by Ruby Loren
“I’m not a big fan of scary experiences but you’ve done a good job,” I said, admitting that much.
“That’s great! Thanks for testing it out, Madi. We’re going to be employing a few actors and adding some pyrotechnics too, so it should be great fun.”
I nodded. “I hope it goes well for you.”
“Yeah, me too. We’re just trying to get some promo finalised for it, as we weren’t sure what we could pull off. I hope you don’t mind, but we actually set up cameras through the maze and took a couple of shots while you were in there.” She guiltily pulled out an iPad and I looked down at a photo of my own face, contorted with horror as I beheld the dangling body. It wasn’t a particularly attractive look.
“You don’t mind if we use this, do you? It’s so natural!” Lyra gushed.
I was feeling less fond of Lyra by the second.
I think she knew it because she grinned again. “I would have told you but then you wouldn’t have looked so surprised! Just think, it could be the start of your modelling portfolio.”
“Oh, shut up,” I told her, good-naturedly. In the grand scheme of things, being told a porky about testing out a Halloween attraction wasn’t an unforgivable crime.
She shot me a grin in return. "All right! Let's go again, but this time I’ll drop a sack of fake spiders in the top… only you won’t know when it’ll happen. It’ll be a great photo!”
“Bye, Lyra,” I said, walking away shaking my head.
Lowell was still out when I got home that night and I didn’t see him until the next morning. He was waiting at the breakfast table when I came down the stairs.
We both regarded one another, warily.
“It turns out there’s been a little crossover with the local police for this runaway case,” Lowell began. I bit my tongue to keep from asking if he was really looking for a lost child, or if that was just another cover story.
“I went in and talked to Detective Maynard.” He raised his eyebrows at me and I managed a nod. “She was very helpful, especially when I mentioned I’d worked with the Leeds policeforce a short while ago. She asked me if I’d met Detective Toyne and I said I’d only heard of how wonderful he was purported to be.” He paused for effect. “She didn’t seem to agree with that statement."
“Oh?" I said, finally tempted into talking.
“Apparently no one here has taken to Detective Toyne. Maynard struck me as a reasonable person. Her judgement is that he’s young, and having come from a bigger force, he believes himself a cut above everyone else.” He raised an eyebrow at me.
“I also mentioned reading about the Fairfax case and casually asked if any progress has been made.”
“Have they found anything?” I asked and he shook his head.
“The detective got a little tired of talking to me at that point, but she didn't mention any breakthroughs.”
“I’m surprised they haven’t brought you in for questioning, given what Detective Toyne seems to think,” I said, and nearly added that I wasn’t so sure myself.
He shrugged again. “That's probably why they haven't bothered to follow that lead. Toyne comes across as a liability.”
I nodded. “I just hope I don’t have to be interrogated by him again.”
I made eye contact with Lowell and we stayed in that moment of pain and misunderstanding for a few more seconds, before we once more went our separate ways, still not ready to talk.
I got to see Detective Toyne again a lot sooner than I’d hoped.
I was sneakily making a few subtle changes to the farm animals’ enclosures, when he came up behind me and made me jump.
“On edge, are we?” he asked without a trace of humour.
I gave him a well-earned glare. “The zookeeper in charge of these animals doesn’t see eye to eye with me.”
He nodded like it was to be expected.
“What do you want?” I said, a little snappishly.
“You spend a lot of time with Zara Banks, don't you? How has she been behaving recently? Have you noticed anything strange about her?”
“You’d be better asking one of her minions, or her husband. I bumped into her in town a couple of days ago but aside from that, she spends her time at the office space, and I spend mine here," I told the detective.
“How did she act?” he pressed. “Did she seem desperate? Scared? Normal?”
“It’s hard to say. People can be pretty good at covering up their motives, can’t they, Detective?” I said, narrowing my eyes.
He looked straight back at me, his face expressionless.
He was going to make me say it.
“Before you got your job here in Pendalay, you worked up in Leeds on a similar case, right? There was a woman being stalked, only you never found the stalker and you got pretty hung up about it. So much so, you had to take a break from police work.” I shook my head in disbelief at my own short sightedness. “At first, I thought it must be serendipity. You join a new force and find yourself in the middle of a case with a similar M.O. What a great chance to finally lay those demons to rest. But it was no accident that you picked Pendalay as the place you wanted to work, was it? I think you chose it because you knew full well there would probably be a stalker to catch. Zara and Darren are the same couple whose case you worked on in Leeds, aren’t they?”
Toyne looked at me in surprise and I saw written on his face all I needed to know. I hadn’t been a hundred percent sure, but my bluff had paid off. Although faint, I'd noticed the similarity of accents when I’d first seen Detective Toyne interview Zara. However, what had raised my suspicions, was learning that Toyne had worked for Leeds police force, presumably around the time when Darren and Zara had lived nearby in Otley.
“I spent so long on that case. I deserve to see it end," he said, confirming everything I’d just said. “I’ve researched every bad business they’ve had dealings with through their company and believe me - there are a lot. The police even had a suspect but, well…” He shook his head. “I didn’t believe it. It was only when I got warned off that I started to suspect Zara was involved.”
“Do you still think so? Even after what happened to Jayne?”
I was willing to give some credence to his hypothesis if he could provide sufficient evidence.
“You mean because she had to be lifted up off the floor and she was the same size as Zara?” Detective Toyne clarified and I nodded. “I’m not sure… an accomplice, perhaps?”
I shook my head, not convinced at all. For a rising star in the police force, I thought his theory had a lot of holes in it. “You said you saw a similar case, before this one? Where a woman targeted herself?”
“I didn’t actually see it. I read about it. I worked hard researching the psychology of stalkers - what drives them to behave the way they do? That's when I came across a motivation that seemed to chime. A childless woman was doing things - just like the things that have been happening to Zara - to herself. The final theory was that she’d done it because of the couple's struggle to conceive. She worried her husband wouldn’t be interested in her and had launched this campaign to keep his attention.”
“I know Zara and Darren don’t have kids, but I’ve never even heard them talk about children and I've never got the impression they're dying to have them. Zara and Darren are pretty focused on their careers,” I cut in, irked that Toyne was throwing all couples in the same boat.
“Okay, sure, but I still thought she might be doing it for some other reason. Perhaps she’s worried her husband doesn't love her enough, or looks at other women. I don’t know!” He crossed his arms and looked furiously at the two goat kids, who were hopping over the hay bales I’d added to their enclosure.
“Look, you could be right. I’m not sure about her motivation for doing it, but perhaps that part could be worked out. I just struggle to believe that Zara could murder and then lift Jayne Fairfax up on that board. Unless you know something I don’t. How was she killed?” I asked.
The detective glanced all around
, as if he were afraid someone was listening in before he told me. “Someone smashed the back of her head against the ground. That community building has concrete floors and the killer either knew it, or was just going to keep smashing their victim until something broke and didn’t care what the floor was made of. You couldn't see the damage when she was up on the cork board. It was only when we took her down that it was pretty obvious what happened.”
“So, you're looking for someone strong enough to overpower her.”
The detective shrugged. “Not necessarily. She could have been taken by surprise and then stunned enough for the killer to get in a good first blow.”
I nodded my head to show I was considering it. “How’d she get lifted up from the floor, though?”
He gave me a look and I knew that he knew this was all shaky ground. “Damn it. Now it will be another waiting game before something else happens and this starts all over again with no end in sight.”
“Unless someone at the station finds out about your past,” I said. I’d meant it as an observation but it sounded like a threat.
“I know a thing or two about your past. It’s not just private detectives who have connections.”
We looked at each other for a few uncomfortable moments before Gemma walked round the corner, saw me, and made a noise of disgust.
“I’ll be in touch if I have any further questions,” Detective Toyne said, already walking away.
I never thought I’d be glad to see Gemma, but even listening to her shout about the changes I’d allegedly gone behind her back to make was better than continuing what had turned into a rather unpleasant conversation.
While I half-listened to what Gemma was yelling about, the little voice in my head asked whether or not I thought Detective Toyne was bluffing about knowing things.
I wasn’t sure.
To my surprise, Gemma was only halfway through telling me exactly where I could shove my bales of hay and seesaw when Detective Toyne reappeared.
“You need to drive me somewhere,” he announced.
“Of course I do!” I said, having reconsidered my situation and decided that Toyne was currently the lesser of two evils.
I followed behind him as he marched back through the zoo.
“Hey, are you serious about needing a lift?” I asked.
“Yes, of course I was," he said with a frown.
I turned my face away and rolled my eyes. I should have known that the phrase ‘help a buddy out’ meant nothing to this man. “Why do you need driving?”
He sighed as though I’d just asked the most impertinent question in the world. “I just had a call from one of my colleagues. Apparently something’s happened at the Banks’ house and I’m needed at the scene. I walked here, so you have to take me.”
“There are such things as taxis.”
“Sure, but I need to get there fast.” He shot me a look. “I thought you were curious about all this.”
I hoped he didn’t see me gnash my teeth together. This annoying detective was right. I really did want to know what had just happened.
“All right, let’s go,” I said, already mentally calculating how much later I’d need to work tonight to make up for the lost time.
We drove through the Cornish countryside, heading towards the small hamlet just a mile outside of Pendalay.
“How exactly did you manage to persuade them to take you on when you were supposed to be taking a break from work?” I asked, when we were still a minute or so away.
“I was good at my job. All I’d done was make one mistake. When I told Leeds I wanted to start again out in the country, they gave me the best references you could ask for.” He shrugged. “I did what I had to.”
“Huh,” was all I said, privately thinking that whoever had given him those references would not be happy to know the real motivation behind Toyne’s sudden taste for the quiet life. Still, it could work as leverage. The detective may think that my past meant I had something to hide, but I knew I’d never committed any crime. What he was currently up to… I didn’t think it would be too much of a stretch for a jury to consider the idea that Toyne had been the stalker all along.
My hands tightened on the wheel of the car as I considered it myself.
We turned into the little hamlet and my worries flew straight out of my mind when I saw the scene in front of me.
The first thing I saw was blood on the steps leading up to the porch. My initial thought was that another rat had been killed, but the number of police present suggested it was something more serious.
“What happened?” I said to the detective, who was already halfway out of my car.
“Darren’s been injured, but it could have been worse,” he said, as if that answered my question.
I got out of my car and followed Toyne through the police tape. Now that I was closer to the scene, I noticed a group of paramedics huddled around something on the floor. When one of them broke away to presumably fetch something from the ambulance, I got a glimpse of what had happened.
Darren’s leg looked like someone had taken an axe to it. There was a deep gash running the length of it that was clearly going to need stitches.
I turned to the nearest person and discovered it was Tom, the police officer living next door to Zara and Darren. He clearly wasn't off-duty today, as he was in uniform.
“What happened to Darren?” I asked.
“He came home, stepped on the step on the way up to the house and went straight through it. Someone’s removed the actual step and replaced it with a dummy. It’s not the best copy in the world, but if you weren’t paying attention, I could see why it would be missed,” Tom told me.
“Someone removed the whole step?”
He nodded. “I know. I suppose that's why Darren didn't see it coming. The thing is, with these cottages, our front steps are basically just a big flat rock that’s been dumped in front of the door. You can shift them fairly easily and that’s what the person who did this must have done. We found the real step leant up by the rubbish bins.”
“That’s considerate,” I commented, and Tom gave me a wry smile.
“Actually, I think it was just a pain to carry too far away from the scene."
“It wasn’t just a trick step though, was it,” I said. Tom threw me a suspicious look and I quickly explained. “I saw Darren’s leg. It didn’t look scraped, like it would if you caught the edge of something. He had a really big wound.”
The police officer nodded, grimly. “Yeah, it wasn't just the step. Inside, were a whole bunch of four inch nails, stuck down so that they had the pointy ends facing up. Actually, Darren was pretty lucky. He only got caught properly by one and another just scratched him. If he’d put his foot down in another place, he could have impaled his foot.”
I never got to ask whether or not Tom believed this was another attack aimed at Zara.
“What are you doing here? This is a crime scene!”
Both Tom and I spun guiltily to find Detective Maynard striding towards us.
“I’m supposed to be here. I’m Detective Toyne’s chauffeur… apparently.” I couldn’t resist being a little grudging.
“Well, your job is done. Toyne will be coming back with me, so you may return to your work.”
I opened my mouth to ask the question about Zara, but there was something about Detective Maynard’s facial expression that warned me not to push it.
In the end, it turned out I was forced to leave at the right time. No sooner had I got into my car, Zara pulled up in her blue sedan and demanded to see her husband.
I was still close enough to the scene to hear Maynard demand to know who’d called her. I suspected a couple of sergeants would be receiving tongue lashings later on today. I started my engine and drove out of the hamlet, leaving Zara to wail over Darren’s injuries.
8
The Man Behind the Mask
Despite its dark past, Pendalay had a lot in common with every other zoo I’d worked at. The rumour m
ill was just as active, and in the days that followed the incident, talk about what had happened to one of the PR team was rife. Everyone had got to know the members of ZaZa PR during the time they’d been at the zoo - especially now that they were a daily presence, sorting out the Halloween event. While Darren wasn’t as involved in the public side of the business, everyone had still found out that the boss’ husband had been the victim of a vicious crime.
The facts, however, were a little more elusive.
I’d heard many theories about what had happened. Some were saying he’d been savaged by something (they’d wrongly assumed 'savaged' must involve an animal) and others were claiming there’d been stakes in the step - just like the one used to impale the woman who’d died.
I hadn't even known that the zoo staff were aware of what had happened to Jayne Fairfax until this most recent incident. The newspaper reports had been vague at the time. I rather suspected that the PR team were pretty loose lipped - especially when it came to gossip as good as murder.
I wasn’t above a little speculation myself. Something had been bugging me since I’d spoken with Tom at the crime scene. It was the first time I'd got a chance to speak to him properly and I just knew there was something familiar about him. It was something about animals, of that much I was sure. Unfortunately, that didn’t really narrow things down much when you worked in my profession.
I was actually a bit down in the dumps when my best friend Tiff called during my lunch break. I moved to the back of the staffroom to take the call, already anticipating being able to share my fury at Lowell over what he’d done to me.
It was only when I pressed the answer call button on screen that I remembered I couldn’t say a word about it, or risk Lowell’s life. Somehow that just made me even more annoyed.
“You’ll never guess what’s happened,” Tiff began as soon as I answered.
My eyebrows were immediately raised. For as long as I could remember, Tiff had always been the kind of person to ask how I was doing before she shared a thing about herself.