A Promise to the Dead: A gripping crime thriller with a brilliant twist

by Victoria Jenkins

  Twenty-Seven

  In the car on the way back to the station, Alex and Chloe discussed the revelation of Kieran’s adoption. Realising that he wouldn’t escape their investigations and that he had been backed into finally telling the truth, Darren had eventually agreed to speak, sharing with them the events that had led up to his argument with Kieran the previous Wednesday.

  His admissions might have been controversial, but none were incriminating. He had told the two detectives that he had never wanted to adopt – that he had been happy when Hannah was born but that she was enough. Linda, though, had become obsessed with conceiving a sibling for their daughter, and when she failed to get pregnant for a second time, she had persisted with the idea of adoption until he agreed to make an application. He confessed that he had never been able to feel for Kieran the way he did for his daughter, and that he had been disappointed by the young man he had become. He had tried to help him by giving him labouring work, but the gesture had only been made to keep his wife off his back.

  ‘So Darren agreed to the adoption because Linda wouldn’t give up on the subject?’ Chloe said, as Alex pulled off the roundabout and on to Manor Way, the main link road between Cardiff and the A470 heading north. ‘Seems a hell of a decision to just give in to. Does Hannah know her brother was adopted? She’s never mentioned it. Perhaps she was too young to know any different, though there’s a few years between them.’ She glanced at Alex, whose eyes were fixed to the road ahead. She had fallen silent, lost in her thoughts. ‘You okay?’

  She had called Alex the previous evening but had received no answer. It wasn’t like Alex not to return her calls. Chloe knew there was something going on, but whatever it was, Alex obviously wasn’t ready to confide in her with it yet. She just hoped her ex-husband wasn’t back in the picture.

  ‘Sorry. I was miles away.’

  ‘I could see that. Anywhere nice?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. I hope so.’

  Chloe studied her with a questioning gaze, but pried no further. Since the incident that had left her scarred months earlier, Alex was often to be found distracted, her thoughts seemingly elsewhere.

  ‘Do you still think Darren’s involved in Kieran’s disappearance?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Alex said, changing gears as she slowed for a set of traffic lights. ‘If Kieran’s phone hadn’t been traced to the water, we’d be assuming now that he’d just gone off somewhere of his own accord, wouldn’t we?’

  Chloe said nothing. Alex was right: had they known about the argument between Kieran and his father earlier, their assumptions would have been very different. But the phone made the idea that Kieran might have chosen to leave less probable. Even had he wanted to punish his parents for what he might have viewed as a betrayal, it seemed likely that he would have wanted to contact Hannah, if only to let her know that he was safe.

  ‘I wonder how Gareth Lawrence thought he was going to get away with ripping off Michael Wyatt?’ Chloe mused. ‘They’re joint partners – surely he must have known Wyatt would find out sooner or later?’

  ‘He must have thought Darren would get off his back quickly enough as well, judging by the lack of response to his messages. Bit naïve, isn’t it?’

  ‘Like Darren said, though, Wyatt’s not been at work so much since his daughter’s death. Natural that his mind hasn’t been on the job, which is probably why they thought they’d get away with it. It looks as though Lawrence decided to exploit Wyatt during his weakest moments. Over two decades of partnership jeopardised for the sake of greed. Nice guy.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Alex said with a shake of her head.

  Chloe reached for her bottle of water from the door of the car and took a sip before sitting back. ‘I just don’t get why he’d do something like that when the man’s obviously loaded anyway. Those offices they’ve got, they don’t come cheap for a start, and I don’t really see why they’d even need them. It seems more of a status thing – you know, look at us with our plush offices and our pointless receptionist. We should get a check on their Companies House records, find out exactly what’s been going on.’

  Chloe realised she was thinking aloud and might as well have been talking to herself. Alex was only present in part, and wherever her mind was it seemed to be a more engaging place than there in the car, swamped by the noise of Chloe’s ramblings. They fell into silence.

  Alex checked the clock on the dashboard, lost once again to her thoughts. She felt a prickle of anticipation creep through her. She was meeting with a social worker in a couple of hours and whatever the day threw at her, she couldn’t miss this appointment.

  When they arrived back at the station, she parked the car and the two detectives headed for the building. There was something irredeemably bleak about the station’s facade, with its grey walls and darkened windows. It stood at the end of the town centre like a concrete prison, casting a lowering shadow on the traffic that passed it.

  ‘We need to get hold of Gareth Lawrence,’ Alex said, pushing open the main doors. ‘It seems convenient he’s permanently “unavailable”.’ She was struggling to see how or where the man’s extortion of cash from the business fitted into anything else. According to Darren, Kieran hadn’t known about Lawrence’s activities, but that might not actually be the case. Was there a chance that Kieran had somehow found out, and confronted Lawrence without Darren knowing about it?

  DCI Thompson would want something concrete from her soon, but at the moment Alex felt the weightlessness of everything she was able to offer him. She had the impression that he was silently willing her to trip over the mess that the current cases had spewed before her, and the last thing she wanted was to leave the job with failure trailing at her heels.

  ‘DI King.’

  As Chloe made her way to the stairs, the desk sergeant left reception and crossed the waiting area to greet Alex. He was holding an envelope, her name handwritten in black biro on the front. He looked at her apologetically.

  ‘What’s that?’ Alex asked, eyeing it with trepidation. After yesterday’s surprise package, further unexpected gifts were the last thing she wanted. Attempts to identify the boy with the bike who had delivered the previous day’s envelope had so far failed to locate the youngster.

  ‘Same kid,’ the desk sergeant told her. ‘Uniform have gone after him this time.’

  She hoped they caught up with him, for all their sakes. Morale was already weak: if they couldn’t track down a kid on a bike, they might as well all pack up and go home.

  She ripped the envelope open as she headed up the stairs to the first floor. Stopping at the top of the staircase, she peered carefully inside to check nothing sinister was waiting there for her.

  This time, there was a photograph. Drawing her sleeve over her hand, she pulled it out between her thumb and forefinger, turning it before she focused on its details. She checked back inside the envelope to see if there was anything else: a note to accompany it, or something that might offer a clue as to who had sent it. There was nothing. In the bottom right-hand corner of the photo, a date was printed in faint red letters: 8 March 2018. The previous Thursday.

  Alex studied the photo closely, making sure there was no mistake. She felt a surge in her head, heard a noise like a repetitive drumbeat thudding insistently at the back of her brain. Her grip tightened around the photograph as she hurried to the incident room.

  Twenty-Eight

  DC Jake Sullivan sat at his desk in the incident room reading over the email he had just received. He felt a trickle of excitement ripple beneath his shirt at the realisation that finally they might be getting somewhere, and that if they were, it would be thanks to him. The atmosphere amongst the team had been growing increasingly despondent, with the general feeling that each of the current cases was getting the better of them, but now there was something that looked like a lead, and Jake would have been lying to himself if he’d claimed he wasn’t grateful it was his lap it had happened to fall into.

  ‘Jake.�
�

  He turned sharply at the sound of his name. DI King was in the doorway of the incident room, her face set with a look of impatience. He wondered what he’d done this time. It seemed that where Alex King was concerned, he needed to do little to provoke frustration.

  ‘DI King,’ he replied, getting from his seat.

  ‘My office,’ she snapped.

  He pushed back his chair and stood, shrugging as one of the other team members threw him a questioning look. Outside the incident room, Alex was already nearing the other end of the corridor, and Jake hurried his step to catch up with her. He followed her into her office, closing the door behind him.

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ he began.

  ‘Oh, there certainly is,’ Alex said abruptly. ‘Something you should have told me last week, perhaps?’

  Jake’s eyes narrowed in confusion. His superior’s attention was distracted from him for a moment, her eyes drawn to something on the desk. He couldn’t see its details, but he could see it was a photograph. Last week, he thought. What should he have told her last week?

  His face fell at the realisation of what he was about to hear. He didn’t know how the DI had found out, but it seemed certain now that she knew. There was nothing else she could have been referring to. His brain raced ahead of him, tripping over the multiple excuses he might offer as some form of defence, but he realised that none of them were going to get him out of this. He had made a huge mistake. It was going to cost him everything.

  When her question was met with silence, Alex reached down and picked up the photograph. She thrust it in front of him, her eyes not leaving his face as she waited for his response. ‘Explain this.’

  Jake looked down at the photo. He tried to hold back a reaction, but it was impossible to stop his face from betraying his shock. Who the hell had taken this?

  ‘That’s Kieran Robinson, isn’t it?’ Alex waited, watching as Jake’s attempt at composure crumbled in front of her. Gone was the defiance she had detected just moments ago when he had entered her office; now, in its place, there was a look of abject panic.

  ‘When was this taken?’

  Jake’s lips moved as though he was about to say something, but the excuses he was clearly trying to formulate fell apart in his mouth, meaningless in their lack of substance.

  Alex studied him intently, awaiting his explanation. Nothing he could say would excuse what he had done. At no point had he mentioned knowing Kieran Robinson. He had lied to them; he had knowingly withheld information that could have saved them resources and time they couldn’t afford to waste. And that, Alex realised, was at best; at worst, she hated to think what else he might be hiding. That he was a member of her own team made the sense of betrayal all the worse.

  Realising Alex wasn’t going to say anything more until he spoke, Jake cleared his throat nervously. ‘I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you as soon as I heard he’d been reported missing, but …’ He tilted his head back and drew his hands over his face. ‘The longer I left it, the harder it was. There was never a right time. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Alex repeated, observing him with disbelief. ‘You didn’t even tell us you knew him.’

  ‘I didn’t know him. I mean … not really. I only met him that once.’

  Alex narrowed her eyes. ‘You’d better start at the beginning, Jake, and unless you’ve got some serious mitigating circumstances, I suggest you brace yourself. You’re already in enough trouble. So come on … tell me.’

  She stared at him, not knowing who she was looking at. She had never felt she knew much about him – she had never felt she wanted to – but now it seemed it would have been better for them all if she had.

  ‘Jake.’

  ‘We met online,’ he told her, his voice unsteady as his secret was forced into the room. ‘We’d never met up before, we’d only spoken. I knew he was going out that night – he’d mentioned it a couple of days earlier – but on Thursday evening he got in touch to say he wasn’t enjoying himself. He knew I lived nearby. He asked if I was busy …’

  He stopped speaking and sank down on to the chair on the other side of Alex’s desk. He tried to hide his face from her, but he wasn’t able to conceal the flush that had raced up his throat and now mottled his cheeks. Alex couldn’t think of anything that would come next that might overshadow or dissipate the frustration she was feeling towards him.

  ‘You were with him on Thursday evening? The missing hours we’ve been trying all this time to trace … he was with you?’

  Kieran’s disappearance had prompted a huge search operation involving specialist divers and hundreds of man hours. How the hell was she supposed to explain to DCI Thompson that one of her own team had been hiding information that might have helped the case?

  ‘He went to your house?’

  ‘Flat … yeah. He wasn’t there long – two hours at the most. Everything was fine when he left … he told me he was going to get the last train home.’

  Alex stood and went to the window of her office. Outside, in the car park, Dan was chatting to a young PC, his hands gesturing wildly as he said something that made the female officer laugh. She felt a knot of regret in the pit of her stomach. Alex knew all about mistakes, but this was something else. Jake hadn’t made a mistake: he had knowingly deceived them all.

  ‘What did the two of you do while he was with you, Jake?’

  With her back still turned to him, he was spared the awkwardness of having her witness his embarrassment. An uncomfortable silence fell over the room. It was interrupted only by a sharp exhalation from Alex as she realised how naïve the question was.

  ‘Oh,’ she said eventually, talking to the window. ‘That kind of website.’ She realised she’d had no idea that Jake was gay. But why would she? she thought. Chloe might have confided in her about her relationship, but their friendship had developed over the past year into something in which those kinds of details could be deemed appropriate. DC Jake Sullivan was mostly a mystery to her. There had always been something about him – the aloof attitude that suggested he considered himself that little bit better than everyone else – that had kept Alex and the rest of the team firmly at arm’s length.

  She turned back to him. ‘So how had you two communicated up until that night’s …’ She didn’t know how she should refer to it. Meeting someone online for sex seemed so sordid, so seedy – so dangerous, if nothing else – yet it was apparently something that many people did, without a thought for the potential dangers involved. ‘I don’t know … what do you want to call it?’

  Though Kieran’s mobile hadn’t yet been recovered, the police had been able to access his call and text history. If there was anything there that linked back to Jake, it would have been found. ‘Internet cafés mostly,’ Jake confessed. ‘It’s less risky.’

  ‘Risky?’ It didn’t take long for Alex to catch up. Thinking back more carefully now, she remembered that Jake had mentioned his partner on a couple of occasions. Sam, she now recalled. She had always assumed that Sam was a woman. Perhaps she was a woman – it wasn’t uncommon for men in heterosexual relationships to have affairs with other men – but regardless, his or her existence would explain why Jake had been careful to conceal his online activities by using the privacy of internet cafés.

  ‘This is getting better by the minute,’ she said, pushing her hair from her face. ‘What about Kieran? He wasn’t in a relationship, was he – not one that we’re aware of, anyway. Why would he need to keep you a secret?’

  ‘I don’t think he’d come out. I mean, we didn’t really talk too much about it, but that’s the impression I got. His family haven’t mentioned anything, have they? I don’t think they know.’

  Alex pressed her hands on the edge of the desk. ‘That’s why you were so keen to go there to speak to Darren, wasn’t it?’ Stepping back, she threw her hands in the air, her exasperation obvious. Jake’s interest in the case made sense now; no wonder he had been so keen to take on the t
ask of checking over Kieran’s social media profiles. No doubt he was worried there might be something lurking among them that would land him under suspicion. ‘You had the audacity to stand in that family’s house and say what you did to them, all the time knowing there was a good chance that you were the last person to see Kieran. Why the hell would you do that?’

  Jake looked down at the floor. ‘I don’t know.’

  Alex strode past and went to the office door, flinging it wide and standing beside it. ‘Get your things. You’re suspended from all duties. Consider yourself now officially under investigation.’

  ‘Boss, I—’

  ‘Don’t,’ Alex snapped. ‘Do you know something, I’ve had reservations about you since the day you joined this team, and now you’ve proved my doubts justified. You’re a liar and a coward. Get out of my sight.’

  Jake lingered at the doorway, but said nothing. Alex could guess what he was thinking: it was written all over his face. She had never held much faith in him, and Jake had always known it. He’d done nothing but prove her doubts justified. ‘You’re going to have to be formally interviewed, you realise that?’

  Jake nodded, then turned to leave.

  Alex waited to watch him head back to the incident room before she slammed her office door shut. Inside, she took a moment to compose herself before returning to her desk and picking up the photograph of Kieran and Jake. Who had taken it, and why had they sent it to her? She was sure that the handwriting on the two envelopes she had received belonged to the same person. But how? It meant that in some way, somehow, Kieran’s disappearance was connected to a mystery that was almost forty years old.

  Jake returned to his desk. His emails were still open on the computer and he glanced at the attachment he had been studying before DI King had called him to her office. With shaking hands, he touched his fingers to the keyboard. Anger bubbled inside him, making him feel sick. He loved his job. It was the one thing in his life that gave him any sense of stability; the only thing that he could really depend upon to make him feel as though he had some sort of purpose. DI King might not have seen it, but he was good at what he did. All he needed was a chance to prove it.