Bye Bye Baby (20 page)

21

It was just before six by the time the Operation Danube team congregated in the operations room. Kate was starving and more than grateful to see the tower of bulging sandwiches DCI Hawksworth had ordered up from the nearby delicatessen.

‘Thank you for coming, Colin,’ Hawksworth said for everyone’s benefit. He’d held the full team back late so they could hear Moss’s tale. ‘But we can’t have you talking on an empty stomach.’ He gestured to the food. ‘Please, let’s have a working supper.’

Colin Moss had enjoyed his tour of New Scotland Yard but now wore a serious look that indicated he was ready to get down to business.

‘Before we hear Colin’s info,’ Jack went on, ‘you need to know that Kate and Sarah’s trip to Hurstpierpoint has delivered us a firm ID on William Fletcher — known as Billy. He’s this fellow in our photo, the good-looking guy, the stammerer that Clive Farrow referred to. According to Mrs Truro, Billy’s old schoolteacher, she seems to think this fourth boy is familiar but couldn’t give us a name. I don’t have to impress upon you how important it is that we find not
only Fletcher, but this fourth guy too. We have to assume both are now at risk.

‘Alright now, everyone, sitting next to Sarah we are very fortunate to have former police sergeant Colin Moss. He was with the Brighton Police before he retired and he’s joined us this afternoon to tell us about a cold case that Sarah’s instincts have led her to. If she looks a bit fidgety, it’s because she thinks we’re on to something that could break open our serial killer case.’

Everyone stared at Sarah and Jack winked at her. He was pleased her instinctive work had paid off, and was especially glad to see the two women seemed to have sorted themselves out.

Once again Moss told his story of Anne McEvoy. He was greeted by a heavy silence when he finished. DCI Hawksworth broke it.

‘A tragic tale and one, unfortunately, that fits all too neatly into the scenario we are working with. I agree with Kate that it is too much of a coincidence for us to ignore that Anne McEvoy may be taking her revenge. Kate, I think you should call Eva Truro again — all of the teachers for that senior school if you have to — and establish whether she recalls Anne McEvoy.’

Colin Moss interrupted. ‘Is this Russell Secondary? I can probably save you a call and some time.’

‘Yes, Farrow and Fletcher attended that school,’ Kate answered.

‘Well, it’s now known as Blatchington Mill, but Anne McEvoy definitely attended Russell Secondary. She left in October 1974 when she was nearly fifteen.’

Jack felt a tingle of excitement zip through him like an electrical current. His gut was sending a bright
message that this was it. They were definitely on the right trail.

‘Right, all the more reason to find Fletcher and the fourth person in our photo,’ he said. ‘Everyone is to turn their attention to this. We need to contact the doctor who examined Anne that night — do we have a name?’

Moss nodded, he didn’t have to consult the file. ‘His name is Dr David Whitworth. He was in his late twenties back then so he should still be knocking around. I am, after all.’ His quip won a flutter of polite laughs.

Both Cam and Bill had questions about the debris that had been found, which the former policeman was able to answer in detail because he’d personally visited the scene of the crime.

‘Definitely teenage debris. Chocolate bars — you know, Mars, Bounty, Galaxy, as well as Opal Fruits, pear drops, milk bottles, chewing gum — that sort of thing. As for the alcohol, it was vodka and beer, plus there were lots of 10-pack cartons of cigarettes. They did them in those days.’ He shrugged. ‘All the sort of stuff teenage lads would enjoy.’

Sarah was studying the file. ‘Colin, it said in the notes that there was also a tin of tobacco found.’

Moss sat forward to pick up another sandwich. ‘Yes, a bit baffling that. There were no cigarette papers found, just the tobacco. It could have been anyone’s, of course, but it was relatively full and fresh, suggesting it hadn’t been lying around for a while.’

‘Not the sort of thing teenagers would go for,’ Bill said.

Brodie shrugged. ‘Teenagers will try anything,’

‘Yes, but there wasn’t any associated litter there,’
Colin added, agreeing with the older detective. ‘If those boys were throwing around their sweet wrappers and beer bottles, then you can be sure we’d have found stubs of roll-your-own cigarettes, used papers and so on, but there was none of that. Just the tin. It always bothered me — still does.’

Jack finally aired what he’d been thinking the whole time Colin Moss had recounted the sorry story of Anne McEvoy. ‘If you work with the hypothesis that these boys and Anne were on the pier together, are you suggesting there could have been someone else, someone older, involved as well?’

A fresh silence descended. Moss and Hawksworth stared at one another. The older man confirmed Jack’s fears.

‘I’m guessing, of course, but yes, that’s been at the back of my mind for nearly three decades. I just needed someone else to think it, say it. No one at the time agreed with me.’

Hawksworth blew out his cheeks. ‘An adult. So what we’re saying now is that an older man may have been there, possibly orchestrating the attack.’

‘Perhaps even the original rape and, arguably, the early birth of a baby,’ Kate said, her tone vicious. ‘How cruel.’

Hawksworth lightly touched her sleeve. ‘Just a theory, Kate. It’s all we have at the moment.’ He noticed how she removed her arm as if burned, wondered at it briefly, but took up the thread again. ‘Colin, did you find out anything much beyond Anne’s schooldays . . . even after you’d lost track of her?’

‘No, I’m very sorry to say, but not for lack of effort. Anne disappeared as though she’d never existed, her
mother was dead, and there were no other relatives that we could find. She never contacted anyone from the bakery. I kept her file open for two years, hoping I’d get a lead from somewhere, but she’d covered her tracks well. I retired in ‘77.’

‘You did everything you could by the sounds of things,’ Jack said. ‘If these murders are Anne’s work then at least you get to close that file now, Colin.’

The older man nodded. ‘What a sad life she’s had.’

Jack looked at Sarah. ‘You go through that file and pick out anything that we can work with. Colin, are you comfortable about DS Jones staying in touch with you?’

‘Anything to save me from touring with my inlaws,’ he offered, smiling at Sarah.

‘Good,’ Jack said. ‘I also want you working on that blue paint, Sarah. Use the database — see if there have been any incidents with blue paint previously.’ Her expression said it was unlikely but he persisted. ‘There’s a clue in there somewhere, even if she didn’t mean for it to be important to us.’

‘Yes, sir. Can I just check something on that?’ Sarah pushed her glasses back up her nose. ‘Colin, I don’t suppose there was any blue paint found at the scene that isn’t mentioned here on the list?’

Moss frowned and shook his head.

‘I mean, I realise it was 1975, and I’m not having a go at the policework,’ Sarah went on, ‘I’m just wondering if you’re able to recall any cans of paint.’

‘Well, the pier was a sort of greeny blue, but I’d think it highly unlikely there were any cans of paint lying around.’

‘This is a very bright blue,’ Hawksworth said, pointing to the ghoulish photos behind them.

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Moss said. ‘Then, no, definitely not. I walked the whole concert hall, looking for something that would give me answers to Anne’s abduction and her disappearance. Definitely no cans of paint, and no splotches or signs of that colour anywhere. What does it mean?’

Jack looked to Sarah — it was her theory after all.

She shrugged. ‘Well, the closest we can get to something of a macabre nature is that clowns are deeply suspicious of the colour — afraid of it, in fact. It signifies bad luck, death on stage — meaning their act bombs — but I reckon it could be even more sinister than that, as in death itself. That’s why we’re hoping to make a link between that and the blue paint on our victims. The fact that it’s smeared on their faces is significant, especially that it was applied by their own fingers.’

‘Like clown make-up,’ Colin finished.

‘Exactly,’ Sarah said. ‘Although it’s still only a theory.’

‘I’ll think on it, something might surface.’ He looked around at the other members of the team. ‘So, let me get this clear: you are now working on the supposition that Anne McEvoy has re-emerged to stalk and kill two of the boys, now men, who raped her?’

Everyone bar Jack sat back and shared sheepish, awkward glances. There was a pause before the answer finally came. ‘Yes,’ Jack said.

‘And that she’s now likely hunting down the other two from this photo?’ Moss added, gesturing at the picture of the four grinning boys that was pinned to the board nearby.

‘Yes.’

‘And that it’s plausible she would hold this grudge thirty years on?’

Jack leaned forward, his fingers entwined on the table in front of him. ‘I’m going to leave that to the clinical psychologist we’re working with, but he thinks it’s plausible. And listening to your tale of what Anne McEvoy suffered, I’m of the belief that no woman forgives the slaughter of her child — if that’s what occurred. She’ll take that hate to the grave. And if these are the men that raped her and then attacked her again with the intention of killing the child they inflicted upon her, I don’t feel much pity for them.’

Jack felt the atmosphere thicken around him. He knew he shouldn’t have revealed his feelings quite so openly.

Moss stared at Hawksworth, betraying nothing of his own thoughts. ‘I heard you were one to move whole cases forward on gut instinct, DCI Hawksworth, but I’d caution that you may need some facts to back this one. Anne, if she’s alive, is forty-four.’

‘Have you checked into me?’ Jack said, his t one smooth.

‘Yes, I did. I don’t care to work with people I don’t know much about. You come with glowing praise.’

There was a pause before Jack gave a twitch of a smile. He didn’t care much for being investigated but he also knew he needed to show respect to this stillsharp former policeman. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us about Anne?’ he said.

Moss finished his coffee. ‘It was a long time ago and I probably spent little more than five minutes in her company. She’d been beaten up, she was frightened and angry, and silent. There’s very little else I can give
you on her, other than she had long dark hair and her eyes were an intense blue.’

‘She sounds striking,’ Jack said.

‘No, not at all,’ Moss countered. ‘Apart from her eyes, Anne had the plainest of features and, although the word probably isn’t politically correct enough for New Scotland Yard these days, the girl was fat. She wore heavy glasses with thick lenses as I recall — they found them broken in one of her pockets, along with a little change and a door key when she was first picked up. We’ve presumed she stole the money for a taxi from the hospital to her house, discovered her dead mother — a drug overdose — and then she was gone. Vanished.’

‘What happened to everything?’ Cam asked.

‘The house, you mean?’

Cam nodded.

‘You know, I don’t have the answer to that. The father — a local GP — and her younger brother were killed in an accident when Anne was very young. After her mother’s death, it all probably went to Anne.’

‘What a miserable life,’ Kate said.

Moss nodded. ‘It’s why I always felt so badly about this case. We didn’t do enough for Anne. She’d already had a sad life, and our ineptitude in looking after her made it worse — apparently turned her into a killer.’

Moss’s final words bit deep and Jack was reminded of his Super’s caution. He wondered if he should heed that warning now, stop himself taking too great a leap of faith.

He cleared his throat. ‘Cam, why don’t you look into the house and family belongings? See if you can find out more.’

‘Right, Hawk.’

‘Well,’ Jack said, leaning back, ‘this has been valuable. Thank you, Colin, for all the information and especially for your time and being kind enough to come down to London. I’ll organise for you to be driven back now, if that’s okay? Bill’s offered to take you as he’s got an early morning meeting with Sussex Police over at Lewes.’

Moss nodded. ‘Say hello to Lou Stanton from me,’ he said to Bill before returning his gaze to Jack. ‘It was my pleasure to help, DCI Hawskworth. If you find her, will you let me know?’

‘Of course,’ Jack said. ‘Although I have a feeling she’ll find us.’

‘If it is her,’ Moss cautioned again quietly.

He and Bill departed after a round of handshakes and further thanks to Kate and Sarah, leaving the others to stare at the debris of their supper.

‘I think it’s her, sir,’ Kate reassured.

‘We’ve only got two bodies, a theory and a cold case to go on,’ he replied.

Kate tried harder. ‘We have stains at the West Pier scene that the police file says were birthing fluids. We know Anne has very good reason for hating these men.’

Jack sighed.

‘Sir, there are too many coincidences,’ Sarah persisted. ‘Moss is being cautious because that’s probably how he is in life.’

‘And I’m not?’ Jack asked, no accusation in his tone.

‘I didn’t mean it like that, sir. I simply meant that

you’re prepared to go out on a limb, which may save someone’s life because you don’t wait for all the answers. You make the bigger leaps.’

Jack wondered which of his critics, or indeed his
supporters, Sarah had been listening to. ‘And if we’re way off track, I could be as good as killing someone right now.’ He rubbed his face to rid himself of doubts and then sat up straight, arching his back. ‘What time is it anyway?’

His watch told him it was nearing six-forty-five, and his instincts told him he should be worried about that for some reason.

‘Right, you’ve all put in a big day, so thanks, everyone. It will all still be waiting for you in the morning,’ he said.

‘Tomorrow’s Saturday, sir,’ Kate reminded.

A phone began ringing.

‘Saturday? Blimey, I’m losing it,’ Jack admitted and stood, stretching again as Kate reached for the phone. ‘Cam, you’re working tonight, right?’