What You Left Behind (25 page)

“N
OTHING BETTER TO
do?” Lorraine said as she eyed all the paperwork laid out on the table in the corner of Burnley’s office. She hadn’t bothered to introduce Adam, or to greet him.

“Sorry to hear about the lad.” The whites of Burnley’s eyes were tinged with yellow, and he had an aubergine-colored blister on his lower lip, probably where he’d been biting it.

“The lad,” Lorraine said, leaning forward across Burnley’s desk, “is my nephew. I want him found.”

“I have people going out, as you already know,” Burnley said, holding up his hands in defense. “Are you after special treatment?”

Lorraine breathed in sharply. “I want the techies taking a look at Freddie’s online activity and phone usage. And while you’re at it, get Finance to look into his bank movements.”

“Bit premature, aren’t we?” Burnley slumped into his office chair. “Let’s give the lad a chance to come back when he’s hungry or runs out of money.” He glanced at his watch. “What do you reckon, eight or nine o’clock tonight?”

Lorraine gave an imperceptible shake of her head. She knew Adam would have noticed. “Freddie’s been depressed,” she said. “He’s got a history of self-harm and his mood is currently low. His disappearance is out of character. I learned earlier this morning that he’s being badly bullied, both at school and online. A witness saw him being intimidated by a group of youths last night as he was leaving the village.” Lorraine decided not to mention the old man’s statement about Gil. “You, of all people, should be particularly concerned about a missing young person’s state of mind, Detective. One more suicide around here and I’d call it another spate.”

“Ah, so they
are
suicides now, are they?” Burnley shook his head, and Lorraine noticed his jowls wobbling. “Everything you wanted to see is over there, by the way.” He gestured to the table. “Help yourself.”

Lorraine knew he was making a point, that by having her go through his case files and finding nothing wrong it would somehow scratch out the past. “Thank you” was all she could manage after requesting somewhere private to go.

T
HE ROOM WAS
small and stifling, but at least it didn’t have Greg Burnley in it. Adam fetched them a couple of coffees from the machine and settled down to join her. There wasn’t much to look through, but since they’d set things in motion with Freddie and were assured that all the appropriate alerts had been put out, Lorraine valued a second opinion.

“Traffic or autopsy?” she asked.

They opted for Traffic first and scoured the usual scene evidence, from photographic and hand-drawn plans to analysis of the wrecked bike and the officer’s scene report. Dean Watts’ body was ethereal in the floodlights, the blood a bronze color pooling on the road. Everything appeared thorough and in order.

Then they skimmed over the scant bike theft details until Lorraine noticed the name of the pub from where the bike was stolen. “The Old Dog and Fox. There’s a camera in the car park,” she said to Adam. “I spotted it the other night when we went for a meal. It’s just one of those home-security jobs, but it’s worth a shot.” She flipped through the file. “I can’t see any mention of it here.”

“It’s probably not even connected up,” Adam said. “Even if it is, the recordings will have been long overwritten.”

Lorraine photographed the relevant details anyway and proceeded to the postmortem report. It was as she was reading those routine details that her phone rang.

“Hi, Jo, what is it?”

Lorraine frowned as she listened, hardly able to believe what she was hearing.

“Jo, are you there?” The line had gone dead.

She stood up, beckoning to Adam to do the same, and grabbed her bag, leaving the files spread out on the table. “We’ve got to get back. Gil has hanged himself.”

21

By the time Lorraine and Adam reached the tack room, Gil had been cut down. Between them, Tony, Sonia, and Jo had wrestled his body to the ground.

“It was because of Stella we found him,” Jo said.

They were still in the tack room. Tony and Sonia were huddled around Gil. Lorraine surveyed the scene, picking apart the tumbling chatter and trying to make sense of what had happened.

“I just wanted my phone back,” Stella said. “I asked Aunty Jo to call it. If Freddie had it, I thought he might answer. He didn’t.” She was talking at speed. “Then I had the idea of tracking it.”

“What do you mean?” Lorraine said.

“God,” Stella replied, as if they were all stupid. “A bit like you do
at work, Mum. You just log into your iTunes account and do ‘Find My iPhone.’ It’s easy.”

“I can’t believe we didn’t think of it sooner,” Jo said with a shaky voice. She was standing behind Stella, who was sitting in one of the chairs at Gil’s pine table.

Lorraine didn’t bother to comment that they’d already requested a ping on Freddie’s phone in order to find him, but it had proved fruitless so far. Either he’d switched it off or the battery had run out.

“I borrowed Aunty Jo’s laptop and, eventually, I located my phone here, in Gil’s house.” Stella shifted in her chair, looking very upset. “I lost it once before and tracked it this way. It turned out it was in someone else’s locker at school.”

Lorraine focused on Stella. “So the phone led you to the tack room,” she repeated. Stella nodded. “But Freddie wasn’t here when you arrived?”

Everyone confirmed that he wasn’t, that it had just been Gil hanging from the beam.

Sonia let out a whimper. “I couldn’t believe it when Jo called me,” she said. “I charged round here right away, hoping to find Freddie, but found him instead.”

She gestured at Gil, who was now sitting up on the floor. He squirmed, covering his face in shame.

Lorraine felt a sudden chill. She could only begin to imagine how Sonia must have felt when she saw Gil dangling by a rope. She imagined the scene, all of them bursting through the doorway, stopping abruptly at the sight of him, no one quite knowing what to do.

“I’m afraid I screamed rather loudly,” Sonia admitted.

Lorraine and Adam listened as Tony and Sonia explained how Gil’s body had been suspended from the gnarled beam that stretched the width of the room.

“I wondered what the hell had happened,” Tony said, red-faced
still. “Thankfully I was in the garden and heard Sonia’s cry. I came straightaway.” He went on to tell them how the rope had been attached to an old meat hook sunk into the wood.

Lorraine noticed the tipped-over chair that Gil had clearly used on the table to reach the beam. The table’s surface was littered with a jumble of pencils and photographs and half-finished drawings, right beneath where Gil must have been dangling. Stella’s iPhone in its pink sparkly case lay right in the middle.

“You did the right thing,” Adam said as Tony explained how they’d cut him down. Luckily there’d been a serrated knife on the draining board.

“I was only doing my exercises,” Gil said, removing his hands from his face. He was clearly ashamed at all the fuss he’d caused. “I need big muscles so I can get a girlfriend.”

Lorraine shook her head in disbelief, relieved it hadn’t been a lot worse. When they’d arrived, skidding the car to a stop on the gravel drive, they’d expected to be greeted by an ambulance at least.

“It’s not my fault I got stuck,” he continued.

“From what I can make out, you’re lucky not to have—”

Adam stopped there, and Lorraine released her breath. Surely even he wouldn’t be that insensitive.

But Tony picked up where Adam had left off. “A few more minutes and he’d have lost his hold and dropped from the beam. The way you’d got that rope tied round your waist, Gil …” He took a deep breath. “Your liver and kidneys wouldn’t have thanked you much if your hands had lost their hold, put it that way.”

“I’m not very good at pull-ups yet,” Gil confessed. “The internet said you should take precautions when exercising so I put this rope on and then I got stuck when the chair fell off the table and then you all came to save me and I am hungry now.”

“Let’s get you into the house, shall we?” Tony said, slinging an arm around his brother’s shoulder. Sonia followed them, telling the others to come too.

“You needn’t worry,” Gil said to Lorraine and Adam as he passed them. “It’s not like what happened to Simon. That was because he was bad.”

A
S THEY MADE
their way to the house, Lorraine caught Jo’s arm. “Wait,” she mouthed. She and Adam gathered round while Stella checked her messages on her newly found phone.

“What did Gil mean by that?” Lorraine asked. Then, when all she’d got by way of response was a shrug, she continued, “Everything’s being done to find Freddie, Jo. The local police have got all the usual stuff covered, I promise. Someone will be out to see you shortly.” She glanced at her watch and hoped it was soon. “I’m sorry Stella’s phone didn’t lead you to him,” she added, giving her sister a hug. She couldn’t stand to see her looking so dejected.

“We need to question Gil,” Adam commented.

“Agreed,” Lorraine added. “He got hold of Stella’s phone somehow. That old chap we spoke to earlier was convinced he met Freddie last night. We need to know more.”

“Did you find anything out at the Justice Center?” Jo asked quietly.

“Burnley obliged and let us see the Dean Watts case files.”

“I meant about Freddie, for Christ’s sake,” Jo said bitterly. “Why are you still so obsessed with that suicide when my son’s missing?”

“Lorraine thinks there could be a link,” Adam responded, almost patronizingly. He took Jo by the shoulders. “Freddie’s an adult. He will be fine.”

“I have one more inquiry I want to make regarding Dean Watts,” Lorraine told her. “If that proves fruitless, then I promise to let it go.”

Jo nodded, although Lorraine could see she was trying not to cry again.

But if I’m right, Lorraine thought, then I’m more concerned for Freddie than ever.