Kennedy 03 - Where Petals Fall (9 page)

Chapter Ten

DC Simpson didn’t feel up to the job. It was his first week back at work after a holiday in Rhodes where he and four mates had tried to drink the island dry. It was his first week back in Harrington, too.

It wasn’t his first encounter with DCI Trentham, though. In fact, Trentham was one of the reasons he’d requested a transfer to London three years ago. An ex-wife being the other reason.

The Green Man was opposite headquarters, and after a long day Johnny felt in need of a drink and a laugh with his new colleagues. What he wasn’t in need of was Trentham’s company. Johnny had read the local rag’s shocking headline and he knew someone would come in for some stick from Trentham. He guessed he’d be top of Trentham’s list, too.

Four years ago, he’d made an innocent enough comment to a reporter and Trentham had been furious . . .

‘Sit down,’ Trentham said now and, unable to think of a plausible excuse not to, Johnny sat. It didn’t do to argue with Trentham.

These days, people said one couldn’t wish for a better boss. It was even rumoured that he’d got a thing going with Jill Kennedy, the psychologist, but Johnny struggled to believe that. She was a looker, in a casual sort of way. She had a great bum and good legs. At least, he thought she had. He’d only seen her in jeans. She could have done a lot better for herself than Trentham, though . . .

The Green Man was enjoying a brisk trade, althoughthere were more standing outside than in. Those outside were smoking. A large television dominated the far corner of the room, but no one was looking at it and the volume was switched off. There was no music. For all that, it was noisy. Drinkers at the bar had to talk loudly to make themselves heard over the door that was constantly banging as smokers either went out for a smoke or returned.

‘So, Johnny,’ Trentham began, ‘how does it feel to be back at Harrington?’

‘It’s good.’ It could be a hell of a lot better, though.

‘Tell me, why did you leave?’

Johnny took a swallow of beer. No way was he giving Trentham the satisfaction of thinking the transfer to London had been down to him.

‘Divorce, sir,’ he replied. ‘My ex was giving me grief and I wanted out.’

‘Ah. I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. And did it work out in the end?’

Blimey, Trentham looked quite concerned.

‘It did, sir. Thanks.’

‘Good.’

Silence settled on them as Trentham watched a couple of officers flirting at the bar.

‘You were suspended from duty for a while, weren’t you?’ Trentham said, switching his attention back to Johnny. ‘Remind me what that was about.’

Like he didn’t know.

Johnny decided that the best way to defend himself was to attack. ‘I know what you’re thinking, sir.’

‘Oh? And what am I thinking, Johnny?’ Trentham asked.

‘You’re thinking that someone on the team has been blabbing to the papers, and you’re thinking it might have been me.’

‘You’re right. I’m thinking exactly that.’

‘Well, it wasn’t. Why the hell would I?’

‘Why the hell would anyone?’ Trentham countered.

He had a point. Why would someone speak to the press? What was there to be gained?

‘I’m serious,’ Trentham said as he didn’t answer. ‘Why would someone do that, Johnny?’

‘I don’t know.’ It might be someone on the team who had a grudge against Trentham, he supposed but, as yet, he’d met no one who qualified. Unlike Johnny, everyone thought the sun shone out of Trentham’s arse. ‘It could be someone wanting to protect the killer. But probably not,’ he added quickly, spotting the scoffing expression on Trentham’s face. ‘Or it could be the killer out for a bit of publicity. You know? Enjoying his moment of glory. If it was the killer, though, that would make you think that The Undertaker was still alive. I mean, if it’s a copycat, he wouldn’t want to give The Undertaker all the glory, would he?’

‘Mm,’ Trentham murmured.

‘Or money,’ Johnny ran on. ‘Perhaps the paper offered a good sum for the story.’

Trentham shook his head in despair at that. ‘To do that, they’d have to know there
was
a story.’

Trentham’s phone rang, and Johnny quickly downed his pint. ‘Time I was off, sir,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Unless there’s anything else?’

‘Yes, there is. Hang on a minute.’ He hit the button to answer his phone.

Johnny gestured to his glass to indicate he was getting another, then thought he’d better point at Trentham’s too. Bugger it. Now he had to buy the bloke a pint.

‘Hiya,’ Johnny heard him say. ‘You’re kidding me . . .’

When Johnny returned to their table with the drinks, Trentham was ending his call.

‘Thanks,’ he said, taking the drink from Johnny. ‘OK, so what I want you to do is find out who talked to the local rag. OK? All that moron of an editor, Bill May, can say is that it was an anonymous phone message left when the offices were closed. Make some inquiries.’

‘OK.’ Did that mean Trentham believed him? ‘Any suggestions, sir?’

Trentham thought for a moment. ‘First off, all phone messages to the paper are taped. They’re now claimingthey can’t find the tape. Find the damn thing. Talk to the girl who sorts out the messages. Talk to everyone on the paper’s payroll. Check the phone records. Just do whatever it takes. And put plenty of pressure on Bill May. He’d sell his grandmother for a story.’

‘Right, sir.’

Johnny was whistling when he finally left the pub. He’d soon get to the bottom of this. It was just what he needed, an opportunity to shine. His promotion was long overdue.

Chapter Eleven

Will Draper wasn’t watching the television. He was vaguely aware that it was on, but he wasn’t paying attention.

His daughter, Lisa, wasn’t either. She was busy applying a bright blue colour to her chewed fingernails.

‘Couldn’t you find a more disgusting colour?’ he asked, pulling a face.

‘Oh, Dad.’ Shaking her head, Lisa smiled that despairing smile of hers.

‘Your dad showing his age again?’ he guessed, and, still smiling, she nodded.

She was a good kid. Not so much a kid now, sadly. She was eighteen and had had a boyfriend for almost a year. Will was expecting to hear the sound of wedding bells or the patter of tiny feet any time soon. He hoped it was bells before feet, but you never knew these days.

Jason, her young man, wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, but he was OK.

In any case, Will thought, brightening, Lisa had a mind of her own. She might not even be thinking of settling down. He hoped that was the case. He’d miss her desperately, far more than he would let her know. She was a good daughter and they’d managed well enough since her mother, Eileen, had died. It was ten years since they’d buried Eileen, and Will often wondered where the time had gone. Lisa had been a shy, vulnerable eight-year-old then. Now, she was working in Woollies and painting her nails blue.

‘Dad,’ she said, and Will thought he probably knew what was coming.

‘Mm?’

‘Why don’t you go out tonight? Just down the pub or something? The older you get, the more lonely you’ll be,’ she went on, warming to her well-worn theme now. ‘You need a woman in your life, someone special. Or, if not special, someone to go out with. Now, you won’t meet women on a building site, will you? And you won’t meet any stuck in front of the telly every night. You don’t go anywhere,’ she ended in despair.

She was right, of course. After Eileen died, he’d stayed at home. With an eight-year-old to look after, he’d had no choice. As Lisa had grown, the habit was ingrained. It was a habit Will was quite happy with too.

‘And you think I’ll meet someone at the pub?’ he scoffed.

‘You might.’

He wouldn’t. In any case, he didn’t want to meet anyone. He was happy as he was.

The news came on and he ambled into the kitchen to make a mug of tea. He liked to watch the news with a cuppa.

‘Do you want a brew?’ he called out.

‘Sorry, Dad. I’ll be late if I don’t get a move on.’

When Will carried his tea back to the sitting room, Lisa was on tiptoe in front of the mirror, lipstick in hand, pouting at her reflection. She looked stunning, Will thought, somewhat wistfully.

He sat down with his mug of tea just as a woman’s face vanished from the screen.

‘Who was that?’ he asked, his heart thumping against his ribcage. ‘What’ve they been talking about, Lis?’

‘The murder,’ she told him. ‘That woman who was murdered, yeah? Well, they reckon the bloke who did that was the same bloke who killed some others five years ago. That was one of the women he killed back then.’

‘That chap Marshall?’

‘That’s him. Hey, you worked at the place he used to live, didn’t you?’ She grimaced. ‘That was right spooky.’ She grabbed her jacket and handbag. ‘Must dash, Dad!’

A kiss on the cheek, a whiff of heady perfume, and she was gone.

Will’s head was in a spin. He flicked through the other TV channels, but there was nothing. He was sweating, and in order to calm down, he took a series of slow, deep breaths.

It wasn’t necessarily the woman from the video. If Lisa was right, the woman on the telly had been dead for five years. He’d only found that video a year ago. On the other hand, who was to say the video hadn’t been five years old? And who was to say it hadn’t belonged to that killer?

He felt sick now.

Even if it did belong to that madman, Will had done nothing wrong. He’d only found a few videos at a site he’d been working on and sold them on. Perhaps he should have gone to the police with them. But why would he have done that? The police wouldn’t have been interested in a few porn videos and that’s what Will had thought they were.

In truth, he’d been so pleased to get some extra cash for Lisa’s driving lessons that he hadn’t thought too much about them. They’d been labelled, he remembered. The titles had consisted of just one word – girls’ names. One was ‘Chloe’. Guessing they’d been porn videos, he’d taken the video player to the site the next day to check them out. He hadn’t risked taking them home in case Lisa saw them.

Six of them had been working on some flats, but Will had had time to himself to view the videos.

The first one had shown a woman – maybe the woman he’d seen on TV, maybe not – being taunted with a knife. She’d been naked, standing with her hands tied behind her and her feet tied at the ankles. Someone wearing a black hood with eye-slits had been holding a knife to her face. First it was held against her lips, then it had been put against her ear. She’d been screaming for mercy. She’d pissed herself, Will remembered. Given the same circumstances, he’d have done the same. Then, the man had walked behind her and cut her throat.

Will hadn’t had the stomach for it so he’d switched it off. The second video had been much the same from the few minutes he’d forced himself to watch. He’d planned to throw them in the skip, but then that bloke had walked in on him. What was his name? Will couldn’t remember. Some big shot architect. Whoever he was, he’d reckoned he knew someone who would pay good money for them.

‘These aren’t porn,’ Will had told him, disgusted. ‘They’re sick!’

‘You’d be surprised,’ the bloke had said with a knowing wink. ‘Leave it to me. Here, you have a couple of hundred quid for your trouble and I’ll sell them to my friend. Forget you ever saw them.’

Will had pocketed the money and forgotten about them. Until now.

Now, he could hear the screams for mercy as clearly as if the women were in the room with him.

Chapter Twelve

It was just after two o’clock the following afternoon when DS Fletcher entered Max’s study bearing two mugs of tea.

‘Anything?’ Max asked.

Fletch had been interviewing Roberts for the last two hours.

Fletch shook his head and handed Max a steaming mug. ‘You OK, guv?’

‘No, I’m not. Someone’s making us look like bloody incompetents and, Christ knows, we’re more than capable of doing that without outside interference.’ He took a swig of tea. ‘Thanks,’ he added belatedly.

He got out of his chair, the mug cradled in his hands, and stood with his back to the window facing Fletch. ‘What a bloody mess!’

God, his patience was being tried today. He’d felt sure they’d had a breakthrough with the ribbon samples Jill had brought in from Forget-me-nots, but no, they didn’t match the length tied around Carol Blakely’s waist. They weren’t even the same shade of red.

‘We’re a bloody laughing stock,’ he fumed.

‘We’ll get there in the end,’ Fletch said.

Not at this rate they wouldn’t. He took a swallow of his tea. ‘So what about Roberts? Anything new at all?’

‘We don’t have much to go on, guv.’

‘We’ve got sod all to go on, Fletch.’

‘Yeah, but it is suspicious. He meets Carol Blakely twice, then she’s dead. He buys red ribbon from her shop –’

‘Not
the
red ribbon, though.’ Max ran frustrated fingers through his hair. ‘God knows.’ He drained his cup. ‘Let’s have another go at him. Oh, and Fletch, don’t let me forget parents’ evening.’

‘Tonight, is it?’

‘It is. It’ll be a complete waste of my time and theirs, but I promised I’d go.’

‘You don’t know that, guv. They’re good kids. Bright, too.’

‘That’s what I always think until I see their teachers struggling to come up with something positive to say about them. Thank God Harry can play football . . .’

Roberts didn’t look concerned to find himself sitting opposite Max again. Quite the reverse in fact. He was enjoying every minute of this. Jill had said he was a man who liked to be the centre of attention. What had she called him? Drop-dead gorgeous? The scruffy, unshaven look must be in, Max decided grimly. Roberts was wearing the oldest, tattiest pair of jeans imaginable. There were no holes in them, yet, but they were worn paper-thin. His T-shirt had once been red, but was now multicoloured with various stains.

‘Right,’ Max said, when the preliminaries had been dealt with, ‘we’re going to start from the beginning and, this time, I’d appreciate the truth. Tell me again about your relationship with Carol Blakely.’

‘I’ve told you, my man, I saw her twice. No, make that four times in total. The first time, I went to her shop to buy flowers for my mother.’

‘Who lives where?’

‘She travels – the circus, you know – but she’s currently in Devon,’ Roberts replied easily. ‘So I chose the sort of flowers I wanted, with Carol’s help, and arranged for the same sort of thing to be delivered to my mother.’

‘As far as I was aware,’ Fletch put in, ‘Carol Blakely didn’t serve in her shop.’

‘True,’ Roberts said, grinning, ‘but she walked in while I was dealing with the young girl and I asked for heropinion. It was the girl – young and blonde – who told me she owned the business.’

‘Go on,’ Max said.

‘A week later, I went to the shop again to choose flowers for my sister. She’d just had a baby, which is why my mother was in Devon. She had a beautiful little girl.’

‘Why choose that particular shop?’ Max asked. ‘You live in Kelton Bridge so why bother driving in to Harrington?’

‘I didn’t. I was already in Harrington, having a look round, when I remembered my dear old mum. The second time, for my sister’s flowers, I drove there on purpose. I thought maybe Carol might be there again. She was. It was then that I asked her if she fancied a bite to eat that evening.’

‘You work on the internet all day,’ Max pointed out. ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to click on the Interflora site that first time?’

‘Of course it would,’ Roberts agreed, legs stretched in front of him and feet crossed nonchalantly at the ankles. ‘But as I said, I was already in Harrington when I remembered my mum. If I’d come home, I might have forgotten.’

‘Perish the thought,’ Max said drily. ‘What was so interesting about Carol Blakely? Why did you want to take her out?’

He smiled at that, a slow, knowing smile. ‘She was very easy on the eye. I enjoyed making her laugh. I’d rather have company than eat alone.’

‘Yes, but why Mrs Blakely?’

‘The main reason? I fancied her and wanted to get her into my bed.’

‘Why are you staying in Kelton Bridge?’ Max asked, changing tack.

‘I remember coming to the area as a child and thought I’d come back.’

‘From where?’

‘Oh, around. I’ve had a month in the East Midlands, Derby to be precise, and before that, I was in London.’ He smiled at Max, and it was a smile Max didn’t like. ‘I’m suremy lovely neighbour, the gorgeous Jill, has already told you that.’

Smug bastard.

‘Why Kelton Bridge? The nightlife in the village doesn’t compare to Derby or London.’

Roberts laughed. ‘Too true, but I fancied a change of pace. And hey, there aren’t too many places to let for a three-month period.’

Max gazed back at him unsmiling.

‘What did you buy from Mrs Blakely’s shop?’ Fletch asked.

Roberts’s gaze didn’t leave Max’s face as he answered. ‘Two bouquets of flowers. Correction. Two orders for bouquets to be Interflora’d. That was it.’

‘You were dancing around the shop with a red rose between your teeth,’ Fletch reminded him. ‘Didn’t you pay for that?’

‘No. I put it back in the container.’ He grinned at Max. ‘You’re not hoping to get me on a shoplifting charge, are you?’

‘The red ribbon you tied in Carol Blakely’s hair,’ Max said, ignoring that. ‘Did you pay for that?’

‘As a matter of fact, I did.’ The grin didn’t waver. ‘Carol wasn’t sure how much it cost – as you say, she wasn’t used to serving in the shop – so I bought the whole roll.’

‘And threaded it through Mrs Blakely’s hair,’ Max murmured. ‘How much of the roll did you use?’

Roberts spread out his hands to indicate a length of a couple of feet.

‘What did you do with the rest of it?’ Fletch asked.

‘I shoved it in my pocket.’ Roberts shrugged. ‘I probably threw it away when I got home. To be honest, I really can’t remember. It might still be there.’

‘Perhaps you’d care to have a look for it,’ Max suggested, adding a grim, ‘when you get home.’

‘I will if you think it will help.’

Max leaned back in his seat. He, too, could look relaxed when he chose. He wasn’t relaxed, far from it. Nothingwould give him greater pleasure than throttling Roberts with his bare hands.

‘What did the two of you talk about on your dates?’ he asked.

‘Oh, the weather, her work, my work, her husband, my mother, my sister, her sisters, the food, Harrington, Kelton Bridge, the price of lamb, politics, music, films, books –’

‘Fascinating,’ Max murmured. ‘What did she say about her husband?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Try,’ Max said, and it was an order, not a request.

Roberts let out his breath as if the effort of thinking was proving too great. ‘When I asked about boyfriends – yes, I knew she was married, but a good-looking girl like that, well, it stood to reason – she told me her husband had put her off men for life.’

‘Really? And why was that?’

‘We were in Mario’s in Bacup, and she said that she and her husband – Michael?’

‘Vince,’ Max reminded him.

‘Ah, yes. Vince. My memory,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘She said they’d been there together and he’d caused a scene. He threatened her, I gather.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, but I got the impression he knocked her about a bit.’

‘What did she say to give you that impression?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Tell me again where you were on Friday the seventh of July and Saturday the eighth,’ Max snapped, adding a sarcastic, ‘if you can remember.’

Carol Blakely had been murdered, as close as they knew, between the hours of nine and midnight. Her body had then been taken to the quarry in the early hours of Saturday morning.

‘I remember it well. I was at home.’

‘All the time? Alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can anyone vouch for that?’ Max asked.

‘Hardly. Unless the Invisible Man dropped in for a drink.’

‘Not even your lovely neighbour, the gorgeous Jill?’

‘Nope. I did see her briefly when she got back from Liverpool, but before that, no.’

‘So no one saw you on Friday night
or
Saturday morning?’ Max asked doubtfully.

‘I didn’t see a living, breathing soul.’

Max needed a cigarette. And some air. He nodded at Fletch and terminated the interview.

‘The smug bastard’s doing my head in,’ he told Fletch as he closed the door behind them. ‘He can sit there and be smug on his own for an hour or so. Get us a brew, Fletch, while I nip outside for a smoke.’

‘Still smoking then, guv?’

‘Not really. I just fancied the odd one.’

While Max was standing in the car park, he watched, bemused, as a man drove a Vauxhall Corsa into the car park, stopped the car, looked at the building and then drove away again. Less than a minute later, he was back. This time, he looked at the building, killed the engine, got out of the car and stood for long moments looking at the main entrance.

There goes a man with a guilty conscience, Max thought, as he watched him mount the steps and enter the building.

Finlay Roberts, on the other hand, didn’t appear to have a conscience. He was playing games with them. Max was certain he knew more than he was telling, but he was enjoying the diversion. Damn him.

Thinking of guilty consciences had him reaching into his pocket for a biro and scrawling PE on his hand. His kids probably wouldn’t mind if he missed hearing how they were getting on, but a promise was a promise.

He tossed his cigarette butt across the car park and went back inside.

‘Ah, this is Chief Inspector Trentham,’ Norah, today’s receptionist, announced.

Standing in front of her was the man with the guilty conscience.

‘Did you want me?’ Max asked.

‘Mr Draper says he has information about the Carol Blakely murder,’ Norah explained.

Max wasn’t hopeful, but at least the chap didn’t look like the usual crank.

‘Come with me,’ he said.

He took him to his office where Fletch was waiting with two cups of tea.

‘Would you like a tea or a coffee?’ Max asked.

The man shook his head. What he wanted, Max suspected, his curiosity aroused, was out of the building in the quickest time possible.

‘This is DS Fletcher,’ Max said, nodding at Fletch and grabbing his cup of tea. ‘He’s working on the case. Please, take a seat.’

The man sat on the edge of the seat, a thin line of perspiration on his top lip. He was about forty, Max supposed, with thinning hair.

‘You have some information that might help in our investigation, Mr Draper?’ Max asked, and he nodded.

‘About a year ago,’ he began, his voice shaking, ‘I was working – oh, I’m a builder, by the way. I was working on this building in Paradise Way. It was half a dozen flats.’

Max’s curiosity was definitely aroused now. Edward Marshall had lived in a flat on the imaginatively named Paradise Way.

‘The flats were being knocked about and turned into office space. I was knocking an old chimney breast out when I found some video tapes.’

Max tried not to raise his hopes too high, but it was bloody difficult.

‘In the chimney?’

Mr Draper nodded. ‘They’d been hidden behind bricks. It hadn’t been used for years because the flats had gas fires, and when I pulled the bricks away, I found these tapes.’

‘What did you do with them?’ Max knew, he just knew he wasn’t about to receive a simple answer.

Mr Draper cleared his throat and kept his gaze firmly on the laces in his black shoes. ‘They had names on the boxes,’ he said quietly. ‘One was Chloe, I remember. I assumed they were mucky videos. Porn, you know,’ he said at last. ‘I was curious,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve got a daughter, Lisa, so I wasn’t going to take them home in case she saw them.’

Max was aware of Fletch fidgeting in his excitement.

‘So what did you do with them?’ Max asked for the second time.

‘I took our telly in with me the next day,’ he explained.

‘It’s one of those cheap, portable all-in-one things. My Lisa used to have it in her bedroom. Of course, it’s all DVDs now, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ Max agreed.

‘And anyway, they might not have been porn, might they? It seemed daft to throw them away without even looking at them.’

He was silent for so long that Max had to prompt him.

‘Sorry,’ he murmured, clearing his throat again. ‘I was working on my own so, when I got to the flats, it was easy enough to rig up the telly and put one of the videos in.’ His voice trailed away.

‘And?’ Max prompted again. ‘Was it porn?’

‘Some might call it that,’ Mr Draper replied grimly. ‘I could only stomach about two minutes of it. It was awful. I swear that no one with a daughter of their own could watch it. Naturally, I assumed –’ He broke off and paused before continuing, ‘I assumed the woman was an actress, but now, I’m not so sure.’

‘Oh?’

‘I couldn’t see the person doing it to her because he was wearing a black leather hood, but she was naked, tied up, and someone was holding a knife to her.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Then it was against her neck. Here.’ He drew a line across his neck with a shaking finger. ‘Whoever it was cut her throat. I assumed it was all fake – a fake knife, a bit ofclever camerawork, tomato sauce for blood – but it made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t eat for the rest of that day.’

‘I can understand that.’

‘I put another tape in the machine, just to see if it was more of the same,’ he went on, ‘and it was. It was disgusting. I can’t explain it.’

‘That’s OK,’ Max said. ‘And what makes you think there’s a connection to our murder inquiry?’

‘I had the telly on last night,’ he explained, ‘and up flashed this picture of a woman, the woman from the tape. At least, I’m fairly sure it was her. So I asked Lisa, my daughter, you know, what they were talking about, and she said that the woman on the telly was one murdered by the same chap who did for Carol Blakely.’