‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I did my best to record everything that I could, but I wasn’t on duty when the other women came forward, and I know that at least two of them withdrew their complaints – or were persuaded to.’ For the first time she looked embarrassed. ‘I also tipped off the local paper. I would never have dreamt of doing such a thing, but this man was a danger to women and we were failing in our duty. I resigned soon after.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ said Grace. ‘One last question. It’s recorded in your notes, without any comment, that each woman had lost a shoe. I wonder if you can fill in any more detail?’
Melanie frowned. ‘The first woman I dealt with was anxious that I write it down, but she wouldn’t explain why. I thought it was because he’d used a shoe to— You know, as an aggravated assault. So when I noticed that the second woman had also lost one of her shoes, I made a note of it.’
‘Did you ask either of them what happened to their shoes?’
‘I tried, but they were both in such a terrible state and I didn’t want to make it worse.’
‘What about whether the shoes were similar in any way?’
‘I don’t remember. I suppose I should have recorded it. Look, I’m not making excuses, but I had no training and Southend nick on a Saturday night was hardly the ideal place to win the trust of a woman who’d just been raped at knifepoint. I suppose I was relying on the medical examination and a later interview, but I wasn’t allowed to accompany them to the hospital and we never heard from them again.’
Melanie rose to her feet. ‘I know you need evidence, and I’ve not given you much more than gossip,’ she said, ‘but it’s been on my mind for a long time.’
‘You’ve been more helpful than you know,’ said Grace. ‘Thank you for coming in.’
As Blake showed Melanie out, Grace sat back down in the soft interview room, glad of a little space and time to herself. She tried to think through everything in order from the beginning. A familial DNA match linked a member of Deborah Shillingford’s family to the knife found embedded in Heather Bowyer’s back. Her brother Reece’s DNA was a partial match to the mixed DNA retrieved from the man’s leather glove also found at the scene, but not to the full profile on the murder weapon. But if Reece had been wearing gloves, then his DNA might not have transferred to the knife. And, even if Larry Nixon’s DNA proved to be an exact match to the knife, that could be because Larry had previously handled it in the family kitchen.
Could the opposite also be true? That Larry had worn gloves previously worn by his brother? He might have known to wipe away any fingerprints on the knife, but – justifiably ignorant of future advances in the science of DNA – unknowingly deposited his own epithelial cells there as he did so.
So far, the existence of a glove found at the scene of Heather’s murder had not been revealed to either the media or the Nixon family. Making sense of the DNA evidence was complicated, especially given how recent the science was, and she doubted that Larry’s grasp of the subject would be crystal-clear. It would be interesting to see how he reacted to the information that Reece’s partial DNA match wasn’t conclusive of guilt.
But she was getting ahead of herself: they wouldn’t have Larry’s own DNA results until after the weekend, and he might not even be a match to the profile on the knife.
She realised, with a sinking heart, that while finding a familial DNA match had indeed spectacularly narrowed down the search for a needle in a haystack, the DNA evidence alone was not going to rule either brother in or out. She had discovered not one, but two needles in her haystack.
26
The drive to Southend offered Grace a useful stretch of time in which to take soundings from Blake about Larry Nixon. She was unsure how to begin without it appearing that she continued to blame Carolyn for the loss of what was now clearly – to her, anyway – vital evidence: the clothes Larry had been wearing the night his brother and sister-in-law had died. Although she felt she had every right to be annoyed at the junior officer for failing to do her job properly, she also knew that she was no longer able to disentangle that from her feelings about what she’d glimpsed – or thought she’d glimpsed – the other night. Jealousy, she told herself, that’s what she’d felt. She had to own it for what it was.
She glanced at Blake behind the wheel. He gave her a brief smile before looking back at the road.
‘Have we missed a trick?’ she asked. ‘Could Larry, not Reece, be our man?’
‘Not much use speculating until we get the DNA results, is there?’ he said. ‘What’s made you suspect Larry all of a sudden?’
She ran through her arguments – that Larry could have invented Reece’s confession, set the fire at Reece’s house himself and conveniently got rid of his fire-damaged clothes.
‘So what you’re suggesting,’ Blake responded, ‘is that, as a young man, Larry was a serial rapist and a murderer and now, to escape arrest for those crimes, he’s also committed arson and fratricide?’
‘Don’t forget the murder of Kirsty Nixon.’
‘He’s kept it together pretty well over the intervening years.’
‘You could argue that if he’s narcissistic, controlled and calculating, then self-preservation would come high on his list.’
‘Which doesn’t exactly square with dashing impulsively into a burning building to rescue two strangers on the night of the Bowyer murder,’ Blake reminded her.
‘So you don’t buy it?’
‘If we get a match on the DNA it’ll be enough for an arrest,’ he said, ‘then we can interview him under caution, search his flat, comb through his entire life. If we turf something up, fine, otherwise I’m inclined to stick with Reece being a rapist who never meant to kill Heather Bowyer, and who spent his life doing his best to atone for it. Why else did he have those press cuttings in his attic and sit there with a bottle of whatever while his house burned down around him? And it accounts for why Kirsty was dead before the fire – he didn’t want her to suffer. I don’t see Larry bothering to risk killing her beforehand if she was already asleep in bed.’
Grace frowned. She knew Blake’s reasoning was right. She’d only met Reece Nixon for a few minutes, and yet every instinct screamed that Larry, not Reece, might be their man. ‘What if Reece had kept the cuttings because he’d always suspected Larry?’ she asked.
‘I think you’re stretching things to fit a theory,’ he said. ‘Stick to facts.’
‘What about this media conference later?’ she asked. ‘We have to give some response to that bloody nuisance of a podcast.’
‘Invite Larry to take part,’ Blake said promptly.
She laughed. ‘Of course! That’s so brilliant. See if he dares to shed crocodile tears in front of the national media! I’ll call Hilary and ask her to suggest it to Colin.’
Blake drove in silence while she spoke first to Hilary, and then to Colin, and then to Hilary once more. She looked up to find that they had arrived at their destination, an anonymous office block on the outskirts of Southend where Cara Chalkley worked as a claims negotiator for a large insurance company.
Grace let out a breath. ‘Right,’ she said, ’let’s see what was missed at the time about the reported rapes.’
As they entered the building and were directed to a lift to take them to the third floor, she felt a mix of emotions: anxiety on behalf of the woman about to be asked to relive an unresolved trauma, but also an adrenalin rush at the hope that this meeting might clarify the ambiguities at the heart of her investigation.
Cara Chalkley was waiting by the lifts as they emerged and greeted them matter-of-factly, explaining that she’d cleared it with her line manager to take as much time as they needed. In her mid-forties, with a tired face and unloved hair, she wore sensible shoes and looked as if she’d put on weight since buying the navy skirt and jacket that had probably cost a tenth of the smart business suit Melanie Riggs had been wearing. She led the way briskly to a small meeting room and appeared so completely unfazed b
y the reason for their visit that Grace almost wondered if they’d identified the wrong woman.
‘No, I remember it as if it was yesterday,’ Cara said as soon as they had settled around the bland office table. ‘It doesn’t upset me any more. It’s more like I’m watching a film of it happening to someone else, yet I can see it all absolutely clearly.’
‘Do you think you’d be able to recognise your assailant?’ Grace asked. ‘We have some photographs we’d like to show you.’
Michael and Anne had only been able to produce a couple of images of their father when he was in his twenties, one of them a wedding photograph from which the technical people reproduced a digital headshot. They’d done the same with a photograph of Larry Nixon from the contemporary newspaper coverage of his role in the Marineland fire. Both images had been compiled into a page of headshots with other men of similar age. The two brothers, at twenty-five and twenty-three, had been strikingly similar, and Grace wasn’t hopeful that, after all this time, anyone who hadn’t known them would be able to choose between them in a line-up.
Blake laid the sheet in front of Cara, who scanned the rows of faces, biting her lip nervously, but then shook her head. ‘Sorry, no. What I see in my “film” is only what I registered at the time. I know I must have seen his face when I got into the taxi, but you just see a face, don’t you, not a person? I think he was youngish, white, and I don’t remember anything else, not even whether he had long hair or a beard. By the time I’d realised we weren’t going the right way he’d put on a hood, like a balaclava. And I’d had a lot to drink.’
Grace watched Blake note down the details. The statement taken by a different police officer – not Melanie Riggs – when Cara reported the attack had been sketchy, but what Cara was describing could so easily have been Heather Bowyer’s experience also.
‘Can you remember anything about the car?’ asked Grace, as Blake put the headshots aside. ‘Colour, make, company logo?’ She held her breath, hoping against hope that Cara would identify one of Owen Nixon’s taxicabs.
‘No, sorry.’
Grace hid her disappointment. ‘Where did he take you?’ she asked.
‘Southchurch Park. He had a knife. Dragged me out of the car and kept it at my throat.’
‘Can you describe the knife?’
‘Like a big kitchen knife.’
‘Like this?’ asked Blake, showing her a photograph of the knife used to murder Heather Bowyer.
Cara nodded and then pressed her lips together and looked away quickly. Blake placed the photograph back out of sight in the file from which he’d taken it.
‘We’re sorry to have to inflict this on you,’ said Grace, ‘but we hope we’re getting close to identifying the man who raped you.’
‘How? After so long? Why are you even bothering? No one did at the time.’
‘We think the assault you reported may be linked to a murder inquiry,’ said Grace.
Cara nodded, her silence a sign of how hard she was trying to hold on to her carapace of competence and efficiency. ‘You want to know what happened?’
‘Please, if it’s not too distressing.’
‘I was nineteen,’ she began after a pause. ‘Had a row with my boyfriend and walked off, hailed a cab. I wasn’t thinking about what route we were taking, barely realised we’d stopped until he’d opened the door and grabbed me. He already had this black hood on and a big knife at my throat. Bent my arm up behind my back. It hurt so much I thought he was going to break it. He dragged me some way into the park, threw me down on my front and knelt on my back while he pulled off my shirt. When I yelled, he knelt harder. He shoved my shirt into my mouth and tied it around the back of my head and yanked up my arms and somehow wrapped it around my wrists, too. I don’t know how he did it. It was only loosely tied, but I was too frightened to move anyway. Then he rolled me over onto my back. That really hurt. My shoulder was sore for weeks. He showed me the knife, then did a few little jabs with it at my throat, here’ – she touched a spot beneath her right ear – ‘then he reached down and took off my shoes and then my pants.’
Barely any of this detail had made it into the official statement, yet Grace couldn’t believe this wasn’t the story told to the police at the time: evidence, perhaps, if Melanie Riggs was right, of DI Jupp’s pernicious influence.
‘Did he wear a condom?’ Grace asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I couldn’t see what he was doing.’
‘In your statement you mentioned losing a shoe.’
‘I didn’t lose it,’ Cara said vehemently. ‘He took it. That’s why I insisted that the officer who questioned me wrote it down.’
Grace couldn’t help glancing at Blake, but tried to hide her elation. ‘Can you tell me any more?’
‘After he got my pants off he put one of my shoes on the ground right next to my head. Kept repositioning it so it was exactly where he wanted it. Looked at it the whole time he—’
‘Did you see him take it afterwards?’
‘No,’ said Cara. ‘He’d rolled me back over so my face was pushed into the ground. I was too scared to move. It wasn’t that hard to untangle myself, but I was afraid he was going to kill me.’
‘Did you hear him leave?’
Cara shook her head. ‘I waited ages to make sure he wasn’t still hanging around.’
‘Did he ever speak?’
‘He must have done when I got in the cab, but I don’t remember a voice.’
‘What about a smell? Or what he was wearing?’
Cara shook her head once more. ‘No, sorry, I don’t remember.’
‘And the shoe?’
‘Gone. The other one was there, so I looked for it because it would’ve made it easier to get out of there. It was late and I didn’t have the courage to go banging on doors around the park and wake people up. He may have thrown it into the bushes or something, but I’m convinced he took it. All the time he was—He never took his eyes off it. He hardly looked at me.’
‘What was the shoe like?’
‘White, only cheap plastic but a classic stiletto.’
‘Was it the left or right one that you couldn’t find?’
Cara thought for a moment. ‘Left.’ She cupped her mouth and gave a gulping, wailing sob. Her eyes filled with tears and she looked away, fighting to regain control. After a couple of deep breaths, she looked from Grace to Blake and back. ‘You actually believe me,’ she said flatly. ‘You really do, don’t you?’
‘We don’t think you were the only woman he attacked,’ said Grace.
Cara’s face puckered and big tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘It was like no one ever believed me.’
Grace dug in her bag, found a clean tissue and handed it over.
‘The policeman I spoke to laughed when I told him about the shoe,’ Cara continued. ‘Said now I was gilding the lily. Even my boyfriend said I must’ve gone along with it, that I went off with a taxi driver just to spite him.’
‘Were you medically examined?’
‘They sent me to the hospital. I had to sit in A&E with all the Saturday-night drunks. I’d had enough by then. I know I should have stuck it out, but all I wanted was to go home, lock the door and have a hot bath. When I went back to the police the next day they said that proved I’d been lying all along.’
‘I’m so sorry you didn’t receive proper respect and support,’ said Grace. ‘It’s inexcusable.’
Cara took a deep breath and sat up straight. ‘Not being believed, that was almost worse. Like being raped all over again. I can’t tell you what it means to see in your eyes that you don’t think I’m lying.’
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Grace. ‘As a detective in these situations, I’m always concerned that all we’re doing is making things worse.’
Cara shook her head firmly. ‘You haven’t, I promise.’
‘One last question before we go,’ said Grace. ‘Can you recall if he was wearing gloves?’
Cara thought about it and t
hen made an expression of surprise. ‘He was! I’d forgotten I knew that, but yes, he was.’
‘You’re sure?’ asked Grace. ‘I don’t want to put ideas in your head if you’re not certain.’
‘Black gloves. Maybe leather.’ She shuddered. ‘I can remember the feel of them.’
‘OK, thank you.’ Grace rose to her feet and handed Cara her card. ‘If you remember anything else, however insignificant, do please get in touch. And again, I can only apologise for how inconsiderately you were treated at the time.’
Cara walked them out. A lift arrived promptly and, as Grace and Blake went in, Cara held her hand across the open doors. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘I don’t know if it’s helpful or not, but it was like the only proof I had – for me, anyway – that I hadn’t made it all up, so I never threw away the other shoe.’
Cara took her hand away and the lift doors began to close. Grace jabbed at the buttons, eager to tell Cara that they would want to take the shoe away for forensic examination as soon as possible.
‘I’m not sure exactly where it’ll be,’ Cara said doubtfully, ‘but I’ll have put it somewhere. I’ll search my cupboards and give you a call.’
Grace thanked her, crossing her fingers that the shoe would be easily found, and was about to press the button to close the doors when Cara once again held them back. ‘You will let me know, won’t you?’ she asked. ‘As soon as you catch him?’
Grace promised and, as the lift descended, turned to Blake, her eyes shining. ‘If she finds that shoe, it might not mean anything for the investigation, but somehow it makes me feel like we’re getting close, can almost reach out and touch him.’
‘We’ll nail this, whatever it takes.’ He smiled and raised his hand. For a split second she thought he was about to caress her cheek, but, as the lift stopped and the doors opened, all he did was lightly touch her shoulder to usher her out before him.
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