The Playground Murders

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Trudy’s done a summary of the case thus far.’ Stella laid down a sheaf of stapled pages. ‘She emailed it to me.’

  ‘That’s not her job!’ Jack exploded. Trudy had assumed Justin had made up the person in Stella’s office. She’d called it a lie. Jack was cross that he’d gone along with her. All because he’d presumed it was Martin Cashman. A knot in his stomach tightened.

  ‘Good of her since she wasn’t feeling well.’ Stella squeezed a teabag into the ‘I ♥ Cleaning’ mug which Jack had found for her in the local hospice shop. ‘Hope she’s OK, she’s never been ill before.’

  ‘Time she was then.’ Suzie jiggled her mouse on the desk. ‘You slave-drive that woman, Stella.’

  ‘Trudy drives herself.’ Jack defended Stella.

  Had Stella told her mum that he’d shouted at her? Jack was nervous. If need be, Suzie would fiercely defend her daughter. He doubted that mention of Hindle would tip the balance.

  Bev burst into the office, she was talking into her mobile.

  ‘…bring ID, copy that. No sharp implements, no drugs. Copy that. No mobiles. Copy that. They’ll be there at fifteen hundred hours sharp. Roger.’ She put a packet of digestive biscuits on Jackie’s desk. ‘Not sharp as in knives. I meant punctual. Cool! Thank you.’ Beverly chucked her handset onto Trudy’s desk. ‘You guys are going to jail. Without passing go!’

  ‘Nice one, Bev! How did you swing it?’ Jack opened the biscuits.

  ‘Trudy suggested we ask Carrie Philips to get her dad to agree and she did!’ Beverly shrugged off her puffa jacket. ‘You’ve got a visit this arvo. Wormwood Scrubs is down the road, what’s not to like!’ She did a twirl.

  ‘We needn’t be undercover,’ Stella said. ‘Christopher Philips knows why we’re coming.’

  ‘I don’t get that Philips would protect his wife.’ Bev drank from her mug.

  ‘Because when Hindle—’ Jack couldn’t remember if they’d agreed to tell the team Penny Philips’ real identity.

  ‘It’s not like she needs it. From Trudy’s summary, Lady Penelope sounds a stroppy madam,’ Beverly continued.

  Stella went into her office. Jack felt bereft.

  ‘I’m tempted to think Martin Cashman got the right man.’ Keen on her new yoga classes, Bev was doing a tree by the filing cabinet. ‘Rachel looks nice in the pictures. She couldn’t help falling in love with a married man. I did that. With a woman. Not that Cheryl was married. And she was already splitting up.’ The tree toppled. ‘Maybe Christopher was a father figure, Rachel’s actual dad died when she was ten.’

  ‘Cashman wasn’t working that case,’ Jack reminded her.

  ‘So why did he turn up at Stella’s crime scene?’

  Stella had told Beverly about that.

  ‘Christopher probably saw that his marriage to Penelope Philips was a wrong turning.’ Suzie would be thinking of her relationship with Terry, who Jack believed was the love of Suzie’s life. Terry could never have met his wife’s sky-high expectations of perfection. Had Jack failed to meet Stella’s?

  ‘It will be Penelope or Carrie that he’s shielding. Fathers lose their heads over daughters. It doesn’t make them better parents.’ Suzie was creating a graph of that month’s customer acquisitions.

  ‘We should go.’ Stella was back with her bag, Barbour over her arm.

  ‘What if Carrie framed her mother?’ With a croupier’s ease, Beverly pushed a stack of biscuits towards Jack. He shovelled them into his coat. ‘But her plan backfired and her dad got the blame. It’s why Carrie’s trying to free him. If my dad killed someone he could rot in jail. But if Carrie did it she knows he’s innocent.’

  ‘She could confess.’ Ultimately, Suzie was as law-abiding as her daughter and Terry.

  ‘If she planned to dob her mum in she’s got to try again. Maybe she wants her dad to herself!’ Beverly fixed her gaze at a far-off spot somewhere beyond Middle Earth and, palms meeting above her head, attained the perfect tree.

  Jack watched Stella unpack and repack her rucksack. Notebook, pens, a book of sticky tabs, phone charger. She left out the poo bags, they weren’t taking Stanley. Jack often felt a rush of love for Stella as they set off to interview a suspect or a witness. They were a team. Not now. Stella would never forgive him.

  Have you forgiven Stella? He shut down the thought.

  ‘There’s something we haven’t told you.’ Stella zipped up her rucksack. She was looking at her mother.

  ‘Go for it.’ Beverly whipped out her notebook.

  Stella was going to tell them what he’d said to her. Jack felt pure fear.

  We’ve split up. Jack said terrible things, there’s no way back. We’ll continue to work on this case, but when it’s over we’re going our separate ways…

  ‘Does the name Danielle Hindle mean anything?’

  ‘She murdered those children.’ Beverly was first.

  ‘You’re too young to know that, Bev!’ Suzie was caught between admiration and annoyed to be pipped at the post.

  ‘I’m not,’ Beverly protested. ‘Once, when I was little, I got lost in the park and Mum said, “Don’t do that again or Danielle Hindle will get you!” The girl lived near us.’

  ‘What about Hindle?’ Suzie said.

  Stella told them. She said that Hindle had been at her house last night and was now at Lucie’s. She left nothing out. Including that Justin had met Hindle. Stella said that she was very sorry about that. She did not mention that Jack had shouted or what he’d said.

  ‘They enjoyed themselves,’ Jack said. ‘They want to come again.’

  Tracking the progress of a 228 bus outside the window, Stella hadn’t heard. Was the bus number a sign? Jack turned the digits into letters on a telephone. CAT? BAT? ACT?

  Suzie went and stood beside Stella. A mother sheep protecting her lamb. Jack wanted to drop through the floor.

  ‘If Lucille Ball doesn’t think the CCTV woman is Hindle, who does she think she is?’ Suzie wouldn’t be generous about Lucie.

  ‘It could be that she happens to look like Danielle and it’s a coincidence.’ Stella sounded miserable. Jack hated himself.

  ‘There’s no such thing as a coincidence.’ Bev quoted Jack. He felt mildly better. ‘If it’s not her, why hasn’t who it is come forward?’

  ‘The police didn’t release the picture. Martin wanted to prevent the press identifying Hindle.’ Stella turned from the window. ‘Personally I think it is her.’

  She had seen Cashman. ‘That’s a stretch!’ Jack was consumed with jealousy. ‘How would Cashman know what Hindle looks like now?’

  ‘We should call her Philips in case we make a slip in front of people.’ Beverly was stern.

  ‘Martin was kept in the loop,’ Stella said. ‘I imagine for exactly this reason.’

  Martin now.

  ‘That makes sense.’ Beverly sucked her pen. ‘A woman is found murdered in the house of a double murderer. The Met had to muscle in. Probably annoying for the Gloucestershire detectives.’

  ‘More likely Lucie May is wrong and the woman in the CCTV is Hindle. Sorry, Philips.’ Suzie collected her stapled reports from the printer.

  ‘For some reason Hindle wanted to leave us in doubt,’ Stella mused. ‘It’s as if she wanted to put herself in the frame.’

  ‘Maybe she’s protecting someone too?’ Beverly said.

  ‘I have a question.’ Suzie tossed her reports into Trudy’s in-tray.

  ‘What?’ Stella looked exhausted, Jack longed to hold her.

  ‘Have you two split up?’

  *

  Wormwood Scrubs prison fitted the Dickensian image of a high security jail. Forbidding flint-clad towers recalling the Tower of London had for a century incarcerated many of Britain’s notorious murderers. A warning of what awaits the wicked, the edifice stood next to Hammersmith Hospital where many west Londoners – including Stella – were born.

  Jack emptied his pockets (stones, a furred Werther’s Original, loose change, phone), and stepped
through the screening portal as if into a life where Stella and he had their mortgage and were living happily ever after in their new home.

  Instead, they were visiting a lifer in D Wing. Notices in the visitors’ centre warned that it was a criminal offence to bring phones or drugs into the prison. The list of prohibited clothing and accessories included no ponchos or hot pants. Jack thought that wearing hot pants with a poncho should be a criminal offence anywhere. You must wear only one pair of trousers. Good idea. He’d never have thought of that.

  The visitors’ centre was crowded. A boy of Justin’s age in a TK Maxx tracksuit played listlessly at a Lego table. An older girl held a doll, both inanimate. The prevailing mood was of defeat. It matched Jack’s. He and Stella hadn’t ‘kissed and made up’. Stella had not answered her mother’s question. On the way to Wormwood Scrubs they’d planned the interview. They had both wanted to be ‘bad cop’.

  Two black men, father and son, Jack guessed, talked in hushed tones. Jack caught enough to gather that they were visiting the younger man’s son. There were more women than men, more black people than white, and the average age was twenty something. He’d read that prisoner diversity didn’t reflect the outside population. Here was proof. Christopher Philips, white, middle class and professional, would spike the data. If the man was protecting his wife or his daughter Jack wondered if being in prison had weakened his resolve.

  ‘They know we’re police,’ Stella muttered. ‘Dad always got spotted.’

  ‘We’re not police.’

  Stella shrugged. ‘We’re on the same side.’

  Jack decided that now was not the time to say ‘speak for yourself’.

  ‘Let’s be nice.’ Just as Jack was hoping that Stella was suggesting making up, she said, ‘If we upset Philips he’ll end the visit. Bottom line is to gauge if he murdered Rachel. You’ll know.’

  Stella still had some faith in him.

  *

  ‘I told Carrie this is a waste of time. Not mine, it’s something to do.’ Christopher Philips tugged at the sleeves of his prison shirt.

  He was a shadow of the lean unremarkable-looking man in the photographs. Bald patches like alopecia showed through thinning hair. His shirt was too big, shoulder bones jutted. In his shambling gait to their table Jack had seen no trace of the high-flying auctioneer.

  ‘Christopher, we know you didn’t murder Rachel.’ Jack leaned as close to him as he dared within the strictures of no touching or palming razor blades. ‘Carrie thinks you’re protecting your wife. That’s credible. She told us Penelope’s real identity.’

  ‘Vermin!’ Christopher raised his voice. A prison officer gave him a warning look. ‘Carrie shouldn’t have done that. I agreed to talk to make you stop. Tell Carrie her mother did nothing. It was me. I don’t want her wasting money on you leeches. Carrion.’ He polished his specs on the corner of the HMP shirt.

  ‘So you still have standards.’ Jack couldn’t do ‘nice’. Whatever else this man had thrown Rachel down a drain shaft.

  ‘Rachel was going to tell the papers about Penny. I lost it. Have either of you got children?’

  ‘I have,’ Jack obliged.

  ‘You’ll know that your own life is nothing. All that matters is that they survive. I will not see my daughter suffer.’

  ‘She is suffering. Carrie came to us because she got nowhere with the police. She believes that Danielle killed Rachel Cater. Perhaps you do too?’

  ‘Carrie thinks that her mother should rot in jail. But she loves her really and it wouldn’t help anyone if Penny were in prison instead of me. Penny’s confession was a shock. I handled it badly. Instead of being there for my family, I blubbed to Rachel and made it worse. I never loved that… that girl.’ Philips rubbed one lens so hard, it popped out.

  Stella made to give it to him and stopped. No touching.

  ‘Rachel wanted me to sell the story. It would fund a new start. Why should she care about Penny? I was stupid to kiss her.’ Philips snapped the lens into the frame and crammed the specs back on. ‘I said we had to end it. I loved Penny. Rachel and I could still be friends. She was the best secretary.’ Perhaps hearing how ludicrous – worse than that – he sounded, Philips blinked. ‘She went for me. I had to kill her.’

  ‘Are you worried that murder is in the genes?’ Stella asked pleasantly. ‘That Carrie is a killer?’ Stella was bad cop after all.

  ‘What? No!’ Philips went white.

  ‘At primary school, Carrie hospitalized a friend for stealing her lunchbox.’ Stella hadn’t told Jack this. ‘Carrie was the same age as Danielle Hindle had been when she killed Robbie and Sarah.’

  ‘Carrie said sorry. The girls are still friends. Penny is not that child, she had nothing to do with that now.’ Philips broke his glasses again.

  ‘Do we change?’ Jack still got jealous after all these years.

  ‘Rachel had to be dead.’

  ‘Had to be dead?’ Jack repeated. A summary execution.

  ‘She couldn’t have survived.’

  ‘Christopher, are you saying that when you put Rachel down that shaft she was still alive?’ Stella was there before Jack.

  ‘She must have been dead!’ Philips spoke into a fist.

  Jack recalled the phantom smell drifting up from the darkness.

  A signal sounded. A voice called, ‘Visiting’s over!’

  ‘Was she conscious?’ Jack hissed. Philips had not said this in court.

  Stella moved towards Philips as if she might fling him to the floor.

  A prison officer was zigzagging through the tables towards them.

  ‘Good girl, Rachel said.’ Philips mumbled to Stella. Carrie is—’

  His speech was indistinct. Jack wondered if he’d spoken at all.

  ‘Return to your cell, Mr Philips.’ The officer’s neutral tone betrayed neither respect nor deepest disgust.

  Chapter Forty

  2019

  ‘You can’t barge in here!’ Wrapped in a pink fluffy dressing gown, Nicola Giles’ protest was feeble.

  ‘Ready for bed, Nick? Or is this you getting up?’ Lucie was already in the sitting room.

  ‘I’m calling the police.’ Nicola slumped onto the sofa, the threat apparently empty. ‘I haven’t got anything else to say. You still owe me for last time.’

  ‘It’s in the post!’ Aiming vaguely for the semblance of a friendly smile, Lucie delved into her safari jacket and waved a newspaper cutting at Nicola.

  ‘My daughter will be here soon.’ Nicola didn’t believe herself.

  ‘Not since she caught you drunk in charge of her kids she won’t.’ Lucie smoothed out a black and white photo of a coffin being unloaded from a hearse. Mourners looked on. ‘Remember this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yeah, you do,’ she snapped. ‘That’s you by the hearse. Couldn’t resist a fond farewell to your old flame. My old ma always said vanity is our undoing!’

  ‘I lost touch with Lee after Robbie and Sarah died.’

  ‘That’s not what you told my friend. C’mon, Nick, you said it for Jack, say it for me!’ Lucie’s eyes glittered.

  ‘I met Lee on a bus. He gave me his bracelet.’ Belatedly, Nicola heard what Lucie had said. ‘Your friend? He never said he was a reporter.’

  ‘Where is the charm bracelet?’

  ‘I told him, it went to charity.’ Nicola rubbed an eye. Lucie knew this was a sign that she was lying.

  ‘Yeah. But we know that’s rubbish. Where is it?’

  ‘She took it.’

  Lucie launched into a line from Charles Aznavour’s ‘She’. Her terrible singing was guaranteed to get the truth out of the best liar.

  ‘That one.’ Nicola indicated a woman in a black hat wearing dark glasses that took up half her face. ‘She said she’d take it. That bracelet was bad luck.’

  ‘Very charitable to share the bad luck.’ Lucie watched a team of rowers pass by on the river below them. ‘All the charms there? The Best Sister one that Lee bought for littl
e Sarah, you didn’t feel like holding onto that one?’

  ‘She took it. Said it reminded her of him.’ Nicola reached for the empty glass on the arm of sofa then thought better of it.

  ‘Got on well, you two?’ Lucie wheedled.

  ‘All right.’ Puzzled, Nicola contemplated the glass.

  ‘Course you did, you had Lee in common.’ Lucie took the glass and going to a huge drinks cupboard beside some Chinese statue thing holding a cake, she rustled up a good strong nippet for Nicola. ‘So when did you last see the lovely Mrs Marshall?’

  Chapter Forty-One

  2019

  Penelope Philips had been moved to a safe house. According to the postcode that Trudy had copied from Stella’s satnav, it was one of a row of flats above a gift shop in Broadway. Trudy picked her way around wheelie bins and flattened cardboard boxes to a flight of steps.

  The terrace was scattered with cheap garden ornaments, a plastic table and chairs. The outside of No 1 was bare paving. A come-down from the grand house in Winchcombe.

  Trudy was doing detective work. She was sure that Penelope Philips was too smart to chuck away a very comfortable life by murdering her husband’s mistress. If that woman had done it, Trudy was sure that police would still be looking for Cater’s corpse.

  Trudy had seen Justin’s guilty expression yesterday and, from Jack’s face, Trudy saw that he’d guessed his son’s hasty admission that he’d been talking to his imaginary friend was a lie. Jack probably assumed that Justin had met that detective who’d had an affair with Stella. Jack was sick with jealousy of Cashman, it was written on his face. Trudy could be objective. Betrayal wasn’t in Stella’s vocabulary. When they’d met by Stella’s van she’d been tempted to warn him.

  Don’t squander the love of this special woman.

  A PA’s job was to get ahead of the danger. Jackie Makepeace had been there for Stella, but now, potty about her grandchildren, her eye was off the ball. Jack was wrapped up in his kids. Beverly was too busy learning to be a private eye and fussing with the joys of married life to watch out for Stella. Lucie May had been obsessed with Stella’s dad, but out for a good story, she’d chuck Stella to the wolves. Trudy wished that Stella would stick to cleaning. She was swimming in treacherous waters and only Trudy could see it.