by Alex Smith
“My name is Robbie,” he said. “I’m a detective, but not here. I’m not officially on duty, as you can see.”
Evie was doing her best to open a Kitkat, firing wary glances back in case Kett asked her to stop.
“That’s my daughter, Evie,” he said. “She’s been at nursery, haven’t you sweetie?”
Her mouth was far too full of chocolate for the question to even register.
“I didn’t do it,” Percival said. “I swear. She was my… my sister.”
“Nobody is saying you hurt Evelyn,” Kett said, keeping his voice low so Evie wouldn’t overhear. “We just want to make sure we know all the facts. Have you seen them recently? Delia and her mum?”
Percival shook his head, his eyes scouring the surface of the table like there were answers written there. The smell coming off him was unbearable, making Kett’s breath catch in his throat.
“I haven’t seen them for ages,” Percival said, sniffing. “Or those other girls. I mean I haven’t seen them at all.”
“Do you know anything about them?” Kett asked. “Maisie and Connie?”
Percival retreated into himself like he’d suffered a physical blow, shaking his head so hard that spittle fanned out from his lips.
“I swear it, I swear it, I don’t know where they are.”
“Do you know anyone who would have wanted to hurt your sister?” he asked. “Any enemies, old boyfriends?”
“No,” Percival told the table. “Everyone loved her. She was so gentle.”
He looked up, his expression full of alarm.
“Who’s going to look after Franklin?”
“Franklin?” Kett asked.
“The cat,” Percival said. “Who’s going to feed him?”
“We will,” Kett lied. “Until we bring Delia home. Okay? Franklin’s going to be just fine.”
“I like cats,” said Evie from the other side of the canteen. She was working on her second Kitkat and Kett fired a warning look at her. She turned away, defiant as always as she wrestled with the plastic wrapper.
“Yeah,” said Kett. “She likes Kitkats.”
At this, Percival almost managed a smile. It was like somebody had left a Halloween pumpkin out for too long, his face weirdly mushy, loose. Kett wondered if he’d taken to drugs since the wrongful arrest, meth maybe. He had the teeth for it. But he seemed sober enough now.
“It’s an unusual name, Lochy,” Kett said. “Do you know what it means?”
Percival scoffed, his eyes darting from Kett to the table to Evie, never staying in one place for more than a second or two.
“Mum always told me it meant God’s gift,” he said. “I don’t know. Evelyn means bird. I always liked that more.”
“Well, Lochy, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? I want you to remember that nobody is accusing you of anything. This is just a chat, okay? So we can find out who did this.”
He glanced back to see Evie guzzling a four-arm Kitkat practically in one go, like a sword swallower.
“Evie, that’s enough,” he said. “No more chocolate.”
Any more and she’d be climbing the walls for the rest of the day.
“Sugar is her weakness,” Kett said, turning back to Percival. “Mine is tea, I drink way too much of the stuff. What’s yours?”
Go on, just say it and save us all some time: snatching young girls.
“Weakness?” Percival said, straining his way towards an answer. “I don’t… I don’t know. I drink. Drink too much. Wine, mainly. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“I want to hear whatever you want to tell me,” Kett said, stifling a yawn. The arrest and interrogation of Stillwater had worn him out, his mind padded with cotton wool like somebody was packing it up for a house move. “No pressure. Were you drinking last weekend?”
Percival shook his head the same way he had before. It reminded Kett of his kids when they refused to do what he asked, so exaggerated it was almost comical. The man rubbed his eyes.
“You’re going to say I did it,” he moaned. “You and him.”
Lochy looked at the canteen door, and so did Kett—just in time to see Clare’s head drop out of sight through the window.
Idiot.
“He was there last time, back in 2013, he asked me the same question again and again and again, about that girl who died, the one they found beneath the boat. He was so angry and he wouldn’t stop, he never stopped. It’s him who wants to do this, he wants me to suffer.”
“Forget about him,” said Kett, leaning forward and keeping his voice low. “I’m in charge right now, and if I say you didn’t do anything then he has to believe me. Okay?”
Percival nodded, calming down, but the guy felt like a powder keg, ready to blow at any moment.
“You weren’t drinking, then? On Sunday?”
“I was,” Percival said, his hand trembling as he wiped away a tear. “Just a little. Just to keep the… keep all the bad stuff away. The pain.”
He rubbed his leg again.
“It hurts all the time.”
“How much are we talking, Lochy?” Kett went on. “A glass? Two? A bottle?”
“A bottle,” he replied with a shrug. “Enough to know what I’m doing. I didn’t hurt my sister.”
“Nobody’s saying you did,” Kett said. “I like a drink too.”
“To take away the pain of your dead wife?” Percival asked.
The question felt like a kick to the bollocks, and for a second Kett couldn’t get a breath in. He looked back, Evie thankfully out of earshot as she tried to open a bottle of Coke.
“How did you know about my wife?” he managed after a moment. Percival squirmed in his chair, refusing to make eye contact. “Lochy, how did you know?”
“I don’t know,” he whined, his words almost insufferably desperate. “I didn’t do anything. I can show you I didn’t.”
It was like somebody had flicked a switch in the man’s head, a desperate smile appearing there.
“Yeah, I can prove it,” he said. “I can prove I was in all weekend. I can prove I’m in all the time, I never go anywhere.”
One big hand dived into the pocket of his stinking sweatpants and he pulled out an iPhone—a brand new one, by the look of it. Unlocking it with his thumb, he swiped through a few apps then opened one up. He passed the phone to Kett, who found himself looking at a large living room, two sofas, shit everywhere, and a couple of cops obviously in the middle of a search.
“That’s my house,” Percival said, leaning close enough to jab a finger on the screen. “That’s live. I said they could look around as much as they liked, I don’t have anything to hide.”
Kett squinted, realising that one of the uniformed officers on the screen was PC Savage.
“Live?” he asked.
“Sure. You can talk to them if you want. Press that microphone thing.”
Kett pressed the icon and the phone chimed. On screen, both cops looked up.
“Savage?” said Kett.
Savage frowned, walking closer. The camera was obviously hidden because her eyes roved left and right, up and down.
“It’s behind a frame,” Percival said. “A silver one. It’s empty.”
Savage must have heard him, because she suddenly locked eyes with Kett. She said something but the sound wasn’t working.
“Take your finger off,” Percival said. “It’s like a walkie talkie.”
“…there?” Savage asked. “Porter?”
“It’s Kett,” he said as he pressed the mic again. “I’m looking at you through Percival’s phone.”
“Nest cam, by the look of it,” Savage said, and the world spun as she picked it from the shelf.
“There’s one in every room,” Percival explained, sitting back in his chair. “Except the bathroom.”
“You film yourself?” Kett asked. He heard a hiss and a whoop of success, looking back to see Evie with the Coke bottle to her lips. “Oh Jesus, hang on. Evie, no!”
&nbs
p; He ran to her and grabbed the bottle.
“Coke? Are you insane? You’re three! Give me that.”
“No!” she screamed. “It’s mine! I opened it myself!”
“Just sit there,” Kett said, pointing to a table. “No more sugar.”
For a second he thought she was about to erupt, but she huffed into the chair and folded her hands over her chest, eyeballing him until he turned away.
“Fart head,” she muttered.
“Yeah,” Kett said, returning to his chair. “Sorry. These cameras, you film yourself on them?”
Percival nodded, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes for a second and making them even more bloodshot than they were before.
“It wasn’t my idea, somebody suggested it in group,” he said.
“Group? Like a support group?”
“For trauma. I went for a little while after I was, you know, arrested. Put in prison. It didn’t really help, but somebody there gave me the idea to film myself all the time. If the cameras hadn’t caught me at that Norwich match, I’d be in prison now. I’d be dead. I’m never going to let it happen again, not ever.”
Kett couldn’t help but feel a rush of sympathy for the man. Uncle L, he’d been, good old Lochy Percival. Then a series of almost unbelievable coincidences had turned him into this. Paranoid, depressed, filthy. It had eaten him up from the inside out.
Kett was starting to feel something else, too. Panic was gnawing at his guts, the fear of what he was about to find out.
“You keep it all?” Kett asked. “The footage from your house?”
“Daddy, I feel sick,” said Evie.
“One minute,” he replied, still looking at Percival, waiting for an answer. The man nodded.
“It’s stored online for a week, but I keep it all. Hard drives.”
“You keep it all?” Kett asked. “Going back…”
“Going back five years,” he said. “Nearly.”
“Daddy I’m bored,” Evie went on. “And sick. And I need a poo.”
Kett turned his attention to the app, navigating the interface to see a bunch of little folders labelled with the days of the week. He clicked on Sunday, then scrubbed through the footage. The living room cam picked up Percival throughout the day, and even though he came and went it was pretty clear he couldn’t have made it out of the house and across town in time to kill his sister and snatch Delia.
“Fudge,” he said beneath his breath.
“Daddy I really feel sick.”
“Am I okay to keep this for a few days?” Kett asked. Percival looked unsure. “It’s totally voluntary, of course. The whole point of the cameras was to do exactly this, wasn’t it? We’ll take a look, then we can be absolutely sure you had nothing to do with those girls going missing.”
After a moment, Percival nodded.
“Thank you, Lochy,” Kett said, standing up and offering the man his hand. Percival stared at it like he couldn’t remember what to do, eventually stretching out his arm and gripping Kett with fingers as damp and limp as salad leaves. The smell pulsed from him, enough to make Kett’s eyes water, but he fought through it. “We really appreciate you coming to talk to us. And remember, if you need anything at all, you only have to ask. Things are different now. We’re on your side.”
Percival swallowed, his eyes bulging. He was sweating, even though the canteen was air conditioned.
“Can I go?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Kett, standing back to let the other man up. Percival limped towards the door, glancing at Evie as he went.
“Bye,” Evie said, waving at him with her chocolate fingers. He had a hand on the door when Kett called to him.
“Lochy,” he said. “Can I just ask you one more thing?”
The man didn’t turn around, he just stood there panting, his eyes dark beneath the brim of his cap. His grip on the door was so tight his knuckles had blanched.
“You seemed concerned about your sister, and rightly so. It was terrible, what happened to her. But you didn’t ask about Delia. Why not?”
Percival licked his lips.
“Have you found her?” the man asked after a moment.
“No,” Kett said. Another pause.
“I was too frightened to hear the answer,” Percival said. “That’s why I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to hear that she’d died too.”
He stood there, motionless apart from the rise and fall of his shoulders.
“Can I go?”
“Yeah,” said Kett. “You can go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The bullpen in the city centre nick was less like a hive now, and more like a funeral parlour. Two dozen coppers sat on chairs or perched on desks, their hands folded in respectful silence, their eyes downcast. Superintendent Clare was in charge of the ceremonies, marching left and right across the full width of the room, his expression as black as a priest’s robes. Nobody dared talk. Nobody dared make the slightest sound.
“Daddy? What’s happening? When can we go home? This is boring.”
Nobody apart from Evie, that was, who sat on Kett’s knee and played with his shirt buttons. Clare pretended not to notice the girl, his nostrils flared like a bull ready to charge. DI Keith Dunst, who leaned against the desk next to Kett’s chair, squinted at Evie like he couldn’t figure her out.
“She was smaller yesterday, wasn’t she?” he said quietly. “Like, a lot smaller.”
“It’s a different girl,” said Kett, one eyebrow raised.
“Oh,” said Dunst, still unsure.
“Aren’t you a police detective?” Kett asked with a smile.
“You think this is funny?” Clare said, coming to a halt and practically stamping his shit-coloured brogue on the floor. He glared at Kett. “You know what I think? I think we’ve separately accused two men of abducting our missing girls, both of whom have a known relationship with this constabulary—one of whom successfully sued us for the better part of a million pounds—and both of whom have rock solid alibis for the crimes. There is no forensic evidence, there is no solid motive other than rampant speculation, and both men are now free. You, DCI Kett, are largely responsible for this, and to be brutally honest with you, you have tossed up all over yourself, me, and this entire department.”
“Sir,” said Kett. “I really don’t think tossed means what you think it—”
“I’ll toss over you!” he roared back. He started pacing again. “This is a disaster, we have no suspects, no leads, and right now three young girls are out there, scared out of their minds—that’s if they’re even still alive.”
Kett did his best to cover Evie’s ears, but she squirmed out of his grip, listening intently.
“Does anyone have any good news?” Clare asked, his voice cracking with desperation.
“Percival is in the clear,” said Porter from two desks away. “His cameras check out. I spoke to Nest and they say it’s impossible to change the timestamp without hacking the whole system, and they’d know if it had been done. He was at home during all three abductions.”
“That’s good news?” said Clare.
“It’s, uh, good for Percival,” muttered Porter with a shrug.
“And Stillwater,” said Raymond Figg, the FLO spinning his pen between his fingers like he was twirling a baton. “All his alibis check out. No video footage for Sunday, but he’s clear on the other two. It’s not him.”
“Any other leads?” Clare asked. “Anything at all?”
“We’re still looking into the idea that it was a gang-related crime,” said DS Spalding as she tied her hair back. “We’ve rounded up a couple of minor players who’ve been caught squabbling over control of the heath. Pressed them pretty hard, but there’s no indication things were serious enough for multiple abductions. It’s too risky, the gangs would never want heat like this.”
Clare swore at the ceiling.
“So you’re telling me you think the Walker father and son are in the clear for this as well?” he asked.
Nobody replied, but the answer was obvious.
“They can’t have just vanished,” the boss said. “They’re out there somewhere. Somebody has taken them. From now on, I don’t want anybody going to sleep, I don’t want anyone sitting down to eat, I don’t even want any of you taking the time to sh—”
“Boss?” came a voice from the back of the room. Kett looked over to see the desk sergeant there. He looked nervous.
“This better be something positive,” Clare said.
“Uh…” the man went on, wringing his hands together. “It’s just that the press has arrived.”
“Which one?” Clare asked.
“All of them,” the sergeant said. “They want to know why you’ve arrested Lochy Percival again.”
“Fuck!” Clare yelled, spittle soaring across the room. He kicked a chair, everyone watching it squeak across the floor on its rollers before crunching into a desk. “Don’t let them in, and don’t talk to them, any of you—on pain of death. Everyone, I want a new lead by the end of the day, something to take everybody’s focus off this tossing disaster, or I’ll bust you all down to constables. Okay? And Kett.”
Kett looked at Clare. Everyone else looked at Kett, the room ringing with the echo of Clare’s voice.
“You’ve done all you need to do here. If you’d been less rash, if you’d taken your time before arresting Stillwater, then maybe this wouldn’t be such an immense clusterfuck. Take your daughters and go home. We’ll call you if we need you.”
“Sir,” said Porter. “That isn’t really fa—”
“Porter, unless you want to sit this out with him,” Clare interrupted, jabbing a finger at Kett, “then shut up, and get out.”
Kett sighed. He stood up, holding Evie. He could have argued, of course, but Clare was right. He’d arrested Stillwater before he knew all the facts. He’d arrested him on instinct—on bad instinct.
“Sorry, sir,” he said, turning to leave. Evie glared at the Superintendent over Kett’s shoulder, getting the final word in just as they were walking through the door.
“Fart head!”
The sergeant hadn’t been lying, it seemed like the whole of the city’s press corps was trying to get inside the building. They’d amassed on the street outside, maybe thirty reporters all jostling for position while the sergeant did his best to hold the pass like a balding, overweight Gerard Butler minus his 300 Spartans. Even through the closed door Kett could hear their questions.