‘And her father?’ Stacey asked.
‘Philip is her—’
‘Her biological father,’ Stacey clarified, although Mrs Ryan knew exactly what she was talking about. ‘Does Jessie see him?’
‘No. Never,’ she said, vehemently.
‘You’re sure?’ Stacey asked.
‘She doesn’t know him, officer. He walked out on us when she was four years old. He had no interest in being a father. Oh, it was fine when she was healthy but at the first sign of illness there were skid marks in the road. He’s never made any effort to get in touch or support her in any way. As I said, Philip is her father.’
Stacey didn’t push the point but she had to rule out his involvement.
‘If I could just take his address before I go,’ Stacey said.
‘Of course but you’ll get no joy there. Probably doesn’t even remember he had a daughter.’
Stacey ignored the bitterness in her tone as the woman grabbed a notepad and pencil from the kitchen drawer.
‘Okay, Mrs Ryan. Well, thank you for your time. If you hear anything at all from Jessie, give me a call,’ she said, reaching for the piece of paper.
Mrs Ryan grabbed her hand. ‘I hope you find her soon, officer,’ she said, tremulously as tears began to form in her eyes. ‘I don’t know how much more worry I can take before I lose my mind,’ she said, glancing towards a corner of the kitchen.
Stacey followed her gaze to a collection of pill bottles and medicines.
‘Those are Jessie’s?’ Stacey asked, incredulously, wondering why the woman had not mentioned the medication the previous day.
Stacey gently pulled her hand away from the woman’s grip.
Mrs Ryan dabbed at her eyes and nodded. ‘That’s why I’m so worried, officer. I know she’s almost sixteen but she’s still my baby. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I just…’
‘Mrs Ryan, is your daughter’s health in jeopardy?’ Stacey asked.
This information put a whole new light on Jessie being just a routine runaway.
More tears forced their way from her eyelids and rolled over her cheeks.
‘Absolutely, officer, without her medication, there’s a good chance my daughter could die.’
Fifteen
‘So, what does the frightening Mrs Cordell think we’re gonna find here?’ Bryant asked, pulling up outside the Dudley address.
The building was an ugly, flat structure thrown up on a plot of land around twenty years ago on the edge of the Wrens Nest housing estate. Kim understood that it was occupied by a mixture of housing association and private tenants.
‘Bodily fluids would be my best guess,’ Kim answered.
‘Ugh, nice,’ he said as they waited for the landlord to arrive to let them in.
‘And she’s not frightening,’ Kim defended. ‘Not everyone is warm and cuddly with their emotions on show. Some folks are a bit more private, you know.’
‘Oh, I know,’ he said, meaningfully, as a male headed towards them jangling a set of keys.
He was younger than she’d expected, dressed in jeans and a dirty tee shirt.
‘My dad said to ask when we can have the flat back?’ he asked, as a form of greeting.
‘Not until we’ve finished with it,’ Kim answered in kind.
They followed him up the stairs silently.
He opened the door and stood aside.
‘I’ll be downstairs so just let me know when…’
‘If you could remain at the entrance, a forensic team is already on the way, Mr?…’
‘Dodds,’ he answered, shaking his head. ‘My dad ain’t gonna like that.’
Kim shrugged. ‘Then your dad should have come to tell us that himself,’ she said, stepping inside.
* * *
She initially wondered if the landlord had already been inside and cleared it and then realised it was just sparsely furnished.
Mrs Cordell had revealed that her husband used the property just a few times each month when he’d been consulting at Russells Hall Hospital on a part-time basis. Being tired after a long day and all that, he’d said at the time, although the fifteen miles or so drive home to Hartlebury was hardly long distance.
Despite the fact he’d had the flat for six years there was little to show that anyone stayed there and apparently Mrs Cordell had not visited once. Kim hadn’t thought to ask about his sons.
A sofa and single chair faced a television in the corner. There were no throws or rugs or ornaments. Not even a newspaper or magazine. And the guy had been living here full-time for more than a month since his wife had thrown him out.
A breakfast bar separated the space from the kitchen, which was neat and orderly except for a few items of crockery on the drainer.
She pushed open the only door from the main room and stopped dead.
‘Bryant,’ she called.
He came to stand behind her.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said.
The bedside cabinet had been tipped forward, the lamp lay on the ground.
The quilt cover was ruffled and hanging all over to the right side. It was marked with a few spots of blood, and a small pool had stained the carpet.
A suitcase had been toppled to the ground, and the occasional table beneath it had been broken. Beyond the bed she could see a smashed photo frame face down amongst a sea of shattered glass. The wardrobe door was open but the clothes hung in full view. A dirty pair of trousers and two shirts were crumpled in the corner.
‘Inspector,’ she heard from the hallway.
She turned.
‘Wasn’t expecting you, Mitch,’ she said. He’d been on his way to the main residence.
‘Thought there was more chance of finding something here and, looking at your face, it appears I was right.’
‘In here,’ she said, nodding towards the bedroom.
He came to stand beside her as two crime scene officers finally caught up with him.
‘Sent a couple of guys over to Hartlebury to collect anything of interest, but I suspect anything that’s gonna help you is right here,’ he said, as his eyes travelled around the carnage of the room.
She nodded her agreement.
‘Give me just a few minutes and you can come in,’ he said, reaching into his bag for a fresh overall.
She stepped away and walked around the living room.
‘Ah, here it is,’ Kim said, spying a computer bag that had been hidden from view beside the single chair. She’d known Cordell had to have a laptop somewhere. One of the techies nodded that he’d seen it.
Bryant circled the room from the other direction, and they met behind the sofa.
‘Sparse,’ he observed. ‘And definitely no blue carpet.’
She’d already noticed the cream carpet throughout the property that was no match for the fibres Keats had found. ‘Certainly expected to be going back home some time soon,’ she agreed. ‘Bed sheets,’ she said to another techie who was removing evidence bags.
‘You think he was sleeping with someone here?’ Bryant asked.
‘His wife does,’ Kim answered. ‘And she seems pretty astute to me. Sex has been the motive for many a murder,’ she said, glancing at the door as a thought occurred to her.
She frowned.
‘How’d he get in?’ she asked. There was no sign of forced entry, and the landlord’s son had unlocked the door to let them in. ‘Either Cordell or his attacker took the time to lock the door as they left?’ she observed.
‘He could have invited his attacker in,’ Bryant said. ‘Could have been someone he knew, but I see what you mean about locking up afterwards.’
‘Okay, Inspector,’ Mitch called from the bedroom.
He handed her and Bryant a pair of blue slippers.
She put them on before entering.
‘Well, whoever it was, why did he invite them into his bedroom?’ she asked, thinking out loud.
‘Or perhaps, he was already here?’ Bryant said, opening the door to the en suite.
/>
Positioning-wise Bryant had a point. The location of the blood pool and the angle of the fallen suitcase would indicate that Cordell’s back was to the en suite, so the killer could have been hiding there.
‘But how did he get in?’ she insisted. They were on the third floor and the locks were intact.
Bryant shrugged.
‘Hey, hang on,’ Kim said to Mitch as he gingerly deposited the gold frame into a bag.
He held it up so she could see the blood on the top right edge.
‘No, turn it round,’ she said.
Mitch did so.
Kim raised one eyebrow at her colleague.
‘Okay, Bryant, why’d he take the photo?’
Sixteen
Oh, Cordell, you fat, arrogant bastard, you were everything I’d dreamed of and more.
It was so easy to get a copy of your key and let myself into your flat, position myself exactly where I wanted to be and just wait.
I could have hit you so much harder with the photo frame. The muscles in my arms felt the rage in my stomach and ached to swing it harder and bash your fucking brains in. Quick. Done. But I refrained, exerted more self-control than I knew I had, given that you were right there in front of me. But it wasn’t the picture in my head. I didn’t want to kill you quickly, from behind, without you knowing what you’d done, the depth of pain you’d caused, you fucker.
It was important to me that you saw my face. That you knew and understood.
That first blow was only a stunner, to fell the beast temporarily.
You writhed and groaned dramatically even though it was barely a scratch. Eventually you managed to haul your bulk onto your back and that’s when you saw me, recognised me as your addled brain finally caught up.
I put my boot on your chest and explained the situation so that you knew resistance was futile. This wasn’t going to be a fight, you were not going to challenge me and you were going to have to make a choice.
Once you understood these things I hauled you to your feet. You were compliant and I guided you through the flat, locking the door behind us.
I drove you to the park and walked you to the spot. You tried to talk to me, to reason with me. To give you another chance. You didn’t fight me. That was sensible.
I told you to drop to your knees and then I gave you the choice again, and for once you did the decent thing. You made the right decision.
I stood behind you, the knife poised at your throat and it felt good. It felt right and not one moment of regret passed through me as I dug the blade into your flesh.
For once you were a real man and sacrificed yourself given the choice that I offered.
But I hope you’re up there watching and understanding that it was all for nothing.
Because there really was no choice at all.
Seventeen
‘Okay, guv, wanna tell me why I’m driving back out into the sticks again?’ Bryant asked, as they headed through Blakedown for the third time.
‘Need to find out why matey boy left Oakwood. He’d been top banana there for fifteen years.’
‘You think he pissed someone off at the clinic? Enough to do this to him on top of losing his job?’
‘Dunno, Bryant,’ she said, staring out of the window, her signal to her colleague that she didn’t want to talk any more.
The subtle, irrefutable link to Heathcrest and their last major investigation kept the shadow of Dawson right there in the back of her mind. His involvement with the school, his determination in following a lead and his eventual death in the place of a twelve-year-old boy.
She was honest enough to admit, if only to herself, that there were times she wished that hadn’t been the case. And then she smothered the thought with a blanket of guilt because the boy had been saved and her colleague was a hero. But he was still dead.
She spent the rest of the journey revisiting every aspect of the case, looking for the clues, wondering where she could have prevented it.
Maybe if she’d been paying more attention to the secret societies he’d been investigating she’d have seen what was going to happen, or if she’d pulled him off the line of enquiry earlier. And then a twelve-year-old boy would be dead, a small voice in her conscience shouted up. And if she was a better person she’d care more about that fact.
‘We all miss him, guv,’ Bryant said, quietly from beside her.
She didn’t bother to argue. He knew her well enough by now.
‘There’s just one thing I wanna say,’ Bryant murmured as they pulled on to the Oakland Hospital car park.
‘Go on,’ Kim said.
‘If I’m ever hurt, I wanna come here. I don’t care about the forty-minute drive. I’ll take my chances.’
Kim smiled and appreciated her colleague’s tact in leaving her and her thoughts alone, and in changing the subject.
Bryant eased to a stop at one of the many free car parking spaces in front of a row of planter troughs that were awash with daffodils, tulips and crocus blooms.
The four-storey red-brick building was attractive and a few planted window boxes had been added to the ground floor to further soften the exterior. Kim remembered that the ground level was for administration with a hydro pool, physiotherapy suite, restaurant, café and shop. The second floor housed the consultation rooms and the third and fourth were taken up with surgical theatres, treatment centres and en-suite rooms for patients. She could certainly understand Bryant’s point.
A maintenance guy surrounded by warning barriers and a mate footing the ladder, who was changing a bulb behind the letter ‘d’ in the Oakland sign above the door, were closing off one of the sets of automatic doors into the building.
Kim stepped aside for a young woman guiding out a small boy with red eyes, and a colourful plaster in the crook of his arm.
Beyond the foyer the space opened up into an area with individual soft chairs in groups around coffee tables. The wheat-coloured chairs matched the oatmeal carpet and Kim wondered if she’d been swallowed by a box of cereal. She couldn’t help but wonder if the interior designer had focussed his attention on just one colour card. Even the reproduction paintings had biscuity tones to be picked out.
She approached the desk, to a woman waiting with a ready smile and poised fingers.
‘I don’t have an appointment,’ Kim said showing her identification. ‘But I’d like to see the person who was Gordon Cordell’s boss,’ she added.
The woman’s smile never faltered as she picked up the phone receiver, pressed a few keys on the phone and explained there were police officers at the front desk. All done so quietly that no one waiting in the peaceful reception area heard a thing above the gentle, non-invasive instrumental music.
Within a minute a smartly dressed male in his late fifties appeared from the corridor to the right marked for authorised personnel only.
His hair was pure white and thick atop a handsome distinguished face.
He offered a hand and a smile. ‘Josh Hendon, Managing Director. How may I help?’
Kim took the cool firm grip briefly, his title reminding her that this particular healthcare facility was a profit-making business. His smile matched that of the receptionist; bright and open. She had a vision of slides being shown on initiation day. This is how you smile at Oakland. Even if you’re imparting bad news, maintain this level of smileyness.
‘We’d like to talk to you about Gordon Cordell,’ she said.
Immediately his face filled with tension. He nodded and guided them through the double doors. They passed closed doors on both sides as they headed along a carpeted hallway to the office at the end, the door bearing his nameplate in brass.
And a very nice office it was too, she thought, as he stood aside for them to enter.
‘Please come in, take a seat,’ he said, moving to the left of the room where there was a full percolator of coffee.
‘May I get either of you a drink? I can get tea if you’d prefer.’
‘No, thank you,’ they sa
id together. They’d recently grabbed a cuppa and some lunch at the Little Chef in Hagley.
‘Is it true?’ he asked, taking a seat behind a teak-coloured desk. ‘The way he died, I mean?’
‘It would have been quick,’ Bryant said, rather than answering the question.
‘Poor bugger,’ he said, shaking his head.
Kim took a seat on one of the velvet upholstered chairs and glanced at the certificates on the wall behind the man. Nothing health or medical that she could see but a whole lot of business credentials.
‘May I ask where you went to school, Mr Hendon?’ Kim asked.
‘I started at Coldgrove Junior and Infant School in Hertfordshire before attending high school and sixth form college in Dorset and then Cambridge University for my masters in business and economics.’ He met her gaze. ‘I’m not from Heathcrest and I’m not in any secret society.’
‘But you know of them?’ she asked.
‘Not personally. I don’t know who the members are, at least I don’t think I do; the secret clubs were mentioned in the press following the murders at Heathcrest and the death of that police officer who—’
‘Dawson,’ Bryant interjected. ‘His name was Kevin Dawson.’
Hendon nodded. ‘I was brought in six weeks ago by the board of directors to repair the damaged reputation of the clinic following unproven accusations against Doctor Cordell.’
‘They weren’t,’ Kim said, now confident they weren’t dealing with a member of the secret club.
‘Weren’t what?’ he asked.
‘Groundless accusations,’ she answered. ‘Doctor Cordell did perform illegal terminations. I’ll rephrase. We know of at least one but there may have been others.’
‘As he was not charged or found guilty of any crime I’ll choose to stay on the right side of slanderous comments,’ he said with a hint of humour before frowning. ‘Aren’t you the detective that accused him?’ she heard for the third time in one day.
She briefly wondered if that’s what her career would come down to. Would she be remembered for the one charge she couldn’t make stick against the hundreds of charges that she had?
Fatal Promise: A totally gripping and heart-stopping serial-killer thriller Page 6