Darkness Looking Back, The (11 page)

TALL AND FAIR, Stuart Fletcher was a good-looking guy, except for the pallor of his face as soon as he opened the door to a couple of badges. It was a bit like watching a cartoon character stick a finger in a power socket — you could see the skull underneath.

'Hello. Mr Fletcher, is it?' asked Rees.

'Yes.'

'Do you know why we're here?'

'I can only guess it's about Charlotte. Ha. Good old colleagues — never forget a name, do they?'

Fletcher sounded bitter. It had been the same woman, Charlotte's best friend, who'd dished them the dirt on him. Judging by her choice of friends, and the airiness with which the information was given, Rees suspected
she
was very probably carrying on a few flings of her own.

'Well, I'm Detective Rees, and this is Detective Constable Stirling. Could we come in?'

Fletcher shrugged, though he plainly wasn't too happy about it. Few people ever were. 'Sure.'

Stirling followed Rees into the small living room. For someone who'd apparently been a hotshot in banking, Fletcher wasn't doing too well now. The carpet looked like it was from the original house, and the house was early seventies. The man also had about as much furniture as Paxton, and Paxton spent most of his time at Lena's. No one would want to spend long in a room like this.

There was one two-seater sofa, and that was it. Rees waved at Fletcher to sit, and the two detectives remained standing, making him even more ill at ease. Stirling let Rees go — he very seldom got the chance to see the detective interview someone. From Rees's air, he might have been at a tea party.

'So. I understand you had a bit of a falling-out with Charlotte a wee while ago.'

'She dumped me, and told me she'd never even loved me at all. Needless to say, I didn't take it particularly well.'

'Especially when your own wife found out.'

Fletcher's head dropped. 'That was the biggest mistake I ever made. The romance had gone out of things by then, but I never even tried to put it back. I just let myself get dazzled by some bitch in a skirt and thought I was in love. Poor Jane.'

'As I understood it, you sent threatening mail to your wife.'

'Yes. Look, do I have to go over this all again? Your colleague got it all out of me yesterday.'

From Rees there was nothing but silence. Fletcher glanced at Stirling, but there was no help there. He shut his eyes.

'Yes, I did threaten to kill her, and Charlotte. I did one hell of a lot of stupid things. I was drunk about twenty-three and a half hours out of every twenty-four. If I was half sober when I woke up, I hadn't drunk enough. But my wife decided not to press charges, and eventually I sobered up enough to head to Australia. Mistake number two . . .'

'In what way?' asked Stirling.

Fletcher made a sound that could have been a laugh or a snort. 'I thought that if I went to a new country, where no one knew my mistakes, I'd be better off. New country, new life. But your problems don't just wave goodbye from the airport.'

'Took a bit more baggage with you than you were expecting, did you?' asked Rees.

Fletcher gave him a slightly startled look, then nodded. 'Wound up dead drunk on Manly Beach, with the tide coming in over my head. A couple of nightclubbers found me, almost as drunk as I was. They were coming down to paddle, in the middle of winter.' He shook his head.

'What happened after that, Mr Fletcher? Did you decide to come home and confront Mrs Hiscocks?'

'No.'

'Not even to see her again?' asked Stirling. 'You were following her around quite a bit before you left.'

'I'm the world's fool, I can see that now, but I wouldn't kill anyone!'

Rees leaned forward, looking straight into his face. 'Then why are three women who ate at Parsifale dead?'

Fletcher looked startled. 'What? You mean that café in Grey Lynn?'

'You took Charlotte there, didn't you?'

'Yeah, it was one of her favourites.'

'Did you ever see Alicia Schofield there?'

'You mean that DJ who went missing? I didn't know what she looked like before I saw her on the news. I don't even listen to the radio.'

'So you didn't recognise her at all? You've never spoken to her?'

Fletcher plainly wasn't sure. 'She did look kind of familiar . . . No. Probably not. I usually didn't speak to anyone but Charlotte or the staff.'

'What about the other woman? Helen McCowan? You must have seen her. Apparently she was quite a regular.'

Now Fletcher looked even less certain, less about his facts than whether or not he should tell them. 'Her I think I
do
know. She was kinda loud. An English woman, wasn't she? She quite often came in with an equally loud Scottish bloke. You could hear almost every word of the conversation.' His face got more hostile. 'But quite how that explains why I'd want to kill her is beyond me.'

'You can't explain where you were when these women were killed?'

Fletcher sighed. 'As I've told you people before, I was home. When I get home from work, the only company I have these days is a bottle of whatever's going cheap.'

'Where
are
you working these days, Mr Fletcher?'

'Kiwibank.'

'How long have you been at this address?'

'Just moved here a couple of days ago. I was at the motel the night Charlotte was killed.' He looked away from them. 'I found out two days later, when I saw it in the paper. I can tell you, I couldn't have killed that second woman either, because I wasn't even capable of walking for about another three days.'

'Celebrating?'

Fletcher's head hung low, and his voice was even lower. 'I'm still not sure of the answer to that.'

Rees gave it another three seconds before saying, 'Can you tell us where you were on the Tuesday?'

Fletcher paused just a little too long before answering. 'I really can't remember. I was definitely drinking in my motel room, that's for sure.'

'So no one would necessarily have seen you coming and going?'

Fletcher shrugged, not seeming to care, not even looking up.

'How's the reconciliation process going with your wife?' Stirling asked suddenly.

Fletcher looked up at him. 'She hates me.'

THE RECEPTIONIST'S EYES were glued to Gardner's badge as it flashed in front of her face.

'He's actually in the studio at the moment. I'm not sure I can get him.'

'Can you find out? I'm quite happy to wait.' Gardner loosely crossed his arms and gazed at the ceiling, like someone patiently waiting for the bus.

Unhappy, the young, dark-haired receptionist patched through to the studio. 'Oh hi, Danny. Can we get Curtis out of there for a second? There's a detective here to see him. Yeah. Yeah, I know . . . He says he'll wait as long as it takes. No . . . All right, then. Thanks.'

She punched a button and pulled off her headset. 'He'll be out in a couple of minutes. They're just finishing a call-in segment.'

Gardner nodded curtly. He'd noticed the patronising tone of that 'No . . .' Bloody media again. Thought they were kings of the earth. It obviously didn't matter if Curtis had murdered his colleague, as long as the show went on.

After quarter of an hour, Gardner had glanced at the clock three times, getting more impatient each time.

'How long do these segments usually last?' he asked.

The receptionist frowned. 'I'd have expected him to be out by now. Hang on, I'll try them again. He might have forgotten.' She spoke again to the man called Danny, and the frown lines became trenches in her forehead. 'Eh? How long ago?' She looked up at Gardner, deeply worried. 'Well, he definitely hasn't turned up here. Yeah, will do. Thanks.'

Before she'd disconnected, Gardner knew what he was going to hear.

'He left the studio more than ten minutes ago.'

'He say where he was going?'

'Here. He said he was coming here to meet you.'

'Mind if I take a look round?'

She nodded readily, all her unhelpfulness gone as if by magic. 'Sure.'

Immediately Gardner ran through the door leading towards the studio. Whatever security clearance he lacked would be made up for by the gold shield in his wallet. Down a long corridor, he followed his nose to a door with a red light on the outside. He didn't even pause to reflect on how much it reminded him of another profession he regularly dealt with. He gave the door a solid rap, and seconds later, someone had the door open a crack, hissing furiously at him to leave.

'We're live on air! Don't ever do that again.'

Gardner gave her a cold stare. 'Which way did Curtis go?'

'Eh? You're the cop?' The woman stepped outside the door and shut it, with a worried glance over her shoulder.

'Is there a back door to this place?'

'Yeah, at the end of the corridor. There's a fire escape, but the alarm doesn't work.'

Cursing slipshod security and members of the public in general, Gardner sprinted for the exit. He pushed it open, and was faced with a carpark with several cars in it. There was a black hole where one reserved space sat empty.

'Shit.'

'Was it important?'

Gardner whirled round to see the woman, her thin, pointed face mystified. 'Where's Danny?'

'I'm Danny. My name's Danielle. Look, I really don't know where Curtis has gone.'

'Right, I'll need his address, phone number, and anything else you can give me.'

She looked taken aback.

Gardner huffed impatiently. 'All I want is to ask him a few questions about his relationship with Alicia, and now he's belted off. It's a bit suspicious, isn't it?'

Danielle's face suddenly went a shade or two paler. 'You think he had something to do with it?'

'I was trying to rule that out. Someone from your office told us quite an interesting story.'

From the look on Danielle's face, she was remembering exactly which story he meant. Turning his shoulder, Gardner took his radio off his belt. He almost dropped it when a loud and totally unexpected ringing sound erupted. It was his cellphone, in his pocket.

'Shit, what now? . . . Ray Gardner.'

'Ray, it's Graeme.' Kirkpatrick sounded wired up.

Gardner didn't wait for an explanation. 'Curtis Webb has just done a runner from the radio station. I'm getting a squad after him.'

'Do it, then. But who knows, we might get forensics to nail him for us.'

'What?'

'We've got our body. Alicia's turned up.'

'
What
? Where?'

'Take a guess.'

'Oh Christ, what was it this time? A bunch of flowers and a card?'

'Not quite.'

THE PHOTOS STARED them all down — or rather, the corpse did. Her eyes were still open, and like the Mona Lisa's, they followed you all round the room.
Why haven't you put me to rest
? They all wanted this case solved, just so they could get
that
off their wall. No living flesh was that colour, and there were flecks of blood in the whites of her eyes. Most of them read horror, and pain, and fear, but it was just as easy to read anger, accusation and pleading.
Why am I dead instead of you? Or your family?

Stirling tore his eyes away as detectives filed out around him. It hadn't been the best start to the shift, for any of them. Alicia Schofield was still wearing the T-shirt she'd had on when she died, albeit with an extra hole in it. It was bright green, one of those pisstake knock-offs you could pick up at weekend markets. Just visible under the blood was a perfect rendering of the Esprit logo, except that someone had added a D.
DESPRIT
.

Should have said DECEASED
, thought Stirling, before he could stop himself. He felt a moment of horror at his own thoughts, then let it go. It was better to crack up this way than the other.

'How long was she at that depot? Three days? Just think, what if no one ever found you until you started to smell?' said Paynter, staring straight at the photo.

There was an obvious comeback but Stirling missed it.

Without his even realising it, Stirling's eyes had gone back to the grisly pictures. Like any pauper from the olden days, she'd been buried in a cardboard box, but above ground. 'He's not just creepy, this guy. He's clever. Sticking a dodgy address on a box and then leaving it round the back of some shops for the courier. What the hell kind of mind is that?'

They stood in front of Alicia's scene-of-crime photos as if admiring the genius of the art. No one noticed delivery people with boxes behind shopping malls. They were just part of the urban furniture. Someone had tried to trace the courier ticket on the outside back to a certain store, hoping the courier company would keep track of which serial numbers were sent where. No go. Courier companies weren't like banks, recording every sticky label as if it were paper money. Serial numbers were only tracked once they were on parcels, not before. Making matters even more difficult, although the box had been left outside a music store, the ticket number didn't ft in the same series as the ones in their storeroom. One unfortunate constable had been sent to ask round all the shops at the mall, just in case. Stirling thought he was wasting his time, and he wasn't alone. This guy had been smart so far — he'd even used a prepaid mobile to order those doughnuts for the crime squad. Untraceable. He would have taken great care to leave that box far away from anywhere connected with him. Rees glanced over at Stirling.

'All right, Andy?'

'Yeah. Just been a long week.'

'No rest for the wicked,' said Rees. 'Which means we don't get a holiday either. Shame Curtis Webb got away this morning.'

Stirling gave him a sharp look. 'You don't think it was Fletcher, do you?'

Rees shrugged. 'I've been wrong before.'

'But you don't think it was him.'

'I'd be highly surprised. He seemed more intent on ruining his own life.'

In answer to Paynter's look Stirling pretended to swig from a bottle. He agreed with Rees. Graeme Kirkpatrick had set an unmarked outside Curtis's house, for whenever he decided to come home. He couldn't hide out for ever. Everyone at CIB was hanging out for the news. Whatever happened, Stirling reflected, he wasn't really looking forward to visiting Parsifale again. His trousers were getting harder to zip in the mornings. That café just wasn't healthy. It didn't help that the proprietor was on a first-name basis with all the dead women.