Watching the Ghosts (11 page)

‘Do you know why we're here, Mr Torridge?' he asked.

Torridge shook his head.

‘You're acquainted with a solicitor called Melanie Hawkes?'

‘She's been doing some work for me.'

‘When did you last see her?'

‘A couple of days ago.'

‘Where exactly?'

Emily saw his face redden. ‘Pickby. I was walking Jezebel in the park and I met her.'

‘Was that a coincidence?' said Joe. ‘Or did you follow her?'

For a few moments the man didn't answer. Then he bowed his head. ‘OK. I admit I saw her going into the park with her kid and I followed her. I hadn't been able to get an appointment that day and I wanted to know if she found anything out.'

‘Couldn't it have waited?'

Torridge shrugged his muscular shoulders. ‘I didn't think she was taking me seriously.'

‘You mean you'd had a disagreement?' Emily glanced at Joe.

‘I wouldn't describe it as a disagreement. I just thought she should be doing more, that's all.'

‘What did she say when you spoke to her in the park?'

‘She said she made some progress and she told me to come to the office to see her. I called the next day but she wasn't at work so I rang her house. She shouted at me down the phone.' He sounded quite indignant, hurt almost. ‘After that I kept trying the office but they told me she wasn't there.'

‘She's dead, Mr Torridge,' said Joe bluntly. ‘We believe she was murdered.'

Torridge raised his hands in a defensive gesture. ‘Now don't look at me. I never hurt her. Why should I? She was going to find out what I needed to know. She said she'd made a breakthrough.'

L
ydia looked through the peephole in the door but whoever was there had stepped to one side so they couldn't be seen. She stood there in the hallway, frozen to the spot, uncertain what to do.

Then she made a decision that she knew was probably foolish. She opened the door a crack, just to make sure that Beverley hadn't knocked for some reason then been summoned back by her mother. Poor Beverley was forever at the old woman's beck and call.

But her initial reservations were justified when the door swung open a little wider and suddenly a looming figure stepped forward. Alan Proud was smiling. A leering, triumphant smile.

‘Glad I've found you in.'

He was moving towards her now, stepping into her personal space. She backed away.

‘I thought we could go for a drink in town,' he said.

‘I can't tonight.' She felt curiously detached from the situation, wondering how long it would be before good manners gave way to a scream and a forceful push.

He edged towards her. ‘I never take no for an answer once I've made up my mind. You must be nervous . . . girl on her own after what's happened. He won't come back while I'm here, will he? If he thinks you've got a boyfriend around the place . . .'

‘No.' All manners were forgotten now and she was surprised that the word came out so forcefully when she was shaking with fear.

He raised his hands in a gesture of appeasement. ‘Very well. But you'll regret it.'

There was a hint of a threat in his voice but he turned and left. When she heard his front door open and close, she closed her eyes and uttered a silent prayer of thanks. It could have turned nasty. Maybe next time it would.

She stood there in the open doorway wondering whether to call at Beverley's to tell her what had happened. But she decided against it. Beverley had her own problems.

She retraced her steps and found her handbag in the living room. She still had Inspector Plantagenet's card. He'd told her to call him any time she was worried.

And she was worried now.

Once Torridge decided to talk it was difficult to stop him. And they now understood why Melanie Hawkes had given the man the brush off until she was ready to deal with him in her own time.

Torridge's desire to discover what had happened to his maternal aunt had certainly come to dominate his life. When Joe asked him what he did for a living he learned that he was self-employed, although what that employment involved remained a little vague. Perhaps deliberately so.

Torridge had been much keener to tell them why he'd engaged Melanie Hawkes' services and he'd told them the whole story in graphic detail. His mother's sister, Dorothy Watts, had had some sort of mental breakdown back in the late 1970s and had been admitted to Havenby Hall. She had remained there for about a year, rarely visited by her relatives who hadn't known how to deal with the situation, and she had died unexpectedly of a stroke. She had been forty-two years of age and, as far as everyone knew, in good physical health.

According to Torridge's elderly mother, his Aunty Dot, as he called her, had always been a nervy woman and her marriage hadn't helped the situation. Her husband had been a cold, uncaring man and the couple had been childless. Because of her bleak existence, Dot hadn't been a happy woman and her eventual fate had preyed on the mind of her surviving sister, Torridge's mother. Something had happened in Havenby Hall to cause Dorothy's premature death, Torridge said and, as his mother had become increasingly desperate to know the truth, his sister had suggested that he look into the matter. Since their mother was in her eighties, the matter was rather urgent. That was why he'd been putting pressure on Melanie Hawkes.

‘Did anybody benefit from your aunt's death?' Joe asked. Torridge hadn't mentioned money directly but the hints were there in the background.

‘Only her husband . . . my uncle Frank,' he said. ‘My mum never liked him. All charm when he wanted something but . . . My mum and Aunty Dot were left some money by their dad and Dot was left a considerable sum by her godfather too. I presume Uncle Frank got it all when she died. He'd been in financial difficulties so . . .'

‘Her death came at the right time.' Emily finished his sentence for him. ‘Where's your Uncle Frank now?'

Joe looked at her. It seemed that she was developing a fresh interest in the fate of Dorothy Watts. There was something about Torridge's story that had drawn them both in.

‘Robins Cemetery. He died five years back. Mrs Hawkes said she'd found Dot's will and all the related probate documents and she left over a hundred grand. It all went to Frank but what happened to it? That's what I want to know, 'cause when he died his estate was only ten grand and, as far as I can see, he didn't have anything to show for it.'

Joe sighed. ‘He could have blown it on travelling . . . or gambled it away. Money just slips through some people's fingers.' He spoke as though he knew what he was talking about. He had never been particularly good with money himself.

‘He never went on holiday and he never gambled. He were a miserable old bugger.'

‘Maybe he gave it away to charity.'

Emily's suggestion was met by a sceptical snort. ‘No way.'

‘People change, Mr Torridge.' Emily stood up. ‘You're sure you've no idea what Mrs Hawkes' important breakthrough might have been?'

‘Sorry. No idea.' He looked from Joe to Emily. ‘Look, I'm sorry she's dead but you've got to believe me, I had nothing to do with it.'

‘Why did you go to a solicitor in the first place? Wouldn't a private detective have been more useful?'

‘I knew she specialized in wills and inheritance. I thought she'd know if there was something dodgy about Aunty Dot's will and all that.'

As Torridge showed them out Joe felt inclined to believe his story. However, he had harassed the murdered woman, phoned her home and followed her to the park on the day her daughter disappeared so he couldn't be eliminated just yet.

They hardly exchanged a word as they drove back to the police station. When they were nearing their destination Joe's phone rang and after a brief conversation he turned to Emily who was concentrating on negotiating her way past a bright red tour bus.

‘The ransom money's been found,' he said. ‘Ten grand in a holdall stuffed through a gap in the wall of the Roman tower in the Museum Gardens. A council cleaner found it and handed it in. Refreshingly honest.'

‘Any CCTV in the area?'

‘Afraid not. The holdall's gone to the lab. Let's hope for some nice fingerprints,' said Joe.

But when they got back to the CID office the news wasn't good. The bag had been wiped of prints. And there was still no sign of Daisy Hawkes.

When Joe's phone rang again he answered it, hoping it was good news. And when he heard Lydia Brookes's voice he wasn't disappointed.

The post-mortem on Melanie Hawkes' body had been arranged for five o'clock, the earliest time Sally Sharpe could fit it in. Joe and Emily stood watching behind the glass screen in the sparkling new mortuary. Joe felt oddly detached from the proceedings. Perhaps it was the new arrangement, the screen and the microphones. In the old mortuary they'd had to stand at the side of the table close to the sounds and the smells. As far as he was concerned the new development was an improvement.

He'd watched while Sally conducted her detailed examination and he'd seen her open the dead woman's mouth and extract the mush of sodden flower heads carefully with tweezers and deposit them in a stainless steel dish.

‘So what's the verdict, Sally?' Emily asked as Sally's assistant was sewing up the Y-shaped incision on the dead woman's torso.

Sally looked across at them, her heart-shaped face solemn. ‘The PM's confirmed my initial findings. There's a head injury so I think she was rendered unconscious and strangled some time later. We'll be lucky to get her killer's DNA off her body because she was immersed in water but I'll send the flowers in her mouth off for analysis, just in case.'

‘Is there any indication that she put up a fight?' Joe asked.

‘There's no sign of her attacker's skin under her finger nails, if that's what you're thinking. I think she was taken by surprise. I don't suppose her clothes have turned up?'

Joe saw Emily shake her head.

‘Are you sure she hasn't been sexually assaulted?' he asked.

‘As sure as I can be,' said Sally, staring at the body. ‘But the bruising on her wrists and ankles does indicate that she was restrained.'

‘Just like Peter Brockmeister's victims,' Joe said softly. ‘He always said that he liked to exercise a different kind of power over his victims. That's what turned him on. Watching them tied up and helpless.'

‘And there's something else,' Sally said. ‘There are a number of small marks on her torso which look like cigarette burns. And there are cuts to her thighs and genital area. I think she was tortured.'

Emily gasped. ‘So you're saying she was knocked out, restrained and when she came round she was tortured before being strangled?'

‘That's the likely scenario,' said Sally. She wrinkled her nose. ‘Nasty.'

Joe looked at his watch. Sally's words had disturbed him but there was something he had to do. Besides, he was anxious to get away from that place of death. ‘Sorry, Emily, I've got to see someone.'

‘Who?' He knew Emily found it hard to suppress her inquisitive nature.

‘Lydia Brookes. She's . . .'

‘The Builder's latest victim. Is there something new?'

‘That neighbour of hers, Alan Proud – the one with the collection of Brockmeister letters – he's been round to her flat. And she's scared.'

‘Why?'

‘He said some things that made her suspicious and after that note The Builder left . . . Anyway, I said I'd pay her a visit.'

‘Just to make sure she's all right?' There was a wide grin on Emily's face. ‘The trouble with you, Joe Plantagenet, is that you're so predictable.'

Joe looked away. Perhaps Emily was right. He'd been without female company since Maddy left . . . and that was too long. Years ago he'd discovered that he wasn't cut out for the single, celibate life. Lydia Brookes was attractive. And she was single . . . and vulnerable. There was something about playing knight in shining armour to a frightened woman that appealed to him just at that moment.

‘How long will you be?' Emily asked.

‘An hour, maybe two.'

‘Make it one. And if Proud looks a likely candidate, bring him in.' She stared at the body on the table. ‘Melanie here . . . was it a random attack? Was the torture sheer sadism or was there a reason behind it? Was the killer trying to obtain information? And why the hell wasn't the money taken? You kill someone then you pass up the added bonus of ten grand in used notes. Weird.'

‘Perhaps the money was irrelevant to him,' said Joe. ‘He was only interested in the killing.'

‘Which makes him all the more dangerous.'

‘We need to know whether it's possible that Brockmeister survived,' said Joe. ‘I've requested the files on his death from Scarborough and I've asked our computer people to age his photograph so that we have an idea of what he might look like now.'

‘You think he's managed to fool everyone and started killing again after all these years?'

‘We've got to consider every possibility, haven't we?'

‘And we've also got to find that kid.' She paused. ‘Oh God, Joe, you don't think he's killed Daisy as well?'

Joe didn't answer. It wasn't something he wanted to think about.

After saying goodbye to Sally and Emily he left the mortuary and drove through the rush hour traffic to Boothgate House. There were parking spaces in front of the building and he swung the car between the wrought-iron gates that had replaced the massive ones that used to keep the former residents in. But now the new gates stood open and welcoming.

Lydia answered her buzzer almost immediately, as though she'd been standing in her hallway waiting, and the few words of greeting she spoke sounded rushed and anxious. The voice of a frightened woman.