Wrong Way Home

by Isabelle Grey

  Wrong Way Home

  Isabelle Grey

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also by Isabelle Grey

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Acknowledgements

  This ebook edition first published in 2018 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2018 Isabelle Grey

  The moral right of Isabelle Grey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  ‘Love Is A Stranger’

  Music and Lyrics by Dave Stewart and Ann Lennox

  © Copyright 1982 Arnakata Music Limited.

  Logo Songs Limited/Universal Music Publishing MGB Limited.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  EBOOK ISBN 978-1-78648-648-6

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Also by Isabelle Grey

  Out of Sight

  The Bad Mother

  DI GRACE FISHER THRILLERS

  Good Girls Don’t Die

  Shot Through the Heart

  The Special Girls

  For Brian Smith, with thanks for a great day out in Southend

  1

  ‘When beggars die there are no comets seen, The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes’.

  So said Calpurnia in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

  Today is my twenty-fifth birthday and I’ve heard my parents speak those words on this day every year for as long as I can remember. Not that I died, and there was no comet, but I’m the boy who was born on the night of the fire. My family has never let go of the idea that somehow that’s significant. Maybe it is.

  I’m Freddie Craig, and you’re listening to Stories from the Fire.

  On this night, twenty-five years ago, the old Marineland resort in Southend-on-Sea burned to the ground. Built in the 1930s as a seaside leisure complex, its Art Deco theatre, dance hall and bars were once thronged with holiday-makers – until they discovered Spanish package holidays in the 1960s, jetted off to the sun and never really came back. By 1992, with the country in recession, the building was boarded up, awaiting an endlessly postponed refurbishment. Once the fire took hold, it spread in what seemed like seconds. The blaze was, I’m told, an inferno. Even the captain of a passing ship was so alarmed by the distant red glow in the night sky that he contacted the coastguard. It took several hours, a dozen fire engines and hundreds of gallons of water to bring the flames under control. The smell of the fire, it was said, lingered in the air for several weeks.

  My mother saw the flames on her journey to the hospital and, throughout her labour, overheard the midwife and nurses whispering about the eerie sights and sounds. After my delivery, she was taken to a ward with windows facing the sea. At dawn she stood, holding her infant son in her arms, watching the sun rise behind a great pall of black smoke drifting slowly eastwards over the mud of the Thames estuary.

  It makes a good story. But there’s more. Alarmed by such bad omens, my mother was later relieved to hear that, miraculously, not only had no one died in the fire but that it had been the scene of a heroic rescue.

  Two teenagers had broken into the empty building, intending to explore its deserted halls. The fire was almost certainly started by their carelessly discarded cigarettes. They quickly found themselves disorientated by the darkness and terrified by the roasting heat. In their rush to escape, one of them fell down some stairs and broke his ankle.

  Alerted by their cries, a passer-by managed to smash his way into the smoke-filled building. Carrying the injured teenager on his back, he guided the other one to safety. Two minutes later an almighty explosion rocked the entire cliffside area as a flashover ignited all combustible material. It was a further five long minutes before any of the emergency services arrived. By that time, Marineland was a roaring bonfire.

  The boys’ saviour was rightly feted. Everyone wanted to tell a story of heroism, survival and, ultimately – after a new shopping mall was built on the site a few years later – renewal.

  And this, too, became the story of my birth. I entered this world on the night of the fire, yet, far from seeing it as a portent of fear and destruction, my parents spun it into an augury of a charmed life to follow. After all, the heavens themselves had blazed forth my arrival.

  Six weeks after my birth, the Queen’s annus horribilis culminated with a fire at Windsor Castle. And here are a few other random facts about 1992. Reservoir Dogs was released, Bill Clinton was elected President of the USA and DNA fingerprinting was first used to exonerate a prisoner on Death Row.

  In Southend, the night of the fire is now remembered for a stranger’s rescue of two teenagers, but I have discovered that other, darker events were also taking place in the seaside town. Obscured by the front-page celebration of a local hero, the death of nineteen-year-old Heather Bowyer received little coverage. Yet, just as two bored teenagers were flicking away their smouldering cigarette butts in the derelict Marineland resort, she was being brutally raped and then murdered in a nearby park overlooking the seafront.

  Twenty-five years later, that crime remains unsolved. For all we know, Heather’s killer may still be living prosperously down the road, a pillar of the loc
al community. He might be the man you drink with in the pub, or even your brother-in-law. Or he could be a drunken vagrant sprawled on a park bench. Nobody knows. Or only one person, and he’s not telling.

  Heather’s life ended as mine began. I can’t help feeling that the destinies of all those involved in the dramatic events of that night are intertwined with mine, which is why I’ve decided to make it my mission to find out everything I can about Heather and the nameless man who has evaded justice for a quarter of a century.

  You’ve been listening to me, Freddie Craig. If you’d like to join me on my journey, then please share and subscribe to hear the next instalment of my podcast, Stories from the Fire.

  2

  Looking around the congregation, Detective Inspector Grace Fisher wondered how many of the people who cried at weddings were shedding tears of disappointed hope rather than joy. Not that this wasn’t a lovely wedding – picturesque old church, bright autumnal flower arrangements, uplifting music; and she couldn’t be happier for the couple now signing the register – but with the marriage service throwing all kinds of dreams and regrets into sharp relief, she could no longer pretend she wasn’t aware of Detective Sergeant Blake Langley sitting two pews behind.

  Over the three months since Blake had ended their brief and discreet relationship he had continued to be the wry and supportive colleague she’d, albeit slowly, come to enjoy working with, but he had also scrupulously avoided being alone with her in any non-professional situation. She knew it was probably for the best, yet she yearned for what might have been – and right now felt that ache more keenly than she had previously allowed herself to admit.

  Beside her, her boss’s wife, Natalie Pitman, took a clean tissue out of her handbag and delicately manoeuvred her hand under the brim of her hat to wipe away a tear. Grace caught her eye and smiled, although she suspected that Natalie’s husband, Colin, a man currently aspiring to be a silver fox, took a rather more pragmatic attitude towards his own wedding vows than might please his wife. The cynical thought reminded Grace not to get sentimental. After all, her own experience of marriage had hardly turned out to be a bed of roses, and no relationship was ever perfect.

  The ache, however, did not lessen, and she was glad when the organist switched to more rousing music to accompany the bride and groom as they processed up the aisle with their families, beaming at friends as they went. Although only Grace knew the true reason why it had taken Detective Constable Duncan Gregg years to break his silence, all his friends had guessed long ago that he had a soft spot for Joan, the civilian case manager on the Major Investigation Team in Colchester. Everyone had been delighted when they had finally announced that they were getting married, and – both were pushing forty – as swiftly as possible. Throughout the service Grace had felt that delight filling the air and enveloping Duncan and Joan in an invisible mist of benevolence.

  Picking up the basket of confetti at her feet, Grace slipped out of the pew and followed in their wake so that she could find a good position at the side of the church steps, ready to offer confetti to any guest who wanted to shower the happy couple with biodegradable good luck and prosperity. Outside in the watery October sunshine, she enjoyed the spectacle of Joan’s four teenage nieces blushing and giggling as they smoothed out their bridesmaid dresses and checked each other’s hair, ready for the photographer. When Blake came to stand beside her, Grace saw the eldest bridesmaid also notice the fit, handsome thirty-something, although he appeared oblivious to the flirtatious glances the girl directed at him from under her long lashes.

  ‘Confetti?’ Grace proffered her basket.

  ‘Thanks.’ He gave her a warm, amused smile and scooped up a handful of dried rose petals and then nodded to where Duncan stood proudly beside his bride. ‘Cute, don’t you think?’

  ‘Very.’

  He was jostled closer as more people came out of the church and crowded round the steps. He looked down at her and smiled once more. Feeling the heat of his body, and sure that he too must be conscious of the heightened emotion of the occasion, she was tempted to say something, although she had no idea precisely what. Maybe it was just as well that, before she could speak, she was side-tracked by several people laughing and reaching for the confetti. As Blake turned aside to speak to someone else, she became aware of her phone vibrating in her clutch bag.

  With so many MIT officers present at the wedding, Grace, as senior investigating officer, had volunteered to be on duty. Indicating her phone, she handed Blake her basket and stepped aside into the shelter of a thick stone buttress. She saw that the call was from the team’s crime scene manager.

  ‘Hello, Wendy,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you on a course this weekend?’

  ‘I am,’ Wendy replied, ‘but I thought you’d want to know that we’ve got a final list from the preliminary search results.’

  ‘And?’ said Grace as Wendy paused tantalisingly.

  ‘After applying the filters, there are at least a dozen that merit serious investigation.’

  ‘And?’ she repeated, hearing the elation in Wendy’s voice.

  ‘Well, if our assumption is correct that the perpetrator is local, then we have one clear front-runner. Deborah Shillingford, charged two years ago with drink-driving.’ Wendy paused for effect. ‘She’s fifty-two and was born and still lives in Southend.’

  ‘So if her father is still alive, or she has brothers or male cousins, they’d all have been around the right age.’ Grace felt the first prickle of anticipation.

  ‘It’s a good start,’ agreed Wendy. ‘How’s the wedding?’

  ‘Oh, perfect,’ said Grace. ‘Joan looks beautiful and Duncan can’t stop smiling. Will you email me the list?’

  ‘Already have.’

  ‘Great, thanks. See you first thing Monday morning.’

  Wendy laughed. ‘Don’t forget to bring me some cake.’

  ‘I won’t. You certainly deserve it.’ Grace ended the call, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. She couldn’t imagine a single detective who wouldn’t be electrified by such a promising development.

  The 1992 rape and murder of Heather Bowyer in Southend-on-Sea was the most serious of the Case Remains Open files that Grace had inherited when she took over as SIO. No serious suspect had ever been in the frame, and previous cold case reviews and even a Crimewatch appeal had failed to offer new leads. The crime had taken place twenty-five years ago, not long after the advent of DNA fingerprinting but before the National DNA Database had been set up. At that point DNA could only be retrieved from bodily fluids such as blood or semen, and none had been retrieved at the scene that might identify a possible perpetrator. However, new techniques had been developed over the past decade that made it possible to get results from tiny traces left by physical contact with an object. When crime scene evidence from the Bowyer case was re-examined using these techniques, two DNA profiles had been discovered. One of them was only a partial, from inside a man’s leather glove, but the other, from the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, contained a full set of markers. The knife blade, left embedded in the nineteen-year-old victim’s back, had found its way between her ribs and perforated her aorta.

  The glove hadn’t simply been randomly lost: the partial sample from its lining shared enough markers with the profile from the knife to suggest that both could be from the same person. However, if the man had ever committed further crimes, he had escaped arrest, which meant that his DNA was not on the national database. Grace knew that if his profile had been added – a search was run every night to match new samples from those arrested that day to DNA from any previous crime scenes – she would already have been informed.

  By the time Grace came to review the Heather Bowyer murder file, other advances in DNA profiling had also made it possible to run a search for a familial match in the hope that a close relative of the unknown offender might be on the national database. While this, if they were lucky, could whittle down the pool of suspects from ‘could be anyone’ to perhaps a t
housand or more who shared the same DNA markers on their Y chromosome, it was expensive. The time-consuming job of tracking down and eliminating the male relatives of each match, possibly spread right across the country, would be prohibitive – unless that number could be meaningfully reduced using filters such as age, ethnicity and geographical location.

  Only when Grace learnt from Wendy that her own theory – that the killer was not a weekend visitor – was backed up by the fact that a couple of unusual markers in the DNA profile from the knife suggested he came from a long-standing local family, did the familial search become a gamble worth taking. Grace had then set about convincing Superintendent Pitman to let her argue her case before the deputy chief constable. She’d been thrilled when she’d finally been given the green light.

  And now she had a list on which to start work. Not only that, she had one name at the top, around which she could begin to gather intelligence immediately. The thought of the net closing in on a brutal killer who had escaped justice for twenty-five years was spine-tingling. Sometimes, she told herself, she really did have the best job in the world.

  She was checking her phone for Wendy’s email when Blake came looking for her.

  ‘Anything urgent?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, yes and no,’ she said. ‘It’s not a call-out, but Wendy has the results from the familial search on the Heather Bowyer case.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Yes, it’s fantastic.’

  ‘Duncan’s looking for you. He wants you to meet his mother.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ Grace knew that Duncan had been estranged from his family for many years, and that his mother’s presence here today meant a great deal to him, but her mind was already off and running along another track. ‘I can’t wait to get started on this,’ she said.

  ‘Twenty-five years, right?’ said Blake.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, can it hang on another few hours until the end of the reception?’

  She looked up at him. His tone seemed light and teasing, but was that a look of pity in his eyes?

  3