The Blissfully Dead (32 page)

Chapter 54
Day 14 – Patrick

T
he incident room was packed full of bodies, every pair of eyes focused on Patrick as he paced up and down in front of the whiteboard. Photos of Chloe Hedges and Jade Pilkington had been pinned up beside the pictures of Jessica and Rose, plus the smaller one of Nancy Marr. Patrick stopped pacing and raised a hand, the whole room falling silent, including Winkler, who was skulking in the corner. Gareth was there too, refusing to meet Patrick’s eye, and Suzanne, standing upright by the door with her arms crossed, one foot tapping anxiously. It was 7.30 p.m. but nobody wanted to go home. Patrick knew this team would stay here all night if they were needed.

‘I’ll keep this brief,’ Patrick said. ‘But I want everybody up to speed with what’s going on. The first thing to say is that, contrary to rumour, we do not believe Mervyn Hammond is guilty of the murders – not least because he’s been here all day and, before that, DI Winkler was with him.’

Several heads turned towards Winkler, who pretended to be examining something beneath his fingernails. Fifteen
minutes
earlier, Winkler had called Sandwell, the journalist who accuse
d Ham
mond of molesting a teenage girl years before. Hearing that Hammond was in custody, Sandwell had panicked at the thought of testifying in court and admitted to making the whole thing up, trying to settle old scores.

‘However, we are keeping Hammond at the station for the time being as we believe he holds important information and we don’t want to lose track of him. We also have Jade Pilkington’s boyfriend, Kai Topper, here for an interview.’

He turned to the whiteboard.

‘Here’s what we know at the moment: Jade Pilkington got a lift home from Hammond’s party last night and was dropped off just after 3 a.m. At noon, Topper went round to her house, but she wasn’t in. Luckily for us, Topper had an app linking his and Jade’s phones, so he could trace where she was.’

‘Creepy little fucker,’ said Winkler.

‘The phone signal told him Jade was at a place called Platt’s Eyot. He went there and looked round, but there was no sign of Jade or her phone, and the signal had gone, like the phone had been turned off. He then assumed she must have hooked up with Kerry Mangan after the party and headed round there, having looked up his address online.’ Patrick paused for a moment. Most people were shocked to discover how easy it was to find home addresses on the Web. ‘But Mangan hasn’t seen Jade since he dropped her home at 3 a.m. I’ve sent a couple of uniforms to this Platt’s Eyot place to look for the missing phone.

‘Chloe Hedges went out at around 4 p.m.,’ Patrick went on. ‘She told her mum that she was going to meet a friend and that they were planning to go shopping in Kingston later. We’ve contacted the friend, Pareesa, who tells us she had no plans to meet up with Chloe and, in fact, hasn’t heard from her for a few days. We called the Bentall Centre in Kingston who put out a tannoy announcement that got no response, and I’m going to ask one of you to go down there to review CCTV footage, though we don’t believe she ever went there. We are trying to pinpoint the location of Chloe’s phone, but it appears to be switched off.’

He paused and surveyed the room, ensuring that everyone was
listening
.

‘Here’s why we believe Chloe and Jade are in danger, why they may have been targeted and haven’t just gone off somewhere, either together or separately: we discovered that Rose and Jessica were the co-authors of a piece of fiction on a website called StoryPad.’

Martin Hale nodded as Patrick said this.

‘There were two other co-authors: Chloe and Jade. We don’t know what it is about this story that has made them the target of the killer – we’re going to talk to Kai Topper about this shortly.’

Winkler finally piped up. ‘You reckon someone killed them because of a
story
? What’s it about?’

Patrick counted to three under his breath before replying.
Stay calm. Don’t let him rile you
.

‘It’s about OnTarget. Carmella and I have read parts of it, but it doesn’t appear to contain any clues – certainly not clear ones. StoryPad have provided us with a huge number of comments that were made about the story by other users and we’ll need a couple of you to go through these. Though we’re hoping Topper will be able to save us the trouble. We’ve also spoken to Strong’s team who have confirmed that Wendy had been looking at StoryPad shortly before she left the station and headed to the Rotunda. My belief is that she discovered something that put her in danger – that she made contact with the killer.’

There was an audible puff of breath from half the officers in the room. Patrick thought he could feel a draught.

‘Finally, we all know that somebody called the station this morning informing us that we would find Rose’s underwear at Hammond’s house, which led to his arrest. We believe that this caller planted this evidence during the party last night and made contact with Jade at the same time. Given everything that has happened today, it’s likely that this was a diversionary tactic – intended to distract us today while they went after Chloe and Jade.’

He gestured at the photos of the two missing girls, drawing every pair of eyes in the room to the pictures.

‘I want you all to be aware that we don’t have much time. The man who murdered Rose and Jess did not keep them alive for long. And during the time he did have them, he tortured them. Chloe and Jade may already be dead. And if they’re not dead yet
. . .’
He let his words hang in the air.

‘I’ve got a theory,’ said Winkler.

Patrick suppressed a groan. ‘Let’s have it, then.’

‘What if Chloe and Jade are the killers? They murdered the other two girls. Jade planted the knickers at Hammond’s gaff last night. All this stuff about her getting a mysterious message is bullshit. They’ve got scared and done a runner.’

Patrick had already thought of this. ‘Chloe has a solid alibi for the time of all of the murders. And Kai Topper says Jade was at her house with him, with her mum downstairs, when Rose and Wendy were murdered. We can’t get hold of Jade’s mother at the moment to corroborate this, but we believe him.’

‘And how does the old lady fit in?’ Winkler asked. ‘She writing stuff about OnTarget too?’ He laughed and looked round for others to join in. Nobody glanced at him.

‘We don’t know that yet. But we’re going to find out. And we’re going to find these girls.’

‘Dead or alive,’ said Winkler. Before Patrick could respond, he added, ‘Right, I’d better go and talk to Hammond, find out who else was at this party last night.’

‘No way.’

Patrick turned his head. It was Suzanne. She took a step towards Winkler, a fierce expression making the other detective visibly shrink away. ‘Everybody else can leave the room now. But don’t leave the station. You’d better call your partners and spouses: tell them not to wait up.’

The rest of the officers filed out, leaving Patrick, Suzanne,
Winkler
and Carmella, whose arm Suzanne had caught as she went to exit the room.

Suzanne addressed Winkler again. ‘I’ve already spoken to
Mr Hammond and he’s willing to help us.’

‘Great.’ Winkler looked relieved.

‘But only if you apologise to him.’

‘What?’

‘He told me about your behaviour at his house. What you did to his personal property. I’ve persuaded him not to make a complaint against you by offering my own time. I’m going to talk to the children at St Mary’s and the other children’s homes where he volunteers, help Mervyn out by talking to them about a career in the police force. A good cause, and one I’m happy to help with. But he also wants a personal apology from you.’

‘But—’

She jabbed a finger at him. ‘Not just an apology, Adrian. He wants you to grovel. Now get out there and do it.’

As Winkler slunk from the room, Patrick was almost able to raise a smile.

‘Carmella, after Winkler’s begged for Mervyn’s forgiveness
I want you to go in and get the details of who was at the party.’

‘And I’m going to talk to Kai Topper,’ Patrick said. He rolled his eyes. ‘Hopefully he’ll have stopped crying by now.’

Topper had indeed ceased his blubbing. He sat in interview room three, twisting a can of Coke in circles, fidgeting and chewing his grubby fingernails. As soon as Patrick entered the room he looked up hopefully. ‘Have you found her?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ Patrick took the seat opposite Kai.

He had already asked the boy if he had any idea where Jade might have gone, if there were places where his girlfriend hung out, friends she might be with. Topper had simply repeated that he was sure Jade had gone off with another bloke. ‘They’re probably doing it right now.’ He’d sniffed, but he sounded less sure.

‘Kai,’ Patrick said now, ‘I need to ask you some more questions about Jade, OK?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘Kai. It’s vitally important that you tell me the truth, that you don’t try to protect Jade or yourself. All we care about is finding Jade. If there’s anything she did that might have got her into
trouble
, we don’t care about that right now.’

Topper gawped at him. ‘What do you mean? You think she’s in trouble? What kind of trouble?’

Patrick knew there was only one way to ensure Topper told him any uncomfortable truths, assuming he genuinely cared for Jade and hadn’t been spilling crocodile tears. ‘We think Jade might be in danger, Kai.’

To guarantee the full impact of this he opened his Moleskine and wrote ‘DANGER’ in block capitals at the top of a fresh page, then underlined it twice, making sure Kai could see it.

‘Oh my days.’

‘But if you tell me everything you know, we can find her. Stop her coming to any harm. OK?’

The boy nodded eagerly.

‘Firstly, how come you two ended up working at Mervyn
Hammond’s
party? Do you know him or something?’

Kai shook his head. ‘Nah, man. Jade got us the jobs with some temp agency. It was the first time we’d worked for him.’

‘Bit of a coincidence, wasn’t it, that the first job you got was working at a party that Jade’s idols were at?’

‘Not really. She got told to apply, by someone on the forum, like, a tip-off that the band would be there. She wouldn’t have done it otherwise. She hates working.’

‘And how was it?’

Kai shrugged. ‘Boring. Shit money. The guests were
horrible
, dead rude to me—’ He stopped abruptly, slapping his
forehead.
‘Shit!’

‘What?’

The boy swallowed hard. ‘I did something.’

‘What? What did you do?’

‘I think it’s my fault, if someone’s got Jade.’

‘How come?’ Patrick held his breath, trying to sound
nonchalant
.

‘Oh man.’

‘Tell us, Kai.’

He looked up at Patrick with eyes like a cowed puppy. ‘It wasn’t my gear, so you can’t nick me for dealing! I swear to God I, er,
found
it, under a railway bridge couple weeks ago, someone must’ve dropped it . . .’

‘Drugs? What’s that got to do with Jade? What sort of drugs?’

‘It was a bottle of liquid acid. In one of them ziplock bags. I don’t do acid, and I didn’t want to sell it ’cos I ain’t no dealer
. . .
I’d put it in me backpack and forgot about it
. . .
until that night.’

‘What did you do, Kai?’

In a tiny little voice, Kai said, ‘It was near the end of the party. I got fed up with them all being ungrateful twats. Jade was in a right strop with me, flirting like mad with that Kerry and all. So I thought it might be funny if they all got off their tits, specially him – but that didn’t work, did it, ’cos he was driving, so he didn’t drink the punch . . .’

‘You
spiked the punch
?’ Pat shook his head.
Stupid idiot
. ‘How much did you put in it?’

Kai shrugged. ‘It was a small bottle. Big bowl, though. Are you gonna nick me?’

Tears filled his eyes again and he held out his wrists, inviting Patrick to handcuff him.

‘Nick me. Go on, I deserve it. I reckon someone got so high that he followed Jade home and has done something to her. I thought it was that Mangan bloke, but it must have been someone else . . .’ He dissolved into sobs again.

Patrick feared the interview was getting out of control. He handed Kai a tissue and the boy scrubbed at his face.

‘Kai, I don’t think that’s the case. We know that Kerry drove her home. It’s hardly likely that someone else followed them, is it? If anyone was that high, there’s no way they’d have been capable of that. I’m not going to nick you, not right now. It was a dangerous and, frankly, moronic thing to do, but we need to concentrate on finding Jade. So – let’s go back a bit. Who was it on the forums who told Jade to apply for the job?’

Kai shrugged. ‘No idea.’

Patrick sighed. It would have been too good to be true, if Kai could have given him a name.

‘OK. Let’s talk about something else. What do you know about Jade and StoryPad? Specifically a story she wrote called
Fresh Blood
.’