Blood Axe (12 page)

26

The detective's parting
words were bothering Dana.

‘If you think of anything else that might help us to find out who did this, anything at all, let me know.'

She had been too upset to think of it at the time, but afterwards she had begun to wonder if she did know something. The more it troubled her, the more convinced she became that she could help the police to find her uncle's killer. She had remembered something as soon as she and her mother had left the shop. Normally her mother would have been embarrassed to be driven home in a police car, but she had been so distraught, they could have been dragged home through the streets chained in a cage and her mother wouldn't have noticed. With all the shock of discovering the body, and the fuss and bother with the police, and all their questions, Dana hadn't been able to think.

It wasn't until after they had left the detective that Dana recalled seeing a creepy man at the bus stop. At the time, when she had noticed the man, she had assumed he was watching her. The truth had turned out to be even worse than that, because he hadn't been interested in her at all. His attention had been focussed on the shop. Standing at the bus stop so it looked as though he was waiting for a bus, he had actually been observing people coming and going in and out of the jewellers. Why else would he have let the bus go without getting on? Riding away, she had seen him enter the shop. Once she had left, he would have known Tim was in there on his own. It could just as easily have been her, left alone in the shop. In that case, Tim would have been safe, and she would have been lying somewhere without her head. The thought made her feel dizzy. It was all so horrible; she almost wished it had been her, not Uncle Tim, who had been killed.

At first she was too scared to tell anyone. What if the man found out she had told the police about him? As soon as he realised she was on to him, he was bound to come after her to silence her. The police might not catch him in time to save her. On the other hand, if she didn't go to the police, he might never be caught, and she would still be in danger. It was all so horrible, and so frightening, that she couldn't sleep. Her mother thought she was in a state because she was upset about her uncle, which of course she was. But there was more to it than that. In the end she felt she had to tell someone or her head would burst.

She decided to go and see the fit detective who had spoken to her and been so attentive at the shop. He was nice.

‘Mum, I'm going out.'

‘What do you mean, you're going out? Where are you going?'

Dana considered for a moment. Her mother could hardly stop her going to the police station.

‘You're going to the police station dressed like that? Don't be ridiculous. Go and get changed into something decent. You look like you're going to a night club! And I'm coming with you.'

‘I'm fine as I am,' Dana protested, pulling her short skirt down over her chunky thighs.

‘Dana, you're not going out dressed like that.'

Grumpily Dana went and put her jeans on before they left the house together. Arriving at the police station she asked for Inspector Peterson.

‘He said to ask for him if I remembered anything.'

There was a sudden flurry of activity. Although there were several people ahead of them waiting in the entrance hall, a smiling woman led Dana and her mother straight to a special room with comfortable chairs, where they were given cups of tea. It was the first time a stranger had treated Dana as though she was very important. If it wasn't for her poor uncle, she would have enjoyed the attention. As it was, she could barely control her distress. At last the good-looking inspector arrived and she cheered up a little, especially when he remembered her name. Overweight and homely, she wasn't used to men paying her attention.

‘It was Wednesday evening,' she stammered. ‘My – he – my uncle let me go home because he'd been out and left me on my own in the shop most of the day. It was our day to stay open until six and then he said he had to stay late after that because he was doing some stocktaking, but he said he didn't need me. He said he'd be there for a while...'

The inspector nodded. ‘Go on. What was it you wanted to tell me?'

Dana explained about the man who had been standing at the bus stop watching the shop. She hadn't realised at the time, but he had been waiting until she left so that he could find her uncle alone in the shop. It could have been the other way round.

‘He might have been waiting for another bus,' her mother pointed out.

‘Well, he wasn't,' she snapped, ‘because as I was going off, on the bus, I saw him go into the shop.' It was true, every word of it.

The inspector took her seriously. ‘Can you describe this man?'

‘Yes. I had a good look at him. I remember him really well.'

She was eager to impress the detective. She might not be pretty, or clever, but she could help him find her uncle's killer. He must want that more than anything, just as she did.

‘He was quite tall, and really ugly. He was bald, and he had a stupid little beard, and he looked really creepy.'

The inspector went out and returned a moment later.

‘Is this the man you saw?' He showed her a photo. ‘Take your time, Dana. Look very carefully.'

She could sense a suppressed excitement in his voice. She knew what he wanted her to say.

‘Yes!' she shouted, although she wasn't really sure if it was the same man or not.

‘Are you sure?'

She couldn't go back on her word now, not without looking stupid. In any case, it looked like the man she had seen at the bus stop. It probably was him, and she was going to help make sure he was caught and locked up.

‘Yes, that's him. That's the man who was waiting outside the shop on Wednesday. You know who he is, don't you?'

With luck, the inspector would ask her back to look at an identity parade. As she gave him what she hoped was an alluring smile, she heard her mother burst into tears at her side.

‘The bastard,' she sobbed, ‘the vicious, crazy bastard! How could he do that?'

At once, the inspector turned his attention to her mother. Dana really hated her sometimes.

27

Ian went to Frank's
house himself. This time he had no hesitation in setting off to make an arrest, armed with the knowledge that Dana had seen Frank outside the jewellers' shop on the night Tim had been killed. Only as he drove to the suspect's house did he begin to wonder how reliable a witness Dana was. Putting such reservations aside for now, he rapped smartly at the door. After all, he was only pursuing a lead. It wasn't as though he was judge and jury in the matter. After a moment Frank came to the door. He was clearly startled when Ian announced the purpose of his visit.

‘What are you talking about? She was my daughter. All right, she was my stepdaughter, but I brought that girl up, from a child, and in all the time I knew her I never touched a hair on her head. I might have yelled at her for her wild ways – she used to go out drinking to all hours, even when she was only fifteen, and her poor mother at home worrying herself sick. There were times I would have liked to give her a good slap, given half a chance, but her mother was too soft. I tell you I never lifted a finger against her and that's God's truth. As for anyone thinking I was responsible for what happened - that's outrageous. It's sheer spite. Who was it told you I had anything to do with Angela's death? Who was it?'

Moira came to the door. She burst into noisy weeping when she learned what was happening.

‘That's crazy!' she screeched. ‘Leave us alone! Frank was with me, he was with me.'

By the time they reached the police station, Frank had recovered his composure. He remained calm throughout the process, waiting for a lawyer to arrive, listening patiently to the convoluted preamble that had to be read at the start of the interview. At last they were ready to begin. He stated his name and sat staring stonily straight ahead.

‘Where were you last night?' Ian began.

‘Last night?'

‘Between six and seven in the evening.'

Frank frowned at the unexpected question, but he answered readily enough.

‘I was on my way home from work.'

‘Do you have any witnesses?'

Frank's frown deepened. ‘There were other people at the bus stop…'

It occurred to Ian that Dana might have seen Frank waiting for his bus, without him being in any way involved in Tim's murder.

‘It's not a crime to travel on a bus, is it?' Frank added, as though he could read Ian's mind.

‘What time did you arrive home?'

‘Oh Jesus, I don't know. I didn't make a note of the time in case you came round asking questions. Look, I left work at the usual time, about five thirty, quarter to six, and waited at the bus stop for about five or ten minutes. But it was a nice enough night so I changed my mind and decided to walk.'

‘So you didn't take the bus?'

‘No, like I just said, I walked. It's only two miles. Sometimes I get the bus, sometimes I walk. It depends.'

‘Depends on what?'

Frank looked puzzled. ‘On the weather, on how tired I'm feeling, on how long I have to wait – what does it matter? Sometimes I walk, that's all. It's no big deal. I should walk home every day, of course. For the exercise.'

Frank's voice was steady. He sounded as though they were engaged in a friendly chat about ways to keep fit. His face gave a different impression. Although it was fairly cool in the interview room his forehead and upper lip were shiny with sweat, while his sharp, little eyes darted rapidly from Ian to Ted and back again, as though he was trying to weigh up how much they really knew about his movements that evening.

‘Did you go into any shops on your way home?' Ted asked.

Frank shook his head. ‘No.' He frowned. ‘I'd just finished a day's work. I wanted to get home.'

‘Yet you didn't wait a few minutes for the bus.'

‘No. It was a nice evening. I wanted to clear my head, I guess. Look, I can't really remember what was going through my mind. It's not a crime to take some exercise, is it? It just helps.'

‘Helps with what?'

‘I've not been sleeping well since we lost Angela. The doctor said exercise would help.' He sighed.

They took a break shortly after that to check the bus timetable. The schedule confirmed Frank's account, establishing that he could have caught a bus home from the stop outside Tim's shop. Leaving work shortly after five thirty he might well have just missed one bus, meaning he would have had to wait about ten minutes for the next one. It was perfectly reasonable to believe he had decided to abandon waiting for the bus in favour of walking home. Dana's accusation proved nothing.

‘No, it proves nothing,' Eileen conceded, ‘but it's a bit of a coincidence. He was a possible suspect for Angela's murder – he knew her, at least – and now he's admitted to being in the street outside the shop just about the time Tim was killed, and we have a witness – reliable or not – who saw him go into the shop. And he's strong enough to carry an axe.'

Ian had to agree Frank was a viable suspect.

‘It's too much of a coincidence,' Eileen repeated. ‘I don't buy it. Let's keep him in overnight, and see if we can persuade him to talk in the morning.'

Ian wasn't sure why he didn't go along with her suspicions. Although he had been unconvinced by Dana's statement, he was as disappointed as the rest of the team when the evidence failed to show anything that supported her account. Grainy CCTV at the bus stop showed a figure that resembled Frank walking in the opposite direction to the jewellers' shop at six o'clock. For a while the street had been almost deserted until at nearly seven CCTV from the shop doorway revealed a cloaked figure entering. Dana might well have seen Frank at the bus stop, noticed his bald head, and maybe even remembered his face sufficiently to recognise his picture the next day. But under the cloak, there was no way of identifying the person going into the shop after a lapse of almost an hour.

‘I don't think she was deliberately lying,' Ian told Eileen. ‘Eye witness statements are notoriously unreliable, and she's only a kid who's just discovered her uncle's decapitated corpse. It's understandable she might be a bit hysterical about it all.'

Eileen's dismay was emphatic, but she had to accept that Dana's account wasn't borne out by the CCTV evidence. While they all agreed it was a suspicious coincidence, Frank being outside the shop at that time, they had no proof he had gone into the shop, only the confused account of an unreliable girl. They focussed on Angela's murder, checking into Frank's background in even finer detail than before, and questioning everyone who knew him. It was a mammoth task. The results came back fairly uniform. Frank was a steady sort of a man who had never been known to react violently to provocation. His marriage to Moira was, as far as they could tell, stable.

‘I love my wife,' he told Ian, speaking with a quiet dignity that Ian found convincing. ‘She needs me now more than ever. Angela meant everything to her. It's not right to leave her on her own just now. Please, let me go home to my wife.'

Ian went home that evening, hungry and disgruntled, to find his own wife upstairs placing neatly folded clothes in a suitcase. More of her clothes were laid out on the bed, as though she had been choosing what to pack.

‘What's going on?'

She turned to him with a tentative smile. ‘I'm going away.'

‘Going away?'

‘Yes, I told you, I'm going to stay with my parents for the weekend.'

He didn't remember her saying anything about it but resisted saying so. She would accuse him of never listening to a word she said, and the conversation would threaten to end in a row.

‘That's nice.'

She turned back to her packing.

‘When are you off?'

‘Tomorrow. First thing. I've booked a taxi to the station…'

‘A taxi? Don't be silly. I'll drop you.'

‘It's OK.'

She sounded annoyed. He wondered if she had been expecting him to remonstrate or at least tell her he would miss her. Going to her parents for the weekend was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. They had talked about it several times, in general terms, and he had always supported the idea. They were her family, after all, and he knew she missed them.

‘I know how busy you are right now,' she added. ‘I just thought you'd be off really early or, if you weren't going out at the crack of dawn for once, then you'd want to lie in. You must be knackered.'

He sighed. She was right. He was worn out, and the end of the case was nowhere in sight.

‘Well, give your parents my best, won't you? When are you coming home?'

From behind, he saw her shrug her shoulders. ‘I thought I might as well stay a few days, while I'm there.'

‘Yes, I suppose so.'

There wasn't really anything more to say.

‘Are you going to stand there watching me pack? Why don't you put the telly on? As soon as I'm finished here I'll get the dinner started.'

He went downstairs, his thoughts already back on Frank, weighing up the possibility that he might be guilty. First thing in the morning a team would set to work, checking Frank's movements, and looking into whether he could have acquired an axe anywhere. A knife would have been impossible to trace, but this killer had inadvertently offered them a possible lead. Not many people carried axes. With any luck the unusual weapon would lead them to the killer.