by Menon, David
‘I don’t know yet’ said Jeff. ‘But he won’t have anywhere to hide when the Europe-wide operation led by Inspector Van Miert goes live. Not even the protection he’s under at the moment will be able to save him’.
Jeff was just about to go and see Owen Cunningham and Jocelyn Holmes to bring them up to date on the investigation into Gabby Lake’s disappearance when the reception sergeant at the station told him that a woman called Anne Griffin was waiting to talk to him. She was adamant that she must speak to the senior investigating officer on the case.
‘You are the investigating officer?’ Anne asked once she was in the interview room with Jeff and Rebecca.
‘Yes, that’s me’ Jeff replied. ‘And this is my colleague, DI Stockton. Thank you for volunteering to speak to us, Miss Griffin’.
‘I expect you’re wondering what took me so long’ said Anne.
‘Well twenty years is a long time’.
‘I read about my father absconding in the papers and that he’s on the run because the police finally seem to be willing to believe that he’s an evil bastard. I’ve never been sure of that before and that meant I was too frightened to come back and see to it that he finally gets what he deserves’.
‘Okay’ said Jeff. She was an attractive woman, he thought, with long black hair but he could see a shadow across her face and a grey tinge to her skin. She wore black mascara and light red lipstick. Her dark eyes were restless, like there was something in front of her she desperately didn’t want to see. ‘We understand you’ve been living in London?’
‘Yes’ said Anne. ‘I rent a small flat in Chiswick. I’ve worked in a coffee bar, as a doctor’s receptionist, in a local cake shop. I’ve done stacks of different things to stop myself going insane from looking over my shoulder the whole time, wondering if my father had bothered to go out and find me’.
‘Boyfriends? Girlfriends?’ Rebecca asked
Anne looked at Rebecca with daggers. ‘I’ve had a few boyfriends over the years but they’ve never lasted because I’m difficult to be with. I make it hard work for them. I’m single at the moment. I’ve needed Uncle Jack’s money because I’ve never earned much and living in London is expensive. The flat I’m renting takes up over half of what Uncle Jack gives me and still it’s only a tiny place’.
‘You’ve not been back to Manchester before now?’ Jeff asked.
‘No’ said Anne. ‘It’s changed a lot. I hardly recognize some of it’.
‘What else have you been doing with your life?’
‘Trying to forget’ said Anne. ‘When I left Manchester that night all I knew was that I wanted to get as far away from everything that was familiar as I could. I wanted anonymity. I felt suffocated. I needed the oxygen of being somewhere nobody knew me’.
‘So what happened to make you leave Manchester so suddenly, Miss Griffin?’
‘The last conversation I had was with a police officer called Ian Hayward. He was a friend of my father’
Rebecca leaned forward. ‘You mean to say that you spoke to the police about your father’s activities?’
Anne laughed but it wasn’t out of amusement. ‘Activities? Is that what you call them? Ian Hayward was the one I told everything to. And he did nothing. My father was mates with all the local police although it was only Hayward who knew what was really going on. The rest were too stupid to believe that there was an evil side to my father. They were too stupid and they didn’t care. Just like you don’t care now as you try and score points off my pain’
‘I’m not trying to do that, Miss Griffin’ said Rebecca.
‘You’re a lying heartless bitch’.
‘Miss Griffin, I do understand the strength of feeling but could we try and keep the tone civil?’ Jeff warned. ‘We’re on your side, Miss Griffin. We’re not the kind of police officer you dealt with before’.
Anne paused and then took a breath. ‘Okay’ she said. ‘Then I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s just difficult, you know. It’s difficult to trust after all this time of trying to live with what happened’.
‘Can you tell us about what did happen the night your baby died, Miss Griffin?’ Jeff asked.
‘You mean the night I killed my baby’ said Anne in a tone of voice so neutral she might be recalling a night she’d got drunk.
‘Your words, Miss Griffin’
‘And incriminating, I know, but it’s the truth. But I didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to murder my baby if that’s what you think. You need to understand what led up to it. You see, I never knew anything from my father except violence. When my mother died it got worse, not because he also used to hit my mother because he didn’t. His violence is only against children because it’s all about obedience. And with my mother gone he was the only one who could instill that sense of obedience in me and he did that with his fists. When he married Mary his price for obedience from my step-brother Ed became even more evil. I couldn’t stop him. Neither of us could. We were trapped’.
‘It can’t have been easy’.
‘It was Hell, detective’ said Anne. ‘It was Hell that Ed and I lived through every single day and you really have no comprehension of what it was like unless you’ve lived through the same sort of thing yourself. You see, you begin to wonder if it could all be your fault somehow. Or you wonder if it happens in other families. Then when you find out that it doesn’t happen in other families you feel like you must’ve been cursed because you’ve been bad. It’s a vicious circle that’s almost impossible to break’.
‘What happened that night, Miss Griffin?’
Anne swallowed hard. ‘We’d called my baby Nathan. He was a very placid little soul. He slept well and I knew that if he’d been born into a different family he’d have grown up to be a decent, kind human being. But that wasn’t to be. My father was dead against my relationship with Leroy’.
‘We know he had Leroy beaten up’ said Jeff, gently.
‘Yes and the beatings Leroy got became ever more violent although that didn’t surprise me because I knew what my father was capable of’ said Anne. ‘But Leroy loved me and he stood by me and as the months rolled on, I became pregnant and we were planning to move out to the Caribbean where Leroy’s family were from. We thought it was the only way to stop my father from ruining our lives. But my father doesn’t give up. I’d been disobedient and I had to be taught a lesson. He asked me to go up and meet him at Pembroke House. He said that he had Leroy and Leroy’s son Ben and he would kill them if I didn’t go. I knew that he meant it. My father never makes idle threats. He said I had to bring the baby too. When I got there it was like something out of a horror film. Leroy was … Leroy had his hands tied behind his back and a noose round his neck that was attached to a ceiling beam in the dungeon place they had downstairs. His feet were bound at the ankles and he was standing on a chair. Poor little Ben was tied to a chair and gagged but as you can imagine, he was absolutely distraught. My father demanded that I give up the baby and never see Leroy again. All the time Leroy was shouting to Ben, telling him not to worry and to me telling me not to do what my father wanted, not to give in. My father turned to me and said that I’d had plenty of warnings and that I would now regret having ignored them. It all happened so fast. He kicked the chair from underneath Leroy and I heard Leroy’s neck … Ben was rocking back and forth in the chair and my father lunged at him with an iron bar. His little head fell forward and blood began pouring out of it …’
Both Jeff and Rebecca felt sick. Murdering a man in front of his child was bad enough but to then murder the child by taking an iron bar to him was beyond anything either of them had dealt with before. This case kept going deeper and deeper into the murky realms of some very sick and twisted minds.
‘ … I was screaming the place down. I’d gone into a blind panic. I just couldn’t bear to have witnessed what I had and I thought my body was going to snap with the pain of having lost Leroy. But then I realised that my baby who I’d been carrying in my arms wa
sn’t moving. I’d been holding him so tightly against me that I’d suffocated him …
Anne broke down and sobbed. Her body began to lurch forward and back with the overwhelming power of her tears.
‘Do you want to stop, Anne?’ Jeff asked after he’d passed her another glass of water.
Anne paused and then she said ‘No. I’ve waited this long and I need to get it all out. I dropped my baby. He was cold and lifeless. I couldn’t believe the sorrow all around me. The world had gone mad. My father was standing there like he’d done something so normal. He hadn’t even broken into a sweat. He’d killed a man and a small child in cold blood and he didn’t even seem to care less. By this time I was almost blind with panic and now grief too. My father ordered me to clear up the mess as he called it but I was sufficiently alert to be able to finally resist him this time. I turned on my heels and I ran. I ran to Ed. Then I ran to Uncle Jack’s house who gave me the money to escape. I went to him because he’d let Ed down by buying his shares from Mary and because he did nothing about the abuse my father had been inflicting on Ed. I admit that I wanted to twist his conscience’.
‘And then you spoke to the police officer Ian Hayward?’ said Rebecca.
‘He was in his patrol car outside Pembroke House. But he didn’t want to know. He just didn’t want to know. So, like I said, I ran. I mean, what would you have done? I had no money! I had nothing! My lover and his child and my baby had all gone so don’t you dare look at me as if I’m some piece of scrounging scum, lady, because the only scum in this room is the piece who’s looking at me the way you are now! I was terrified! Terrified he’d find me and kill me like he’d killed Leroy and Ben. Can’t you get that? I suppose you think I should’ve been a good little girl and just accepted my father’s violence and shut up about it?’
‘No, of course I don’t think that, Miss Griffin’ said Rebecca.
‘You’re a liar!’
‘Miss Griffin, I’m sorry’ said Rebecca.
‘Whatever’ said Anne. She was crying.
‘Anne?’ said Jeff. ‘And I’m going to call you Anne, I understand that you must be beyond angry’.
‘You don’t know the half of it’.
‘I can’t begin to think how difficult it was for you, Anne’.
‘I deserve respect. I was beaten black and blue every day of my life as a child. Did you watch your father murder the only man you’ve ever loved and his child? Did you ever hold your baby so tight that you suffocated the life out of him? You have no idea how difficult it’s been for me, no idea at all’.
‘Anne, where are you staying?’
‘My Uncle Jack is paying for me to stay at the hotel where he is. It’s a bit over the top for me but at least I should be safe from my father there’.
‘Do you really think he’d come after you?’
‘He’s got Ed’s daughter, my step-niece. He’s in a corner. He could do anything’.
After they came out of the interview Rebecca was reeling from the onslaught of all Anne Griffin’s twenty-year old resentments.
‘I’m sorry you had to go through all that’ said Jeff.
‘She had to take it out on somebody’ said Rebecca. ‘But it doesn’t look good for the former chief superintendent’.
DC Oliver Wright caught up with them in the corridor.
‘Sir, ma’am, June Hawkins has rung through her initial report after the opening up of Mary Griffin’s coffin’ said Ollie excitedly. ‘If Mary Griffin is dead then she isn’t in that coffin. It was a man’s body in there. June Hawkins is sending the DNA to Inspector Van Miert in Antwerp in the hope that he might know who he is’.
‘Well it’s no surprise to me to find out that Mary Griffin is probably alive’ said Jeff. ‘She and George were cash strapped and her brother Jack wouldn’t help them. They mixed with a lot of criminals and they’re guilty of horrific crimes themselves’.
‘So what are you thinking?’ asked Rebecca.
‘I’m thinking that they colluded to fake Mary’s death in order to claim the monies from her estate. They got Dr. Josef Smets to come up with a forged death certificate and they put a clause in Mary Griffin’s will to effectively stop her son Ed from inheriting anything, meaning that they would be able to use the lot. Unhappily for them those human remains were found at Pembroke House’.
‘But they couldn’t just run back to the sunshine and pick up their lifestyle where they left off’ said Wright. ‘Not after having gone public with Mary Griffin’s death’.
‘They must’ve been planning to move somewhere else’ said Rebecca.
‘That’s what I thought too’ said Jeff. ‘But the question for us now is where are they and what have they done with Gabby Lake?’
Gabby tried to stretch her legs but she knew it was impossible. Her hands and feet had been bound together tightly with rope which had then been covered with the same masking tape that was right across her mouth. It was really starting to hurt. She had no idea where she was. After George had tied her up and thrown her into the boot of his car they’d driven for miles whilst she’d cried and failed in her numerous attempts to call out for help. How could George do that to her? How could her mother sleep with such an evil monster? She was absolutely terrified and desperately wanted to see Owen. But then her heart filled with fear when she wondered if George had done something to him. If he had then all she wanted to do was to die because she couldn’t live without Owen and she couldn’t live with the knowledge of what George may have done to him. Trying to live with what he’d done to her father was almost beyond the limits sometimes. If she had to live with something having happened to Owen as well it really would finish her off.
She was thrown against the inside of the boot as the car came to a sudden stop. In the darkness she could smell her own fear as she heard someone get out and come towards the back. If this was the moment when her life was going to end she just had to accept it. She was shaking. She could feel the drops of sweat down her face and in the small of her back and on her hands. She could barely catch her breath as the boot was opened.
But it wasn’t George standing there.
Terror streaked through her veins with such a force that she didn’t notice how kind the stranger was being to her. He cut all her restraints and held out a hand for her to take so he could help her out. As she struggled out of the space she’d been confined in for what had seemed like days she squinted her eyes to try and adjust to the light. She stroked her wrists where the ropes and tapes had been so tight. Then the stranger asked her to brace herself whilst he took the tape form her mouth. He then ripped it off and she whimpered.
‘It’s all over now’ he said.
‘Are you going to kill me?’
‘No’ he said. ‘I’m going to let you go. You shouldn’t suffer because of the crimes of your grandfather’
‘Who are you?’ Gabby asked. She couldn’t see the man’s face because his head was covered with a balaclava. But she’d never heard his voice before and it sounded strange, not just because of the balaclava but because of the different waves in his voice. She’d heard something like it before but she couldn’t place it.
‘It doesn’t matter who I am’ he replied as gently as before. He handed her a wad of cash and a mobile phone. ‘Go down to the main road and call someone. Then get yourself a taxi and get home’.
Gabby took the cash and the phone but was still shaking. ‘I don’t understand’.
‘You don’t need to understand. I’m here to take care of your grandparents once and for all’.
‘My grandparents? But my grandmother is dead?’
‘No she isn’t. It was all a setup. But you don’t need to know anymore so just do as I say and I’m sorry for your ordeal’.
‘It doesn’t sound like it was your fault?’
‘Just go, Miss Lake’.
‘But where am I?’ she asked, looking round. She was standing in the middle of a patch of waste ground. Half a mile or so to the left was an elevated piece
of motorway above what looked like a motorway intersection. To her right she could see the beginnings of a suburb, houses, a petrol station, a row of shops.
‘Just get down to the main road. No dramas. You’re safe now’.
Gabby began to run as fast as she could whilst she heard the screeching of wheels behind her and the car sped off in a cloud of dust. She didn’t get to see the driver but she got the feeling that she’d always be grateful to him.
But what was he going to do with George? And why was he saying her grandmother was still alive? What the hell had been going on?
SORCERER SIXTEEN
Jeff and Rebecca sat down in the living room of the house shared by Gabby Lake and her fiancé Owen. Gabby’s great-aunt Jocelyn Holmes was also there.
‘I know this is going to be difficult for you, Gabby’ said Jeff, gently. ‘You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. But try and tell us what happened from the beginning?’
Gabby held hands firmly with Owen and felt tired but she was lively enough to want to tell the police what she could. She’d already had it confirmed that her grandmother hadn’t died and that it had all been a scam by both George and Mary Griffin to claim the money from her estate to get them over their severe cash problems. During further conversations with inspector Van Miert in Antwerp, Jeff had discovered that the Griffins had secured false British passports under the names of Richard and Maxine Gibson and were planning to escape to a beachside apartment they’d bought in Rio de Janeiro. They’d booked tickets under the name of Gibson on the direct British Airways flight from Heathrow to Rio de Janeiro the previous night but they’d failed to turn up for it. Inspector Van Miert had gained the information after he’d arrested the Griffin’s partner in crime Dr. Josef Smets who’d completely capitulated in custody and ended up singing like the proverbial canary.
‘I went out to my car and saw George walking over towards me’ Gabby began. ‘I made it clear that I had nothing to say to him and that he had nothing to say that I wanted to hear. I told him to fuck off to be exact. Anyway he started talking about my Mum and he said that she was heartbroken and desperately wanted to see me. I told him that whatever negative feelings my Mum had were her own fault but he started pleading. He begged me to come with him to see my Mum. In the end I agreed. He said we could use his car and he’d drop me back at home later. I got into his car and he drove off. That’s when he changed. He suddenly stopped talking and shouted at me to shut up when I demanded to know what was going on. I screamed to make him let me out but he said that if I tried that again I’d never see Owen or my father again. Then he stuck his foot down on the accelerator and we ended up down some country lane. I’ve no idea where. I was so frightened I just don’t remember where we were, I’m sorry. He picked up some pad he’d had in his pocket and lunged forward at me covering my mouth and nose with it. The next thing I knew I woke up in the boot’.