A Wreath for my Sister (24 page)

‘I admit I was out that night, just driving, but I didn't see her. If I had I would have given her a lift certainly. It was a cold night.'

‘And yet again she was inadequately dressed.'

But Haworth was too sharp to fall into that trap. ‘As I didn't see her,' he said, ‘I really can't tell you what she was wearing.'

Joanna played her trump card then, turning to the solicitor. ‘Tell me,' she said. ‘Mr Haworth is Ryan's father. Presumably this could be proved by DNA testing?'

The solicitor nodded, flicking a glance at Haworth. ‘And if it was proved by DNA testing I assume he would have legal rights over the child in preference to anyone else?'

The solicitor nodded again.

‘I thought so.'

Haworth was blustering. ‘It's no motive for murder. Surely you wouldn't think I'd kill her to get at my son? I'd be in prison.'

‘If you were found out.'

It was past eleven by the time she arrived back at the cottage, but then she was lucky to get home at all. Neither Thorr nor Haworth would see their own beds that night. Even as she put her key in the door the telephone was ringing. Wearily she picked it up. It was Matthew and he sounded upset.

‘Please, Jo,' he said, ‘can I come round to the cottage tonight?'

He knocked on her door five minutes later.

‘I thought you were away for a few days, on your conference.' She studied his face. ‘Blackpool, wasn't it?'

He nodded, gave a feeble attempt at a grin. ‘Joanna,' he said.

She moved towards him, let her head drop against his shoulder.

‘Joanna,' he said again, brushing her hair with his lips. Then he lifted her chin upwards.

It was much more than a hungry kiss. As his arms tightened around her she could feel his heart beating, his chest movement with each breath, the heat from his body. But it was the violence of her own reaction that shocked her as she clung to him.

‘Joanna,' he was murmuring and she looked again at his face. His troubled eyes looked bark brown. And she knew that something was very wrong.

‘What is it, Matthew?' she demanded, pulling away from him.

He was still watching her with that hungry, desperate look, frowning and breathing hard as though he had been running.

‘Are you going to tell me or do I have to guess?'

He let her go and led her to the sofa, still gripping her hand.

‘I was fool enough to think I had everything worked out,' he said quietly. ‘I moved out of the farmhouse. I thought Jane would be able to sell it eventually.' He smiled. ‘I found myself somewhere to live. I took out a short lease on a flat. Plenty of time, I thought, for us to work out what we really wanted.'

He looked at her with anguish in his face. ‘Can you explain why,' he said, ‘if four out of ten marriages end in divorce why the hell
I
can't seem to manage it?'

‘Matthew,' she said, pulling her hand away, ‘are you going to explain what you're talking about?'

‘Eloise is in hospital,' he said. ‘The little tiger is starving herself until Daddy comes home.'

Joanna nodded.

‘The little tiger,' he said with a touch of pride, ‘is currently being drip-fed in the paediatric ward of the hospital. She insists she's on a hunger strike.'

Joanna felt hatred for the child searing through her, hot and furious. She stood up. ‘You've come to the wrong place for medical advice, Matthew.'

He stood too, taller than she, eyes blazing.

‘We're talking about my daughter here,' he said. ‘My daughter's life.'

Joanna was shaking with rage. ‘Then go home,' she said. ‘But don't involve me.' Her fury made her incautious. ‘And if you want to know how other people can manage to divorce, I'll tell you. Because you, Matthew, may be sexy and intelligent and, yes, very good looking. But you're weak. Your wife is icy, cruel, selfish and unstable. However, she has an iron will and she has no intention of letting you go – ever. And as for your daughter ...' She took two steps forward. ‘Eloise is a monster.'

For the rest of her life she would remember the shock on Matthew Levin's face.

With a shaking hand he put his glass down on the table and without looking at her he walked out.

She stood for a moment staring after him, then she opened a drawer in the table, found a cigarette. And for the first time in eight years she set a match to it.

She didn't sleep at all that night but lay anxiously tossing and turning.

For the first few hours all her turmoil was provoked by Matthew. She had always been so sure he loved her, right from their first, frenzied lovemaking. Even now she didn't doubt it, but she hadn't realized his love for Eloise was stronger. Stupidly she had concentrated on his wife while discounting his daughter, but it was the daughter who would prove the insurmountable obstacle, not Jane.

But if the first half of the night was occupied by visions of Matthew, during the second half he was replaced by Sharon Priest.

Images wandered in and out of her mind. It was only now that she was realizing what a complex character Sharon had been, bent on survival, on having a good time yet struggling with her three children, using anything to earn money, by cleaning and, now, surrogacy.

She had been both streetwise and naive, clever and yet stupid, used and yet manipulative. She had written the advert, that pathetic, silly attempt to find happiness, excitement, romance and sparkle. An attempt to realize illusions.

Prince Charming had answered.

Stuart.

The whole thing would have been funny – Stuart turning up as the man of her dreams, only for her to find she'd already had an affair with him. That image was replaced by the black high heels, glass slippers, Sharon, shivering at the pub, not wanting to wear a coat that clashed with her best dress. But unable to afford anything more suitable.

So she had shivered. Sharon must have been excited as she waited in the pub. And then who had turned up? Someone she must secretly have laughed about. The trousers left hanging out of the window seemed so ridiculous. Passers-by must have seen them and laughed. Finnigan had known how to parade his wife's infidelity. And any romantic illusions Sharon might have nursed must quickly have been dispelled by the trousers, waving half-mast.

After her initial fear of Finnigan had evaporated how she must have laughed at the memory of Stuart pedalling furiously away from the scene. Even Joanna could laugh at the thought of a naked man on a bicycle. Cyclists are sexy?

So when Stuart had turned up at the Quiet Woman that night Sharon must have been disappointed. Weeks of build-up for nothing.

Instead of the Don Juan, Don Quixote had turned up, yet, according to the barmaid, she had gone willingly.

Joanna shivered. It was in these dark, quiet moments that the brutality of rape and murder hit home. It had been an ugly way to die. Ugly and brutal.

Joanna got up then, with the feeling that these last few thoughts had contained the answer.

She would not sleep again until the killer was identified, so she threw on a towelling robe and padded downstairs to make coffee and switch on the central heating.

Reluctantly she pulled her little-used Peugeot 205 out of the garage and drove to the station.

The desk officer watched her walk in sympathetically.

‘No sleep, Inspector Piercy?'

Almost in a dream, she shook her head and asked him to give Korpanski an early call.

He arrived half an hour later, puffy-eyed and cross. To compensate for the unearthly hour she went to the coffee machine.

‘OK,' he yawned. ‘What is it?'

‘I think we can work it out,' she said.

He was still yawning and downing the coffee. ‘Come on, then, share the good news. And by the way, how are the prisoners this morning?'

‘About to go home.'

He sat up. ‘What? Both of them?'

She nodded.

He took a deep gulp of coffee. ‘Go on, I can tell you're dying to say something.'

Her hand was on the scattered letters. ‘We've never checked out Finnigan's alibi, have we?'

‘We didn't need to. She wouldn't have got in the car with him.'

‘She might have if she was cold.'

She waited for Mike to absorb this last sentence before ploughing on. ‘We're all agreed it was a vicious, brutal crime. And we know he is a brutal, vicious man with a hatred for women. We also know he is a rapist, although no charges have ever been brought.'

Mike looked troubled. ‘We don't know he's a murderer, Joanna.'

‘He's more likely than the other two we've had banged up overnight.'

‘What about the Macclesfield girl?'

‘He really did answer her advert,' she said. ‘But it was Stuart Thorr who answered Sharon's. The answer's here, Mike. The letters were written by two different people. Finnigan's are blunt, obvious, misspelt. Stuart's were – well, let's just say they were two opposite personalities. Stacey was murdered by the man she had gone out with that night, but Sharon's date turned out to be someone she found almost ridiculous – Thorr. Reluctantly she goes along with him, disappointed, but halfway to his house he makes a suggestion which she finds so crazy she actually gets out of the car and starts to walk back to Leek. But it's snowing and she's wearing the thinnest of dresses. So when Finnigan happens along, although she knows from experience that he's dangerous, she gets in the car with him. It's the last choice she is able to make and it's the wrong one. It was the very chance he'd hoped for, the one woman he hated most. He rapes and garrots her before dumping her body up on the moor.'

‘Proof?' Mike asked.

‘Eventually, a blood sample,' she said. ‘But before that we can look over his flat.'

Finnigan was lying on his back snoring when they broke down the door. Joanna took fiendish delight in shaking him awake and cautioning him while he complained he had a full bladder. She was only sorry the caution wasn't longer.

The SOCOs had a field day. Newspaper clippings, practically the entire personal column, some with rings around, some, ominously, with red ticks and underlinings ... But it was in the car that they found the more specific evidence, Sharon's hair, a few thin, red threads, some minute traces of blood. And neatly stacked in the boot under the spare wheel, almost like firewood, were pieces of broom handle, sawn into lengths roughly a foot long, together with some coils of cycle brake cable wire. Joanna counted them. There were eight. She had never felt more relieved to catch a killer and as she watched the police surgeon draw a syringe full of blood from Finnigan's arm she felt sudden elation. Not for the world would she do any other job.

Leaving Stuart to Mike's tender mercies, she derived some pleasure from being the one to release Haworth. Looking a bit more dishevelled than he had the night before, he needed a shave and his teeth cleaning. He slumped in the chair and scowled at her.

‘Good morning,' she said brightly. ‘I'm delighted to inform you that you're free to go.'

He stared at her, then rasped his hands over his chin. ‘You have a suspect?'

Joanna nodded. It was the first time it had hit her that there must have been a relationship between Sharon Priest and Haworth. Maybe he had even been fond of her.

‘Inspector,' he said. ‘I want you to know I am sorry about what happened to Sharon. But the fact remains that I am the little boy's father. I am prepared to take a blood test to prove the point and my wife and I want custody. And by the way, Inspector.' Some of the old haughtiness was creeping back into Haworth's voice. ‘Perhaps you'll tell Mrs Priest that there is a law against trying to obtain money by extortion.' The news didn't surprise her. Doreen had some of her daughter's talent for irregular ways of making money.

‘Do you want to press charges?'

‘I want her to leave me alone,' he said, ‘and stop spreading gossip.'

‘Will you tell him?' she asked curiously.

‘You mean about his parentage?' Haworth stared ahead. ‘To be honest, I don't know. We might say he was adopted and leave out the details, but it would mean moving away from this town. People here have very long memories.'

It was a phrase Colclough repeated when she was summoned to his office half an hour later.

He began with the case and a scrutiny of the prosecuting evidence, and she could tell from the happy wobble of his jowl that he was content. ‘Has he confessed to both murders?'

She shook her head. ‘He's confessed to nothing. Not Stacey Farmer, not Sharon Priest and not Deborah Pelham either.'

‘You're still convinced she's one of his victims?'

‘I'm not
sure
, sir.'

He nodded. Then his face changed as he moved on to her personal life.

‘I've mentioned this before, Piercy,' he said. ‘Keep your nose clean. However, in this particular instance I can't see you're to blame. I have been in contact with Mrs Levin and pointed out the areas of the law which she could be contravening.'

He looked up. ‘That's all, Piercy, for now.'

She left feeling furious with him for the paternalistic, interfering attitude and yet, like a domineering, bossy father, maybe, just maybe, he had her best interests at heart.

It was the next day and Joanna was sitting in the office, working with Mike, when the door opened. She looked up. A thin young woman, dressed in faded jeans, was staring at her.

For a few seconds the room was silent.

Even Mike said nothing. It was as though all three were dumb. And Joanna did not want to be the one to break the silence.

Finally the girl spoke in a cracked, hard voice. ‘Which one of you's Piercy?' she asked.

Joanna blinked. ‘Me,' she said quietly and the girl sank down on to one of the chairs.