‘Byrd.’ They spoke together.
‘About last night,’
‘Look, last night,’ they said again and then laughed.
‘It was good though, wasn’t it?’ Byrd had that twinkling thing going on in his eyes again.
‘Hell, yes,’ said Jo, biting her bottom lip with her teeth and feeling far younger than her years. Wait, was she blushing? Dear God, this had to stop!
‘Not to be spoken of.’
‘Not at work,’ Byrd agreed, causing Jo to laugh.
‘I meant ever!’
‘No you didn’t.’
The lights turned green and he drove away a smile playing across his lips. No more was said and soon they pulled up opposite Lindsay’s shared house.
Jo introduced them to the man who answered the door. ‘Do you live here?’
‘Nah, just visiting, like. I’m just off,’ and he pushed past Jo and Byrd, a waft of weed emanating from his clothes.
A girl came clattering down the stairs and said, ‘Oh thank goodness you’ve come! I’m so worried about Lindsay.’
‘Did you report her missing?’
‘Yes, I’m Hayley Short. Is there any news?’
‘Not as yet. It’s early days.’
‘Yes. Sorry.’
‘Can we see Lindsay’s room first, please?’
‘Sure,’ and she led them round to the back of the house. ‘Lindsay’s room has the view of the back garden. Luckily her door wasn’t locked, so when I got no reply to my knock this morning, I was able to open it and saw that she wasn’t in. The patio doors were open, but I closed them as the wind and rain was coming in.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jo. ‘We’ll come and find you when we’ve finished.’
‘What? Oh yes, sorry,’ and Hayley backed out of the room.
Jo and Byrd looked around them in silence. It was a large room, with light flooding in from the patio doors. It clearly used to be a sitting room, or dining room, that the landlord had turned into an extra bedroom. A trick used to maximise the rental income from the house. But what really caught their attention were the cork boards on each wall. Pinned to them was stuff about the case. Newspaper cuttings, photographs, maps, bits of string looped around some of the pins which seemed to indicate possible connections with the case and lastly a myriad of images of some of the notable Egyptians including Anubis.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Byrd. ‘It looks like she was trying to solve the case all on her own!’
‘Doesn’t it just,’ agreed Jo. ‘We need to find her. Anubis could be keeping her somewhere, but where? I want lots of eyes on CCTV, perhaps we can trace her movements.’
‘I’ll get Bill to send a forensic team over here. It looks as if an intruder came through the patio doors and quite possibly attacked her.’
‘Get him to fingerprint Hayley also,’ she said. ‘Bill will need them for elimination.’
‘Will do, Boss.’
Byrd reached for his phone while Jo went to find Hayley.
39
‘Hayley?’ Jo called as she left Lindsay’s room.
‘Yes?’ Hayley appeared from the front of the house.
‘Can I ask you some questions?’
‘Yes, of course, come through to the kitchen.’
Hayley cleared a space at the kitchen table for Jo. Not that the surface she revealed could be described as clean. There were many rings from hot mugs with various unidentified splodges marring the tabletop. This had clearly been a student house for many years. Wallpaper was beginning to peel off the walls where they met the ceiling. A large, but old fridge, churned away in the corner of the kitchen and the top of the cooker held stains from a myriad of meals. Jo hoped the chair she’d sat on was fairly clean as she had a new trouser suit on. It was a deep plum colour, that she’d bought on a whim from her local charity shop, brand new with the tags still on it. Jo was a fully paid up member of the charity shop ethos of recycle, recycle, recycle, but was very picky about what she bought.
‘Do you want any tea or coffee?’ Hayley was saying. ‘Mind you I don’t think there’s any milk.’
‘No, you’re fine.’ Jo felt it was more than her life was worth to drink anything produced in that kitchen. ‘I take it you’ve contacted all Lindsay’s friends?’
‘Yes. I’ve not seen her since, oh, two nights ago when she went out to meet a local newspaper reporter. She said it was something to do with her course. The next morning she wasn’t in her room, so, well, I guessed she’d hit it off with him, know what I mean?’
Jo smiled in response and tried hard not to blush as images of last night when she’d hit it off with Byrd flashed in her head.
‘But then I got calls saying that she hadn’t been at Uni yesterday and did I know if she was okay? Well, no I didn’t know. But I thought she’d be back at some point last night. But when I got up this morning, there was still no sign of her, and her room was just like she left it. She’s not answering calls or texts to her mobile.’
‘Have the patio doors been open all this time?’
‘Yes I’m pretty sure they have.’
‘So someone could have entered her room from the garden?’
‘Yes, I suppose. I only closed them this morning because of the weather. Do you think someone got in and took her? Oh my God! I’m sorry I just didn’t think.’
‘Now, now, Hayley, let’s not jump to conclusions. What was Lindsay wearing when you last saw her?’
‘You mean when she went to meet that bloke?’
‘Yes. I want to track her movements on CCTV.’
‘Well she was wearing jeans, of course. A baggy beige jumper that was one of her favs. Her Uni scarf and flat brown boots.’
‘Thanks a lot, you’ve been very helpful. Do you have a recent photo of Jo?’
‘Yes, we took some last week.’
‘Send them to my phone would you?’ and Jo gave Hayley her mobile number.
Back at the office Jo had no alternative but to wait for the CCTV operatives to do their thing. They knew far more about following people on the system than she did, so was told to butt out and leave them alone. The objective was not just to track Lindsay’s movements, but also to see if they could spot anyone stalking her.
Walking back to her office, she met Byrd and told him to interview Daniel Tate.
‘Not Tate again, Jo. Do I have to?’
‘Yes you do,’ she snapped, ‘and it’s Boss or Guv while we’re at work. And no lip either.’
‘Ah so I’ve the green light to do the opposite when we’re not at work, do I?’
‘Fuck me, Byrd. Shut up and get on with it!’
‘Gladly Boss,’ he breathed into her ear.
Jo’s cheeks flamed, but she couldn’t berate him as she’d walked right in to that one!
Jo was prowling around the office when Byrd got back.
‘Bloody hell, you took your time!’
‘Sorry, Boss. The staff at the Leisure Centre weren’t much help and it took me a while to find him. They’re probably as pissed off as I am about all this.’
‘Byrd, all I’m interested in is where the fuck was Daniel Tate the night Lindsay went missing.’
‘He had a date.’
‘You what?’
‘He had a date and no ordinary one, but a double date with a friend, so he isn’t likely to get three people to lie for him, now is he? They went to an Indian in town, so he’ll also be on CCTV. Then last night he had a friend over, and they played computer games until gone midnight.’
‘Do you have details of these friends of his?’
‘Of course, Boss.’
‘Well bloody ring them, then. Oh and after that get CCTV to pick him up leaving the restaurant and let’s see where he went.’
‘Yes Boss,’ Eddie said and turned away from her. Jo felt disgusted with herself. One for being so harsh to poor Byrd and secondly for having, yet again, to face her obsession with Daniel Tate, which everyone apart from her seemed to think was misplaced. For the first
time, Jo began to feel a prickle of unease over the choice of her first suspect.
40
That night, her father went over in response to her plea, asking him to help her decide what to do next.
‘So you’re having problems with your suspect, are you?’ he said as he huffed up the stairs. ‘Bloody hell, Jo, we’ll have to put in a stair lift soon.’
That made Jo laugh. He was just kidding around to lighten her mood.
‘So, here’s my problem,’ she began. ‘We’ve had a 4th abduction. Or at least we think we have.’
‘Okay,’ he said, reading the new information Jo had pinned to her wall. ‘Another Uni girl?’
‘Yeah. We went to her house today.’
‘Anything?’
‘No, I didn’t get anything from the room, nor from any of her stuff. I think at this stage she’s just abducted and not yet dead.’
‘Okay… It makes sense that our killer is someone with a connection to the university.’
‘Tate has, Dad, he works at the gym on campus.’
Her father nodded. ‘Fair enough. Does he have an alibi for the night she went missing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, yes he does.’
‘That’s the first time it’s happened.’
‘Right.’
‘Can it be broken? Proven to be false.’
‘Nah, Byrd contacted them all.’
‘All?’
‘Yes, three friends from the date with him on the night Lyndsay went missing and a fourth from the following night. If I can’t pin the fourth girl on him, then how would he have done the first three, but not the fourth? I wondered about a copycat for the latest one?’
‘Doesn’t make much sense really, Jo, does it? These abduction need to be meticulously planned. Are you sure your killer is Tate? I mean, really sure?’
Her dad wasn’t the first man to ask her that. To question her choice of suspect. Thoughts of Byrd sent her into a daydream of what had happened last night in this very flat.
‘Jo?’
Bloody hell, her dad had been talking and she missed it completely. ‘Sorry, dad, what?’
‘I was musing again that the abductions and then killings had to be meticulously planned. They weren’t spur of the moment crimes. Anubis knew the girls and probably followed them for quite a while before he took them.’
‘That’s it!’ Jo shouted.
‘What?’
‘Meticulously planned. I need to go back to Lindsay’s street, show the students she shares a house with and their immediate neighbours, a photo of Tate, to see if anyone has seen her with him or seen him hanging around. Lock up will you?’ she asked her father as she grabbed her bag and car keys and ran down the stairs. There was no time like the present to find out.
41
Jo was in Lindsay’s street in Chichester within 15 minutes. She checked with the occupants of the house that were in. Had they seen anyone acting suspiciously? Did they recognise Jo’s picture of Daniel Tate? But nothing.
Then she tried the house next door. Nothing.
In desperation she knocked on the three doors either side. But still nothing. Until she tried the house on the corner.
The girl who came to the door was bundled up in pyjamas and a dressing gown. She didn’t recognise Daniel Tate. But then said, ‘I know the other bloke though.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one in the paper.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Hang on a minute.’ The girl scrabbled through papers strewn all over a hall table. ‘Here,’ she said and thrust it at Jo. The newspaper was open to a photo of the professor they’d contacted from the University. Professor Russell. It seemed he was helping the press with information about Egyptology, which the newspaper reported was also connected to the murders.
The girl was still talking and Jo had to tear her eyes away from the newspaper and focus on what was being said. ‘Sorry. What?’
‘I saw him waiting for Lindsay a couple of times,’ she said.
‘Waiting? Was she seeing him then?’
‘No idea. But he was there.’
‘Where?’
She pointed to the opposite side of the street. ‘Under that lamp post.’
‘So he could have been following her, not necessarily meeting her,’ mused Jo.
‘I guess. Anyway hope that helped?’
‘Yes, yes, thanks very much. It did,’ and Jo hurried back to her car.
42
The next morning she received a phone call from the office. It was 7 am and she’d just stepped out of the shower. Dripping all over the carpet, she heard she was summoned to see DCI Crooks at 8am. Not asked. Ordered. Shit.
After quickly drying herself and dressing, she clipped up her damp hair, grabbed her bag and keys and raced for the car.
She made it with one minute to spare.
Crooks made her stand throughout the interview.
‘Well, Jo. What do you make of the case so far?’ Friendly enough words but delivered with a steely menace. Sarcasm in there somewhere as well.
‘I’ve just got a new lead, Boss,’ she said. And proceeded to tell him about her canvassing Lindsay’s neighbours last night and finding that Professor Russell had been watching her.
‘And you think this is worth following up?’
‘Most definitely, Boss,’ she said.
‘As long as this actually pans out and you don’t waste even more time chasing down an innocent suspect.’
‘Boss.’ To be honest Jo couldn’t think of anything else to say. Her cheeks flamed and she looked down at her shoes. Why the hell did Crooks always make her feel like a recalcitrant schoolgirl in the headmaster’s office, instead of an intelligent woman and a damn good DI.
‘Go and get on with it then and stop wasting time here.’
‘Boss.’
Jo turned and fled before he could change his mind.
Once in the stairwell on the way to the Major Crimes Unit, Jo sat on a step and tried very hard not to cry. To cry was to show weakness. And she was not weak. Most definitely not. No one who knew what she’d gone through to get well, could ever think that. She knew it was Crooks’ role to be the big bad Boss at times (big bad wolf) and she could live with that. Deciding not to take criticism to heart, but to use it to forge ahead, she stood and ran down the last few steps to her office.
She called Byrd into her office. ‘Byrd, we need to go back to the beginning with the case.’
‘What the fuck, Guv?’
Jo went on to tell him about the sighting of the Professor waiting outside Lindsay’s house and the stay of execution she’d negotiated with Crooks. ‘So, let’s go back to the beginning. I want to go back to Alison Rudd’s flat.’
‘Not Daniel Tate again!’
‘No, not this time. I want to see Alison’s room again, before her parents strip it and sell the flat.’
‘OK you’re the boss,’ he huffed.
‘For the moment, Byrd. Only for the moment. So you better ring Tate and get him or a neighbour to let us in.’
Tate had left a key with a neighbour in case of inadvertently locking himself out, so all it took was a phone call from him and a knock on the door of the neighbour. While Byrd was assuring the woman that they would return the key to her very soon and that they really were the police, Jo was already letting herself into the flat.
It had that stale, male smell about it, now that Alison was no longer there. It made Jo want to throw open the windows, but she resisted and went into Alison’s room, stopping at the door and taking her time to look around. It was pretty much as they’d left it, apart from all the liberally applied black fingerprint powder.
Thrown on her bed were the two books on Egyptology. Byrd arrived and stood near her. She could feel his breath on her neck. It made her want to melt. Instead she took a step into the room to put distance between them. ‘Didn’t we see these books the first time we were here?’ she asked him.
‘Yes, why?’
‘Did anyone open them.’
‘No idea, Guv.’
‘Did you?’
‘Nah.’
‘Neither did I.’ She picked up the two books and opened them. ‘Well we should have.’
‘Why?’
‘These are from the Chichester University Library.’
‘What?’ he grabbed the books from her to look himself.
‘Find out if Alison was doing a course there. Unless we’ve already checked that?’ But even as she asked the question, she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
‘Don’t think so, Boss. We figured there was no need. She worked full time. She wasn’t a student. Never thought she had anything to do with the Uni. Assumed, you know?’
‘Unfortunately assuming doesn’t get to the truth, does it? And it means I could have made a very big mistake.’
43
They had only been back at the office about 15 minutes before the front desk rang Jo.
‘Um, ma’am there’s a Daniel Tate here to see you.’
Jo frowned. ‘We don’t have an appointment.’
‘He’s insisting I’m afraid. To be honest, he’s in a bit of a state and causing quite a disruption with his ranting and raving.’
‘Oh God, I’ll be there in a minute.’
Jo put the phone down and took a few deep breaths. She’d been trying to avoid the awful thought that perhaps she’d been wrong about Daniel Tate. And now he was here. Oh well, she’d better face him.
‘Byrd,’ she called. ‘Daniel Tate’s in reception being rather vocal and demanding to see me.’
‘Not on your own, he’s not,’ and Byrd put down his own phone and stood and joined her in the short journey downstairs. Eddie occasionally touched her back as he guided her. Jo noticed, but pretended she hadn’t, as she rather liked it and didn’t want him to stop.
They heard Tate before they saw him. ‘Get that bitch down here, now!’
‘The Detective Inspector is on her way, I’ve told you that, Mr Tate.’
‘Don’t fucking Mr Tate me!’
Touching the Dead Page 11