by JANICE FROST
Neal paused, knowing he was on the right track, also knowing he couldn’t prove a thing. “You needed to punish Nancy so you took the thing she loved most in the world. Her daughter.”
“My daughter,” Bolan corrected him.
“Your daughter. You were serving a sentence for killing her anyway, so why not make it justified? Who did you get to do it for you, Wade? An old mate, a stranger, someone who owed you from the past?”
Bolan leaned back in his chair, appearing to be relaxed, but Neal suspected a lot was going on in his head.
“You can’t prove nothing,” Wade said at last, and Neal smiled inwardly, satisfied now that he was right, even if, ironically, Wade was also right. He stood up, signalling to the guard that he was ready to go.
“I’m going to appeal, you know. Now it’s come to light I never killed Debbie nor Amy, I’m getting out of here with a truckload of compensation for wrongful conviction.”
Wade’s words stopped Neal in his tracks, “You’ve spent eighteen years of your life in this place. No amount of money can compensate for that,” he said, but his heart was in his shoes. In a perverted way, Wade had served his sentence backwards and he was likely to be well recompensed for his time.
Even if he were guilty of hiring a hit man to kill Amy, Wade Bolan could not be convicted of murdering her twice. It was an unsatisfactory conclusion to the investigation. Even tracking down Bolan’s hitman — which might or might not happen at some indeterminable time in the future — would bring small reward. The whole case, like life, Neal supposed, was full of small victories and crushing disappointments.
All the way home, Neal wrestled with his feelings. He thought about the letter Richard Turner had shown him a few days after Nancy’s suicide, in which she confessed to feeding Debbie Clarke painkillers and smothering her with a pillow before abducting Amy. Richard had wanted to throw it away without showing anyone, but in the end his conscience had made him take the letter to Neal. This backed up Simon’s story, which might otherwise have been dismissed as a false memory.
Richard Turner had also confessed to knowing about Bradley’s trip to London to see Wade Bolan. Once Bradley found out that Amy’s father was a ‘jailbird,’ he had wanted to use this information to hurt and embarrass her. He had had no idea that Nancy was not Amy’s real mother nor could he have foreseen the tragic consequence that would result from his visit to Bolan. Between father and son, Neal could not decide which was the more pathetic.
He thought also about Nancy Hill and the choices she had made. It had recently come to light that, while she had been in foster care, she had been raped, aged fourteen, by a fifteen-year-old boy, and became pregnant. The child had been stillborn.
Had Nancy seen in Emily Clarke the baby she had lost and now could save? No amount of tragedy in her life could justify what she had done to Debbie, but as Neal so often observed, people who do wrong have very often been wronged themselves.
He picked up his mobile and called home. His sister answered on the second ring.
“It’s me,” he said, “Is Archie home?”
THE END
Book 2: DARK SECRET
A gripping detective thriller full of suspense
JANICE FROST
First published 2016
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this.
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©Janice Frost
THERE IS A GLOSSARY OF BRITISH TERMS IN THE BACK
DEDICATION
To my mother, with love.
Prologue
Two in the morning and minus fifteen outside. Gray Mitchell lay awake, grateful for his down-filled quilt and the residual warmth still lingering from the heating, which had sputtered off at midnight. He’d grown up on the East Coast of America, where winters had been colder, but twenty years in LA had spoilt him. After two years in England he wondered whether he’d ever acclimatise to the capricious British weather.
It wasn’t just the plummeting temperature that was keeping Gray awake. He had a lot on his mind, principally his relationship with his partner of nearly a dozen years. Leon Warrior was the reason he had left his homeland in the first place — and why he was now thinking of going back.
Just as he was drifting towards sleep at last, Gray’s mobile vibrated on the bedside table. He groped for it in the darkness, knocking it to the floor. Who could be texting at this hour? Gray switched on the light and squinted at the carpet. Predictably, the phone had landed out of reach and so he had to get out of bed. His phone case felt cold in his hand but as he scanned the message, a different sort of chill gripped his heart.
Am on the roof of the cathedral. Afraid I might jump. Please come now.
In less than five minutes, Gray was dressed and out of the house. The fresh snow was ankle deep and a layer of ice underneath made for treacherous walking. Gray slipped and slid over the cobblestones as he headed for the scaffolding surrounding the cathedral’s south-west front. He made for a spot in the hoardings where a couple of kids had found a gap a few weeks back. They had managed to scramble up to the roof of the cathedral and had taken stunning pictures of the city at night and posted them on Instagram.
The opening in the hoarding had been given a temporary fix with a plank of wood nailed loosely over the gap. It was easy enough for Gray to prise it free. The darkness on the other side was not his only problem — the ladder leading to the first deck of scaffolding had been removed. At fifty-four, Gray was slight but strong and supple. He had done some of his own stunts in the string of low-budget movies he’d appeared in back home. Nevertheless, he needed all his physical prowess now to launch himself high enough to grab hold of the scaffold and haul his weight up to the first deck.
By the time he managed to pull himself onto the boarded walkway, the palms of his hands were red and stinging from gripping the icy steel pole. In his haste to leave the house, he had forgotten to wear gloves.
Gray scaled the scaffold at a reckless pace, frightened that he might be too late. His laboured breathing expelled white clouds of vapour into the freezing night air, along with any thought for his own safety. Higher and higher he climbed, conscious of the lights of the city receding below him.
On the final deck, Gray stepped off the scaffold onto a long narrow parapet running partway along the length of the cathedral’s west front. There was no safety rail and the ground was a vertiginous two hundred and fifty feet of empty freefall space below. A short distance away on either side of him, the twin towers of the cathedral’s west front rose to a dizzy height, their distinctive, piercing spires hidden behind giddy swirls of snow.
Gray took a few hesitant steps forward. It was treacherous underfoot, ice and snow making the uneven stone walkway slippery. Ahead of him, where the parapet met the left tower, Gray thought he could make out a human form silhouetted against the stonework, but it was impossible to be sure in the swirling snow. It might just as easily be a stone carving. Gray called out, his words muffled and distorted by the wind. No one answered, and the shape seemed to dissolve in the snowy gloom.
Heart racing, Gray inched forward, pinning himself to the parapet wall, at times slip-sliding dangerously close to the edge and the sheer drop to the cathedral’s forecourt far below.
As he neared the tower, he called again. All the way along the ledge he had been wondering what he should say. Now, approaching the spot where he thought he had glimpsed the nebulous shape, he worried that it really was too late.
Gray t
hought he heard a voice calling to him from behind the tower and he called back, “Stay where you are.” A step. “I’m coming.” Then, “Hold on. Whatever it is, this isn’t how to fix it.”
Gray shuffled forward, back pressed against the parapet wall, needing something solid to lean against, even though there was now a little more room to manoeuvre. Close up, he could see that the shape was a statue after all. A weathered stone king with a snow-filled crown and an empty, emotionless stare loomed up in front of him. Had the statue witnessed a solitary, despairing figure leap out into the void? For a moment, Gray stood completely still, afraid to move, afraid to know the truth.
Another couple of steps and he was there, clinging for dear life to the crumbling statue. Snow was falling fast around him as he hugged the stony king to edge past it. But there was nothing on the other side, only more snow and a triangle of pitched lead roof sloping steeply away from him. There was no one ahead of him on the parapet and no way that anyone who might have been there before could have gone anywhere but down.
Gray’s eyes filled with tears. He stood, holding onto the statue, head bowed, snow settling in his collar and dripping cold down the back of his neck. He did not hear the hooded figure stealing up behind him, or see the arm raised above his head, weapon in hand. He did feel the sudden, agonising pain of a fracturing blow to the back of his skull. His knees buckled, and he sank down on the snowy parapet, perilously close to the edge. Gray Mitchell twisted round and looked up. He saw a familiar face inside a fur-trimmed hood. “You!” was all he had time to say before his assailant’s foot sank into the small of his back, sending him over the edge.
No one but the hooded figure was around to hear the shriek that was the last sound Gray Mitchell uttered as he plummeted towards the ground. A gush of warm blood pooled around his head, turning the snow to pink slush where he lay.
The hooded form stood on the ledge looking down before turning and making its way back to the scaffolding. Minutes later, safely on the ground, the figure paused to look at Gray Mitchell lying unmoving on the forecourt, then turned and headed off. Enveloped in snow and darkness, the silent killer disappeared into the bitter night.
Chapter 1
Laurence Brand loved his job as a Roman tour guide, but he was less fond of it in the winter. Just as well business was slack at this time of year. Thermal underwear from Marks and Spencer’s didn’t go well with a Roman toga. From October onwards, Laurence only did a handful of tours, mainly for groups of primary school kids. They liked to see him dressed up as his alter ego, Caius Antonius.
Laurence’s wife Maxine referred to Caius as Laurence’s ‘evil twin.’ Fortunately she tolerated his obsession with the classical world, mostly without complaining. Over the years, Laurence had dragged her round all the famous Roman sites in Europe. Maxine did not share his passion. She was happy to wander around the ruins with him for an hour or so, but soon she would take off to a beach or the nearest shops. It did not seem to matter that their interests did not coincide. They had rubbed along quite nicely for twenty odd years. What did it matter if, on a trip to Northumbria, Maxine preferred a day at the Metro Centre to a trip to Vindolanda?
Having run her own tea rooms for ten years, Maxine had quickly become bored when they moved to Stromford. She had taken a part-time job in the cathedral café and within a year, she and a fellow worker had taken on the catering contract. Now, it seemed, she was busier — and happier — than ever. The café was located next to the chapter house, and in the summer months, tables spilled out into the cloisters. Laurence liked to lunch there on a slack afternoon, sipping a glass of wine and enjoying the peace and quiet.
Through their jobs, and Maxine’s natural sociability, they had quickly acquired a circle of friends in the historic Uphill area where they lived and worked. Maxine’s business partner, Helen Alder, was a forty-something disillusioned nurse. She’d discovered a love of baking after watching The Great British Bake Off and enrolled on a course at the local FE college. Helen was Maxine’s new best friend.
Helen was one of those larger-than-life characters, nearly six feet tall, with a swimmer’s broad-shouldered build, and a loud personality. Laurence was slightly scared of her; she reminded him of the matron in the hospital where he had had his tonsils removed when he was six years old. Matron had ordered his mother to leave at the end of visiting time, and he had clung to her until Matron prised his fingers loose. He imagined Helen telling customers what to order, where to sit. But according to Maxine, Helen’s manner was partly bluster. She had another side to her personality. Don’t we all, thought Laurence, with a nod and a wink to Caius. Maxine drew his attention to Helen’s wrists, which bore the scars of a failed suicide attempt. Maxine had called it a “cry for help.” Caius Antonius merely snorted. Cry for attention, more like.
Despite his eccentricities, Laurence had made friends too. His visits to the café often coincided with break-time for the craftspeople who worked at the cathedral. The stonemasons and stained glass experts were working on a seemingly endless series of restoration projects on the magnificent edifice. Until he met them, the only stonemason Laurence had ever come across was the hapless Jude Fawley, from Thomas Hardy’s novel. Like Jude, Laurence had dreamed of escaping his working-class background into the giddy heights of academia. After obtaining his degree in classics, Laurence had taught in state schools for a few years until an unfortunate incident put an end to his career as a teacher.
On one of his first visits to the café, Laurence had looked up from the book he was reading as a group of workers in safety boots, navy overalls and hard hats walked through the door. They’d queued up at the counter, talking and laughing with the staff. Laurence had watched Maxine flirt with a pang of resentment. His wife was an attractive, shapely woman, ten years younger than him. In their working clothes, these guys looked big and manly. Laurence was dressed in what was essentially a skirt, his spindly legs and knobbly knees stretched out under the table, one bony shoulder bare and a laurel wreath around his balding head.
As they settled around a long table with their steaming mugs and bacon butties, Laurence noticed that at least two of them were women, and possibly a third, though this turned out to be a slight man with a long brown ponytail. That evening, Laurence had asked his wife about the workers and learned that they frequently came into the café, where they were entitled to a discount.
“You seemed to be on pretty friendly terms with them.” Maxine had glared at him. She had never liked his insecurity. But Laurence had never been able to understand what she saw in him. He wasn’t exactly god’s gift in the looks department and she was, well, perfect. A goddess, Caius whispered inside Laurence’s head.
The next time he’d popped into the café, Maxine introduced Laurence to the craftsmen and women and somehow he had become part of the group. He soon came to know them as individuals, none of whom posed a threat to his marriage. Laurence hit it off immediately with Vincent Bone. He was the oldest, a sinewy, quiet-mannered black man. Vincent was a devout Christian and had a tendency to refer to God as ‘the Boss.’ For the first few weeks of their acquaintance, Laurence thought he was talking about a real person. Vincent would signal the end of the break with, “The Boss wants us back at work.” Laurence pictured the Boss as a man in a hard hat and clunky boots with a long white beard and a stonemason’s hammer.
Laurence had also struck up a friendship with the youngest member of the group, a nineteen-year-old apprentice stonemason. The aptly named Marcus had expressed an interest in learning Latin, and Laurence had been tutoring him one evening a week and on Sunday mornings.
Today was one of those days when he had no tours arranged. Laurence was planning to take a stroll down the Long Hill to see if he could find some inspiration for Maxine’s Christmas present. There was a new shop down there that sold the kind of thing she liked to wear — long floaty tops and full, ankle-length skirts. Laurence secretly preferred the figure-hugging black trousers and fitted blouses that she wore
to work.
Perhaps he would call in at the cathedral café for lunch and enjoy a chinwag with Victor. Afterwards, he could head across to the Jester for a glass of real ale. He would wear that new winter jacket Maxine had persuaded him to buy at the weekend. His phone buzzed. A text from his wife. Bit unusual, she seldom contacted him during work unless it was an emergency. As he read Maxine’s message, Laurence’s heart lurched.
Laurie, don’t be alarmed, please come immediately. There’s been a terrible accident. PS It’s not me. Maxine xx
* * *
As his taxi passed the cathedral, Leon Warrior clocked Laurence Brand scurrying across the cobblestones. Off to see Maxine, no doubt. If ever a man loved his wife it was Laurence. Leon smiled. He knew Brand’s irascible alter ego, Caius Antonius. The centurion had left a wife behind in every outpost of the Roman Empire. He was the opposite of Laurence in every way imaginable.
As the taxi pulled into his drive, Leon looked up at the bedroom window, searching for any sign of Gray. Leon felt a pang of guilt, thinking of how much Gray had sacrificed to be with him. The weather was a challenge of course, and his partner complained incessantly about the British climate.
Gray had suggested the move. Career opportunities were dwindling for both of them. They were both tired of Hollywood, and the whole dreary business of endless auditions for bit parts in second-rate movies or TV dramas. Leon’s last role had been as a corpse. He had lain still throughout the whole autopsy scene, naked and cold. When it was over, all the other actors had walked away, leaving him lying there, with a lump of dead meat on his chest. He’d had to call on a cameraman to help him heave the bloody, prosthetic carcass off him before he could sit up. There had to be a better way to earn a living.