by Graham Smith
First off she listed the missing women whose age was similar to Dr Hewson’s estimate of Woman 1’s. Next she looked at the length of time they’d been missing and eliminated those whose dates were after Woman 1 was estimated to have died.
Beth picked up her phone and dialled the first of four numbers. Her priority now was checking to see if any of the remaining four missing women had turned up. Many of the people reported missing would return home after a few weeks away. Some would have dropped out to cope with a life event; others would have returned to their spouse when they realised their lover wasn’t all they dreamed of. When these scenarios happened, there were only a few who bothered to let the police know.
The person who picked up was a woman, so Beth asked her name. It matched the missing person, and she made a note in the database and gave the woman a short lecture about wasting police time.
She had the same result with the next call.
The third call she made put her into contact with a man whose voice wavered with grief when she explained why she was calling. His wife had been found a week after he’d reported her missing. Her car had left the road and plunged into a flooding river. It was only when the waters receded that her car was found. He’d never thought to cancel the missing persons’ report because the police knew about his wife’s death.
Beth cursed the fact that she’d dredged up painful memories for the man. She’d blame the officers who were involved in the recovery of the vehicle and informing the man his wife was dead, had she not been aware of the pressures on officers of every rank. As well as there being fewer officers, there seemed to be more paperwork than ever, more databases to update. It was inevitable that on occasions some things would get missed due to someone being overworked and overstressed.
The fourth and final call put her in touch with someone whose wife had returned home, stayed long enough to pack a bag, and had then flounced out the house and into her lover’s car.
With all four options exhausted, Beth gave the database another scan in case she’d missed something. But nothing obvious presented itself.
She was about to extend her search by a month either side of Dr Hewson’s guess when O’Dowd’s phone rang.
The DI listened for a moment then hung up. Her mouth twisted into what could only be described as a determined pout as she pulled on her suit jacket and straightened the collar. ‘Let’s go ask a man some awkward questions.’
Fifty-Three
Beth laid the folder with her notes onto the table and listened as O’Dowd went through the formalities for the benefit of the tape.
‘Mr Fielding, we are interviewing you under caution regarding the murder of Nick Langley and three others. Do you understand what we mean by that?’
Fielding glanced at his lawyer, an earnest man who carried the air of someone who’d seen every possible outcome of a police interview.
‘Yes, I understand. How may I help you?’
Beth noticed how calm Fielding was. There were no trembles to his voice or his hands. The looks he cast them were assured and there was no stress on his face.
‘Can you account for your whereabouts on Monday evening?’
‘I was at home most of the time.’
‘Can anyone verify you were there?’
‘No.’ Fielding tilted his head. ‘I’m not married and I have no kids. Maybe one of my neighbours saw me putting something in the bin or noticed my lights on.’
‘May I ask why you are asking my client about these murders?’
‘Mr Langley had a brawl with your client last year. Apparently Mr Fielding took it upon himself to cut Mr Langley’s hedge.’ O’Dowd shifted her gaze from the solicitor to Fielding. ‘Care to tell us why you were cutting another man’s hedge?’
‘I wasn’t cutting another man’s hedge. All I was doing was making sure that my garden got plenty of sunlight. Vegetables need light, you know. He wanted to grow the hedge to six feet high and I wanted it at four maximum. I cut it at five and he went off his head. Called me all kinds of names. That wasn’t acceptable.’
‘So you just went ahead and cut the hedge at the height you deemed was a fair compromise. Except Mr Langley didn’t see it that way and the two of you came to blows.’
Fielding spread his hands wide. ‘It was wrong of me, I know. I got beat up for it at the time. I shouldn’t have done it, and I paid the price. But if you think I’ve waited a year to kill him, then you’ve got to be joking.’
‘Excuse me for butting in.’ Beth put a hand on O’Dowd’s arm. ‘I read the reports from the arresting officers. It would appear that Mr Langley did indeed win the fight you had. That upset you at the time. You made threats. Threats against his life to be specific. What do you have to say about that?’
Fielding lifted his right hand from the table and used his forefinger to point at Beth. ‘Pardon me for saying so, but you look as if you’ve been in the wars yourself. I’d say that judging by the scar on your face, like me when I fought Langley, you got a silver medal. Do you remember feeling angry, wanting to hurt the person who done that to you? Did you at least want them to feel as scared as you were? I was angry at myself for getting into a fight. Disappointed that I lost it, and scared that I’d cross swords with him again and get another pasting. Because my emotions were running high, I said some stupid things that I didn’t mean. When you got that scar, did you say anything you now regret, even though it was said in the heat of the moment?’
Fielding had a good point and Beth knew it. She had been angry and scared after the bottle had been thrust into her cheek. In the first few weeks after it happened she’d entertained many thoughts of vengeance and retribution. Yet she’d never wanted the perpetrator killed, just punished.
‘Don’t try to deflect this, Mr Fielding. You threatened to kill someone, and lo and behold, that person is murdered.’ Beth glared at Fielding as she waited for his answer.
Fielding smoothed his moustache. ‘Over a year later. I’m sure you’ve checked me out in your database. You’ll have found that in my fifty-two years on this planet I have collected one speeding ticket, three parking tickets and one caution for the fight with Mr Langley.’
The lawyer leaned back in his chair. ‘My client is innocent of the murder of Mr Langley. He is more than happy for you to check his whereabouts by triangulating his mobile phone signal.’
Beth looked at O’Dowd and saw uncertainty. A man Fielding’s age wouldn’t necessarily use his phone the way someone her age would. His might well get left in the house for days.
He had it with him now; she could see it wedged into his shirt pocket. It looked to be similar to the old Nokia her father had. He’d kept the same phone for years as all he wanted it for was making and taking calls.
‘We’ll take you up on that.’ O’Dowd pressed on regardless of their confident smiles. ‘Let’s be clear though, it proves where the phone was, not Mr Fielding.’
‘Of course.’ The lawyer’s smile was like an oil slick. ‘Is there anything else, or is my client free to leave?’
Beth seized the opportunity before O’Dowd let Fielding leave. ‘One thing. Do the names Angus Keane and Rachel Allen mean anything to you?’
Beth watched Fielding closely as she posed the question.
‘I heard something about Angus Keane on the news. Wasn’t he the guy whose body turned up with wings attached to his back?’
His eyes widened. ‘If you’re asking me about him as well as Langley and whatever the woman’s name was, it means you think their deaths were connected. I’m sorry, but you’re asking the wrong man. I didn’t know any of them, and I’m sorry I ended up brawling with Mr Langley.’
O’Dowd wrapped up the interview, and they returned to the office.
Fifty-Four
Sarah lifted the brush and ran it through her nana’s hair. The old woman was unaware of her granddaughter’s actions, but for as long as Sarah could remember, she’d never had a hair out of place. To not maintain that tradition now would be to
let Nana down.
As she brushed the hair into its usual style she recounted her day to her grandmother. She told her of the different test drives, of the customer who came in complaining that the cruise control didn’t actually steer the car, and how her boss had praised her for the way she’d managed to sell a top of the range car with every possible optional extra.
She even told her nana about the date she had arranged for Friday night. The old woman lay unmoving as she described every detail of her encounter with Kevin Ingersoll. Sarah chatted about the date and how she was looking forward to eating at Sharrow Bay. That would be a treat in itself. To dine there with a rich man who found her attractive would be even better.
The biggest issue for her was choosing the right outfit. Sharrow Bay was a classy place and, as such, she’d have to dress appropriately. While on the one hand she wanted Kevin to be attracted to her, she also wanted to create the right impression. What she had to achieve with her outfit was a mixture of sensual, alluring and respectable.
Sarah gave her wardrobe a mental rifling through and remembered a pale-green wool dress. She’d got it last year and had only worn it once. It was perfect. Mid-calf; it was appropriate for the venue and the way it clung to her legs as she walked would add a level of sensuality.
When she settled down with a cup of tea, she contrasted the two test drives she’d had today. The old man with his military tie had been a waste of time. He’d never tried to put the car through its paces and had spent more time leering at her than paying attention to the vehicle he was supposed to be interested in.
It hadn’t taken her long to realise that his main interest was in her.
Her next thoughts were about Kevin and how he’d driven with flair and confidence. He’d been interested in the car and his questions had all been about the vehicle. He’d wanted to know about performance, the car’s statistics and the range of extras.
When he’d taken the car up to 150 it had been all she could do not to squeal in pleasure. An ex-boyfriend had once got his clapped-out Golf up to 120, but that had been during an argument and had left her scared rather than exhilarated.
By comparison, Kevin had been his normal self and hadn’t shown the slightest hint of fear or concern about the high speeds he’d reached. Nor had he shown exhilaration. He’d been flat, dispassionate to the point of being emotionless.
He had been indifferent to her charms at first and she’d had to become more brazen than she’d expected. She’d begun to think he wasn’t attracted to her, when he’d sprung the invitation to dinner. Her agreement had been given at once and it was only when he’d left the showroom that she realised Friday was her night to be here with Nana.
Her mum had agreed a swap, although it meant Sarah would have to cancel her night out on Saturday. If things worked out with Kevin, missing a Saturday night in Kendal with the same faces telling the same stories was a tiny price to pay.
As she kicked off her shoes, Sarah caught the whiff of hypocrisy from her recollections of her day. She’d had two encounters with two very different men. Both had been polite and neither had touched her beyond a polite handshake. One man had paid attention to her body. His wandering eyes had creeped her out and made her feel like she was being ogled by a pervert, while the other had kept his eyes on her face and had shown indifference to her physique, even when she’d flashed a bit more leg.
It was counter-intuitive, because she knew she had a good figure and was used to the attention she got when she wore a short skirt or a low-cut top. She dressed for work in a way that attracted male attention, to help her make sales, while still looking smart and professional. Perhaps that’s what was responsible for the way she felt about the older man, the fact that somewhere in her subconscious, she knew he was never going to buy a car and was only there to perv over her.
Her choice of outfit for Friday night was another indicator of her shifting boundaries. The wool dress was sexy in a non-revealing way. It would showcase her figure to perfection without revealing anything more than a few inches of ankle and calf. It would be suitable for dinner in a posh hotel, and yet she also wanted it to be a catalyst of desire.
There was no doubt in her mind that she wanted to sleep with Kevin, but she wanted him to have to work for it first, to prove that he wanted her for more than just a one-night stand. Then, and only then, would she let him make love to her.
Fifty-Five
Beth went back to the list of missing persons and checked a month either side of her original parameters. The list yielded one possibility, but even they didn’t seem like a cast-iron certainty.
When she called the number of the person who’d reported the lady missing, the call was answered by a sleepy voice. Beth explained who she was and why she was calling so late. The man at the other end of the line perked up a little. A minute later Beth thanked him for his candid appraisal of his wife and ended the call.
The woman had been located at her sister’s house five days after he’d reported her missing. A week after that he came home from work to find most of his furniture and all her belongings had disappeared.
A quick check of their address yielded three treble nine calls from neighbours in the weeks before her disappearance. Each call had been made after the neighbours had heard a man shouting and a woman screaming.
Beth gave the woman a mental high-five. She’d escaped the clutches of a man who didn’t value her, freed herself from a life of terror and had possessed the courage to make a new start.
While pleased for the woman, Beth knew that it meant she’d drawn another blank unless the victim had been in the cellar a lot longer than Dr Hewson had stated. It was easy to cast the blame for her failure to name the victim onto the pathologist, but Beth wasn’t keen to believe he’d got it so wrong. Plus Max Cooper had only been away for six months, so it seemed unlikely that the body had been there before he’d gone on his world tour.
Hewson had covered his bases by not being specific and giving a wide parameter for the length of time the woman had been in the cellar. She’d extended the dates without success, which meant one of three things: the doctor was mistaken, the woman wasn’t local to Cumbria, or she hadn’t been missed by anyone.
If she’d been a tourist holidaying in the area, she’d have been missed when she hadn’t returned home. But with Cumbria as her last known position, her disappearance would have been flagged on the searches Beth had run.
Beth’s next thoughts were about who wouldn’t be reported missing. Homeless people were always moving about and were prone to vanish for weeks at a time before popping up somewhere else. Nobody on the streets would miss her, and if they did, they often weren’t the type to walk into a police station to discuss anything other than their personal conspiracy theories.
Even if she wasn’t homeless, the woman could otherwise be the kind of recluse who lived alone and shunned contact with other people. Already in Beth’s short career, she’d twice attended calls where a neighbour had been worried about an unusual smell. Upon breaking into the houses, they’d found decomposing bodies that had lain for at least a month. Without a body to create a smell, the neighbours had no reason to call the police about the pain in the backside who lived next door. They’d figure they’d just got lucky and had missed bumping into their crotchety neighbour.
Beth spent a few minutes looking at the missing persons’ reports from neighbouring counties and drawing up a list of possibilities. It seemed less likely than being local to Cumbria, but there was no other course of action she could think of right now, other than waiting for a result from the woman’s dental records.
By 10 p.m., she had a list of nine names which fit Hewson’s timescale. They could be called in the morning though. Even with the urgency of the case, Beth knew she’d get far better responses if she didn’t wake up people to ask if their loved ones had returned home.
There was nothing further to be found in the missing persons’ reports. Or in the ones that had been filed about the people t
hey’d spoken to when canvassing the area for witnesses.
Beth tried not to slam the office door behind her when she left, or to stomp her feet in frustration at her lack of progress as she walked to her car. She achieved the first.
The bottle of wine in her fridge called to her and she planned on having a large glass. To hell with Dr Hewson and his warning, she was a grown woman, and if she wanted a glass of wine, she’d damned well have one.
Fifty-Six
Beth couldn’t help but notice the air of dejection when she entered the office. It was a physical thing which polluted the atmosphere. Both O’Dowd’s and Thompson’s faces wore harried, uninspiring frowns and there was no sign of the always-early Unthank.
‘Morning.’ Beth cast a look at Unthank’s seat, noticed the lack of a jacket hanging from the back of it. ‘Where’s Paul?’
‘He phoned in sick. Said he’d been up all night spewing.’
Beth winced at the grumble in O’Dowd’s tone. Illness happened, and while Unthank wasn’t to blame for his, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time for them.
‘Anything else happening?’
‘Yeah. The DCI has invited me to join him for a press conference.’
From the way O’Dowd spoke, Beth could tell the invitation was one which couldn’t be refused. She’d never had to take part in a press conference, but it was a box she’d be quite happy to leave unticked. With so few leads to pursue, one unidentified body, and no obvious link between the victims apart from how they died, there was next to no information to share with the press. And when the journalists sensed they were being fobbed off with stock responses, their questions would become sharper, more pertinent. DCI Phinn would probably want O’Dowd there as the sacrificial lamb should the press conference turn tricky.