Doors Without Numbers (31 page)

Dunn’s voice was quiet and calm, she was standing behind him so he couldn’t look at her but he knew she was thinking, trying to make sense of what he had told her.

“I guess it crossed my mind for a moment, but it could be simply co-incidence. There is the possibility that the burglar was looking for Christmas presents and didn’t find any so left.”

“You didn’t get your family any presents?” Her tone was incredulous.

Hammond ignored her question, he wasn’t oblivious to the fact that she wasn’t behaving as his subordinate, if anything she was showing her disapproval like a frustrated wife.

There was an awkward silence before Dunn resumed her seat at the table.

“Ok, let’s consider the possibility that whoever broke in was looking for something other than Christmas presents...let’s also consider that there is a possibility that the same person was responsible for the car damage. They sabotaged your car, maybe not to kill you, maybe it was a warning or an attempt to handicap your progress with an investigation. Whilst you are out of action, they break in to your house looking for something...”

“Jenny thought the house was being watched.”

Dunn nodded as if she was aware of this already. “It is a possibility, I looked for a silver Citroen when I arrived this morning but there wasn’t one fitting the description she gave me. I guess we will have to keep an eye open. Where are Jenny and Paul now?”

She listened to Hammond’s answer impatiently. “Allow yourself the luxury of being paranoid, look out for yourself Hammond. Think about what it is you have discovered that would make someone want to stop you delving deeper. Do you think it could be something you’ve uncovered about the girl who was murdered in 1991?”

They discussed the possibility but couldn’t produce any theory that would make sense. For a brief second Hammond considered the contents of the box file. He had the file with him at the time of the accident, it was plausible that the same person had wanted to find the file whilst he was in hospital.

Dunn asked to look at the file. Rather than limping to where he had left it, he directed her into the other room and waited for her to return into the kitchen. They browsed through the contents together whilst Hammond identified the faces in each photograph.

“It’s unlikely someone was looking for this, there isn’t anything incriminating here surely.”

Hammond agreed. He pulled out the Offstead report and notes on Rachel Turner, the social worker.

“You’ve investigated her yet?”

“No, that was my next point of call.”

“Well, if I get a move on I may be able to do a discreet check.”

Hammond smiled at her “Are you offering your skills, expertise and valued experience?”

Dunn returned his smile.” You may as well make the most of it now in order to appreciate what you will miss later.”

For some time after Dunn had left, Hammond found himself thinking about what they had discussed. It was the first time he had allowed himself to think about the cause of the car accident. He couldn’t agree that the sabotaged car was an attempt on his life yet at the same time, he could find no other reasonable explanation. He had been selfish to have ignored the warning. What if Paul had been in the car? The idea was too awful to think about. He wondered whether Lyn had been told or whether she had assumed he had been to blame. He hoped not. Her opinion about him still mattered, it always would.

The house had been ransacked whilst he had been away in hospital, someone had been looking for something and had used this time to explore the house. This meant that they had known they wouldn’t be disturbed. Jenny may have been right, the house had been watched. But for how long? Hammond was relieved that Jenny and Paul were away, at least he was reassured that they were safe. There was a possibility that the same person was responsible for the car damage and the break-in which was a chilling thought. If they had wanted to hurt him, would they have been willing to have hurt Paul or Jenny if they had been at home when they broke in? The thoughts swam around Hammond’s mind and he knew Dunn was right. He had to work out who was responsible and why, before anyone else got hurt. He sat at the kitchen table and wrote a list of people from whom he had received violent threats, all those he had arrested in his career, people who had reason to feel angry enough to strike back at him. Then he read the list. There were thirty three people, all of whom had threatened him with violence or revenge at some point in his career. Then he considered what each person would benefit from his death and drew a blank. There was no benefit to any of them with him being dead. Maybe a perverse satisfaction that he had been taught a lesson, but otherwise there was no reason for them to have taken the trouble to have sabotaged his car. It would have been easier to have killed him with a passing shot or a knife in the back whilst he was unprepared. It didn’t make sense, none of it did. Hammond sighed and crumbled the list before throwing it in the recycling bin. He got up from his chair and looked in the fridge, even though he knew it was empty. He hadn’t shopped since before Christmas and he needed to eat, it was the only thing that brought him comfort when his mind was occupied with answering riddles he had no hope of solving.

The phone rang as Hammond was debating whether to order a pizza.

“So far I haven’t found anyone registered as a foster carer under the name of Goodchild but I think I’ve found something else.” Dunn didn’t wait for Hammond to answer before she launched herself into an explanation for the call.

“Rachel Turner was registered with the Social Care Council in 1984, she worked with the Kent Social Services for twelve years, until she disappeared in 1999. I found a missing persons file on her. I am certain it is the same woman as the Rachel Turner mentioned in the Offstead report you have in the file.”

“There’s no other information?”

“Well, only the obvious, the notes of the police investigation into her disappearance. You want me to pick you up? I can leave now.”

Rachel Turner’s husband was a slim, intelligent looking man in his late fifties. He ushered the two officers into his home with a welcoming air, and immediately offered Hammond a chair to rest his plastered leg upon. He listened politely as Dunn explained the reason for their visit. They were investigating the background of several people who possibly had been fostered under his wife’s supervision as a social worker. Dunn made no promises to investigate his wife’s whereabouts but she gave no reason for him to believe that the police investigation into his wife’s disappearance had been forgotten.

Mr Turner seemed nervous of their presence but made it clear he wanted to help with their enquiries.

“We understand Rachel was working for Child Protection Services at the time of her disappearance?”

Mr Turner nodded affirmatively.

“Did she ever talk to you about her work?”

“No, not much. Rachel was a very discreet person, she took her work very seriously. There were occasions when I could see she wanted to tell me about certain cases she was working on, but she was a stickler for protocol, she would never have broken confidentiality.”

“It says in the Police report that you suspected Rachel had left with another man? Do you still believe that?”

Mr Turner sighed heavily and removed his glasses, he drew a hand across his forehead massaging the temples for several quiet seconds before replacing his glasses.

“To be honest, I don’t know what to believe. Rachel was a good wife, she was a great mother to our daughter Heather who was only four when she left. When it happened I was convinced that Rachel would come back in the door at any moment telling me she had made a mistake, but she never did. The police had traced her movements throughout that day. She told me she was going shopping, but apparently, she had met some man at a local motel. It didn’t seem plausible but I was shown the security film footage from the motel lobby, it was definitely her. The Rachel I knew would never have left our daughter, she was devoted to Heather.”

Mr Turners words were spoken hurried and without care, it was as if he was still trying to rationalise the incident.

Dunn was silent for several moments, Hammond was aware that she shot a sideways glance at him before plunging in with her question.

“Rachel had been beaten shortly before her disappearance? I understand that you were questioned by the Police about her injuries?”

Dunn maintained eye contact with him, willing him to answer.

“I never harmed a hair on her head. Never! Two weeks before Rachel left, she came home later than usual with a black eye and a broken nose. When I asked her about it, she said she had been mugged, and that she had spent the afternoon at the police station. I had no reason to disbelieve her. As for the police...they didn’t question me Sergeant Dunn, they accused me of abusing my wife. At one point, they suggested I had something to do with her disappearance. When I told them that Rachel had reported a mugging only weeks earlier, they accused me of lying. Apparently there was no such report.”

Hammond spoke up, he realised a man to man talk may seem less accusatory.

“The details that the police uncovered during their investigation into Rachel’s disappearance, it must have been a shock to you. You said that the Rachel they portrayed was not the same woman you had known. Is it possible Mr Turner that your wife had led a double life?”

Mr Turner looked at Hammond for several seconds, studying his face before answering.

“I don’t want to believe that Inspector Hammond. Rachel was a gentle, honest woman. We were a close and loving family. I cannot think of one reason why she would have left, yet I cannot understand why she met that man. I don’t believe she was having an affair, at least it didn’t look like that from the motel’s security video. I don’t know who she met, but she knew him, it looked like they were in a heated discussion, at one point he had his hand on her shoulder and was looking directly at her which isn’t the kind of thing you would do with a stranger.”

“Had her behaviour changed in any way leading up to that day?”

“Yes, I did say this to the police because I thought it was relevant. Rachel became very withdrawn and secretive about her work for about a year before she left. She wouldn’t discuss any individual cases with me anyway but I discovered that she stopped bringing her paperwork home with her, like she used to.”

“Do you think she suspected you of reading her work?”

“I cannot imagine why, I respected my wife’s work. It was none of my business what her charges were going through, I never had any desire to know about her work other than what she would tell me.”

“Do you think someone else looked at her private papers, hence her being more security conscious?”

Mr Turner looked with surprise towards Dunn, he obviously found her question ridiculous.

“Who would look at her private papers here? It was only ever me and our daughter, who was an infant!”

Hammond interjected, he leaned across and helped himself to a custard cream and smiled as he did so, hoping to ease the atmosphere.

“The fact is this Mr Turner, your wife suddenly left one day and didn’t come home. The police could find nothing suspicious other than an injury to her face that she didn’t report. Your wife was a conscientious worker, good at her job, and for some reason, she becomes over protective of her business papers. Then she lies to you about going shopping and instead meets a man who you do not know before disappearing. There isn’t much in this account that suggests a crime had been committed, which means that Rachel’s background would have been investigated. Is there anything, no matter how trivial it may seem, that would have been of interest to the people investigating her disappearance?”

Dunn sipped her tea casually, she knew what Hammond was suggesting, that maybe Mr Turner hadn’t known his wife as well as he thought.

“Soon after Rachel and I married, she was desperate to have a family, this would often cause arguments because I wanted us to enjoy a relationship before we had children. At one point we had an awful row about it, and she confessed that she had had a child when she was seventeen, a son that she had given up for adoption. She regretted it ever since. When she left, I wondered if she had managed to trace him which is why I didn’t report her missing until forty eight hours after she failed to come home. I wanted to respect her wishes to keep her son a private matter.”

“Did she tell you she had attempted to trace her son?”

Mr Turner shook his head. “No, but I thought she may have worried about telling me in case I disapproved. You see, when she mentioned the idea of tracing her son, I told her that I didn’t think it was a good idea to look for him, I suggested she leave her details with the adoption contact agencies so that, if her son wanted to trace her, he could. That way it would be his decision. I wanted to protect her from being rejected by him. But, perhaps she thought my motives were selfish.”

“You didn’t mention any of this to the police. Why?”

Mr Turner looked exasperated by Dunn’s question but he answered her calmly and simply.

“The police were quick to presume that I was a wife beater, they didn’t listen to my concerns, instead they saw it as an act of guilt, that I was in some way responsible for her disappearance. I didn’t want them stampeding into an investigation of Rachel’s background. Her character would have been blackened. Becoming a mother at seventeen years of age wasn’t unusual but to Rachel, it was something to be ashamed of and I had no right to humiliate her by telling all and sundry.”

“But you are telling us now. Why?”

“Because eleven years have passed. If Rachel had contacted her son during this time, he would have had enough time to get to know his mother and trust that she didn’t abandon him. Heather is now fifteen years of age, she has forgotten her Mother. Also, I believe that if Rachel is alive, she is happy doing what she wants and that she has left her life with me and Heather behind. It doesn’t make a difference anymore. Rachel isn’t the same person now, she probably has a new identity and a new life. One where she has no secret to be ashamed of.”