again, and Sophia was able to calm down Ron Bloomfield, who sat alone in his front room and wept quietly at what his family had become in his short absence.
None of this was Ron’s fault; he was now as alone in the world as Travis.
Chapter 77
‘Has he been nicked?’ asked Tom when he got into the incident room at 8 a.m.
‘Do you mean Aiden Bloomfield?’ said Doug as he walked out of his office. ‘If you do, the answer is yes. He was arrested this morning by Pierre and he’s on his way back here. The overtime for all these working rest days is going through the roof.’
‘Was he arrested for perverting?’ Tom asked.
‘Yes,’ said the DI, empty coffee cup in hand, desperate to get a caffeine fix yet not wanting to walk away from a young DC asking questions, even though he knew they were about to become awkward. ‘He tried to get rid of some clothing we think is connected to the murder in a charity bin.’
‘So how did we know about that?’ said Tom, straightening his tie as he caught the DI staring at it.
‘Erm, we’ll talk about it at the briefing. I need to call Hazel and let her know.’
He didn’t really want to talk about it at all, except word would get out. It always did. The problem with police officers was that they were very nosy. Tell them they couldn’t know about something or allow any air of mystery to a situation, it only made them more curious. At least Doug could rely on Hazel to accept what he was telling her. If she was nothing else, she was reliable and predictable.
That thought made him pause halfway through making his drink: Harry had never struck him as the sort of person to be attracted to reliable and predictable. He had always seemed to be the kind to pick more of a live-wire. Mind you, that was exactly the wife Harry had chosen and she’d left him as soon as she became financially independent. Perhaps Hazel was a very good choice after all.
‘Morning, boss,’ said a voice behind him. ‘I hear there’s news.’
‘Hello, Hazel,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking about you. I was about to call you.’ He looked around at her as he added milk to his coffee, spilling it over the counter top.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Let’s go to my office and I’ll explain.’
Once the door was shut, Doug was more willing to speak a little more freely than he had a couple of minutes earlier.
‘I couldn’t forewarn you about this because we didn’t know what Aiden was going to do or when he might make a move. We released him from custody, and please, Hazel, this stays confidential, a surveillance team was watching him. I didn’t think he’d be so spooked that he’d act right away, but after twenty-five years, it’s good to know I can still be surprised.’
‘What did he do?’ asked Hazel, desperate to know for herself, mind whirring over how she was going to tell Travis this news and how she was going to phrase it if she could only tell him half a story.
‘The clothing Jenny said she was wearing at the time of the murder had no blood on it. We knew that couldn’t be right because her shoes had blood on them and the blood-pattern splatters meant that anyone nearby or inflicting the blows would more than likely have had some of Linda’s blood on them somewhere.
‘Either Aiden, Jenny or both of them must have hidden her clothes in a garage that they had access to but wasn’t a part of the
ir home. At 6.30 this morning, Aiden let himself into the garage with a key, took a black bag of clothes and dumped them in a nearby charity clothing bin.’
‘And he’s been seen doing that and got arrested for attempting to pervert the course of justice?’ asked Hazel before adding, ‘What a total fool.’
She leaned back in the chair, wondering how Travis was going to react when he found out that his friend had been arrested again. No sooner had Hazel’s mind turned the problem over and come up with Travis at least having an understanding of why Aiden would feel compelled to help his mum than Doug’s next news dragged up something else hideous.
‘The CSI’s examining everything now,’ he said, watching her intently. ‘She thinks the clothes have got blood on them so we’ll have to get them sent to the lab too. Again, if it’s airborne blood from Linda, we should be able to show where Jenny was standing or possibly crouching over her on the floor when she was hit on the head with the hammer. I think that I or Barbara should come with you to tell Travis about this. He’s bound to have questions, and possibly do a fair bit of shouting.’
Hazel shook her head in reply and wondered how anyone’s sanity would come out of this intact.
Chapter 78
Afternoon of Tuesday 10 October
When the dust had settled, Jenny and Aiden having been charged and awaiting trial, the topic of conversation returned to Milton Bowman. Harry went along to the Coroner’s Court with Doug Philbert, both aware that there was much speculation in the incident room about what happened to him that day. No one wanted to think that it was suicide and the forensic collision investigators examined his car and found no faults. There were three other important factors that played a part in explaining how Milton lost control of his car.
The Coroner’s verdict came back, unsurprisingly, that Milton died as a result of an accident. Harry sat and listened, not previously aware of everything that was spoken about but he could at least put his own mind to rest that someone who had once been a friend hadn’t taken his own life, especially with his wife lying dead on the floor at the time. It was little to be grateful for, although under the circumstances, he would take anything that was being handed out.