‘My father sometimes uses them to clean.’
Flowers shook his head at his client who had obviously broken the ‘no comment’ rule but if he felt like talking Kim intended to make the most of it.
‘And why would it be covered in blood?’ she asked.
That did seem to surprise him but he covered quickly.
‘Nosebleed, shaving…’
‘Which is fine if it’s your father’s blood, which is being analysed right now; speaking of which. Where is your father, Mr Mancini?’
He shrugged.
She nodded towards the tape.
‘I don’t know.’
She’d had a plan coming into the room. She had known that she wanted to show him the process of building the evidence against him.
She didn’t believe for a second his story about getting the shoes from lost property. The blood on the glove was still being analysed, but there was one piece of evidence that he could not refute and this was her final play.
What she wanted from him now, what she needed from him now to silence Bryant’s earworm was a full and frank confession.
She wanted to hear him admit to the brutal murder of Gordon Cordell, to smothering Phyllis Mansell and to viciously stabbing her daughter twenty-nine times. And the murder of Saul Cordell would be a happy bonus.
She needed it, so she could stand outside this room, front up to her colleague and tell him he’d been wrong.
And now to pose the question that had been on her lips since the earlier call from Mitch.
‘I’m curious, Mr Mancini, about something. You see, we found a hair at the very first crime scene and I’d like you to explain why that hair matches the one taken from you when you first got here.’
The colour drained from his face. He swallowed. He licked his lips; he looked to his lawyer, who nodded, and then looked down.
Here it comes, she thought. Readying herself for a moment of victory.
‘So, how would you like to explain?’ Kim asked again.
He took a breath and replied.
‘No comment.’
Ninety
Stacey shook her hand free and turned on Emma’s mother.
‘What the hell have you done with her?’
‘What do you?…’
‘You knew Emma had Jessie’s phone but you pretended you didn’t and…’
‘I didn’t know about the phone,’ she protested.
‘But you knew Emma had hit her best friend and you covered it up. You wouldn’t even let me speak to her to ask her about Jessie. Now, I understand about protecting your child but what did she do to Jessie?’ Stacey asked. ‘And what have you helped her cover up?’
Panic and fear shaped her face.
‘There’s nothing, I swear…’
‘What happened between Jessie and Emma on Sunday night that you don’t want me to know about? Was there some kind of incident and Emma went too far? Hurt Jessie badly?’
‘No, Emma would never hurt Jessie,’ she said, moving in front of the caravan door.
‘Mrs Weston, if you don’t move from in front of that door I will physically remove you and worry about the search warrant later,’ Stacey said, meaningfully. She had the feeling that inside this caravan was the body of a fifteen-year-old girl.
Mrs Weston paled and sighed heavily.
‘I can’t do this any longer. I can’t protect her. I’ve tried and I can’t do any more,’ she said, moving away from the door.
Stacey’s hand moved back towards the door handle, and Mrs Weston didn’t try and stop her. When she spoke her voice was a defeated whisper.
‘Once you open that door we can never go back. I won’t be able to protect her any more. It’s all over.’
The tears began to fall from her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Jessie,’ she said, loudly.
‘Wh-what?’ Stacey said, her palm still on the handle. ‘Jessie’s alive?’
The tears stopped falling, and horror bent her features.
‘Of, course she’s alive. You didn’t think… oh my god… how could you even?…’
‘Mrs Weston, you’re really gonna have to talk fast.’
The woman glanced at Stacey’s hand on the door of the caravan. Stacey dropped it for now.
Mrs Weston moved a couple of steps away and lowered her voice.
‘I know you’re not going to believe me but Jessie’s mother has been making her ill for years.’
Mrs Weston appeared to pause for the exclamation of disbelief.
‘Go on,’ Stacey said.
‘It’s got a special, fancy name but the top and bottom of it is that her mother does it to get attention.’
‘I’m listening,’ Stacey said.
‘You already know something, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘That’s why you’re hearing me out. You wouldn’t believe me if you hadn’t already got a suspicion.’
‘Please continue,’ Stacey said, admitting nothing.
‘It’s a tough thing to believe,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve known Jessie since she was five years old and even I struggled to believe her mother could do something like that. But then I started to think about how sickly she was as a child. There was always something wrong with her and then she seemed to get better for a while.’
‘When her brother was alive?’
‘You do know, don’t you,’ she asked with relief. ‘You’ve looked at this.’
‘Please, carry on,’ Stacey said.
‘When Justin, that poor little boy, died, it all started up again. But it was different. Her mother was coming up with more and more serious claims. Eventually I asked Jessie about it, and she broke down. It took a lot for her to admit that she thought her mother was making her ill. She actually preferred to think that she was ill. And then last week she received this appointment for the angiogram and it frightened her half to death. She’s tried to tell people, but no one will listen to her. She has no control over the procedure because she’s a minor. For another three days,’ she said, gravely.
‘So, that was the plan?’ Stacey asked, ‘To hide her until the threat of the procedure was over.’
‘Until Monday,’ she said. ‘When Jessie turns sixteen and has some say over what happens to her.’
‘Mrs Weston, why did Emma slap her?’
‘She’s not proud of what she did, officer. She loves that girl like a sister. You really think we’d be doing this if we didn’t care a great deal about her? Jessie had decided she wanted to tell her boyfriend about the plan, and Emma got angry. She knew how much trouble I’d be in if anyone found out. She ran after Jessie and apologised. They made up. Jessie went to the caravan as planned, and Emma came home.’
The endless trips up and down the path to take the girl supplies and to check on her.
Again, Stacey touched the door handle.
‘Please, if you do that you’ll have to take her. I understand that but please know that she will be back with her mother within an hour and then none of us can protect her.’
‘But I have to know.’
Mrs Weston stood closer to the door and spoke loudly.
‘I would imagine that if Jessie were alive she might find some way to let us know.’
A single knock sounded on the side of the caravan.
‘And if she were healthy, and fed and feeling safe…’
Another single knock.
‘But I can’t just walk away and pretend—’
‘You know she’s safe,’ Mrs Weston pleaded. ‘I swear to you that first thing on Monday morning I’ll bring her to the station and you can ask her anything. She’s in no danger. I won’t let any harm come to her but if you take her back…’
‘I need to know it’s her,’ Stacey said. For all she knew it could be Emma knocking back, sitting beside the dead body of her friend.
‘Ask something,’ Mrs Weston said.
Stacey thought about the girl’s medical history. She could picture the list of procedures as though it was imprinted on her brain.<
br />
‘How old were you when you had your first overnight stay in hospital?’ she asked.
Six knocks.
Correct.
‘How many times have you been put on an intravenous feeding drip?’
Three knocks.
Correct.
‘Damn,’ Stacey said aloud, wondering where in the handbook she’d find instructions for this.
The police officer in her cried out to open the door and do what was procedurally correct. To see the girl in the flesh, alive and healthy. Take her to the station and stamp the case closed.
And the human being in her knew that beyond that door was a young girl terrified to go home to a mother who had abused her for years.
She had started this week with Jessie as a runaway. No one had pushed to find the girl except her.
‘She’s safe. I won’t let anyone hurt her,’ Mrs Weston breathed. ‘I promise.’
Stacey prayed for some kind of sign. Some kind of guidance as to what she should do in this situation.
Suddenly her phone rang, startling them both.
She answered
‘Stace, it’s Penn. Boss wants you back here. Now.’
Ninety-One
‘Okay, guys, Mancini ain’t talking, so what now?’ Kim asked, grumpily.
With the weight of evidence against him the guy should have been either desperate to confess or quaking in his shoes. He was neither. ‘Look, folks, we either bugger off on a day trip to the seaside while we wait for the blood results on the glove or we take another look at this thing,’ she said.
‘But the fibres…’ Stacey said.
‘Ignore them,’ she said.
‘And the boot print?’ Penn asked.
‘Ignore it,’ she said, barely able to believe her own ears.
She saw Stacey and Penn shoot a look at each other and part of her agreed with them. But the other part agreed with Bryant.
‘And bear in mind that Nat Mansell said something about a choice,’ Bryant piped up.
‘So, I want you two here thinking outside the box, while Bryant and I go chase up these forensic results from Mitch.’
‘Okay, boss,’ Stacey said as Kim grabbed her jacket.
Bryant followed her out of the room.
‘Happy now?’ she asked, as they headed down the stairs.
He shrugged. ‘You’re probably right about Mancini but, be honest, guv, have you ever worked a case that’s thrown up so much forensic evidence?’
‘I get it,’ she said. But by the same token she’d never worked a case where she’d chosen to ignore all the forensic evidence either.
‘But why are you so hung up on Nat Mansell’s comment about making a choice? It was just something she said.’
‘No, guv,’ Bryant said, opening the driver’s door. ‘It was the only thing she said.’
Ninety-Two
‘So, what did the boss say about Jessie Ryan?’ Penn asked.
Stacey had updated the boss as soon as she’d got back, ending with her explanation of why she hadn’t entered the caravan. The boss had listened, her face showing a mixture of surprise and something that looked like pride.
‘So, no one was looking for her except you, cos you refused to let it go?’ the boss had asked.
Stacey had nodded.
‘And you feel that the girl is in danger if she’s returned home in the next couple of days?’
Stacey hadn’t hesitated in answering that question.
‘And you’re convinced Jessie is fit and well and in the care of a responsible adult?’
Stacey had thought about Mrs Weston’s fierce protection of a child she had known almost all her life.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Okay, Monday morning it is,’ the boss had said.
‘You know, Penn, I think she trusts me,’ Stacey said, feeling the weight of that expectation land heavily on her shoulders, and she prayed to God that she’d called it right.
Penn sat back in his chair and eyed her thoughtfully. ‘So, this happen a lot around here? You find a missing girl and leave her missing, and then do a complete turnaround on a case that’s almost complete when the evidence is telling you exactly what you want to hear?’
Stacey hid her smile at his summary. ‘Isn’t that how it happens everywhere?’ she asked.
Penn raised an eyebrow. ‘Not everywhere. But okay, out the box we come,’ he said, getting up and heading for the blank whiteboard on the wall by the door.
He took the pen and wrote the name of each victim in a corner. He drew a straight line from Gordon Cordell to Saul Cordell and another straight line from Nat Mansell down to the name of Phyllis Mansell.
Stacey watched as he labelled the lines ‘family’ and then put two lines stretching from Cordell to Mansell, one marked ‘complaint’ and one marked ‘affair’.
In the middle of the board he wrote the names of Giovanni and Angelo Mancini.
He drew a line from Angelo to ‘complaint’, which linked him then to Cordell and Mansell.
He listed the evidence. The boot took a line down to Giovanni. The hair took a line down to Giovanni. The fibres took a line down to both of them. He wrote ‘blood’ and a question mark.
He stepped away and turned to her. ‘Anything else?’
She shook her head as a feeling of unease stole over her.
‘You know I’m starting to see what Bryant means. Looking at it like that puts a whole new slant on it. The family members. What the hell did they do?’
She carried on looking.
‘We’ve taken everything at face value; the complaint, the affair, the evidence. We’ve focussed on everything we know: that they were involved in a complaint together. That they were having an affair together.
‘And yet we’ve forgotten a very important third link,’ Penn said, tapping the pen against his lip.
Stacey nodded, knowing exactly what he was getting at.
They had forgotten that the couple worked together.
Ninety-Three
‘Carry on up to Mitch,’ Kim said, spying someone sitting in the hospital cafeteria.
Bryant followed her gaze and nodded his understanding.
Kim approached the table of a man staring down into a black coffee.
‘Hey,’ she said, sitting opposite Luke Cordell.
He lifted his head and smiled weakly.
‘Sorry about your brother,’ she said and meant it. Admittedly, he had been less than courteous this week but his anger had been born of grief. She could only imagine what it had been like to see his brother’s broken body in the hospital bed only to watch him slip away.
‘How’s your mum?’
He shrugged. ‘Trying to stay strong for me and I’m trying to do the same for her. We only have each other left. Our family has halved in just a few days.’
‘Where is your mum?’
‘In the chapel. We had to come sign some papers, and we don’t seem to be able to leave. It’s so final, like we’re leaving him behind.’
Kim understood. While they were still at the hospital they were close to where Gordon Cordell had worked and where Saul Cordell had died. They were still linked to the events. Once they walked out of the hospital for good they had to begin dealing with the ‘never agains’ as she liked to call them. Never again would Saul walk into the family home. Never again would they be able to just call him on the phone. Remaining at the hospital delayed that final acceptance.
And once they left they would have to adjust to the new landscape of their family.
‘Did you always know about the affair?’ Kim asked, gently.
‘We all did,’ he said. ‘Although it was more than an affair,’ he said. ‘They’d been at it for years.’
‘But he wanted to come home, didn’t he?’ Kim asked.
‘Only so he could have his cake and eat it,’ he answered. ‘He wanted to come back for the comforts of a home he bought, and my mother knew that. He had no intention of giving up the affair. My mother also knew that.
’
Kim had the sudden sense that this family had endured a lot of pain because of Gordon Cordell’s selfishness.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he said.
‘Of course.’
‘I overheard one of the nurses who’d spoken to the police say something about not being sure what happened to my brother was an accident. Is that true? I haven’t said anything to Mum but I’d like to know.’
Kim thought for a minute before responding.
‘The incident with your brother is being handled by the traffic collision team. To my knowledge it isn’t under investigation and CID has no involvement.’
‘I sensed a great big “but” hanging at the end of that sentence.’
‘Most detectives don’t believe all that much in coincidences,’ she said.
‘Are you saying?…’
‘I’m saying that if someone else was responsible for the death of your brother, we won’t rest until we find them.’
Sensing he was getting no more, he nodded his understanding.
She touched his arm lightly and stood.
‘Give my condolences to your mum,’ she said.
‘Thank you, I will,’ he said, as she turned away.
She paused as he spoke quietly.
‘You know, strange as it sounds I do get some small comfort from the fact they’re now together.’
‘Despite everything your father did?’ she asked.
‘Saul always managed to forgive him. My brother had a generous disposition and tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m afraid I wasn’t quite so charitable.’
Kim had nothing left to offer and walked away, leaving the young man alone with his regret.
Ninety-Four
‘Okay, what you got?’ Stacey asked.
‘Nothing yet, you?’
They had agreed that Penn would continue to work through the van registration number owners, looking for any obvious links to Gordon Cordell, Nat Mansell or the hospital.
Stacey had agreed to interrogate hospital records.
‘In total, I’ve got 120 procedures they worked on together over the years,’ she said. ‘A mixture of all kinds of procedures but many being hysterectomy or voluntary sterilisation.’
Fatal Promise: A totally gripping and heart-stopping serial-killer thriller Page 24