Broken Dolls (A Jefferson Winter Thriller) (3 page)

There were dusty ornaments on every spare surface, faded floral cushions on the chairs and sofas, faded floral curtains at the windows. An ancient framed wedding photograph had pride of place on the mantelpiece, and there were family photos everywhere, lots of smiling kids and grandkids. The hairstyles and clothes dated the photographs, with the most recent being about four years old. That’s when Johnson’s wife must have passed away.

Johnson came back with two steaming mugs of coffee, handed me one, then settled down in the chair next to the fireplace. My coffee was strong and packed with caffeine. Just how I liked it.

‘Can you tell us how you found Patricia Maynard?’ Hatcher asked.

‘That was her name then,’ he said. ‘You know, I must have spoken to a dozen policemen since Monday night and no one bothered to tell me her name. Then again, I didn’t ask, so I guess it’s my fault as much as theirs. It doesn’t seem right, though. Not finding out what she was called.’

‘Mr Johnson,’ said Hatcher.

The old guy snapped back into the here and now with a visible start. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

Hatcher waved the apology away. ‘Can you tell us what happened?’

‘I was taking Barnaby out for his late-night walk. This would have been about ten. I take him out the same time every night. I actually take him out to the park two or three times a day. If I didn’t he’d wreck the house.’

‘This was to Verulamium Park, right?’

‘That’s right. Verulamium Park. You probably passed the entrance on the way here. Anyway I got to the end of the lake and that’s when I saw the woman. The reason I noticed her was because I thought she was about to go into the water.’ He stopped and drank some coffee. ‘Look, I don’t mean to be rude but I’ve already told the police all this. I don’t mind going over it all again, but I can’t help feeling I’m wasting your time.’

‘You’re not wasting our time.’ I glanced over at the Jack Russell. ‘I’d like to try something if you’re up for it. Do you think Barnaby would like to go for a walk?’

The dog’s ears pricked up when he heard the word ‘walk’. He jumped off his chair and started barking and twirling, pirouetting like a circus dog. Johnson laughed. ‘I think you can take that as a yes,’ he said.

3

It took us five minutes to walk to Verulamium Park, long enough to smoke a cigarette from tip to butt. Barnaby bounced all the way there, straining on his lead, half choking himself to death, and acting like this was the most exciting thing ever. Dark was descending fast and the streetlamps glowed a sickly sulphurous yellowy-orange in the heavy half-light. The snow wasn’t far off and the air had a choking damp feel. I pulled my jacket in tighter to ward off the chill but it didn’t help. The cold of a damp British winter day could penetrate an arctic suit.

‘Do you do the same walk every time?’ I asked Graham Johnson.

The old guy shook his head. ‘We’ve got a number of routes we take. It depends on the weather, how much time we’ve got, that sort of thing. It’s a big park.’

It was a big park. Off to the right, acres of grassland stretched as far as I could see, empty soccer fields marked out white on grey. The cathedral was off to the left, perched imposingly on a distant hill. Up ahead was a small lake that was separated from the main lake by a humpback bridge. Ducks and swans bobbed on the water, oblivious to the cold.

It was also dark and deserted, making it the perfect place for the unsub to dump Patricia Maynard.

‘The night you found Patricia Maynard, which way did you go?’

Johnson pointed towards the cathedral side of the main lake. ‘We did a quick anticlockwise walk around the lake.’

‘And where did you see Patricia Maynard?’

The old guy pointed to the far end of the lake.

‘Okay, let’s go.’

It took another five minutes to walk there. I got Johnson to sit down on an empty bench, then sat beside him. Barnaby was straining on the end of his lead, yapping and scratching at the concrete, desperate to get free so he could catch a duck. I glanced up at Hatcher, who quickly got the message. For this to work, the fewer distractions Johnson had the better. Hatcher took hold of Barnaby’s lead and walked out of earshot.

A cognitive interview differs from a standard interview in that you’re trying to get the subject to revisit the scene by reliving the feelings and impressions that were imprinted at the time. Rather than hitting the event head-on, you circle around it, looking at it through the different senses. The memories this evokes have been found to be much more reliable than those retrieved through the usual interview techniques. Strictly speaking, I didn’t need to bring Johnson back here, but since we were just around the corner I didn’t see the harm.

‘I want you to close your eyes, Mr Johnson, and then I’m going to ask you some questions. Try not to censor your answers. I don’t care how crazy they might seem, just say whatever comes into your head.’

Johnson looked at me sceptically.

‘It’s okay. I’ve done this before.’

Johnson gave another sceptical look then shut his eyes.

‘I want you to think back to Monday night. You’re taking Barnaby out for a walk like usual. What time is it?’

‘Around ten. I always take him out around ten.’

‘Before or after?’

The old guy’s face creased with concentration, then relaxed. ‘It was after ten. I’d just finished watching a TV programme. The news was about to start.’

‘What’s the weather like?’

‘It’s raining.’

‘Describe the rain. Is it heavy? Light?’

‘It’s one of those misty, drizzly rains. You know the sort I mean. It doesn’t seem heavy but you end up soaked.’

‘Is the park busy?’

‘In that weather and at that time of night?’ Johnson shook his head. ‘No, it’s just me and Barnaby. And Patricia, of course.’

I ignored the mention of Patricia Maynard because I wasn’t ready to go there yet. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘A bit annoyed to tell the truth. I’d taken the car to the garage earlier and been hit with a six-hundred-pound bill. Now I was out walking my dog in the rain. I’d had better days, let’s put it that way.’

‘What can you smell?’

‘Damp dirt. Wood smoke coming from my clothes.’

‘What can you see?’

‘The cracks in the footpath. I’ve got my head down to stop the rain getting in my face.’

‘Are you walking quickly or slowly?’

‘Quickly. I just want to get home out of the rain.’

‘What’s Barnaby doing?’

A smile. ‘Pulling my arm off like usual. If he wasn’t on a lead he’d be in that lake in two seconds flat.’

‘How do you become aware of Patricia?’

‘Something catches my eye. A movement from the path at the far end of the lake that leads down from the Fighting Cocks.’

The old guy gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head and I glanced in the direction he’d indicated. Even in the late afternoon half-light the dark, narrow path didn’t look inviting.

‘How’s she moving?’

‘Unsteadily. She’s weaving like she’s drunk. My first thought was that she’d had one too many at the Fighting Cocks. I don’t want to stare, but you know how it is when you see an ambulance parked up at the side of the road. It’s impossible not to look over, right? Anyway, I watch her weave out of the trees, and it strikes me as odd that she’s on her own. There’s no sign of a boyfriend. No girlfriends, either. It’s dark and late. This is no place for a woman to be on her own. I watch more closely because she’s got me worried and that’s when I notice she’s headed straight for the lake. I run over and just manage to grab her arm in time and spin her away. If she’d gone into the lake at this time of year she would have ended up with hypothermia.’

The rest of the story had been in the police reports. Johnson had tried to talk to her and when she didn’t respond he’d taken her to the Fighting Cocks and got the bar owner to call the police. Graham Johnson was the first person I’d met in ages who didn’t own a cellphone, a relic from a long-gone era.

‘I want you to back up a couple of steps, Mr Johnson, think back to when you first become aware of Patricia. I don’t want you to say anything, I just want you to picture the scene in your mind. Picture it as clearly as you can, every single detail, no matter how small or insignificant. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you feel?’

I gave Johnson a few moments then told him to open his eyes. The old guy had a strange look on his face.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘You’re going to think I’m paranoid.’

‘Paranoid or crazy, I don’t care. I want to hear what you’ve got to say.’ I smiled reassuringly, waited for him to smile back. ‘So what happened? Were you abducted by aliens and transported up to the mother ship?’

Johnson’s smile didn’t last long. The old guy’s face turned serious, and a little fearful. He pointed to a shadowy clump of trees and bushes off to his right. When he spoke, it was with absolute certainty. There was no doubt he believed every word he was saying.

‘Someone was watching us from over there.’

4

tesla: u there

ladyjade: yeah ☺

tesla: busy

ladyjade: u have no idea

tesla: still on for tonite

ladyjade: yeah

tesla: cant w8 2 meet u

ladyjade: me 2

tesla: gotta go works crazy here 2

ladyjade: ok cu l8r x

tesla: x

Rachel Morris shut down the IM box and her smile turned to a frown. What was she playing at? She was thirty, so why the hell was she acting like a lovesick teenager? It was crazy. She glanced through the window of her cubicle, convinced every set of eyes would be aimed in her direction, but everyone had their heads down. Rachel could hear the bang and clatter of the call centre on the other side of the glass, the chirping of the telephones, the mumble of dozens of one-sided conversations.

She stared at the report on her screen and willed the words to make sense. It didn’t work. All she could think about was tonight. She’d told Jamie she was going out for a birthday drink with some of the girls after work. Not that he cared. She could have told him she was emigrating to Australia and she would have got the same uninterested, grunted non-response. It hadn’t always been like this. Back at the start, they used to talk through the night, sharing their dreams and secrets. But those days were long gone, eroded away by the daily grind of six and a half years of marriage.

Underneath her desk was her bag, and inside the bag was her expensive perfume, her best underwear and her favourite little red dress. The dress highlighted all the good bits, hid all the bad bits, and was sexy without being slutty. That last part was important. She didn’t think Tesla would appreciate slutty. There was something old-fashioned about him. He was a gentleman, in both senses of the word. It was his sensitivity that had attracted her in the first place, that probably more than anything else. It was nice to have someone who listened to her, someone who made her feel that what she said and thought actually mattered. Someone who appreciated her for who she was.

Rachel stared at the jumble of words on the screen and told herself there was still time to bail out. Then she thought about Jamie and all the hurt he’d caused her and she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She’d been chatting with Tesla for the last couple of months and the more she got to know him, the more she liked him. She hadn’t even met the guy, didn’t even know his real name, but there was no getting away from the fact that he understood her in ways she had never been understood by anyone. He got her.
Really
got her. Jamie had never understood her so completely, not even back in the good days.

She glanced at the clock on her screen, saw it was only three thirty. Four and a half hours until they met up. Four and a half hours that were going to drag like the last day of school.

5

I stood with Hatcher at the end of the lake and watched Barnaby drag Graham Johnson home. The snow had finally started, fat flakes that hung suspended in the lamplight, trapped in slow motion. This was just a taste of things to come. The weathermen had promised blizzards and the newsreaders had promised chaos, and I saw no reason to argue with them. Johnson was already halfway along the lake. The old guy obviously wanted to get home before the snow really got going. I didn’t blame him. Being stuck out here in a snowstorm was nobody’s idea of fun. I tapped out a cigarette, lit it with my battered brass Zippo, and ignored the waves of disapproval coming from Hatcher.

‘The unsub was here,’ I said.

‘That’s what Johnson said?’ replied Hatcher.

‘Not in so many words.’

‘So what did he say?’

‘What he said wasn’t important. What’s important is what he felt. And what he felt was that someone was watching.’ I nodded to a nearby clump of trees. ‘From over there to be exact.’

‘What he
felt
,’ echoed Hatcher. ‘Not sure that one’s going to stand up in court, Winter.’

‘And that’s the problem with being a cop these days. You spend too much time thinking like a lawyer and not enough time thinking like a detective.’

I headed over to the trees and peered into the gloom. Dark shadows moved with the swaying branches and the eerie whistle of the wind filled the air. Before Hatcher could lecture me on the dos and don’ts of contaminating crime scenes, I pushed through the undergrowth and the trees swallowed me up. Branches whipped against my face and flicked against my body. Mud splattered my boots and the bottoms of my jeans. Hatcher was a few steps behind, swearing and complaining and wanting to know what the hell I was doing.

I tuned him out and, for a while, just stood in that clump of trees, oblivious to the icy flakes of snow pricking my face. I knew with absolute certainty that the unsub had been here two nights ago. Hunting was in my blood.

When I was a kid my father used to take me on camping trips to the wide rolling forests of Oregon, the same forests he then took his victims to. He taught me how to shoot and how to track, taught me how to field-dress the animals we killed. Taught me that the strong endured while the weak perished, and that that was the way of the world. I lost count of the number of times I’d heard that one. It was a cynical piece of philosophy that made a hell of a lot more sense after the arrest.