The Twisted Knot

by J. M. Peace

  Sammi nodded. She was only helping out. She did not have to make decisions on which way the investigation went. Terry would have to take over from her. The investigation would run until the coroner, not Terry, ruled it non-suspicious.

  ‘Looks like no one’s home anyway,’ Bob noted, as he switched off the ignition.

  Bob hung back so Sammi would be the one to reach the front door first. She wasn’t sure if he did that because it was her job and he wanted her to have to take the initiative. Or to test her and see if she was settling back into being on the road.

  She pressed the doorbell but couldn’t hear it ring inside the house, so she knocked loudly as well. Everything was shut up. There were no signs of life. Bob was probably right about no one being home.

  ‘They might be at Faye’s house?’ she suggested.

  ‘Maybe,’ Bob replied, dubiously.

  Sammi looked at him in surprise. ‘Surely Barry should be supporting his mum at a time like this?’

  ‘Peter’s dead. There’s nasty rumours around the town. I wouldn’t blame them if they’d headed off for a week.’

  ‘You think they’d leave poor old mum behind?’

  Bob shrugged.

  Sammi turned her attention back to the door. She tried the handle. It was locked. She worked her way methodically around the outside of the house, checking each window and door as she came to it. She peered in where she could. The curtains were open, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. All the furniture was in place. Everything appeared as it had the day before – the usual trappings of family life. The little girl’s bedroom, decorated in shades of pink and purple, offered a few clues. There didn’t seem to be many toys on the shelves and there appeared to be gaps where items had been. The kitchen looked clean, no dirty dishes or abandoned breakfasts. The doors were locked. No signs of life, but also no signs of a rushed exit. It looked almost like everyone would be returning home after work.

  ‘What did I tell you? No one here,’ Bob said when Sammi returned to the front. ‘The interesting part will be to see if they’ve packed all their clothes and valuables. It’s the stuff missing from cupboards and drawers that will tell the story.’

  Sammi nodded. ‘I hope they’re okay.’

  While they were at the house, the young neighbour over the road had decided her front garden was in urgent need of watering. She waved as soon as they came back out to the police car.

  ‘Hello,’ she called, turning off the hose and making her way across the road. ‘Is everything all right?’ She looked in her early twenties, and was wearing a stained T-shirt and shorts with the hem coming down on one side. Sammi noticed children’s toys scattered around her front yard.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sammi, offering no further information. There was a pause as the woman waited for her to continue.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean to be nosy,’ she said eventually, ‘but I’m friendly with Belinda and Barry. They often come over for a chat. I have a little girl – she’s only a toddler – and she adores Nicola.

  ‘Yesterday evening I saw Belinda and Nici leave with a couple of suitcases. Normally, they tell me if they’re going away and I empty their mailbox and keep an eye on things. They didn’t say anything though.’ She paused. ‘I’ve heard some rumours around town and I guess that’s what’s really bothering me.’

  ‘And what have you heard?’ Bob asked.

  The woman looked around quickly as if someone might be listening in. She lowered her voice and leant in slightly. ‘That Barry’s brother has been abusing young girls.’

  ‘And where did you hear that?’ Bob continued.

  The woman’s eyes flicked left and right as she tried to compose a suitable answer that didn’t compromise herself or her source. ‘You know . . . around. Is that why they left? And why you’re here?’

  Bob granted the woman a disarming smile. ‘Sorry, that’s police business.’

  ‘Well, I hope they come back once things settle down. Must be hard on Barry, hearing those things about his brother. Barry’s such an easygoing guy, but I think that would rattle anyone.’

  ‘If you see Belinda or Barry, could you let them know we were here?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ the woman replied. If she was annoyed about the lack of information, she didn’t show it. She returned across the road.

  Bob and Sammi got back into the car.

  ‘There’s another one who wants to know everything, but not tell us anything,’ Sammi said, turning her hip so she could get past her Glock to the seatbelt clip.

  ‘Just a part of small-town life,’ Bob replied.

  32

  Stuck in the office over the past few months, Sammi had discovered a new way of policing. Whilst not on active duty, she kept up-to-date by looking at the reports. There was a lot of information to be found in a police report if you cared to look. Not only the details of the incident as listed in the report, but also who put the report on, what time and how long before it was updated. She knew her colleagues and could read between the lines when need be. She knew who might under-exaggerate and play down a crime so they could wiggle out of conducting further investigations, or who would talk up an incident to try to draw the boss’s attention to their work. So she read reports thoroughly as a matter of course now.

  She was checking a detail in the Form One for Peter Woodford that she had generated for Terry.

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ she hissed under her breath as she read through the most recent supplementary report.

  She started watching the door as well as the clock. So when Terry finally arrived for his shift, she knew he was seven minutes late. His detective sergeant was on holidays and he was clearly making the most of having no boss watching over him.

  She followed him straight to the CIB office. He looked over his shoulder as she marched in behind him.

  ‘Are you stalking me?’

  ‘Yep,’ Sammi replied.

  ‘Watch out, people will start to talk,’ he said, with a smile.

  Sammi stood in front of him as he plonked himself into his desk chair, ‘I wanted to ask you about Faye.’

  ‘Faye? Refresh my memory.’

  ‘Faye Woodford. The mother of the hanger in the shed. I saw your supplementary on the report.’

  Terry gave her a half-smile. ‘Ah, she was okay about it.’

  ‘I can’t believe you asked an elderly lady to identify her son when he was rotting from the inside out.’

  ‘They cleaned him up at the morgue. It wasn’t too bad. It will take ages to get dental records back. Her identification will speed things up.’

  It was a poor argument, Sammi thought. The cause of death wouldn’t be listed until the toxicology results came back and that would take weeks.

  ‘So she identified him,’ Terry said. ‘It’s officially Pete the Ped. But yes, before you ask, I am still investigating it as a suspicious death. And we’re organising dental records.’

  ‘If you are doing the dental records anyway, why did you make Faye do a visual ID? I hope the coroner has a crack at you about putting an old lady through that,’ Sammi said.

  ‘I did it for the coroner, to get the file moving before the dental ID comes back. Why do you care anyway?’ Terry argued.

  ‘Because it’s the wrong thing to do.’

  ‘It’s done now, it’s all good, Sammi,’ he said with his usual grin.

  ‘It’s not just one big joke, Terry,’ Sammi replied, then marched out, not turning back to see if he was still smiling.

  33

  Sammi was still cross when she returned to the front office. Cross about Terry’s attitude. Cross about the lack of progress in finding a victim. She had hoped that by now someone in town would have come forward with more information about Peter’s latest victim, if there was one. There must be something they were missing, something to point them in the right direction. And what abo
ut Peter? Had he really committed suicide? And why hadn’t Faye been more surprised? There was more to this whole story than met the eye. Of that much, she was sure.

  Sammi went out to the front counter and leant up against it, looking at Mel as if she had the answers.

  ‘Let’s do some brainstorming. Where would Woodford come into contact with a child?’ Sammi asked.

  Mel considered this briefly. ‘Nowhere. In this town at least. All the locals know him. He’s not going to get away with volunteering at a church or a sports club.’

  ‘So something might have happened in some other town? And that may explain why we haven’t found the victim? Maybe they’re not even here in the Crossing?’ Sammi speculated.

  Mel nodded distractedly.

  ‘But even if someone made a complaint somewhere else, he’d be listed as the suspect and there was nothing like that when I ran him through the system.’ Sammi was thinking out loud. ‘He seems to keep to himself. Maybe he’s been away somewhere and no one even noticed.’

  Mel groaned and Sammi looked at her expectantly.

  ‘I’ve had an idea but it’s unpleasant,’ Mel said. ‘The people he seems to have regular contact with are his family. His mum, his brother. His brother’s family.’

  It was Sammi’s turn to groan. ‘His niece. Nicola.’ The little girl’s bedroom she had spied through the window flashed through her mind.

  Mel nodded. ‘Belinda’s works shifts at the hospital. He might have had access to Nicola some time when Belinda and Barry were at work. Maybe Faye has been babysitting her. That’s how it happened with Janey. And Peter’s family stood by him through that like they believed he was innocent.’

  ‘But Nicola’s only, like, six years old or something?’

  ‘She’s eight or nine. Small for her age, I think.’

  Sammi remembered Nicola with a pang of remorse. She couldn’t recall noticing her any time before, though surely she would have been at some of the functions Sammi and Gavin had attended. One of those kids who hangs back and blends in.

  ‘She was terrified of us when we went around there to do the death knock,’ Sammi said. ‘She seemed to think we put everyone in jail.’ Sammi remembered how resolute Belinda had been that Nicola speak to them, how difficult that had been for the child. Part of her had wanted Belinda to leave the scared little girl alone.

  ‘She’s a shy little thing,’ Mel agreed.

  ‘Maybe too scared to talk to the police about anything that happened to her.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Mel said. ‘Peter and Nicola – they’re not blood relatives. Nicola was a toddler when Belinda got together with Barry. She moved to town when they started dating. But since when does any of that factor in for a pedophile?’

  ‘If that’s the case,’ Sammi said, ‘Barry might have rocketed to the top of the list of people to speak with. I don’t think he’s been seen since this all blew up. I’d have to check with Gavin but I don’t think he’s been back to work. It’s reasonable that he be off for a few days. Looking after his mum and making arrangements for his brother would be a handy excuse. But what if he has had a hand in it all and he’s on the run?’

  Mel nodded. ‘Nicola called him “Dad”. He’s the only father she’s ever known. Maybe he found out Peter was abusing her and flipped out?’

  ‘Terry better do something with this,’ Sammi said, shaking her head.

  34

  By the time she had settled the dog into her house and found them both something to eat, Faye knew what she wanted to do.

  ‘I need glasses to find my glasses,’ she murmured to herself. She found the missing glasses eventually in her crossword book, nestled between the pages after she’d shut them. Her address book was easier to find, she always put that back in its spot next to the phone. The names were listed alphabetically, by the first name instead of the surname. She was much more likely to remember the first name. She found the number she was looking for.

  She held the receiver in her hand, then replaced it again. She steadily rolled another smoke and, once it was lit, she picked up the receiver again. She carefully typed the number in, peering through the thick glass, double-checking she got all the digits right before hitting the call button.

  It went to message bank. Faye had expected that. She didn’t like talking to a machine and nearly changed her mind, but this was important. She waited for the beep and spoke falteringly.

  ‘Oh, yes, well. It’s Faye here. I really need to talk to you. It’s very important. I’ve made so many mistakes. I want to explain some things. Maybe I can even help somehow. Please call me back. Please . . .’ She realised she had nothing else to say so she hung up. She sucked the rollie down to the filter and ground it into the ashtray. She took a deep juddering breath that ended with a cough that shook her frail frame. She hoped the message would be received. She hoped it would be acted on.

  35

  Sammi took the call from Jeremy from Forensics.

  ‘Hey, is Terry there?’ he asked.

  She checked her phone’s control panel and saw Terry’s extension was lit up.

  ‘Looks like he might be on the phone.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to him about that hanger in the shed. I superglued the suicide note we found there. It’s so much more effective than dusting. There were a few prints on it. They were all from the same person, obviously whoever wrote it. I ran the prints against Woodford but they weren’t his.’

  Sammi took a moment to process this information. ‘Peter Woodford didn’t write the suicide note?’ This might add a new avenue of enquiry. ‘The note that said “Sorry” and nothing else?’

  ‘You’d need a handwriting comparison by an expert to confirm he didn’t write the note. All I can tell you is that I found fingerprints on the note and they weren’t his. They were in the right places to belong to the person who wrote the note. A right-handed person will usually hold the paper still with their left hand while they write. The fingerprints were the side of the thumb and the index finger of the left hand on the left-hand side of the paper. Hardly any other smudges that might suggest the paper had been handled by other people. We had Woodford’s prints on file. They’re not his.’

  ‘This whole job’s got hair on it. Thanks for letting us know. I’ll pass it on to Terry,’ Sammi said.

  She hung up and swung silently in her chair for a moment, digesting the news, until the control panel showed Terry was off the phone.

  Sammi headed up the corridor to the CIB office. Terry had his back to her and she could see he was drinking coffee and looking at Facebook on the office computer. The site was blocked for most police but exceptions were made for CIB because social media could be a valuable information-gathering tool.

  ‘Hey!’

  Terry jumped, automatically closing the screen he had been viewing before even looking to see who was behind him. When he realised it was only Sammi, he shot her a dirty look.

  ‘Shit, Sammi. Scared the bejeezus out of me. Have a look at this.’ He clicked open the screen he had closed when she came in. ‘This guy gets absolutely mashed coming off a skateboard going down stairs.’

  ‘I’m not interested unless he’s a suspect,’ Sammi said. She reached past him to click the Facebook window shut. ‘Tell me what you are doing about the dead ped.’

  ‘Still trying to find something to show it’s not a suicide?’

  ‘Evidence is starting to build that his brother’s family might be involved,’ Sammi said.

  Terry leant back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. He smiled at Sammi.

  ‘What have you found out?’

  Sammi filled Terry in on disappearance of the Woodford family and the fact that Peter might have had access to Barry’s young stepdaughter, Nicola. ‘Sound suspicious to you yet?’

  ‘It’s all extremely circumstantial,’ Terry remarked.

  ‘Okay,
on top of that, I’ve got news hot off the press from Forensics. There are fingerprints on the suicide note and they’re not Peter’s.’

  Terry shrugged. ‘Means nothing. Someone else had touched the piece of paper previously and when Peter wrote the note he didn’t leave clear prints.’

  Sammi took a deep breath to try and calm her rising frustration. ‘That’s not the way Jeremy sees it. Tell me there’s not some leads for you to follow up there.’

  ‘Aw, but you’re doing such a great job, Sammi.’ Terry gave her a broad smile.

  ‘Come on, Terry.’ Sammi didn’t try to disguise the exasperation in her voice this time.

  ‘You really want this to be a suspicious death, don’t you?’ Terry asked, tilting his head a little.

  ‘It’s not what I want or don’t want. There’s things that need investigating. I know he’s a ped, and killing him may be some sort of a community service, but that doesn’t mean the coroner’s going to write it off. Don’t pretend I didn’t tell you all this info when the job goes to shit.’

  ‘It’s not going to go to shit unless you keep going with your conspiracy theories.’

  ‘Seriously, Terry? I thought you’d be all over this if there was any chance it might be murder. How many murder pinches have you had? Zero, I’m guessing – same as every other plain clothes constable with your length of service.’

  ‘Do you really think they’d let me investigate a murder?’ Terry countered. ‘We do all the work, some detective sergeant looking for promotion cruises in and takes the pinch.’

  Sammi shrugged. ‘Just because your boss is away doesn’t mean you’re on holidays too.’