Fireflies (20 page)

‘Well that’s true in terms of basic geography but we certainly feel close to the big hotels in Manchester because of our attitude which is international and sophisticated’.

‘I’m sure’ said Sharon. ‘So as a businesswoman from out of town  who’s here to negotiate contracts and so on and so forth, what would that level of service look like to me?’

‘Well my staff would give you all the personal and individual attention they could and they’d make sure you left here feeling happy that you spent your money here with us and not anywhere else’.   

‘And what about sex?’

Helen looked like she’d stuck her wet finger into an electric socket. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘What if I wanted to buy sex during my stay?’

‘Miss Bellfield, I can assure you that we don’t run that kind of establishment’.

‘No you can’t give me that assurance at all’ Sharon countered. ‘You know it and I know it. You use half your staff here as prostitutes but I’m sure it’s not in their job description’.

‘This is absurd! I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about’.

‘This hotel has been going downhill financially for months now’ said Sharon who couldn’t make up her mind whether or not Helen Curzon was complicit or innocent in the workings of evil that have spun round this hotel. ‘You and your husband Brian wanted a way out of your financial predicament and a way out of your business association with Bernie Connelly’.

‘Where did you get this scurrilous information?’

‘Various sources’ said Sharon.   

‘Well when I find out who they are they’ll be hearing from my solicitor’.

‘I wouldn’t take on cases you won’t win if I was you’.

‘You’re out of your mind’.

‘This will be the first and only chance you get to tell your story to us, Helen’ said Sharon. ‘I’m trying to help you if you’d only see it. I’m a lot kinder than some of my colleagues from some of the national papers so why don’t you talk to me?’

‘You tricked me into thinking you were going to help me promote my business!’

‘But you don’t want to promote your
business’.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come on, Helen. I just don’t believe your cry of innocence. You and Brian have been out to damage the hotel’s reputation to the point where you’d be able to sell the property to a developer. I know you’ve been running it into the ground so that you’d get to the point where you would have to sell it. And all because you want out of the arrangement you found yourselves in with none other than Bernie Connelly, one of Manchester’s most notorious gangsters and who runs a prostitution ring that includes the Mayfair. So, let’s get real, Helen. Was the dumping of the body of James Clifton such an inconvenience to you? Or was it a deliberate act that you were fully aware of because you know who killed him?

FIREFLIES SEVENTEEN

‘You need to tell us everything, Melanie’ said Jeff who was losing patience with being given the runaround by this lot. ‘And I mean everything’.

Melanie Cartwright began singing like the proverbial canary once she acknowledged that she was in serious trouble. She had her brief sitting beside her but Jeff and Rebecca both noted that he wasn’t doing anything to stop her confession. Her hands were shaking that much she couldn’t even hold her glass of water.

‘I couldn’t believe it when I walked into the crew room on the day of my first flight with the airline and Sophie Cooper was standing there. She looked straight into my eyes like she always used to. She and Clarissa Dalton-Wood made my life absolute hell when I was in my last year at school and they joined my class. They were rotten to me. They had it in for me from the start’.

‘What did the school do about that?’ asked Rebecca.

‘I told them what was happening but they did nothing’ said Melanie, tearfully. She was playing with a paper tissue, ripping bits off it and letting them fall into her hand. ‘But
you see, those bitches were clever. They never did anything that would be obvious to other people but they used whispers that nobody else could hear and physical assaults when nobody else was around. Then they started getting at me on the way to and from school and they even hung around near my house at weekends. In the end I thought I couldn’t be safe anywhere’.

‘Were you friends with Andrea Kay?’

‘Yes I was’ said Melanie. ‘But Sophie and Clarissa even put paid to that’.

‘How so, Melanie?’

‘They somehow managed to make Andrea a friend of theirs. They subjected her to the same treatment as me at the start but she gave in and became their kind of enforcer. If they wanted someone intimidating they got Andrea to do it. If they wanted someone beaten up then they got Andrea to do it. Andrea was a very needy girl, you know. Her mother had died, her father had fucked off with another woman who made it clear she didn’t want Andrea to be part of their lives and she went to live with her grandma. She needed to belong. She needed to be needed by someone. She was easy prey for the likes of Sophie Cooper and Clarissa Dalton-Wood who gave her all that but only at the cost of her doing their dirty work for them. She was stupid. She should never have gone along with them’.

‘So Melanie, did the bullying stop when you all finished school?’ Jeff wondered.

‘Well yes until I met up with Sophie again at work’ said Melanie with the tears still rolling down her face. ‘My Mum and Dad will be so disappointed in me when they hear about what I’ve done’.

‘And what exactly have you done, Melanie?’

Melanie was sobbing her heart out. ‘I went into work for Sophie that night. I didn’t know it was because she wanted to do something to her fiancé. I swear I didn’t know anything about that. But as soon as I saw Sophie was working there too I knew it wouldn’t be long before she came knocking. She said I owed them, you see. Years ago, she said that one day she’d be in a position to ask me to repay the debt’.

‘And what debt was that, Melanie?’ Rebecca asked.

‘I was pregnant’ she wailed. ‘I wasn’t even sixteen but Sophie and Clarissa said they knew someone who could do something about it’.

‘You mean you had an abortion?’

‘Yes’ Melanie admitted. Her tears were flowing so much now that her face was soaked. ‘They knew this doctor who would do it without asking any questions and they took me to him. I was desperate for them not to tell Andrea Kay because although she’d gone over to their side I still considered her to be something of a friend of mine’.

‘So why didn’t you want to tell her about your pregnancy?’

‘Because of who the father was!’

‘And who was it?’

‘Andrea’s father! Brian Curzon was the father of my baby. I’d been sleeping with him for six months before I got pregnant’.

‘Get Brian Curzon in here!’ Jeff ordered from the middle of the crowded squad room after he and Rebecca had finished interviewing Melanie Cartwright. ‘Arrest him on the charge of having sex with a girl who was underage and we’ll take it from there. Where the hell were Melanie Cartwright’s parents at that time? Didn’t they notice their fifteen-year old daughter was pregnant? God save us from these useless individuals who have children.

‘Sir?’
Rebecca ventured holding up a file.

‘What?’

‘Clarissa Dalton-Wood? She’s next to be interviewed?’

‘Ah yes, another one of our poor little rich girls who took great delight in being sadistic bullies.
Ollie, any news on Andrea Kay?’

‘No, sir’ Ollie replied. ‘She’s not at work and there’s nobody answering the door at home’.

‘Well get a warrant and break your way in’ Jeff ordered. ‘Do a thorough search of her belongings and when you find her, I want her down here as quickly as possible. Also Ollie, dig out that piece of footage from the CCTV of the Manchester Hilton three years ago on the night Kim Barnes was murdered’.

‘Of the woman dressed in black, sir?’

‘That’s it. I think if we take a closer and now, more informed look, we’ll see that it’s Andrea Kay. So now to Miss Dalton-Wood. Let’s see how she’s going to try and lie her way out of trouble because she will do. Just how many more layers on this case have we got to get through before we finally get to the truth?’

‘Which is?’

‘That Andrea Kay is the killer of James Clifton, Piers Jones, and Malcolm Barnes, and I think Kim Barnes three years ago.  It all makes perfect sense now, Becky, and like I said before, we’ve got to get just one of them to crack and the chain will be broken’.

‘And Brian Curzon?’

‘Well we know he’s a pervert and we now know that he’s Andrea Kay’s father. So I’m sure it won’t be long before something else pops up out of the box about him’.

Like most girls from backgrounds like that of the Dalton-Wood family, Clarissa sat in the interview room with the most defiant look on her face, an expensive lawyer at her side, and an attitude that informed the rest of the human race that they were all beneath her. Her natural blond hair was tied back in a bun and she wore a long pink coat over a short black dress. She was a very pretty girl, Jeff noted. Green eyes and a small narrow mouth but not a lot of make-up as far as he could see. She didn’t need it.

‘How did you get her to do it?’ Jeff opened.

There was a pause and then Clarissa said ‘How did I get who to do what?’

‘How did you get Andrea Kay to murder for you?’

The lawyer butted in and told Jeff that his client would not be answering such direct and leading questions as that had been.

‘It must’ve been difficult for you’.

‘What must’ve been?’

‘Well there you were down at Grange Park surrounded by the beauty of rural Somerset and communities of horse riding country folk and then you’re pulled back up to sunny old Manchester and thrown into what some would call a bog standard comprehensive in a northern suburb where you’re surrounded by types you wouldn’t normally associate with in a million years. So how did you handle it? You decided to pick on the two most vulnerable girls, Andrea Kay and Melanie Cartwright, bully them, humiliate them, knock them off their pedestals and then draw them into your sordid, murderous little games’.

Clarissa smirked. ‘You must be some kind of fantasist’.

‘Oh we have a sworn statement from Melanie Cartwright telling us everything’.

‘Then why do you need me here?’

‘Because there are gaps in the story that she couldn’t fill’.

‘Such as?’

‘Well how did you feel when you found out that your late fiancé Piers Jones was having an affair with Annette Bryson?’

Clarissa shifted a little in her seat. It was the first indication from this Ice Queen that she may not be quite as sure of herself as she first seemed.

‘It was his life’ she answered. ‘If he wanted to waste it on her when he already had me then that was his decision’.

‘Did you know Annette Bryson was pregnant?’

‘Of course I knew’.

‘And how did you react when you found that out?’

‘I was very upset as a matter of fact’ Clarissa admitted. ‘You see, I can’t have children. I have a problem with my reproductive system’.

‘I’m sorry to hear that’.

‘What’s it to you?’

‘A lot if your jealousy drove you to have him murdered’.

The lawyer stepped in again with another warning to Jeff that he would instruct his client not to make any further comment if this line of questioning continued.

‘Oh I’m so sorry’ said Jeff. ‘I thought I was just doing my job’.

‘You don’t have anything of a case’ scoffed Clarissa.

‘I’ll be the judge of that, Miss Dalton-Wood’.

‘It’s interesting, Miss Dalton-Wood’ said Rebecca, taking over from Jeff.
‘To note that you haven’t mentioned one word of sorrow at the passing of your fiancé? It’s only a couple of days but there are no tears and yet this was the man you were set to spend the rest of your life with’.

Clarissa shrugged. ‘We all deal with these things in our own way’ she said. ‘I do my crying alone. I don’t make a public show of it’.

‘How very controlled’.

‘Call it what the hell you like’.

‘It might help to convince others of your innocence if you did show some emotion’.

‘Let me spell this out to you’ said Clarissa. ‘I have nothing to convince anyone of. Got it? Absolutely nothing so the sooner you let me out of this awful place the sooner I can convince my father not to make representations to the chief Constable about you. They’re friends, you see. They play golf together and have drinks parties’.

‘And that’s of relevance to this case because?’

‘I’m just letting you know that my family is well connected’.

‘Well that won’t stop us from charging you with conspiracy to murder if we see you have a case to answer’ said Jeff. ‘No matter who your friends are’.

‘Oh how very … left-wing of you to think that connections in higher society are there to be broken. Thank God I’m more of a realist’.