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

by Victoria Jenkins

  ‘How?’ asked Dan.

  ‘Lawrence viewed the farmhouse where we know Matthew Lewis was on Saturday night. Kieran had been working with his father, who was contracted by Lawrence and Wyatt to complete building work on the housing development in Whitchurch. All three cases have these two men as a mutual link.’ She stood back and surveyed the complex mass of photographs and notes that covered the board. There was a missing piece, but she felt they were nearer now to finding it than they had been in previous days. With so little hope to be found elsewhere, she had to cling to the belief that they were drawing close to something of significance. ‘We need to consider more closely now the possibility that the ground we found disturbed was being prepared for Kieran Robinson.’

  Alex appeared to be thinking aloud rather than throwing the statement out to the team, and as such, it was met with silence. The sad fact was that the more time that passed, the greater the likelihood that something sinister had happened to Kieran. She had hoped to deflect such a pessimistic outlook, stop it taking root in the team, but the facts were inescapable.

  ‘We’ve got no other recent missing person reports,’ she said, still apparently talking to herself. ‘But we know we’ve got a link between these three young men.’

  ‘Sorry to throw a spanner in the works,’ Dan said, ‘but the finger might just be a coincidence. It might not have any connection to Oliver Barrett.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Alex said, still looking at the board. Perhaps not, she thought. It was too much of a coincidence; too improbable. But wasn’t the likelihood of these three cases all being connected in some way also improbable? Gauging the reactions of the team, it appeared to Alex that to everyone else her theory seemed unlikely.

  ‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ she said, as though concluding her own thoughts. The timing of the discovery of Oliver Barrett’s body seemed far too convenient, almost as though someone had wanted him to be found. The builders working at the house had both been questioned, but so far there was nothing linking either of them to any history with the building or its former owners. ‘Let’s go public with this today. It’ll probably garner a decent amount of press coverage – historic cases always tend to create interest. Someone, somewhere, must know the connection between Oliver Barrett and the Smith family – he didn’t end up at that property by chance. Let’s keep chasing up this Graham Driscoll too, please. He can’t have just disappeared. Dan, did you get back to Carol Smith? Any idea why she didn’t list Driscoll as one of the contacts she gave us?’

  ‘She claims it was a mistake – she said Driscoll only went to the house on a handful of occasions and she barely came into contact with him. Do we believe her?’

  ‘For now.’

  Alex brought the meeting to an end and turned back to the board, assessing the links between the victims that she had proposed. The cynicism of the rest of the team didn’t matter to her, not when there was a nagging voice inside her head that wouldn’t allow itself to be silenced. Chloe’s support for the idea that both missing men might have been targeted by the same person was good enough for her. If there was one thing Alex had learned in almost two decades of policing, it was that nothing was ever impossible.

  Thirty-Five

  Later that morning, Alex knocked on the front door of retired Detective Chief Inspector Raymond Davies. He was living in sheltered accommodation in Newbridge, a small village twenty miles north of Cardiff. She could hear him shuffling around inside and mumbling to himself. When he finally answered the door, she had to make a conscious effort to hold back her surprise. She had seen DCI Davies’s police photograph, taken over thirty years earlier, but even knowing how long had passed since the image was captured hadn’t prepared her for the change those decades had wrought.

  Now in his early eighties, Raymond Davies was a thin, frail man, his skin an ashen shade. In his younger years he had been a highly decorated officer, with several honours attached to his name and accolades for bravery in service noted on his record. Now, it seemed to take all the energy he could gather to greet Alex and usher her into the small one-bedroom flat he now called home. The ravages of time hit her with all their cruelty, and she felt a pang of sadness for the man and the life that had been left behind.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ he asked, leading her into the living room. ‘I’d offer you a mocha-chocha doo-dah or whatever it is you youngsters drink these days, but I’m afraid I’ve got builder’s and that’s about it.’

  Alex smiled. It had been a while since anyone had referred to her as a youngster. ‘Builder’s is fine with me, thank you.’

  ‘So you want to know about the Oliver Barrett disappearance,’ Raymond said, taking two tea bags from a box next to the kettle. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you more than what you’ll have seen in the files.’ He turned to Alex as he waited for the kettle to boil. ‘Played on my mind for a long time afterwards, that one. Every route we took, we kept hitting brick walls. You’ve found him then?’

  Alex nodded.

  With a shake of his grey head, Raymond reached up and took down two mugs. The cupboard was almost empty, she noticed: two mugs, two glasses, two plates; two bowls. She wondered how often, if ever, the second set of dishes was put to use.

  He still wore a gold wedding band on his ring finger, though there was no sign of a wife now. Alex glanced at the bookcase in the corner of the room, but it housed no photographs. Perhaps they were too painful to have on display, all day every day.

  ‘You must have had your suspicions,’ she said.

  ‘Any other case, I’d be telling you yes. There’s always someone who surfaces, even when it can’t be proven. But not with this one, sadly. Oliver Barrett was one of our few real mysteries. The boy seemed to have just disappeared into thin air. That poor family. I don’t think his grandmother ever got over it, especially not after what had happened to her son and his wife. One tragedy after the next. She died a couple of years later, I heard.’

  He passed Alex a mug of tea and she went back into the living room. Raymond sat beside her on the sofa. He was studying the side of her face intently, his expression heavy with sympathy. It was a look she had grown accustomed to over the past few months, though it continued to make her uncomfortable. She didn’t want to be regarded as a victim.

  ‘That was no accident, was it?’

  She shook her head. She preferred it when people mentioned her scars rather than staring and then saying nothing, trying to make it appear that they had somehow managed not to notice.

  ‘Nasty business.’ Raymond tutted and took a sip of his tea. ‘Take some advice from an old codger who knows … don’t give it your life.’

  ‘It?’

  ‘The force. The service … whatever you’re supposed to call it these days.’ He looked around the room sadly, as though assessing the results of his forty-year career. Whatever thoughts he had about his life and what it had led him to, Alex had a feeling she had already shared the same at some point.

  ‘You won’t get any thanks for it.’ He rested his tea on his knee while the other hand moved to his hip. ‘And another thing,’ he said through a wince, slowly stretching out his lower leg. ‘Don’t get old, love.’

  Alex gave him a sad smile. She had seen enough of old age and death during the past year to know that getting older was something she would choose to avoid if the option were available. ‘You did a lot of good in your time.’

  ‘I suppose. But the good doesn’t stay with you – that’s the thing no one tells you. You won’t remember the cases you solved, only the ones you failed on. Oliver Barrett was one of the people I failed.’

  ‘There must have been part of you that thought he’d run away from home. Not run away, even – he was seventeen, old enough to leave of his own free will. After everything he’d gone through – losing both parents as he did, and at such a young age – there must have been the thought too that perhaps he’d just had enough.’

  ‘Suicide, you mean? We’d have found a body eventually, though,
wouldn’t we? The longer he was missing, the more we suspected he’d been murdered. Even in 1981, without all the technology you’ve got at your fingertips these days, it wasn’t that easy for someone to just go missing of their own free will without leaving a trace.’

  ‘But there was no one you suspected might have been involved?’

  Raymond took another sip of tea. ‘Look, I say no, but … well, there was someone, briefly. It was silly – just my cynical mind going into overdrive, I realised that later. There was no evidence to back it up, and to be honest, I felt guilty afterwards for even contemplating it.’

  ‘Who did you suspect?’

  ‘The grandmother.’

  Alex put her untouched tea on the windowsill. ‘The grandmother,’ she repeated. ‘Why?’ She had spent hours the previous evening searching through the notes on Oliver Barrett’s disappearance. There was nothing in any of the files to suggest that the boy’s grandmother had at any point been suspected of any wrongdoing.

  ‘We searched Oliver’s bedroom at his grandmother’s house after he was reported missing. It’s standard practice, as you know. Anyway, beneath the bed we found some pictures. Photographs, you know. Of boys.’

  ‘Boys? Children?’

  ‘No, not children. Teenagers, early twenties. Boys around the same age as Oliver. Young men, sort of …’ He raised a bushy eyebrow, giving Alex an awkward look that wasn’t easy to read. ‘You know. Tops off … swimwear … that sort of thing. He’d cut them out of magazines and books.’

  Alex sat forward. ‘What are you saying? Oliver was gay?’

  ‘There was no other explanation for the pictures. His grandmother’s reaction … well, you can imagine. She was in her sixties, and this was 1981. She’d have been mortified if anyone had found out about it, so it was kept hushed up. She’d been through enough. It wasn’t like it is now. You could use your discretion back then, show a bit of compassion.’

  ‘But you wondered whether she might have already known?’

  With a shake of his head, Raymond stood. ‘Maybe she did, but logically she can’t have been involved in Oliver’s disappearance. Do you want another cuppa?’ he asked, pointing to the tea Alex had forgotten about on the windowsill. ‘That one’s probably stone cold by now.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘If nothing else, she had an alibi,’ he said, his back to her as he headed into the kitchen with his empty mug. ‘Home all evening with Oliver’s sister. Like I said, just my cynical old mind going into overdrive.’

  Alex stared at the blank screen of the television set, unseeing. Her mind was back at the station: on the details of Jake’s interview; on the secret life Kieran Robinson had been living online. Young men all hiding their sexuality in some way. Jake lying to a lover; Kieran hiding the truth from his family; Oliver seemingly storing his secret beneath his bed. Almost forty years between the cases.

  Closing her eyes for moment, she visualised the evidence board back at the station, with all its interconnecting lines and missing pieces. One thought kept returning to her, no matter how many times she tried to work a different route around it: just where did Lawrence and Wyatt fit into all this?

  Thirty-Six

  Once Oliver Barrett’s name and photograph reached the public domain, the team expected an increase in calls to the incident room, but the reality of the situation was that the intervening four decades had relegated him to the status of forgotten – or the thought of him pushed to one side, at least – by anyone who might have held any information that would have been of use to the police.

  With other members of the team searching for the elusive Graham Driscoll, Dan continued his scrutiny of the Smith family. As he tried to build a picture of who exactly could have had access to 14 Oak Tree Close back in 1981, he sent a page to print and waited for the noisy machine in the corner of the incident room to kick into life. It spluttered and clunked as though not quite sure it was ready to be woken from its temporary slumber. Dan felt he could relate to its general lack of enthusiasm.

  He stood from his chair and crossed the room. Someone had left a page in the printer, and he removed it, taking a swift glance before placing it with his own document.

  ‘This yours?’ he asked Chloe as she passed him. He held the page out, gesturing to the list of names.

  Chloe glanced at the sheet and shook her head. ‘Have you seen Alex?’

  ‘Don’t think she’s back yet.’

  ‘I’ve just spoken to Matthew Lewis’s mother,’ she said, crossing the room with Dan as he returned to his desk. ‘What am I supposed to say? I’m sorry we haven’t found your missing son, but we haven’t got a clue what might have happened to him?’

  ‘Well, we do have a clue, don’t we? We just don’t want to say until there’s evidence. No point putting them through that kind of trauma if there’s no need for it.’

  ‘What do you make of the theory that these cases might be connected?’

  Dan pursed his lips as he considered it. ‘I don’t know. I mean, Alex is right – there’s a link. But it’s tenuous, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily. What if Matthew did unwittingly interrupt Kieran’s intended burial? Both of them seem to have just dropped off the face of the earth, so if the same person’s responsible, he’s obviously good at covering his tracks. What if we’re looking at a serial killer?’

  ‘But where does Barrett fit in?’

  Chloe’s eyes rested on the names listed beneath Oliver Barrett’s photograph on the evidence board: the remaining members of the Smith family, and other people who at some point had had access to 14 Oak Tree Close. At present, there was no reason to suspect that any of them had had anything to do with Oliver’s death.

  ‘Stan and Peggy Smith,’ Dan said, following Chloe’s eyeline. ‘At least one of them was obviously involved. We just need to find out why.’

  ‘With both of them dead, I doubt there’s much chance of that, is there?’

  Dan shrugged. ‘Exactly. So where’s the link to Kieran and Matthew now?’

  Chloe’s stomach rumbled loudly enough for Dan to hear it. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m going to pop out and get something – I’ve not eaten anything today yet. Do you want anything?’

  ‘Watching my waistline, but thanks.’

  With a wry smile, Chloe left. Dan returned his focus to the computer screen, but was interrupted moments later by a call that had been transferred to the incident room by reception. The caller had requested to speak to DI King.

  ‘DC Daniel Mason,’ Dan introduced himself. ‘My colleague tells me you have information regarding Oliver Barrett?’

  ‘Not directly,’ the man told him. ‘Well, I don’t know … it might be. I mean … yeah, I do.’

  Dan jabbed the nib of his pen on to the notebook he kept open on his desk. He didn’t have the inclination that day for time-wasters, not when there were so many other things that needed his attention. ‘Okay. Can I take your name, please?’

  ‘Paul Ellis.’

  ‘Okay, Mr Ellis. Obviously you’ve seen the news report regarding the discovery of Oliver Barrett’s remains.’

  ‘Yes. I knew him.’

  Dan rolled his eyes and moved the phone away from his ear for a moment, wondering whether the man was going to have anything more useful for him than an anecdote relating to a childhood game of football in which Oliver Barrett had played on the opposing team. It wouldn’t have been the first time the incident room had received such a call, and it was unlikely to be the last of these unhelpful gems. If everyone who had ever known Oliver Barrett was going to call in, it was likely to prove an even longer and more difficult week.

  ‘How did you know him?’

  ‘We went to the same school. We weren’t really friends or anything. I just remember him, that’s all.’

  Dan exhaled silently. ‘Okay, Mr Ellis. What information do you have regarding Oliver Barrett’s disappearance?’

  ‘I don’t. Like I said, not directly, anyway. But I knew the man
who lived at that address where he was found. I know what he was capable of.’

  The caller had Dan’s attention now, his scepticism cast to one side. ‘Which man?’ he asked, unwilling to offer any information regarding names that might have been previously unknown.

  ‘Stan Smith,’ Paul Ellis said, spitting out the words. ‘I thought I’d save you the time. He’s been dead for years now, but you’ll already be aware of that, I’d imagine.’

  Dan had stopped using his pen to jab dents in the notebook and was now instead writing down the caller’s name. ‘Why do you think Stan Smith was involved in Oliver Barrett’s disappearance?’

  It was a stupid question, he realised: the boy’s remains had been found beneath the man’s patio. It was near impossible that anyone would have been able to carry out a burial of such a kind without the involvement of someone living at the address. What was missing from the mystery was why Oliver Barrett had been there at all.

  There was silence at the other end of the line; for a moment, Dan thought the call had been disconnected.

  ‘Mr Ellis?’

  ‘I’m still here.’ His voice had changed, the anger dissolved. ‘Sorry. It’s not easy for me to talk about.’

  ‘Take your time.’ Dan’s brain was already two steps ahead, anticipating the information Paul Ellis was about to offer him. His thoughts had taken a dark turn along a path he hoped for Ellis’s sake he wasn’t about to take them down.

  ‘I told everyone in 1979 what Stan Smith was. I was fourteen at the time. No one believed me, not even my own mother. He was a married man, well respected in the community. I was just some troublemaker who’d been suspended from school. I had a history of telling lies. No one believed me. Perhaps if they had, Oliver Barrett might still be alive.’