The Playground Murders

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘It was all over the media when Chris was arrested.’ Hindle was scornful. ‘And believe me, Maxine would never lie to the police to get me out of trouble.’

  ‘The link between you as Penelope Philips and Danielle Hindle was never made. The police ensured of that. You look very different to the last public photo of your old self.’

  ‘Maxine would expect me to have all those things. When we were kids, she went on that I always landed on my feet. She’s the world’s biggest victim. Don’t get me wrong, Stella, I don’t mind in the least that the Cater bitch is dead. She would have brought trouble to our family. But, contrary to the theory you are clearly trying to shore up, I had no motive. It hasn’t worked out at all well for me that my husband is banged up for a murder that my daughter is trying to pin on me. I should be in your shoes.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Stella knew what she meant.

  ‘Terry said I’d make a good detective. He reckoned that I was treated unfairly about those kids.’ Hindle chucked the tin of lip balm onto the table. It rolled toward the floor. She made no move to pick it up. ‘Why are you here?’

  Those kids.

  ‘If my dad made a mistake he’d have owned up.’

  A murderer is capable of murder.

  Stella heard a car door slam. For a wild second she hoped it was Jack.

  ‘And Terry said you had good manners.’ Her eyes slid over Stella with undisguised disgust.

  Terry had talked about her. No way. He would not have replied to Hindle. (Now Stella, like Jack, could not think of her as Penelope Philips.) Hold the boundaries, fine to feel compassion, but don’t forget you’re a detective.

  Terry was always the detective. He had not replied to Hindle. Her mother complained that he cared more for victims than for her and Stella. Her fog thinned.

  ‘The police triangulated the signal on your phone to London.’ A punt. In her reading of the case Stella had not found this evidence.

  ‘Triangulated? Lah-dee-dah! I’m not up on technology. I missed out on everything. I didn’t go to a nightclub until I was twenty-five.’

  Stella couldn’t imagine spending her teenaged years in prison, becoming institutionalized and dependant on a routine. Actually, she could get the routine.

  ‘If you were in London obviously you are not the killer despite what Carrie says. We’re considering the possibility that Rachel’s killer discovered your real identity, came to the house and lay in wait. You were the intended victim. If so, he or she will try again.’

  ‘You’re in above your pay grade, Stella. So I have enemies, whoop-de-doo! Tell me something I didn’t know. I’ve moved on from all that. I suggest that you do too. My daughter will come to her senses and renege on your bill. When she does, I’ll cover it. Now go off and clean something, there’s a dear.’

  Stella held her own: ‘I think that you know who murdered Rachel Cater. You may not realize that you know. Please just think.’

  ‘Ooh, nice one, Terry’s daughter.’ Philips tapped her front tooth again. ‘When I told Chris about the past he lost it. I showed him photos of Danielle. The playground where they found Sarah and the slide which Robbie fell off. Chris went and told that woman. That meant I had to tell Carrie.’

  ‘It’s better to be honest.’ She talked as if Danielle was someone else. Perhaps to her she was. It was uncanny.

  ‘I’ve got a suspect for you.’ Philips was jeering. ‘There’s this tabloid hack. She hung around Terry and found out he wrote to me. She’d love to put the knife in.’ Philips retrieved the tin of gloss and replenished her lips.

  Lucie May. Terry’s erstwhile girlfriend. Suzanne’s enemy. No wonder Lucie had been interested when she heard that Carrie Philips was coming to the office. Suddenly Stella knew Lucie was already on the case.

  ‘Chris bit off more than he could chew with Cater. She was going to the papers about me. She planned for them to live on the cash. She had him in a vice.’

  ‘Do you believe your husband did kill Rachel?’ Had Hindle and Philips been in it together? Highly regarded in Winchcombe, they had a life to protect. Perhaps they’d decided that Christopher shoulder the guilt. With good behaviour and no previous history of violence, he might be out in ten years. Stella remembered Jack’s suggestion. ‘Did you pay someone to murder Rachel Cater?’

  Terry advised against antagonizing a suspect without backup. Stella hadn’t told anyone she was going to the Cotswolds. Not even Trudy. Stella had only once been in a fight. Aged eleven, Liz held her bag as she squared up to Kim Payne. Stella had expected it to be like in Westerns, each cowboy taking turns to punch. Kim had pummelled her to the pavement. Alone in her bedroom, Stella had cried.

  ‘I should have got you to kill her. Cleaners mop up anything for a fee, don’t they?’ Hindle tapped her tooth. The sound set Stella’s own teeth on edge. Jack might call it a sign of nerves. Stella reckoned that it was a scare tactic. It was working.

  ‘Broadway is near Winchcombe. You should leave this area.’

  Tap. Tap. ‘Cashman ran checks, but we know that the police can be wrong. Still, if you say it, I should listen!’

  Cold. Calculating. Manipulative.

  ‘It could be a matter of time before the killer finds you.’ Stella felt cruel saying it.

  ‘Terry would be proud of you!’ Hindle said. This time there was no Liz to hold Stella’s bag. ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘Jason said that he’d stab you if he found you. Your family are affected by the repercussions of the two murders.’ It was easy, after all, to be blunt with a woman who had murdered two children.

  Inflame the suspect to provoke them to spill information.

  ‘Jason’s a vicious little tyke, but he hasn’t the guts to go for me. Maxine’s a liar. She has no idea where I live. If she did then she and Jason would have sold me to the press by now. I’m worth more to them alive.’ Danielle Hindle went to the window. ‘Max wouldn’t stand me having a bloke, a kid and a house while she’s doing hairdressing like every girl in her class. Mum would kill me.’

  ‘Did Terry write back to you?’ Stella asked the question that had brought her to Broadway. ‘There’s nothing in your letters that suggest he replied.’

  ‘Terry liked face to face.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ The mental fog was back. It had been the stupidest mistake to come without Jack. She was no match for a double murderer.

  ‘I was the last person to see Terry alive.’

  She was blindsided. Terry had seen no one on the day he died. Stella had painstakingly pieced together his last movements from parking tickets, shop receipts and the case notes. Terry had tailed a suspect to the south coast and done an overnight stakeout in his car. The next morning he’d bought pork pies and Coke from the Co-op in Seaford and as he left the shop he’d had a massive coronary. Jack had said that Hindle would be adept at mind games. Stella was out of her league. Jack should be here. All the same, as facts arranged themselves, she had to believe that Hindle was lying. She had not seen Terry.

  ‘Here’s a clue, Miss Detective. Who is keen to pin the blame on me?’ Hindle was laughing at her.

  ‘Carrie. You think Carrie killed Rachel Cater?’

  ‘When I told her what happened to me when I was little, Carrie ran to Daddy. It wasn’t me she wanted dead, it was that tart Cater. Carrie would not have coped with finding her father’s mistress in her own home. Poor lamb.’

  Stella picked her way through the scenario. Carrie Philips kills her father’s lover meaning to frame her mother, but the plot pointed at Christopher. Carrie had asked Clean Slate to find evidence to pin the murder on Hindle and set her father free. Possible.

  The trouble was that too many scenarios were possible.

  *

  Stella’s rear-view mirror reflected darkness. Rush hour was over. The motorway was empty and on this stretch with no lamplight, it was like a tunnel, her headlights piercing the black. Rain spattered the windscreen. Her companion sounds were the creak of the wipers.


  Stella wondered if this was what it was like for Jack driving a train. He’d said that apart from signals, there were no lights in the tunnels or in his cab. For the umpteenth time, Stella wished Jack was with her; even Stanley would be company.

  After she’d left Broadway, Stella had gone for a walk along the high street. The trip to the Cotswolds had got her no further ahead. She still didn’t know if Terry had replied to Hindle and was now tortured by the possibility that Hindle had actually met up with him. Why would he? Did he feel sorry for a girl starting again with a new identity? Terry believed that capital punishment was wrong. It was too big a gamble. No jury was infallible, innocent people had been executed. But why had he kept Hindle’s letters?

  At last Stella had returned to the van. The trip had thrown up more questions than answers. Her only comfort was for the miles she was putting between herself and Hindle. The woman spooked her.

  The petrol gauge warning light was on. It signalled about twenty miles in the reserve. Stella blinked. How long had the light been on? It must be just now or she’d have noticed it. She’d make it to the garage. Except there wasn’t a garage for twenty miles – she’d just passed a sign. Stella put the van into cruise at fifty, hoping to save fuel. It meant she was going slower.

  The darkness and silence took Stella back to the night she’d driven home from Brighton after she had identified her father’s body at the hospital. The experiences conflated so that it was as if Terry had only hours ago vacated the earth and left her.

  Stella had considered booking a room in Winchcombe. She was tired and hungry (she’d forgotten about the crisps and now couldn’t get to them). But she must see Jack. After looking after his children he was going to see Nicola Walsh. Like Stella, he never went to bed before one. She’d be home by ten. She’d suggest that she came over. She’d tell him about the letters and that she’d seen Danielle Hindle. Jack would hate that she’d put herself in jeopardy. He said her lack of fear wasn’t a good thing. Fear is a survival mechanism. She’d point out that nothing had happened. Stella pressed the phone button on her steering wheel. She needed Jack’s voice to break the silence. To fight off the encroaching night.

  Name or number? the digital voice asked.

  ‘Number— What!’

  A man emerged from bushes metres ahead. He stepped out into the road and flagged her down. Stella swerved out to the middle lane. She pulled onto the hard shoulder and flicked on the interior light. A flicker in the offside mirror. The man, tinted red by her brake lights, was running towards the van. He held something in his hand.

  ‘Don’t bloody stop! Didn’t Terry teach you the basics? He’ll be targeting lone women. Those stupid enough to feel sorry for him. Drive,’ the voice hissed.

  Paralysed, Stella gripped the wheel like a learner driver. Her feet wouldn’t move to the pedals. She heard the handbrake release.

  ‘I. Said. Drive!’

  A face was at the passenger window. A tap on the glass. He tried the handle. Something bashed against the window.

  Without checking for oncoming traffic, Stella screeched the van out onto the motorway. She lost control of the van and the central reservation loomed. She yanked on the wheel and regained the lane.

  Her system flooded with adrenalin. She looked in her rear-view mirror. In the insipid light of the interior lamp, she saw Danielle Hindle sitting in Stanley’s jump seat.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  2019

  ‘Is she a nice woman?’ Justin asked for the umpteenth time.

  ‘Yes, Justy, she’s very, very nice,’ Jack said.

  ‘Nicer than Mummy?’ Justin sounded doubtful that this was likely.

  ‘They’re different.’ Jack resisted saying, Yes, much nicer.

  ‘I don’t want to go.’ Milly bobbed Mr Sssnake’s head about like a ventriloquist’s dummy. The woollen reptile, knitted for her as a baby by one of Bella’s botanists, went with Milly on sleepovers. Justin had his bear which, for an unfathomable reason, he’d named Portus Teddy. Not that Jack could talk, his own bear had been called Walker and he had no idea why.

  ‘You’ll have a fantabulous time.’ Jack pressed the doorbell. ‘Stella can’t wait to meet you.’ Appalled by the untruth, he went on pressing until Justin, teetering on tiptoe, grabbed his sleeve. ‘You should stop, Daddy.’

  Jack snatched his hand away. He hadn’t been able to reach Stella on the phone. She hadn’t picked up his texts. As they waited, reality descended. Jack began to hope that Stella was out. Yet he had no backup. Jackie was in Manchester with her son. Suzie Darnell hated the unexpected. So did Stella. Lucie May…?

  Picturing Lucie taking Milly and Justin on a doorstepping expedition, Jack jumped out of his skin when the door opened.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Stella gaped at Jack as if he was a stranger come to mug her.

  Despite his obsession with losing Stella, deep down Jack trusted her. She’d never two-time him. His suspicion rocketed. She had wanted him to interview Nicola Walsh on his own. She’d turned off her phone. She ignored his texts. She was with Cashman.

  ‘Is this a bad time?’ On the way Jack had constructed a scene of abject apology (him) and unalloyed joy (Stella) – at last she would be meeting his twins.

  ‘It’s half past ten,’ she told him.

  ‘I’ve got an emergency.’ Insecurity made him belligerent. He grabbed a child’s hand in each of his. ‘But if you’re busy…’

  ‘What emergency?’ Stella appeared oblivious of the children. She hated children.

  ‘Mr Sssnake and Portus Teddy have nowhere to go.’ Justin was straight out of Disney.

  ‘No, Justin, that’s not true—’

  ‘Daddy said you were expecting us.’ Milly was strict about facts.

  Jack saw Stella’s demeanour change. She snapped into gear.

  ‘I am expecting you.’ She stood aside. ‘Would Mr, er, Sssnake and Teddy Portus… would they like to visit?’

  ‘Yes!’ Generally individual, the twins answered in unison. Jack had the eerie sensation that they knew exactly how to play the momentous encounter.

  He hurried to his car – a fifteen-year-old BMW estate bought off a train driver colleague when Jack became a dad – and came staggering back with two holdalls. He felt duplicitous. A hitchhiker who, after thumbing a lift alone, is joined by a gaggle of companions.

  Stella took one of the bags. She grimaced at the weight.

  ‘Bella packs for every eventuality.’ He babbled incoherently about emergencies, plasters, food for low blood sugar level, a million toys. He could not kid himself that Stella looked pleased to see them. From their dubious expressions he guessed that Justin and Milly had seen her reluctance.

  ‘Mr Sssnake has to have a bed of his own,’ Milly announced.

  ‘No he doesn’t!’ Jack snapped. Then gently, ‘He’ll want to be with you.’

  ‘Will Portus Teddy die?’ Since the demise of his terrapin, Justin was concerned about the fate of all things.

  ‘No, Justin,’ Jack cried. ‘None of us will.’

  ‘That’s actually not…’ Stella ground to a halt.

  He nodded at her. ‘In your study, yeah, you’ve got that blow-up mattress. I’m sorry, but I haven’t time to pump it up. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’ He sounded recriminatory.

  ‘That’s already… the case things are there.’ Stella was sharp. ‘In here.’ She went into the living room.

  Jack watched dumbfounded as, with lightning speed, Stella dismantled the sofa, stacking cushions by the window, unfolding the apparatus.

  ‘I’ll get bedding. Stay.’ As Jack made to follow her, Stella put out the flat of a hand as if instructing Stanley. She was cross.

  ‘Perhaps they could go up and clean their teeth?’ Jack heard himself pleading when Stella returned and started stuffing pillows into cases, fiercely plumping them.

  ‘They can do that in the kitchen. I’ll get buckets for the loo.’

  Jack was about to tell her that Milly an
d Justin were potty trained, but thought better of it. Instead he prattled a stream of reassuring bedtime words and kissing them both, fled to his car.

  Driving away, the throaty roar of the BMW loud in the cul-de-sac, he merged today’s ‘one under’ with Lee Marshall’s suicide two years before. He was hot with irrational rage at Marshall for causing the mess. He’d fretted about whether Stella would welcome his kids. Her expression on the doorstep told him that she would not.

  As he unlocked the door and boarded his train at Earl’s Court, Jack reminded himself that he had left his children in the care of the woman who he loved most in the world. Hyper risk-averse, Stella was the safest pair of hands. Jack loved them all. What could go wrong?

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  2019

  The bell had rung on and on. Stella had shooed Danielle up to her study (Be totally silent!). Then answered the door. From there things had gone from very bad to far worse. It was Jack. With his children. As she had taken this in, Stella’s mind blanked with horror. A look Jack had mistaken for extreme reluctance to look after his children.

  Once Stella was certain that the twins were asleep, she crept up and tapped on her own study door. Nothing. She peeped inside. No one. Hindle wasn’t in the bathroom. Stella had locked her bedroom. She definitely wasn’t downstairs.

  She had gone. Stella sank onto her study chair. Now she could enjoy having Milly and Justin. Easing pain in her neck, she looked up. Light seeped around the loft hatch.

  Pulse at top speed, Stella dragged down the ladder. Heedless of danger, her mini Maglite slippery with sweat, she climbed up.

  Danielle Hindle lay under the eaves. A giant caterpillar in the sleeping bag that Stella had found for her. Beside her was a box from the Rokesmith investigation (the first case that Stella solved with Jack). She was reading.

  ‘That’s private!’ Stella forgot to whisper.

  ‘Terry was investigating this that last day.’ Regarding Stella over her reading glasses, Danielle flipped over a page of the summary report. Prosaic, like a colleague at a meeting.