What You Left Behind (37 page)

“I just can’t believe Freddie would hurt anyone,” Malc said, helping himself to some of the tea from the pot on the table.

“Me neither,” Lorraine replied.

“What if the other deaths weren’t suicide either?”

“Malc, mate, you should have joined the force.” Adam laughed. They’d always got on well.

“I’d be a useless cop,” Malc said. “Too trusting, me. But don’t tell me you haven’t considered it.”

“You’re right,” Lorraine said, holding up her hands, “we have considered it. I’ve even spent hours at the Justice Center going over the old files, looking for possible links, but the only thing that stood out was that the final two boys, Simon and a lad called Jason Rees, were about three or four years older than the others. They didn’t really fit the age demographic.”

Malc was thoughtful for a moment. “You do know about those two, I take it?”

“Know what?” Lorraine leaned forward in her chair.

“Well, I mean, don’t hold me to it. Kids talking, hearsay and all that.” Malc seemed slightly embarrassed.

“
What
, Malc?”

“Brian—I play darts with him,” Malc explained. “His son started the rumor.” He drank some of his tea. “Jason Rees was a regular at New Hope. He was a right dropout by all accounts, although he hadn’t always been. Apparently he came from a well-heeled background at one time. Anyway, he lost the plot, got into drugs, and ended up at the shelter. This was before Sonia got involved with the place, by the way. That only happened after she lost Simon.”

“You know an awful lot about village goings-on for a City man,” Adam remarked.

“One night a week in the Old Dog was all it took. What else do you talk about over a pint and a few games of darts?” He grinned fondly, as if he wished he could take time back. “Turns out that Jason and Simon had a thing together. God knows how or where they met as their lives were worlds apart.”

“That’s even more tragic,” Lorraine said.

“Simon wasn’t happy at university, everyone knew that. He was planning on quitting and going traveling with Jason as soon as they’d got some money together. The word was, after Simon died, Jason couldn’t bear to live without him so he killed himself too.”

There was silence, just the occasional sounds of Jo clattering in the kitchen, as Lorraine thought through the implications.

“That makes me even more certain that those two deaths were unrelated to the previous four,” she said after a short while.

“Maybe you’re right,” Malc said. “Brian told me Tony was bereft after losing his son. But he never talked about him being gay.” Malc shook his head. “You’ve met Tony. You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Lorraine replied thoughtfully, sipping her tea.

G
REG
B
URNLEY ALMOST
seemed pleased to see them, Lorraine thought as they walked through the open door of his office. He looked up from his desk and smiled, his eyes narrowing to wrinkly slits in his tired, puffy face. She knew he’d been working extra-long hours recently.

“News?” she said. Burnley had summoned them to the office.

“Not of Freddie, I’m afraid. But Sonia’s alibi for Gil doesn’t check out.”

“Didn’t she say she was with him on the night of the crash?” Lorraine said, thinking back several days.

Burnley nodded. “One of my constables investigated. She claimed she’d rented two movies from the shop in Wellesbury that afternoon and then gone to the grocery store next door to get ingredients for a curry. She was having a night at home with Gil, apparently.”

“Sounds plausible enough,” Lorraine commented. She understood why Sonia would want to protect Gil.

“Yes, except that the rental shop had no record of anyone from Sonia’s address taking out movies that night, or even that week. She claimed she paid for the groceries in cash.”

“Gil’s prone to wandering off,” Lorraine said. “He could easily have gone out when Sonia and Tony were asleep.”

“True again,” Burnley said. “Although she says she locked all the doors and Gil doesn’t have access to the keys.”

“Gil’s story stacks up, though. Whether he was there or not, we know that two people left the pub on the motorbike and—”

“Doesn’t mean two people were on it when it crashed,” Burnley said, scratching his chin.

“Fair play,” Lorraine said. She couldn’t believe she and Adam were actually brainstorming with the man she once hoped she’d never see again. “My theory about the girl on the bike being Abby didn’t stand up to much scrutiny. It’s just those sandals … And Lana said she was wearing Converse sneakers when I asked her what she had on that night.”

“Surely the sandals aren’t unique,” Burnley suggested.

Lorraine had to agree. “True. But the ones Abby was wearing looked expensive,” she said. “They were real leather, designer, I think. Where would a homeless girl get the money to buy them?”

“Charity shop?” Adam said.

“Or the donations bags that came into the shelter?” Lorraine felt a little stab of excitement. “The Hawkeswells have been having a big clear-out recently.”

“Which would fit with Lana’s story of her being on the bike if they were once her sandals,” Burnley said, folding his arms.

Lorraine sighed. “There were a dozen or so bags of clothes and boxes of bric-a-brac at New Hope when I visited a few days back. Some were for the charity event Sonia’s organizing, and I think some were to give to the homeless.”

“Then we need to speak to Frank,” Adam said.

He glanced at his watch. Another day was fast slipping away.

“One step ahead,” Burnley said with a satisfied grin. “A couple of my officers went out to see him yesterday. Not about the charity donations, of course.”

“And?” Lorraine and Adam both said it at the same time.

“Turns out he had a son once.”

“Once?”

“He disappeared aged fourteen. Frank Butler was arrested on suspicion of his murder.”

J
O AND
M
ALC
were deep in conversation when Lorraine and Adam arrived back at Glebe House. Lorraine dumped her bag on the kitchen table and Stella rushed up to her, clearly unsettled by Freddie’s continuing absence.

“We’ll stay here tonight now,” Lorraine said, stroking her daughter’s hair as she leaned against her, arms wrapped round her waist.

She filled Jo and Malc in on the news, especially about Frank’s arrest. “It happened twenty years ago and a body was never found.”

“He’s always given me the creeps, if I’m honest,” Jo said flatly.

“Why don’t you go and find the chessboard, Stella?” Lorraine thought it best to change the subject. “I bet your Uncle Malc will give you a game.”

A moment later, Stella yelled out from the living room that she couldn’t find it.

“I’ll go,” Lorraine said, walking across the hall flagstones and into the big room at the other end of the house. It seemed cold and desolate, reflective of the family’s situation. “I know what your searching’s like,” she said, giving Stella a mini-tickle.

Stella pouted. “The games always used to be kept in this cupboard,” she said, “but it’s all changed.”

“You’re right,” Lorraine said, poking about in a mess of papers and photograph albums. A shoe box fell off a shelf and spilled its contents. “Oh great,” she muttered, gathering up the bits of paper. They were mostly cards and letters, plus a few newspaper cuttings and saved recipes. “Look in the bottom drawer of the bureau,” she told Stella, pointing across the room.

“Found it,” Stella said a moment later. She held up the chessboard and a wooden box of playing pieces Lorraine remembered using as a kid.

“Take it through while I clear up this mess.”

Lorraine was on her knees, gathering up the cards, resisting the temptation to peek at the messages. One, however, caught her attention. It was a poem, unsigned, written on a floral postcard, dated only weeks earlier. A few phrases stood out—
simply adore you … can’t live without you … please don’t end it … you make my heart beat …

“How very sad,” she said to herself, thinking. She guessed they were Malc’s desperate words of love to Jo, and that he’d sent the poem soon after leaving the house.

She was about to put it back in the box with the others when
something made her look at the card again. She stood up and took it over to the window to study it in the light, trying to recall what Bill from Central Forensics had pointed out to her about spotting specific similarities and differences between scripts, especially the unique traits and quirks of an individual.

“What is it, love?” Adam was suddenly beside her.

Lorraine glanced at him. “Just a poem.” She sighed. “But look at the flourishes on the
y
’s and the
f
’s. And there too.”

She gave the card to Adam to read.

“OK. What about them?”

“As far as I remember, they’re identical to the letters on Lenny Jackman’s suicide note.”

35

Freddie had no idea how long he’d been gagged and tied up. He ached all over, his right shoulder still in agony from where he’d been dragged along by the arm from Gil’s cottage. He reckoned it was dislocated.

“You fucking pig!” he’d screamed when he’d first been shoved in the barn.

The bastard had clamped his hand over his mouth, taken his backpack from him, and tipped out the contents.

“Is this the computer taken from New Hope?” he’d growled.

“Fuck you,” Freddie had said.

Another blinding pain had ripped through him as his shoulders were wrenched back, and his wrists bound up tightly with twine.

“Keep quiet, or you’ll feel this around your head,” the man had
said, brandishing a shovel a few feet from Freddie’s face. “I asked you if this was the computer taken from New Hope.”

Freddie cowered back into the pile of straw he’d been shoved into, and nodded. “But it wasn’t me who took it,” he cried. He squirmed, feeling like he was going to pass out. “Oh God … look, this is agony … please untie my hands. I think my shoulder is broken or dislocated … 
please
untie me. I won’t escape.” He was choking on the sobs now.

“Nice try, son. Now shut the fuck up, or I’ll make you.”

Freddie smelled his sour breath, felt the cold metal of the Swiss Army knife blade against the skin of his neck. Then a pain in his thigh as he was kicked hard.

“Shouldn’t go around snooping into business that’s not yours, should you?”

Freddie ducked to avoid being hit round the head.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “Please don’t hurt me anymore.”

Freddie thought of his mother at home in their kitchen. He’d do anything to be back with her.

“You’ve no idea what you’re messing with, you fucking idiot.”

It was true, although Freddie was beginning to work it out. Getting Lenny to take the computer had felt like the right thing to do at the time, but seemed plain reckless now, after what he’d found. Surely only the police had those kinds of photographs? He felt sick thinking about what had happened, what it all meant—and it had taken place in this very barn too. By the time he’d pieced it all together, seen Gil’s drawings, and figured it out, it was too late. He’d been caught.