The Night Caller: An utterly gripping crime thriller

by J. M. Hewitt

  Suddenly Carrie understood; the key that Lee had referred to was the patterns of the tattoo. She stared at the geometric waves that went round and round, the key design linking up to form a circle. In black and white it looked to her like the Chinese circle tattoos that had been popular in the late nineties.

  It looked to Carrie almost exactly like the partial tattoo she had spotted on the mystery man’s arm the night that Ashlan Patel was murdered.

  Carrie picked up the piece of paper, bought it up to her face so it almost touched her nose.

  ‘Paul…’ she breathed. ‘It’s the tattoo, it’s the same one I saw on the boy at the canal last year.’ She blinked, looked again, put it back on the table and stared at it from where she stood.

  Paul shoved up to stand beside her, crowding her as he peered at it. Wide-eyed, he turned his head to regard Carrie.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She waited a beat, closed her eyes before slowly opening them. It hadn’t changed. The design was the same as the small bit she’d seen that was imprinted on her memory.

  ‘It’s the same,’ she said. ‘It’s the same tattoo that I’ve been trying to find for the last year.’

  She recalled what she had thought so often in the last twelve months; that the tattoo was the key to finding the killer. She had thought of it as the key, and after all this time it had turned out to be just that, a key. A laugh bubbled through her but she knew it would emerge with a hysterical edge, so she swallowed it back.

  Paul stared at her. ‘What does this mean?’

  Carrie shook her head, unable to speak.

  What did it mean? She had no idea. This changed everything.

  Thirty-Eight

  DAY TEN

  Emma resumed her daily walk of the canal alone. Silently she acknowledged to herself that she was no longer looking for Jordan, but rather his body. A floating thing, like what she’d seen in the mortuary. Skin and clothes that used to contain the essence that was once her son. She spoke to nobody, watched everybody, and cast her eyes over the still waters of the canals until darkness fell and she could no longer see. And then she went home.

  As the streetlights switched on outside, a knock came on Emma’s door. As she walked to the door she realised that she no longer expected a knock to be her son returning home.

  Yanking the door open, she sagged at the sight of DS Carrie Flynn. The painful beat against her chest started up again, she rubbed at it distractedly.

  ‘Emma,’ Carrie said. ‘I’m just stopping by with a few more questions. Can I come in?’

  She shrugged, offered her a tight-lipped smile, let her hand fall from her chest to hang loosely at her side. Stood back and opened the door wide.

  ‘I wanted to speak some more about Jordan,’ she began as she stood in her tiny hallway. ‘You left abruptly when you came to visit me at the station, and I had a sense you might have left some things unsaid.’ Uninvited, Carrie moved past her into the lounge. ‘I also found out that Jordan did have a tattoo, after all.’

  Emma stared. ‘No, he didn’t,’ she said.

  Carrie moved towards where she still stood in the hallway, offered up her phone. Emma squinted at it.

  ‘That’s not Jordan,’ she said.

  But it was. That skin, that tiny cluster of moles, she even knew which arm it was. She bowed her head.

  Another thing I didn’t know about my own son.

  ‘Emma,’ her voice was kind, more than she had ever heard it. ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea? We can have a chat.’

  She shrugged. Carrie wouldn’t leave even if she declined. Sighing, she moved into the lounge.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on, then,’ Carrie said.

  She put out a hand to stop her. ‘Can I… can I look at the photo again?’

  She passed her the phone. Emma devoured the picture on the screen. She didn’t hear Carrie as she headed towards the kitchen. She didn’t even hear the kettle as it clicked on.

  * * *

  As Carrie stirred the tea in the kitchen, she watched Emma. She was rapt, her only movement her finger tapping on the phone screen to keep the photo from fading into black.

  Carrie had her.

  She returned to the lounge, placed the mugs on the table.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Emma asked, still not taking her eyes off the picture.

  ‘Lee gave it to us.’

  Emma looked up then. ‘You spoke to Lee?’

  Carrie nodded. Watched as Emma’s eyes returned to the screen. ‘Did Jordan often go to the canals?’

  Emma flicked a glance up at her. Reluctantly she passed the phone back.

  ‘He went to the pubs, mostly,’ she replied, eventually. ‘With his mates, guys from uni, some from work, I think.’

  Carrie felt her mouth set in a grim line. ‘The funny thing is I couldn’t find any of Jordan’s friends who he was with that night. None of the people who reported the incident were with him.’ She waited a beat before pressing on. ‘In fact, I didn’t find any of his friends at all.’

  Carrie watched as Emma’s fingers moved in slow circles around her jaw. She didn’t speak.

  ‘Did he not have many friends? Was Jordan a loner?’

  Beneath her fingertips she saw Emma’s mouth open. A cry emerged. Though it wasn’t loud it seemed to shatter into the room. ‘You’ve seen all the flowers, of course he had friends!’ Her voice was strangled, furious, an edge to it that Carrie hadn’t heard since that first night that Jordan had gone missing.

  Good, she thought. I need that fury. ‘When something like this happens, people – and young people especially – need an outlet. Flowers, social media, it’s almost a natural reaction.’ She kept her gaze fixed on Emma as she delivered the blow. ‘Even if they didn’t know the person involved. Lee said that Jordan mostly kept to himself.’

  Emma made a sound deep in her throat. ‘Lee said the same to me,’ she offered, grudgingly. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She was talking at least.

  Carrie took the opening and dived in. ‘I saw Jordan, at the canal, this time last year. He watched as we pulled out the body of Ashlan Patel. You might not know, it wasn’t widely reported, but Patel was a known dealer.’ Carrie kept her eyes on Emma’s, spoke her next words very carefully. ‘Jordan was there, he had a mark on his T-shirt, blood, I thought, like he’d recently been in a fight. I didn’t know it was him until Lee showed me his tattoo.’

  Emma stared at her dully, no reaction on her face apart from an absence of colour in her cheeks. She was not connecting the hints Carrie had given. Or perhaps she was deliberately denying them. ‘Jordan didn’t do drugs.’

  Carrie nodded, agreeing with her. ‘How did he feel about people that did deal them?’

  ‘Same as the rest of us, I suppose. That they were scum.’

  ‘Do you recall Jordan coming home late, one night last winter, perhaps when you did his washing you saw the mark on his clothes, it was pretty big, it might have needed special attention, a stain remover—’

  ‘Jordan did his own washing,’ she interrupted.

  Carrie made an exaggerated surprised face at her. ‘Is that usual, for a teenage boy—’

  ‘He was fussy, he had a lot of nice clothes, he took care of them.’

  Carrie uttered a little laugh. ‘Surely nobody knows better than a mother how to wash delicates? I know I’d be—’

  ‘No!’ She cut her off again, and her voice was high-pitched. Then, more quietly, ‘No.’

  She would have to push her again, Carrie saw now. She continued, ‘He knew that I had seen him, he left the crime scene. He ran away.’ It wasn’t strictly true; Jordan – if it had been him – was in no rush, he’d simply… vanished.

  Carrie waited; still her eyes were locked on Emma’s, but she was no longer there. She changed tack. ‘I talked to Lee. He told us Jordan had no friends. That he was civil to people.’ Carrie paused. ‘What was he like to you, Emma, his mother?’

  She shook her head. A reaction now; te
ars leaked from under closed lids as if she was hurt.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered as she looked away. ‘Please leave me alone.’

  Deflated for the second time that day, Carrie nodded to her. She had pushed as far as she could.

  As she returned to the door, she heard Emma coming up behind her, breathing hard. Carrie turned around, hopeful once again.

  ‘Find him,’ she rasped, and her eyes were no longer dark or dull or dead. They shone, simmering with something she couldn’t identify. ‘Just find the man who killed my son, that’s all you need to do, there’s nothing more you need to know.’

  When Carrie left, Emma went out to get some groceries. After seeing the state of her fridge this morning, she realised she needed some fresh food. To her surprise, as she arrived home, she saw Claire and Jade huddled at her front door.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, a surge of unexpected pleasure running through her at the sight of them.

  Jade hugged her awkwardly, Claire smiled and raised a hand.

  ‘I just thought I’d stop by, I was in the area,’ Claire said. She gestured to Jade. ‘And this one had the same idea.’

  ‘Come in,’ she said, shoving the key into the door and pushing it open.

  * * *

  Jade sat dutifully next to Claire as Emma put the kettle on.

  ‘Where’s Nia?’ Emma asked.

  Jade felt guilty as she held up the baby monitor. ‘She’s sleeping, but she’ll wake up soon so I can’t stay long. I just wanted to know if you wanted to come over one evening, I’ll cook us a meal.’

  Emma barked out a laugh, harsh and shrill. ‘You, cook?’

  Jade felt Claire’s eyes on her and she reddened. Yes, she didn’t enjoy cooking or baking, not like Nan had, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t follow a simple recipe.

  ‘I can rustle us up something,’ she replied, as neutrally as she could manage.

  ‘Nia, that’s an unusual name,’ said Claire. ‘Where does it come from?’

  ‘I read it in an article, when I was pregnant,’ replied Jade, a well-rehearsed lie.

  ‘I knew a Nia, once. A young girl working at the council, she told me that her name meant…’ Claire clicked her fingers, her brow furrowed. ‘It was something Greek, or Italian, maybe,’ she said.

  ‘Jordan went to Greece, once,’ said Emma as she carried through three mugs and set them down on the table in front of Claire and Jade.

  ‘Really? Lovely place, very unspoilt,’ commented Claire.

  They sipped their drinks in silence for a while, until Jade stood up and made to leave.

  She was at the door, pulling on her coat when Claire spoke up again.

  ‘Purpose!’ she said, still clicking her fingers. ‘I knew I’d remember it.’

  Emma, hands cradling her mug, frowned at Claire. ‘What?’ she asked, as though she had lost the thread of the conversation she had thought was over.

  Jade’s heart stopped, and she massaged her chest as the beat sprung back to life, at double time.

  ‘I’ll see you, then,’ she said, loudly.

  ‘Purpose, that’s what the name Nia means.’ Clare nodded at Jade. ‘That’s nice, isn’t it?’

  Jade dared not look at Emma, but she could feel her friend’s eyes on her.

  ‘Purpose?’ Emma repeated. Her eyes were slits of concentration, her fingers tapped on the mug that she held.

  She can’t remember, thought Jade, hope springing to her. She knows she’s heard or seen that word recently, but she can’t connect the dots. Jade zipped up her coat.

  ‘Bye,’ Jade said to Claire, and tucking her chin into the collar of her coat, clamping the baby monitor under her arm, she slipped out of the door.

  She clambered over the small wall that divided their houses, didn’t bother going down Emma’s path and up her own. Slamming her door closed behind her she leaned against it, breathing hard, a sob hitching in her throat.

  Emma would remember. Jade bet herself that Emma looked at the wording on that damn Father’s Day card every single fucking day. The next time she did so, she would realise.

  It was coming apart. Everything was ending.

  She closed her eyes and the memories came flooding back.

  Thirty-Nine

  DAY TEN

  She hadn’t thought of birth control, of condoms or later on getting the morning-after pill. The only thing that continued running through her mind was Jordan’s age. At first, when she kept throwing up, she thought it was because of how bad she felt about sleeping with him. Because that was how it made her feel, when she thought about it: sick.

  She avoided Emma as best she could, which wasn’t much as her neighbour came over constantly, still concerned that Jade wouldn’t be able to cope in the wake of Nan’s death.

  Nan, now, was the last thing on Jade’s mind.

  When it became clear to Jade that she was pregnant she poured a glass of the wicked ouzo out of the bottle that Jordan had left and swallowed it down in one. She eyed the rest of the bottle, thought about sinking it all down until it was empty, but she’d drunk most of it that night anyway.

  She waited until Emma went to work before going round to his house.

  He greeted her as he always had, polite, slightly indifferent, like nothing at all had happened between them.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she blurted.

  His black eyes glinted in the dim light of Emma’s front room.

  ‘It’s yours,’ she said, bitter that she felt she had to say that.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It can’t come out, what we did. Nobody can ever know.’ She lowered herself into a crouch by his chair. ‘You’re fifteen, Jordan, fifteen!’

  ‘Sixteen, now,’ he replied.

  She waved her hand. ‘Doesn’t matter. Sixteen is still…’ she tailed off, shook her head in disgust. ‘Nobody can ever know.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But I’m keeping it, I’m having this baby.’

  He reached forward, ran a finger down her bare arm. ‘I know.’

  The finger stroked her until she shivered, and he said, ‘I know you’re keeping it, I did this for you. It’s not for anyone else, certainly not for me.’

  She stared into the bottomless pits of his eyes and said, ‘What do you mean?’

  He withdrew his hand, leaned back in his chair. ‘You wanted to stay in Nan’s house, with a child they’ll likely allow you to take on the tenancy.’

  She heard her own ragged intake of breath, shocked at his thought process.

  He carried on, ‘Besides, I figured I owed you one, a baby, I mean.’

  Her hand clutched at the fabric on the arm of his chair. What was he saying? Was he acknowledging what he’d done, all those years ago, when he pushed her off the roof and killed the baby inside her? Was it all that simple for him – I killed your child, here, have another?

  She remembered before, when Nan had been attacked, around the time her parents were threatening to take her away, back to her real home. Jordan’s words, the look on his face, when he told her, you get to live here now, like you always wanted to. The way his mind worked, it wasn’t normal.

  She backed away from him and left the house.

  * * *

  She had avoided him as much as she could for the next eight months. It wasn’t difficult because he was rarely around, always out, where or with whom she didn’t know. And when the baby came, he showed no interest. He was polite, and yet again, indifferent.

  She felt tenderness then. A belief that he’d meant it when he’d told her this was just for her. In the darkened ward after the birth she had logged onto her tablet and scrolled through the endless lists of baby names.

  ‘Nia,’ she told him, shyly, when he accompanied Emma round to her house after she was discharged from the hospital. Emma was unpacking food she’d bought for Jade in the kitchen and Jade pulled him aside. ‘Her name is Nia. It means purpose, in Greek.’

  He hadn’t said anything, but she was sure she saw something flicker in those black old eyes of h
is. She hoped he knew that she loved him, in a way that wasn’t usual, but was love, and forgiveness for the other baby.

  The only times he even behaved as though Nia was there was when the little girl was a bit older and Jade scolded her. Then he would always take the child’s side.

  As time passed, as Nia kept those lovely shining blue baby eyes and they didn’t turn black like his, Jade relaxed a little. They were shaped like his, elongated, and she styled Nia’s hair so it framed her face, cutting off the outside edges of her eyes.

  She relaxed so much that she created the Father’s Day card, complete with a beach scene she had found of Greece, and the cryptic-to-anyone-other-than-him message on it.

  She was safe from her misdeed.

  Had been safe.

  Now Claire and her bloody knowledge of baby names and the Greek language had let the secret come tumbling out.

  And she was certain it wouldn’t be long before the penny dropped for Emma.

  * * *

  Jade wiped her nose, casting a glance at the door as she ran upstairs. Nia was still sleeping soundly. Jade bundled her up, the little girl whining at the disturbance. In Nia’s bedroom, her daughter in one arm, she paused, lifted the lid of the jewellery box that used to belong to Nan. Inside, folded neatly, was a few hundred pounds. He had given her that, over the years when he began working. He had simply put it through her door in a blank envelope. She had no proof even that it was him, but there was nobody else in her life who would give her money, not without wanting to make a song and dance about it. She kept it safe, sometimes using some to buy Nia something nice.

  Now, holding her daughter close, Jade slipped outside the back door. She hurried down the garden, turning left in the ginnel, towards the bright lights of the city.

  There was a determination in her step. For the first time in what seemed like forever, her nerves had gone. It was coming apart anyway: she had no choice but to face it.