Deep Fear

  ‘So, the fire – what were the conclusions of the enquiry?’

  If she could have chosen a time in which to make this cross country journey to the coastal town of Whitehaven, the middle of a late-July day would be her last choice. Ordinarily, it would take an hour. Today, it would more likely take two.

  ‘Accident,’ Phillips said.

  ‘How long did it take them to come up with that little gem?’ she asked.

  ‘A day.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A day. It stinks,’ Phillips articulated what Kelly was thinking.

  ‘Tell me about Tania Stewart,’ she said.

  He looked at his notes.

  ‘She was fifty-two when she was murdered. The detective in charge was convinced of overkill, and that her killer was known to her. She had fifteen stab wounds to her breasts – seven to the right, eight to the left – and seventeen to her abdomen. Classic rage. I phoned the care home in Workington but it had closed down. However, I managed to track three patients’ relatives and a colleague. Each one said the same thing: that she was cruel.’

  ‘How?’ asked Kelly.

  ‘The relatives complained to the company owners on five separate occasions, they cited rationing water as a discipline method, poor hygiene and drastic changes to their relatives’ personalities.’

  ‘Who was the colleague?’

  ‘A student nurse who was training there. She’s in her thirties now, but she was very clear. She said she was scared to say anything at the time, but she saw Stewart hit her patients and take food away. There was one occasion where Stewart made a patient clean faeces off the floor. Apparently the patient had an accident and Stewart smeared it all over the floor, then made the woman clean it.’

  ‘Jesus, why didn’t the girl report her?’ Kelly asked. But she already knew why – institutional bullying would be terrifying for an eighteen-year-old, new to the profession.

  ‘She said she was scared to. She left soon after. She didn’t know that Stewart was dead. When I told her, she sort of implied that she wasn’t at all surprised. She said, and I quote, “Probably one of her old patients did it, or their families.”’

  ‘Do any of our suspects so far have links to care homes, apart from Colin Tate?’

  ‘Only him, but none of the forensics match him. It’s the same story: all the suspects have elements that match – MO, motive, opportunity, knowledge of the victims – but none of them tick all the boxes. It’s as if, taken altogether, we’d have the perfect suspect,’ he said. Since the search on the Cole residence, the whole family had vanished into thin air, and all units were looking out for them. It was baffling.

  ‘What the hell are we missing?’ she asked. But it was rhetorical. She was thinking aloud.

  ‘What about his handwriting?’ asked DC Phillips.

  ‘Dr Modus said that even though every sample was different, and he agreed that Cole has the capacity and intelligence to change styles easily, and has done so, he found no characters in any of the notes supplied. He said, in all his career, he’s never come across a person who can omit every single trait and produce an entirely new style. They always carry something from one style to the next, even if they’re doing it deliberately.’

  ‘So why run?’

  They fell silent as they approached Keswick, the turn off was rammed and they were glad to avoid the town itself. They carried on west, towards Bassenthwaite Lake, and the traffic thinned a little. The southern side of Skiddaw sat covered in sunshine, and both detectives looked up, longingly.

  ‘When’s the last time you were up there?’ Kelly asked, following his gaze and reading his thoughts. Their personal lives had ceased to exist.

  ‘Oh ages.’

  ‘How’s Katrina taking it?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s good, she’s always busy anyway.’ Kelly knew that DC Phillips and his wife, Katrina, had yet to start a family, and so they were both fairly flexible for now. She studied her junior and noticed that his eyes were tired and the wrinkles around them looked deeper than they had recently. He also had dark shadows underneath. She felt a pang of guilt.

  ‘Does Katrina like to hike, Will?’

  ‘Not really, it’s usually me and the dog.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘She’s a border Collie. Millie. She’s seven, and she’s done a hundred and twenty Wainwrights.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. We’ve got just under a hundred to go. I keep hoping she’ll make it.’ His face relaxed and his eyes shone for the first time that day. They all longed for normality.

  ‘How’s your mum, boss?’

  Kelly was thrown but touched. The question was genuine, but she couldn’t have personal stuff getting in the way; it would make her soft around the edges.

  ‘Mum’s back at home, thank you. Thanks for asking, Will. She’s dying. She knows it, we know it. It’s about keeping her comfortable.’ Kelly stared ahead. Bassenthwaite Lake took her mind off the conversation. Will looked out of the window.

  ‘So why don’t you hand the case to someone else? And spend more time with her?’ he said.

  ‘Because she wants me to catch The Teacher.’ Kelly smiled mischievously and Phillips didn’t know if his boss was joking. Something told him she wasn’t.

  ‘What a legend,’ he said. There was a companionable silence until Kelly broke it.

  ‘I don’t think it’s Cole.’

  ‘I know. Someone who knows him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, the hospital?’

  ‘Yes. I’m hoping that something from today will provide us with something to connect a name from the care homes to the hospital.’

  ‘Anything from his rental properties?’

  ‘No, Guv. They’ve all got tenants and none have the issued grey carpet, even though three of them are ex-council and fit the timeline.’

  ‘I wonder if it could be an ex-patient of his. Someone who was let down by him.’

  ‘Like it,’ Phillips said.

  ‘Maybe he hasn’t always been the eminently successful surgeon that he is today: even perfectionists make mistakes.’

  ‘I’ll call DS Umshaw. She’s coordinating the search of the hospital staff database.’

  Chapter 42

  A reporter stood outside the Church of All Saints, on the Pike Road, Penrith. Mourners lined the streets on either side. A hush descended on the crowd when the hearse arrived, flanked by five black sedans carrying the family of Aileen Bickerstaff.

  Johnny had sat on the mountainside for two hours, while Dan spoke into his radio, and Kelly gathered evidence and took photographs. She’d even sketched the scene, by hand, on a drawing pad, noting carefully where everything was. The helicopter had left three times for emergencies, but each time it came back and hovered above them, waiting for Kelly’s lead.

  The wind had picked up on top of Hart Crag, and Johnny couldn’t help glance at what was left of the young girl, occasionally. Her torso was weirdly bent, and deep marks were left on her neck. He recalled the moment when Kelly had noticed the scar on the girl’s hip, where her underwear should have been.

  The scar was sewn up with black thread. The wound was infected and the skin had begun to turn green. Thick yellow puss had dried into the stitching, and, against the pure white skin, looked oddly inhuman. He thought at the time that a human isn’t made of those colours: dark green, orangey-yellow and white. A human is made of pink, beige, brown and cream – colours that hint of life, of warmth, energy and spirit. There was no spirit left in the girl’s carcass, and that’s how he thought of it.

  He’d dreamt of her body all that week.

  Especially the colours.

  He dreamt of black worms crawling out of the green skin, and of the whole thing slitting apart, and yellow goo bleeding out and running onto him. For the first time in years, he’d dreamt of war.

  He’d only looked at her face once.

  Her eyes were closed, and he was thankful. Her hair was wet and tangled – than
ks to a day or two out there, he suspected. She looked asleep, and he hoped that she hadn’t suffered for long. He thought of Kelly and how many bodies she’d seen like this.

  Johnny had seen bodies ripped in two, laying on the side of the road in Iraq. He’d seen bodies headless and rotting, hung from bridges in Sierra Leone. And he’d seen bodies piled up, being nibbled on by dogs, in Bosnia.

  This girl was different. She’d been left all alone in that desolate place and he wanted to hold her and bring her back to life. He couldn’t imagine anything happening to Josie. Johnny didn’t want to know the details, and he hadn’t asked Kelly any questions.

  Bile rose in his throat as he thought of the girl’s family. Kelly said that some families wanted to know every last detail about their loved one’s final moments, and others requested only the basic information. Johnny wondered, as he stood up in front of the pew, as Aileen’s body was carried in to the church, if Annie and Joe Bickerstaff had wanted to know what he knew – that Aileen had met a terrible death.

  Speakers had been placed outside the church, so that hundreds could share the service.

  Annie and Joe Bickerstaff walked behind the coffin, and Johnny thought he might be sick. Kelly never went to funerals unless she was expressly invited. She said it reminded the families of the brutality of the victim’s death, rather than the beauty of their life, which is not what funerals were supposed to do. Her face in the congregation would be further torture to the family. Johnny understood completely, but he had to go. He had to listen to the eulogy and the history of the girl he’d first met on the mountainside, because he had to try to rid himself of the images that refused to disappear in the middle of the night.

  A road block had been put in place, at Kelly’s request, and no traffic disturbed the tranquillity of the site. Behind the church, where traffic could still be heard, a navy blue Volkswagen Touran sat, engine running, windows closed, and parked momentarily. The closed windows looked odd, it was another searing hot day, and most people celebrated the fact with open windows. The occasional convertible taunted onlookers with its Hollywood-style swagger, as the drivers marked the highlight of their year.

  But Johnny saw none of this. And no-one took any notice of the Touran as it pulled away from the curb, behind the church, and turned left out of the town, towards Pooley Bridge and Ullswater. Its final destination was Coniston Lake, or a location close by, where daffodils grew in the spring.

  The driver turned the radio up and took a bite from a sandwich. A debate on Radio Four had caught their attention, and it would make the drive more pleasant. But nothing could spoil the afternoon.

  * * *

  Staff Nurse Nicola Tower was a heavy fat bitch. Manoeuvring her into the boot of the Touran had been a cumbersome task, but not insurmountable. It had been easier getting her in when she’d been alive. The nurse had happily accepted a lift after her shift, and had talked and talked as usual, her great gob opening and closing, droning on and on, giving the world her opinions on her patients, their families and her colleagues. Mistakenly, she believed that her views mattered, that anyone cared about her vitriol, so unshaken was she in her self-importance.

  She’d even accepted the invite for a cup of tea.

  As the electric garage had closed behind them, Nicola hadn’t stopped for breath, and continued talking about the weather, celebrities, Brexit and other trifling affairs she deemed too important to keep her trap shut about. Once on the sofa, the nurse filled it, sitting with her legs open, unable to close them fully; inviting attention to herself and her obese frame. She was a shame on her profession. A stain, a scourge. A problem.

  Problems needed solutions.

  The final straw was the fluttering of the nurse’s eyes, flirting and encouraging; wanting more than a cup of tea and a lovingly served biscuit on a pretty plate.

  Her smile had waned when the belt was pulled so tightly from behind that it knocked her backwards over the sofa. Nicola had heaved against it with all her might, her mounds of flesh wobbling and jerking as her nurse’s tunic rode up, exposing her great white belly. But the grip of the belt was vice-like. It was a relief when Nicola passed out, not because the perpetrator was tired, more because it gave a respite to the racket of her voice.

  Nicola had lovely plump veins that took the chlorpromazine well: it would last about half an hour. Meanwhile, there was an excellent programme on Radio Two about Wilfred Owen. Certainly not the best war poet (Hardy’s Drummer Hodge would be difficult to beat), but Owen would do for now until the anti-psychotic wore off and Nicola began to contemplate her future.

  * * *

  As the Touran headed south, the news interrupted the radio programme. The Teacher was the main news item. Of course.

  The Teacher.

  It was disappointing.

  It lacked authority and status. But it was unsurprising, given the lack of imagination and predictability displayed by laymen generally.

  Chapter 43

  Whitehaven Police Station was a drab affair. Its archive was well ordered but, like any other basement register, it was situated in the bowels of the building. But at least it was cool in there. Kelly steeled herself to delve deep into the chronicles of cases decades old, and she was glad she’d brought a sweater.

  She and DC Phillips had been greeted by PC Wright, who’d offered them coffee, and as much time as they needed. Kelly wanted to read the case file herself. Meanwhile, Phillips had three addresses to visit. Two were in Whitehaven, and one in Workington. Three separate relatives of three clients all cared for at some point by Tania Stewart.

  ‘Did you manage to talk to anyone in Yorkshire about the misconduct case she was facing?’ Kelly asked, before he departed.

  ‘Yes, same thing: cruelty and bullying. Five families brought the complaint, and the local authority had no choice but to suspend her while they investigated.’

  ‘And she was killed how far into the investigation?’ she asked.

  ‘She was suspended in the April of 2010, and the local paper ran a piece on it. She was murdered in May,’ he replied.

  ‘And no-one was ever charged?’

  ‘No, Guv.’

  ‘Right, Will. I’ll see you back here. I’ll be going nowhere for a while.’

  ‘I’ll be back about four.’ He left.

  In the silent room, underneath the street, Kelly began her search, and it wasn’t long before she located the twenty-year-old file on the fire.

  The police officer in charge had long retired, but that’s what she expected. The case hadn’t even shown up on the computer file, so it had never been written up. She knew that in the case of old investigations – especially so-called open and shut ones – it was seen as a waste of time.

  The file wasn’t thick, just as she’d also expected, and it was maddeningly sparse on detail. It didn’t say if an accelerant was found; it didn’t mention the original source of the blaze; and it didn’t give any indication that anyone interviewed suspected foul play. She ran a check of the night nurse on duty, Ms Sara Moyles, and the janitor, Mr Fred White, who died apparently trying to rescue her. She jotted down their last addresses and then tried to find as many of the children’s details as possible. She also looked for any links between the night staff and Tania Stewart. She suspected that Tania Stewart hadn’t suddenly become a sadist in 2010 when she’d first been accused of cruelty, she might have been abusing her position for years. Ripe for abuse, children’s homes up and down the country had been common targets for sexual predators until very recently. Kelly wondered what Sara Moyles and Fred White had been up to on the night of the fire.

  There were seven statements from children. Kelly flicked through them. Three children had perished in the blaze, but there was only one autopsy. Kelly tutted and rolled her eyes.

  The cause of death noted on the single autopsy was toxic smoke inhalation. She couldn’t find anything on the other two children. One was a girl and one was a boy. She was staggered that an investigation could conclude th
e deaths of two children and not reference at least a coroner’s report for them. After the fire, the children remaining in the home had been shipped off to other institutions.

  The autopsy on Fred White concluded the same as for the child – poisonous smoke inhalation – but Sara Moyles died of a broken neck, before her lungs had a chance to fill with smoke. A note in the file said that it was assumed that Moyles had fallen whilst trying to escape the blaze, and White tried to rescue her before being overcome himself. There was no statement from Tania Stewart, who being day staff, hadn’t been on shift. Despite this, it would have been customary to gather statements from all staff, given the devastation of the fire. Stewart moved on after that.

  Kelly took a screenshot of the two children unaccounted for, and the name of the coroner. Perhaps Ted Wallis could unearth some old files for her.

  She thanked PC Wright, and decided to walk to the site of the old home. Her neck was stiff from hunching over and, to her amazement, it was almost three o’clock and she was hungry.

  The home had been rebuilt as offices several times, and an ugly mixture of glass and metal sat where once there had been a graceful home; she’d seen pictures, and it had been a grand Victorian pile. Houses now backed onto the establishment, but in 1996 there were just fields behind the home – perfect for an arsonist to hide in.

  The names of the two children, unaccounted for, were embedded in her brain and she walked back to the police station, stopping at a small corner shop on the way to buy a sad-looking boxed sandwich. She called Phillips.

  ‘Boss,’ he said. He was breathless, and it sounded as though he was running.

  ‘Yes, Will? I’m just on my way back to the station now,’ she said.

  ‘The three relatives were more than happy to tell everything they knew about Nurse Stewart. Rumour had it that she started the fire herself, to cover up what was going on there. They alluded to local gossip at the time along the lines that Stewart knew that the night shift, i.e. Moyles and White, were basically left up to their own devices with the children. I have a name of a man who used to attend the home. He’s a recluse, chances are he won’t want anyone looking into his business, but at the time of the fire, he was only fifteen. His history is a text book rendition of delinquency. He was fostered by a local family, and they had all sorts of problems with him – petty theft, cruelty to animals, and arson. He set their garage on fire when he was seventeen, and he was moved to different care arrangements. He was seen as the local thug, and kept getting into trouble. He moved from family to family after that.’