The Playground Murders

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Go for it. I make lists, or Christ knows where I’d be!’

  If something ever happened to Jack, Stella vowed to handle it like Lee’s widow. She too would go far away. A clean slate.

  ‘On bad days, I’m so angry with Lee, I daren’t leave the house or I’d commit murder!’ Jo Marshall patted her hair. ‘Lee never got over his sister’s death. Whatever he looked like on the outside – job, marriage, mortgage, all that – he was a mess. His stepfather blamed him and although she never said, so did Cathy. And truth be told, Lee did play his part. If he hadn’t been smitten with that snobby cow, Nicola Walsh, he might have remembered to take Sarah home. I said, “Darlin’, at the end of the day there’s no one to blame but that bitch who crushed Sarah with a brick.” I blame the parents. They were responsible for Sarah, not a ten-year-old boy. Fancy letting kids that young play out after dark.’

  ‘Have you met Nicola?’ Stella was cross with herself. If she’d had gone with Jack to see Nicola then her questions could have taken into account what she’d learnt there.

  ‘Once, yes. Miss Perfect led Lee on. She and the Hindle Witch had him under their thumbs. Lee was lovely. Not a bad bone in his body.’

  ‘How did you meet?’ Terry would start at the beginning. Although Stella knew they’d met in Germany she wanted to hear it from Jo Marshall.

  ‘I was an army brat. He was a private. He left soon after that and we came to England. We moved to Bristol. I thought it was a good town to bring your children up in. More fool me! A good town to watch other people’s kids growing up. When we’d see Lee’s mum that tosser Ferris wouldn’t have him at the house so we’d have tea out and go to Lee’s dad’s grave. Jolly! Cathy never visits where Sarah’s buried, did she tell you that? Isn’t that weird? Lee didn’t think so. I think Cathy wanted to wipe out all the life that came after her first husband died.’ She drained the tumbler.

  ‘I met Cathy at Lee’s grave.’ Stella expected that if her child died, she’d never stop tending the grave. She did think it odd that Cathy Ferris didn’t visit her daughter’s grave. Wikipedia said it was the same churchyard. ‘Did Cathy say why she doesn’t go?’

  ‘She clams up if you ask her. But the answer is it’s where Alan the tosser was born. Newhaven down in Sussex. Too far for Cathy to visit with her hip. Lee and I went once. It was overgrown. Lee made us weed it. But we never went again so I daresay it’s back to how it was now.’ Jo Marshall adjusted her computer, briefly Stella saw a door with a handbag hanging off a hook before Marshall, as if she’d seen Stella notice, returned the screen to its original position. ‘Alan Ferris should kill himself and do us all a favour.’ Her face was expressionless. Possibly she was finding the call an ordeal. Stella had noted down the bit about Bristol being good for children. Lee and Jo Marshall had been childless. A term Stella disliked because it suggested a lacking. As Jackie had once said, why define someone by what they didn’t have?

  Jo Marshall’s face was paralysed in a grimace, Stella looked away.

  A message popped up: ‘Weak Signal.’ Stella realized that Jo’s face wasn’t immobile with grief. The screen had frozen.

  ‘…if I’d known Lee was against kids, I’d have left. But I was young and stupid, I thought I’d make Lee change his mind. I secretly stopped taking the pill. After he killed himself, when I was going through his files, I found a letter confirming his appointment for a vasectomy. Lee always said he couldn’t go through what happened with Sarah. It didn’t matter when I said no child of ours would ever be left alone in a park at night. Behind my back Lee sneaked off and got the snip.’

  Cathy Ferris had expressed anger that Lee’s wife hadn’t wanted children. The women’s accounts did not match up.

  The screen sprang to life. Stella was almost surprised to see Jo Marshall’s face move when she talked.

  ‘…Lee couldn’t bear me to feel the pain his mum had. He even felt sorry for Alan. Sarah was the man’s reason for living. When I said, how come Alan wasn’t looking out for Sarah, Lee wouldn’t listen. On the anniversary when Sarah would have been thirty-six, Cathy told the News of the World that Sarah would have had kids and a husband. Want to know what I think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sarah would be dead by now. She’d have crashed a car, overdosed or got herself murdered. She was a right madam. To Lee she was a saint.’

  Stella wondered how this fitted with Lee never returning to Sarah’s grave. She was surprised that Lucie May hadn’t covered it. Perhaps the neglected grave of a murdered child wasn’t a good angle. Stella tuned back to Jo Marshall.

  ‘…Lee was forty. On his nineteenth nervous breakdown, curled on the settee with a blanket over his head, crying like the kid he wouldn’t have. I was sympathetic, course I was, but it was wearing thin. I had to support us both. I was a secretary, not earning a fortune. When he went under the train, guess what I thought?’

  ‘What did you think?’ Stella wouldn’t risk a guess.

  ‘You. Total. Shit!’ Joanne Marshall grimaced. Again the screen froze.

  The door drifted open. Danielle Hindle. Stella could believe that a child-killer was capable of walking through locked doors.

  ‘That looks like one of those nineteen-fifties posters of horror films.’

  Stella was too late to quell a shout.

  ‘Stella? Are you OK?’ The signal gained strength and her face moving, Jo Marshall was concerned. Stella’s face appeared in the corner of the screen. She looked like she’d seen a ghost.

  Jack was beside her, out of shot.

  ‘I didn’t hear my boyfriend come in.’ Stella never called Jack her boyfriend. ‘Jack is helping me write my book.’ Stella enunciated clearly so that Jack took on the scenario.

  ‘You didn’t mention Jack.’ Jo Marshall didn’t look happy.

  ‘Stella wasn’t expecting me, Mrs Marshall. I can go away.’ Craning into the frame, Jack was his most charming.

  ‘If you’re writing this book, best you’re here.’

  Stella didn’t like the emphasis on ‘if’. She’d hoped she’d convinced Jo. Jack said that a good liar believed their own lies. She could imagine writing a book about Terry. She caught Jack up with their discussion. ‘Lee felt guilty for not minding his sister in the playground. Jo says he never got over it.’

  ‘That would have been hard.’ Jack perched on the edge of Stella’s chair, his arm around her. This wasn’t visible on the screen. ‘Hard for both of you. Murderers don’t think about collateral damage when they kill someone.’

  Stella saw Jo Marshall relax. Jack had the knack of saying the right thing. For herself, she doubted many killers factored in damage limitation. No one had thought of Agnes Cater, left alone and definitely childless. A lack she would never make good.

  ‘I gather that Lee was haunted by not listening to Sarah say that she’d seen Danielle Hindle push Robbie off the slide,’ Jack said. ‘I’d have been reluctant to repeat a murder accusation by a six-year-old. These days we credit small children with telling the truth – then, not so much.’

  Stella remembered that Trudy assumed that the person Justin had said he saw in Stella’s room was his imaginary friend. Justin had told the truth. But Trudy had no reason to think that Stella entertained murderers in her home.

  ‘I’m not with you, Jack. What did Sarah say to Lee?’ Even all the way from Australia, Stella sensed a drop in mood. She felt Jack’s arm stiffen, he got it too.

  Jack snatched Stella’s pen and scrawled ‘Help!’ in the margin of the suspect list. He gabbled, ‘Nicola Walsh said that you and her were the only two in whom Lee confided.’

  Wrong.

  The connection weakened. Jo Marshall’s lips didn’t move. ‘Lee never told me Sarah was a witness to murder. They ruled that the boy’s death was an accident. The Hindle girl never confessed. Lee never saw Nicola Walsh after he met me. I don’t understand you.’

  ‘No! That’s right.’ Jack nearly fell off the arm of the chair. ‘Nicola said she hadn’t seen Lee since they
were kids.’ He was dialling back. From what?

  Jo Marshall’s voice, suddenly grating, filled the room. ‘When I said that Lee couldn’t bear for me to have children, I should have been clearer. Lee wanted Nicola to have his kids. Nicky this, Nicky that. Hindle ruined our lives. Lee’s blood is on her hands. She robbed me of a family and of my husband. She’s got both. Let’s hope wherever she is she’s rotting in hell.’

  ‘Do you blame Nicola?’ Jack asked.

  Jo Marshall leaned back, her image almost lost in shadow. ‘Watch out, Stella, your bloke’s smitten. Men love hopeless women and poor old Nicky is a pharmacist’s wet dream.’

  Sensing that anything Jack said would make things worse, Stella dug him in the ribs. He tipped off the edge of the chair and vanished from the Skype picture. In a different situation it would have been comic.

  ‘Nicola is on the same road as Lee. To nowhere.’ Perhaps Jo hadn’t realized that the television had come back on because, with evident irritation, she switched it off at the set.

  ‘Do you know where Danielle Hindle is now?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Police protection at tax-payers’ expense, life-long anonymity while the rest us are goldfish in a bowl of fools and knaves. I’ve got life-long animosity!’ Jo gave a tight smile at what the pun.

  ‘When did you move to Sydney?’ Stella affected one of Jack’s smiles.

  ‘Been here a year. If Cathy’s on at you to make me come back and fuss around Lee’s grave with her you’re filling a leaky bucket. I’m never leaving Sydney!’

  The call ended. Stella was about to re-establish the connection when a message came through.

  Think before you dig up other people’s nightmares.

  ‘That went well then!’ She eased out of the chair and stood looking out of the window. The back gardens of houses in nearby St Peter’s Square were lost in inky darkness.

  ‘That was my fault,’ Jack said from behind her. ‘She was rattled by me coming in unexpectedly.’

  ‘Jo Marshall had said all she was likely to say,’ Stella said.

  ‘She is angry with Hindle. She could have tried to get revenge.’

  ‘She could have flown into Birmingham airport, stabbed Cater by mistake and left on the next plane. She has motive. Hindle ruined her life. But equally she’s keen to escape her past. How easy is it to fly on a false ticket? And even if it is I doubt any deception would bear up to police scrutiny.’ Stella returned to the desk. ‘What was Nicola like?’

  ‘Out with the drug fairies.’ Jack yawned. ‘She is another of Hindle’s victims. If she was faking it, she’s bloody good. She did imply she’d met Joanne Marshall. I didn’t press her on that.’

  ‘No. Jo didn’t elaborate on Nicola except to say that men fell in love with her. Maybe she was jealous. She didn’t look happy when you said Lee had met Nicola.’ Stella went to close Skype. Jo Marshall’s grimace stared out. Marshall had heard every word.

  ‘Oh, brilliant you captured a still!’ Jack reached for the keyboard and pressed print. ‘Class act, Stella!’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’ Stella had forgotten that, in trying to erase her image on the screen, she’d pressed the wrong button. Instead she’d taken a picture.

  ‘Marshall looks fit to murder! But if she was going to bump off anyone, Nicola would be as good a target. Lee never seemed to have got over her.’ Jack gathered up the picture of Jo Marshall as it spooled off the printer. ‘Marshall’s left-handed. Didn’t Cater’s pathology report say the killer was a left-handed person?’ He quoted from memory, short-bladed, of a minimum of four inches. Gripped in the left hand.

  ‘How can you tell?’ Stella examined the photograph.

  ‘She’s holding that mug with her left hand.’

  ‘She used her right hand to use the TV remote,’ Stella remembered. ‘I use both hands.’

  ‘Yeah, you do.’ Jack smirked at her.

  ‘Jo Marshall contradicted Cathy Ferris,’ Stella said. ‘Cathy said that Jo didn’t want children. Jo told me that Lee was frightened of having a child in case it was murdered. Cathy never told us that.’

  ‘She may not have known. She probably blamed her daughter-in-law for not having them. We saw that Lee could do no wrong,’ Jack said.

  ‘They both said that Alan Ferris told Lee it was his fault that Sarah died.’

  ‘How cruel. Over time Lee would have absorbed that as the truth. Especially if Sarah told him that she’d seen Danielle murder Robbie.’ Jack stretched his arms above his head. His shirt lifted from his waistband. Stella resisted placing a hand on his stomach, feeling the taut muscle. Either hand.

  ‘Why not get Dale on to Joanne?’ Jack yawned again.

  ‘Dale isn’t a detective.’ Stella’s brother was a celebrity chef in Sydney with no wish to follow their father’s footsteps. ‘You saw her text, Jo Marshall wants nothing more to do with us.’

  ‘Exactly. Dale shouldn’t let on that he’s your brother. He has a different surname. He could drop a card through her door offering a two-for-one deal at his restaurant, free glass of bubbly, that sort of thing. I reckon she’d go for that. Once he’s snared her over a plate of oysters, he can wheedle out illicit information from her.’

  ‘I’m not involving Dale.’ Stella was firm.

  ‘Shall we cross Jo and Nicola off the suspect list?’ Jack had brought up the spreadsheet. ‘I vote Nicola goes.’

  Stella wanted to cross herself off the case. It was usually Jack who intuited phantoms and bad vibes. All their cases involved murder. What was different about this one? It wasn’t as if the murder they’d been asked to solve actually involved children. Rachel Cater had been in her thirties. If there was any doubt about who killed her, they should address it and give her justice. Stella couldn’t let go.

  ‘We’ll exclude Nicola. Let’s keep Jo Marshall. We’re still considering Penelope Philips and her alibi is watertight too.’ Stella had lost concentration. Only hours ago, Danielle Hindle had been there. If Jack knew, it would be the end.

  Jack took Stella’s face in his hands. ‘Stell, when I came in I’d have sworn you looked scared. You’re never scared. What was that about? Is the case getting to you?’

  Stella exhaled. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  2019

  Jack was oblivious to where he was going. Since leaving Stella’s he’d walked for hours, heedless of cracks in the paving, bad luck was in his face.

  He came to Little Wormwood Scrubs Park. The bandstand a shape in the sodium dark. Beyond was the playground where tonight’s nightmare had begun.

  When Stella told him that she’d been scared that the person creeping into her study while she was Skyping Jo Marshall was Danielle Hindle, he’d been upset. Hindle had entered Stella’s nightmares too. Detective work was taking her into the netherworld of murder and untold emotions that had eventually consumed her father.

  He’d reached for her as if, like Orpheus, he could bring her back to the light where she belonged.

  ‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’

  Stella had to tell him twice. His body comprehended before his brain. His limbs went to jelly, his head hurt as if his skull would shatter. Stella had allowed Milly and Justin to spend a night within feet of Danielle Hindle. He saw the ten-year-old’s knowing smile. Old for her years. Old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. Old enough to know better.

  Hindle had sneaked into Stella’s van. A True Host, ruthless and smart, Hindle had beaten Jack. In the end they did.

  ‘Why wasn’t it locked?’

  ‘It’s a village in the Cotswolds, I didn’t expect theft.’ She said something about Hindle saving her from a mugger on the motorway. He had batted that away as an irrelevance.

  In black, Jack was with the darkness. He entered the playground, his breath clouding like smoke. Clenching his cheeks between his teeth he tasted blood. Justin had said that he’d talked to a person in the ‘Out of Bounds’. Why hadn’t J
ack pushed for detail? Because he’d believed that the ‘person’ was Cashman. Stella hadn’t bargained for Justin – a perfectionist like herself – wanting to complete his polishing. Jack hadn’t bargained for who the person really was. Jack groaned. His precious boy had been alone with Hindle. Jack couldn’t protect his children every minute of the day.

  ‘It takes three minutes to strangle a child! Justin would never imagine that someone would hurt him. With that bloody sanitizer on you wouldn’t have heard him shout for help!’

  ‘Yes I would.’ She had lied. ‘Psychiatric reports said Danielle Hindle was no longer a danger to the public. She was allowed to bring up Carrie.’

  When Stella tried to defend herself Jack went over the edge.

  ‘You let a child-killer near my children! Just because you don’t care about them you exposed them to danger. That room is jam-packed with scalpels!’

  ‘I do care about them.’ Had she said that? he wondered now. As if sleepwalking, Jack swung up onto the jungle climbing frame and balanced at the top. The lights of Dalgarno Gardens twinkled beyond the park.

  Stanley had trotted around their feet in agitation. Jack was a friend but he was behaving like an enemy.

  ‘She slept in the attic.’ Stella had pointed at the hatch.

  ‘I know where the attic is!’

  ‘When you arrived out of the blue, I couldn’t think how to say no. She’d made me promise not to tell anyone. She was listening. I never expected you’d ask me to look after the twins. Bella said I wasn’t allowed.’

  ‘Don’t make this my fault! Tell you what, it won’t happen again. You made it clear you don’t want kids. I hear it from your mother often enough. Pity you didn’t say so before we got involved!’

  Jack had thrust his fist at the wall, the idea obliquely borrowed from Alan Ferris when Terry told him that his daughter was dead.

  Stella had tried to hold his hand. Was he all right, she’d been concerned. He had felt no pain although now his hand hurt like hell. He had shaken her off and walk out of the room.

  Stella had pleaded with him. We need to talk. He’d barged past a neighbour wanting to check that Stella was all right.