The Eye in the Dark

by Katherine Pathak

  “What did these people say?” Lawrence inserted encouragingly.

  “Well, they suggested that Miss Carlisle received a number of male visitors at the cottage.”

  “Could you give us the names of the villagers who told you this?” Lawrence got out his notebook expectantly.

  “Oh, I don’t want to get anyone into trouble. It was only tittle-tattle.” The woman looked alarmed.

  “We will be very discreet with our questioning, but it’s imperative that we know the source of these rumours.” Dani’s expression became grave. “It is very likely that Miss Carlisle was murdered, you see.”

  “Goodness, then of course I must tell you, straight away.”

  Furnished with their list of names, Mrs Forbes led her visitors to the door.

  “I hope you enjoy living here,” Dani commented as they stepped out onto the path, the afternoon sun bathing the front garden in a golden glow.

  “Oh, I shall, thank you. Although my first job will be to remove those tall maples round the back. They cut out all the natural light to the kitchen.”

  “They must be the reason the cottage got its name.”

  “Yes,” the lady sounded wistful. “It’s a shame to get rid of them for that very reason. But the trees are such an awful blight.”

  The detectives approached the car and open the doors to get in.

  Mrs Forbes suddenly rushed forward to the gate, following them to the kerb. “I’ve just recalled something Miss Carlisle said, on my very first visit here.”

  “Go on,” Dani was expectant.

  “She said those trees were the main reason she chose to live here. The maples. She said they were the best thing about the house. It stuck in my mind, because to me, they were the very worst thing.” She shrugged her shoulders bashfully. “I’ve no idea if that’s important to you at all.”

  “I don’t either,” Dani replied earnestly. “But I’m extremely glad you told us.”

  Chapter 9

  Lawrence pulled into the car park of a country pub which was positioned off the A22. The weather was pleasant enough for them to sit at one of the tables outside.

  The DI sipped from a pint glass of coke. “Are you married, Dani? Any kids?”

  Dani smiled. “My partner and I don’t have children, no. How about you?”

  He grimaced. “I worry that maybe I missed my chance with the whole marriage and family thing.”

  “Come off it, you’re only young.” Dani was once again amazed at the man’s openness.

  “Yeah, but when my mates were coupling up at college, I was fixated on making a million in the City. Then when I got the banking job, it absorbed all my time and energy. I had plenty of girlfriends, but none of those relationships stuck. Now I find myself in my mid-thirties and all the nice girls are taken.”

  “Maybe nice girls are over-rated. I didn’t settle down until I was older than you. There are plenty of career women out there who are single.” Dani took a gulp of her own drink.

  “Well, I’ve yet to find one. I knew a girl once who really liked me. It freaked me out, so I didn’t treat her very well. Now I think about her a lot.”

  “What is she doing now?” Dani knew that social media these days meant keeping tabs on the life choices of your exes was an easy enough task.

  “Busy making house with her husband and two kids.” He sighed. “I thought finding someone who you have a connection with and who cares for you in return was easy, so I threw it away when I had it.”

  Dani was starting to think Nate Lawrence’s main problem was not the state of the singles’ market, but his propensity towards self-pity. Either way, it was time to change the subject. “We have a description from the landlord of the King’s Head in Mitchling. Autumn frequented the pub with the same man during the months before she moved out. There had been others, but this chap seemed like her latest and most regular companion.”

  “The couple who run the general store suggested Autumn had a new man at the cottage pretty much every month, although they couldn’t provide much information about any of them. I got the sense they’re both gossip merchants. One of the paper-round girls lives on the same road as Maple Cottage. She reported the comings and goings of male visitors there.”

  “I’m starting to understand why Autumn may have preferred the anonymity of the flat in London.”

  “Yet she didn’t appear to have had a single visitor during her time on Camberwell Road, male or female.”

  Dani finished her drink. “Yes, it is odd. It’s as if something changed for Autumn at that time, something more significant than a switch of jobs.”

  Lawrence glanced at his watch. “We’d better get back on the road. I’m holding a briefing at five.”

  Dani picked up her bag. “Sure, let’s go. The traffic is only going to get worse if we hang around here.”

  *

  Trudy Gifford perched on the edge of DI Lawrence’s desk. Dani was seated beside her. The DC had returned from interviewing Autumn Carlisle’s friends and colleagues at British Airways, where the woman had worked since graduating from college.

  “It seems like Autumn had some good friends from her time at BA,” Trudy began. “A couple of her colleagues went drinking with her in the evenings and stayed for weekends at her cottage.”

  “Did they mention the names of any boyfriends?” Dani asked.

  “Yes, they gave me a couple of possible candidates that I still need to check out. It doesn’t sound like Autumn had a lot of boyfriends, but she was at BA for over ten years, so there were a few men on the scene during that time.”

  “Had any of these friends seen Autumn in the last three months?” Lawrence interjected.

  Trudy shook her head. “They said Autumn had lost touch since joining Lomond. It was put down to the hectic schedules of flight crew, no hard feelings were evident on either side.”

  Dani furrowed her brow. “But maybe an ex-boyfriend had taken offence at Autumn cutting him out of her life so abruptly. We need to check out the men on that list.” She looked again at the description that had been given to her by the landlord of the King’s Head in Mitchling. Autumn’s regular companion was no taller than her, stocky in build, balding and aged around thirty-five. “I can’t help feeling this description resembles Denny Lomond, CEO of Lomond Airlines. But he claims he and Autumn only became acquainted a few months ago. He gave the impression they had met up only in town.”

  Lawrence looked interested. “Maybe we should go back and talk to him again? Perhaps there was more to the relationship than he has let on?”

  Dani nodded. “It’s a good idea, but Lomond is a powerful man, if we return to question him again, I expect he’ll get lawyered up in preparation.”

  “We’ll have to take that chance. We’ve got precious few leads to chase up as it is.”

  Trudy got to her feet. “I’ll start tracing the boyfriends, Boss.”

  Lawrence nodded his approval. “Dani and I will make that visit to the airport.”

  Chapter 10

  Although the case was officially closed, DI Dermot Muir had continued to dig into the backgrounds of the German couple who died at the hotel. The newspaper speculation about the case had intrigued him.

  Muir had learnt through his period of service with the diplomatic branch, that there were plenty of covert operations played out every day, all across the country, and that even the police had no knowledge of them.

  DS Sharon Moffett brought him over a mug of coffee. She offered up an open bag of assorted pastries, which he politely declined. She pulled across one of the newspapers which was lying open on his desk. The piece on show was an analysis of the Berkley hotel deaths. “Are you still thinking about the Bauer case, Boss?”

  He nodded. “It still feels like there are loose ends. Can a couple really die within hours of one another with no external factor intervening?”

  Sharon dragged over a chair. “They were in their early seventies, both with serious heart problems. We have their docto
r’s testimony on that. The couple were in a foreign country and an unfamiliar bed. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much for a person’s system to close down.”

  “But both of them?” Dermot sipped his coffee, which was as good as it was possible to be from the machine in the department kitchen.

  “I’ve heard of it happening. My great grandparents died within a few days of one another. They’d lived together for over sixty years, were barely apart in the last twenty of their lives. Couples can become physically and emotionally interdependent. It’s nothing sinister, just our hormones and stuff getting in sync.” Sharon reached for a Danish pastry from the bag and bit into it, sending a snowfall of icing sugar down the front of her blouse.

  Muir did his best not to look at the resultant spillage. “But there must have been a trigger.”

  Sharon considered this. In the case of her great-grandparents it was the news of her uncle’s death in a motorcycle accident which had precipitated their demise. The family hypothesis was the old pair didn’t want to carry on after that, the grief was too much. “Perhaps they’d received a piece of bad news. We could always contact the son and daughter again and ask them?”

  Muir shook his head. “We reassured Stefan Bauer the case would be passed onto the Fiscal’s office where a verdict of death by natural causes was the most likely outcome. If I contact them again, it will only shake things up.”

  Sharon stood. “That’s true enough, and we need to get the reports written up for when DCI Bevan returns from London.”

  “Aye, you’re right.” Muir shuffled the newspapers into a pile and shoved them in his drawer. “My girlfriend would be fuming if she thought I was making extra work for myself.”

  “While the DCI is away, we can control our own workload. Don’t make life more difficult for yourself than it needs to be, Boss.”

  Muir watched his colleague return to her desk, where DS Calder made a grab for the bag of pastries. He smiled to himself. But that niggling, persistent sense of doubt still remained, no matter how hard he tried to push it down.

  *

  Trudy Gifford was led through a carpeted hallway with leather sofas flanking the walls at strategic points. The woman guiding her stopped outside one of the doors. She gave a light knock before opening it and nodding for the DC to enter.

  The office was as softly furnished as the rest of the building. Trudy approached the desk, flattening the thick pile of the carpet with her sturdy shoes. “Mr Colbert? I’m DC Gifford from Hammersmith CID. Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.”

  The man stood, putting out his hand. “Please, call me Noel. Take a seat, detective. You wanted to ask me about Autumn Carlisle?”

  “That’s correct, sir. One of her co-workers at BA suggested you two had been an item a couple of years back?”

  He nodded, running his fingers through his sandy hair. “I didn’t know she was dead until you called. It was one hell of a shock.”

  “When did you break up?”

  “It was the summer of 2016. We went on holiday to Florida but argued a lot. After we got back, we agreed to cool things off. By the Christmas we weren’t in contact at all.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “I’m a regular flyer with BA. I got to know Autumn when she worked in Business Class. I asked her out after a business trip I took to Frankfurt. When we returned, we went for drinks near the offices here and were together for the next eighteen months.”

  “Did you visit her cottage in Mitchling?”

  “Yeah, I was there a lot. The cottage is much more pleasant than my flat.”

  “Did you know Autumn moved out of the cottage three months ago?”

  Noel crinkled his forehead. “No, I hadn’t heard that. As I said, we weren’t in touch any more. But I find that surprising. She loved the cottage. We spoke about me moving in someday, there may even have been mention of kids frolicking in the lovely garden. That place was home to her.”

  “Her job move to Lomond Airlines meant she needed to be closer to Heathrow. It makes sense for that reason.”

  Noel looked genuinely taken aback. “Had Autumn taken a job at Lomond? Bloody Hell! Things definitely had changed.”

  “How so?” Trudy was intrigued.

  “Autumn was always complaining about Lomond opening up routes to international destinations and undercutting BA on prices. She said it would be passenger comfort, service and safety that would ultimately be compromised. She hardly shut-up about it, to be honest.”

  “Perhaps Denny Lomond made her an offer she couldn’t refuse?”

  “He must have done.” The man looked dazed. “I suppose it’s no more incredible than the idea of Autumn taking her own life.”

  “You don’t think she would have committed suicide?”

  He shrugged. “The woman I knew was full of life. She loved travel, had good friends around the world. When I asked her to give up the job and settle down with me, she wouldn’t have it. That’s why we split. Her life was too enjoyable to give up for a relationship, so why the hell would she end it?”

  Trudy nodded her head. Why indeed. “We now have reason to think the cause of death wasn’t necessarily suicide. Did you meet many of Autumn’s friends? An ex-boyfriend before you perhaps?”

  “I don’t think Autumn had many serious relationships before me. But I met her mates in Amsterdam, I got the impression they were her closest. We stayed for a weekend in the February of 2015, it was fun.”

  “Autumn crewed a flight to Amsterdam in the week before her death,” Trudy commented.

  Noel leaned forward. “She would undoubtedly have hooked up with Lucas and Sofie. Autumn never missed a chance to see them.”

  Trudy asked eagerly, “do you have any contact details for them?”

  He considered this. “Actually, I still have Lucas’s number on my phone. I added it whilst we were over there, so we could meet up for dinner and stuff. It’s three years old, mind you.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’d like to have it, if I may.”

  Noel dug in his pocket for a black, glossy smartphone. “Of course you can have it. Perhaps Lucas and Sofie will have a better idea of what the heck had been going on with Autumn recently. Because her behaviour certainly doesn’t sound like the lady I knew.”

  Trudy jotted down the number gratefully.

  Noel slumped back into his plush, leather chair, the information he’d been given only just seeming to have sunk in. “Do you think Autumn might have been murdered?”

  Trudy nodded. “It’s a possibility we’re looking into, Sir.”

  He shook his head sadly. “Why did she leave that sleepy little village to come to this heartless old city?” He glanced out of the window as if to highlight his words. “It wasn’t as if Autumn was naïve about how evil the world could be.”

  Trudy frowned deeply. “What do you mean by that, Mr Colbert?”

  He peered down his angular nose at the detective. “Well, I happen to know that early in her career she had a nasty encounter with one of her passengers. It was following a flight to one of the Egyptian resorts. This chap had noticed Autumn on the plane and then followed her after they landed. I think there was some type of physical attack. She reported it to the police. He got a caution and a ban from BA flights. It wasn’t a huge deal, but it made Autumn circumspect, you know?”

  Trudy had rapidly noted down the details as the man spoke. “Do you know when this happened exactly?”

  “Oh, it was before the two of us met, a good decade back I’d say. But there must be records of it somewhere, if she went to the police?”

  “Yes,” Trudy agreed. “There certainly would.” She stood to leave. “Thank you for your assistance, Mr Colbert. You’ve given me plenty to follow up.”

  Chapter 11

  This time DCI Dani Bevan visited the headquarters of Lomond Airlines, the CEO wasn’t on hand to greet her. She and Nate waited in a long, dark corridor for Denny Lomond’s PA to finally make an appearance.

  “I wi
ll accompany you to one of our boardrooms, Detectives. Unfortunately, Mr Lomond is out of the building on business. But I believe you wished to speak with a member of our staff by the name of Kathy Brice? She is being fetched for you.” The woman delivered her words over one shoulder, as she strode along the corridor, pausing halfway down to swing open a door for them.

  Dani entered first, into a room filled with a glass table and leather chairs, bordered by a series of windows looking out over one of the flight terminals. “We really do need to speak with Mr Lomond himself,” she added with emphasis.

  “Yes, and I will make an appointment for you. But today isn’t good for him, I’m afraid. He’s in high-level discussions with the pilots’ union, there’s talk of a possible strike.” She wrinkled her heavily-made up face to illustrate the seriousness of the situation.

  Nate sighed heavily. “At the present time, we are asking Mr Lomond to voluntarily aid us with our enquiries, but if he refuses to see us, we will have to have our conversation at Hammersmith Police station.”

  The PA backed out of the room. “I’ll pass that on to him, Detective Inspector. In the meantime, I’ll order a pot of coffee for you and Ms Brice.”

  When she had left, Dani lifted her eyebrows. “I don’t reckon we’ll get hold of Denny Lomond any time soon, certainly not without his corporate lawyers in tow. It sounds like he’s in the midst of some kind of industrial dispute.”

  “He should try paying his staff properly, that might resolve the problem,” Nate muttered darkly.

  “Then we wouldn’t get our cheap package holidays to the Continent,” Dani added playfully.

  “I wouldn’t fly with Lomond Airlines anyway,” he glanced out of one of the vast windows at the huge aeroplanes taxiing towards the runway. “You wonder what safety checks get overlooked in order to operate on such low fares. It’s not bloody worth it.”