When Hart came to the door, she was wearing a lilac dressing gown wrapped tightly around her small frame. Her face was gaunt and her skin blotchy. She looked like she had the flu.
‘There’s a virus going around work.’ Hart coughed into her sleeve.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Loxton said.
‘Please come in.’ Hart led them inside. Her flat was cluttered; every available space was covered in empty takeaway boxes and diet-coke bottles. There was the occasional half-empty vodka bottle, too. ‘Sorry about the mess; it’s been a rough few weeks.’
‘That’s all right, you’ve not been well.’ It looked like it had been a rough few months, not weeks. The flat smelt of stale air and Loxton was shocked at the mess, but she kept her face neutral. She’d seen worse, but she hadn’t expected it from the glamorous Hart. The flat itself was nicely decorated with expensive furniture; the mess was obviously a new addition. Loxton moved a plate of congealing sweet and sour chicken from the sofa and sat down. ‘We have reason to believe that Mark went missing from this area,’ she began.
‘Really?’ Hart fidgeted with her red hair, winding it around her index finger.
‘Do you know this man?’ Loxton held up her mobile screen showing the photograph of McGregor.
Hart peered at the picture, taken three weeks ago. ‘I think he’s one of the ones that begs near here.’
‘We think he might be linked to Mark’s disappearance.’ Loxton held the photograph nearer to Hart.
She blinked rapidly at it and then suddenly burst into tears. Kowalski threw Loxton a look and she knew exactly what he was thinking. Hart was more than just friends with Mark Rowthorn. She had fallen apart since his disappearance. Loxton held her hand up towards Kowalski. It was better to coax than bulldoze here.
‘Did this man hurt Mark?’ Hart wiped tears from her face using her sleeve. Grief was never pretty.
‘This man was wearing Mark’s engraved watch when he was found in the river. We’re trying to find out why.’
Hart looked sheepish.‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’
‘We think this man might have attacked Mark and stolen his watch.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Hart shook her head.
‘Why?’
‘Sorry, I . . . Mark lost that watch a few days before the wedding.’
‘Are you sure?’ Loxton was frowning.
‘He told me he’d lost it.’
‘His fiancée’s pretty sure he had it the weekend before he went missing.’
‘She’s wrong.’ Hart’s voice became harder at the mention of Talbot.
‘Emily, it’s important that you’re honest with us.’ Loxton tried to keep the frustration out of her voice. It was these little white lies that often threw everything off the correct course. ‘We’ll waste a lot of resources on this lead, but it may not be a real one.’
‘He lost his watch about a week ago and he didn’t get it back.’ Hart’s voice was certain.
‘Was he visiting you when he lost the watch?’ Loxton asked.
Hart turned her face away, her lower lip quivered. ‘Why does it matter?’
‘It matters, Emily.’ Loxton held her breath.
Hart covered her face with her hands.
‘We won’t be able to find Mark if we don’t know what happened to him. The last few hours are crucial in an investigation like this.’ Loxton reached her hand towards Hart instinctively but held back. It was as if there was an invisible wall between them, one she’d never be able to break through. She put her hands on her lap, feeling useless. She couldn’t do anything for the woman falling apart in front of her.
Hart was crying in short, rasping gasps. Kowalski looked pointedly at Loxton, and she sighed. She didn’t know what to say any more than Kowalski did.
‘You were in a relationship, weren’t you?’ Loxton asked softly.
The crying grew louder, and Hart nodded her head, still hiding her face in her hands.
‘We’re not here to judge; we understand that life is complicated,’ Loxton said. ‘We’re here to find Mark.’
‘Please find him.’ Hart’s body was trembling, but she lowered her hands from her face and met Loxton’s eyes.
‘We need your help to do that, Emily.’
‘Will Julia find out about the . . . affair?’ Hart gazed down at her hands.
‘Don’t worry about that. Finding Mark is the most important thing.’ Loxton leaned forward and patted Hart’s hand.
‘I didn’t mean it to happen.’ Hart gave a sad shrug of her shoulders. ‘You spend all your time at work . . . it becomes your life.’
‘Did he come here?’
‘Yes. He’d pretend he was working late. It became routine. We had a row a couple of days before his wedding. He kept saying we should end this, but I didn’t want to. It hurt like hell when he talked about me like I was a problem to be got rid of before his wedding. After the row, I threw all his things into a bin bag and chucked it out onto the street.’
‘He had belongings here?’ Kowalski said.
‘Sometimes he’d stay over if Julia was away for the weekend, or he’d pretend he was away on business.’ Hart’s cheeks coloured.
‘And when you threw his things out, that included his watch?’ Kowalski said.
‘I think so.’ Hart glanced at Kowalski. ‘I was angry and I’d been drinking. In the morning when I looked outside the bags were gone.’
‘McGregor might have taken them,’ Kowalski said.
‘Mark was so angry when he found out what I’d done.’ Hart shuddered at the memory. ‘He was worried about who’d taken the bags. That maybe it would get back to Julia. It’s all he seemed to care about.’ She looked close to tears again.
‘What happened then?’ Loxton asked, trying to focus Hart on the next part of her story.
‘He wouldn’t return my calls or WhatsApps that week.’ Hart looked utterly heartbroken and again Loxton had the urge to reach out and hold her.
Hart continued: ‘Then when he came over the day before the wedding, we argued again, and he told me it was over. I couldn’t believe it.’ She wiped the tears from her eyes and shook her head, as if trying to free herself of the memory.
‘You saw him the day before the wedding?’ Kowalski’s eyes widened.
Hart’s face clouded over.
‘Emily,’ Loxton said. ‘This is really important.’
Hart’s cheeks coloured and she looked down at her hands. ‘I WhatsApped him. I was losing my mind. I had to know whether he was going to go through with the wedding. I love him. I still do. It was killing me watching him marry someone else. I thought maybe I could convince him the wedding was a mistake. He came over and told me to leave him alone. He said it was all getting too much for him; it was destroying him. “But what about me?” I said. How could he marry someone else when he loves me?’ Hart looked up again and her face was puffy and blotchy from crying. She looked desperate.
Loxton looked at Kowalski. She waited a moment, but Kowalski didn’t say a word.
‘What happened then?’ The room was still. Loxton didn’t dare move. Had Hart lashed out at Rowthorn? It seemed unlikely, given her small frame, but adrenaline could be a powerful hormone in the human body.
‘He called me a bunny-boiling bitch and left.’ New tears rolled down Hart’s cheeks. ‘I thought he loved me. I was such an idiot. But when he went missing, I thought that maybe he couldn’t go through with the wedding after all.’ She looked at them both, hoping to get the answer she wanted.
‘What time did he leave?’ Loxton said.
Hart’s shoulders dropped. She thought for a moment. ‘He left around six. He said he had a dinner to go to or something.’
‘Is that the last time you saw him?’
‘Yes.’ Hart’s eyes dropped to her hands. Either she was trying hard not to cry again, or she was attempting to avoid Loxton’s gaze.
‘Emily, did you send him threatening texts?’ Loxton said.
‘Mark asked me that too, but I didn’t. I told him to his face he was making a mistake marrying her. How could I threaten him? He knew I’d never contact Julia or anything like that. I love him.’
Hart was a bad liar and had said far too much as it was. But the killer instinct was missing. Loxton glanced at Kowalski, and he gave a slight shake of his head, and she was relieved that he wasn’t about to arrest Hart either.
‘We need to search your flat and take your mobiles.’
‘Why?’
‘To verify that you didn’t send those texts.’
Hart nodded; she didn’t put up a fight. ‘Are you going to tell Julia?’ she whispered, her face pale.
‘Not unless it becomes relevant,’ Loxton said. ‘Thank you for being honest with us.’
‘If you tell her and my work find out . . . It’s all I’ve got left.’ Hart began to cry again.
‘I understand,’ Loxton said.
Hart wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve. ‘I’ve lost everything. Please, find him.’
Loxton dropped Hart’s single mobile into an evidence bag; she would analyse it when they got back. Before they left, she spoke to the security guard, who was happy to let her view the CCTV.
Kowalski stood behind her as she loaded up the footage from the reception on 6pm on Saturday 15 July. The day before the wedding. She fast-forwarded until, at 6.07pm, a man came out of the lift and pressed the green exit button, releasing the locked front door to the block. She froze the frame as his face turned to the camera on the front entrance door. There was no doubt. It was Mark Rowthorn.
She swapped cameras and watched him walking away out of the block, alone, then past an old man who was sat near the front entrance.
‘Is that who I think it is?’ Kowalski moved closer to the screen.
Loxton examined the image. The footage was good – no expense spared for the modern private block. She rewound and played it again. It was Robert McGregor sitting on the floor. She saw Rowthorn pause and drop a couple of coins into McGregor’s open hand before continuing onwards and out of the CCTV’s view.
‘That’s McGregor all right,’ Kowalski said.
A minute later, Robert McGregor struggled to pull himself upright. He shuffled after Mark Rowthorn until he was also lost from the CCTV.
‘I wish the camera angle was just a little wider,’ she said.
‘I know,’ Kowalski agreed. ‘What happened to him that he ended up in a river?’
Neither of them wanted to say it, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘I think Rowthorn’s what happened to him. One way or another.’
Loxton took a week’s worth of CCTV; two days before and all the way up to today. She’d check it when they got back to the station to make sure Rowthorn hadn’t been back. For now, she was content that Hart had been telling the truth.
Chapter 30
Julia Talbot
Thursday
I couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t slept since the police told me the body wasn’t Mark. The afternoon light seeped in through the curtains and my head whirred with images. Jonny Cane and his anger towards me, the gash on his head after I pushed him.
When I started to drift off, I would be jolted awake by fear. Sweat cooled on my skin and the sheets seemed determined to tie me in knots.
I went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water, popped another sleeping tablet. If I could sleep, then I wouldn’t feel so dead. I sank onto the sofa waiting for the tablet to kick in and turned the TV on. I lowered the volume to a whisper, the harsh noise too much for my tired brain.
Eerie white light flickered on the walls as I skimmed through the channels. The usual daytime rubbish. I ended up on the news, hoping the relentless bulletins would make me drowsy. I settled myself down, wrapping my dressing gown tighter around me, trying to distract myself from the yawning ache in my chest.
The London news came on and a familiar view sprang onto the screen.
The Night Jar Bar.
I sat upright. A man had been found dead there this morning by the police.
Fear made my heart thud harder in my chest. There was an appeal for witnesses. They’d identified the body as that of Jonathan Cane. His family had been informed.
I picked up a sofa cushion and held it tight to my face, biting into it to stop me from screaming. So Jonny Cane was finally dead. The police had confirmed what I’d already feared. All those years of being scared of him, and now I was free. But at what price? I’d killed him. Would they believe me when I said it was in self-defence? I’d left him to die in that alleyway, not getting any help for him.
What had I done to deserve this? But, of course, I knew exactly what I’d done. This was my punishment. My punishment for Rachel.
I was shivering and I couldn’t stop. Terror ballooned inside me, growing bigger and bigger.
My vision blurred and the room around me began to dance. Rachel and Jonny were spinning in front of my eyes, holding hands. She was laughing and her head was flung back. She was in her late twenties, the age she would be now if she’d lived, her hair still golden and long. He was the carefree boy I’d spent so many hours dreaming about as a girl. They looked happy as they spun round and round my living room. I wished I could join them.
I was losing my mind.
I glanced towards my front door. The police would come knocking soon when they discovered that I’d been in contact with Jonny. I covered my face with my hands as I sobbed.
There was a chance my DNA wouldn’t be identified. I’d been arrested as a child, but that DNA would surely be destroyed by now. There were time limits now on how long they could store people’s DNA, especially if they hadn’t been convicted of anything. I’d read up on it recently.
Maybe the CCTV in the Night Jar Bar hadn’t been recording. I should wait and pray that they never linked me to his death. There was nothing else I could do.
Lucy was going to lose it when she saw the news report. She’d want us to go straight to Loxton. But I couldn’t tell Lucy I’d killed Jonny. She was the only person I had left. I couldn’t bear to see the disgust on her face.
Sickness gripped my stomach and I tried to breathe in and out through my nose. I peeked from behind my fingers. Rachel and Jonny were looking straight at me. I shivered and my breathing came out ragged. What were they going to do to me? Their lifeless eyes were all I could see. I reached out for them, but before I could take hold of them, they were gone.
It was as if they’d never even been there.
Lucy had promised me we would check Mark’s crypto account when she got back from work tonight and try to find where the money had gone. She’d told me to try to get some sleep. But part of me didn’t want to wait for her. I felt like going back to the nightclub right now and speaking to the boss. He’d said he hadn’t killed Mark. What if he had him locked up somewhere? But going it alone hadn’t worked out so far. I’d wait for Lucy, go through the crypto account with her. And if we found the money, we could try to get Mark back. Without it, the police were my only option. But I couldn’t confess to Johnny’s murder when his boss might still have Mark. He might kill Mark in revenge.
Chapter 31
Alana Loxton
Friday
Loxton’s sleep was always bad during the first week of a case, but this was worse than normal. It didn’t help that every lead had been a dead end, with no finish line in sight. Cane’s death had left them with more questions than answers and she felt helpless.
Could it have been David Steele, trying to pin the insider trading on Rowthorn? Making sure Jonny Cane was in the frame for that and seeing to it that neither man could give their side of the story? Or had Rowthorn just decided to walk away, realizing that he didn’t love his fiancée or his mistress?
And why had Cane got all those photographs of Talbot, Rowthorn and Steele? Was he framing Rowthorn or threatening to hurt Talbot? Loxton wasn’t sure how to broach it in a way that would guarantee that she got the truth from Talbot. She struck Loxton as someone
holding back. But through fear or self-preservation? That was the real question.
Loxton looked at her watch. Ten past four in the morning. The rest of the world was sleeping.
But maybe not everyone. She thought of Julia Talbot, alone in her bed, waiting for her fiancé to come home and afraid he never would.
Loxton sat up in bed, propping up her pillows, and pulled her laptop from her bedside table. It was still on when she opened the lid. There was one unread email in her inbox sent a couple of hours ago from Kanwar on the night shift. She opened it.
‘Hi Alana, these case papers came into the CID inbox. The night shift’s been crazy, two stabbings already, so we won’t get around to looking at it tonight. It’s something to do with the dead bloke you found at the night club. Thanks, K.’
Reviewing case papers was the last thing she wanted to do at four in the morning, but it was clear no one else was going to do it and it wasn’t as if she was sleeping anyway. She took a swig of water from the glass on her bedside table and opened the document. It contained scanned documents, yellowing pages which had been handwritten. There was a letter at the front:
‘Urgent: FAO DC Loxton. From General Registry – Requested Case file relating to the murder of Rachel Hughes.’
She opened the file and realized that she was looking at Jonathan Cane’s murder case. She hadn’t known who the victim was when she’d sent off her request. The murder team were convinced Cane’s death was an overdose, but Reynolds was still waiting for the toxicology results to finish his post-mortem report. She’d learnt in her career never to leave any stone unturned. Ever.
Her brow furrowed as she read DC Neil Fraser’s report. He’d been the officer in charge at the time. Rachel Hughes’s sister, Jenny, had been arrested in the early stages. Something pulled at the edges of her mind, almost too ridiculous to entertain.
Loxton had never found anything on Julia Talbot’s early life – no evidence of the car accident that killed her parents, not even their death certificates.
This murder had happened on Monday 24 July 2000, during the start of the summer holidays. Three children had gone into the woods and only two had come out alive. The murder weapon had been a rock.
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