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

by Victoria Jenkins

  He moved the mouse, dragging the arrow on the screen to the right-hand side of the attachment and clicking print. Then he waited as the ancient printer in the corner of the incident room spluttered into life. Since going to see Elliot West, he had deliberated whether to share the secret of Kieran’s homosexuality with the rest of the team. He had chosen not to, not wanting to draw attention to himself and not seeing how it could be linked in any direct way to Kieran’s disappearance.

  He closed the attachment on the computer screen, deciding not to save it. Then he glanced over his shoulder before deleting the email.

  There was a reason he’d been made part of the team. With all that he knew, maybe it wasn’t too late for him to still prove his worth.

  Twenty-Nine

  Alex left her office, putting Jake’s interview on hold. There was somewhere she had to be and she couldn’t afford to be late. They needed to interview him formally as soon as possible to find out all the details about his relationship with Kieran Robinson, but it would have to wait a little longer. On this particular day, her own commitments had to come first. She couldn’t mess this up, not now. She had waited long enough for it.

  She passed Dan in the corridor as she headed towards the stairs.

  ‘I was just on my way to you,’ he said.

  ‘Can it wait? There’s somewhere I need to be.’

  ‘I won’t keep you. Just to let you know the foster agency got back to me. Debra Rogers, Stan Smith’s sister, fostered a fourteen-year-old boy named Graham Driscoll in 1979.’

  ‘Do we know where he is now?’

  Dan shook his head. ‘No one seems to know where he went after moving from Debra Rogers’ house. He was sixteen by that time, and by all accounts it seems the relevant agencies had stopped bothering to check on him.’

  Alex wondered how many other teenagers in the care system fell victim to this attitude. No longer children but not quite adults either, they were left to fend for themselves in a world their childhoods had failed to prepare them for.

  Dan raised his hands in a gesture of despondence. ‘I’ve tried all the obvious avenues – electoral register, Facebook and so on – but there’s no one of that name who knew the Rogers family.’

  ‘Or no one who says they did.’

  It seemed to Alex that if Graham Driscoll somehow knew about what had happened at the Smith house, he might not wish to return to the details all these years later. He would be even keener to keep his identity a secret if he was in some way involved.

  ‘Keep going,’ she said, making her best attempt at an encouraging smile. With their current progress, even she had to admit it was sometimes a struggle to maintain any kind of motivation.

  Pulling on her jacket, she headed down the stairs and into the car park, passing her car and walking out on to the main road that led into the town centre. Kelly had agreed to meet her in a coffee shop just round the corner, meaning Alex wouldn’t need to be far from the station. Her job and its commitments was likely to be a central topic of conversation yet again, but she had spent enough sleepless nights envisaging the scenario in all its possible forms that she had had ample opportunity to plan for any question that might come her way.

  She entered the coffee shop – a small, generic room housing standard wooden seating painted pale grey and sanded in a trying-too-hard attempt at shabby chic – and saw Kelly sitting in a far corner, a notebook and pen waiting on the table in front of her beside a half-finished bottle of water. Although Alex had met her on numerous occasions already, each of their meetings filled her with the kind of nerves no criminal had ever managed to prompt; not even those she had encountered in recent months.

  ‘Alex,’ Kelly said, standing to greet her. She leaned over to take her hand for a brief moment before sitting back down. ‘How have you been?’

  ‘Busy’ would have been Alex’s response to anyone else who might have asked the question, but the reply was inappropriate where Kelly was concerned. Alex needed the woman to know she had sufficient time, even though in her current situation the claim would have been nothing but a lie.

  She would rectify the current situation, she thought. Nothing was going to stand in her way any more.

  ‘Good, thanks.’ She gestured to the board behind the serving counter, where two young women were bustling about with coffee machines and cocoa shakers that left leaf patterns on the top of steaming mugs of hot chocolate. ‘What can I get you?’

  Kelly scanned the board. ‘I’ll just have a tea, I think. Thank you.’

  Alex went to the counter to order drinks, using the waiting time to consider any potential questions she hadn’t prepared for: mainly, all the ones that she herself might want to ask. She had been so busy fretting over her answers to Kelly’s questions that she hadn’t given herself time to plan for anything beyond it. But what did she need to know? Her biggest question was when.

  ‘You received the letter?’ Kelly asked, when Alex returned to the table.

  She nodded, unable to keep the smile from her face. For the past year or so, causes for happiness seemed to have been few and far between. She was determined to cling on to the alien feeling for as long as possible, still unsure whether its source might be taken away from her.

  ‘Congratulations. Look,’ Kelly said, pushing her notebook to one side and resting her forearms on the table, ‘there’s still a way to go yet – you know that. But this is great news, obviously. Meeting today is really just a chance for us to go over anything you might want to ask – any last-minute concerns or questions you have.’

  ‘I don’t have any concerns.’

  Both women sat back as one of the staff brought over their drinks. They stalled their conversation until she had put down the mugs and left.

  ‘In terms of what happens next,’ Kelly said, ‘it’s really difficult to put a time frame on it. We’ve had placements made within weeks, with others taking a lot longer. Have you finalised your plans about work?’

  Alex nodded. ‘Everything I told you last time stands. I’ve just been waiting for that letter.’

  Kelly added sugar to her tea before taking a sip. ‘You’re sure this is what you want? I’m sorry … I know it’s a stupid question, but I have to ask it.’ She tapped her notebook and rolled her eyes. ‘Form-filling.’

  ‘I’m working on a couple of big cases at the moment,’ Alex admitted. ‘You’re probably aware of them. After that, everything will be in place.’

  Kelly’s expression changed. She lifted her mug again, peering at Alex over its rim as she took a second sip. ‘These cases. You obviously can’t have any idea how long you’ll be working on them. If this is a bad time for you—’

  ‘It’s not,’ Alex interjected, a little too abruptly.

  ‘It won’t cancel your acceptance – it’ll simply put it on hold until you’re ready.’

  ‘It’s not a bad time. There couldn’t be a bad time for this.’

  ‘Okay.’ Kelly put her mug back on the table. ‘Then the next thing we do is find you a match.’

  Thirty

  When Alex returned to the station, she found a uniformed officer waiting in reception with a young boy whose eyes were red with tears. He glanced up as she entered the building and quickly averted his gaze, as though looking at her was likely to result in even more trouble than he’d already managed to get himself into.

  ‘Dominic Price,’ the officer told her. ‘His mother’s on her way.’

  Alex ushered them both through to the corridor, finding an empty interview room in which they could sit while they waited for Dominic’s mother to arrive. The boy started crying, strangled sobs that he tried and failed to keep concealed from their sight. Alex went to get him a glass of water, finding Chloe on her way back.

  ‘Jake’s partner,’ she said. ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘Sam?’ Chloe shook her head. ‘He’s mentioned her in passing, but no, I’ve never met her. Why do you ask?’

  Alex reached into her pocket and took out the photogr
aph showing Jake and Kieran Robinson together at the door to Jake’s flat. Passing it to Chloe, she watched a flurry of unspoken questions pass over her colleague’s face.

  ‘When was this taken?’

  ‘Thursday night.’

  Chloe’s eyes widened. ‘He’s never said anything about knowing Kieran. I don’t understand.’

  ‘He’s waiting in one of the interview rooms. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  When she returned to the room where Dominic Price was waiting, the boy’s mother had arrived.

  ‘Thank you,’ Alex said to the uniformed officer, giving him his cue to leave.

  ‘Why the hell aren’t you in school?’ Mrs Price shrugged her coat from her shoulders, glowering at her son as she took the chair next to him. ‘I can’t believe this,’ she said, looking up at Alex. ‘I took him there myself this morning – I watched him go in. What has he done now?’

  Alex took the seat opposite Dominic and his mother. ‘Your son delivered a couple of envelopes to the station, Mrs Price – one yesterday and one earlier today.’

  ‘Yesterday?’ She glared at the boy, who kept his head lowered, refusing to meet her eye. ‘You weren’t in school yesterday either?’

  She exhaled loudly. ‘That bloody school. I didn’t have any calls from them yesterday. I’d have gone looking for him myself if I had. What were these envelopes, Dominic? And you’d better tell the truth – I’ve just about had enough of your stories.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the boy said, still looking at his lap.

  ‘You don’t know what?’

  ‘I don’t know what was in the envelopes.’

  His mother rolled her eyes. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know – you were the one who delivered them.’ She sighed and looked to Alex for help, exasperated. ‘I’m at the end of my tether with this one, I swear. Never does what he’s told, think he’s twenty-five rather than eleven.’

  ‘Dominic,’ Alex said. ‘I believe that you don’t know what was in those envelopes, okay?’

  He still refused to look up, but he acknowledged Alex’s words with a slight nod of his head.

  ‘You’re not in any trouble either, but I really need you to tell me who gave you the envelopes.’

  The boy hesitated, finally averting his gaze from his lap. He glanced at his mother tentatively, and then looked across the desk at Alex. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Jesus … is that all you’re going to bloody say?’

  ‘Mrs Price,’ Alex said, raising a hand. ‘You mean it’s someone you’re not familiar with?’

  The boy nodded. ‘I was in the park,’ he said, dropping his head again. ‘I was just going round on my bike and this man comes up to me and asks me if I want to earn some money. He said all I needed to do was take something into the police station for him.’

  ‘How much money?’ Mrs Price asked. Of all the questions that might have arisen from her son’s revelation, this seemed to Alex to be the least important.

  The boy tugged at the sleeve of his hoody, hesitating over his answer. ‘Fifty quid,’ he said eventually. ‘He said if I came back at the same time the next day for the other envelope he’d give me fifty quid.’

  ‘What was in those envelopes?’ Mrs Price asked, looking at Alex expectantly.

  Alex shot her a look that said she’d rather not discuss that in front of Dominic. Panic flashed across his mother’s face, her brain clearly rushing ahead of her for a moment, envisaging the worst that her son might have been entrusted with.

  ‘So you went back to the park this morning?’

  Dominic nodded. ‘He gave me the other envelope and the fifty quid.’

  ‘And you didn’t think this was all a bit dodgy? It didn’t once occur to you that this bloke could’ve just gone to the post office like everyone else and spent less than a quid on a stamp? Jesus, Dominic, if you tried staying in that bloody school for longer than half an hour at a time, maybe you wouldn’t be so bloody stupid.’

  Alex watched the boy, noting how his face twitched and tightened in response to his mother’s words. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

  ‘Did this man tell you his name, Dominic?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘I don’t know. Old.’

  That wasn’t particularly helpful, Alex thought. She could just about remember being eleven. Anyone over the age of twenty-five had looked old.

  ‘What was he wearing?’

  Dominic shrugged. ‘Jeans. A coat.’

  Alex stood and left the room for a moment, returning with a pen and a piece of paper. ‘Your mum and I are going to leave you alone for a few minutes, okay? We’ll only be out there in the corridor. I want you to write down everything you can think of – any details about this man that you remember, where you were in the park when he approached you, all those kinds of things. Can you do that for me?’

  Dominic nodded. He waited for his mother to stand and leave his side before reaching across for the pen and paper.

  With the door closed behind them, Alex turned to look back through the glass panel. The boy was already writing.

  Thirty-One

  Chloe was waiting in the corridor outside the interview room when Alex arrived. They both glanced through the glass in the door, hardly able to believe that they found themselves in this situation, having to interview one of their own. Alex had thought Jake useless, but she had never contemplated that he might be a liar capable of deceiving the team he was supposed to be a part of.

  ‘Who do you think sent this?’ Chloe asked, glancing down at the photograph she held in her hand. Alex had left it with her to allow her time to process the latest development.

  ‘No idea. I don’t think he knows either. I’ve just spoken with the boy who brought it in. CCTV from the park will need reviewing.’

  ‘Any fingerprints?’

  Alex shook her head.

  ‘Whoever it was, I think it was addressed to you because you’re heading current investigations. Anyone could have found that out from the news. I really don’t believe there’s any more to it than that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Alex realised what Chloe was trying to do. She had been targeted before, and the feeling of vulnerability that had come with it was something she didn’t want to ever experience again. ‘I suppose only time will tell, won’t it?’

  She pushed open the door to the interview room and waited for Chloe to go in before her. They both took seats opposite Jake, who was staring forlornly at the box of personal effects on the floor next to him, no doubt contemplating the risk he had taken in concealing something so potentially important.

  ‘Before we do this formally, which we’re going to have to,’ Alex said, gesturing to the tape recorder sitting on the table, ‘I want to hear it from you, between us. You and Kieran were involved sexually?’

  Jake nodded. ‘It was just the once, though, like I told you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us this before, when he was first reported missing?’

  Jake sighed and looked at his hands. ‘I didn’t want Sam to find out.’

  With a roll of her eyes, Alex put her fingertips to the bridge of her nose. His deceit had only made things more complicated for him. ‘He’s going to find out now anyway, I assume. You’ll have to explain to him why you’ve been suspended. I’m right in assuming Sam is a he?’

  Jake looked up from his hands and nodded again, then returned his focus to the box. He refused to make eye contact with either of the women.

  Alex realised how naïve she had been, and how little she had known about someone she had worked alongside for so long. Had she missed the details, or had Jake purposely kept them concealed?

  ‘Do you have any idea where Kieran might be, Jake?’

  Only now did he meet Alex’s eyes, his face pinched with alarm. ‘No. I swear to God, I don’t know what happened to him after he left my flat. And that’s another reason I didn’t say anything – I really didn’t see how i
t would help. He came over to mine, we spent a couple of hours together, he left. That was it.’

  Alex watched him carefully, aware that Chloe would also be looking for signs of further lies. She didn’t know what to believe. Jake had proven himself so efficient at hiding the truth that any honesty he now demonstrated would be immediately cast into doubt. He had no one to thank for that but himself.

  Reaching for the tape recorder, she started the interview formally and read Jake his rights, though he needed little reminding. For the purposes of the recording, she described the photograph that had been sent to her.

  ‘What do you know about Kieran Robinson?’ she asked, once Jake had taken her again through the details of how he had come to meet the man. ‘You must have spoken to him quite a bit, all those conversations online.’ She would take the details of the website, along with his username and password, at the end of the interview, and would check for herself exactly what had been shared between the two men. For now, she wanted to hear it all from Jake himself.

  ‘Very little. It wasn’t that sort of relationship. It wasn’t a relationship at all, it was just …’

  ‘Just?’

  ‘Flirting,’ Jake said. ‘That’s all it was.’

  ‘I doubt Sam will see it that way,’ Chloe said.

  Jake eyed the tape recorder. ‘I wish I could tell you something that might help find Kieran. But I don’t know anything. We chatted online, it was mostly banter, and when he came to the flat on Thursday, we had sex.’ He held Chloe’s gaze now, defiant. If he was embarrassed by any of his admissions, he was determined not to show it.