Wrong Way Home

by Isabelle Grey

  ‘Only about how lucky it was that he did. I can’t believe how modest he was afterwards. He never looked for the limelight, had to be badgered into giving interviews.’

  Grace realised she’d probably gleaned everything she could from his recollection of that night and, taking a note of his contact details, thanked him for taking the time and trouble to come in.

  ‘No worries,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t far out of my way. But seriously, if you think he’s a suspect for anything so appalling, you’re barking up the wrong tree.’

  Grace saw him out and climbed the stairs to the MIT office, mulling over how one of Kevin Barnes’s patients might feel if they were told that they owed some life-saving diagnosis or treatment to a chain of events connecting them to a multiple rapist. Would they care? Did it matter? Did a subsequent good contribute in any way towards cancelling or diminishing an earlier evil? These were certainly not questions a police detective had to answer, yet they intrigued her.

  As Grace entered the office, Carolyn looked up. ‘Can I have a word, boss?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The constable followed Grace to her desk and remained standing. ‘Have you heard the latest podcast, boss?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ said Grace. ‘Should I?’

  ‘Well, you know I thought someone was following me yesterday?’

  Grace went on the alert. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think it was him,’ said Carolyn. ‘Freddie Craig. He obviously has no idea who I am, but he describes stalking a woman in Southend. I followed the same route and was wearing the clothes he describes.’

  Given her misgivings of the night before, Grace’s immediate reaction was relief that Carolyn’s stalker was definitely not Larry Nixon, but she was infuriated that Freddie Craig was continuing to insert himself into her investigation. ‘That’s not on,’ she told Carolyn. ‘I’ll listen, and if necessary ask Hilary to have a word with him. It’ll be less heavy-handed if it comes from her. Are you worried by it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I mean, it’s difficult to say how much he’s doing for effect, to create a more visceral response, and how much might be real. I’ve listened to quite a few of the well-known true-crime podcasts. I think they’re great. And they do try to make stuff sound weird and scary. He might just be being clever and spooking his listeners into believing that he’s actually losing the plot and turning into a stalker.’

  ‘Or?’ asked Grace.

  ‘Or he’s actually turning into a stalker.’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ said Grace. ‘But if you’re following up with any of the women you spoke to in Southend, don’t go alone, OK?’

  ‘Sure. Thanks, boss.’

  Grace expected Carolyn to go, but she hovered in front of her desk. ‘Is there something else?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, boss. I would’ve mentioned this, but I wanted to follow it up before talking to you.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘A couple of the sex workers I spoke to asked if we were looking into the missing girls. So I did some digging, and Southend does seem to have had more than its fair share of young women reported missing.’

  ‘Did the sex workers see this as connected to the 1992 rapes?’

  ‘No. It’s all much later.’

  ‘Are they saying the young women who went missing are linked to each other in some way?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So then what’s your thinking about why it sheds light on our investigation?’

  ‘I don’t really know, but I thought it was worth looking into.’

  Grace bit back her impatience. It was good that Carolyn was both thorough and prepared to act to some degree on her own initiative, but right now their priority had to be uncovering the evidence required to charge Larry Nixon. She made an effort to speak kindly. ‘Firstly, there’s no reason to suppose that missing persons aren’t adequately dealt with at Southend nick,’ she said, ‘and I seriously don’t want to tread on their toes any more than I have to. And secondly, we simply don’t have time to go chasing up leads that can’t be justified strategically.’

  ‘Sorry, boss.’

  ‘Make a note in the strategy file, but please concentrate on the work in hand.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘OK, thanks.’

  Grace reviewed what Carolyn had said about Freddie Craig. She couldn’t see how he could have known that Carolyn was a detective – unless his stalking behaviour was more insidious than it appeared, in which case he would definitely have to be warned off. But even if his pursuit of one of her officers had been inadvertent, his intrusion was a gratuitous sideshow and an unwelcome distraction.

  She decided to listen to the podcast without delay. Freddie’s ‘ride’ was coming to an end when Blake tapped on the partition of her cubicle and waited until she had removed her earbuds.

  ‘So you’ve heard it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m inclined to go with Carolyn’s assessment, that it’s amateur dramatics.’

  ‘He talks about wanting to take her down,’ said Blake indignantly.

  ‘He makes it plain it’s all in his head. He’s committed no crime.’ She observed the stubborn line of his mouth. ‘I’ve told her not to go back to Southend on her own, and I’ll make sure Hilary knows.’

  ‘OK.’ He sounded a little mollified. ‘I’ve just had Owen Nixon on the phone.’

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘You’re not going to believe this one.’

  ‘So Freddie Craig isn’t the only one stretching his imagination?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Owen Nixon is now claiming that he completely forgot to mention that he might have another son.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He says that he caught his wife messing around with another man, and then she discovered she was pregnant. She insisted it was Owen’s child, but he refused to have it in the house. Says he told her to get it adopted. He insists it was a boy, but can’t remember when the child was born or the other man’s name.’

  ‘It’s a blatant red herring,’ she said angrily.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Blake, ‘but he knows we’ll have to check it out because otherwise it could derail a trial.’

  ‘He’s wasting his time. It’s Larry’s DNA on the knife, and only a twin will have the same DNA as Larry.’

  ‘Except he wouldn’t have to be a match to the knife,’ Blake reminded her. ‘A match to the mixed DNA in the glove would be sufficient. After all, we’d have been willing to run with that if we’d stuck with Reece as our prime suspect. The mere existence of a mysterious brother is enough to introduce reasonable doubt.’

  ‘It’s bullshit!’ she said. ‘He’s playing games. How quickly can we knock this on the head?’

  ‘We can try his in-laws,’ he said, ‘although Owen said he hasn’t been in touch with any of his wife’s family for years. Her name was Theresa, known as Terri, that’s all he’d give me.’

  ‘Deborah said her mother had died in 1982, not long before she left home. Put Duncan on to it. If anyone can get to the bottom of it, he will.’

  ‘Will do.’ Blake turned to go.

  ‘Wait a second. Did Owen specifically ask to speak to you?’

  ‘He came through on my direct line. But then I did give him my card that day at his house.’

  ‘Do you think his contacting you directly has anything to do with the funny handshake?’ she asked.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘If there was some kind of corrupt relationship between Owen and DI Jupp back in the day, maybe he still imagines the police are open to negotiation.’

  ‘That I might make him an offer, you mean? Come to some arrangement to make it all go away?’

  ‘At the very least he’s supplied us with a plausible excuse to back off if we choose to,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put anything past him,’ said Blake. ‘Should I play along? Perhaps I can get the evidence to charge him with attempting to pervert the course of just
ice?’

  ‘We should hang fire until Duncan’s had a chance to check out his story,’ she said. ‘And then we can see how far Owen pushes it.’

  ‘Right you are, boss.’

  ‘Thanks, Blake.’

  With a smile, he made a mock salute and went off to speak to Duncan.

  Grace swivelled her chair so she could look out of her window. The day was blustery, the wind blowing dead leaves from the trees down onto the road where they spun around in the wake of passing cars. Owen’s diversionary tactic surely meant only one thing: that he knew Reece had been innocent because he knew not only what Larry had done all those years ago, but also that it was Larry who had set the fire at Reece’s house. Owen’s attempt to cover up for his surviving son, his blue-eyed boy, was tantamount to an admission of Larry’s guilt.

  She opened her email and scanned down the list of new messages until she found the one she wanted. Wendy’s estimate of the cost of the forensic test on the cap of the petrol canister was eye-watering. Never mind. She wasn’t going to risk Colin telling her it was too much, so typed a quick response, telling Wendy to go ahead.

  45

  It’s an obsession. I get that now. Twenty-five years ago, taxi driver Reece Nixon drove around Southend looking to tempt a girl into his car so he could drive her far away. He played the Eurythmics song ‘Love Is A Stranger’. It’s that beat, that repetitive rhythm of wanting, wanting, wanting, that made what was coming – the rape and murder of nineteen-year-old Heather Bowyer – inevitable.

  I’m Freddie Craig. Welcome back to Stories from the Fire.

  I said I wanted to go inside the mind of a murderer, and now I really feel like that’s where I am. I’ve talked about fate and destiny as if a killer and his victim were star-crossed lovers. That was because I’d read Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky when I was at uni, and imagined that great forces of guilt and evil and innocence had to be at play. But I was wrong. It’s nothing like that. It’s simply an earworm that won’t let you go. The beat of a song that says ‘I want you’ until you can’t resist and it becomes like the beat of your heart in a world where you can no longer imagine this not happening. You reach a point where you acknowledge that you can’t – or won’t – stop yourself, that you’re going to cross a line, go too far, do the thing that, even an hour ago, you told yourself was only a fantasy, an idea to toy with on a dull night cruising around Southend.

  It’s no longer even about those thoughts that brought me here. All the hurt and anger and resentment have been reduced to an insistent voice that keeps telling me this is what I want, so do it. This is what I want, so do it. It’s an obsession.

  I’ve already found my victim. But she’s not what’s important to me any more. Making my selection, that was an earlier phase. It’s gone now and I’ve moved on to the next level. That makes this sound like it’s some kind of online game. Believe me, it’s not. This is so much better. This is vivid and real, my very own personal game that I can play any way I like. And it’s rigged in my favour.

  I’ve followed her home, my blonde-haired woman in her tight black jeans. She can strut her stuff as much as she likes, but she’s not going to win. It’s not about what she wants or thinks or expects me to do. She can’t walk out on me. Can’t change her mind about being with me. Doesn’t get to tell me what’s happening. I’m in charge here.

  I’m outside her house now, watching her move about behind the blind that covers her kitchen window. She’s on her own. There’s nothing she can do to stop me watching. She doesn’t even know I’m here. And it’ll stay that way until I decide to change the rules. My rules.

  Somewhere in her life I’ll find a weak spot, a place where I can step in and tempt her far away. And then the beat goes on. The things I want to do. The pumping rhythm of my heart. I want it, I want it, I want it. An incessant beat that will carry me over the line. I can’t wait.

  And I get to carry my secret with me all the time. No one else knows I’m a superhero. I realise how great it can be to possess a secret. To be a secret. Part of me wishes that other people could sense it, feel that I’m not who they think I am, that I’m so much more scary and in control than they realise. But that would dilute the power of being alone with my knowledge.

  How on earth could Reece Nixon give all this up? He had tasted this power, exercised this incredible potential within himself, and yet left it behind and went off to run a landscape gardening business. Seriously, how did he not go mad with frustration? Or did the secret knowledge of what he’d done keep him going, even when annoying customers complained or the bank wouldn’t extend his overdraft and his wife nagged at him?

  You’d think that, when he was finally going to be unmasked, he’d have longed for everybody to understand who he really was, how badly they’d underestimated him all these years. That should have been his moment of glory.

  But then, maybe it was. After all, he chose his own end and went out in a blaze of glory. Maybe arson was his way of demonstrating that he’d remained true to his vision right to the end.

  I’m Freddie Craig. Thank you for accompanying me on this journey and listening to Stories from the Fire.

  46

  Grace played the latest podcast on her journey to work in the morning. Freddie’s insinuating voice gave her such creeps that, finding Carolyn wasn’t yet in the office, she felt a sudden spike of anxiety. She looked around, but the rest of the team seemed to be at their desks – all except Blake. Unbidden, all the regret and jealousy she’d struggled to push aside since seeing them in the bar returned like a tidal wave.

  She retreated to her cubicle, from where she could keep an eye on the door. Five minutes later Blake and Carolyn came in together. They were laughing, and Blake touched her lightly on the arm as they separated. Blake stashed the sports bag he was carrying under his desk. Was it an overnight bag? Grace felt sick with misery, but swiftly ordered herself not to be railroaded by disappointment over something that was her own stupid fault. She rose to her feet and made herself walk calmly over to where Carolyn sat.

  ‘I was worried about you.’ She spoke as lightly as she could manage. ‘I don’t like the tone of that last podcast one little bit.’

  Carolyn smiled. ‘Yes, I heard it too,’ she said. ‘But don’t worry, I live in an attic flat, and there’s no blind on my kitchen window.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ said Grace, noticing Blake glance over attentively. ‘Except that he’s stalking someone, even if it isn’t you.’

  ‘I doubt it, boss,’ said Carolyn, ‘I reckon he’s making it all up.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘He’s playing to his audience,’ she said. ‘Ever since the Courier wrote about him, the podcasts have been all over social media. I’ve seen lots of chatroom speculation and online comment. Most of it is the usual trolls egging him on, so I reckon he’s just giving them what they want. The more outrageous he is, the more the podcast will be talked about and the more followers he’ll get.’

  Grace still didn’t like it. ‘But what if another woman is in danger?’

  Carolyn shook her head. ‘It was me he was following the other day. There was definitely a man behind me, and in that podcast he described exactly what I was wearing and the route I took.’

  ‘Should someone have a word with him, boss?’ asked Blake.

  ‘Hilary was going to anyway,’ said Grace, conflicted that she should find his chivalry so painful merely because it was directed towards another woman. ‘She said she might raise it with the Courier, too, if they’re supporting him. But I still want you to watch your back,’ she told Carolyn, ‘just in case.’

  ‘Understood. And thanks. But I honestly don’t think any of it is serious.’

  Grace turned with relief to Duncan, taking refuge in the pressing needs of work. ‘Any progress on the two rape complainants?’

  ‘Yes, boss. Unfortunately it looks like Jodie Miller may have passed away.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  D
uncan nodded. ‘But I found Rhona Geary on Facebook and have left her a message vague enough to hope she’ll get back to us.’

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘And the search for Owen Nixon’s phantom offspring?’

  ‘No births registered to Owen Nixon’s wife other than the three children we know about.’

  ‘Hardly a surprise,’ she said.

  ‘Terri Nixon was barely sixteen when she had Deborah, her first child,’ said Duncan, ‘and there wasn’t much of a gap between her and the next two babies, so if there was another son, it’s more likely he was born after Larry. That was 1969, and then Terri died in 1982.’

  ‘Plus, if he’s to be a credible suspect, he had to be old enough in 1992 to drive a car,’ said Grace.

  ‘And strong enough to overpower his victims,’ said Blake.

  ‘So he had to be born between 1969 and 1975 at the latest,’ said Duncan. ‘Not too big a window. I’ll keep searching, boss.’

  ‘Good, thanks. It’s important that we can show a judge that we’ve done all we reasonably can to follow this up.’

  Grace went to sit at her own desk. While it was aggravating to have to waste precious resources on Owen Nixon’s brazen attempt to muddy the waters over the DNA evidence, she was glad of the distraction. She felt ambushed by a regret she had never fully allowed herself to feel. The sight of Blake and Carolyn arriving together, relaxed and laughing, and of him stashing away his overnight bag, confirmed the fear that until now she’d promised herself wasn’t real. But it was. He’d moved on. There was no chance of Grace resuming their affair. Why had she let him go? Why had she not seen what she was truly giving up?

  She checked herself. She wasn’t some broken-hearted schoolgirl. She was the senior investigating officer in what was turning out to be one of the most significant cases of her career.

  She forced her mind back to Owen Nixon’s arrogant power play. They would have to hope that, if Duncan’s searches produced nothing, and Owen – as he surely must – failed to come up with any convincing proof of his assertion, then no judge could instruct a jury to take into account an unidentifiable sibling whose DNA might in theory be a match to the crime scene evidence.