"Oh s.h.i.t, Suzy, I"m so sorry. Of course you know. You must know exactly how I"m feeling."
Suzy choked out a laugh. "That"s just the point, Mags. I have absolutely no idea. I"ve never felt like that I didn"t know that"s how it"s supposed to feel. All I"ve ever felt since Ian left is anger. I guess it"s time I let that go and accepted that maybe what we had was never good enough."
Maggie reached out and took her sister"s hand. There was nothing she could say. After a couple of minutes she pushed herself off her chair. "Come on, sis. Let"s go and see the kids."
Suzy stood up too, held out her arms and gave Maggie a hard hug. "No, I"ll take care of the kids. You do whatever you need to sort all of this out."
As Suzy walked back towards the sitting room, Maggie pressed redial again. She was about to hang up when the ringtone stopped, and her heart leaped. Then she heard a voice uncertain, quiet, young.
Not Duncan.
Maggie paced the room as she spoke. "h.e.l.lo?" She couldn"t tell if the voice was male or female, but she didn"t want to frighten whoever it was away. "Hi," she said, keeping a smile on her face knowing it would be reflected in her voice. "Thanks for picking up. I wonder if you can help me? Do you think you could tell me where I"m calling exactly? You see, a friend asked me to phone, and I"m not sure if I"ve got the right number."
There was silence for a few seconds.
"It"s a phone box."
"Oh, that"s great. Thanks. He"s probably going to come back then. Err, can you tell me where the phone box is?"
"Near the park."
"Brilliant. I"m just wondering which park, though. Sorry to be stupid."
"Heaton Park."
Maggie felt her tense body sag with relief. At least it wasn"t far away, but the park was ma.s.sive. She was also fairly certain that the gates were closed at night, so it was unlikely Duncan would be inside. There must be a park warden, and surely he wouldn"t allow anybody to park up overnight?
"Thanks. You"ve been really helpful. One more thing can you have a look round, do you think? Is there a white van parked anywhere near you?"
The line went dead. Maggie leaned back against the wall, a mixture of frustration that she hadn"t managed to get more information and elation that she at least knew where Duncan had been a few hours ago competing for her focus.
"I"m going to find you, Duncan," she whispered.
41.
Tom had spent too long thinking about Maggie Taylor and what was making her so edgy. He didn"t have any answers, so he had to concentrate on what he did know, and that meant focusing on Adam Mellor. The question was, did Adam Mellor have an accomplice? Maggie Taylor had said there were two men in the van that had followed her, so if a second man was involved it would be good to know who he was.
Becky popped her head round the door.
"Louisa Knight has agreed to call in to see us on her way home from work to take a look at the picture of Adam Mellor. Maybe he"s been seen around with one of her colleagues. She"ll be here in about ten minutes."
"Let"s both see her. I"ve got a couple more questions to ask her."
Becky stood looking at him for a second. "If you"re going to talk to her, I think two of us is overkill, frankly. So why don"t you get started, and I"ll join you when you"ve got through the pleasantries stage, hmm?"
She turned to leave, but not before Tom had seen the cheeky grin on her face. It wasn"t easy to fool Becky. It was obvious that he didn"t need to see Louisa. The fact was, he wanted to.
She was waiting in reception when Tom went downstairs, and as he showed her into a small interview room and asked for a cup of tea for both of them he felt a momentary lightening of the weight of concern that he was lugging around with him.
"Sorry to drag you out here again, Louisa. Especially so late in the day. I"m sure you have somewhere better to be."
Louisa shook her head and smiled. "Nope. Just an evening in front of the fire. Me, Bailey and a bottle of red."
"Oh. Then I"m sorry to deprive Bailey of your company this evening," he said, feeling vaguely disappointed.
She smiled and gave a small shake of the head.
"Don"t you worry about Bailey. He"ll curl up in front of the wood burner. He"ll be fine. My neighbour will let him out."
Tom relaxed. Dog or cat? he wondered. He was a dog person, and if it hadn"t been for his long working hours would have picked one up from Animal Rescue years ago. It sounded like a peaceful, relaxing evening, something Tom wasn"t likely to be getting in the near future.
He pushed all thoughts of fires, red wine and dogs to the back of his mind and filled Louisa in with as much detail as he could.
"We have an unusual situation in that a woman is missing who looks very much like your friend Hayley. In fact, when Hayley"s body was found, we initially thought she was our missing person. That seems like a h.e.l.l of a coincidence, and we"re concerned for the safety of this woman. We"ve got somebody in our sights who we think might be involved in some way, and I"m hoping you can help."
"Okay. Is it one of the guys I told you about?"
"No, but I wonder if he might be known to you; perhaps as a friend of one of your colleagues. Bear in mind that this man may well be entirely innocent, so please keep this confidential. Does the name Adam Mellor mean anything to you?"
Louisa placed her forearms on the desk and looked down, her eyes crinkling slightly at the corners as she concentrated. Tom stayed silent. She let about ten seconds pa.s.s.
"No. I"m sorry, but I can"t think that I"ve met anybody by that name, or even heard it mentioned."
Tom nodded. He showed her the photograph. "He may be using another name."
Louisa looked at the photograph that Julian Richmond had emailed through to the office at Becky"s request. She stared for quite a long time at the young man with blond hair, slightly pointed chin and an immaculate white shirt.
"I"m sorry. I"m fairly sure I haven"t seen him before. He"s a good-looking guy in a clean-cut sort of way. He has the look of somebody who comes from money. Would I be right?"
"So it seems," Tom said. He hadn"t really considered Mellor"s looks, but he supposed Louisa was right.
"Sorry, Tom. I would have liked to help." She looked disappointed.
"Don"t worry. It was only on the off chance. We"re trying to find connections wherever we can, and we"re particularly interested in people who either worked or studied at Manchester University around twelve years ago."
Louisa gave a sad smile. "That"s not going to help much. A lot of our staff trained here in Manchester. There"s something about this city that grabs you, once you"ve lived here, and won"t let go."
"I know what you mean. I had a brief spell in London, but I was glad to get back up north. It must be the weather."
They both smiled at that.
Louisa stood up. "I suppose I should go, then. I"m sure you"re too busy to sit here chatting to me." She held her hand out towards Tom, and he took it.
"Thanks for coming. I"m sure I"ll be seeing you again," he said.
"I hope so," she said, meeting his eyes.
She withdrew her hand and walked towards the door. At the last minute she turned.
"By the way, I don"t think there"s much point you trying to speak to one of the team that I mentioned to you Ben Coleman one of the surgical registrars. Apparently he left for a holiday the day before Hayley was killed. But I also found out that Charlie Dixon another man I mentioned to you didn"t turn up for work yesterday. I don"t know if that"s relevant."
At this point in the investigation, anything was relevant, and Tom thanked Louisa, opening the door for her just as Becky appeared. She smiled at Louisa as she left.
"Did I miss anything?"
Sorry as he was to see Louisa leave, Tom was eager to get back to his office. He filled Becky in on the little he had gleaned from the meeting.
"Dig out the information on Charlie Dixon if you can, and anything you"ve got on Ben Coleman. We need to go through the interviews you conducted at the hospital and see how they tally with what Louisa had to say," he shouted as he walked towards his own office.
He sat down, pulled a plain sheet of paper towards him and started to write.
12 years ago 3 girls (although only 2 dead), 3 lines on legs.
Now 2 girls dead, 1 missing, 1 being threatened. All similar, or made to look similar. 3 lines on legs.
Is the number 3 important?
Tom knew that serial killers often fell into one of a small number of categories power and control, visionary, mission or hedonistic but he didn"t see how any of those cla.s.sifications fitted here. In the case of victims of a similar type the murders were often considered the work of a mission killer somebody who believed it to be their role to rid the world of a group of people perceived as undesirable based on their ethnicity, lifestyle or religion. But ridding the world of all pretty blonde girls or, as in the current spate, all dark haired attractive women, seemed an unlikely mission. s.e.xual gratification didn"t seem to be a motive, as far as they could tell, so could this be a visionary killer somebody who believed they were being compelled to murder by an ent.i.ty such as the devil or G.o.d? If it was a thrill killer, on the other hand, why did they all have to look the same?
But if only one of the deaths was important, which one was it? And who was she important to?
Was it Adam Mellor? All they knew was that it seemed possible and nothing more that Leo had disappeared, and if she had, Mellor might be involved. This was based on the fact that somebody looking like Leo had been followed by Adam Mellor"s van, and that he had met Leo and knew she wasn"t going to the races last Sat.u.r.day. It was a stretch, but if Mellor was involved in Leo"s disappearance, did that mean she was the real target? And was she already dead?
The other killings seemed to have happened within hours of the girls being taken, so if Leo had been abducted, was her body yet to be discovered?
Tom swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to focus as Becky nudged the door open with her foot, two cups of tea in one hand and a pile of papers in the other. He was glad of the interruption. Becky was less emotionally involved in this and hopefully could see it all a little more clearly.
"Here you go, boss."
Having deposited the tea she pushed her hair behind her ears, every inch of her shouting, "We"re getting somewhere."
"Right," she said. "Adam Mellor went to Manchester University, studied economics and was in his third year at the time of the first murders. However, we can"t find a single thing that links him to either of the girls who were murdered or the one who was almost killed. Of the names given to us by Louisa Knight, both Ben Coleman and Malcolm Doyle attended Manchester University as well, both obviously studying medicine. They"re both slightly older, but of course they would have been students for a lot longer. We"re a.s.suming that Hayley was going out to meet somebody from work that night, but we don"t know that, do we?"
Tom had to admit they didn"t, but when Hayley spoke to Louisa about this man, it had sounded very much like a colleague she had been adamant she couldn"t say who it was because it might affect Louisa"s relationship with him. So it had to be somebody at the hospital. But Hayley"s date that night could have been with somebody entirely different.
Charlie Dixon, it turned out, could be ruled out of the murders twelve years ago because he was in New Zealand at the time.
"Okay, Becky, one last thing, then I think you should go home. It is Sunday after all. Find out when Ben Coleman left for his holiday, will you. And check if he actually got on the plane."
Tom looked back at his scribblings. They had names but absolutely no way of connecting them to any of the murders. It was a step further than twelve years ago, though, when names had been notable only by their absence.
42.
12 years ago mid June Tom knocked on DCI Victor Elliott"s door and waited to be told he could enter, another one of the time-wasting rituals that were slowly driving him to distraction. He looked through the gla.s.s panel, and the DCI held his hand up, palm out, as if to say "Stay" to a dog. Tom gritted his teeth but held his ground.
He knew his superior"s behaviour was getting to him, and he shouldn"t let it. In any murder enquiry tension always ran high, but in his opinion Victor Elliott was making him jump through hoops that were entirely unnecessary. Fortunately, Tom had his ever-willing trainee, Philippa Stanley, who seemed keen and eager to do just about anything she was asked. Sadly, this had encouraged some of the guys to take the p.i.s.s and send her on fools" errands, but Tom had put a stop to that. He needed her to focus. She hadn"t taken kindly to his intervention, though.
"I knew what I was doing, sir," she said. "I can deal with idiots like them."
"Right. So when you were sent for some holes for the hole punch, you knew that was a wind-up, did you?"
She had turned to him, her skin slightly flushed. "Of course I did. I was biding my time. Waiting for the moment when I could make the t.o.s.s.e.rs suffer."
Tom had known she was right: he hadn"t needed to come to her aid. He was beginning to realise that Philippa Stanley was n.o.body"s fool. As a result of her help in this investigation he had been able to get off home a little earlier a couple of times this week. He hated leaving her to do all the grunt work, but he needed to spend some time with Kate.
He tried to talk to Kate about the baby, about how excited he was, but she changed the subject all the time and Tom had been forced to admit to himself that he was scared. Scared Kate was going to leave him. Scared the reason she had become so much happier just before she fell pregnant was because she had met somebody else. Scared the baby his wife was carrying that he was so excited about wasn"t his.
He was jolted back into the here and now by a signal from his boss. Waving him to come in. Elliott hadn"t been on the phone or talking to anybody else; he was simply posturing.
"Where are we up to? Any more names in the frame? Still got a bee in your bonnet about Alexander?" His first words, and they intensified the waves of irritation that Tom was feeling. It was true that Alexander Tamsin Grainger"s ex-boyfriend had a cast-iron alibi, but there was something there, Tom was sure. He could see it; feel it. Sadly he hadn"t been able to follow anything up because he kept being sent on wild-goose chases.
"I"ve been looking at all lines of enquiry. There"s the lecturer who had the affair with Tamsin Grainger, Edward Price goes by Teddy, apparently."
"We"ve cleared Price. He was at home with his wife."
"And do you consider his wife a good enough alibi? What about the wife herself? She had as much of a motive as anybody, although killing somebody for an act of f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o on your husband seems a bit steep."
"Oh, I don"t know. A woman scorned, and all that. Do we know if it was the first time, or had Tamsin been blowing him for weeks?"
"He says it was only the once, but sadly the only person who could confirm or deny that is Tamsin."
"Fair point, Douglas. So what are you thinking?"
Tom was silent for a moment. "If it was Price"s wife, she wouldn"t necessarily get the right girl first time. It"s possible she killed the first girl by mistake, and learning what she had done, went back for the right one."
"So her husband"s covering for her? Is that what you mean?"
"It"s possible, but I don"t believe it. Women rarely slash throats, do they? I don"t think it"s either of the Prices. I wish I knew what the symbol meant on the top of the leg, though. The profiler says it may be connected with the idea of the power of three." Tom shrugged, and neither man spoke for a moment.
"Okay, tell me more about Price. I know you don"t think it"s him, but humour me," Victor said.
"He works in the psychology department, and he specialises in cognitive psychology."
"And what the chuff might that be?"
"Attention, perception, memory, reasoning. Quite interesting, I imagine."