Authors: Rachel Thomas
Ready or Not (17 page)
Chris had been comparing the three cases – Jamie Griffiths, Joseph Ryan and Michael Morris – since his earlier meeting with Lauren Carter and the phone call from Matthew telling him that Michael Morris’ wife had been in touch. Jamie Griffiths had been found the previous winter in a bus shelter in Cardiff. He had received a single blow to the side of the head. Pathology suggested it was caused by a heavy lump hammer, the type builders used for smashing brick or stone: the very same kind of hammer that had been used to kill Michael Morris and Joseph Ryan. But how were the three men connected? Had they known each other?
‘Where’s the link, boss?’ Matthew asked; his attention still focused on the houses and shops that passed by the window in a blur. He swallowed; the sound of it loud enough for Chris to hear. ‘Besides the skull bashing.’
Chris gave him a sideways look. ‘Besides the skull bashing, as you so sensitively put it,’ he said, ‘there’s the fact that each of these men has an identical family pattern: married, two kids; one boy, one girl. It’s too much to be a coincidence.’
Matthew watched a row of tall gabled houses quickly pass by. ‘You may have a point, boss, but it’s a bit of a long shot, isn’t it?’
‘Are you in the right job?’ asked Chris, glancing at him quizzically.
*
Now they were in the Morris household again and Diane was putting two mugs of tea in front of them. Christ, they drank enough tea in this job to float a kidney.
‘He talked about this friend a lot over the past few months,’ she said, leaning tiredly against the sink.
Chris watched her distractedly twist the corner of a blue checked tea towel.
‘They met when this man Adam helped him with the car, you said?’ Chris recalled.
Diane nodded slowly. ‘Michael was on his way to work when the car broke down. It had been on its way out for a while, but we just never got around to doing anything about it. He wasn’t much of a mechanic.’
She paused and stared at the cupboards on the opposite wall, her thoughts far away. Her expression was distant; removed, Chris thought. Matthew scanned the kitchen, his attention also diverted. His inability to keep his eyes focused on one thing or one person for longer than a few moments was increasingly irritating and intrigued Chris. His mind wasn’t on the job, or if it was, he didn’t seem to be able to cope with it.
‘When was this, Mrs Morris?’ Chris asked.
‘Oh, a good few months ago now,’ she said. ‘Well before Christmas. About four months ago, I’d say.’
Matthew looked at Chris. He was listening then, Chris thought.
‘The car broke down on the side of the road and someone was good enough to help him. I don’t know how, or why, but after that they seemed to stay in touch.’
‘Did you ever meet Adam, Mrs Morris?’ Matthew asked.
‘Never,’ she said. ‘Michael invited him and his wife around for dinner once, but they had to cancel. We never got around to rearranging.’
Was this the same Adam who had last night joined Joseph Ryan on a night out at Candy’s, Chris wondered? Surely it would be too much of a coincidence if it wasn’t; particularly now that an ‘Adam’ had been connected to Joseph Ryan also. He thought of Kate. Just this once, Chris, he told himself, allow yourself to go with the hunch and believe in the reality of coincidence.
‘Did Michael ever tell you Adam’s surname?’ Matthew asked.
She shook her head apologetically. ‘If he did, I don’t remember,’ she admitted. ‘Although I’m pretty sure he never mentioned it.’ She turned her back to them, looked out of the window and into the garden. ‘Do you think he may know anything?’ she asked, her words choked. There were no tears now, just an apparent inability to get the words out without stumbling on them. It was obviously too difficult for her to accept the idea that somebody had wanted to intentionally hurt Michael.
‘We don’t know,’ Chris told her. ‘But perhaps he spoke to your husband on Tuesday, or maybe he saw him. Either way, he may know something that we don’t.’
Diane turned back and sat with the two men at the table. Her eyes were damp with burgeoning tears. ‘Michael never had many friends,’ she said. ‘Even at school he was a bit of a lone soul. He was…I don’t know…lacking in confidence, I suppose. He had the kindest heart. He could be easily taken advantage of, but I thought he was getting on well with this Adam. It was all Adam this and Adam that for a while.’
She stood again and paced the kitchen uneasily, gripping the tea towel in a tight fist.
‘Please don’t read too much into it, Mrs Morris,’ Chris reassured her, noticing the way in which her features had tightened. ‘We’ll do our best to track this Adam down and when we do we’ll let you know. In the meantime, please try not to jump to any conclusions.’
‘I was pleased, at first,’ she said. The fist tightened around the tea towel again, her knuckles strained white. ‘I was glad he’d made a friend. I always thought perhaps it wasn’t healthy that he spent all his time either at work or at home, with us.’
There was something other than sadness in her voice now. Her teeth clenched and a flush of colour rose in her cheeks. Chris couldn’t be certain, but it almost sounded like resentment.
‘You can’t blame yourself,’ Matthew offered, although his attempts at reassurance were unconvincing. ‘Like the Chief Inspector said, don’t jump to any conclusions.’
Diane wiped at her left eye with the tea towel she had been grasping tightly since answering the door to Matthew and Chris.
‘At first?’ Chris said, recalling her earlier words.
‘Sorry?’
‘At first,’ he repeated purposefully. ‘You said, you were pleased that he had this friend, ‘at first’, Mrs Morris.’
Diane sniffed and put the tea towel on the table in front of her. ‘Did I?’ she said, regaining her composure; features slackening. ‘Well…I was, I suppose. I was pleased. At first.’
*
In the car Matthew exhaled loudly, as though he’d been holding his breath for the forty minutes they had been inside the Morris house.
‘Good job in there,’ Chris said, turning the engine.
Matthew pushed his head against the rest behind him and closed his eyes. ‘Thanks, boss.’
‘She’s not telling us everything though, is she?’
Matthew opened his eyes and pulled a face. ‘What do you mean? What else can she know?’
Chris indicated and took a left out of the street where the Morris family lived. He thought again of Kate and the conversation they’d had the previous day about her impetuous visit to the Reed house. Clayton had given Kate plenty of chances. This wasn’t the first time she’d acted impulsively and broken the basic rules of standard procedure. At the same time, she was his friend. He’d give her a call later, see how she was feeling.
Chris shrugged.
‘Just a hunch,’ he said.
Twenty Three
The flat was cold and quiet. It had started to rain as she let herself into the building and now it came down heavily, thudding relentlessly against the windows. Kate paused in the living room doorway and glanced at the clock on the far wall. It had been such a long and eventful day that it seemed ages since she had last been home. She’d spent the latter part of the afternoon looking forward to this mom
ent, but now that she was back here, she wished she were anywhere but.
She kicked off her shoes and dropped her bag where she stood. In the bedroom she stared briefly at the floor space where Stuart’s records had sat for months; now, a mark on the carpet was all that remained. The square of carpet that hadn’t seen a vacuum cleaner for ages was a different colour to the rest of the floor; lighter: clean. She’d move the furniture around, she thought; find something to cover it up so she could pretend it wasn’t there.
Kate sat on the end of the bed, removed her jacket and peeled her tights from tired legs. She thought back to lunch; remembered Neil Davies’ face, inches from hers, and reprimanded herself. She was too old to be acting like a smitten teenager and she was worried about her feelings. She was attracted to him, but couldn’t understand why. It was inappropriate and ill timed. She had met him yesterday; she didn’t really know the first thing about him. She couldn’t let distractions interfere with her work.
After making herself a cup of tea and warming a bowl of soup in the microwave, Kate settled on the sofa and turned on the TV. She aimlessly flicked through channels as she distractedly stirred her soup, lost in thoughts of the castle grounds and the long repressed tears that she’d shed just hours earlier. She kept her mobile on the sofa beside her, willing Andrew Langley’s number to flash up on the screen.
Where are you, she thought; the thought so loud that, for a moment, she thought she’d spoken it out loud.
What happened to you, Daniel?
She kept an eye on the phone, praying it would ring. She was tempted to try him again, but Andrew Langley would see that she’d tried contacting him and would call her back when he got her messages. She’d already called enough. She didn’t want to scare him off by coming across as a mad woman.
Kate put a hand to her temple, pushing back the headache that was fighting its way through. She had waited too long behind that tree. She should have stepped from her hiding place earlier; should have peeped from where she hid to keep an eye on her little brother; ready or not. Perhaps then she may have seen where he went. Seen who took him.
*
Six months after Daniel went missing someone claimed to have seen him in Cardiff city centre. A boy matching his description had been seen on a late night bus with a middle aged woman, just past the city museum, but there was nothing more; no CCTV cameras on every street as there were now.
Kate had often wondered if, had he gone missing now, she’d have already found her brother. Modern technology had made police work easier, making it less easy for a child to disappear, hadn’t it? Hadn’t science and forensics evolved at such a rate that it was more difficult now than it had ever been for a criminal to get away with abduction? Kidnapping? Murder?
She yanked herself from the latter thought; distracted herself by looking at her phone again.
Maybe developments in technology and policing hadn’t really helped at all. If they had then where was Ben Davies? Where was little Stacey Reed? Where were all the children who seemed to vanish, never to be seen again?
And did it really matter how easy it became to catch a criminal, when there would always be people still intent on committing crime?
*
She took her mobile from the sofa beside her. Kate selected her contacts list and scrolled down the names until she found Neil’s number. Her thumb hovered above ‘select’.
If she wasn’t a detective, and he wasn’t the father of a missing boy, would she have any hesitation in calling? Of course not, she thought. Why should she sit her every evening alone and miserable, waiting for something interesting to happen to her? Where in her work contract had it said that by signing she would be committing herself to a life of solitude and microwave dinners for one?
No one warns you during training that the job drains away the last dregs of your personal life, Kate thought. No one bothers telling you that every decision you make – every evening phone call, every should-be-innocent smile – will be determined by your role as police officer.
The job had drawn an invisible circle around her and anyone who got too close received a jolt of electricity; not enough to kill, but enough to send them running. Or maybe that was her, Kate thought. Maybe it was she, not the job, that kept everyone safely beyond that invisible line.
She closed the phone, put it back into her bag and returned to the sofa, annoyed with herself.
Twenty Four
Chris Jones was still at the station, wading through the paper work on the Jamie Griffiths murder case he’d had sent up from Cardiff. The case was now over a year old. He was trying to make a link between Jamie, Joseph and Michael, but if there was one, apart from the manner of death, it eluded him. The similarities he had pointed out to Matthew – the cause of death and identical family pattern of each victim - were so far the only ones Chris could find, but he was certain there was something else he wasn’t seeing, or some sense of logic only feasible to the person who had perhaps been responsible for the killing of all three.
If the same person had been responsible for the murders of all three men, they were now looking for a serial killer. Chris shook his head at the thought. It had been a long time since Wales had harboured a serial killer, and it was certainly something he had never experienced in his time with the police. He knew men who’d longed for this kind of investigation during their careers; a chance to prove themselves as Detectives Extraordinaire. Chris had always found those attitudes unsettling and the men who displayed them almost inhumane. For every killer there was a victim; for ever victim, any number of family and friends who were left to suffer the consequences.
As with every case, Chris had to consider the possibility that there may be no logic or motive behind the killings. Even if all three men had been murdered by the same person, there didn’t necessarily have to be an obvious motive. What was even more terrifying than premeditated murder was the spontaneity of motiveless crime; the ability of some to simply extinguish life without a second thought. No conscience; no remorse.
Stephanie Ryan had been questioned about her husband’s infidelities. One thing had become obvious very quickly: the woman had no idea her husband had been having an affair. Nor had she been aware of any of the other women he had been involved with. She had loved him unquestioningly. She couldn’t have begun that day to realise just how many others there had been, but no doubt in the future the truths of his secret past would unveil themselves, piece by piece; person by person. What would that do to her, and to the memory she would have of her husband?
Sometimes Chris hated the job. Hadn’t Stephanie Ryan been through enough, without having to be told that the husband she was mourning was a liar, a cheat, and an all round bastard of the first water?
Chris was staring at a photo of Jamie Griffiths when his mobile rang, wondering how this man could possibly be connected to Joseph Ryan and Michael Morris and why, if he was, there’d been a year’s gap between the murders.
‘Chris Jones,’ he said, answering his mobile.
There was a pause at the end of the line. A slight cough, then a nervous female voice.
‘DCI Jones.’
It was Diane Morris; Michael’s wife. Chris recognised the timid, cautiously polite tone immediately.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t perhaps tell you everything this morning,’ she said. Tell me something I don’t know, Chris thought. The anxious twisting of the tea towel, the distracted staring at the cupboards: Diane Morris was terrible at hiding her emotions. He said nothing, waiting for her to continue. He absent-mindedly doodled on the back of an envelope, thoughtlessly scrawling a series of swirls and squares as his mind ran elsewhere, still hooked on the thought of Jamie Griffiths.
There was a rustling at the end of the line, as though Diane was adjusting herself, trying to make herself comfortable before she disclosed her information, or desperately seeking a distraction that would put off the inevitable. Chris could wait. She had called him; whatever she wanted to tell him she would tell him, in her own time.
She coughed nervously.
‘There are things that Michael kept from me,’ she said eventually, and when she said it the regret in her voice was immediate. ‘Things that he thought he’d kept from me – things I don’t think he had even fully admitted to himself. I knew when we married that he wasn’t the same as the other men I had dated, though there weren’t that many to compare him with, but it was those things that at the time I found the most endearing.’
Diane paused to cough again; her voice was cracking and her speech became faster. She had obviously planned exactly what she was going to say, but now that she was on the phone the words didn’t want to be spoken despite the fact that she was keen to get through them as quickly as possible.
‘I think he always knew though he was afraid to admit it,’ she blurted. ‘I think I’ve always known as well, deep down.’
‘Known what, Mrs Morris?’ Chris asked.
‘Mr Jones,’ Diane said calmly. ‘I think my husband was gay, but I think he tried to suppress it.’
Chris stopped doodling.
Diane went on to explain the nature of her marriage to Michael: how she was pregnant with their first child when they married and how their daughter had been conceived within the six months following David’s birth; how Michael had been an excellent father, but the relationship between them following Emily’s birth had been one of close friends.
After Emily was born, the physical relationship between Michael and Diane quickly faded. It was, she told Chris, as though they had served the purpose of their marriage by having children and they later continued to exist within their life together in a kind of cloudy bubble of expected domesticity, both convincing themselves that their situation was normal. Both devoted themselves to the children and, although they loved each other in their own way – as siblings love one another, she suggested - Diane always knew that her husband didn’t love her as she felt a husband should love his wife.
Then there were the undeleted websites he had visited; the magazine that Diane had found hastily shoved beneath the seat of her husband’s car.
‘Was Adam your husband’s lover, Mrs Morris?’
Silence.
He wouldn’t have predicted that he’d be asking that question today.
‘I’m sorry to have to ask,’ Chris said. ‘But if it will help us find out what happened to Michael then I have to know.’
Diane sighed. ‘I don’t think he was,’ she told him. ‘I don’t think Michael ever had a lover. He didn’t condone infidelity. He believed that marriage vows were for life. We’re not really church-goers as such, but…well, you know how it is, I’m sure. There’s always that fear, isn’t there? He always tried to do the right thing. It wasn’t in him to be unfaithful, you see. No matter how much he may have wanted to be,’ she added.
There it was again, Chris thought; the resentment he had heard in her voice earlier that afternoon. The tightened fists, the edge that lined her voice razor sharp; they were explainable now. Diane Morris was resentful. Not in an angry, revenge-seeking sense, but in a tired, worn-down, defeated manner. She was on the brink of middle-age and she’d devoted the best years of her life to a man who could never love her in the way she should have felt love from her husband.
Chris scribbled notes as Diane talked, trying to create a clearer picture of the type of man Michael Morris had been.
‘He took his vows seriously,’ she told him. ‘He lived his life the way he felt he was expected to. He did what he thought was the right thing – the moral thing. Things were different back then,’ she said. ‘Not like now. If we were in our twenties now, who knows, he may never have married. It’s not a big deal anymore, is it? Not like it used to be. Anyway, I don’t believe he would ever have broken those vows no matter how repressed he may have felt. I don’t think Adam was his lover. But I think Michael may have been in love with him.’
*
When the call had ended Chris sat in silence in his office for a few moments, staring again at the photo of Jamie Griffiths. His left temple throbbed with information overload and the need for sleep had begun to creep up on him like a thief, catching him unawares and stealing his concentration. How would he sleep knowing what he knew now? This changed everything.
He glanced at his mobile and thought about calling Kate. Would he tell her about the conversation he had just had with Diane Morris? Probably not, he thought. Not yet, anyway.
That wasn’t why he wanted to call her. He just wanted to hear her voice.
He picked up his phone, found her number; put it back down again.
Chris wrote the three names next to his doodles on the back of the envelope. Jamie Griffiths. Joseph Ryan. Michael Morris. Next to Joseph’s name he wrote the word adulterer. Next to Michael: homosexual.
He drew a question mark next to Jamie Griffiths. What secret were you hiding, Jamie? Chris spoke aloud.
