Against a Dark Sky (21 page)

Chapter Forty Five

T
he scant amount of evidence they’d managed to lift from Micky Ford’s cottage had been labelled and sent off by mid-afternoon. Bevan was prepared to pay a premium to get what remained of the camera processed quickly by the forensic laboratory in Glasgow.

              Dani gathered the team together, having sent out for proper coffees and pastries from the Wallaces’ café. Five minutes later, a couple of their young waitresses delivered the order to the Town Hall, informing Bevan that a few extra cream cakes had been added for free. Dani made a mental note to drop in and thank Charlotte when she had a spare moment.

              Bevan smiled as she watched the lads tuck in. They’d had an early start and no time for lunch. Dani reached for a huge, spiralling Danish pastry herself, as hunger finally caught up with her. The sight of a perfectly cut quarter of strawberry gateau, carefully wrapped in grease-proof paper, made Dani automatically think of James Irving, and their meeting in Jenner’s tea-room. She recalled his kindness and consideration on that occasion and had to almost physically shake her thoughts back to the present.

              ‘I’m just praying there’s something that can still be lifted from the camera’s memory card,’ Bevan began, her mouth full of cinnamon custard.

              ‘Are you sure it’s the same device that was taken from Amit Batra’s house on the night of the break-in?’ DS Driscoll enquired.

              ‘I’m absolutely positive, even if we can’t prove it forensically. At least we can now be certain we’ve got our man.’

              ‘The casing looked like it was made from some kind of highly reflective metal. It was probably that case which saved it from the fire,’ DC Kendal added. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before in this country, and I fully confess to being a bit of a gadget nerd.’

              ‘Maybe Daniel Goff had bought it when he lived abroad,’ Andy suggested. ‘It might be worth having photographs of it taken and circulated in the press both here and in Europe. With something that unusual and distinctive, we might find a retailer who remembers selling it to Goff.’

              ‘That’s a great idea, Andy. Ring the techies at Pitt Street. Ask them to take some shots of the camera case and send them to us. Even if we can’t get anything off the memory card, we might be able to identify the camera itself.’

              ‘There were definitely traces of petrol in the back of Micky Ford’s van. The carpet reeked of it. But it’s purely circumstantial. He could easily claim he used the stuff on his bonfires. I don’t think it’s enough to tie him to the Ronnie Sheldon murder,’ DS Clark added.

              ‘The registration number that DI Barr’s witness provided us with matches the transit van’s minus about two digits. I reckon it’s enough for Crieff CID to haul the guy in for questioning,’ DS Driscoll said positively.

              ‘I agree. If we get something back on the camera that links it to Batra or Goff then we’ve got grounds for an arrest,’ Dani responded.

              Andy Calder creased up his face. ‘Micky Ford is clever. He’s left almost no forensic evidence behind in any of these murders, assuming they’re all down to him, of course. I think we need more. The guy’s got far too much wriggle room if this ever gets to court. We need to find a new angle, keep digging into the 1983 Ardyle case; because there’s something here we’re missing. There’s no way on earth Ford is going to confess, he isn’t the type. So we’re going to have to nail him.’

Bevan sent a text to Sam, asking him to meet her at the Wallaces’ café. It was late afternoon when she got there and the place was almost empty. Charlotte was behind the counter, polishing the enormous coffee machine, trying to get a perfect shine from its myriad pipes and spouts.

              ‘Thank you for the cream cakes,’ Dani said quietly, perching on one of the tall stools.

              Charlotte spun around. ‘Och, that’s no problem at all. You and your men have provided me with an awful lot of business in the last couple of weeks. Now, can I get you something?’

              ‘A couple of Americanos please. I’m expecting a friend to join me.’

              Charlotte turned back to her machine, gently manipulating its levers and dials. The door to the café opened. Dani watched Sam approach, taking in his broad smile and reassuringly burly physique. He sat beside her and placed his hand briefly on the small of her back. She liked the subtlety of the gesture; he was deliberately trying not to place her under any pressure.

              ‘Busy day?’ He asked casually, removing his padded jacket.

              Dani filled him in on the results of the search of Micky Ford’s cottage, pausing when Charlotte set down their drinks. ‘I didn’t think it would be wise for you to come along,’ she concluded.

              ‘Sure, you’re quite right. No need to attract the attention of the Scottish press again. Actually, I had quite an eventful day myself.’ Sam raised an eyebrow playfully.

              ‘Oh yes?’ Dani was intrigued.

              ‘I hooked up with Bill and Joy in the town. They offered to drive me up to Loch Arklet. We took a walk through the glen, the landscape is stunning. It’s kinda like a miniature version of the Great Lakes. I loved it.’

              ‘I’m glad you’re managing to see the sights. It wouldn’t be much of a holiday otherwise.’ Dani sipped the coffee, appreciating the deep, almost nutty flavour.

              ‘At the risk of sounding cheesy, you were the only sight I came to see.’

              Dani shifted about awkwardly, keeping her vision fixed on the cup her hands were cradling. She was unsure where Sam was going with this.

              ‘Dani, I’ve got something to tell you. I want you to stay calm and not flip out, okay?’

              Bevan twisted around on her stool, giving the American a puzzled look.

              ‘About a week ago, I got a call in the States from Andy Calder. He told me I had some competition; that you’d been seeing this guy who he thought was bad news. Andy said he was giving me a friendly warning and I could do whatever I liked with the information.’

              Dani’s mouth dropped open. Anger and embarrassment, in equal measure, crept through her entire body, making her cheeks flush crimson.

              Sam laid a hand on her arm. ‘It was my decision to come here. I’d never made my intentions towards you clear, that was a mistake.’

              ‘You don’t need to say anymore,’ she interrupted in a croaky whisper. ‘We’re fine.’

              ‘No, I really do. I’m not far off reaching my 25 years of service. This gives me options. All I can say for the moment is that while my boys are growing up, I need to be living on the same continental land mass as them. But as time goes on, there’s a possibility we could be together, which is a scenario I’m very keen on. It’s probably not enough to offer somebody like you, but it’s all I got.’

              Dani leant forwards and placed a kiss on his lips. She wasn’t quite sure how to reply to him, so for now this felt like the most appropriate course of action. Sam slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her close.

              ‘Do I get to come back to your hotel yet? ’cause I gotta say, trying to be a good boy these last few days has been killing me,’ he whispered softly into her ear.

              She smiled, scattering some coins on the counter next to their half-drunk coffees and leading Sam out of the café by the hand. 

*

Chapter Forty Six

A
ndy Calder had spent the previous night back at home with Carol and Amy. Dani wasn’t expecting him at the Incident Room until midday. Sam had urged her at breakfast not to be too hasty to confront him. He suggested she take a few days to consider things first. Sam was convinced that Andy had meant well and was trying to look out for her best interests.

              This may have been true, but Dani felt his actions were so inappropriate she wasn’t sure she could continue working with him. He’d interfered in her private life in a way that Bevan hadn’t thought the man capable of. But then, it was Dani herself who’d dragged her personal relationships into the workplace, so could she really blame Andy for thinking he could stick his oar in? Suddenly, Dani recalled the fortune teller at the Irving’s party, telling her she had problems separating private from professional and seeming to be aware of what had happened to her mother. Bevan didn’t like all these people appearing to know so much about her, she didn’t like it one little bit.

As Dani entered the Town Hall, DC Kendal leapt up from his seat and jogged towards her. ‘I’ve got something interesting on Kathleen Harris, Ma’am.’

              Bevan took the chair next to the young detective whilst he summoned up a screen on one of his laptops.

              ‘After she began working on the cruise ships, I found her impossible to trace. For a while, I thought she might have emigrated to the United States; meeting an American on board one of the ships and marrying him, perhaps. But the official US databases I tried, with Detective Sharpe’s assistance, didn’t have any record of her doing this. The last movements I’d pinpointed for Kathleen were in 1984. So I applied a little lateral thinking. Harris is a very common surname so it took me a while, but eventually I had the idea that maybe Kathleen had started using her middle name, which was Amanda. ‘Kathleen’ struck me as quite old fashioned for a woman of her age, even back in the 80s. I reckoned maybe it wasn’t very cool for a cabaret singer.’

              Dani nodded, impressed by the lad’s logic.

              ‘I tried Amanda Harris first, but drew a blank with the women I checked out; they didn’t quite fit the evidence we had. Then I had a go with Mandy Harris. My cousin calls herself Mandy. She cringes if anyone refers to her as Amanda.’

              ‘And?’ Bevan prompted.

              ‘Here, look,’ Kendal swivelled round the laptop. A marriage certificate was displayed on the screen. Kathleen officially changed her name to ‘Mandy’ in 1985, but I suspect she’d been using it ever since starting work on the cruise ships. ‘Mandy Harris, aged 23, married Charles Oliver Endicott, aged 34, at St Giles Church, Buckinghamshire on 24
th
August 1988.’

              Dani stared at the document, the information taking a while to compute. ‘Oh my God. Kathleen Harris was Joanna Endicott’s mother.’

Within a few minutes, the entire team were gathered around Ian Kendal’s workstation. ‘Why didn’t we know this already?’ Dani demanded.

              ‘Well, we knew that Joanna’s mother and father were dead. Mandy Endicott died of ovarian cancer in 2009 and Charles passed away in 2011. DS Driscoll ran police checks on them both. They were completely clean,’ Ian explained. ‘It didn’t seem necessary to carry out a detailed background investigation. Even if we had, I’m not sure we would have made the connection.’

              ‘Hang on, when was Joanna born?’

              ‘October 1983,’ Dave Driscoll called out, the details of the case imprinted on his brain.

              ‘But Harris married Charles Endicott in 1988. Joanna would already have been five years old. So, was Charles actually her father? Has anyone looked at Joanna Endicott’s birth certificate?’ Dani glanced around the room and then she stopped dead still. ‘Shit,’ she muttered darkly. ‘Joanna was the baby.’

              ‘What do you mean, Ma’am?’ DC Clark asked tentatively.

              Sammy Reid pushed himself forward. ‘If Joanna was born to Kathleen Harris in October ’83, then Kathleen must have been two months pregnant at the time of the Ardyle tragedy.
Joanna
was the baby that Kathleen was discussing in her therapy sessions with Judy Sheldon.’

              ‘So Kathleen
did
have the baby and she kept her,’ Dani added. ‘When did the woman start working on the cruise liners?’

              ‘The first indication she was employed on a cruise ship was in the summer of ’84 and the last evidence I found was in’86,’ Kendal explained.

              ‘Can you take a child with you if you work on one of those vessels? Sammy, can you find that out for me?’

              The young man nodded and scuttled off to make a start.

              ‘What if Kathleen, now calling herself Mandy, met Charles Endicott on board a cruise ship? He had money and was older than her. Perhaps he was prepared to take Joanna on as his own child. Mandy certainly married into a wealthy family to end up living in a two million pound home in Chiswick.’

              DS Driscoll looked thoughtful. ‘So why did Joanna come back here to Ardyle all these years later? Was she aware of her mother’s connection to the place?’

              Dani tapped a pen on the desk. ‘I think she must have done. James Irving said Joanna was the brains behind their decision to take the holiday in Ardyle. He intimated that she was the driving force behind everything. Joanna Endicott undoubtedly had a purpose for returning to Loch Lomond.’

              ‘She would have been back here searching for her real father,’ declared a voice from the centre of the hall. Dani turned to see Andy Calder standing there, his hands on his hips. In all the excitement, they had completely missed him come in.

Bevan texted Sam and asked him to join them. She wanted to hear as many ideas on this new development as possible. The American arrived within twenty minutes.

              DS Reid was the first to provide Bevan with his input. ‘Joanna’s birth certificate lists her father as unknown and her birthplace as Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham.’

              ‘What was Kathleen doing there?’ Dani exclaimed.

              ‘Perhaps she went to stay with a relative for the birth. Her family may have wanted her to remain away from home for a few months, so there wasn’t any gossip,’ Reid suggested.

              ‘It sounds like the 1880s not the 1980s,’ Dani muttered incredulously, ‘carry on please, Sammy.’

              ‘Joanna was officially adopted by Charles Endicott in 1988 and took on his surname. Before that time, Kathleen worked for Royal Atlantic Cruises from the spring of ’84 to the summer of ’86. She sang with a troupe of other girls. According to the man I spoke to at Royal Atlantic, a couple of them had young children. He told me the company has always been progressive about its working conditions. There was a crèche on board both the liners Kathleen had been employed on. The women in the cabaret often worked it out between them so that there was someone free to watch the kiddies during performances. He said it was actually a great environment for the little ones to grow up in, but the women usually had to leave when their children reached school age.’

              ‘Joanna was three years old when her mother stopped working on the cruises. We assume she’d met Charles Endicott by then and had begun a relationship with him,’ Dani contributed.

              ‘Aye, the Endicott family had a huge old pile in Buckinghamshire, which is where Charles and Mandy got hitched. A few years later, Charles was working in London and they bought the property in Chiswick.’

              ‘So what prompted Joanna to go looking for her real dad?’ Sam Sharpe pitched in.

              Dani considered this. ‘Perhaps she’d started digging into it after her adopted father died in 2011. It may have taken her all that time to make the connection with Ardyle. As soon as Joanna knew her mother had been living up here when she was pregnant, the lawyer made plans to come for a holiday.’

              DS Driscoll paced across the room to join them. ‘I’ve just been on the phone to Joanna Endicott’s maternal aunt. She was one of the relatives DC Clark and I interviewed. Vera Mortimer told me she’d lived in Solihull at the time Kathleen was expecting Joanna. Kathleen’s parents sent her down to stay with her aunt for the birth.’

              ‘Why didn’t she tell you this in the first place?’ Dani proclaimed.

              ‘She says we never asked her. Also, Kathleen’s parents wanted the whole thing kept on the quiet. After Kathleen started referring to herself as Mandy and married Charles, the family decided never to mention the fact that Joanna was illegitimate. It didn’t seem to matter once Charles had adopted her.’

              ‘Do you know what?’ Dani said in exasperation. ‘That actually makes a lot of sense.’