Hold Hands in the Dark (15 page)

Chapter 36

S
am Sharpe experienced a restless night. When he was on the hands-free to Dani he hadn’t sensed there was anyone at her place except Calder. But he had no idea what that meant and still didn’t have a clue which way she was going to jump.

              As soon as it became light, Sam padded into the kitchen of his one-bedroom, city centre apartment and started to make coffee. The other cause of his sleeplessness was the doubt forming in his mind about his old friend Dale.

              Up until now, he’d assumed that whoever killed the McNeils, stuffed their brutalized bodies in a freezer box and then buried them in the yard of that run-down old house on the Southside, had also shot Dale. His cop’s instinct wasn’t telling him that any longer.

              Sam took a shower and pulled on his jeans and a casual sweater. He drove out to Midlothian, sitting in his SUV and watching Toni Faulkner pottering around in the kitchen for a while. Finally, the detective opened up and approached the front door.

              Toni looked surprised to see him. She ran a hand through her loose hair. ‘Hi, Sam, I wasn’t expecting you this morning.’

              ‘No, I didn’t call ahead. Sorry.’

              ‘Not a problem, you’re welcome anytime.’ She stood back and allowed him to enter. Toni led her visitor into the kitchen and began filling the coffee machine. ‘I’m clean out of pods.’

              ‘Coffee from a machine is just fine.’ He sat on a stool at the breakfast bar.

              ‘Is that lady detective not will you this time?’ Toni avoided eye contact, keeping herself busy opening a fresh packet of ground beans.

              ‘Dani’s gone back to Scotland.’

              ‘Only I recalled, after you’d gone the other day, how you’d had a girlfriend who was in the police over in Glasgow, a while back.’

              ‘Yeah, that was her.’

              Toni’s shoulders seemed to drop just a fraction. ‘She seemed nice. Good at her job.’

              ‘She is. Look, I didn’t come here to discuss my dating history.’

              Toni turned round, her forehead wrinkling into a frown. ‘Have you found something out about Dale’s murder?’

              ‘Kind’ve.’ Sam stood up and moved closer. ‘I know it’s tough, but I need you to tell me about the period of time between two years and eighteen months ago. When Dale ended your marriage.’

              ‘What do you want to know?’ Toni turned her back on the detective.

              ‘How was he behaving? Did he say or do anything out of the ordinary during that period?’

              Toni shrugged. ‘Apart from ending a twenty year marriage I thought was perfectly happy, you mean?’

              Sam allowed her to formulate a proper answer, carrying their cups over to the breakfast bar and sitting there patiently, pretending to enjoy the coffee.

              ‘He’d been working long hours on that drug case – the one that took you out to Virginia Beach all the time.’

              Sam nodded, he remembered it well.

              ‘Only as a detective’s wife you’ve gotta take a lot of stuff on trust, you know? He’s out until the early hours and when he comes back, he claims it was work. What can you do? You’ve gotta believe him.’

              ‘That case did take up a great deal of man hours. I should know. I filed the overtime sheets.’

              Toni managed a thin smile. ‘I didn’t see a whole lot of Dale in the month or so before he left. In fact, the kids and I went away to my parents’ cabin in the Blue Ridge for a couple of weeks. Dale was real busy on the case and couldn’t join us.’

              ‘When was this exactly?’ Sam carefully put down his cup.

              ‘It was the summer of 2014. I’d have to find my old calendar to get the exact date.’

              ‘While you were away, Dale remained here, in the house?’

              ‘Yeah, he hadn’t moved out yet. He dropped his bombshell not long after we returned from that vacation. It must have been in the early September. But Dale hadn’t been himself that whole summer. He was real distant and wouldn’t talk to me, not properly.’

              ‘Was there a part of the house that Dale used to hang out in – like a workshop or a den, maybe?’

              ‘Dale wasn’t a great one for making things, but he stored all his gardening gear in the basement. It’s where we keep the bikes. He used to go down and work on those occasionally, fixing punctures and adjusting stuff.’

              ‘Do you mind if I take a look in there?’

              ‘Sure, although it’s a mess. No one’s used it since Dale went. The kids got new bikes for college.’

              Toni lifted a key off a hook by the large refrigerator and unlocked the door under the stairs. She flicked a light switch and stood back. ‘Go ahead, but watch your footing, there may be boxes on the steps.’

              Sam descended cautiously. The overhead bulb wasn’t throwing out much light and he was struggling to get accustomed to the gloom.

              The large space beneath the Faulkners’ home was filled with the usual detritus of family life. The bikes were leaning against one of the wooden support struts and a workbench stood in one corner. Sam manoeuvred through the piles of camping gear, peering under dusty sheets and shifting old blankets aside in the process.

              Then something caught the detective’s eye. One corner of the basement seemed to have been allocated to the storage of the Faulkners’ luggage. Sam moved across to examine the cases and trunks, each of them bearing flight labels for various destinations; Florida, New York, Washington DC.

              But one pair of suitcases didn’t quite match the rest. They were more old-fashioned and were of the kind that Sam’s own parents tended to use. He dragged one of them forward and undid the zips. The case itself was empty. Sam ran his fingers around the interior, searching for any pockets in which something may have been missed. Nothing.

              He pulled over the second suitcase. This one was slightly smaller than the first. Again, Sam folded back the lid and examined the interior. Instantly, his hand shot forward and touched a small, hand-sewn label which had been woven into the lining on the base, its material so closely matching the upholstery of the case that on first glance you could easily miss it.

              The label read: Mrs R.E. McNeil. Richmond, Virginia. U.S.A.

Chapter 37

D
ani addressed her team in the conference room of the Pitt Street HQ.

              ‘We’ve been looking at this investigation from the wrong angle,’ she began, eyeing each detective in turn. ‘Now we have the McNeils’ suitcases, recovered from the basement of the Faulkner property in Richmond, it changes everything.’

              ‘Dale Faulkner murdered the McNeils in the summer of 2014.
He
placed their bodies in the freezer of their rented property,’ Alice supplied.

              ‘It seems increasingly likely that is what happened. Toni Faulkner and the children spent two weeks at her parents’ cabin that summer; from the 12
th
to the 26
th
of July. Dale may have killed the couple before this date and used the absence of his wife from their property to dispose of the bodies and clean up the crime scene.’

              ‘But
why
would Dale do something like that?’ Dan looked genuinely crestfallen. ‘He was a friend of Detective Sharpe’s. They’d known each other for decades.’

              Andy got to his feet. ‘Dale Faulkner wasn’t the guy people thought he was. He’d lied to his wife and children from day one. The man was hiding something terrible from his past. He bludgeoned to death a harmless old couple in order to keep it a secret.’

              Dani shook her head in frustration. ‘We should have known that whoever killed the McNeils had a good knowledge of forensics. He stored the bodies in the freezer until he had an opportunity to bury them. Dale was determined to cover his tracks.’

              ‘So who made the 911 callout to the property where the McNeils’ were buried and shot Dale in the head?’ Alice Mann asked bluntly.

              ‘Someone must have discovered what Dale had done,’ Dani continued. ‘Perhaps they’d contacted Dale before the night of his death and that’s why he decided to bury the bodies after all that time.’

              ‘Could this person have been blackmailing him?’ Andy pitched in.

              ‘It’s certainly possible. But then why kill him? They’d lose their supply of cash with Dale dead.’ Dani ran a hand through her hair.

              ‘How does this tie in with the murder of Vicki Kendrick?’ Alice wanted to steer the discussion back to their Glasgow investigation.

              ‘Well, I think they both knew the secret – Dale and Vicki.’ Dani tapped her finger on their photographs, pinned up side-by-side. ‘Somebody wanted them both to pay for their sins.
That’s
who we’re looking for.’

              ‘It seems like Dale had committed quite a few of those,’ Andy said with distaste. ‘How is Sam taking the news?’

              ‘Perfectly professionally, as far as I can tell. The Richmond PD are tearing apart the Faulkners’ home right now, looking for more evidence. What they have as it stands is purely circumstantial. We don’t know where Dale dumped the murder weapon or the contents of the suitcases. They may have gone into the James River somewhere. It’s unlikely they’ll be recovered after all this time.’

              ‘Keeping the suitcases themselves was a gamble,’ Alice commented.

              ‘Perhaps they were just too big to dispose of. Dale thought he’d removed all traces of the McNeils from them. He may even have told Toni they’d once belonged to his parents and he’d inherited them. She wouldn’t have questioned it. Dale was a policeman. He knew nobody was actually searching for the McNeils. They had no children and no immediate family in the area. The couple told everyone they knew in Richmond that they were about to go off travelling. They hadn’t been missed. If Dale himself hadn’t been murdered in that house and the landlord forced to refurbish the place, we may never have discovered what happened to them at all.’

              Andy’s face had flushed red with anger. ‘I don’t think we should feel sentimental about this guy, Dale. We need to forget all about the fact he was a cop, like us. I say we dig over that family’s history until we find the dirty little secret they were all hiding. Then we blow it sky high.’

              Dani nodded. ‘Don’t worry DS Calder. That is my intention exactly.’

Chapter 38

A
s soon as Dani opened the door to her flat, she sensed something was wrong. It immediately occurred to her that James might have returned from Edinburgh.

              She placed her briefcase in the hall and made her way towards the kitchen, calling out her boyfriend’s name but without switching on the lights. The first thing she noticed was that the lock on her patio door had been broken. It was wrenched open just enough for someone to have squeezed inside.

              Dani glanced around her, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. There was no noise except for the humming of the fridge. She padded towards the bedroom, careful not to touch anything. Bracing herself, Dani kicked open the door with her foot. The room was empty.

              She turned and gazed into the gloom of the sitting room. At first, everything appeared to be in order. Then Dani noticed several dark streaks across the walls and floor. Pulling her sleeve down over her hand she flicked on the light switch.

              There were glass fragments all over the coffee table and sofa. It took Dani several minutes to work out that the stains on the paintwork were from several bottles of red wine now smashed into pieces and strewn across the furniture. Someone had broken into her flat, emptied out her wine rack and gone to town with the contents all over the front room.

              Dani felt the phone in her pocket start to buzz. She lifted it out. It was Andy.

              ‘Hi.’

              ‘Evening, Ma’am. Sorry to bother you at this time. There’s been an odd incident.’

              ‘Ditto.’

              ‘Huh?’

              ‘Carry on, you first.’

              ‘DCS Douglas arrived home to find his wife’s car had been vandalised. It’s been scratched with what appears to be a broken bottle. The words, ‘filthy scab,’ were gouged across the side of the paintwork.’

              ‘I think the broken bottle came from my kitchen.’

             
‘What?’

              ‘I’ll need a forensic team over to my place straight away. As soon as I’ve had my back door secured by the locksmith, I’ll come and join you at headquarters.’

*

The only detectives still on duty were Andy, Alice and Dan. Bevan called them all into her office.

              ‘The DCS decided to stay at home to comfort his wife. She’s very upset at the thought of some nutter having a go at her new car. She’s worried it might be personal.’ Andy reclined comfortably on the sofa.

              Dani shook her head. ‘It isn’t. This person was targeting me and the DCS. It just happened to be Alison’s car parked on the driveway.’

              ‘The Douglas place is like Fort Knox. All the doors are wired up to some kind of central alarm system. Plus the wife was at home for most of the day, just popping in and out for provisions. I reckon this vandal didn’t fancy their chances of getting inside the place undetected.’

              ‘Maybe I’d better update my home security,’ Dani added bitterly.

              ‘The techies have gone through your place lifting prints. They told me a new lock’s been fitted to your back door, a much better model. The old one didn’t take much jemmying to snap it in two.’  Andy was clearly making an attempt to be reassuring.              

              ‘Why were the DCS and I targeted? I know that we’re pretty unpopular with a good number of Glasgow’s villains, but why the both of us and why now?’

              Dan Clifton cleared his throat nervously. ‘When I got approached by Nancy McRae the other morning, she was really upset about the idea that the police had taken bribes from Hemingway. I felt I had to provide her with as full an explanation as possible as to why we closed down the case into her husband’s death.’

              Dani narrowed her eyes. ‘What did you tell her?’

              ‘She wanted to know exactly whose decision it was to stop the investigation. I said that it was you and the DCS who decided there was no negligence case to answer.’

              Andy turned on his colleague. ‘Why the hell did you tell her that?’

              ‘She was angry that we weren’t reopening the file, despite the fact that an officer had been dismissed for taking a bribe from the shipyard. I felt I owed her a better explanation.’

              Dani placed both hands in the air. ‘At least we now have something to go on.’

              Andy made a face. ‘Do we really think that Tony McRae’s widow broke into your flat, Ma’am?’

              Dan Clifton shuffled forward in his chair. ‘The words scrawled on Mrs Douglas’s car were, ‘
filthy scab’
. That’s an insult that used to be hurled at workers who broke a strike – folk who were seen to have betrayed the union. Nancy McRae hails from that background. Her father was Alec Duff. Even if
she
didn’t carry out the vandalism, I’m certain Nancy would know of somebody who would do it for her. The Duffs were urban heroes in certain Glasgow circles in the 70s and 80s.’

              ‘Right, you and Andy head out first thing in the morning to have a wee chat with Mrs McRae. If she can’t give us a watertight alibi for what she was up to this afternoon, bring her in for a formal interview.’