by Sibel Hodge
‘Maybe Felicia and Dr Spork were in on it together.’ I leaned forward, feeling an idea brewing. ‘Or maybe the letters gave Nathan the perfect cover.’ My brain had a mental light bulb moment. ‘Yes. Someone starts sending Aleesha letters threatening to kill her, so Nathan gets the idea in his head he can bump her off for the inheritance, and it will get blamed on the stalker who’s sending the letters and knickers.’
‘Sounds plausible.’
I downed the rest of my coffee. ‘Well, Aleesha’s house is swarming with police and SOCO at the moment. Plus Nathan’s there, so I can’t go in and get a good look round yet to see if there’s any evidence that points to him.’ I jigged my knee up and down impatiently.
My mobile rang as I tapped my fingernails on the desk.
‘Hey, Amber,’ Romeo said, his voice deadly serious.
‘Hi.’ I leaped to my feet and paced the office. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I just thought you’d like to know that the toxicology results came back on Nathan and Brad’s blood tests.
‘Yes?’ I said breathlessly.
‘They both contained very high levels of sleeping drugs and tranquilizers. Enough to knock someone out for hours.’
‘See! I told you Brad was telling the truth.’ Except that now messed up my theory about Nathan. Unless Nathan drugged Brad, killed Aleesha, and then drugged himself afterwards to make it look like they were both out of action.
‘I don’t think Brad’s telling the truth,’ Romeo said. ‘He could easily have drugged Nathan, killed Aleesha, and then taken the drug himself as an alibi.’
Damn. Bloody crapping damn. It worked both ways, didn’t it? Except…‘Romeo, you know as well as me that if Brad had killed her, he wouldn’t have left any evidence.’
‘Maybe he got sloppy in his old age. Maybe they were having an affair and he killed her in the heat of passion. How else do you explain the substances on his hand?’
I stopped pacing, feeling the anger rising and something else…doubt. ‘He wasn’t involved with her in that way. It was a business relationship.’ But I knew Aleesha wouldn’t stop when she had her sights set on something, and it was obvious she’d had a thing for Brad. Had Brad betrayed me with her? ‘Has SOCO analyzed the swabs from Brad’s hands yet?’
‘No, we’re still waiting for the results. Felicia’s been arrested for sending the death threat letters, and she’s down at the station now with her parents. I’ll be questioning her shortly.’
‘Right. Well, can you let me know as soon as you get an update, please?’ I said stiffly.
‘Yes. Oh, and Amber. I’m just doing my job, you know. This isn’t anything personal.’
‘Uh-huh.’ I let my tone speak for itself. I hung up and turned to Hacker. ‘Right, Felicia’s parents’ house is empty. Can you give me a hand to search it while they’re all at the station?’
‘Sure thing.’
****
Hacker and I drove in silence, which was pretty rare for me. Usually, my mouth worked overtime, but I was exhausted with worry, lack of sleep, and lack of food. I was determined to find out what really happened to Aleesha, but part of me was freaking out that I didn’t want to know. Because what if it really was Brad?
I tried to shake the thought away, but it hovered over me like a doomsday cloud.
It was eleven a.m. and the street was quiet. Part of me didn’t even care if we got caught, but the other part knew it wouldn’t do any good to be banged up in a cell next to Brad for breaking and entering when I had to be out here, trying to find a clue.
‘Drive round the back,’ I said to Hacker. ‘I’m pretty sure these houses back onto a playing field. We might be able to get in from there without being seen.’
Hacker obliged, and we parked up in front of a scout hut. There was only one other car there. In the distance, an elderly woman walked her dog on an empty football pitch.
‘We should wait for her to leave,’ Hacker said.
‘I don’t know how much time we have.’ I bit my lip, willing the woman to go away.
After five minutes of throwing a ball for her retriever, she made her way leisurely back towards her car.
‘Hurry up! Don’t you know we’ve got houses to break into!’ I said.
‘We look suspicious, just sitting here in the car,’ Hacker said as she got closer. ‘Kiss me.’
‘What?’ My eyebrows shot up to my hairline.
‘It will look like we’re a couple who’s parked up for a bit of romance.’
I groaned. ‘OK, but no tongues. And never, ever speak of this again.’ I leaned over and pressed my lips to his, my gaze looking over his shoulder as the woman opened the rear door of her car and let the dog jump in.’
‘As e one et?’ Hacker asked, his lips pressed firmly to mine muffling his words.
‘O.’
The woman got in the driver’s seat and started the engine, fiddling with the radio.
‘Ome on!’ I said, still stuck in a lip-lock with Hacker.
Finally, she drove off and we broke apart.
‘Right, let’s go.’ I was out the door and running to Felicia’s six-foot wooden fence that backed onto the playing field.
Hacker gave me a leg up, and I climbed over and into the garden before he hoisted himself up. We ran to the back of the detached 1980s house devoid of any nice architecture. Patio doors opened into the lounge, and a door led into a kitchen. The kitchen door looked easier to get into.
We pulled on some latex gloves before Hacker got a lock-picking tool out of his pocket, exactly the same as the one Brad had, and fiddled around in the door lock.
‘Right, you start downstairs, I’ll start in Felicia’s bedroom,’ I said. ‘Look for traces of anything that might link her to Aleesha’s murder, but especially on clothes. If Aleesha still had glitter on her from the photo shoot, tiny specks of it are bound to have got onto the killer’s clothes. And the chocolate. Some of it would’ve melted from the heat of the killer’s hands when she was strangled with the knickers.’ I pushed away thoughts of the stains on Brad’s hands.
I padded up the navy blue-carpeted stairs and poked my head in the first bedroom. A simple wrought iron double bed and fitted wardrobes sat along one wall. A pair of men’s slippers lay on the floor next to one side of the bed. Some curlers rested on top of a bedside table on the other. It must be her parents’ room. A large wooden cross hung on one wall, with a picture of Jesus above the bed. I was betting Felicia’s mum and dad’s sex life was non-existent. Who could get into the throes of passion with Jesus watching?
After searching and finding nothing incriminating, I ducked out and up the hallway into a bathroom. A plastic laundry hamper in the corner caught my eye. I opened the lid and rummaged through the dirty clothes. I’d done some strange things to solve cases in my time, but rummaging through dirty underwear and stuff wasn’t my idea of fun.
I pulled out men’s trousers, cardigans, and Y-fronts (yuck), and threw them on the floor, turning my attention to the women’s clothes. What had Felicia been wearing when I’d tailed her yesterday, and would she have worn the same clothes last night?
Picking up skirts, ladies’ trousers, and dresses, I inspected each one for signs of glitter or chocolate.
Nothing. Not even a mini chocolate speck.
I let out a huge sigh, put everything back in the basket, and examined the sink and bath. If Felicia took a shower when she got back, there would probably be traces of glitter somewhere. Even the smallest speck lodged somewhere around a tap or on a plug would be proof. I pulled a mini Maglite out of my back pocket and shone it around the taps and down the plugholes, but no glitter sparkled back at me.
Opening the door opposite the bathroom, I found myself in a stark and impersonal bedroom, painted white with a single bed in the corner, covered by a white duvet. A cheap dressing table sat underneath the window. A mirrored fitted wardrobe ran the length of one wall. The other walls were bare except for a picture of God. At least I thought it must
be God, although I’ve never met him so it could’ve been someone entirely different. It was a man with long white hair, a long white beard, and long white robe in the middle of some floaty clouds. You know the drill. A Bible was on the floor next to the bed. I didn’t think God would be too impressed at Felicia threatening to kill someone, but I could be wrong. Weren’t there lots of fanatical religious people who committed horrible crimes in the name of religion? Had Felicia taken things a step further and carried out her threats to kill because she thought Aleesha was a threat to society’s morals?
I opened the wardrobes and examined her clothes carefully but couldn’t see anything that would tie her to Aleesha’s murder. I searched the rest of the room and ditto.
I ran back down the stairs and found Hacker poking around in the under stairs cupboard, checking jackets, coats, and shoes.
‘Find anything?’ I asked hopefully.
‘No. You?’
‘Nah.’
I glanced in the kitchen. It had a washing machine but no dryer. ‘There’s no recent washing hanging up to dry upstairs, anything down here?’
‘No.’
‘So it looks like Felicia didn’t wash her clothes from last night then, unless she got rid of them somewhere else, and every other thing I’ve looked at had no traces of glitter or chocolate. Maybe she’s only responsible for sending the letters.’
‘Looks like it. I haven’t found anything that could possibly connect her to Aleesha’s murder.’ Hacker hung the last jacket back on the hook. ‘Ready to leave?’
I nodded and felt the doomsday cloud move with me. One suspect eliminated. How many more before it led back to Brad?
Chapter 13
‘Any luck with Curtis’s or Tracy’s place?’ I asked Dad on the phone as we drove away from the scout hut.
‘I got into Tracy’s when she took Lisa to school. It’s clean, although I’ve got some really nice graffiti on my car that says, “Some people do this for fun. I’m just a knob”. I’m still staking out Curtis’s bedsit, but his car’s here and the curtains are closed.’
‘Maybe the curtains are closed because he had a busy night killing Aleesha.’
‘Oh, wait. A couple of detectives just turned up on his doorstep. I used to work with one of them in CID.’
‘OK, stay on the line and tell me what happens.’ I picked up a pen and doodled angry slashes on a piece of paper.
‘Curtis has opened the door. The police are going in.’
The slashes turned into big zigzags. I bet Suzy would have a field day working out what that meant.
‘What now?’ I asked Dad urgently.
‘No sign of them yet. Wait! They’re coming back out.’
‘That was quick.’
‘They’re going to the next door neighbour’s bedsit. A woman in her mid-twenties just opened the door. The police are talking to her.’
I doodled so hard I ripped the paper to shreds. I balled it up and threw it in the bin before attacking another piece. It was quite therapeutic.
‘The neighbour’s nodding a lot and pointing to Curtis’s bedsit,’ Dad carried on his commentary.
What did the woman next door have to do with it? I wondered what Curtis had told them. I wished, not for the first time, that I had a super power to turn me invisible so I could listen to conversations without people knowing.
‘The police are leaving now. One of them is on the phone to someone.’
‘OK, great, Dad. Let me know what happens.’ I hung up and dialled Suzy to find out what time Dr Spork’s mega appointment was so I could get into his flat and poke around. I wasn’t going to leave any stone unturned.
‘I don’t have much time,’ Suzy answered brusquely.
‘Hello to you, too.’
‘What do you want? I’m rushed off my feet this morning with back-to-back consultations. I bet you’d like to know that I phoned Dr Spork last night, and he’s admitted his erotomanic fixation on you. Now, I’m confident I’ll be able to treat him successfully with some in-depth sessions. Admission and realization is the first step to being cured.’
‘Good. What time’s his appointment?’
‘This afternoon. Four p.m. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. Thanks.’ I hung up and glanced at Hacker. ‘Dr Spork will be out of his place at four. We need to check it out then.’
‘OK.’
Did Dr Spork kill Aleesha after all? He obviously had a giant secret stash of chocolate knickers, and as an electronics expert, he could easily have disabled the alarm.
I spent the next few hours like a nervous ball of energy, spending my time pacing the office, fidgeting, or doodling. At three p.m. Romeo phoned.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked.
He paused for a second, and I knew it couldn’t be good news. ‘Curtis has an alibi. Some colleagues spoke to him, and he was with the woman next door until nine this morning. He couldn’t have killed Aleesha.’
‘You’re sure?’ My voice jumped up a notch. ‘He couldn’t have slipped out unnoticed during the night at any point?’
‘The woman is very sure. She said he kept her pretty active all night long.’
‘Well, I hope for his sake he didn’t do a video of it this time,’ I snapped. Another suspect bit the dust. ‘How do you know she’s not lying to protect him?’
‘The woman’s also a police informant, so she’s well known to us. Her information has always been reliable. She’s got no reason to lie about this, Amber.’ He paused for a beat. ‘And there’s something else. The lab did a rush job on the substances found on Brad’s hand. They’re a match to the chocolate from the knickers used to strangle Aleesha, and the remains of the glitter found around her neck. I’m sorry.’
My legs turned wobbly, and the room swam before my eyes. This couldn’t be right. Brad couldn’t have killed her. I put my hand on my desk to steady myself, trying to fight down a rising wave of nausea and panic. My cheeks burned with anger, and something else. Fear.
‘We’ve just charged him with Aleesha’s murder. Felicia admitted sending the letters but denies murdering her. She said she was in love with Steve and trying to rid the world of immoral behaviour.’
‘Well, she’s got a funny way of going about it. How do you know for certain it wasn’t her that killed Aleesha, too?’
‘She’s got a watertight alibi. She was volunteering at an all-night soup kitchen for the homeless. I’ve got five other people who worked with her saying she didn’t leave the building from eleven p.m. until eight this morning. The pathologist puts Aleesha’s time of death at three a.m., so there’s no way Felicia killed her.’
‘No. No, no, no.’ I flopped onto the chair, all my blood pooling to my feet. ‘You’re wrong,’ I said, but it came out more like a question.
‘The evidence says otherwise.’ His voice softened.
‘Is Brad still in the cells?’
‘Yes. His court hearing is tomorrow morning. The crown prosecution service will be asking for Brad to be remanded in custody with no possibility of bail before the trial.’
‘Can I see him?’ I managed to croak.
‘You can see him tomorrow morning before court. He’ll need you to bring him a suit, since the clothes he was wearing were taken for evidence.’
‘Oh, God.’
‘I’m really sorry.’
I dropped the phone in my lap as my world spun around in front of my eyes.
Hacker’s arms circled round me. ‘What’s happened with Brad?’
‘They’ve charged him with murder,’ I managed to squeak.
‘You know he didn’t do it, right?’ He took my chin in his fingers and tilted my face up to meet his gaze.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.’
He held onto my shoulders firmly, staring deep into my eyes. ‘I’ve known Brad for a long time. I trust him with my life. He wouldn’t just snap and kill someone for the sake of it. He’s the most controlled person I know. He’s only ever killed for a good reaso
n.’
‘Yes, that’s the thing, though. I know he’s killed for Queen and country in the SAS. I know he shot someone to save my life. And I know he executed David Leonard to get a serial killer off the streets. I know he would only kill someone with good reason. But what if there was a reason for killing her? There are lots of things he’s never told me about what went on in the SAS. I know he’s not allowed to, and I don’t want to know most of it. But I know what he’s capable of.’
‘What possible reason could there be for him to have killed her?’
Tears sprang into my eyes. ‘What if Brad still fancied her and slept with her? What if he got angry or jealous with her about something and it got out of control? How do you explain the substances on Brad’s hands?’
‘He was framed,’ Hacker said, slowly and clearly so there could be no possible mistake. ‘Are you listening to yourself?’ His nostrils flared with frustration. ‘You know how much he loves you. He’d never cheat on you.’
‘I thought I knew, but I don’t know what to believe anymore.’ I glanced away, not wanting to meet his penetrating eyes. Brad’s and my life as we knew it had just come crashing down around our ears. We couldn’t lose each other now. We just couldn’t.
‘So, what? You’re just going to give up on him? Believe what they’re saying? Because I don’t believe it. Not for a second.’
‘No, I’m not giving up. I want to know for sure. I’m going to eliminate all the suspects and see what we’re left with.’
He pulled me to my feet. ‘Come on. It’s half-past three. Let’s go and search Dr Spork’s place.’ Leading me past the reception, I looked over at Tia.