by Alex Walters
It had to be bad news. Why else would be call her on a Sunday morning? She pressed call back and waited. The phone rang once and then was answered.
'Kate?' He presumably had her name and number in his address book.
'John. What is it?'
'I almost didn’t call today. Didn’t want to disturb people’s weekends if I didn’t have to. But I remembered you were on leave next week.'
'What is it?'
'Tim. Have you heard the news?'
'I spoke to his wife yesterday. Just briefly. She said he hadn’t come home on Friday night. She was tearing her hair out.'
'Yes. Poor Jane. Jesus.'
'Has something happened?'
'They found Tim. Yesterday morning, apparently. By the main London-Manchester railway track. Just a few hundred yards from the pub.'
Kate could picture the expanse of track, a couple of fields away from the car park where she’d sat talking to Hulse on the Friday evening. The West Coast mainline trains ran down there, every twenty minutes in the daytime, a red and silver streak she’d occasionally registered as she drove to or from the prison.
'Jesus. What happened?'
'He was hit by a train, sometime overnight on Friday. They’ve not said much but it was after the passenger services had stopped running, so they think an overnight freight service.'
'Christ. How could that happen?'
'That’s the mystery,' Hodges said. 'It’s not the sort of place you’d stumble into by accident. Police aren’t saying anything just yet, not even to Jane.' There was a lengthy pause. 'I can only see two explanations. Tim was pretty pissed by the time I left on Friday. I’d been careful so I offered him a lift home, but he said he’d sort a taxi. But I know in the past he’s sometimes not bothered with the taxi if it looked like there was going to be a long wait, and he’s walked it instead. It’s only a couple of miles. And there’s a theoretical—but quite illegal—shortcut over the railway line.'
'You think he’d have done that?'
'He was the one who told me about it. But he reckoned he was too cautious to actually use it. Being Tim, he was less concerned about safety than about getting caught. Wouldn’t look good: prisoner governor caught in illegal trespass.'
'So why would he have done it on Friday then?'
'Christ knows. Like I say, he was pissed. Maybe seemed a good idea at the time. I suppose after midnight the risk should be pretty minimal.'
'Poor bastard,' Kate said. 'What would the odds be of being hit at that time of the night?' That was the question, she thought, realising now where Hodges was leading. 'You said two possible explanations.'
'Yes,' Hodges said. 'I mean, either he was there by accident or—' He stopped, reluctant to articulate his next thought. 'Or it wasn’t an accident. The other possibility is that he went there deliberately. That he waited until there was a train approaching.' He took a breath, and she could heat the emotion in his voice. 'And then threw himself under the fucking thing.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Milton slumped himself down in front of Murrain's desk. Here they were again, yet another Sunday morning, a quarter of the team turning up unpaid in the hope of making some headway on a case that seemed to be going nowhere. Murrain was looking exhausted, his eyes red from lack of sleep, carrying the air of someone pushing on through will-power alone.
'Anything new?' Milton said.
It seemed to take Murrain a moment to focus on the question. 'Bugger all. Other than this Kevin Wickham stuff.' He'd briefed Milton on the outcomes of the session with Barker and the others.
'You reckon there's any legs in that?'
Murrain hesitated in a way that, to Milton's practised eye, suggested some potential significance. 'My first reaction's to say no. It's just coincidence. Just another possible lead to be eliminated. But—' He paused, again. 'You remember when you called me after you'd been out to that pub in the village?'
Milton stiffened awkwardly. 'Last week, you mean?'
'The Friday night. I was in the car when you called.'
'What about it?'
'When you talked about the people coming in—that Business Forum lot—I felt, just for a moment, something really intense. Stronger than usual. Couldn't make head or tail of what it might mean, but it nearly drove me off the road.'
Milton nodded, clearly following Murrain's train of thought. 'You think Wickham might be part of this Business Forum? That he might have been one of the people coming into the pub?'
'Who knows? But it might be worth checking with that Brody chap.' Murrain rubbed his eyes and then continued, as if unconscious of any non-sequitur: 'What about your railway body? That going to end up with us?'
'I'm hoping not,' Milton said. They were all conscious how thinly their resources were stretched already. Not just the Ethan Dunn case, but all the other numerous ongoing cases and unfinished business that they had to deal with. 'Ferbrache's view was that it was most like an accident. Or maybe even suicide. There are some reports of trouble at work, apparently. He was a prison governor, of all things. Either way, not likely to end up on our list.'
Murrain rubbed his temples. 'Hope you're right.'
'You've got some feeling about this as well?'
Murrain laughed. 'You shouldn't place too much faith in anything I'm feeling, Joe. You know what it's like.'
'I do. I also know it's usually worth paying attention to.'
'Maybe I'm losing it. Whatever it was. I'm normally sure what I'm feeling, even if I don't know what it means. But in this case it's been all over the place. Nothing there when I might expect it. Then some sort of sensation when it makes no sense. Like with that couple in Hazel Grove.'
'But if the attempted snatching there was linked to the Dunn case, that wouldn't be surprising, would it?'
'Maybe not. But it didn't feel like that. It was something to do with the parents. There was something similar with Dunn's parents.' He paused, thinking. 'The mothers, at any rate.'
'You think they're involved? We've talked to them countless times now, but there's nothing suspicious.'
'I'm not sure about involved. I've just got the sense that there's something else there. Something they're not saying. Or something one of them's not saying.' He shook his head. 'Maybe nothing. Like I say, I don't know. Anything come from Bert's door to doors with the neighbours in Hazel Grove?''
'Not much so far. She's gone over there again today to try to catch a couple who were out yesterday. But nobody seems to have seen anything.' He stopped and regarded Murrain more closely. 'You OK?'
Murrain pressed his palms against the sides of his head. 'Truth is, I've had a bloody nagging headache ever since the report of that railway body came in. That's not usually a good sign. Feels like a loose connection in the back of my skull.'
'Could be a migraine,' Milton pointed out. 'Or just that you're knackered.'
'The second's certainly a possibility. But—'
Milton nodded. 'Difficult to see any connection with the Dunn case, though.'
'You'd think so. Could well be something else.'
'But you think there's something?'
Murrain shrugged apologetically. 'Didn't want to tread on your toes, Joe. But I put a call into Pete Warwick. Asked him if he could expedite this one. Just to put my mind at rest. We've enough on our plates as it is. Could do without another one.'
Warwick was the pathologist who most commonly supported Murrain's team. 'And what did he say?' Both of them knew that Warwick usually made a point of doing things his way and at his own pace. Which, in fairness, generally meant they were done both rigorously and efficiently, if not always quite at the speed that Murrain would have ideally preferred.
'You know Pete. He huffed and puffed and told me how busy he was. Then I offered him a couple of beers and he said he'd pull it to the top of the list. Truth is, he loves doing the stuff for us far more than his day-to-day work.'
'Well, let's hope he just confirms what Neil Ferbrache thought.'
; 'Ferby's not often wrong.' Murrain shook his head. 'Jesus, it's coming to something, isn't it?'
'What's that?'
'When we're both sitting here hoping that some poor bastard might have committed suicide.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The news was shocking enough in itself, of course. But what had really shaken her were the echoes of Ryan’s death. Echoes that seemed almost too loud, as if someone wanted to be sure she heard. She considered that thought for a moment, then realised how absurd it sounded.
'Mum. Come and try a muffin. They’re great.' Jack stopped, his child’s intuition recognising that something was wrong.
'Are you all right?' Elizabeth said.
'No.' Kate sat at the kitchen table. 'I just had some news. Bad news.'
Her mother shooed Jack into the sitting room with a plateful of the freshly-baked muffins. 'You go and get started on those. I’ll make some coffee for your mother and me and then we’ll come and join you.'
Kate waited until she was sure Jack was out of earshot. From the sitting room, she heard the sound of the television being turned on, an explosion of musical noise. 'It’s Tim, my boss.'
As she recounted what Hodges had told her, Kate could see that Elizabeth had been struck by the same thought that had occurred to Kate herself. 'Oh, my goodness. How dreadful. I remember—'
'Ryan?' Kate said. 'That’s exactly what I thought. The same stupid senseless death.'
'Did he have children?'
Kate nodded. 'Two. Quite young, I think.' She pushed away her half-drunk coffee before her mother could offer any response. 'Let’s go and help Jack finish those muffins before he eats them all himself.' she said. 'And then let’s get off, shall we? I need to be doing something.'
An hour or so later, they'd packed up and were on the road. They had a slow journey back south, the motorways clogged by weekend roadworks even though the traffic was light. It was late afternoon before they pulled up outside Kate’s new home.
'This is lovely,' Elizabeth said as she climbed effortfully out of the car. 'Beautiful views.'
'That’s the Peak Forest canal,' Kate said, trotting out the information she’d accumulated since moving here. 'Part of the Cheshire Ring. And beyond that’s the Goyt Valley, with the river down there among the trees. And after that you’re into the High Peak.'
'That’s nice.' Elizabeth clearly had little interest in her daughter’s gazetteer offering. 'And it’s an ideal house for you.'
Kate busied herself helping unload her mother’s and Jack’s cases from the boot of the car. 'Still a bit of a drive to work, but nothing too unpleasant.' Once in the house, Kate ushered Jack into the kitchen and poured him a glass of orange squash. 'What do you think of the place, then?' she asked as he lifted the full beaker to his mouth. It was a question she might have been better asking herself.
'It’s nice,' he said. 'Better than granny’s. Can we go and look at the canal later? Are there boats?'
'There are narrow boats,' she said. 'Sometimes people actually live on them. I can show you.' She felt as if she were babbling to keep the silence at bay. 'Some of them are painted bright colours.'
Kate left Jack to explore the house with Elizabeth, and stayed by the kitchen window staring on to the small garden at the rear of the house. The garden was backed by a stone wall, a couple of metres high, which looked older that the house itself. She'd been told that it was part of an old farm wall that had formed the boundary of an adjoining estate, but she had no knowledge of the history. Much of the land in the area had belonged to the local landed gentry and had been sold off piecemeal over the years.
The resulting garden was a decent space, though—a sun-trap on summer’s evenings, the sun over the hillside warming the stone to create an atmosphere that felt comfortable and secure. Although the summer had been nearly over by the time she moved down here, she enjoyed the evenings she’d spent out there with a glass of wine and a book. Those evenings seemed distant now, and not only because of the approaching chill of autumn.
Jack and Elizabeth had discovered the garden too and were out exploring its charms. There was little out there to interest Jack, just a patch of lawn and a few half-tended flowerbeds. But she could see he was already concocting some fantasy in his head, running up and down the grass, engaged in an adventure only he understood.
As she watched, she was struck by a sudden thought, and the same old fears came flooding back into her head.
She stepped over to the back door. It was firmly bolted and locked, the key of the deadlock secreted safely in her purse. As she knew it had been. She fumbled in her pocket for the purse and found the key, then she unlocked and unbolted the door. Outside, the air was chilly and damp. 'You found the garden, then?' she called to her mother, striving to keep her voice steady. 'Good, isn’t it?'
'Lovely,' Elizabeth said, her attention fixed on Jack’s increasingly manic circling of the lawn.
'How’d you manage to get out here?' Kate asked. 'Was the key in the lock?'
Her mother was frowning, her expression baffled. 'I thought you must have been out here already,' she said, after a moment.
'No,' Kate said. 'No, I hadn’t been.'
'The patio doors were unlocked. I don’t know why I even tried them. It was only because Jack was keen to get out into the garden. But they weren’t fastened. I just pushed them open.' She sounded apologetic, as if she'd committed some social faux pas.
'God, I’m so stupid,' Kate said. 'I must have forgotten to lock them when I left on Friday morning. It was a bit frantic because I was running late for work.' In fact, she hadn’t been in any particular hurry on Friday. She’d been up early and had packed the night before. She was sure she’d checked very carefully that all the doors and windows were locked before she’d left.
Leaving Elizabeth and Jack out in the garden, she walked through to the sitting room and looked around. There was no sign of any disturbance. As far as she could tell, everything was as she’d left it. There were a couple of CDs out next to the stereo system, but those were ones she’d been playing the previous week. There was a small pile of newspapers and magazines and a couple of books on the coffee table in the middle of the room, but as far as she could recall those were all where she’d left them.
She walked upstairs to check the bedrooms Jack and Elizabeth would be using. Both rooms were austere in their furnishings and decor, with little beyond the bare minimum of furniture. Kate had taken no steps to personalise them. She’d entered the two rooms only occasionally, and as far as she could judge both were as she’d last seen them. The bathroom, similarly, looked unchanged.
Finally, she entered her own bedroom. At first glance, it looked as unchanged as the other rooms. The bed was tidy, as she’d left it. There was a book, spread-eagled, on her bedside table—a paperback thriller she’d been reading to help send herself to sleep. The dressing table held its usual scattering of cosmetics, a box of tissues.
There was something else on the table, a square piece of card that caught the last light of the sun through the window. She couldn’t remember what that might be.
Kate took a step forward and peered more closely. It was a photograph, the image still obscured by the reflected sunshine.
She had no memory of leaving a photograph on the dressing table. Some nights before, when she’d been feeling low and anxious, she’d dug out an old album of pictures from the early days of her relationship with Ryan. They’d been the last few photographs they’d taken with their old camera in the days before digital cameras had become ubiquitous.
They were mainly holiday snaps, most of them showing only Kate or Ryan, the picture taken by the other. Souvenirs from those happier times—a long weekend in Paris, a rain-sodden week in the Lakes, a languorous week on one of the Greek islands. Some of the photos were already sun-faded. She’d hoped the images of herself and Ryan would help snap her out of her anxieties, but they’d had the opposite effect. The fading colours had felt almost like a metaphor. The past
was slipping away even as she tried to make sense of it.
She’d brought a couple of the albums up to the bedroom, almost luxuriating in the self-pity that overwhelmed her as she flicked through the images. She’d had a last skim through them in bed and then slipped the two folders into the bedside drawer.
As she stepped forward, the angle of the sunlight slipped away from the photograph. It was an image that, at first glance, she did not recognise. She picked up the glossy sheet and stared at the picture.
It was a photograph of Ryan, maybe a couple of years older than those she'd been leafing through. He was standing slightly awkwardly, dressed in his uniform, squinting into the camera as if caught off-guard. The photograph itself was inexpertly taken, with the sun apparently partly behind Ryan's body so that his face was partly lost in the shade. There was another figure standing beside Ryan, clearly a prisoner. A young man, slighter than Ryan, with a spade in his hand. His face, too, was only partly visible.
Kate held the photograph before her and peered at the image. It was impossible to be sure, she told herself. The definition was poor. The face was partly obscured by shadow. Even so, she had no doubt.
Carl Hancock. Kevin Wickham. Whoever he might be now, she knew that he was the figure in the photograph.
So how had the picture appeared here?
She had no recollection of seeing it before, though both she and Ryan had kept a few envelopes of random older pictures—most from before they had met—tucked in the backs of the albums she'd been looking through. Perhaps this had simply fallen out of one of those, unnoticed, while she'd been skimming through the pages.
But she didn't really believe that.
Someone, somehow, had been in here. Someone had left this for her as—well, as what? As a message? As a warning?
She looked around her, feeling the same vulnerability she'd felt in the pub car-park. But stronger now, and with more substance. She'd seen this place as a safe haven for herself and Jack, a place where she could start again, rebuild her life. Now, she felt exposed and threatened and she didn't have a clue why.