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

by Victoria Jenkins

  ‘You and Sam don’t live together then?’

  Jake shook his head.

  ‘How did Kieran seem to you on Thursday?’ Alex asked. ‘This was the first time you’d met him in person, you said?’

  ‘Yeah, so I don’t really have anything to compare it to. It was just casual. We both knew what he was there for and we were both fine with it.’

  ‘How did he contact you? Did you have each other’s numbers?’

  ‘No. He contacted me through the website. I never give my number out.’

  Alex raised an eyebrow. So this wasn’t the first time he had met someone online for sex, and it was likely that Kieran wasn’t the first person he had cheated on his partner with. She couldn’t understand how he could be so blasé, or how he could repeat this behaviour without feeling some element of responsibility or remorse. She wondered if life was easier if the only person you really gave a shit about was yourself.

  ‘Did Kieran ever talk to you about his family?’

  ‘Not really. I knew he did some labouring work with his father, but that was about it.’

  It seemed to both women that Kieran Robinson’s family hadn’t known he was gay. When he had been reported missing, the police had asked if there was a girl he might have been with, but his mother had told them he hadn’t had a girlfriend in a number of years.

  ‘Do you think Kieran’s sexuality is linked to his disappearance, Jake?’

  He raised his eyes to the ceiling, his mouth turning down at the corners. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I would have said no, but now … That photo. Why was someone watching us?’

  No one answered the question; no one was able to. Alex could only hope that CCTV from the park might offer some clue as to who had given those envelopes to Dominic Price, and that identifying the mystery man might lead them closer to answers.

  ‘How was Kieran when he left your flat?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you? Any arrangement to meet again?’

  ‘He said he’d see me later. You know, not in a literal sense, just a general “see you later”.’

  ‘As you do,’ Chloe said, one eyebrow raised.

  Jake turned to her, a smirk flitting across his lips. ‘You’re not really one to judge, though, are you? At least neither of us was charging for it.’

  ‘Listen to me, you little shit,’ Alex said, slamming a fist on the table. ‘If anything’s happened to Kieran, which it more than likely has by now, you can think yourself partly to blame. Look.’ She put the two envelopes down in front of her and pushed them towards Jake, directing his attention to the handwriting. ‘It’s the same. Whoever sent this first envelope sent the second as well. So whoever was watching you two on Thursday may very well be the same person who sent me that lovely little gift yesterday. Has it not occurred to you that the finger might belong to Kieran?’

  Jake’s face paled, but he said nothing.

  ‘Is there anything else you need to tell us, DC Sullivan? I appreciate you’re not a fan of the truth, but if there’s something that’s perhaps slipped your mind then now would be a good time for you to get everything off your chest.’

  Jake said nothing.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘No,’ he said, with a shake of the head. ‘That’s everything.’

  Alex brought the interview to an end, telling Jake he would be charged with withholding information. She and Chloe went back out into the corridor, leaving him to deal with whatever guilt his seemingly untouchable conscience was able to muster.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Chloe asked.

  If Alex had had a pound for every time Chloe had asked her that question recently, she’d have been considerably richer. She realised it was uncharacteristic of her to lose her temper as she had, especially at the station.

  ‘And thank you,’ Chloe added.

  Alex brushed off the thanks with a wave of a hand. Defending Chloe to the likes of Jake was the least she could do after all the support Chloe had given her during her recovery. ‘What do you make of this handwriting? It doesn’t make sense. How the hell might Kieran Robinson be connected to Oliver Barrett?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Chloe admitted. ‘We should speak to Sam, though. Perhaps he knew what Jake was up to. Maybe he took that photograph?’

  Alex nodded, but she knew as well as Chloe did that it was unlikely. Sam was far more likely to have just confronted Jake with the evidence rather than sending it to his workplace.

  There was something more going on here, she thought: something they were currently missing. Oliver Barrett was linked to all this in some way, and to find the answers she needed, she was going to have to visit the past. ‘Thompson’s going to love this,’ she said flatly.

  Chloe offered her a smile that was intended to reassure, yet all it managed to do was confirm that Alex’s suspicion was likely to prove correct. ‘I don’t think it’s you,’ she said, casting a glance along the corridor to make sure no one was around. ‘I don’t think he likes any of us.’

  Alex glanced back to the door behind which Jake was still sitting. ‘Sullivan’s made a mockery of us. No wonder the DCI thinks I’m incompetent.’

  ‘He’s said that?’

  ‘He hasn’t needed to.’

  She took a deep breath, clearing her lungs with a fresh intake of air. She wouldn’t allow her career to end this way. She owed it to herself to solve this case. More importantly, she owed it to the three young men whose families were waiting for her to find the truth.

  Thirty-Two

  Dear Elise,

  Even just writing about it feels strange after all this time. The human brain has an enormous capacity for concealment; we manage to hide things from ourselves – things we don’t want to remember, things we don’t want to have to think about, things we would rather not admit to. We tell ourselves lies that eventually become our truths. I managed this for years, but I refuse to regret any it, not with you at the end of it all.

  Don’t be upset by what I have told you. I was so much younger then, and that first love was fuelled by a desire I imagine exists in many first loves; it was fierce and alive, stronger than either of us. Don’t think that what I did means that it wasn’t real. Don’t think for a moment that any of it makes you less loved. I’ve never told anyone any of this before. You might be wondering why I’d want you to know it, but by the end of it all I need you to understand why I’ve done what I’ve done. I want you to know who I am – who I really am. It doesn’t matter about the others – they can think what they want of me – but you, my darling, you are the most important thing, more important than any secret I have tried to hold on to.

  Please try to be patient with me.

  When all this comes to an end, there will only be you ahead of me. You are the only person I need to answer to; the only one whose opinion of me matters. I tried to do my best. I tried to save those boys from lives that would only ever have been half lived, as mine would always have been if it wasn’t for you.

  In so many ways, it was they who sought me. I saw something in their faces, heard something in their words – all these things that reminded me so much of myself when I was younger. I knew they were silently calling out to me before even they did.

  You’ll understand, won’t you? I promise things will be different from now on, just the two of us.

  Benny x

  Thirty-Three

  Alex sat in her office, the cold-case files relating to the disappearance of Oliver Barrett stacked up on her desk. She had looked over and over them, going back and rereading, desperate for some detail missed by detectives at the time. Yet the longer she looked, the less she was able to see. Whatever had escaped the police then, it was continuing to get the better of her now.

  Taking a break from the files, she concentrated on the footage running on the computer screen in front of her: CCTV taken from the park across the road from the station. She stared at the screen as the activity on the stretch of path played out: dog walkers, joggers, people
pushing prams. Then Dominic appeared, wearing light jogging bottoms, a dark hoody and the swagger usually associated with boys far older than him; an attitude that at some point in his young future would probably cost him in one way or another. He looked so different here to the boy who had sat silently sobbing into his sleeves as he’d waited for his mother to arrive at the station.

  He pushed the bike to his left, leaving the screen for a moment, and Alex pushed the recording forward, waiting to play it again when he returned. When he didn’t, she wound the tape forward further, willing him to reappear. She paused the recording, went back; paused again. The boy was gone.

  ‘Shit,’ she muttered.

  Whoever they were dealing with, this man knew exactly what he was doing. He knew where the CCTV cameras at the park were installed, so he knew which areas to avoid in order to approach the child without being detected. Presumably he had watched this boy, picking him out as a target. Was this then the same man who had known where to approach Kieran in Cardiff Bay free from the risk of being captured on camera?

  Dominic Price was only eleven years old, and children of that age, no matter how streetwise they might think themselves, could be easily influenced. In Dominic’s case, all it had taken was the promise of cash to persuade him to trust this man, forget all the rules of talking to strangers that would presumably have been drummed into him by his teachers and his parents. For Kieran Robinson, circumstances must have been different. Alex presumed he had gone somewhere with someone he had known well enough to trust, but she knew that even that was a presumption she shouldn’t make. Hadn’t he gone to Jake’s flat to have sex with a stranger, someone he couldn’t possibly have known, no matter how many online conversations they had shared? Either Kieran was incredibly reckless or there was a vulnerability to his character that had made him an easy target. Either way, there was someone out there who knew him well enough to realise as much.

  They were dealing with a clever, calculating individual; someone who knew the areas he moved within inside out and had made preparations for his crimes in advance. It was also likely that they were looking for someone who appeared to others to be an approachable character; the type whose dangers were kept carefully concealed behind a friendly facade. Whoever this man was, he was a clever bastard: a clever bastard who was currently outsmarting them on all fronts.

  Alex left the footage paused on the screen of her computer and went to the coffee machine to get herself a drink before walking the length of the corridor, heading for the incident room. The station was silent, and the darkness of the night sky closed in at the windows, enveloping it in an oppressive grip. She pushed open the door and made her way to the evidence board at the back of the room. Mug in hand, she gazed in turn at the array of faces that looked down at her from the wall: the young and the old; those past and those present; the living and the dead. A skeleton missing finger bones; a finger sent to her with no message to accompany it.

  And yet somebody was trying to tell her something. She had been chosen, presumably for a reason currently known only to the person who had written her name on those envelopes. Whoever had watched Dominic Price – whoever had singled him out in the park that day – had also watched her in some way, if only for a brief time. Sending the envelopes to her had drawn attention to himself, and it seemed to Alex that that had been done knowingly, intentionally. Someone this calculated didn’t make that kind of move without considering the repercussions. It was as though this man wanted to be found, but only on his own terms, when he was ready for it.

  She moved her attention from image to image, tracking the faces of each victim in turn, still searching for the links between them. What was it that connected these cases? Had Matthew interrupted something going on in the field? Was there really a chance that the burial ground had been intended for the body of Kieran Robinson? It had occurred to her and Chloe as a possibility; it wasn’t to be ruled out as implausible.

  If so, the man she believed to be outsmarting them was perhaps not as clever as he thought. Matthew had caught him off guard. Stacey’s murder had been clumsy, unpremeditated: if nowhere else, this was the point at which mistakes would have been made, and they should have been able to identify him.

  And yet even then they hadn’t.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door. She turned to see Chloe entering the room, her coat zipped up to her chin in preparation for the cold of the evening.

  ‘I thought you’d gone home.’

  ‘Forgot my phone,’ Chloe said, gesturing to her desk. ‘What are you still doing here?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Alex said, frustrated by how much truth the word held.

  Chloe retrieved her mobile from her desk and put it in her coat pocket. ‘You’re going to have to tell me sooner or later.’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘What’s going on.’ She raised a hand, cutting short any response Alex might offer. ‘And don’t even try to pretend it’s just work. I know you better than that by now.’

  Alex’s focus rested on the face of Matthew Lewis. She wasn’t ready to talk about the adoption to anyone, not while two young men were still missing. She had made a promise to them and she needed to fulfil it. Besides, she could anticipate Chloe’s reaction. Although her friend would be happy for her, she would almost certainly try to persuade her that her career could remain as it was.

  ‘I’m just tired,’ she said, knowing the excuse was a poor one.

  Chloe studied her for a moment but pushed the subject no further. ‘So go home and get some rest. And when you’re ready to talk, remember that’s what I’m here for.’

  She left the room, leaving Alex alone with the faces on the incident board. Days earlier, she had still held on to the hope that they would find Matthew Lewis alive somewhere, wherever he had been taken. She had hoped the same for Kieran Robinson. That hope was disintegrating, so fragile now that she could already feel its cracks widening, separating themselves from her grasp. Each time she had to speak to the boys’ parents and tell them that she had nothing more to offer them broke her spirit a little more, making her less and less certain of the profession she worked in.

  She had failed people before, more often than she cared to think about. There was always the popular get-out clause that not all crimes could be solved and that some criminals would always remain elusive, but Alex never wanted to be a part of those cases. It wasn’t what she had signed up for. She had never anticipated that things might end this way, with yet more faces to add to those she already carried with her: the ghosts of the cases she hadn’t been able to resolve; the dead to whom she had broken a promise.

  Matthew’s eyes looked at her and through her, there but already gone.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ she said aloud, her words lost to the empty room.

  Thirty-Four

  First thing the following morning, Alex assembled the team to give them confirmation that the remains uncovered at number 14 had been identified. An image was projected on to the screen behind her: a head shot of a teenage boy, the picture mottled and slightly out of focus. As she’d anticipated he would, DCI Thompson had shown up for the briefing, no doubt eager to see how Alex would tackle the subject of Jake’s suspension. If he was hoping to watch her crumble in front of her team, he was going to be disappointed.

  ‘The body has been identified as that of seventeen-year-old Oliver Barrett, who went missing in 1981. At the time of his disappearance, police believed he had run away from home, although by all accounts his family were quick to dismiss the idea. Barrett was a sixth-form student who was apparently hoping to apply for university. He lived with his sister, Nicola, and their grandmother, having lost both parents to cancer a few years earlier.’

  ‘Christ,’ Chloe said. ‘Family didn’t have much luck.’

  ‘Oliver’s disappearance received a lot of publicity, mostly due to the tragedy of the family’s background. There was apparently speculation that he might have taken his own life, although his siste
r and grandmother never accepted that as a possibility either. Oliver was said to be a studious and settled young man with no known enemies.’

  ‘Any leads at the time?’ asked Dan.

  ‘According to the files, there was very little to go on. This morning I contacted the retired DCI who was SIO on the case – I’ll be visiting him after this briefing.’ Alex glanced at the evidence board, and at the photograph of Kieran Robinson that looked down at them. ‘Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way, shall we?’ she said, shooting Thompson a look. ‘You’ll all now be aware that DC Sullivan has been charged with withholding information and is currently on suspension. Needless to say, he won’t be returning to the team. We’re a man down now, so we’ll have to compensate for that.

  ‘Priorities this morning: we need to continue to try to get hold of Gareth Lawrence. His absence is well timed, particularly in light of what we found out yesterday. As we all know, Mr Lawrence has been embezzling money from his own business using false invoices supplied by Darren Robinson, who believed he was going to be cut in on the deal. We believed that perhaps Kieran had found out about the blackmail and that this was what Hannah heard them arguing about on Wednesday evening last week, but Darren has now told us that they argued because Kieran found out he was adopted. Other than the possibility that Kieran made the choice to leave, we can’t see any link between the news of his adoption and his disappearance.’

  Alex sighed. She felt as though she was chasing her tail, and the last thing she wanted was to start showing her uncertainty in front of the team. She turned to the evidence board, indicating the image of the severed finger she had received. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is linked in some way to the photograph of Kieran and DC Sullivan.’ She pointed to the second image: a photo many of the team were still struggling to take in. ‘Same handwriting on the envelope. That gives us a possible link between Oliver Barrett and Kieran Robinson. These men,’ she continued, turning her attention to the photographs of Lawrence and Wyatt pinned to the board, ‘need to be a focus of our attention.’ She took a marker pen from the table and drew a long line linking Oliver to Kieran. Above the line she wrote the words linked by handwriting. She drew another line between Kieran and Matthew Lewis, this time writing linked by Lawrence and Wyatt.