“No. I’m not. How do you know who I am? Who are you?” Molly was afraid, she looked desperately back and forth, searching for some help. There was no-one near enough and she really didn’t want to cause a fuss. “Give me my baby back.”
“Outside. Quick.” With the final command the pram was pushed down the hallway and out into the small porch.
Molly followed reaching forward, trying to catch hold of the buggy handle but unable to squeeze through the narrow space between the man and the wall. “Give him back.”
“Molly, go and get your things. I am waiting here.”
She stood for a moment in terrified indecision. She could fight for possession of the child and the pram or she could run upstairs and fetch her things. She could stand in the porch and scream for help – but she didn’t.
She couldn’t leave Jakey, couldn’t turn her back on him.
A woman crossed the parking space towards them, she smiled at the baby. Molly was about to call out, to beg for help but before she had a chance, Patrick handed over the pram to the new stranger. He turned and took hold of Molly by the wrist.
“Come, don’t make a scene. Let’s go to your room. We will bring your things. No need to be upset.”
He pushed her back into the hallway and then up the narrow stairs to her room.
Chapter 23
Penny didn’t interfere with Jordan’s work – ever. She listened when he wanted to talk and rejoiced with him when he had a success but that was all. But on Sunday night she had taken his tablet computer away from him.
“Leave it, love,” she said. “Sitting here going over and over it isn’t going to help. You’re exhausted. Come on up to bed. Get some sleep. Nothing is going to happen tonight and even if it does, they know how to contact you.”
She was right. He knew it and he followed her up to the bedroom where she helped him to strip off his clothes and then, while she checked on Harry, he had a shower and slid under the covers. It was warm and comfortable and once Penny was beside him, he was able to switch off for a short while and let the worry go. He pulled her close and breathed in the clean, fresh perfumed scent of her and as he held her the tension and worry drained away and he drifted into the darkness.
He had just over an hour’s sleep before his mobile chimed and he grabbed it quickly before it woke his family.
“Boss, it’s Ros. Really sorry to disturb you but I’ve found Molly McCardle. Well, I’ve seen her anyway.”
“Brilliant. What have you got? Hey, hang on, are you still in work?”
“Well, yes. I didn’t want to give up on this and I had to do it on my own, so it took a while. I had to flannel a bit with the bus company, but I reckon if we get her home safely it won’t matter. Am I right?”
Jordan reassured her and hoped they were right.
“Anyway, it was worth it I reckon. To be honest, from what I’ve seen this might be able to wait until you come in. She was on her own. She didn’t look disturbed or frightened from her body language. She had the baby with her, of course. I picked her up on the bus from Picton Road. She went all the way into the city. She caught a train at Central and travelled to Southport. I was able to follow her leaving the station. She walked along Lord Street, went into the supermarket and came out with a couple of bags. Then she turned down Hill Street and I lost her. Really, boss, I don’t think there is anything much we can do right now. Maybe she just needed to get away, you know, have some me time.”
“Go home, Ros. You’ve done brilliant work, thank you. At least we know she’s okay. But now you go home, get some kip. I’ll get in touch with Terry and we’ll take over. We still need to find her and find out just what has been going on. I reckon we could request information about her bank card use, and whatnot. Going walkabout after what has happened to her mother makes her a person of interest. I’ll have a word with DCI Cross in a while, we need to put out an appeal – ask her to contact us. We also need to have the Southport bods involved.”
“I’ll go home, get a shower and a quick nap then I’ll be back in later. Call me if you need me,” Rosalind said.
“I will. Thanks again.”
Jordan left a note for his wife, grabbed an energy bar from the tin in the kitchen and rang Terry on the handsfree as he drove through the quiet Crosby streets and out to Wavertree.
* * *
By the time Jordan arrived at the station, Terry was already there, scanning the report and footage.
“Can’t get onto the bank yet, boss. We need to contact the brother and find out which one she uses.”
“Call him now.”
“It’s a bit early.”
“It’s his sister. If he’s asleep, I’d be surprised. If it was my sister, I’d be walking the streets and I’d do anything, anything at all to find her. Sitting in the house waiting for her to come back isn’t good enough. Get on to him. Find out if they have any relatives in Southport, which bank she uses, which cards she has. Oh, do you know what, bugger it – let’s go and talk to him ourselves. I want to put out an appeal. Let’s ask if he wants to be a part of it. They have more impact with a concerned relative on screen. I know that’s a bit cynical but it’s also fact. Come on.”
Terry gulped back the remains of his cup of coffee, pulled on his jacket and they stomped off down the corridor. The station was still night-time quiet, a couple of drunks were lolling in the reception area on the plastic chairs and the desk sergeant appeared to be playing some sort of game on his phone. However, Terry and Jordan were firing on all cylinders as they swept past and headed for the car park.
Chapter 24
Gary McCardle was red-eyed and dishevelled. The curtains were still drawn across the windows and as he dragged open the front door, the stink of cigarette smoke swept past in a cloud.
“Christ, not you again? Leave us alone, can’t you? It’s seven in the morning there must be some sort of law about this. It’s harassment.”
“Mr McCardle, we did offer to assign a family liaison officer – that would have avoided some of the visits, but you declined.” As he spoke, Jordan pushed forward and for once Gary didn’t bother to try and stop him entering. They walked down the hallway and into the kitchen. After just a few days, the place had deteriorated into a shambles. There were dirty mugs and plates on all the surfaces. A loaf lay beside the toaster with the wrapping screwed closed and a jar of peanut butter was left lidless on the table with the knife abandoned alongside. There were crunchy yellow stains across the tablecloth.
“We have some better news for you, Gary. But first of all, I need to ask if your brother Eddie is here.”
“No, I’ve told you. I haven’t seen him in a couple of years. I don’t know where he is.”
“It’s just that we met Laura Clark up by the memorial for your mum and she told us she thought she’d seen Eddie.”
“Aye well, she’s talking through her arse, isn’t she? How could she see him when he’s not here? Do you really think I wouldn’t know? Anyway, what’s this better news you’ve got? I could do with some.”
“We’ve seen CCTV of Molly.”
“Where! Is she alright?”
“We think she’s okay. We tracked her on CCTV to Southport.”
“Southport? What the hell is she doing in Southport?”
“We were hoping you might be able to tell us,” Terry said.
McCardle shook his head, his lips pursed. He reached for a pack of cigarettes which were lying on the table. Jordan was about to ask him not to smoke while they were there, to point out they had that right. But he looked at the dark rings under Gary’s eyes, the fingernails bitten to the quick and kept his thoughts to himself.
“She likes Southport. Always did,” Gary said. “When she was younger. She was a bit wild, they used to blag their way into the clubs there, her and her mates, like. She loved the funfair as well. I bet she hasn’t been since she had the kid though.”
“You’ve no relatives there?”
“No, bloody hell, no. A bit t
oo rich for us. Well, it used to be anyway. All those big houses, the posh shops.”
“We need to find her. We could look at her bank accounts and see if she’s used her card, that might give us an idea what she’s up to at least. She must have stayed somewhere last night. She could have spent the time in the open, at the railway station or even in the bus shelters, something like that. But we haven’t seen her on any of the cameras. My instinct is she had somewhere to go. She would need to with the baby, after all.”
“I’ll go. I’ll go and look for her. I don’t want your lot tracking her or whatever. Just leave me, let me get myself together and I’ll head off.”
Jordan shook his head. “That’s not the best idea, Gary. Really, leave this to us. We’ll be quicker and more efficient. We have access to technology that’ll help. We won’t frighten her. I promise you. Look, we could have her located and back home with you while you’re still trying to find a parking place in Southport.”
The tongue-in-cheek comment diffused some of the tension. Gary raised his head and stared at Jordan for a minute. “You promise, you won’t scare her? You’re not going to arrest her or something?”
“No, of course not. We would like to talk to her, obviously. But the main thing right now is to make sure your sister and the baby are safe. I know you understand that.”
“Okay, what do you need.”
“Bank details, card numbers if you have them. Then we can get on with tracking any spending. Any idea at all that you think might help. I need to get back to the station and put things in motion. But you can call my mobile any time and if you can’t get through, try Terry here or our colleague DC Searle. I’ll give you her number. There is just one other thing. If we don’t manage to track her down quickly, I would like to arrange an appeal for help. You know the sort of thing I mean. Just a short section on the news asking her to get in touch or anyone who might have seen her to let us know. Would you be willing to take part in it? I’m sure you’ve seen them yourself?”
“No, bloody hell no. Don’t do that. Whatever you do, don’t do that. Please. You have to promise me you won’t.” As he cried out, Gary McCardle sprang from the table and grabbed hold of Jordan’s arm. “Don’t do that.”
Chapter 25
“Gary was panicked. What was that about? I thought we were getting through to him.” Terry Denn was driving them back to the station while Jordan messaged the team with information about Molly’s bank cards.
“It did seem like an overreaction, I have to say. I’m not reading too much into it right now. He’s an odd character anyway and he’s under a lot of stress. I still want to go ahead with an appeal if we can’t trace her today. If he doesn’t want to take part, then there’s nothing we can do. I suppose we could approach Sandra.”
“Yeah, that’s a good thought. Maybe it’s not going to be a problem though. If we trace her through her plastic – job done.”
“We have to be careful here, Terry. We are focused on finding Molly, and I think that’s right. She’s still alive and she may be in danger. At the very least her behaviour is odd. But we still have a murder to solve. We can’t let the original investigation get away from us. I’ve asked Beverly to look into the background of the family. Anything she can find could be a help in tracing just why that poor old woman was killed. Up to now we haven’t found anything. The SOCO team have drawn a blank at the crime scene. Except of course to say it’s not actually the original crime scene but simply the place where she was left. Vivienne Bailey has sent a report in. They believe the flames…” Jordan compressed his lips. “Sorry, I can’t think of another way to say it. Anyway, they were extinguished with water. Not potable but something more likely from a lake or a pond, that sort of thing. They will try and find out just where, but that means taking samples from all the water sources in the area. But it means they never really intended to let the body be totally consumed. This leads us back to it being some sort of message, but we don’t know who for or why. She also highlighted the presence of residue on the shoes. Apparently, there is something in the tread on the sole. A bit of a puzzle, she said. She’s still working on it.”
* * *
The incident room was quiet, everyone was focussed on their screens, either scanning CCTV of Southport and looking for live images of Molly and her son, or reviewing the film of her the night before. Jordan had asked them to go over it to see if they could pick up anything suspicious around the young woman. “Just ask them to look for people who are on all the images, who took the same bus, the same train and then turned up in Southport,” he told Rosalind Searle when he spoke to her on the way back from the McCardles’.
“Anything?” he asked the room at large as they arrived. There was a chorus of negative responses. “Okay, well, carry on. If anything shows up from her bank card it’ll help to tighten the search. But this is all good stuff.”
“Can I have a word, sir?” Beverly Powell had come up behind him and spoke quietly into his ear.
“Have you found something?” he asked. “If you have it’s probably best to share it with everyone. The more information we all have the better.”
“Erm. No. I just need a word in private.”
Terry stood by the table making himself coffee, he was doing the silly wiggling thing with his eyebrows again. Jordan glared at him.
“Okay, Bev. What is it?”
“Can we step into the corridor, sir?”
“Is it really necessary?”
“I’d prefer it.”
He had no choice but to follow her out into the space outside the incident room. She turned and closed the door behind them.
“If this is a personnel matter, you really should speak to HR, Bev,” Jordan said.
“No. No, of course it’s not, sir. I have no problems. It’s great to be working with you again. No, it’s just something odd about the family – the McCardles.”
“Okay.”
“Well, you know you asked me to have a look at their background?”
Jordan nodded.
“I can’t.”
“Oh. I’m surprised. I would have thought that sort of thing was right up your street. You’re good with records and what have you.”
“Yes, well, thank you, sir. It’s not that I’m not able to do it, although it sort of is. It’s just – well, there’s nothing there. I’ve found records of the murdered woman owning the house. That was quite easy from the Land Registry. It has been in her name for a long time. Since the seventies. There was no record of a mortgage on it which I found surprising but anyway you would expect her to own it outright now, given her age. I found a record of her working as an auxiliary nurse at the Royal Infirmary. I think they call them something different now – health care assistants, I believe. There was some employment information about her husband at the docks and at the container base in Bootle. I can’t find any record of her at any other hospital though. The kids have got school records and health service cards and all of the usual documentation but none of it goes back to the beginning. It seems very odd.”
“What do you mean the beginning?”
“I can’t find an address for her before the current one and actually no marriage certificate. The father’s name on the birth certificates is McCardle and it says they are from Liverpool. I don’t want to let you down, boss. I just wonder how much time you want me to spend on it. I could look for all the certificates and even census records, it is very time consuming.”
“Well, maybe it’s not so odd. It could be she never married. Maybe unusual in someone her age with so many children but not impossible. I’ll see if I can get more information from Gary McCardle, he must know where she came from and her maiden name. He did mention a cousin in Ireland so perhaps that’s it. Maybe her records are all there and he didn’t specify whether it was North or South and to be honest I didn’t think to ask. It didn’t seem very important at the time. As you say, it’s going to be a challenge. Leave it for now but let me see what you’ve got, and we’
ll decide whether or not it’s going to be something we need to follow up.”
“Okay, sir. I’m sorry, I feel as though I’ve failed.”
“No, not at all, let me know how you get on.”
Chapter 26
Rosalind Searle strode over to the whiteboard where Jordan was reviewing the latest notes. “Sir, I reckon we’ve found her.” She held out her tablet so he could see the screen. “She’s paid with her card at an hotel in Southport. Queens Road. She used it in the supermarket as well.”
“Excellent.” Jordan grinned at her and made to hand the computer back.
“There is something else. If you look at the credits on her account.” She pointed at the screen.
“Blimey. Where did that come from? Five thousand all in one lump. I don’t think it’s her Jobseeker’s Allowance, is it?”
“No, I reckon not. We are on to the bank. Bev is chasing them to find out where it came from. They are being a bit cagey at the moment. But we’ll keep working on it.”
“Great stuff. Come with me, will you? She may be upset when we turn up and it’ll be less frightening if she sees a woman.”
“Right, boss.”
“I’ll meet you in the car park. In the meantime, ask Terry to call ahead and let the hotel know we’re coming.”
“Do you want to send a local bobby round to keep an eye on her till we get there?”
“No. I don’t think so. We don’t have any proof she’s done anything after all.” He turned to the room. “Okay guys, we need to monitor the live feed cameras in Southport, particularly around Queen Street. We are heading out there now but if you do see our woman out and about you need to let us know, soon as. Yeah.”
Body by the Docks: detectives investigate a baffling mystery Page 8