DEAD SECRET a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by JANICE FROST

  “Aw, boss, can’t we just go shopping?” Ava moaned, adding quickly, “Just kidding.”

  They booked a couple of rooms in a Premier Inn near King’s Cross and took a cab to Bethnal Green. Their driver dropped them at the estate where Simon Foster had begun his life under a different name and in very different circumstances.

  * * *

  There was a housing office near the estate, which served the Trafalgar and a couple of neighbouring estates. A young Bangladeshi woman greeted them at the reception counter. Neal and Ava showed their ID cards and asked if they could take a look at tenancy records from eighteen years ago. They were invited to wait while the woman consulted her manager.

  They stood away from the counter to allow other clients access. A frustrated tenant complained about his leaking toilet and the number of appointments the contracted plumber had missed. He left with another appointment and was replaced by a mother of three small children who complained about the state of the communal staircase. The housing officer promised to inform the caretaking team. Then, an elderly man approached the counter to complain about his neighbour’s dog, and the person after him in the queue had a grumble about the family living above him who made too much noise.

  “Bloody hell,” Ava whispered, “Makes me grateful for my own little cottage in the woods.” Neal nodded. He would have said that he thought Ava’s little cottage was a bit too isolated for his liking, but it was none of his business, and, besides, at that moment, a door behind the counter opened and the Asian girl returned, accompanied by a harassed-looking man in a grey suit.

  “Please come through,” he said to Neal and Ava. Both were aware of the looks coming from the other people in the reception area, as the girl lifted the counter gate to let them through into a back office. What had they done to warrant special treatment by the housing manager, no less?

  “I’m Jack Hammond, housing manager. What can I do for you, Officers?” Neal explained again that they would like to look through some records for background information on a case they were investigating involving a young man who had previously lived on the estate.

  “I remember the family,” Hammond said to their mutual surprise. “I was a newbie housing officer at the time. It was a terrible tragedy the death of that young mother and her daughter.”

  “How well did you know the family?” asked Neal.

  “Debbie Clarke was one of our ‘heart-sink’ cases,” Hammond answered, “You know, the ones who keep coming back. They make you feel inadequate because there’s really nothing you can do for them. Or, more precisely, whatever you do will fail because you can’t change some people.” He looked suddenly guilty. “Not supposed to say that, I know, but I’ve been doing this job for twenty years now and I’ve lost all my youthful idealism. Maybe it’s time for a career change.”

  Neal nodded patiently. He knew so many people working in public services like housing and social work who were similarly disillusioned. Those in his chosen profession were not immune either. He knew all about ‘heart-sink’ cases: the repeat offenders, drug users and dealers, serial rapists, paedophiles and psychopaths. In his darker moments, he saw his role in terms of rounding up the bad guys, in some cases locking them up and throwing away the key, instead of rehabilitation and reform. He was not yet as disillusioned as Jack Hammond, but he was no longer under any illusions either.

  “This is where we keep our archived tenancy records,” Hammond said, leading them into a room full of shelf files. “They’re arranged alphabetically by the name of the block or street, then numerically by house or flat number. Debbie Clarke was in Admiral House, number fourteen. Here we are.” He removed a thick cardboard wallet from a suspended file and handed it to Neal. “You’re welcome to sit in here and browse. Give me a shout if you need any help or assistance.”

  “Cup of coffee would be nice,” Ava said wistfully, after the housing manager left the room.

  “Take a look through some of the files for neighbouring flats,” Neal instructed her, “see if there’re any references to Debbie in any of them. Complaints about noise nuisance, domestic disturbances, anything.”

  Some files were bulkier than others. Many of the blocks had been built in the 1930s by the old London County Council and in some cases tenancies had changed hands several times. Not surprisingly, Debbie Clarke’s file was substantial, bulging with letters and reports from social workers and housing officers. Neal adopted a systematic approach, reading everything in date order: beginning with the housing officer’s comments — recorded after every contact with Debbie — then those of the professionals involved with her and her children.

  It made for depressing reading. Forms and reports from her previous tenancies attested to the fact that she had been rehoused by the Council several times before arriving on the Trafalgar estate. There was a history of domestic violence going back several years, involving more than one partner.

  Before Wade there had been a Darren and a Vince, but Wade was recorded as the father of Debbie’s two children, Peter and Emily and Debbie had been moved twice to ‘escape’ him. According to Jack Hammond, the housing officer at the time, Debbie had ‘repeatedly informed her abusive ex-partner of her whereabouts and permitted him access to her home.’ Neal wondered how she could possibly have avoided Wade Bolan, as the flats she had been allocated were all located in the same borough; sooner or later, they were bound to collide. In any case, it seemed that Bolan had been permitted occasional supervised access to his children.

  Still, as Jack Hammond had hinted, Debbie had been unable to change, to escape the cycle of abuse.

  “Oh my god. This guy has got to be the neighbour from hell,” Ava said, looking up from a bulging file. “These are all letters from other tenants complaining about his anti-social activities. Spitting and swearing at little kids, noise nuisance, letting his dogs use the walkways as a toilet, minor vandalism, racist language, the list goes on. ASBOs, god rest ’em, were invented for people like this.” Neal did not comment. “Boss?”

  Neal was aware that Ava was speaking to him, but her words had faded to background noise. He was staring at the record sheet, where one name leapt out from the page. He had almost missed it — a short entry recording a complaint about a leaking soil stack outside Debbie Clarke’s flat.

  “Ava,” he said quietly, “come and take a look at this.”

  Chapter 17

  Nancy had not seen Richard for two days; he had remained true to his word, and left her alone. She had been grateful for the time and space to think. Over and over, the events leading up to the night when her action had changed her life forever, played out inside her head. She was like the Ancient Mariner, under a compulsion to retell her story, in hope of release.

  It was early afternoon; she had eaten nothing since breakfast the day before, and had barely stirred from bed, except to relieve herself; hardly moved at all except to kick the duvet off when she grew too warm and pull it over her again when she began to shiver.

  Her phone buzzed; a text. Nancy stared at the message from Anna Foster with a feeling of defeat. I know about Emily. For nearly nineteen years, she had kept her secret; from her friends, from Richard, even in recent years from herself, as she gradually adopted the habit of questioning the reliability of her own memory of those distant events.

  Hadn’t she read that when questioned about events in their past, people very often had a distorted view of what had actually happened, and in some cases, their memories were completely false? The past is so often not what we remember, she reminded herself, but what we choose to forget. The very word sums it up. Past. Passed. Over and done with. Except it wasn’t.

  The past, or more precisely one particular part of it, had been uppermost in Nancy’s mind for days, plaguing her waking hours and haunting her dreams. Her fingernails, which for years now had been long and polished, were once more bitten down to the quick, just as they had been throughout her teenage years. Her eyes, when she stared into them in the bathroom mirror, wer
e portals, focusing her thoughts inwards and backwards twenty years and more until the present became strange and dream-like.

  More than anything, Nancy had been looking for the love that had gone from her life after her parents died. And what love she had found! An abundance of it, all in one small, beautiful child. There had been only one problem. Emily was not hers.

  She had already decided to move away. She had become too embroiled too fast in Debbie Clarke’s affairs after their first meeting in the park. Wade frightened her. Ever since the night he had touched her, she had felt violated. That night when Debbie came knocking on her door seeking refuge after Wade had beaten her, Nancy had not wanted to let her in. She had feared for her own safety, and the knowledge had made her ashamed.

  After that night, Nancy’s instinct had been to extricate herself from the situation altogether. At first, approaching Debbie in the park with her naïve offer of help had given her a warm glow inside; made her feel that she was a good person again, like before. Four years of foster care had not, after all, stripped her of her humanity. The values her parents had communicated to her throughout her childhood were still alive inside her; she would recover the kind of love she had basked in as a child through her kindness to others. How speedily she had become disillusioned. Did she even have the right to judge how Debbie chose to live her life, how she brought up her children? These were big questions and at twenty-one years old, Nancy did not have the answers.

  She had never asked herself what she would have done had the events of that night been different. The first time she held Emily/Amy in her arms, she had been suffused with a love that shocked her with its intensity. It was a feeling that was wonderful yet frightening and possibly dangerous, for Nancy quickly realised that there was little she would not do for this child.

  Had she subconsciously been plotting all along to snatch Emily? Nancy had never permitted herself to admit that possibility — until now. Now it was all she could think about.

  At the time, she convinced herself that her actions that day had been dictated by circumstance; the need to act. Adrenaline-driven. She hadn’t planned, could not have foreseen, the course of events that led to what she ever afterwards referred to in her own mind as, ‘Amy’s rescue.’ It was instinctual; a primal response.

  Perhaps if Nancy had simply walked away, Amy would still be alive. She would have been fostered, adopted even, perhaps by a nice family. Babies were easy to place, weren’t they? Not like a twelve-year-old.

  Who would want to kill Amy? Nancy had gone over this time and again until her head was bursting. Someone who knew her and had a motive? Or some psycho who killed indiscriminately, selecting his victims at random? Which was worse? Did it even matter when the end result was the same? Amy was never coming back.

  * * *

  For the umpteenth time, she went over the events of that night. Nancy had been writing her letter of notice to her landlady and was thinking of having an early night, finishing her book, when the phone rang. Debbie. Asking her to baby-sit again, threatening to go out whether Nancy came round or not. This had happened a lot lately. Knowing that Nancy feared for the children’s safety, Debbie was taking every advantage.

  Instead of going to bed, Nancy had pulled on a fleecy top and a pair of boots and headed off to Debbie’s. As she approached the block, a voice behind her made her jump. Swinging around, her hand already balled into a fist, she recognized the Bangladeshi man who lived two or three doors along from Debbie. Despite the nip in the air, he was dressed in a loose white shift and open sandals.

  “You know Debbie, yes?” He asked, grinning at her, baring uneven, khat-stained teeth. Nancy nodded.

  “Her boyfriend very bad man. He frighten my wife and my childruns. All very frightened. Why they let bad man live here? Very bad man. I think he drink very much, beat Debbie and childruns.”

  “Wade.” Nancy whispered.

  “Yes. Wade. Very bad man.” Her companion repeated excitedly. “Mr Wade. Very bad man.”

  “Yes,” Nancy agreed. A thought struck her, “Is he at Debbie’s house now? Have you seen him there?”

  “Yes, here today. Gone now. Much noise and very bad language.”

  With that, the man said goodbye and Nancy could hear him muttering to himself as he walked away, “Mr Wade, very bad man . . .”

  She had been in two minds whether to go round to Debbie’s after that. The man had said Wade was gone, but was he really? She should have turned back, but she didn’t.

  * * *

  Nancy had already made up her mind before she read Anna Foster’s text. The message only served to strengthen her resolve. Now that Amy was dead, all her justifications for acting as she had were exposed for the lies and pretence they truly were, and she knew what she had to do to punish herself for what she had done.

  Nancy tossed her mobile to the floor and rolled off the bed. She walked into the luxurious bespoke en-suite bathroom that Richard had designed and fitted for her a couple of years ago. She ran her hand sadly over the shiny antique gold-finish taps, remembering how delighted she had been when the room was completed and she had taken her first bath there, feeling like a princess. Richard had strewn rose petals across the floor around the free-standing tub and poured her a glass of Prosecco before leaving her to luxuriate in a foaming cloud of rose-scented bubbles.

  Leaving the bath to fill, Nancy brought a portable CD player from the bedroom and placed it on the lowered toilet seat cover, resting the remote control on the side of the bath. Then, she undressed slowly and before stepping into the tub, reached for one of Richard’s razor blades and laid it beside the remote control. All she had to do now was step in and let the hot water soak away her pain.

  She pointed the remote control at the CD player and lay back listening to Jessye Norman’s achingly beautiful voice singing the last of Richard Strauss’s ‘Four Last Songs.’ With her head resting on the rim of the bathtub, and the razor blade poised over the blue-veined skin of her left wrist, Nancy gave the bath taps a last lingering look, thinking that if she had any regrets about what she was about to do, they were all for Richard.

  Chapter 18

  It had been a long day, and Neal was relieved to see the floodlit cathedral looming up out of the window on his left as the train slowed on its approach to Stromford station. They had not, after all, spent the night in London, but hitched a ride in a patrol car out to one of the suburbs and caught a train home from there. Beside him, her head resting on his shoulder, Ava was asleep as she had been all the way from the outskirts of London. A sweep of golden hair cascaded over his shoulder, staticky silken strands clinging to the lapel of his jacket. For the past half hour, Neal had been experiencing an almost irresistible urge to stroke his sergeant’s head, and he was sure that she would not have stirred, so deeply was she asleep. Only his stern professionalism stood between him and the satisfaction of this urge. Instead of finding out if her hair was as silky as it seemed, he gave Ava a poke in the side to wake her up, and then looked out of the window to save her embarrassment.

  “Bloody hell. We home already? How long was I out, sir?”

  “Only the best part of two hours. Glad the latest development in the case hasn’t kept you awake and fretting.”

  “I suppose you’ve been mulling it over all the way back?”

  “Actually, no. I’ve been listening to some podcasts. Radio 4. Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time.’”

  Ava made a face, “Bit intellectual for me.”

  “Why do you do that? Neal asked, curious.

  “Do what?”

  “Pretend you’re less intelligent than you are. I’ve noticed you do it a lot. You got good results in your A levels, went to university . . .”

  “And dropped out,” Ava reminded him, “I didn’t even make it through the second year.”

  “Not through lack of ability, I suspect?”

  Ava didn’t answer. Sensing it was a touchy subject, Neal let it go.

  “So what happens now?�
� Ava asked, “Do we question Nancy or just arrest her outright for kidnapping?”

  “Well, it won’t be difficult to establish Amy, or should I say, Emily’s true parentage,” Neal answered. “If it’s proven that Nancy abducted her from the scene of Debbie’s death, then she will have to face charges of child abduction. We still have no idea who killed Amy, or why, but this revelation certainly has the potential to open up the case.”

  “Simon Foster still seems the most likely suspect. Now that we know he and Amy were brother and sister. What with his continued disappearance . . .” Ava said.

  The train juddered to a halt and Ava, on the aisle seat, stood up immediately. Neal was right behind her, but he stopped to help an elderly woman with her suitcase, and they both had to wait on the platform while she thanked him from the bottom of her heart.

  At last, through the barrier and outside the station, the elderly woman safely in a taxi, they were able to resume their conversation.

  “So Simon’s reaction to meeting Nancy Hill at his mother’s book group makes sense now,” Ava began, “if he recognised her as ‘the angel’ who took his sister Emily it must have been a shock, not just to see that Nancy was flesh and blood, but to learn that his sister was still alive.”

  “Amy. Emily. Nancy didn’t change the name much. It’s highly likely that the two-year-old Simon pronounced Emily’s name as ‘Emmy,’ and that’s where Nancy got the idea. All seems so obvious when you start to join the dots, doesn’t it?”

  “Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, brother and sister ending up in the same city, their mothers being friends, don’t you think, sir?”

  “That does bother me,” Neal commented, “makes me wonder how much of what both Nancy Hill and Anna Foster have told us is the truth.” He glanced at his watch. “Too late to deal with any of this tonight. I’ll have Nancy Hill brought into the station in the morning. Should scare her into telling the truth.”

  It had been a long day. He wanted to get home and say goodnight to Archie. Neal could not have known that by morning, Nancy Hill would be beyond all questioning.