Hold Hands in the Dark (6 page)

Chapter 12

H
e stood squarely in the middle of the kitchen, not making any move to take off his dark blue jacket.

              Dani slowly took in Sam’s appearance. The jacket was smart and although he wasn’t wearing a tie, she could tell that the open-necked shirt was an expensive one. ‘It looks like you’ve been somewhere special?’

              ‘I’ve been at the Royal Concert Hall. But the evening was a blow-out.’

              The DCI crinkled her brow.

              ‘When I gave Vicki Kendrick my card the other day, it had my cell number on the back. She called me up yesterday afternoon.’

              Dani frowned even further, wondering why she was only just hearing about this.

              ‘Vicki said she wanted to talk more about Dale. She said that the shock of hearing about his death made her clam up when we were in her office.’ Sam cleared his throat. ‘She invited me to a recital she was giving this evening. Tickets were put aside for me at the door. The plan was to talk afterwards, over dinner.’

              Dani wasn’t sure why she felt so uncomfortable about this arrangement. Sam Sharpe was perfectly entitled to go on a date with whomever he chose. He might even have got more information out of the woman this way. ‘Go on.’

              ‘The gal was a no-show. We sat in that auditorium for a good forty five minutes before an embarrassed theatre manager came out to tell us the recital was cancelled, ‘due to a last minute illness,’ he said.’

              ‘Okay, so Vicki’s been taken ill. I don’t quite see what that’s got to do with me at ten o’clock in the evening.’ Dani hadn’t intended to sound so cranky.

              ‘I’ve tried calling her dozens of times and there’s no reply – either on her cell or home number. If I were back in Richmond I’d head over there and check things out. But I’ve no jurisdiction in Scotland.’

              The words hung in the air for a few moments.

              ‘You want me to send a squad car round to check she’s alright?’

              Sam shook his head steadily, finally starting to appear pissed off. ‘
No
, I want the both of us to go round there and check she’s alright. Her brother was murdered less than a week ago. I think I’ve got a duty to make sure that the woman is safe.’

              Dani disappeared into the bedroom, returning moments later having pulled on a pair of jeans instead of her jogging pants. ‘I think you’re over reacting, but it won’t hurt to take a look.’

              Sam threw his arms in the air. ‘Well, thank you Ma’am.’

*

‘What’s Vicki’s personal history?’ Dani asked, as she drove them towards the west side of the city.

              ‘According to her Wiki page, she was married to a fellow musician called Guy Kendrick for fifteen years. They divorced in 2010. There was no mention of anyone else,’ Sam replied.

              Dani swept her little car into an attractive terrace, where a neat row of Georgian homes formed a crescent ahead of them. The detectives got out and approached one of the grand front doors.

              ‘This is the one,’ Sam commented, pressing hard on the bell.

              Dani tried to peer through the ground floor window but the shutters were closed. The place was in darkness.

              ‘No response,’ Sam called over.

              ‘Is there a back entrance to this terrace?’ Dani thought out loud.

              ‘Let’s go see,’ Sam responded.

              ‘Hang on,’ Dani added, swiftly pulling out her warrant card. ‘This is a nice area and Vicki is a sensible middle aged woman who lives alone.’ The DCI stepped over a low wall and hammered the next-door-neighbour’s knocker.

              An elderly man opened up a crack, with chains still attached at top and bottom.

              Dani held her identity card up close to him. ‘My name is DCI Bevan from the Police Scotland Serious Crime Division. We’ve not been able to get hold of Ms Kendrick at number 25 this evening. Have you seen her at all?’

              ‘I believe that my wife has.’ The man’s face disappeared, rapidly replaced by the suspicious eyes of an equally elderly lady.

              ‘Vicki came home at around 4pm. We parked up at the same time. She said there was an important recital this evening. You’ll find her at the Concert Hall in town.’

              ‘She never turned up,’ Dani replied gravely.

              The eyes flickered to and fro. ‘That’s very unlike her. Vicki is the consummate professional.’ The face disappeared once again, to be replaced by a bony hand, shoved through the gap between the door and the frame, with a Yale key gripped in its long fingers. ‘You’d better have this Detective Inspector. Vicki may have been taken ill.’

              Dani nodded her gratitude and took the key.

              Sam stepped out of the shadows to join her. ‘How very British. At least it wasn’t sitting under a flower pot.’

              ‘Oh, people do that too, don’t you worry. It would have been the next place I’d have looked.’

              Dani fitted the key into the lock and pushed her way inside. The hallway was wide and in total darkness.

              ‘Ms Kendrick!’ Sam called out. ‘It’s Sergeant Sharpe and DCI Bevan. We’ve come to check you’re okay!’

              There was no response.

              Dani pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt down to cover her hands, turning to Sam. ‘Ever get the feeling you’ve stepped into a crime scene?’

              ‘Yeah,’ he muttered distractedly. ‘Best not to touch anything we don’t have to.’

              Dani took a couple of long strides towards the sitting room door. She’d been to enough scenes of violent crime in her career to recognise the eerie stillness and the faintly metallic scent of death. There wasn’t an opportunity to reach the room, however, as with her last step, Dani’s foot slid unceremoniously in what felt like a deep pool of liquid on the floor. Her head struck the stone tiles as she fell. The DCI recalled no more after that except blackness.

Chapter 13

W
hen Dani came to, she was lying on a sofa in a large kitchen-diner and could hear police sirens outside.

              A sudden gust of cold air blasted her legs before a pair of paramedics rushed to her side. Dani glanced down then and saw the blood, which was streaked along the side of her jeans and sweater. It took the detective a couple of seconds to realise it wasn’t hers.

              ‘I’m fine,’ she said shakily.

              ‘How long were you unconscious?’

              ‘A few minutes perhaps, I don’t know for sure.’

              ‘Then you’ll need to come with us.’

              ‘What about the blood? What’s happened to Ms Kendrick?’ Dani tried to sit up but her temples throbbed like crazy.

              The paramedic shook his head. ‘You’re a detective, right?’

              Dani nodded.

              ‘Let’s just say that she doesn’t need
our
help any longer. Your people are taking it from here.’

*

It seemed like hours before Sam came into her room at the hospital.

              ‘What the hell’s going on?’ She demanded. ‘They won’t let me out of this ruddy place.’

              Sam looked pale. He sat on the edge of the bed. ‘How are you feeling? I shouldn’t have let you go on ahead in the dark. The perp could still have been in the building.’

              ‘It’s fine. I am trained for this kind of thing. What about Vicki? I’m taking it she’s dead?’

              ‘Yeah, and it was nasty. Her body was strung up from the light fitting, not far from the entrance to the sitting room, hence the blood on the floor. Vicki had multiple stab wounds to the neck and torso. It wasn’t quick
or
painless. The doc reckoned she bled out.’

              ‘Who attended the callout?’

              ‘Phil and a young gal called Alice. She seemed very on-the-ball. And Phil was great. He didn’t waste any time assuming I was the killer, who’d incapacitated you with a blow to the head and then taken the time to call the cops.’

              ‘DI Boag is a sensible guy. He knows you.’ He must also have wondered what the hell Sam was doing here in Glasgow with his boss, Dani imagined, even if he didn’t ask.

              ‘Don’t worry, I explained everything, including the details of Dale’s murder back in Richmond and his connection to Vicki. I told them you were helping me out as a friend – nothing official.’

              ‘Well, it’s going to be official now.’

              Sam creased his face. ‘There was no sign of a break-in and not much in the way of evidence indicating a struggle either. In fact, there were two glasses in the kitchen sink and a half finished bottle of wine on a counter.

              ‘We might get prints?’ Dani sat bolt upright, only to groan in discomfort.

              ‘The place was wiped clean, according to the scene of crime techs. But at least we can be certain that Vicki knew this guy reasonably well. She must have let him in.’

              ‘Then someone will have spotted the bastard. Those houses are close together. There must be plenty of comings and goings along that crescent in the early evening. Any news on the time of death?’

              ‘Nothing official, but the doc suggested she’d been dead about three or four hours which fits with the murder taking place after she got home from the college and before setting out to the recital.’

              Dani rested her hands in her lap, feeling the unpleasant sensation of dried blood on her trousers. The DCI sensed bile rise into her throat. ‘Why has this happened now, Sam? We’d only just informed the poor woman that her brother had been murdered in cold blood and now this?’

              Sam’s expression was grim. ‘There has to be a connection to the hit on Dale. The thing that’s really bugging me about the timing, is the possibility that
I
was the one who led the killer right to her.’

Chapter 14

T
he new meeting room in the Glasgow Serious Crime Department was packed full. DCI Bevan was addressing her team from the front, but DCS Douglas was standing, menacingly, just a couple of inches to one side.

              ‘We are now officially working with our colleagues in the Virginia PD, like we did in the Gordon Parker investigation a few years ago.’

              Several heads nodded in recognition. The ones who remained impassive were newer to the division, including DS Alice Mann.

              ‘Our link man is Sergeant Sam Sharpe.’

              The American raised a hand to his forehead and gave a salute.

              ‘He was looking into the death of Detective Dale Faulkner back in Richmond when his inquiries brought him to Scotland. Our previous working relationship encouraged him to share his findings with me, which at that stage were purely speculative.’

              ‘But now Faulkner’s sister has been murdered, it looks like more of a concrete connection,’ Calder added.

              ‘Do we know any more about the family?’ Phil enquired.

              Dani nodded, turning to a set of photographs pinned to the board behind her. ‘Vicki Faulkner went to live with her grandmother, Maeve Lomas, at her council home in the Muirhouse estate in 1976, when her parents relocated to the US. Lomas died eight years ago of lymphatic cancer.’

              Sam stood up and moved across to join the DCI. ‘Dale’s parents both died around a decade back. There was nothing suspicious about their deaths either. We’re still looking into the existence of wider members of the Lomas and Faulkner families. It’s certain that the Richmond branch pretty much lost contact with their Scottish relatives. I’m not sure that line of inquiry will bring us much further forward.’

              ‘How did you make the Scottish connection in the first place?’ DCS Douglas eyed the American detective with thinly veiled scepticism.

              Sam prodded the white board with a beefy finger. ‘It was these two names that brought me across the pond. Dale was shot in a derelict house on the Southside of Richmond. Its most recent tenants were a couple named McNeil. They had no kids and were teachers. It turns out that John McNeil’s family hailed from Portencross West Kilbride, less than five miles from Dale’s parents’ farm, which they rented until the move to the States.’

              ‘Have you interviewed this couple?’

              Sam shook his head solemnly. ‘Nobody’s heard anything from them since 2014. That’s when John and Rita gave up the lease on the house in Richmond. They could be anywhere by now.’

              Douglas’s expression stiffened. ‘We’ve not got much to go on then, as far as the brother’s shooting is concerned. I say we focus on Vicki Kendrick instead. It turns out the new DCC was a great fan of her playing.’ The senior detective rolled his eyes.

              Andy had to stop himself from letting out a laugh. Who knew that ‘Dour’ Douglas had a sense of humour?

              ‘Of course sir,’ Dani put in. ‘Ms Kendrick’s murder was right on our patch and it was a grisly one. Our investigation needs to begin with the forensics. Vicki let her murderer into the house, she even socialised with them. This person must have been acting normally for at least part of the evening. There have got to be traces of the perp somewhere on the premises.’

              ‘Well, let me know when the PM results arrive. I’ll need to keep the media informed of developments.’ With that, the DCS swept from the room.

*

              ‘Do we think the bastard was her lover?’

              The discussion was flowing more freely now that Douglas had left.

              ‘We’ve got to keep an open mind on that,’ Dani replied.

              ‘But to be able to string Kendrick up onto that light fitting, whilst she was still alive, must indicate a strong physical build, so we’re surely assuming the killer was male?’ DS Mann asserted.

              ‘She asked me out pretty quick off the mark. I mean, I know Vicki wanted to find out more about Dale an’ all, but I still got the distinct impression it was a date she was proposing.’ Sam shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other.

              ‘Which tells us nothing,’ DC Clifton supplied. ‘The woman was a long term divorcee and free to see any man she wished. Just because she asked out Sergeant Sharpe, it doesn’t mean she didn’t have other boyfriends.’

              ‘Aye, Dan’s quite right,’ Andy continued. ‘But her coming onto Sam suggests the woman was sexually active. That means men could’ve come back to her house reasonably often, which makes our job a hell of a lot more difficult.’

              ‘Hopefully, the house-to-house inquiries should shed some light on that.’ Dani sighed. ‘But I take your point. If Vicki had a long-term partner with whom she was monogamous, it would provide us with an immediate suspect.’

              Phil stood up. ‘But if Kendrick was killed by the same people who shot her brother, then we should be setting out on quite a different track altogether.’

              Dani was quiet for a moment, putting a hand absent-mindedly to the ugly purple bump on the side of her head. ‘Phil’s right. We need to split this investigation into two. Sam and Andy can look into the Richmond connection whilst the rest of the team focus purely on Kendrick and her lovers.’

              Sam crinkled his brow. ‘Don’t I get any more manpower than that?’

              ‘If your investigation turns something up, I’ll reassess. In the meantime, I trust you two to do an excellent job.’

              Andy Calder slapped the American on the back playfully. ‘Looks like you’re stuck wi’ me, pal!’ he declared, a wide grin on his handsome face.