by Jane Isaac
The lights of Brixworth Village glistened in the distance, within it the home of Phoebe and Jason Carter. They could only be ten minutes or so away by car and Beth couldn’t help but wonder whether that was significant.
*
Pockets of darkness were dotted around the room, broken by a flickering streetlamp at the end of the driveway. Phoebe Carter left the curtains undrawn and sat in the armchair, staring out. Watching. Waiting.
A squeak of bedsprings sounded from above. One of her children turning in their sleep. A lorry droned past on the nearby bypass. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there. The sounds of the evening quietened as night crept in.
Finally, the rumble of an engine was followed by a blaze of headlights on the drive. The car door banged shut. Jason had always been heavy-handed. A key was inserted into a lock. She could hear his heavy breathing as he shrugged off his jacket, kicked off his boots.
He walked into the front room and halted. ‘You gave me a start!’
She blinked twice as he switched on the light, but said nothing.
‘Are you okay?’
Phoebe flinched as Jason bent down and kissed her forehead.
‘Sorry I’m so late. It’s been one of those days.’
He plumped up a cushion on the sofa and sat. ‘What were you doing sitting in the dark?’
Phoebe raised her eyes and lifted the two tiny plastic bags. ‘I found these.’ The white powder shifted in the bottom as she held them up.
Jason’s face tightened. ‘Where?’
‘Don’t try to deny it, Jason. I’m not a fool.’
‘I’m not denying anything. You found them down the back of my sock drawer.’ He rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘They’re old, Phoebe.’
‘What do you mean old?’
‘From last year. I… lapsed a while. It was after news of the charge broke. You know what it was like. Business was plummeting. We were losing customers left, right and centre. I needed a little help.’
‘Dad stepped back from the business.’
‘Yes, he did. But it took a long time to restore confidence and convince customers he was no longer with us. Your dad’s been running Ingram’s a long time. We had to reduce our charges to attract business, struggled to make ends meet.’
‘That was a year ago.’ She waved the packets in her hand. ‘Why do you still have them?’
‘I don’t know. I weaned myself off. Didn’t want to let you and the boys down. But I couldn’t manage to part with them, just in case.’
Phoebe stared at his forlorn face. ‘How dare you bring this into our home?’ she said. ‘The boys could have found it.’
‘It was hidden, and in a locked drawer.’
‘The key was in the jewellery box!’ She battled to keep her voice low.
‘I’m sorry, Phoebs, but you have to believe me. I lapsed for a few weeks last year, that’s all. Haven’t touched the stuff since. I promise.’
Phoebe searched the filing cabinets of her mind, seeking out the moments when Jason appeared fuller, more confident, in control. She thought she’d spot the signs; it certainly wasn’t the first time. But the early months after the charge were a blur. She knew the business was struggling. Jason took over both branches and was inevitably out at work more. But… why keep them? Jason had always struggled to say no and she found it hard to believe he’d be able to resist the temptation of it being so close by. She pushed her tongue against the side of her mouth, stood and headed for the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To flush them away.’
He was on her tail as she reached the downstairs cloakroom. Swiped at her, missing by millimetres as she tossed the bags in the toilet.
‘Do you know how much that was worth?’
Phoebe elbowed him back and pulled down the flush. The water gushed through the toilet pan, circling the little bags and encasing them until they disappeared.
‘Why? What would you have done with it? Sold it to your pals that you’re no longer in contact with? Come on, Jason. Don’t lie to me.’
He placed his hands over the back of his skull. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’
Phoebe pushed past him, moved into the kitchen and pressed the switch on the kettle. She needed a cup of tea to calm her frayed nerves.
Jason followed and leaned on the breakfast counter. ‘You have to believe me, Phoebs. I’m not on the stuff anymore. I promise.’
‘Good.’ She whisked around. ‘Because if I find out you’re lying, that’ll be it. No going back this time.’
The kettle bubbled and spluttered in the background.
‘What’s this?’ Jason said, lifting a business card off the counter.
‘Oh, it’s the detective. The one that came to see us the other night. She was here earlier.’
‘Why?’
‘Checking up on us, I guess. She wants me to ring her if I think of anything.’
24
Early morning sunlight streamed into the incident room bringing with it the promise of a clear day.
‘Hey, Beth. Come and see this.’
Beth looked up from her stack of Monday emails and followed the voice to Pete, who was hunched over his laptop. She crossed the office to join him. ‘What is it?’
‘A member of the public heard Freeman’s appeal and sent in some footage.’ He clicked a button on his laptop. Darkness filled the screen, illuminated by strobes of light from a pair of car headlights. ‘It was filmed on a dashcam,’ he said. ‘This man was at the Brampton Halt pub last Thursday evening. He was parked at the point where the Brampton Valley Way pathway runs through.’
They waited. An engine fired up. The car set off and immediately juddered to a stop. Something flashed past but it was quick and impossible to decipher the blur.
‘Can you slow it down?’ Beth asked.
Pete nodded. He clicked a couple of buttons. The image moved in front of the car in slow motion. It was still blurred, but she caught the edge of a bicycle wheel, a rider. The rider was dressed in black with a rucksack on his back. The car missed him by inches.
‘Pretty stupid to be riding around in the dark dressed in black,’ Beth said.
‘Unless of course you don’t want to be seen. Looks like we might have located our offender’s escape route from Merry Tom Lane,’ Pete said. ‘The witness had been in the pub, having a meal with a work colleague. The clock on the dashcam records the sighting at 10.53 p.m.’
‘Timing would be about right. Why didn’t the driver contact us earlier?’
‘He didn’t think much of it until he heard Freeman’s appeal last night. Then he remembered the dashcam.’
‘Play it again,’ Beth said.
The footage flashed back up. The rider’s head was down. Even in slow motion she couldn’t see any facial features or distinguishing marks.
At that moment, Nick strode into the office. ‘Beth?’
She raised a hand from the side of the room. ‘You need to see this, Sarge.’
Nick weaved through the desks to join them. Pete replayed the footage and explained about the email from the witness. When he’d finished, he brought up a map on the screen.
‘If that’s our offender, he dumped the car at Merry Tom, and made his escape on bike,’ Nick said, stroking the sides of his beard.
‘The direction’s interesting,’ Beth said. ‘He’s cycling towards Northampton.’ They quietened, three pairs of eyes focused on the screen. ‘It’s possible our suspect lives in or near Northampton town.’
‘Look how far he’s travelled over the past few days,’ Beth said, running along the route from Rothwell to Merry Tom, then across to Great Oakley and Corby. Corby’s about thirty miles from Northampton. We know he’s taken the time to learn his victim’s movements, watch their habits. If that’s the case, I doubt he’s relied solely on a push bike. I reckon he’d need a car to make some of these journeys.’
Nick rested a hand on Pete’s shoulder. ‘Good work. Get out and take a statement fro
m the witness, will you? Oh, and email the footage to Freeman.’ He turned to Beth. ‘The signals are back up on the rig. We can interview Craig Moss over Skype now.’
Beth glanced around the incident room. Very few chairs were occupied, the majority of officers already out on inquiries. ‘Where’s Freeman?’
‘He’s got an audience with the assistant chief constable to plead for more staff. Taken Andrea with him. It’s you and me to interview.’
*
Even with the limited view on the computer screen, it was obvious Craig Moss was a bear of a man. His broad head sat on a thick neck, the number one haircut accentuating the width of his skull. He shared his father’s fair features and pale skin, but it was the eyes that were really telling: piercing grey-blue Moss eyes that latched on to whoever was speaking.
‘We’re sorry for your loss,’ Beth said.
‘He’s nothing to me.’
‘How much do you know about the nature of his death?’ Beth asked. Although limited details of the murder had been released to the press, she wasn’t sure how much Craig had gleaned.
‘My wife, Jean, called me this morning when our phone lines were restored. She filled me in.’
‘Your wife?’ Beth’s chair leg scraped the floor as she inched back. There’d been no mention that his wife had been in touch. Was she warning him of the police’s intention to contact him, or preparing him for the news he was about to receive?
‘Yeah. She gave me a right rollicking. I wish you’d told me you were going to speak to her.’
‘We have been trying to reach you.’
He blew out a heavy sigh, looked away.
‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt him?’ Nick asked.
‘No. As I said to your officer yesterday, my dad and I were estranged.’
‘When did you last see him?’ Beth asked.
‘About twenty-two years ago.’
‘You haven’t seen him at all since then? Bumped into him in a supermarket, seen him at a petrol station?’ She imagined Craig sitting around the dinner table with his family discussing upgrading their car, where to go on holiday, what their children had done at school. It seemed astonishing they were less than twenty-two miles from his father, a man his wife and children didn’t even know existed.
‘No. We might have been in the same county but we lived in separate towns, far enough away not to bump into each other. I don’t think I’d have recognised him in recent years anyway.’
‘Can you tell us why you decided to stop seeing each other?’
‘I don’t think that’s relevant.’
‘We’re trying to build up a picture of his life.’
‘I wasn’t part of his life. I don’t see how I can help you.’ His piercing eyes didn’t leave hers.
Nick drew a breath. ‘What was your relationship with your father like before you parted ways?’ he said.
Craig switched to Nick and gave an imperceptible shrug. ‘My father left when I was a year old. I continued to see him occasionally when I was young. As far as I remember, it was supposed to be one weekend a month when I was in school, and sometimes in the holidays, although he often cancelled. My mum brushed aside his absences, said I was better off without him. When I did see him, we played football, went to the cinema. I don’t remember much more. When I reached my teens, I started going out with friends and barely saw him at all.’
‘When did your relationship break down?’ Beth asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You said you were estranged. Did something happen to cut him off altogether?’
Craig rested his elbow on a chair beside him, an action that set him at an angle through the computer screen. ‘My mother died suddenly when I was sixteen,’ he said eventually. ‘I was in my last year of school and there weren’t any other relatives nearby, so I was sent to live with my father. I only stayed with him for a short while.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I’d rather not talk about it. It was a long time ago.’
Beth leaned in closer to the screen. ‘I appreciate that but anything you can tell us might help.’
An array of tiny lines appeared around Craig’s eyes.
‘What was he like when you moved in with him?’ Beth said, changing tack.
‘It was okay at first. He was caring, empathetic. Surprisingly so, given we’d barely seen each other in years. Helped me talk through losing Mum. It was a difficult time.’
‘So, what changed?’
‘I don’t know exactly. There was an incident at his work, it seemed to affect him.’
‘What kind of incident?’
‘He worked at Whitefield’s, a children’s home. One of the kids there committed suicide. It really upset him. So much so, that he left soon afterwards. He was always at home after that, moping about. It was difficult. I was a teenager, struggling with losing my mum. There wasn’t enough space. We argued constantly.’
‘Where were you and your father living at the time?’
‘Scotter Walk in Corby. Number 134. It was a two-bedroom house, but the spare room was full of junk so I slept on the sofa in the lounge. It wasn’t ideal.’
‘When was this?’
‘Mum died on the first of February. I moved in with him the following week and stayed until the September. I remember it exactly because I finished school in the July and got my apprenticeship at the steelworks in town on the twenty-seventh of August. I left the following week. One of my workmates put me up initially, until I could afford my own place.’
‘Did you visit your father after you left?’
‘Only once. A couple of weeks afterwards, I’d been out with some friends and we ended up at The Lincoln, his local.’ He grimaced. ‘I wanted to see him, check he was okay. I guess I felt bad about how we’d left things. I was surprised he wasn’t in the pub and decided to call in to see him on my way back. I still had my key.’ His face hardened. ‘I’ll never forget that night. As soon as I arrived, I could hear voices. I walked into the kitchen to find him shagging a woman over the table. It wasn’t until they both leapt up and she pulled her dress down that I recognised it was Lisa Stenson. She was in the year below me at school. Only just sixteen. I couldn’t believe it.’ A crackling sounded as he wiped a hand across his stubbly chin. ‘I’d felt sorry for him, was worried he was okay. And he was having a right old time. The dirty bastard was old enough to be her father. When I walked out of his house I decided that was it, I wouldn’t see him again. My mother always said I was better off without him and I’d finally learned why. He hadn’t been in touch since I’d left home, hadn’t bothered to contact me. Because all he cared about was himself.
‘I met Susie a while afterwards. I didn’t want to tell her about Dad and have to explain why we didn’t see each other. She has a large family, they’re close. So, I cut him out of my life, told her he’d died in the car accident with my mother. And I tried to put him out of my mind. Until now.’
25
The smell of damp grass and rotting plants hung in the air as Gina wandered around her back garden later that morning. It was a clear autumnal day, the sky a rare cornflower blue. A northern breeze injected an icy chill into the air and she tugged her cardigan across her chest. Oscar ambled along behind. She’d felt the pinch of not leaving the house for her daily stroll and, while the knot of press out front was smaller this morning, their attention taken to the other murder no doubt, she still couldn’t face clambering through the herd of reporters with their microphones and cameras. She missed her walks across the fields, sucking in the fresh air, the wind in her hair. She missed Shaun. Tears filled her eyes.
Crossing to the conifers at the bottom, she pushed them aside to view his garden and the bungalow beyond, taking care not to show herself. Relief flushed her veins when all was clear. Although she felt compelled to look, she had no idea what to say to him. There were no words. His wife was his priority now. She needed to leave them alone to patch things up. Guilt ate into
her. The last thing she’d wanted was to drag him into this. Perhaps she should text Isla, see if she fancied a coffee later. It would be good to spend time with someone unconnected to the inquiry and maybe she’d heard how Shaun was doing.
Warren was sitting at the table when she wandered back into the kitchen, tapping at his keyboard. ‘How are you doing?’ he said snapping the laptop shut.
Gina kicked off her shoes and towelled Oscar’s paws before she responded. ‘Okay,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s good to be outside, even if it’s only in the garden.’ The dog danced around her. ‘I might ring Isla, see if she wants a coffee.’
‘I do have some more questions for you. Can we do that first?’
The rush of heat from the central heating flushed her cheeks. She pulled out a chair opposite him and sunk into it. ‘What is it?’
‘Are you familiar with Whitefield Children’s Home?’
‘Yes, we did some fundraising for them. Oh, it must be over twenty years ago now.’
‘Do you remember the specific dates?’
‘Goodness.’ She worked it back in her mind. ‘Phoebe was four when we first started supporting them, so it would have been 1993. I remember it specifically because I’d had my third miscarriage.’ She lowered her gaze. ‘We realised we weren’t going to have any more children, considered adoption for a while but it’s a long process and Stuart wasn’t keen. We cherished Phoebe, but I was aware a lot of other children didn’t have the same privileges. That’s when we contacted Whitefield’s and helped them organise a fundraising ball. It was very successful, I think we raised over £1000 at the time. Stuart got the bug and continued supporting them afterwards. I was tied up with Phoebe, so I left him to it. He supported them for another couple of years at least. Why do you ask?’