Beyond Evil

by Neil White

  The statement was nothing more than a summary of the arrest, and her comment after arrest had been, ‘Fair enough.’

  It was an ordinary shoplifting case against a woman with only youth convictions to her name. It was an easy one. Either a charge, or perhaps a fixed penalty notice, or even a caution. Sheldon could see no reason why Dixon would interfere.

  Which made him suspicious.

  He put the file back and left the filing room. He was going to go to Dixon’s room to confront her, if she was still there, but he wanted to look into the John Abbott file first.

  There was an empty room across the corridor, with five desks, each with a monitor on, all connected to small servers on the desk. It was the room used by the burglary team, with trays teeming with paperwork and photographs of Oulton’s most prolific thieves plastered on the walls. There was a list of names on a whiteboard, with descriptions of their trainers underneath, so they knew whose door to smash down when a footprint mark turned up at a scene. It was the team Tracey Peters worked on, and he scowled as he thought of how she had spied on him.

  He put his anger to one side; he didn’t have time to be distracted, and logged in. Once he was in the system, he keyed in Abbott’s details, and there were five people with that name on the computer, although only one had an arrest from that year. When Sheldon clicked on the link, he was able to access the custody record and incident log.

  Abbott had been caught spraying the graffiti after an anonymous call, and he didn’t answer any questions when interviewed.

  Sheldon paused, his fingers drumming a beat on his lips. Why didn’t John Abbott answer the police questions? He clicked on the case result, and he saw that Abbott had pleaded guilty at the first court hearing. He had admitted the damage at court, but if he had confessed to the police, he wouldn’t have had to go to court. He had never been in trouble before, and so would have received a caution, and possibly an add-on of paying the cost of the clean-up, although the graffiti was on a building scheduled for demolition a week later. All of this on the advice of his solicitor, Amelia Diaz. It was almost as if he wanted to go to court. Sheldon pulled on his lip. That troubled him.

  The custody photograph of John Abbott showed a man in his mid-twenties, with his hair around his collar and unkempt, like someone who hadn’t realised that once Glastonbury comes to an end you are supposed to go back to the real world.

  Sheldon scribbled down the address John Abbott had given on his arrest and headed along the corridor once more.

  He was heading for Dixon’s office, wanting to speak to her about Lucy’s case. As he got closer though, he saw the light from the Incident Room spilling into the corridor. He slowed down, and as he passed the doorway, he couldn’t stop himself from looking in.

  Only Lowther and Tracey Peters were in there, along with DI Williams. Lowther was perched on a desk, looking down at Tracey. From the smile on her face, it seemed that she was enjoying the attention.

  Sheldon paused to listen. DI Williams was telling some anecdote about something he once said. The scrawls on the whiteboard and the papers already accumulating on desks gave Sheldon a tinge of envy that he was no longer part of it, but then Williams spotted him in the doorway.

  ‘What brings you back, Sheldon?’ Williams said, his grin gleaming beneath the unnatural darkness of his moustache.

  ‘I’m just checking in, wondering how you were getting on,’ Sheldon said. He felt some of his tension return as he was reminded of being taken away from the investigation.

  ‘I thought you were on leave, sir,’ Lowther said.

  ‘I’m just looking in on one of my other cases. A shoplifting. You wouldn’t be interested.’

  Williams snorted. ‘You’re right, I wouldn’t. Things find their own level, I suppose.’

  Sheldon ignored the jibe. He didn’t want to be ejected just yet.

  Except Williams didn’t seem to want to stop taunting him.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ Williams continued, ‘is why Dixon was so keen for you to stay in charge. We had to force her into letting us in. Why would that be?’

  Sheldon turned away, grinding his teeth. He didn’t want to get into a shouting match with him. He walked along the corridor and tried to ignore what he thought were sniggers from the Incident Room.

  When he stopped outside Dixon’s room, he smoothed down his clothes and looked at the ceiling. He took a deep breath. If his suspicions were wrong, this could end his career.

  The knock on Dixon’s door was followed by a quiet, ‘Come in.’

  It seemed Dixon hadn’t been doing anything before Sheldon’s knock, as he’d heard no scurrying of papers and there was nothing open on her desk.

  He didn’t bother with the formalities. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Christina, Billy’s housekeeper, when I brought her in?’ he said, sitting down.

  She seemed to sink lower in her chair. Her mouth opened for a second before she spoke. ‘Christina?’

  ‘We thought she was a young woman called Christina, but you knew differently.’

  ‘I don’t keep track of your cases, Sheldon.’

  ‘But you did with Billy’s murder. You spoke to me about it, wanted to know how things were going, and when I brought in Christina, you knew her. I saw it in your face, when you met her in the corridor. You looked shocked.’

  ‘You must be mistaken.’

  Sheldon felt the anger build in him, more than a year of frustration of not knowing the answers about Alice Kenyon. His late night vigils outside Billy’s house. His wife walking out on him. Hannah, his daughter, growing distant.

  He slammed his hand on the desk. Dixon jumped back, startled.

  ‘Liar!’ he shouted. He held up Lucy’s file and waved it angrily. ‘You took quite an interest in her six months ago. Except that Christina was called Lucy Crane back then. You made sure her shoplifting case went away. Why did you do that?’

  Dixon’s eyes widened and she swallowed. ‘I am your senior officer,’ she said, although Sheldon heard the tremble in her voice.

  ‘Report me then, and I can tell everyone about this,’ and he threw the file across the desk. It slid towards her.

  ‘Sometimes I decide which cases we are proceeding with,’ Dixon said. ‘Cases cost money and manpower.’

  ‘So you remember her now?’

  Dixon looked as if she was about to say something, but then she stopped and looked at her desk.

  ‘But why this case?’ Sheldon said, leaning across to jab the file with his finger. ‘It was an easy hit, an admitted shoplifting. Why would you want a tick in the wrong column for a case like that?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean?’ Her fingers trembled.

  ‘Okay, try this,’ he said, his words coming out quickly. ‘Lucy’s shoplifting case was just a few weeks before Ted Kenyon was caught in a car with a young woman. You might remember that, it was all over the papers, and guess what; that was Lucy Crane as well. She made a bit of money is my guess, but I can’t help wondering whether there was something more to this, because Ted Kenyon being caught with Lucy took the public sympathy away from him. Once the stories became about him, they stopped being about how we couldn’t find his daughter’s killer.’

  Dixon’s tongue kept flicking onto her lips. ‘Come on, Sheldon, spit it out.’

  ‘That’s the thing, ma’am. You’re not throwing me out. You are sitting there, listening, wanting to find out what I know, which means that the reason behind this is something you would rather I didn’t find out. And now I’m really curious.’

  ‘Don’t think you can mess with me, Sheldon.’

  Sheldon laughed, but it was filled with bitterness. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, it must be a sign of my sickness. If you remember, you put me on sick leave that I hadn’t requested, for the sake of my mental health. So what I will do is leave you alone, but trust me when I say that I will keep on looking for the reason. You noted yourself that I have a tendency towards, shall we say, obsessive behaviour.’

>   He stood up as if to leave. Just before he turned away, he noticed that some photographs had been taken from the wall, as all there was left was a picture hook.

  Sheldon took one last look at her. She was staring at her desk, and she looked frightened.

  Once the door had closed, Sheldon paused for a moment. He looked at his hands. They were shaking. He had done the right thing though, he was sure of that. He marched off down the corridor, and when he got outside the station, he ran to his car. It was time to find out more about John Abbott.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Jake sat down on the chair opposite Ted, facing each other over the dining room table. From the pictures Charlie had seen of Alice, he could see the family resemblance, although there was a sadness to him that he had never seen in photographs of Alice.

  Jake sat hunched up with his knees turned inwards, his shoulders bony through his black T-shirt.

  ‘So what do you know?’ Charlie said.

  Jake shrugged, and then said, ‘They used to talk to us when we were hanging out in town. They were into being free, so they said. I don’t know why they spoke to us. Maybe it was because of how we were dressed, as if they thought we wanted to join some kind of Goth gang. They were friendly at first, but the second time they found us, they started to talk about leaving society and having no rules, and how we had to be there on the big day.’

  ‘Big day?’ Charlie said.

  ‘The uprising, that’s what they called it.’ Jake shook his head. ‘It was rubbish, all of it.’

  Charlie knew it was the same group he had seen outside his office. He thought of Christina, how she had been placed into Billy’s home and felt angry about Donia, about how she had set him up. It was obvious now that she was a plant, put into his firm just so they could find out what Billy had told Amelia. Was that why they had been outside the office, waiting for Donia to take whatever they needed to them?

  ‘Did they go round all the young people in the town?’ Charlie said.

  ‘I don’t know, because I don’t hang out with other kids. Anyway, it wasn’t really us they were speaking to.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It was the girls, not the rest of us. They were just trying it on. They realised soon enough that we weren’t interested and so left us alone. We get enough shit from the local kids, all the hoodies picking on us, without the political freaks joining in.’

  As Charlie thought back on how the group had watched him, Jake said, ‘A couple of them were pretty scary. Like Billy said on the video, one was a huge guy. Solid, over six feet, with a beard that was kind of twisted, with beads in it. And the smaller guy, Henry, he had long hair, and with a really intense look to him. All the girls were in awe of him, I could tell.’

  ‘When was this?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Not long before Alice died.’

  Ted’s mouth opened in shock. ‘So you’ve always suspected them?’ Jake responded with another shrug. ‘How did you know?’

  Jake ground his teeth and looked down.

  Charlie moved closer to him. ‘Jake?’

  He looked away.

  Charlie banged his hand on the table. Jake jumped and stared, scared now.

  ‘Jake, if you know something, say it.’ Charlie was breathing heavily, his temper rising. ‘The time for silence is gone.’

  ‘Jake?’ Ted said, confused.

  When Jake looked up again, there were tears in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘For what?’ Ted said.

  ‘For not saying anything.’

  ‘Tell me now.’

  Jake took a deep breath and wiped at his eyes. ‘One of Alice’s friends had become involved with them. Alice had gone away to university, but do you remember Marie, her friend from school? She failed her exams and she drifted, but Alice would hook up with her when she came home, except that Marie was hanging around with this group. Marie was with them when they were speaking to my mates and me. She was talking about going wild at Billy’s house, and that we should go up too, that we’d enjoy it.’

  ‘And so you thought that this group might have had something to do with Alice’s death?’ Ted said, his voice rising.

  Jake looked at his hands for a few seconds, and then said, ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And you didn’t say anything?’

  Jake shook his head.

  ‘Why not?’

  Jake swallowed. He looked at his father, and then at Charlie, before he sighed and said, ‘We don’t know everything about Alice. She was all grown up, not a little girl anymore. She will have had secrets from us. It’s natural. When I was talking to Marie, she told me they were having a great time. She was smoking a spliff, and the nods and the winks hinted that it was like a group thing, you know, orgies. What does everyone think about Alice? That she was sweet and lovely and respectable – and she was, but if she had got involved with them, got out of her depth or something, well, it would all change, and I didn’t want that, because then she would be the girl who died in some drug-fuelled party. No, I preferred it how it was reported, that she was innocent, that she wasn’t part of their crowd. So I kept quiet.’

  Ted took some deep breaths, and Charlie could see some anger in his eyes, that his own son knew some of the answers but had kept them from him. But Ted’s furrowed brow showed he was wrestling with his feelings, because he understood why Jake had kept quiet, because he had tried to protect Alice’s memory.

  ‘Who’s the girl?’ Ted said. ‘Marie?’

  ‘Marie Cuffy,’ Jake said. ‘She was a friend of Alice’s from the sixth form, but Marie had changed. I suppose Alice had, but all of Alice’s other friends had gone away too, and so Marie was someone to hang round with when she was home.’

  ‘Find me a picture.’

  Jake left the room, and Charlie listened as he rummaged in what he guessed was Alice’s room. When Jake came downstairs again, he was holding a photograph. ‘That’s her,’ he said, pointing to a picture.

  As Charlie looked, he saw an attractive young woman, her eyes flirty, smiling with Alice, each holding beer bottles in their hand.

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’ Charlie said.

  ‘I haven’t seen her since Alice died.’

  ‘We need to find her,’ Ted said, tapping the photograph. ‘She knows something about Alice. Jake, do you know where she lives?’

  Jake nodded and gave an address. ‘That’s where her parents live.’

  Charlie’s thoughts were interrupted by the buzz of his phone in his pocket. He checked the number. It was Donia’s.

  ‘Hello?’ Charlie said, expecting to hear her voice, ready for the next stage of deceit.

  ‘Mr Barker,’ said a deep voice. Charlie recognised it from the hallway of Donia’s flat.

  Charlie swallowed. His mouth had gone dry. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You know what we want.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The videotape of Billy Privett. We’ve got the discs, but we want the original tape.’

  He felt the hot flush of anger creep up his cheek, mixed in with helplessness about how it was all out of control. ‘You killed Amelia. Why should I do anything for you?’

  ‘Because we’ve got something you want.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing I want.’

  ‘Haven’t we?’ the voice said, and then he laughed, loud and mocking. ‘What about poor little Donia here?’

  ‘The work experience girl you put into my firm. Very clever, but I’m not falling for that.’

  ‘If you knew the truth about Donia, you would help. The tape. Bring it, and it must be you. Call me when you’ve got it. I’ll give you an hour. Then we start to kill her, slowly.’

  His phone went dead, and he looked at it in disbelief. And what did he mean about Donia? The truth?

  Charlie remembered that he had grabbed Donia’s CV before he left the office. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper. It looked routine, headed with her name, Donia Graham. He dou
bted its truth, but there was a phone number.

  He dialled the number and waited as it rang out. When the phone was answered, a timid voice said, ‘Hello?’

  Charlie put the phone against his chest for a moment, just to think about what to say, and then, ‘Mrs Graham?’

  ‘Miss,’ she said. ‘Miss Graham.’ Her flat Yorkshire vowels were given some lift by the lilt of the Caribbean.

  He took a deep breath. ‘Is it Donia’s mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Charlie Barker,’ he said. He expected Donia’s plan to unravel now, because he doubted she was the real Donia.

  Instead, he heard just a gasp. He waited for her to say something, anything that would kick-start the conversation, but she said nothing.

  ‘Miss Graham?’

  ‘It’s Wilma, you know that,’ she said, her voice stronger now. Then she sighed. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your business partner.’

  ‘She told you?’

  ‘Yes, she was quite shaken by it.’ There was a pause, and then, ‘Has she told you?’

  Charlie was confused. ‘I’m sorry, told me what?’

  ‘About her. And me.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Another pause. ‘You don’t remember me?’

  Charlie was getting exasperated now. ‘I’m not calling about you. It’s about Donia.’ And then he realised what she had said. ‘What do you mean, why don’t I remember you?’

  ‘Hasn’t Donia said anything to you?’

  Charlie closed his eyes. She sounded genuine, and so the possibilities started to race through his head. The scene at the flat, the members of the group there, and now the phone call, the demand for the videotape and the threat to kill Donia. He had it wrong, and she wasn’t a plant. She was just a young law student getting some experience, which meant that the threat was real. He felt nauseous.

  ‘Do you know anything about an anarchist group near Oulton?’ Charlie said.

  ‘No. Why should I?’ Her voice started to crack. ‘Why, what’s happened?’

  Charlie wanted to put off the moment, knowing what he was about to say would wreck her, but he knew that he couldn’t.