by Sibel Hodge
‘Nevertheless, it’s what I want you to do,’ he snapped.
‘But what vehicle?’ I said. ‘Tracy didn’t own a car. She didn’t drive. We’ve found no associates she could be with. And I think it’s highly unlikely she met someone out of the blue and suddenly hatched a plan to do a Bonnie and Clyde with them.’
Greene treated me to a frown. ‘Check petrol stations between Berrisford and Turpinfield, as well. Maybe they stopped to fill up with fuel and were caught on camera.’ He walked towards the Ordinance Survey map pinned to the whiteboard. ‘Extend the house-to-house enquiries, as well.’ With his fingertip he circled an area around the Jamesons’ property of about ten miles, which contained two small villages. ‘I want every house in the surrounding villages visited. Someone might’ve seen this vehicle or Stevens and her accomplice without realising the significance.’
‘We’ve only got three bodies on this! When are we going to have time to visit all those houses in the neighbouring villages and go through all CCTV and check petrol stations? Why waste time doing that? We need to be searching for the connection between the Jamesons and Stevens or her accomplice. That’s where we’ll find answers. This wasn’t a burglary that got out of hand. There’s another motive here.’
‘There is no connection! You’re reading far more into this, as usual. Or are you going to come out with some bizarre X-Files theory for this case, too?’ He sounded irritated as he referred to my difference of opinion with him about a previous murder, where everyone else had been convinced we had the offender in custody. Still, they’d been wrong about that, too, and I’d been right. A good detective had to look at all possibilities. The first, most obvious answer wasn’t necessarily the right one.
‘I don’t want to hear any more wild theories with absolutely no evidence to back them up,’ he said.
I opened my mouth to object but shut it again. I’d just be wasting my breath.
‘Is everyone clear on what they’re doing?’ Greene asked.
Everyone said yes and he left the room.
‘It’s a waste of time,’ I said. ‘But still, if that’s what he wants, then that’s what we’ll do.’
Becky raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re rolling over a bit too easily. You don’t normally take any notice of what he says. Are you ill?’
I just grinned at her.
‘I know that look,’ she said. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Bollocks to what he says.’ I wandered over to the window that overlooked the car park, thinking. ‘I’m going to go to London Road to check out the shop’s CCTV instead of you, Ronnie. The answer’s there, from the last night Tracy was seen before her phone was switched off, I’m sure of it. But Becky, I want you to make a start on going through any CCTV and traffic camera footage for the ridiculous multitude of routes Greene wants us to go through, along with contacting any petrol stations and getting them to set aside their footage for you to look at.’
‘I’ll be here for a year! Like you said, we don’t even know what vehicle we’re looking for. And none of the villages around Turpinfield have CCTV.’ Becky pulled a face.
‘Then it’ll just make you look busy until I can work out where we should go from here. At least you both won’t get into trouble for not following orders.’
‘What shall I do, then?’ Ronnie asked.
Down below, I saw Greene striding towards the entrance to the nick. He pressed a button to release the sliding gate and stepped out on to the pavement, looking at his watch, then looking up the main road.
Ronnie was talking but I didn’t hear him. I was too busy watching a shiny new BMW pulling up along the main road beside Greene. Watching Greene open the passenger door and climb inside. Watching the vehicle drive away. Whisked off to another stupid time-wasting meeting.
‘Guv?’ Ronnie prompted me.
I turned around and said to Ronnie, ‘You can start on the house-to-house in the villages nearest to Turpinfield.’ Then turned to Becky. ‘And if Greene asks where I am, say I’m doing the same.’
Ronnie nodded and gathered up a local map book and some photos of Tracy before leaving the office.
A short while later I left Becky tearing her hair out with frustration and drove to London Road.
The five shops that had private cameras were a newsagent, a chemist, a clothes shop, a Tesco Express and a jeweller. It took until the late afternoon for me to go through all the CCTV footage of Tuesday night that their cameras had recorded while they’d been shut. Some of them were only pointing at their own frontage so had no good view of the street. A few had captured Alice and Tracy arriving at 10.46 p.m., walking down the street. I saw them stop outside the chemist and talk for a moment. I saw some of the other girls I’d spoken to on the street milling about nearby. Then Alice hugged Tracy before moseying up to a vehicle that had stopped, the driver winding his window down. Alice got in the car and waved at Tracy, who walked further down the road to her patch at the corner where it met Devon Crescent and disappeared out of view. Then nothing. There were no more sightings of her that night from the angle of the CCTVs.
By the time I left London Road I felt deflated. I arrived back at the Jamesons’ house in the early evening to do something I hoped would be much more productive. SOCO had finished there yesterday so the house was empty. I had no clues to go on. No evidence that would point me in a particular direction. I was no further forward, with a brick wall looming in my face. And whenever I got to that stage, I liked to go back to the scene of the crime. I’d missed something. Something important. I had to think like Stevens and her accomplice. Feel like them. Act like they did.
I parked my car and got out, surveying the area – the main house, the driveway that led towards some outbuildings to the left and right of the farmhouse.
No one had come forward about having seen a vehicle that day in the lane and no useful tyre tracks had been found by forensics, but they would’ve had to have come up the driveway. So why did they go round the back of the house and enter from the rear patio doors? The soil prints indicated the offenders only went as far into the lounge as the coffee table in front of the sofa. They left the same way. Why not just knock on the front door and then force the Jamesons back inside with the gun? Why risk being seen wandering around by the Jamesons, who could’ve called the police, before they made their move?
I let myself in the front door and the putrid smell of death hit me. The finality of the Jamesons’ murder angered me again, reminding me how tenuous our existence was. One minute here, the next, obliterated.
I headed straight into the lounge and stood next to the coffee table, in the area where the shooter had stood and looked around the room.
I extended my hand like I was holding a gun and pointed at where Mike would’ve been standing when he was shot. Then I swung around and faced the wall to the side of the sofa, pointing to where Jan Jameson’s blood was spattered across it.
I kept turning everything over in my mind. Less and less about this case was making sense to me. A prostitute had disappeared on Tuesday night. Her phone had been turned off somehow shortly after and hadn’t been used since. She’d ended up fifty-five miles away in a tiny little hamlet she’d never been to before, supposedly to rob the Jamesons, even though there were empty houses nearby. Even though there were thousands of places to break in to closer to Berrisford. Even though she’d never done anything remotely like it before and had no known associates involved in anything similar. And after the Jamesons were shot, Tracy and her accomplice had still not taken Jan’s handbag and jewellery or Mike’s wallet.
Tracy Stevens had obviously been here. Had she fired the shot and her accomplice was also around five feet tall, the one who’d been standing next to Jan Jameson? Or had her accomplice murdered the couple? I’d quipped to Greene about Bonnie and Clyde, but I thought that was pretty near the mark. Why would Tracy suddenly meet up with someone and decide to go on a shooting spree?
I looked at the book left open and face down on the middle
of the sofa, as if someone had placed it there intentionally. It hadn’t fallen in that position. There was a bookmark on the sofa seat next to it, but it hadn’t been used to mark the page. The cover showed a historical romance, and although it was possible Mike had been reading it, I doubted it. Stereotypical or not, it was more likely Jan had been sitting on the sofa, reading it at some point before they were killed. Denise had been a big reader. She’d loved the bonkbusters. She’d also loved paperbacks, the feel of them in her hand, the smell of them. She’d used several bookmarks over the years because she hated folding down the corners of the page to mark her spot. She’d never placed it face down and open like this one was because it made the spine crack and the pages could fall out.
I picked up the novel and flicked through it, finding no turned-down corners, no repeated cracking of the spine that would be obvious if she’d always put her books down that way. So for someone who must’ve been fastidious about using a bookmark, why hadn’t Jan used it? She’d tidied the house before they were murdered; the fresh vacuum marks attested to that. Maybe she’d been sitting on the sofa relaxing for a while with a novel and then she’d been disturbed with no time to slip the bookmark between the pages, so she’d turned it face down instead to mark where she was. And if so, what did that mean? She’d seen Tracy and her accomplice appear at the patio door while she was reading? If she’d felt threatened by strangers in her rear garden, wouldn’t her first thought have been to run or call the police? Her landline handset was on the coffee table, which would’ve been in easy reach if she’d been in the lounge. Surely, she wouldn’t have placed the book down neatly first. Unless she hadn’t been reading it at all before she was killed and it was completely inconsequential. Or she hadn’t felt threatened by them because she knew them.
I picked up the cordless handset, now dusted with fingerprint powder, and pressed the button to make a call. Nothing happened; the battery was dead. Stupid of me not to have checked before. I wondered if it had run out of juice since the Jamesons had been killed or before.
I put the handset back down and glanced around again, pictured Jan putting the book down, seeing Tracy and her accomplice at the door. If Jan didn’t know them, she would’ve been scared. Maybe her first thought was to run out of the lounge to the front door, but they shouted out to her to stop, forced her at gunpoint against the wall. Had Mike come in the room then, alerted by the noise? But if Jan and Mike had cooperated with them, why had Tracy and co. felt the need to shoot them at all? Unless Jan and Mike could easily identify them? And if they could identify them, how the hell did the Jamesons know them?
I blew out a frustrated breath. I was just going round in circles.
I sighed and opened the patio doors, stepped outside on to the terrace. Then I positioned the door at the angle it had been open at when Paula had arrived, using the crime scene photos as a guide.
I moved backwards and stared at the door. Then I got closer and looked at the three palm prints belonging to Tracy Stevens, highlighted with fingerprint powder from the SOCOs.
Greene’s opinion was that Tracy had pressed her hands to the glass when she was looking inside to see if the property was empty so she could burgle it. It was now later than the estimated time frame when the Jamesons were killed but even so, the light didn’t hit the glass at all, so there was no reflection bouncing back at me. Tracy wouldn’t have needed to stand against it and peer inside. They were big doors, so I could see perfectly clearly into the lounge from even ten metres away. And in any case, if that’s what Tracy had been doing, surely she would’ve cupped her hands around her face on the glass to see better, meaning she would’ve left two edges of palm prints, one for each hand either side of her face. But she hadn’t. She’d left three, solid right-hand palm prints, all overlapping each other. She couldn’t have been using her hand as leverage to slide the door closed behind her because it was left open, so what had she been doing? She was savvy enough to turn her phone off so no one could trace her location but stupid enough to leave her palm prints here? Didn’t make sense.
What was I missing?
Tracy had left traces of grey powder on the ridges of her hand prints. Where had that come from? What was it? Concrete? Dust? Paint? Where had she been in the hours between Tuesday night and the day of the Jamesons’ murder? A construction site? A DIY shop? A derelict building?
Tracy had disappeared into thin air from London Road.
Disappeared without a trace.
I clenched my jaw, thinking it was unlikely for Tracy to be able to keep this much of a low profile. She’d need to find cash from somewhere for food and yet her bank account hadn’t been touched.
I paced up and down, trying to make things fit.
Jan didn’t feel threatened enough to reach for the phone when she saw Tracy. She spotted her at the patio door, put the book down, and what? Opened the door to her? Why?
Jan recognised her.
Or
Jan recognised something or someone.
I stopped pacing and stared again at the palm prints, head tilted.
I stepped closer to the patio door. Pressed my right palm against it. Removed my hand and pressed again, slightly overlapping the first. Then I did it again, mimicking the exact pattern Tracy had left. I stared at it some more, then I repeated the action over again but faster. Three times in quick succession.
And that’s when it hit me. The only plausible reason I could think of. What if Tracy had disappeared as in not missing. Not hiding. What if she’d been taken? What if Tracy hadn’t been the one to switch her phone off?
Tracy had banged on the door with a flat, open hand because she’d been trying to attract the Jamesons’ attention, not because she wanted to rob or hurt them. Jan hadn’t reached for the phone because she’d seen a woman at the door who obviously needed help, who was distressed, and Jan hadn’t felt threatened at that point. Tracy was fleeing from someone. Someone who’d abducted her on Tuesday night. She came to the rear of the farmhouse because she’d never arrived in a vehicle in the first place. Then Tracy’s kidnapper had caught up with her. Tracy wasn’t standing next to Jan to restrain her, she was standing there because they were both cowering together from someone who had a gun. It really was random because the Jamesons weren’t the target. They had never been the target. They were just in the way. And they were witnesses.
I turned around, my back to the doors, my gaze scanning the area. The woods dead ahead in the distance. The fields to my right that led to the stables. The high rapeseed fields of Bill Graves’s land to my left.
But which direction had Tracy come from? How had she ended up here? And where was she now?
THE VIGILANTE
Chapter 39
He was mid-twenties. Dark-haired. But he wasn’t Jimmy Delaney.
As he swung the door open lethargically, hair mussed up, yawning, unaware of and completely oblivious to the danger, I shouldered it hard.
He was already stumbling backwards when I tasered him square in the chest. He dropped like a lead weight, the shock rendering him speechless. Two seconds, max, from the time he opened it until the time I was inside, with the door kicked shut behind me.
After the spasms from the taser shock stopped, I flipped him over and plasticuffed his wrists together, then sat him up against the wall.
I drew my Glock and quickly cleared the area. The place was tiny. A minute, open-plan flat with a lounge/kitchen, one bedroom – single bed in the corner, one chest of drawers – and one door that led to a small bathroom, which was empty. I reholstered my weapon and turned my attention to the bloke who was now regaining his senses.
His eyes huge with fear, he panted through his mouth. The smell of ammonia filled my nostrils from where he’d pissed himself.
‘Where’s Jimmy?’ I said.
‘What? I . . . I don’t . . . know. He doesn’t . . . live . . . here, man!’ More panting as he struggled to get the words out.
‘Where does he live?’
�
��I . . . don’t know!’
‘He used this address for his dole money and he uses it for his bank account. So, I’ll ask you one more time. Which is pretty generous of me, really. And if I still don’t get an answer, I’ll shoot you in the head. Where. Is. Jimmy?’
Tears filled his eyes. ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t live here! I let him stay when he got out of lockup, but he ain’t lived here for ages. Honestly, man. You have to believe me. I don’t know where he is. He just comes and gets his post every now and then.’
I did believe him. My gut told me he wasn’t lying. ‘Who are you?’
‘R . . . Rob.’
‘Rob, who?’
‘Rob Brown.’
‘Right, Rob. You’d better tell me everything you know about Jimmy. And fast.’ I drew back my coat showing the Glock in its holster.
His eyes bulged on seeing the weapon. He sucked in a deep breath and nodded manically. ‘What do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything. Just don’t . . . You won’t kill me, will you?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet. Start talking and I’ll make up my mind.’
He gulped in another breath, snivelling with snot, saliva dribbling down his chin. ‘He hangs out with the Parkers now. Brett and Connor. Jimmy met Brett when he was inside. They were tight, like, but I haven’t seen Jimmy for weeks.’
‘You got a phone number for Jimmy?’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded so fast he was in danger of giving himself a herniated disc in his neck, then jerked his chin towards a phone on the arm of a frayed and stained brown armchair to his left. ‘In my phone.’
‘OK. Who are the Parkers? Where do they live?’
He groaned, as if he really didn’t want to give me more bad news. ‘I don’t know! I really don’t. They’ve got some farm somewhere. In the middle of nowhere. One of the villages out in the sticks. Don’t know where, he never said. I think Jimmy stays with them now, though. I didn’t like Brett much. He thought he was better than everyone else. Stuck up his own arse. Brett’s a fucking psycho. Jimmy said Brett shanked a guy in the shower once because he sneezed on him accidentally. Didn’t know what he was on about half the time. He used to come here to see Jimmy and quote poetry and shit. Really fucking weird.’