STORM LOG-0505: A Gripping, Supernatural Crime Thriller (The First Detective Deans Novel) (10 page)

Mansfield was apparently out for the morning, so Deans was using his desk. From his limited contact with the bloke, Deans imagined Mansfield was out on some social, domestic chore or off shopping on job time.

The phone next to him erupted with a loud electronic chime. There was no one else around so he answered.

‘DC Mansfield’s phone. How can I help please?’

It was the front office and there was a visitor – for Deans.

He was surprised to see Denise Moon waiting for him. He offered a wave but she did not reciprocate. She looked tense. He found a vacant interview room, motioned her inside, but before he had the chance to close the door Denise asked, ‘How much do you know about Amy so far, Detective?’

‘Please, take a seat,’ he said, and watched attentively as she took her position opposite without breaking eye contact.

He smiled and took his own seat. ‘It’s still early days, Miss Moon.’

‘Amy is deceased, Detective,’ she announced with stout conviction.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘To be exact, she has been murdered.’

Deans placed his pen slowly on the desk, folded his arms, took a moment, and studied her face. She seemed different to the first time they had met – starchy.

After a moment more, he opened his daybook to a fresh page, and gave Denise a tilted stare. ‘Go on.’

‘When you left me, I did some work around Amy,’ she said.

Deans narrowed his eyes, said nothing and nodded for her to continue.

‘I made contact with Amy.’

‘Contact?’

‘I asked the guardians to guide me to Amy. To show me she was safe.’ She paused and looked away. ‘Regrettably, I made contact with her.’

‘Guardians?’

She stared forcefully at Deans. ‘Amy is dead, Detective.’

‘Okay,’ Deans said, trying hard to suppress his frustration. ‘Are you saying she’s in the afterlife and you had some kind of chat with her?’

‘No. She is not in the afterlife. She is trapped between this life and the next life. And she needs your help.’

Deans smiled politely, shook his head and shrugged.

‘Believe her and believe me,’ Denise said. ‘Use me like a transmitter to communicate with her.’

‘Okay,’ Deans said holding a hand up. ‘Miss Moon, I thank you for coming in today, but I’m sure you can appreciate that I’m a busy man right now. I am not sure how I can help, given the information you have provided. Unless you know where she is, how she died or even who killed her, I can’t see what else we can do here today.’

Denise frowned and slowly nodded her head as if it was on a stiff spring. It was obvious she believed this stuff.

Deans looked at the wall clock and then back at Denise. Her glare was penetrating. He wearily ran his fingers down his cheeks and brought his hands together at the tip of his nose as if in prayer. ‘All right,’ he said from behind his cupped hands. ‘What did she say?’

Denise delayed her response. It was obvious she was sussing him out equally as much.

Eventually, she spoke. ‘It was confused.’

Deans felt like a judge on a TV talent show with a large red plunger beneath his palms, waiting for his moment to end the suffering.

‘She’s been betrayed,’ Denise said.

Deans nodded; gestured with his hand for her to continue.

‘She accepted a lift.’

Deans lifted his head.
She accepted a lift
. ‘Go on.’

Denise shook her head. ‘There was confusion. My contact was for some reason… limited. I can’t explain how or why.’

‘Tell me more about the lift.’

‘That’s all I know right now. It was vague… but I do know she got into a car.’

‘Describe the car,’ Deans said impatiently.

‘I can’t. My connection to Amy faded. I need more time with her.’

‘Where are you saying Amy is?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t make out specific detail. She was… she was in darkness.’

Deans sat motionless.
Is this for real?
he thought. A part of him hoped that it was; that Denise could in some way make contact with the afterlife, or whatever life she was claiming that Amy was occupying right then.

‘I’m offering you my services, Detective. I don’t expect payment, however I do demand respect and trust in all I say.’

‘Miss Moon, I thank you for coming to see me. Please, you must appreciate this is a rather strange occurrence and one that I’m not overly comfortable with.’

She nodded.

He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Let me consider what you’ve told me. I still need to find Amy and I hope to God that you’re wrong.’

He held out his hand to shake and the conversation was over.

Back at his acquired desk, he continued checking through the taxi logs. Outside the window a bank of angry dark clouds were gathering ominously on the hills beyond the estuary. He tried his best to concentrate on the job in hand but became wildly distracted by his conversation with Denise Moon.

Ranford glided into the office clutching a brown A4 envelope and slid it across the table towards Deans, who stopped it before it fell off the edge of the table.

‘Your CCTV,’ Ranford said.

‘Excellent,’ Deans replied, more than surprised at the gesture. ‘Thank you.’

‘I saw your timeline,’ Ranford explained. ‘We don’t use them much here so I had a nosey at it and thought I’d help out a little. I took the dates and times and worked out the cameras from the locations you described.’

Deans removed the six CDs from the envelope.

‘Everything’s good to go,’ Ranford said cheerfully.

‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’ Deans racked his memory for the last time anyone back at his own station had willingly gone out of their way to such a degree, and he did not even know Ranford.

Deans checked the clock on the wall: 11:43 a.m. He still had not given any update to his wife but he was hoping to be heading back home that night. The taxi driver line of enquiry had so far gotten him nowhere, so he decided to break away from that and start on the CCTV.

Six cameras, one conveniently covering the quay where Amy lived, two incorporating the streets either side and overlapping the taxi rank in Torworthy, and one other comprising the pedestrian street where Jumping Joe’s was situated. Ranford had also collected two others including late-night fast food outlets. He had done a good job. It was close to perfect coverage from what Deans knew of the events of that night.

So what did he know? He looked at his timeline. Little point commencing at the start, best to work backwards.

Deans always worked CCTV in thirds of an hour. The perception of time through the eyes of a witness was often distorted, not only in the length of time an incident took, but also exactly what time it happened. Thinking about his conversation with Scott, he readied the computer and in his daybook wrote
Sunday 5
^th
Oct – CCTV Camera 2 (Taxi queue left)
. Beneath he started a log with
00:40 hours
.

The footage was delayed between frames, by only a second or two, but enough to make viewing problematic. He groaned and sucked in cold air behind his teeth. At this setting, it was challenging to distinguish whether someone was running or walking. What else might be missed?

After reviewing eighty minutes of footage in just about ninety minutes of real time, he had drawn a blank on camera two. He had done the same for camera three (taxi queue right) with the same result, and thanks to a canopy overhanging the front of Jumping Joe’s, seventy percent of the screen was obscured by overexposed glare.

It was now 2:52 p.m. by his watch. Scott Parsons still had not shown. He rapped the edge of the desk with his fingertips. If he left for home now he would avoid the worst of the rush hour and could make alternative arrangements with Parsons over the phone. Nevertheless, there was still one CCTV camera left to view, and that was at Amy’s home village, Hemingsford.

He huffed and tutted and again checked his watch. Deep down he knew he was better off completing all the viewing today. Another task to tick off the list.

Scott mentioned that he had met with Amy around eight p.m. at the bus stop in town, so she must have made her way to him, because he lived close-by and wouldn’t need a bus, unless he was travelling from elsewhere.

Deans set the viewing clock to 19:40 hours and jotted the time in his book with an underscore.

Already jaded by viewing the previous disks, his eyes were professionally reluctant. It was helpful that he had been to the location shown on the footage; at least it was somewhere he recognised. The camera faced across the road from the quayside towards the small row of businesses; including the quaint coffee shop he had visited when he first arrived.

Fifteen minutes went by without incident, and it was then that a briefest moment in time gripped him by the balls and wrenched his senses into action.

‘What the…’ he squealed, and in that instant, all his plans needed to change.

Thinking quickly, Deans established the immediate priorities, and soon he was speaking to DS Savage back in Bath.

‘Deano, enjoying our little jolly, are we? Make sure you come back when you’re good and ready,’ Savage jested, clearly in a playful mood.

‘Mick, listen,’ Deans said. ‘I need Carl Groves lifted for the kidnap of Amy Poole. And we need his car, pronto.’

‘Hold-up, Deano. Have you been doing some work while you’ve been away? You’d better tell me what’s going on.’

Deans explained the grounds for the arrest and Savage agreed.

‘Get your arse back up here, Deano, you’re in for a long night.’

That was something Deans did not need telling.

Ranford had come into the office while Deans was on the phone and was obviously interested in the conversation.

‘Progress?’ he asked.

Deans hastily updated him, gathered up his things and exchanged mobile numbers with Ranford. He made a quick phone call putting off Scott Parsons, and less than ten minutes after ending the call with Savage he was back on the North Devon link road and eating up the journey time.

As he pulled into the rear yard of his own station, the time was nearing seven thirty. He spent a silent moment and then dialled home.

‘Hi, love,’ Deans said. ‘I’m back in Bath again, but I’m going to be a bit tied up for a while at the office.’

‘Where’ve you been?’ Maria responded in a deadened tone.

‘Devon, but I’m back now.’

‘When are you coming home?’

‘Are you alright, love?’

Maria did not reply.

‘Look,’ Deans said checking his watch. ‘It was just a quick call to say I’m back and I’ll be home a little later, so don’t wait up, okay?’

There was a delay before Maria spoke again.

‘I’ve been to the hospital today.’

‘What?’ Deans fell still. ‘Why, love… Everything’s alright isn’t it?’

‘I had to go to the EPAC clinic,’ Maria said slowly.

‘What’s that?’

‘Early pregnancy assessment clinic.’

‘Why?’

Deans could hear Maria snivelling.

‘Maria, what is it? Please tell me.’ He could feel his chest pounding.

‘I’m spotting, Andy. We’re losing the baby.’

‘Are you sure? I mean… did they use those words?’

‘I didn’t stay around to speak to anyone.’

‘What, why the hell not?’

‘Don’t you criticise me,’ Maria snapped, her voice trembling. ‘You’re in no position to judge me. You couldn’t even be here to support me.’

‘It wasn’t a criticism, that’s not what I meant.’

‘It was horrible, Andy. I was herded into the waiting room with all the other mums. Had to sit there for ages, watching them being called …seeing their faces again as they left.’

‘I’m so sorry, love.’

‘I was the only one alone, Andy. The only one. The only one who didn’t have someone to talk to… someone I could hug.’

He bunched his eyes and dipped his head. ‘Maria, I—’ He knew the next words were empty; ‘I could have got away. Why didn’t you say something?’

‘Huh,’ she grunted. ‘You were in Devon, remember?’

Chin on chest, he bobbed his head. Culpability echoed through his muteness.

He blew a long breath. ‘So, what now? I mean, what can we do?’

‘They’re going to find me an appointment. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after.’

‘It could still be alright, Maria. We’re only a couple of months—’

‘Ten weeks, three days,’ she said mechanically.

Deans puffed out his cheeks. ‘Have you told your mum?’

‘Not yet, I mean, what can I say? Sorry, Mum, I’m losing your first grandchild.’

‘We don’t know that.’

Maria was silent.

‘Look,’ Deans said softly, ‘I’ll get away as soon as I can, but I know it’s not going to be for a few hours, at least. I’m sorry.’

Maria’s reply was slow in coming. ‘Yeah.’

‘Love you, babe.’

‘Yeah. I know.’ Her voice trailed away.

Deans ended the call and sat inactive for the next five minutes.

Mitchell had been tasked by Savage to work with Deans through the night and he was not looking happy about it.

‘Is Groves in the bin?’ Deans asked, not interested in his colleague’s discontent with the situation.

‘Damn right,’ Savage replied. ‘Bless him. He hasn’t stopped bawling since he arrived.’

‘What’s the state of play with forensics?’ Deans asked.

‘All taken care of,’ Savage reassured him. ‘Grab yourself a brew and let’s have an O-Group in ten. Okay?’

Deans had not come across O-Groups until he joined the CID, but they were invaluable forums for thrashing out ideas during complicated or serious cases. Rank and experience counted for nothing: any suggestion could be the golden solution.

Deans sprawled out in his chair. Ten minutes did not give much time to prepare, so he would have to wing it. Nobody knew as much about the job as him and most people thought he had been on a jolly for the last couple of days, so this would be a revelation for them, if nothing else.

They went through to the darkened conference room. There were five of them present: Deans, Mick, Harper, Mitchell and DC Bairstow from the day shift who had been late off from dealing with an earlier custody case.