A Killing Moon (5 page)

Six

21 April

Brook arrived at St Mary’s Wharf later than usual, having slept until nearly five that morning. Even so, he felt tired when he set off, and, assuming lack of food to be the culprit, stopped at the corner shop in Hartington just opening its doors. He bought packs of uncooked bacon as well as other staples like bread, butter and milk, returning briefly to the cottage to dump his supplies in the kitchen.

Once at St Mary’s, he walked briskly through the smoked glass doors, carrying his flask and a bacon sandwich from a local chuck wagon. His old sparring partner, Sergeant Harry Hendrickson, was on reception. Brook looked away, though without the trepidation of old. Their animosity had cooled recently and Brook no longer had to run the gauntlet of Hendrickson’s jibes about the nervous breakdown he’d suffered while serving in the Met. Now neither of them even acknowledged the other’s existence, and that was exactly how Brook liked it.

Trudging towards the stairs, he was surprised to see Chief Superintendent Charlton walking smartly in his direction in his crisp uniform.

‘There you are, Brook.’

‘No denying it, sir,’ answered Brook.

‘How was your holiday? Go anywhere nice?’ said Charlton with scant interest.

‘I live somewhere nice,’ replied Brook. ‘Why would I go anywhere?’ He sifted through the reasons for Charlton’s presence at such an early hour. It couldn’t be a gathering of the station’s prayer group, dubbed the SPG after the now-disbanded Met unit of trained thugs who’d attracted so many negative headlines in the
1980
s. No, the SPG gathered every other Friday, and when a meeting loomed, Brook had a rolling list of excuses to avoid Charlton’s persistent invitations to bend the knee before ‘the Great Chief Constable in the sky’.

‘I’ve just been to your office, Brook. Guess what I found.’

Brook considered the short figure of Mark Charlton glaring at him with all the authority he could summon from his minimum regulation height. ‘Desks and chairs, sir?’

‘Don’t get cute, Brook,’ said Charlton. ‘I’m referring to the file on Caitlin Kinnear. It was on your desk. You’re not actively pursuing that, are you? It’s a month old and she’s out-of-area. Pass it on to the MPB.’

‘Done that, sir,’ replied Brook. ‘But we retain a copy for when we get an opportunity to revisit.’ He paused. ‘Cold-case work being a speciality of mine.’

‘So then you’re free to head up a new initiative I’m putting together on scrap metal theft. After the success of Operation Calanthia—’

‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ replied Brook without missing a beat. ‘DS Noble and I have had an urgent request from Interpol.’

‘Interpol? Why haven’t I heard about it?’

‘We’ve only just picked it up,’ replied Brook.

Charlton raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘What do they want?’

‘They have an enquiry about a series of missing women who visited the area recently and they’d like us to check it out. That’s why I was brushing up on the Caitlin Kinnear file, in case there were similarities . . .’

‘What missing women?’ demanded Charlton. ‘Recent?’

‘I don’t have the dates to hand, but the missing girls were from as far afield as Italy, Ireland and Poland.’

‘Tourists? Economic migrants?’

‘A mixture,’ bluffed Brook, not wanting to lie.

‘You’re not serious,’ said Charlton. ‘EU citizens come and go as they please these days, Brook. And Interpol have always got some vague fishing line dangled in our waters about this and that missing person. Nothing ever comes of it.’

‘Agreed,’ said Brook, beaming his admiration for Charlton’s grasp of the essentials. ‘But one of the girls was also a student at Derby University.’

‘And you think she might tie in with the Kinnear girl?’

‘Unknown, sir,’ said Brook gravely. ‘But I told Interpol we’d look into it for them, and they were very glad of our help.’

‘Were they indeed?’ Charlton’s tone was wary. ‘And I suppose you’re going to need DS Noble to keep you company.’

‘If it’s not a problem.’

‘You must think I’m a complete idiot, Brook.’

Brook paused to control the lure of an honest answer. ‘Sir?’

‘I see what you’re doing.’ Charlton eyed him, a sly smile breaking out. ‘I should be annoyed. But then you did build up a large reservoir of goodwill with me on the Wheeler case.’

‘Nice to know, sir,’ smiled Brook. ‘Shame about the new initiative – sounds interesting. And if I had DI Ford’s local connections, I’d jump at it.’

‘Ford?’

‘But if you think I can help . . .’

‘All right, don’t overdo the smarm,’ said Charlton. ‘Follow up with Interpol if you think it has merit, but I want to be kept in the loop.’

‘Of course.’

‘And be aware you’re cashing in that goodwill chip now. If a proper case rears its head, you’re on it. Understood?’

Brook smiled his acceptance.

Charlton made to turn away before swivelling on his highly polished Doctor Martens. ‘By the way, I had Donald Davison on the phone yesterday evening, chewing my ear off about how you treated his boy, young Roland, ex-boyfriend of the Kinnear girl. You do know Councillor Davison’s the boy’s father?’

‘That’s the only reason I didn’t waterboard him, sir.’

‘Be serious, Brook. Davison is on the PLC and we do not want him rubbed up the wrong way. He says you threatened his boy.’

‘He’s right,’ agreed Brook. ‘The odious little runt obstructed my enquiries and I threatened to charge him accordingly. Worked wonders.’

‘I dare say,’ said Charlton. ‘And I know from my time as a school governor that the parents of the worst-behaved brats always squeal the loudest, but . . .’ he paused to emphasise his point, ‘go easy.’

‘My new motto, sir,’ smiled Brook, continuing on his way. Through the double doors and up the stairs, he turned a corner and walked into DI Ford coming the other way, unlit cigarette in hand.

The grey-haired Ford shot Brook a baleful glance before fixing his gaze beyond the younger man, with whom he’d nearly come to blows a few months before.

‘Morning, Frank,’ chirped Brook. Ford ignored him, skipping quickly down the stairs. ‘The Chief Super was looking for you,’ Brook shouted after him.

Almost out of sight, Ford came to a halt, declining to face Brook. ‘Why?’

‘Something about your pension. Not bad news, I hope.’

Ford scuttled away to find Charlton, not deigning to express gratitude, and Brook smiled at a bullet dodged.

Brook took a bite of his first hot food in forty-eight hours, then opened the file on Caitlin Kinnear. He flicked through the material for the umpteenth time, beginning with the records for Caitlin’s mobile phone. Not uncommonly, Caitlin and Laurie, who shared a tiny bungalow on Amber Road near the university, had not bothered to install a landline, relying exclusively on their expensive mobiles for all communications. No calls had been made, no texts or emails sent since Caitlin’s final message to Laurie Teague on the night she vanished.
Never better
.

Brook devoured the bacon sandwich, wiped his hands, then skimmed back through the previous month. All calls and texts to Caitlin’s mobile had been identified, with the majority of communications coming from best friend and housemate Laurie. Of the others, a large rump had been from Roland Davison’s mobile phone and a few from a landline in Normanton, which Noble had identified as the home of Councillor Davison. Those calls had presumably been made at times when Roland was at his father’s house.

The calls and texts from her ex-boyfriend ceased twelve days before Caitlin’s disappearance, at around the time both Laurie and Roland had identified as the break-up of his and Caitlin’s . . . what? Relationship seemed too strong a word for the casual way young men and women interacted these days.

Brook set aside his ignorance of modern mating rituals and circled a call from the councillor’s home two days before Caitlin’s termination and four days before her disappearance. Roland had denied contacting Caitlin after the break-up, so it seemed noteworthy.

Next he ploughed methodically through her outgoing calls, several of which had been placed to a number identified as the Rutherford Clinic, where she had undergone her termination. There was a sprinkling of other numbers, including a pizza delivery service, a nail bar and a hairdresser.

He tossed the phone records aside and picked up the report detailing the abrupt interruption of GPS tracking on Caitlin’s phone on the night of her disappearance. Again he put it aside, as it told him nothing he didn’t already know. On Friday
20
March, Caitlin had walked up Kedleston Road through heavy snow, past the university buildings, to her shared bungalow, where she picked up her rucksack. After that, her phone’s GPS had been disabled and subsequent movements were a mystery, though it was reasonable to assume that she had disappeared that same night.

He turned to the bank statements. Caitlin’s account had been in overdraft after paying her university fees and a security deposit on the bungalow in September of last year. Her student loan had put her back in the black, and for the next six months there had been a steady stream of cash withdrawals as well as regular payments for rent, utilities and her one credit card. The payment for her return train ticket to Liverpool had come out of her account six weeks before the Easter break. There had been no activity on her current account or credit card since her disappearance.

Brook pored over the limited entries on her credit card statement. Caitlin was remarkably prudent in her spending for one so young. Even with a full student grant, he himself could remember the pinch of tight finances at the end of every month, and his old Access credit card had often taken a hammering.

‘Her consumption is positively frugal – thirty pounds at the campus Waterstone’s and twenty pounds for takeaway pizza,’ he said, mulling aloud over the only purchases in the final month of her statement. Granted, the month had been cut short by her disappearance, and as Laurie Teague had attested, the pregnancy had persuaded Caitlin to eschew an active social life for a few weeks. He sat back to ponder. ‘Even so, there’s a dog not barking here.’

‘Who’s barking?’ Brook was startled out of his reverie. Noble spotted the file and raised an eyebrow. ‘Revisiting already?’

‘Well, I thought about what you said. About Caitlin and those missing girls.’

‘The Interpol girls?’ enquired Noble breezily.

‘Yes,’ replied Brook solemnly. ‘And although it’s a thankless task, I think you’re right – they deserve more than a passing glance.’ Noble said nothing. ‘And there is something odd about Caitlin vanishing
so
completely. No warning, no trace.’ Still Noble was mute and Brook began to falter. ‘The emotional trigger of the termination may have tipped over into depression.’ Noble raised an eyebrow and a mocking smile began to turn the corners of his mouth. ‘You know about the new initiative, don’t you?’

Noble’s grin erupted and he clapped his hands together. ‘Hot off the press. Pity we’re so snowed under that we can’t give it the attention it deserves.’

‘Isn’t it?’ replied Brook, a guilty smile deforming his face.

‘It gets better. Sergeant Hendrickson tells me DI Ford won first prize in the pointless inquiry raffle.’

‘A very able choice,’ responded Brook soberly.

‘Well he’s not taking it very well. He reckons you had something to do with it,’ said Noble. ‘Did you?’

‘I don’t have that kind of influence with Charlton, John.’

Noble eyed him with suspicion. ‘If you say so.’ He nodded at the papers in Brook’s hand. ‘Dog not barking?’

Brook threw Caitlin’s financials across. ‘I’ve not been at university for thirty years, so it didn’t really strike me at first.’

Noble began to thumb through the papers. ‘I’ve not been to university at all.’

‘Well don’t feel hard done by,’ said Brook. ‘I’ve got a long list of things I’d like to unlearn.’

‘So you could be thick like me, you mean?’

‘Exactly,’ said Brook, ignoring Noble’s jibe. ‘I was struck by Caitlin’s parsimony.’

‘And in English for dummies?’

‘She didn’t spend very much for an inexperienced girl, far from home, unused to managing a budget.’

Noble turned a page. ‘Actually, I did notice that. She’s got all the big stuff coming out of her current account – rent and bills – but apart from small cash withdrawals, there aren’t many . . .’ He clicked a finger for the right word, darting a glance at Brook for help.

‘Incidentals.’

Noble pointed an approving digit at Brook. ‘Not many of those for someone her age let loose on the world. Her credit card is clean, and after her loan went in, she was never close to an overdraft again.’

‘No,’ said Brook. ‘Could she have had another account we don’t know about?’

‘Possible. But why wouldn’t she keep the statements with her other financials?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe she had a part-time job,’ said Noble. ‘Cash in hand. Though Laurie said not.’ Brook grunted. ‘Problem?’

‘It worries me how much we rely on Laurie for what we know about Caitlin.’

‘You think there’s something she’s not telling us?’

‘She didn’t mention the pregnancy at first.’

‘An innocent mistake, surely.’

‘I’m not saying she’s a liar; just that there may be things about Caitlin that Laurie
doesn’t
know.’

‘They’re best friends.’

‘According to Laurie,’ said Brook. ‘But reading between the lines, I got the impression Caitlin kept her at arm’s length on some things.’

‘What things?’

‘I don’t know. What are young women usually secretive about?’

‘Boyfriends,’ suggested Noble.

Brook thought of Terri and her abusive stepfather. ‘Boyfriends,’ he repeated. ‘And what passes between them.’

‘That’s why we should descend on campus, talk to everyone Caitlin knew or had contact with,’ said Noble. ‘See if we can get a different spin on things.’

‘If we do, we’ll be working it without back-up.’

‘Would you rather be examining manhole covers at the scrapyard?’ argued Noble.