The Truth Will Out (22 page)

“Hello dear. Oh, don’t you look better!” She pushed wisps of grey hair out of her face as she hauled herself up. “The fresh air has brought the colour back to your cheeks.” She ushered Eva in, squeezed past her to close the front door. “I’ve just made drinks. Would you like one?”

Eva immediately felt the warmth of the house wrapping around her. The air was loaded with the smell of freshly filtered coffee. “No, thank you.”

“There’s been a man here looking for you.”

Eva jolted. “What?”

“A policeman actually, although he wasn’t in uniform. Stayed and chatted awhile. He was just checking to see if you are okay.” She tilted her head to one side and narrowed her eyes. “It sounds like somebody’s worried about you.”

Eva stared back at her, feeling the air squeezed out of her lungs.

Molly seemed to sense her anxiety. “Don’t worry, dear! He was such a nice young man. Just concerned. Left a note. Now, where did I put it?” She rummaged in her pocket, retrieved a creased piece of paper and unfolded it. “No, that’s not it. Wait there.”

Eva watched her amble into the kitchen. As soon as she was out of sight, she took to the stairs, two at a time. How did they find her?

As soon as she reached her room, she crossed to the bedside table and retrieved her mobile phone, still plugged into the charger. She switched it on, willing it to life.

The door knocked. She jumped, like a child caught peeling wallpaper from behind the settee. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, dear,” Molly cried out.

Eva opened the door and Molly handed her an A5 piece of paper, folded neatly in half.

Eva stared at it.

Molly smiled at her gently, touched her arm. “Are you okay, dear?”

She fought to get the words out. “Yes.”

“Are we staying another night?”

“No… Thank you. I think I need to get back.”

Molly gave her a knowing nod.

She closed the door, rushed to her bedside and reached out for her phone, her final bastion of hope. The screen lit. It was searching. She prayed there would be a signal. Yes, two bars! A plethora of messages sprung up from a past life. A life without fear.

As she scrolled through the messages she saw it, a message from Naomi, her best friend. Nothing unusual in that. Except the message was sent the day after she died.

The room turned hazy. She cast the phone aside, sat back onto the bed, a hand clasped to her temple. Slowly her vision cleared. The phone rested on her bedside table and she stared at it, as if it was a grenade ready to explode.

The note sat on the bed next to her. She snatched it, unfolding it slowly. It bore a crested emblem with Strathclyde Police printed below, alongside a telephone number:

PLEASE CONTACT DC GILMORE AT STRATHCLYDE CID ON THE NUMBER BELOW AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE.

THIS IS A ROUTINE ENQUIRY. NOT AN EMERGENCY.

Eva turned the paper over in her hands. It certainly looked legitimate. But anybody could produce something like that on a home PC. Anyone could copy and paste the logo.

She reached out for her phone. Tentatively, she stroked the screen. It lit up. She viewed her messages again, and gasped. Naomi’s number was top of the list. Another message, sent a minute earlier. Goosebumps pricked her arms. She blinked back tears and clicked to open the message:

You can’t run forever.

Eva’s body began to shake. A sudden thought struck her. It was possible to trace somebody through the GPS on their mobile phone. With trembling hands she leapt forward and switched it off.

***

Nate surfaced at around nine o’clock the following morning. He pulled on his joggers, made his way downstairs into the kitchen, opened the fridge and glugged juice out of the carton. As he shut the fridge door, he felt a presence. He turned. The kitchen was empty.

He wandered through to the living room. Dressed in a black t-shirt and boxer shorts, Chilli sat on his chair at the far end, staring into space. He looked as though he’d been there all night. He didn’t acknowledge Nate, his gaze fastened to a black bin liner sitting beside the table. A red stained Manchester City football shirt, just like the one Richard Elsdon, one of their runners wore, spilled out of the top. Spatters of blood marked the surrounding carpet.

“They think I’m too old for all this,” Chilli said, without looking up.

Nate scanned the sofa, curtains and coffee table for more blood. There was none.

“That’s the problem when you get to the top,” Chilli continued. “Everyone wants your crown.”

Nate stared at Chilli as his uncle finally made eye contact. He stood, approached his nephew and slapped him on the back, affectionately gripping his neck. “You’re the only one I can trust now, Nate. That’s why we’re special.” He turned to leave the room. “I need you to make that disappear. We’ve got a busy day ahead.”

***

Helen was still seething as she exited her car in the road behind Karen Paton’s garden. How could Dean do this to her? How dare he? The sound of her mobile interrupted her thoughts, and she stopped to answer it, surprised to hear Spencer’s voice at the other end of the line. At Jenkins’ bequest, she’d reluctantly leant Spencer to MOCT as they wrapped up the Paton case.

“What’s up, Steve?”

“Ma’am, you asked me to contact you personally if we received anything on Eva Carradine?”

A shot of adrenalin whipped through her. Finally. “What do you have?”

Spencer cleared his throat. “Strathclyde Police located the guest house where she is staying in Scotland and left a message for her to contact them. Although we cancelled their assistance the message didn’t get through to the field. Anyway, Miss Carradine responded and they referred her to us.”

“She called the incident room?” Helen balanced the phone precariously between her chin and shoulders as she rummaged through her bag for her notebook and pen.

“I’ve just put the phone down to her. She asked to speak to someone in charge.”

With the case now under Dean’s jurisdiction, Spencer would normally pass this to him. Helen was grateful for his loyalty. “Thanks, Steve. Who else have you informed?”

“Nobody yet, ma’am. She isn’t a suspect here. I thought I’d let you make that decision.”

As far as Hampton management were concerned, the murder was solved, the enquiry being closed. Both Dean and Jenkins had made it perfectly clear that Eva wasn’t a suspect. There was no evidence linking her to Naomi’s murder and, even though the informant’s call was made so close to her home address, there was nothing to indicate Eva made that call. But Helen couldn’t rest until she’d spoken to her. “Right. Thank you.” Helen hesitated. She didn’t want to get Spencer into trouble. “Allocate the action to me, would you? I’ll speak to her and report back if anything further is required.”

“Certainly, ma’am.”

Eva had called from a guest house near the Scottish town of Callander. Helen jotted down the details quickly before she rang off and dialled the number.

The call was answered on the second ring, as if somebody was standing beside the phone.

“Hello.”

The voice sounded fragile, timid.

“May I speak to Eva Carradine please?” Helen replied.

“Who is this?”

“Is that Eva?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Detective Chief Inspector Helen Lavery from Hampton force. You asked to speak to someone in charge?” The line fell quiet, a few short shallow breaths, the only indication of a presence. “What can I do for you?” she said gently.

“I need your help.”

“And why is that?”

“Can we meet? Alone?”

Helen turned this over quickly in her mind. Jenkins himself said there was no evidence to suggest that Eva was linked to the murder enquiry and he didn’t want resources wasted on finding her. But he couldn’t object to her meeting Eva alone. She grabbed her pen and leant her notebook against the fence. “Okay, where are you?”

Another pause. “I’m in Scotland, but I’m driving back to Hampton today.”

They agreed to meet at a motorway services just outside Hampton. Helen didn’t want Eva to cross the county border, drive through the town, approach her home, until she’d spoken to her.

Her spirits bolstered by the phone call, Helen marched up the alleyway beside Karen Paton’s house and knocked on the door. No music blasted from her neighbour today, no sound of children playing.

It was several moments before she heard footsteps up the hall. The door opened. A slim elderly lady with bushy, white hair and striking eyes stared back at her. “May I help you?” A thick Northern Irish accent weighed in her voice.

Helen flashed her card. “I wondered if I could have a word with Karen Paton?”

The woman leant into the card, examined it carefully. She looked up at Helen, suspiciously. “She’s sleeping at the moment.”

“And you are?”

“Marian. Her mother.”

“May I wait?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“How is she?”

“As well as can be expected. Look, I think I know what this is about and I don’t think she is ready for more questions about her late husband at this stage.”

Helen nodded. She hadn’t told anyone back at the station about her visit which meant she couldn’t afford to press the point. “I’ll come back at a more convenient time. How are the boys?”

Marian looked taken aback for a moment at the personal nature of the question. “I don’t think they really know what’s going on. Certainly the youngest doesn’t. Keeps asking when his daddy’s coming back from heaven.”

Helen pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry.” She turned to go.

“So am I,” Marian shouted after her. “Just hope you catch them.”

Helen turned back. “Pardon?”

“The beggers who did this. They might not have been living together, but my son-in-law idolised those boys. The last thing he would do is take his own life, whatever mess he’d got himself mixed up in.”

Helen heard the squeak of footsteps on floorboards above. Marian gazed up. “I have to go,” she said and closed the door.

Helen hovered on the doorstep a moment. A chink of light peeped through the dark clouds overhead. The suicide note. She knew something was strange about it - Jules hadn’t mentioned his boys. A loving father would be sure to mention his boys. Wouldn’t he?

***

The white Mercedes crawled past Helen as she pulled out of the estate. She didn’t need to view the personalised plate to see who it belonged to. Chilli Franks had been a teenager when his family moved to the rabbit warren. He immediately saw opportunity in Jimmy Percival’s interests and ingratiated himself with Jimmy’s crowd. Later, when he took over the reins to Black Cats, the club flourished and he expanded his empire and moved to the new estate nearby, just a stone’s throw away. Situated on the corner, one of his bedroom windows overlooked the rabbit warren, another reached across to the trading estate opposite. With his obvious wealth, Chilli could easily have afforded to leave the area, take a home on one of Hampton’s more affluent estates. But that would take him away from his insidious operations. These days, it was not only home to the city’s red light district, but intelligence officers estimated that more drugs came out of the rabbit warren in a single month than the rest of Hampton city in an entire year.

The difficulty was catching him in the act. Many police operations were planned and executed. Some led to prosecutions. But nobody talked and none led them to Chilli himself. He may parade around with his posh car and five bedroomed house, dodging the tax man and evading the police. He may market himself as a reformed character. But Helen knew what he really was: Rotten to the core. Some things never change.

***

The clock on the dashboard read five o’clock as Helen turned into Leicester Forest East Services. The parking area was thick with vehicles, pushing her far from the entrance, near the lorry park, in search of a space.

Helen crossed the car park quickly. The sweet smell of nicotine curled her nostrils as she reached the entrance. She stepped over a used Burger King box, reached in her bag and placed a mint in her mouth. Anything to keep the buried nicotine cravings at bay.

Bodies swarmed the doors. She stood aside to let an army of teenagers out and held the door for a mother wrestling with a double buggy, the twin toddlers fast asleep inside, ignorant of their mother’s difficulties.

Helen located the sprawling restaurant and glanced around. It teamed with bodies, the sports car event at nearby Donington Park drawing more travellers to the road than usual on a March Saturday afternoon. She strained her eyes to see a girl with long blond hair and blue eyes. It was a hopeless task amongst the mass of occupied tables.

She decided to wander around. On the phone earlier, Eva had said she was unable to use her mobile. They agreed that Eva would sit alone and place a closed copy of
Red
magazine next to a can of Coca-Cola on the table to indicate her presence.

Helen passed tables of families eating meals, elderly couples drinking coffee, young lovers holding hands, a table of teenagers clicking on their mobile phones. Time passed slowly. Her arms itched in agitation. Had Eva changed her mind?

Helen tripped on the outstretched foot before she saw it. In her haste to retain balance, she flew sideways against the broad bicep of a middle aged man.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, straightening her jacket around her. He waved her away and she turned to scowl at the owner of the outstretched leg: a tall, stringy man who had curled himself into the chair, but simply couldn’t fit his legs beneath the table. He looked up, mouthed an apology. But Helen didn’t hear it. Her attention was taken elsewhere as a flash of red caught her eye.

She raised her head to meet the gaze of the single lady seated at the table for two.

Chapter
Twenty-Five

Eva Carradine sat in the front seat of Helen’s Honda and stared out at the sea of cars clogging the car park.

The black hair and severe fringe had initially thrown Helen. She’d glimpsed the magazine, the can, then instinctively glanced over her shoulder. But as she turned back to Eva, the mixture of apprehension and fear behind her large blue eyes was enough to convince Helen that this was her girl.