by E C Deacon
“Don Hart caused this, Mr Lewis. He’s a liar! A liar and a cheat! He was dating Laura Fell. He was sleeping with her and at the same time he was phoning Gina, turning up at her house at night. I was jealous, I admit it.”
Angus, who’d never even heard of Don Hart, had heard enough and cut him short. “Were you spying on them?”
“I had to check him out to protect Gina. The man’s a crook. He’s being investigated by the Inland Revenue.”
“Really? And how do you know that?”
“I used to work for HMRC. I have contacts. He’s suspected of making fraudulent benefit claims. He’s also been running a dog betting scam. The police are involved.”
Angus licked his cracked lips and wondered where he’d left his glass of malt, thinking that as soon as he got rid of Colin, he was going to have to phone his wife and relate the episode, and to do that he was going to need another stiff drink.
Later that night, Colin would need a stiff drink too. Because Celia Lewis’ steel-haired driver stood on his doorstep carrying a court order banning him from approaching or contacting the Lewis family again. Furious, he slammed the door in his face and snatched up the phone to vent his anger to Frieda Cole, the only true friend he felt he could now rely on.
And in that moment the spell of the “coven” and its weave of friendships truly began to crumble.
Megan Howell had resorted to drinking Night Nurse to help her sleep. It worked up to a point, but left her feeling hungover in the morning and did nothing to stop the real cause of her anxiety: the abusive phone calls, sometimes as many as a dozen a night.
She’d contacted British Telecom to try and block them but they came from different mobiles and withheld numbers. Most were silent or just breathing, but some were disgusting, slurping, grunting, orgasmic sounds. She kept a diary, noting down the date and time of each call, gathering evidence that she could never use, because she already knew who was behind them and couldn’t go to the police for risk of incriminating herself.
Keeping her secret, living with it every day, was eating away at her from the inside and now she was coughing blood. Her GP had booked her in for an endoscopy but Megan knew her real disease couldn’t be cured by medical intervention. She was being punished for her crime and deep in her heart she knew she deserved it.
Three years previously, she was the highly-respected deputy head of Southgate College, a private co-educational school on the outskirts of Swansea; then, in what she called “a moment of madness”, she started an affair with a fifteen-year-old pupil. The girl had subsequently taken an overdose when selfies, intended for Megan, were found on her mobile. Fortunately for Megan, she’d refused to press charges and, with no other proof, the police were forced to drop the case. But Megan had been persuaded to resign and left the school and Swansea in disgrace.
She’d moved to Putney in South West London because it was an area where she knew no one. She intended to remain anonymous and rebuild her self-esteem and life. Giving up teaching was hard but she found a job in a small language college, for foreign students learning English, on the Lower Richmond Road. Slowly she began to make friends through FrontRow and realised there were a lot of single women of her age looking for companionship. She wasn’t interested in them physically; her preference had always been younger women. Teenagers, not children. She wasn’t a paedophile; the very thought was repellent to her. But girls on the verge of womanhood, beginning to explore their bodies and sexuality, beguiled her. In her mind, she wasn’t predatory. She never touched anyone who didn’t want to be touched and never made the first move. But after Swansea, she knew she had to stop and, hard as it had been, she had. But then, the disgusting phone calls had started.
She pushed her foam plugs deeper into her ears and tried to ignore the insistent ringing phone. Finally, she was forced to give up. It wasn’t her stalker; it was Frieda Cole.
There was no celebration of Gina’s life. Instead, the core members of the group, minus Colin Gould and Laura, who hadn’t been invited, gathered to discuss Colin’s behaviour and his extraordinary claim that Laura had been left Gina’s house in her will.
They met at The Wharf in Teddington. It was still early but the bar area, with its huge deco mirror reflecting the happy punters, was already buzzing.
“Shall we sit at a table? It’ll be more private,” suggested Frieda, who felt uneasy about attending without Laura.
The group milled around, looking for a suitable table. The maître d’ saw them and beckoned them into the conservatory, indicating a table with a river view.
“Enjoy your meal, ladies.”
Forced to eat when they only wanted a drink, they ordered from the Early Bird two-course menu and made small talk until the food arrived. Frieda ordered a large glass of Chilean Sauvignon Blanc, but no one else was drinking; either because they were driving or out of deference to the seriousness of the discussion they were about to have.
Megan was the first to broach the subject. “Can I just say, this was supposed to be a celebration of Gina’s life and it’s sad that Colin’s behaviour has tarnished it. Anyway,” she said, holding up her glass of water in a toast. “To Gina.”
The group reciprocated as one, clinking glasses and waiting for Frieda to speak. She sipped her glass of gooseberry flavoured wine, wishing it were vodka, and said, bereft of anything else, “Colin is a sensitive man, sometimes oversensitive–” “Sensitive?” Iris interrupted. “He’s a βλάκας – an idiot. I’m sorry, I know he’s a friend of yours, but what the hell was he thinking? Having a drink with someone, going to the cinema a few times and sharing a pizza, is hardly love. I mean, come on, he’s asked us all out at one time or another. He’s creepy.”
“He says they were sleeping together,” said Frieda, more in explanation than in Colin’s defence.
“What? When? No way. We’d have known.”
“Gina did say she’d met someone else. Remember, in Ibiza? Someone new and special?”
“Someone new couldn’t be Colin,” corrected Megan. “I mean, I accept that he’s upset, Frieda – we all are – but all these accusations about Don Hart… He’s completely delusional.”
“Okay. Look, he made a mistake, a bad mistake. He knows that and he’s embarrassed–”
“He should be.” Iris snorted.
“I’ve asked him to write a letter of apology to the Lewis family.”
Megan and Iris said nothing but their exchange of looks spoke volumes. Frieda felt her shoulders and spirits sink. She was tired of trying to defend the indefensible, tired of trying to defend her motives. She just wanted to drink and numb herself to dreamless sleep. She took another hit from her glass of wine and tried again.
“I just think that the least we can do is to try and apologise.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s not us that need to apologise. And I’m certainly not going to do that to a woman who was partially responsible for her daughter’s suicide.”
“That’s an appalling thing to say, Megan, you don’t know that–”
“I know she hated her mother–”
“She didn’t hate her mother! Their personalities clashed. They were too similar–”
“Gina told me she hadn’t spoken to her in over a month.”
“Her mother helped her buy her house! Why would she do that if she didn’t love her?”
“She was trying to control her. Buy her affection.”
“That’s ridiculous! How can you say that?” Frieda could feel her throat constricting. She took a calming breath and, choosing her words carefully, continued, “Look, Megan, you don’t have children–”
“That was my personal choice! It has nothing to do with this.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just saying… bringing up kids… it’s hard. Despite everything, all the problems, I know Gina’s mother loved her.”
“So why did she kill herself and make Laura the executor of her will if she wasn’t trying to get back at her?” said Iris
, siding with Megan.
“We don’t know she did. We’ve only got Colin’s word for that and you said yourself he’s delusional.”
“Actually, I didn’t. Megan did.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! Who cares who bloody said it? She’s just lost her daughter, Iris, try and show a bit of compassion for once, can’t you?”
Heads turned at nearby tables at the sudden outburst. Iris and Megan retreated into silence. A waiter materialised at the bar door. Frieda saw him and downed the rest of her wine in one long deliberate draught, then, with as much dignity as she could muster, stood and walked past him and headed for the sanctuary of the bar.
The waiter approached the table and cleared the plates. Megan and Iris sat in silence, sipping their iced tap water as the table was re-set for a dessert they weren’t having, until finally he nodded and, thank God, made his way out.
“I’m surprised Laura didn’t mention being made Gina’s executor. I mean, we’re all supposed to be friends,” said Iris, still smarting over the way Frieda had spoken to her.
“She’s probably embarrassed. I mean, it looks a bit odd, her being at Gina’s for no apparent reason on the night she committed suicide and telling the police that there was someone else inside when there wasn’t.”
“And being left the house,” said Iris. “Which is probably why she split up with Don Hart.”
Frieda watched the grisly soap opera reflected in the huge mirror behind the bar, and wondered if Gina could have had any real idea of the devastation her suicide would cause… not only to her family but to her closest friends.
Empathy
Helen’s briefing to Everton in the detective’s room had overrun. DS Jack Clarke, a man who made sure he publicly shared his superior’s views but in private had no problem slagging him off, had insisted on sitting in. Clarke had been the lead on the original investigation, which had found no links between the missing women and would prefer not to be proven wrong, especially by a woman who had a high opinion of herself and her looks, which in his opinion were only mid-range.
Clarke had developed a habit of rating everything on a scale of one to ten. His Philippine wife was a five, their doll-like daughter an eight. DCI Teal an out-of-his-depth four. And know-all Detective Constable Lake – who had a nice arse but knew it – a, being generous, six.
Helen had found her rating, or rather Everton had, on a yellow Post-it note stuck on her back at the end of her first day at the nick. It had been the birth of her and Everton’s relationship and conversely set the tone for hers with Clarke. From then on, she referred to Clarke as “Nobby” or, in private to Everton, “the knob”.
Today, she was demonstrating her resentment by trying to ignore him, which seemed to Everton a pretty juvenile thing to do. But Clarke was such an arrogant prick he didn’t even realise. He sat back from the briefing table, laid out with the photographic evidence, rubbing the toe of his black cowboy boot against the leg of his skinny chinos, calculating whether he needed to get involved or not.
One by one, Helen held up the photos of the missing women and ran briefly through the earlier investigation into their disappearances. And, one by one, Clarke, interjected to question her conclusions.
“The similarities between all the missing women and Tessa Hayes are striking,” said Helen. “They’re all in their forties, divorced and living alone–”
“I wouldn’t call them striking.”
“And they were all using online dating sites,” Helen persisted.
“One in five relationships start online. There’s nothing uncommon in that.”
“No, but all of the women disappeared the night they’d arranged to meet their online date. We know this because we found a diary entry on a laptop we recovered from Kate Holmes’ flat at the time.”
“That’s only proof of when she disappeared, not the other two women.”
“If you let me finish, I’ll get to that.”
“Be my guest,” said Clarke, and stretched out on his seat to wait.
“Thank you.” Helen turned back to Everton and caught him checking his watch. “Do you have to be somewhere, PC Bowe? Or am I boring you too?”
“Neither,” said Bowe; lying on one count.
“Okay. We know this because the mobile phone records of Francis Cole, missing woman two, and Barbara Crane, missing woman three, both show a number of calls to an ‘unknown’ mobile number the day they disappeared.”
“The same number?” asked Bowe, interested now.
“No. But significantly, both numbers were unavailable the next day.”
“Probably pay-as-you-go and he shut them down.”
“Exactly. He also removed his profile from the dating sites–”
“Hold on.” Clarke could feel the weight of evidence building but wasn’t going to give up without a fight. “You only found evidence of that on Holmes’ laptop and we found nothing on the other two women.”
“They both used iPhones which have never been found, neither have their purses and credit cards.”
“Which we checked. In both cases their credit cards were used after their disappearance.”
“Probably trying to cover his tracks,” said Bowe, not buying Clarke’s explanation. “How long were they used for?”
“Less than a week. Not long enough for us to trace them, and in different locations. And Tessa Hayes’ iPad, purse and credit cards were taken too.”
“And never used – and she didn’t disappear – so where does that leave your theory? Supposition is not evidence, love.”
“Thank you, Nobby, your scepticism has been noted.”
Nobby? Everton waited for the shit to hit the fan. It didn’t take long. Clarke heaved himself out of his chair and took a menacing step towards Helen.
“I’ve got your number, Constable. I’d advise you to remember that.”
“I know. Six. I’ve seen it on my little yellow Post-it.”
“Once a smartarse, always a smartarse,” sneered Clarke. “People don’t like that.”
“Yeah, well, ‘people’ better get used to it.”
“Ding dong,” announced Everton, striking an imaginary bell. “End of round three.”
Clarke turned and shot him a withering look.
It bounced right off Everton. “What’s in the evidence bag? The one with the little yellow Post-it label?”
Helen allowed herself a small smile, and handed him the clear plastic bag.
“We found this on the riverbank, near where Tessa Hayes was discovered. We think she was dumped out of a car. There’s a bridge a hundred metres upstream – and before you ask, there’s no CCTV coverage of the road.”
“Hmn,” said Bowe, placing the shit-encrusted blanket aside and picking up a smaller evidence bag. “What’s this?” He emptied the meagre contents onto the table, picking up the solitary, downy white feather. “Is this from a duck or something?”
“No. A dove. We’ve had it analysed.”
None the wiser, Everton placed it back in the evidence bag, resealed it, handed it back to her and said, “Okay. Are we done?”
“Yes. First thing tomorrow you start on the pubs and bars in Kew and the surrounding area and see if anyone recognises Tessa Hayes’ photograph. I’ve made a list. All she remembers is the name had something to do with ‘gardens’. I’ll start interviewing the families of the other missing women–”
“We did that before. You’re wasting your time,” interrupted Clarke.
“Fortunately, it’s mine to waste.”
“For five days. The DCI’s asked me to keep him informed of your progress.”
Clarke turned and strolled out. Helen pursed her lips in distaste as she stared after him. “He’s so far up Teal’s arse I’m surprised he can breathe.”
“I have a feeling he’d prefer to be up someone else’s,” Everton grinned, and headed for the door. “I’m late. See you tomorrow.”
“Where are you going?”
“To another boxing match.”
Everton was already running when he hit the street and headed for Wimbledon station, and still running when he emerged from the Tube at Fulham Broadway. He bounded up the stairs two at a time, flashed his warrant card at the barrier guard and headed out onto Fulham Road. The offices of Gale Mediation Lawyers were in Farrier Walk, a mile from the station. He tried to hail a taxi, there were none, groaned and began to run.
Two hundred and forty an hour, he chanted to himself, and the clock is running whether you’re there or not. Run. He was sweating profusely by the time he passed the Chelsea Stadium and he still had eight hundred metres to go. Two hundred and forty an hour. He lengthened his stride, calculating that his lateness had already cost him forty pounds.
Pauline Bowe checked her reflection in the lawyer’s window. She’d changed out of her perennial leggings and oversize sweaters into more formal navy slacks and cream blouse; which complemented her bob cut, blonde hair. Now, she was wondering why? Who was she trying to impress?
She was sitting in the tiny waiting room of Gales Mediation, reading a copy of the Metro with a headline that declared:
Head of Met Abuse Enquiry under pressure
The door banged open and Everton staggered in, bent double, hands on knees, fighting to catch his breath.
“You’re late,” Pauline said, folding the paper neatly in her ample lap and waiting for an explanation.
“I know… Sorry… Sorry…”
“Hey. It’s your money you’re wasting.”
She said it, as she always did, without rancour or reproach, as if she were an adult talking to a wayward child. It was one of the things he’d grown to hate about his wife: her innate sense of superiority.
“Believe me, I’m aware of that. I was working. I’ve been seconded to CID… These missing women…”
A crack appeared in Pauline’s studied indifference as she caught scent of a story. “Tessa Hayes?”