No Smoke Without Fire (A DCI Warren Jones Novel - Book 2) (22 page)

“I’m so sorry but I need to know — are you aware of anybody that might want to harm Carolyn? Any ex-partners or people that she had disagreements with?”

The couple looked at each other for a long moment before Carl Patterson let out a long breath. “Her ex-boyfriend, Alex Chalmers. They split up back in February. It didn’t go well, but I can’t see him being responsible.”

“He hit her.”

“What?” Carl Patterson turned to his wife in disbelief.

“She denied it, but a mother can tell.”

Carolyn’s father looked at his wife as if seeing her for the first time. “When? Why didn’t you say something?”

Carol Patterson’s voice shook. “It was about eighteen months ago. You were away a lot, during that frantic last six months before you retired. I popped in to see her one day unannounced. I woke her up before she had a chance to put on her make-up. She had a bruise under her eye. She insisted that it was from her boxercise class, made a joke about it. Said she ducked when she should have dived.

“I wasn’t sure and I didn’t want to worry you. I knew you wouldn’t take it well.”

Carl Patterson looked sick. “I can’t believe it…”

“Was it just the once, do you think?” asked Warren, his interest piqued.

“I don’t know. Thinking back on it, I think it must have happened more than once. There were little signs.”

“Like what?”

“We knew that they were arguing a lot in the last few months. They had moved in together after only a couple of months of dating, but he seemed nice enough. A bit rough around the edges, but Carolyn was happy. She hadn’t had much luck with boys before, so we were pleased for her.”

“When did things change?”

“Back the summer before last they had a big row. I don’t know what it was about but she phoned me up in tears. Said that he had been really abusive and called her some really horrible names.” Carol Patterson’s voice shook. “At the time I thought it was a lovers’ tiff. I calmed her down and reassured her that he loved her and told her that it was probably nothing. Like I said, he’s a bit rough around the edges, he had a tough upbringing, so I put the horrible language down to that. I should have told her to run away…”

“You weren’t to know. But I wish you’d told me.” Carl Patterson sounded hurt.

“She begged me not to; you know what a temper you have. She was worried you’d go around there and make things worse.”

“And do you think he was hitting her then?” Warren prompted.

“Maybe. I wasn’t sure. I’ve been retired a couple of years now and so sometimes we’d meet up for lunch during the week when she was working from home. Do a bit of shopping in Cambridge. A couple of times she cancelled at the last minute and we’d not see her for a week, then she’d turn up wearing far more make-up than normal. Once we met up on a hot July day, and she wouldn’t take her cardigan off. We caught the Park and Ride into Cambridge, standing room only. Anyway, the bus swung around a corner really fast and I knocked into her arm. Not very hard, but she let out a real gasp of pain. Again, she blamed boxercise.

“Anyway, after they broke up, I looked up this boxercise thing on the Internet and it seems that they don’t hit each other, so she couldn’t have got her bruises from there. By now they’d split up, of course, so I didn’t say anything; I couldn’t see the point.”

“When did it end?”

Now Carl Patterson took up the story. “February. It was completely out of the blue. She just phoned up one evening and said, ‘It’s over. Here’s my new address. Don’t tell Alex.’ She didn’t want to talk about it, but she must have been planning it for some time. She moved into a new apartment in less than twenty-four hours.

“It seemed to take Alex by surprise as well. The following evening he phoned up demanding to know where she was, claimed he came home from a weekend with his brother to find all of her stuff gone and a note on the kitchen table. We refused to tell him and hung up.

“The next night he turned up on our doorstep, banging on the windows convinced she was staying here. He wouldn’t leave until we threatened to call the police. A week later he turned up again, claiming that Carolyn owed him her share of the outstanding rent and bills as he’d had to give notice on the flat they shared. He was brandishing a piece of paper that he said was their contract and that they were co-signatories. Reckoned he’d take her to small claims court if she didn’t cough up. In the end I wrote him a cheque for six hundred quid on the understanding that he never tried to contact her again. We never told Carolyn — she didn’t need to know.”

“And did he contact her again?”

“Not as far as I know. Carolyn never mentioned it. Although my wife may know differently — it seems there’s a lot she doesn’t share with me.”

Warren almost winced at the barbed remark. At times like this, the couple in front of him needed each other more than ever; he truly hoped that this issue wouldn’t become a wedge between them. To the side of him Tony Sutton also shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing. Doing his best to steer the conversation away from the topic, Warren asked about any other people that might wish Carolyn harm. After thinking hard, the couple said no.

Finally the doorbell rang as two officers from the family liaison unit arrived. With the Pattersons in good hands, Warren and his team left. The drive back to Middlesbury was quiet, each officer deep in their own thoughts.

Chapter 28

Whilst Warren, Tony Sutton and Karen Hardwick had been with the Pattersons, Middlesbury CID had been busy piecing together Carolyn Patterson’s last night. First Gary Hastings had tracked down the instructor who gave the boxercise class. An insurance broker by day, Mandy Albright also taught aerobic classes weekday evenings to keep fit and earn a bit of extra money. She’d been understandably shocked to hear of Carolyn Patterson’s death.

She’d confirmed that it was normal for several members of the class to go for a quick drink in the sports centre bar after a session. Normally it was little more than a half-hour and one drink. However, Carolyn and three of the other women in the class had decided to stay for a bit longer, since Ms Albright’s upcoming ski trip meant it was the last class before Christmas.

The part-time fitness instructor had been able to furnish Gary Hastings with the names and details of Carolyn’s three friends from class and he’d spent the next couple of hours tracking the women down and getting a description of the night in question. All four of the women had agreed to attend the station in the next couple of days to undergo a full interview.

Whilst he did this, a small team of detectives had descended upon the Middlesbury Publishing Services Group — the closest thing that the freelance Carolyn Patterson had to an employer. A modestly sized business operating out of a converted farmhouse, MPSG specialised in performing various jobs for small, individual publishing houses.

“Some of these publishers are so small and specialised they only produce a handful of titles a year,” the company’s managing director had explained. “They can’t afford to have a dedicated marketing department or to employ full-time artists. We act as a sort of one-stop shop, matching individual jobs to our pool of freelancers. Strictly speaking, all of our employees, except for myself, our accountant and our human resources manager are freelance. But for a skilled and reliable worker like Carolyn, we could all but guarantee full-time work for her. In fact some of her clients even requested her personally and were willing to wait until she was available.”

In a typical week Carolyn would visit the offices on a Wednesday and a Thursday; she didn’t have her own desk as such, rather a large cubby-hole where her mail and any physical work would be stored. Her work was becoming increasingly computer-based these days; nevertheless clients often liked to meet her face-to-face and discuss their requirements and so the building had a plush meeting room for this purpose.

Carolyn had been in work on the day that she died and so brief statements were collected from everybody who had met her. Again, everybody was shocked and upset and willing to attend the station to give a more detailed statement in the future if necessary.

By the time the CID unit assembled for an after-lunch briefing, Gary Hastings had largely pieced together Carolyn Patterson’s last known movements.

According to her work colleagues, Carolyn had been at MPSG between about nine and five p.m. on Thursday, joining in their traditional, weekly cake session. She had been described as happy and cheerful, looking forward to Christmas. One of her colleagues remembered her refusing a second slice of cake, since she still had a few pounds to lose before her sister’s wedding. When another colleague suggested that she could eat the cake then go for a jog, she’d turned her nose up, saying it was too cold, she’d just work extra-hard at boxercise that night.

After she left work, there were no sightings of her until she arrived in time for her fitness class at about five to seven. She only lived about a mile away and preferred to walk rather than drive or catch the bus. As usual, she simply paid for her class with cash and signed in on the paper register. CCTV images showed her wearing the same outer layers that she had been found in. She went into the changing rooms but emerged about a minute later dressed in the same tracksuit bottoms and a yellow T-shirt, carrying her boxing equipment. After the class, she disappeared back into the changing room for about fifteen minutes, before emerging redressed with apparently damp hair.

A T-shirt similar to that seen on the CCTV was stuffed in a carrier bag in the locker along with several other dirty T-shirts and underwear. A second bag contained clean underwear and T-shirts and a towel in the locker appeared to have been used and allowed to dry several times. The best explanation was that Carolyn got changed into her gym kit at home, then walked the mile to the sports centre, discarding her overcoat in the changing room and picking up her boxing gloves from her locker.

After class, she would have a quick shower, swap her sweaty underwear and T-shirt for a fresh set, then join her friends for a drink in the bar. She didn’t have a washing machine, but there was a launderette on the way home so she probably did a load of washing every few weeks.

On the night in question, she apparently followed her usual routine, except that she stayed about an hour longer in the bar than normal. It looked as though she’d had a meal of pasta and sauce before leaving the house, leaving half of it to reheat at a later date, consistent with the pathologist’s report. Her blood alcohol levels were also what one would expect from somebody who’d drunk three glasses of white wine.

Her friends had described her as happy and full of fun; they’d all left at the same time a bit tipsy and giggly, but not drunk. One friend had offered her a lift home, but she’d declined, saying she needed to walk off the chocolate cake she’d eaten.

The CCTV put her time of leaving at 21:34h. It was being examined and an attempt made to identify every person leaving at about the same time.

The team was now eager to exploit the new leads and Warren lost no time assigning jobs. The most likely time for the abduction was at some point during her walk home from the sports centre. As a precaution, SOC were checking her apartment for signs of a struggle, but her next-door neighbour had seemed pretty confident that he’d have heard anything too violent. Superintendent Grayson had already arranged for the uniform division to loan him a few bodies and so Warren assigned a detective sergeant to organise door-knocking on the streets between Carolyn Patterson’s flat and the sports centre. Realistically there was only one route that she could have taken and so he also arranged another team to close those roads and start a search for any evidence of foul play.

It had been nearly four days since Carolyn Patterson’s disappearance and the streets were busy, residential areas. Warren wasn’t overly optimistic that they’d find anything. Similarly, he wasn’t expecting much in the way of CCTV evidence, beyond that from the sports centre itself.

“Remember, Carolyn Patterson broke her routine that night and stayed in the bar longer than normal. Assuming that her killer planned the abduction, he probably wasn’t expecting that. He may have been loitering in the area for over an hour, waiting for her. Somebody might have seen something or someone.”

By far the most promising lead so far was that of Carolyn’s ex-boyfriend, Alex Chalmers. Using the information given to them by her parents, they didn’t take long to track him down. Records from the Police National Computer were even more interesting.

“ʻAlexander Liam Chalmers, thirty-one years old,ʼ” Warren read. “No convictions, however, the domestic violence team attended three incidents between 2002 and 2005. Arrested but released without charge on two of those occasions. Neighbours called the police each time, but his then girlfriend refused to press charges and there wasn’t enough evidence to proceed.

“We know that he was with Carolyn Patterson from about 2007 until February of this year, but nothing is on the system for then. However, neighbours called the police again in August of this year after loud noises came from the flat he shares with his new girlfriend. Different flat, different neighbours, but the same outcome. She denied everything and the attending officers didn’t have enough to make an arrest.”

“So we have his address, should we pay him a visit?” Tony Sutton’s voice was grim, but Warren could see that he was keen to meet the man.

Warren glanced at his watch.

“The file says that he is a postman. I’m willing to bet he’s finished for the day. I think we should go and pass on our regards.”

Chapter 29

Warren’s hunch proved right and Alex Chalmers was home, but he wasn’t pleased to meet them.

After they rang the bell twice, the door was finally opened by a heavily pregnant young woman who looked to be in her early twenties. Stick-thin, aside from her protruding belly, she appeared nervous and edgy as she opened the door. Her eyes widened even more when she saw Warren’s warrant card. Even in the dim light from the greying afternoon sky it was obvious how much make-up she was wearing. Nevertheless a dark smudge across her jaw hinted at the sins concealed beneath.