Knife Edge (24 page)

Naysmith took up the newspaper and began browsing through the pages, spending a moment or two on each one until he found the article he wanted.

REDLAND KILLING: MURDER WIDOWER’S
DARK PAST

Police investigating the brutal stabbing of Bristol cake-maker Lesley Vaughn,
46
, are remaining tight-lipped about serious sexual-assault allegations levelled at her wealthy husband. Phillip Vaughn,
49
, who owns a successful dental practice in an affluent town near Bristol, was accused by a female patient who claims he took advantage of her in the dentist’s chair. Friends of the former public schoolboy are said to be ‘stunned’ by the news. Meanwhile, police continue to appeal for any information relating to the crime, which has shocked the local community.

There was more, but he had read enough. Smiling to himself, he folded the paper quietly and slid it back into the middle of the table, then leaned his head against the seat and rested his eyes for a moment.

He’d always imagined that it might be problematic if the press took an interest –
really
took an interest – in one of his victims. A huge media appeal championing the police investigation, galvanising witnesses to come forward … that would be a worry. But thinly veiled accusations levelled at the dead woman’s husband, and snide comments about the boys in blue?

It was so easy.

Relaxing his shoulders back into the upholstery, he almost felt sorry for the police.

Almost.

Opening his eyes, he blinked at the brightness coming from the window, recognising the familiar scenery as the train began to slow for the stop at Andover. He turned back to gaze at the blonde woman. She was putting her book away now, closing her handbag and lifting her chin to look around the carriage. Their eyes met for a second and the corners of her mouth twitched in a faint smile as she got to her feet. Her figure was better than he’d thought, and his eyes followed her as she turned and made her way, swaying from seat to seat, down to the end of the carriage.

Damn.

He sighed and drummed his fingers on the table as the station slid into view and the train came to a standstill. He’d been so very restrained recently. Outside, he watched the blonde woman walking along the platform, turning her head slightly to catch his eye as she passed the window. He smiled at her before she was swallowed up among the other passengers, then sat back against his seat and stared up at the ceiling.

And thought of Kim.

It had rained overnight, but the dark patches of damp were retreating into the pavement cracks now, drying like last night’s tears. Redland felt different today, shocked and sobered by the brutal killing in its midst.

Police Appeal posters stared out from plate-glass windows as he passed – ‘MURDER’ picked out in block capitals along the top, above the woman’s face, frozen in that same smile he’d seen in all the local papers and TV news reports. He wondered where she had been when it was taken. A party perhaps? Or a night out with friends, laughing and enjoying herself, oblivious to how famous her image would become, or why. All the neighbourhood businesses seemed to have it – restaurants and coffee shops displaying it in their polished windows, shops with it taped up inside glass doors. A community’s cry for help.

Harland slowed, staring through his own reflection at another of the pale sheets. This one had a second flyer beside it, older and faded by sunlight, appealing for information about a missing tabby cat. He considered the two posters for a moment, little A4 rectangles of tragedy, side by side, then shook his head and walked on.

Ahead of him, two middle-aged men were sitting at a pavement table – the smokers’ section – outside a small café. Steam rose from their mugs of tea as they scraped their chairs in and one coughed as he drew the ashtray towards him.

‘Yeah, that’s what the paper said. Stabbed to death in her own home.’

‘Well, it’ll be the husband that did it.’ The second man took out a pouch of tobacco and carefully unfolded a cigarette paper. ‘This used to be a nice neighbourhood, but now we’ve got murderers and all sorts living here.’

Harland stepped down into the road as he passed their table. It was the subject of almost every conversation he’d overheard this week. A whole city suburb, young and old, working class and affluent, all stunned by the thought that something so terrible could happen here.

He frowned to himself at that.

It really shouldn’t matter where these things happened. That it had occurred in a quiet street, in a desirable area. That the victim had been a respectable middle-aged woman. That she had been killed in her own home.

People turned up dead all too often in the city without ever catching the public’s attention or the media’s interest – but they were usually in (or from) the poorer parts of town, where it was assumed that nobody could be entirely innocent. It would be gang-related, or drug-fuelled, and it would get a single headline and a day’s coverage before the reporters dropped it and moved on. If a woman was sexually assaulted, there might be a more vocal campaign, but even that would soon degenerate into a bandwagon for the professional cause junkies that such crimes always seemed to excite. And if it happened too far outside the city, it would largely slip under the radar, like that poor girl they’d found on Severn Beach – somewhere else’s problem. There had been pressure enough on that case. He thanked his lucky stars he wasn’t leading this one.

The Redland murder was becoming a nightmare. It ticked all the boxes and the press were settling in for a long campaign, positioning themselves as the champions of the public, stirring the pot with that constant, irritating question:
What are the police doing?

Harland clenched his fists as he walked. Did they really expect the force to show their hand, to broadcast their progress so the murderer would know when the net was drawing in around him? Did they really think that because the police were saying nothing they were also
doing
nothing?

No, they just wanted to sell papers. The questions they asked – the self-appointed, self-righteous indignation – this was what they turned to when the real world didn’t suit their own personal schedules and publishing deadlines.

What are the police doing?

Harland shook his head in irritation. The police were doing what they
had
to do – legwork, building up a true picture of events, searching for those tiny pieces of information that might lead to an arrest
and
support a conviction.

And the media certainly weren’t helping.

He paused and took a deep breath. It wasn’t good for him to get angry – he had a job to do. Glancing up at the line of shopfronts, he checked the street numbers. The café he wanted was just a few doors further along. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he drew out a small notebook and reminded himself of the name he’d been given, then walked forward.

It was a small place, squeezed in between a letting agent and a picture framer, halfway along a parade of shops that crowded the narrow pavement. Harland pushed open the door and stepped inside. There were no customers, and he walked slowly up to the long counter where a woman with frizzy red hair was unwrapping the clingfilm covering from a tray of muffins.

‘Won’t be a moment.’ She glanced up at him with a slightly harassed expression. ‘I can assure you we are open, just running a little behind this morning.’

‘Gill Evans?’ Harland asked her.

She stared at him, then put the tray down and regarded him cautiously.

‘Yes?’

‘Detective Inspector Harland.’ He drew out his warrant card and held it up for her to see, noting how she relaxed once she knew he was a police officer. Normally, people tensed up when he identified himself, but since the murder more had remembered that the police were there to help them. He wondered how long it would last. ‘I understand you were working here last Monday?’

‘Oh yeah,’ she said, understanding dawning. She had a soft Welsh accent and she wiped her hands on a cloth as she faced him across the counter. ‘Pam called and said the police had been round and how you might want to speak to me, ’cause she was off that day.’

‘Pam?’

‘Pamela Bellar – she’s the owner.’

‘So you were working here last Monday?’

‘That’s right,’ Gill told him. ‘I do four mornings a week, Monday to Thursday. I was in from about eight o’clock till lunchtime – can’t remember what time I finished exactly, it depends on how busy we get.’

Harland took out his notebook and scribbled down the times.

‘Can you remember anything that happened that day?’ he asked her. ‘Anything out of the ordinary?’

Gill shook her head.

‘Nothing ever happens in here,’ she sighed. ‘It’s always the same customers – people who live or work nearby.’

‘Any strange cars or vans parked outside?’

‘None that I remember, sorry.’

Harland gazed at her for a moment.

‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me where you live, and how you get to and from work?’

‘I live over in Montpelier,’ Gill explained. ‘I usually just walk – it’s only about twenty minutes.’

Harland closed his eyes for a moment, picturing the layout of the streets.

‘You come up by Redland Station?’ he asked. ‘And then up Alexandra Park to here?’

‘I used to,’ she replied, then her expression darkened. ‘Don’t like going past that house now – it gives you the creeps, knowing that he might be in there.’

‘Knowing who might be in where?’ Harland quizzed her.

‘That pervy dentist,’ Gill said earnestly. ‘You lot still haven’t arrested him, so I go down Fernbank Road instead.’

Harland sighed and massaged his temples. Everywhere it was the same story – since the piece in the paper, nobody could see past the husband, despite the fact that he’d been virtually ruled out as a suspect.

‘I’d like you to think back to last Monday,’ he told her patiently. ‘As you were coming to work, or as you were going home, did you pass anyone or see anyone unfamiliar?’

Gill nodded seriously.

‘Pam and I were discussing this the day after it happened,’ she told him. ‘You know, wondering if we might have actually passed the murderer in the street.’

She gave a little shudder.

‘And?’ Harland pressed her.

‘Well, it was mostly the usual people – local people who you pass, that get familiar after a while. But I don’t know their names or anything.’

‘You said “mostly”,’ Harland mused. ‘Any strangers on your walk?’

‘Well, Bristol’s a big place, so there’s always strangers,’ she replied. ‘There was a woman jogging with her dog near the station … oh, and a delivery van outside the deli place on Gloucester Road, but it’s mostly parents and kids going to school at that time in the morning.’

‘How old was the woman?’ Harland asked.

‘In her thirties, blonde …’ Gill shrugged. ‘One of those athletic, hard-body types … I hate them.’

A smile touched the corners of Harland’s mouth.

‘Can you remember anything about the van? What colour it was?’

‘It was quite big – like a transit van – and I think it was white, or a light colour anyway. I’m not really sure, sorry.’

‘No, you’re doing fine,’ Harland told her as he finished writing down what she had told him. He looked up from the notebook. ‘And what about on your way home?’

Gill sighed and frowned.

‘Nothing really,’ she said, picking up a bottle of water and unscrewing the top. ‘Mostly familiar faces. A couple of old biddies that I hadn’t seen before, and some bloke on a bike who passed me down by Redland Grove. But I didn’t see the husband, if that’s what you’re asking.’

Harland ignored that.

‘Where were the old ladies?’ he asked.

‘Up near the top end of Zetland Road, but they were both really old.’

‘And the cyclist, what did he look like?’

Gill thought for a moment.

‘Couldn’t tell you,’ she frowned. ‘He was wearing cycling stuff – you know, Lycra shorts and one of those cycle helmets … He wasn’t fat, if that helps?’

‘Thanks …’ Harland noted everything down, then stood thinking, tapping his pen against his chin.

Gill watched him for a moment, then leaned forward over the counter.

‘So?’ she asked conspiratorially. ‘When are you going to arrest the dentist?’

The skies were clouding over again as Harland locked the car and turned towards the grey CID building. He yawned and walked slowly, his mind sifting through the conversations of the last few days, trying to discern anything important, anything that would help.

Pearce had a lot of people on the ground, but the team still needed that first decent opening – something to steer them in the right direction, something to indicate a suspect other than the husband …

… because it was only a matter of time before the press would be demanding they arrest him.

He frowned to himself, frustration overtaking the weariness. If only the media hadn’t got involved.

Walking between the parked vehicles, he heard a car door slam and looked around. His heart sank as he saw Pope’s squat figure striding towards him, but they were both making for the entrance – there was no way to avoid him.

‘Morning, Russell,’ he said, waiting for the shorter man to catch up.

Pope raised a hand in acknowledgement.

‘Hello,’ he replied. ‘You look gloomy – everything OK?’

Harland gave him a bleak look, then sighed. Pope was only speaking the truth.

‘Just thinking about the Redland case,’ he admitted. ‘And wondering when we’ll get a break.’

‘Still interviewing witnesses?’

‘Trying to.’ Harland shook his head. ‘I ask them what they remember, and
they
ask me when we’re going to arrest the dentist.’

Pope looked down.

‘It’s a pity about that,’ he said quietly. ‘At first, the husband looked like a dead cert for it, but …’

Harland nodded, a wry smile touching his face.