Monument to Murder (26 page)

A
HAND TREMBLED
. Emily was half-dressed, standing in her living room, holding a copy of a photograph Walker had just discovered in Fearon’s cell. The SO had come straight there on his way off duty to hand it over personally. ‘It was hidden behind a picture on his wall.’ He could hardly look at her. ‘I’m sorry, Emily. It looks like you were right about him all along.’

Staring at the photocopy in disbelief, Emily’s heart was banging in her chest, her worst fears realized. She and Rachel were the subjects in the photograph, the image taken in their cottage garden just weeks before Robert’s death. Looking up, her eyes met Walker’s, an unspoken plea for answers. He stared back at her, a mixture of embarrassment and sympathy. She wanted to slap him hard for not offering her the level of protection she deserved within the prison environment.

His wing. His responsibility.

She held on to her anger.

‘What drove you to search his cell?’ she asked.

‘Does it matter?’

Of course it mattered.

Emily wanted to thank whoever it was. It was nice to know that someone was looking out for her. Walker’s body language was revealing. He looked out of the window, an avoidance tactic if ever she saw one. If it wasn’t his own idea, then whose? Had Stamp intervened on her behalf, called in a favour from night-shift security? He was big mates with the principal officer in that department. Or was it Jo? Few officers at the prison would turn her down.

‘Well, was it Martin or Jo?’

‘Neither.’ Walker didn’t offer an alternative.

Emily’s stomach lurched as she realized there could only be one other name in the hat. Guilt washed over her. She owed Bill Kent a big apology. She’d fingered him to the police and, in so doing, had probably kick-started a catastrophic chain of events that might cause him a lot of unnecessary grief. She’d have to undo that immediately, apologize to Kate Daniels for wasting her precious time.

Fair enough.

At least everyone would now understand that her fears were legitimate. Perhaps they would start to take her allegations seriously, stop treating her like a deluded attention-seeker with a tendency toward paranoia.

‘Was it Kent?’ She knew the answer before Walker had a chance to nod. ‘But how, Ash?’ She tapped the photo. ‘The original of this was in my desk, out of sight. Please tell me Fearon hasn’t been in my office unsupervised.’

‘He’s a wing cleaner, Em.’

Emily held her tongue, ran a hand through tangled bed hair, her lips pressed tightly shut to stop herself from breaking down. She looked at him accusingly. ‘Have you been listening to me at all? I thought that you of all people . . . How could you? Knowing how that creep feels about me! How could you let him in there?’

Walker wouldn’t meet her eyes. He knew he’d let her down and had no answer. Emily asked him to leave. She wanted him out of her house so she could ring Kate and explain how wrong she’d been and what had happened during the night. Shutting the front door, she listened as Ash drove away, then sank to the hall floor and wept. There was a bomb in her head and Fearon had just lit the fuse.

I
T WAS STILL
early – 6.30 a.m. – Kate Daniels’ thinking time before the squad got in. She’d arrived half an hour ago and was so intent on studying the murder wall, concentration etched on her face as she took in key facts that set her pulse racing, she never heard the door to the incident room open or the sound of footsteps approaching.

‘Penny for them?’ said a familiar voice behind her.

Jo was standing in the doorway with her coat on, briefcase in hand. Ordinarily, a wonderful sight first thing in the morning – or at any other time – but for once the DCI didn’t want to see her. It wasn’t that she resented the intrusion into her working day. It was because of what she’d scribbled on the murder wall a few moments ago, an aide-memoire as she tried to make sense of what she knew and decide where to go next, jottings she didn’t want Jo to see.

Too late.

Jo was already taking them in, making judgements on the mini diagram facing her. Next to her unidentified victim, Kate had placed a big question mark and written Sophie Kent’s name and the date she went missing. A dotted horizontal line led across the murder wall to a second, even bigger question mark, another name. Clear evidence of the SIO’s thought processes, a fairly convincing demonstration that, in theory at least, she strongly suspected she’d found her second victim and may even have identified a third.

Jo couldn’t draw her eyes away from that third name:
RACHEL MCCANN
.

A phone rang on someone’s desk.

Ignoring it, Kate continued to stare at the murder wall. She’d set Munro’s 1999 case aside, unable to establish a link. There was dressing up, but no pearls, nothing to suggest they were the work
of the same perpetrator. Not so for the three facing her. Assuming they were linked, she didn’t need crime-pattern analysis to determine the connections. The similarities screamed at her in thick red pen: Sophie Kent – aged ten – missing since 11 February 2001; Maxine O’Neil – aged fifteen – had suffered the same fate on 12 February 2006; Rachel McCann – aged twenty – missing since 14 February 2011.

As she reviewed the information, she drew up a mental list:

Mid-February abductions.

Five years apart.

Five years difference in age.

An anniversary of some sort?

What the hell is going on?

Jo’s eyes were empty of emotion. Without saying a word or getting upset, she took off her coat, threw it over the nearest chair and placed her briefcase on the floor. Then she walked toward the murder wall, picked up a whiteboard marker, adding seven words of her own:
Five years, victims’ ages, pearls, Bamburgh, Valentine?

‘You read my mind,’ Kate said. ‘I’m sorry you had to see that.’

‘Don’t worry. None of it will go any further. Not even to Emily . . .’ She hesitated, a tremor in her voice. ‘Especially not to Emily.’

‘Actually, it was Emily who tipped me off in the first place – without realizing the significance, obviously.’ Kate pointed at the murder wall. ‘I’ve been over and over this since I got in and I just can’t ignore the fact that these cases may be linked. I don’t know as yet where that leaves Rachel, but we’re definitely on to something.’

Jo’s voice was flat. ‘When will you tell her?’

‘Emily?’ Kate sighed. ‘When I have more than supposition to go on is the short answer. There were several suspects for Sophie Kent’s abduction. My priority now is to do a job on them, both here
and in Yorkshire.’ She turned her head away, an attempt to avoid eye contact. She didn’t feel able to heap even more bad news on Jo by telling her that her longstanding friend and current colleague, Martin Stamp, was among them.

When she turned back, Jo was putting her coat on. ‘If you need a hand—’

‘I’ll call you. It might be a while though. There are crosschecks and countless searches to be done. I need to establish where the suspects are now. If anyone who was interviewed then has walked across the same county at the same time, I want to know about it. If they’re already in the system, I’ll know I’m on the right track.’

Another nod from Jo. ‘And if you get any hits?’

‘I’ll TIE-action all of them.’

Jo understood the term –
Trace, Implicate or Eliminate.
‘You look worried.’

‘I am. I don’t want a Yorkshire Ripper scenario. Sutcliffe was interviewed several times about five-pound notes and size of feet and the police did fuck-all about it. I want these men questioned so I can work out what the tale is.’

‘Do yourself a favour. Take Rachel out of the equation, at least in your head. If you don’t, it’ll be too much of a distraction, preventing you from doing what you do best. Just find the bastard that took her. You’ve uncovered a huge link here: dates, prisons, girls buried here that went missing in Yorkshire. Now all you have to do is work out what it all means.’

D
ANIELS WAS UNAVAILABLE
on the incident room number, so Emily rang her mobile and left a text message she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t received:

Kate sighed.

She’d already had words with Jane Lowther and knew exactly what had taken place at the prison in the early hours. Emily wasn’t coping.
Hardly surprising
. She was living on a knife-edge, clearly not thinking straight. And she was wrong about Kent. Somewhere along the line he was involved in all this. Daniels was sure of it. She texted a reply, choosing her words carefully:

There was no way she could tell her of the covert operation being carried out. Not at this stage at any rate.

Maybe never.

O
N THE FLOOR
below, Sergeant Lowther welcomed Emily to the station and led her to the same interview room where she’d given a brief statement that her daughter had gone missing to a slip of a lad pretending to be a detective.

Was that only six days ago?

It seemed like for ever to Emily.

Lowther appeared professional and businesslike. She was around forty years old, six-two if she was an inch, with wavy blonde hair, worn short and brushed straight back, just touching her uniform shirt collar. She reminded Emily of South African actress, Charlize Theron. She had high cheekbones, a generous mouth and eyes that could kill at a hundred yards . . .

They were looking directly at Emily.

Before either of them had a chance to say anything, there was a gentle knock at the door. The young PC who’d seen Emily the first time she’d come into the station stuck his head in. He smiled at her, apologized for interrupting, and warned Lowther that psychiatrist Martin Stamp was insisting on joining them.

‘Apparently Mrs McCann is expecting him, Sarge.’

Emily was expecting no such thing but nodded her consent when Lowther looked at her pointedly. She figured that a little moral support wouldn’t go amiss right now. Still crushed by the find in Fearon’s cell, she wanted answers. With his complete disregard for authority, Stamp would help her get them should she meet resistance from the police a second time.

Lowther nodded at the PC.

The rookie disappeared, closing the door behind him.

Under the female sergeant’s steady gaze, Emily began to fidget, trying her best not to prejudge the outcome of Fearon’s police interview. But a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach increased in
intensity as the seconds ticked by. Desperate to hear what had gone on, she imagined him drooling over Lowther, eking out the time he was in her company, playing his games. Enjoying another ludicrous fantasy, acting the innocent all the while.

Sick fuck.

The door opened and Stamp was shown into the room.

Leaning across the table, he shook hands with Lowther and introduced himself.
Charm personified.
He was good at that. Except, on this occasion, the woman on the receiving end wasn’t having any. He sat down next to Emily. Taking her hand, he squeezed it gently, giving her a little smile of encouragement as he apologized for keeping her waiting. So convincing was he, Emily began to wonder whether she had asked him along after all.

‘I won’t beat about the bush.’ Lowther’s eyes were on Emily. ‘I’m afraid I have nothing positive to tell you. Walter Fearon no replied his way through most of his interview. I wish I had better news, but I don’t believe in giving people false hope. As it stands, there is no evidence to link him with Rachel’s alleged abduction.’

‘
Alleged?
’ Stamp scoffed. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’

Lowther glared at him.

‘Surely the photograph proves—’

‘It proves nothing,’ Lowther said. ‘Unless his prints are on it.’

‘They’re not?’ Emily’s voice was barely audible. She’d been in her job long enough to know what was coming. ‘He swears it was planted in his cell, right? Well, he would do, wouldn’t he? An offender’s default position, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘She’s right,’ Stamp switched his focus to Lowther. ‘Like claiming they slipped in the showers when they get beaten up. You’re not buying his crap, surely?’

Lowther’s eyes held a warning. ‘Let me be quite clear on this.
The photograph was not wiped clean. There are prints on it, but none that belong to the offender in question. In the absence of evidence, my hands are tied. I’m afraid I cannot authorize his further detention.’ Pausing for breath, she opened the manila folder she was holding. Then she levelled her eyes at the psychiatrist, watching his reaction as she carried on talking. ‘He claims any number of people had access to his cell in recent days, yourself included, Mr Stamp.’

‘That’s—’

‘I’m not finished,’ Lowther cut him off. ‘Fearon gave me a long list of visitors to his cell, an even longer list of those with access. Including Officer Kent, who I gather has a serious, well-documented and long-standing attitude problem, and Senior Officer Walker, who ordered the search without reference to the duty security SO. Strange behaviour in the middle of the night, wouldn’t you both agree? And you, Mrs McCann – you have keys, do you not?’

Neither Stamp nor Emily had an answer to that.

Lowther was on a roll. ‘There are others: his personal officer for one; the discharge officer; Principal Officer Harrison; even the prison chaplain. You see my problem here? You’ve got to admit he has a point.’

‘He wouldn’t know the truth if it ran up and bit him,’ Stamp said.

Emily looked at the floor.

Lowther was right. Cell doors were often left open. In the days leading up to release, it wasn’t unusual for a range of professionals to sign off on an inmate with a one-to-one pep talk. Hell, she’d done it herself often enough. No. Without his prints on the photograph, there was no way they would make the theft stick.

Her disappointment was not lost on Lowther. ‘I’m so sorry. Whether Fearon is involved indirectly in your daughter’s disappearance,
I’m afraid I cannot say. But DCI Daniels has asked me to assure you that she is looking into the other matter you mentioned.’

Stamp glanced at Emily, his expression a mixture of surprise and bafflement.

‘Other matter?’ he said.