SECRET CRIMES a gripping crime thriller full of suspense (11 page)

‘No, not really. Barry told me his theory about why you left. I do feel partly to blame, being away at the Home Office for so much of the summer. But you must have realised I wasn’t well even when I was around, since I was always heading off for therapy sessions.’

‘So you’re disappointed in me? For taking the chance and jumping ship while you weren’t there and fully fit?’

‘I suppose I am, yes. It puzzled me. I wouldn’t have stood in your way, Lydia. I’ve always thought too highly of you to stoop to any underhand tricks to keep you. Like so many other things that were happening to me at the time, your leaving left me bemused.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t entirely what Barry thinks. I’ve always loved Bath ever since I was a student here. And I’d already met my new boss on a course I went on. When he contacted me with news of the job, I just jumped at the chance.’

‘But it was partly due to what Barry had guessed? That you thought it was me who assaulted Duff?’

‘It’s not as simple as that. I know you didn’t actually do it. Barry convinced me of that.’ She paused, as if picking her words carefully. ‘But I know you were involved somehow. I still think that. Do you deny it?’

Sophie said nothing.

‘You see?’ Lydia continued. ‘It’s what I always knew. But Barry’s right. There’s no proof whatsoever, so no chance of any investigation. And anyway, would I want you convicted? For goodness’ sake, I can understand why you would have wanted him to suffer. That evil man killed your father, and murdered all those other people. And even though I wasn’t there when you dug up those girls’ bodies, I could see the effect it had on everyone. Duff deserved it all. But it altered the way I felt about you. I felt claustrophobic, as if I couldn’t breathe. So when the chance came, I jumped. Can you blame me?’

Sophie sighed. ‘No, of course not. I don’t hold grudges, Lydia. Or at least I try not to. God knows, I was in such a mess anyway that I couldn’t have coped with any more, so I just forced myself to accept it. At least I’m a bit more balanced now, or I hope I am. I just wanted to let you know that you can always depend on me if you need my help or advice, or if you need a reference. I’ll always do the best I can for you.’

‘I’m grateful. I guessed that would be the case. And I know you always had faith in me.’ Lydia pulled a tissue from her bag and dabbed at her eyes.

‘Can I give you a hug?’ Sophie asked.

Lydia nodded and stood up. Sophie put her arms around the young detective and pulled her close. Lydia didn’t see the tiny tears shining in the corners of her eyes.

* * *

Sophie rang the doorbell of a smart, terraced house on the north side of the city centre, and stood back. There were flower boxes painted red on the front windowsills with geraniums still in bloom. A smartly dressed woman in her late fifties answered the door. She looked guardedly at her caller.

‘Brenda Plant?’

The woman nodded. Sophie held out her warrant card. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Sophie Allen from Dorset police. I believe you might have some information that could be of use to me in a current investigation.’

Brenda looked at Sophie carefully.

‘You’d better come inside,’ she said in a slightly raspy voice. ‘You’re lucky to catch me in. I usually work on Tuesdays, but I swapped days this week to allow a colleague a day off.’ Sophie followed the woman through a rather dim hallway into a large kitchen, well-lit from a south-facing window.

‘I hope you don’t mind coming into the kitchen. I’m in the middle of some baking.’

‘Not at all. I’m impressed. Maybe I’ll pick up a few tips. I’m probably one of the world’s worst bakers. My teenage daughter is really into it though. Even my husband has given it a go on occasions, with surprising success. Well, maybe not so surprising since he’s always been a better cook than me. He takes his time, whereas I get impatient and try to cut corners whatever I’m cooking. It’s a question of temperament, I guess.’

Brenda spooned a fruit cake mixture into a large cake tin, smoothed its surface and slid it into the oven. She wiped her hands and sat on a tall stool facing Sophie across the table.

‘What can I help you with?’

‘It’s a tricky one, Mrs Plant. I don’t want to cause you any distress, but I’d like to get some details about the assault you suffered during the jazz festival two years ago.’

‘Surely the local police can tell you everything you need to know?’

‘They can give me factual details, yes. But there’s nothing like a face-to-face talk to help get a feel for the events. Can I tell you why I need this information?’

‘I saw on the news there was a possible murder at a blues festival in Swanage at the weekend. Is that it?’

Sophie nodded. ‘The circumstances sound very similar to your own experience. If there is a link, it will help me, but it might also help your local police make headway with their investigation into your own assault. They told me it has stalled because of a lack of evidence. I have some photofit images with me if you’d like to see them. I saw the ones you helped to create two years ago, and they might be the same men.’

Brenda sighed. ‘I guessed when you first spoke at the door. Okay, I’ll do it, but it won’t be easy. I’ve been trying to forget about it for the past year.’

‘I know that the worst part is often the long-term psychological damage, Brenda. I’ve been through trauma therapy myself recently, and I know how hard it can be. But unless we do this they might escape again, if it is the same men. And this time it’s murder.’ Sophie slid the two photofit prints of Derek and Brian across the table but held back on the one for John Renton. Brenda looked at them and nodded her head. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I think it’s them.’

Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ She shuddered. ‘Take them away, please.’

‘You don’t recognise this one?’ Sophie showed her Renton’s image.

‘No. He might have been there for all I know, but he wasn’t one of the men who had sex with me.’

‘How many were there, Brenda?’

‘Two men and a woman, I think.’ Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have drunk so much. I couldn’t deal with it. And it wasn’t rape like you read in the papers. They weren’t violent and I didn’t have any physical injuries. But I didn’t want it, and I couldn’t stop it once it started.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. You must believe that. Just because you were drunk doesn’t give them the right to force themselves on you. They’re the criminals, not you.’ She paused. ‘Can you tell me how it started?’

Brenda walked to the sink and poured herself a glass of water.

‘There was the jazz festival proper, with tickets or armbands and things. But at the same time some pubs had jazz groups playing for free. I was in a pub, along with a couple of friends. They were married, whereas I was recently divorced, so when they decided to go home I stayed on.’ She pointed at Shapiro’s image. ‘This man was with a small group at the bar, but he left them and came over to sit beside me. He started chatting and we got on really well, or so I thought. Maybe it was just the drink made me think that. Much later on, when the gig finished and the pub was emptying, I saw that his friends had gone, and we were alone. He suggested going back to his hotel room and I agreed. I’d never had a one-night stand before. I thought I’d been missing out somehow. And he was a pleasant enough bloke. Or so I thought. I didn’t realise how much drink I’d had until we got outside. I could walk, but I was really unsteady I guess. It’s all a bit hazy. His hotel was nearby. I can remember standing in the porch for a bit while he went in. I guess he was checking that the coast was clear, and we wouldn’t be spotted by any staff. When we got to his room he poured out some brandies. I can half-remember being on the bed with him and getting my clothes off. There were just the two of us at first, but then the other man and a woman appeared from somewhere, and I think I struggled to get off the bed, but they held me back. The woman made me drink some more brandy, and everything went really hazy. I have dim memories of being with her, and then two men together. I think I passed out. They’d gone when I came to the next morning. You know that the local police have never been able to trace them?’

Sophie nodded. ‘Yes. They’re pretty sure they left in the middle of the night, from what you told them. The only one who was officially staying in the hotel was the one you returned with, but all his details were false. It’s very similar to my current case.’

‘But she was killed, the one at the weekend. Do you know why?’

‘No. It’s a puzzle. Maybe it was never intended, and things got out of hand somehow.’

Sophie showed her a photo of Sarah Sheldon.

‘It could be her but I can’t be sure. She was heavily made-up and her hair was a bit shorter.’ Brenda started to cry. ‘I felt sick with myself when I came to the next morning, terribly ashamed. How did I let myself get lured into it like that?’

‘It wasn’t your fault, Brenda. It was a clever trap, and you just happened to be the person who fell into it. It could have been any woman out in Bath that night. Please don’t blame yourself.’

Chapter 9: On the Beach

Tuesday afternoon

Barry Marsh still checked up on Jimmy Melsom. Jimmy didn’t resent this. He was well aware that there were occasions when he fell into his slapdash ways of the previous year. His involvement with two high-stakes murder inquiries that winter should have brought about a change in the way he approached his work, but sometimes he couldn’t seem to help being careless. Thus, before leaving for the Portsmouth offices of Sarah Sheldon’s employer, Melsom sat down with his superior and they drew up a rough plan of the kind of questions he should be asking.

Jimmy kept the list firmly in his mind while he was being introduced to Sheldon’s boss. The middle-aged woman didn’t get out of her seat to greet him. He was forced to reach across the desk in order to shake her hand and then he could see why: she was grossly obese.

‘Could you confirm the type of work that Sarah did for you, Mrs O’Neill? I have a rough idea, but I just need to fill in the details.’ He sat down on the chair opposite her, assuming this was what her slight arm movement had meant.

‘We investigate possible fraudulent claims. There’s another team that scans all the claims, looking for the signs. If they find something suspicious we’re asked to find out the detail. We do the phoning and track back through the records. There are four of us, or there were when Sarah was here.’

Melsom was writing in his notebook while she spoke. He looked at what he’d written and pursed his lips.

‘What kind of claims?’

‘Car accidents. Household insurance. Travel. The whole lot, really.’

‘Does each person deal with everything, or do you allocate a particular type of claim to each person?’ Melsom felt pleased with the question. He thought it was the kind of thing his boss would ask.

‘Everything really. Requests come in from higher up and I just share out the jobs.’

‘Wouldn’t it be more efficient to have your people specialise?’

She gave a kind of minimal shrug. ‘Suppose. Hadn’t really thought of it.’

‘How long had Sarah worked for you?’

‘Just over a year.’

‘And what was her attitude to work? How did she fit in?’

‘She was okay. She got things done quickly. Too quickly, sometimes.’

‘What, in a slapdash way?’

Eileen O’Neill hesitated. ‘No . . . She was just quick.’

Melsom looked around at the three other workers in the office. The place wasn’t quite the hive of activity he’d expected, yet he could see a small stack of documents waiting in Eileen’s in-tray. Oh well, he thought, mine is not to reason why.

‘And how did she get on with you all?’

‘Okay, I suppose. It’s not as though we socialise or anything. We just work together.’

‘What time did she leave on Friday?’

‘Early. She’d worked late a couple of days last week and that meant she could finish mid-afternoon. I think it was about three.’

Melsom found it difficult to get much more out of Sarah’s boss, so he asked to see the dead woman’s desk and computer. He was surprised to be left alone at the workstation. Eileen wandered off down the corridor. One of the other workers came across to speak to him.

‘You won’t get much out of her. Really, she has no idea. And we did see Sarah sometimes after work, despite what Eileen told you. It’s just that she never came along, so we gave up inviting her. She’s a lazy so-and-so. From what I hear she won’t be around much longer.’ The speaker was a young woman in her mid-twenties. ‘I’m Becky Smith, by the way.’

Jimmy smiled at her. ‘Thanks. So what did you think of Sarah?’

‘I liked her. I think the others did too. She was a lot older than the rest of us, and she seemed to know what she was doing. She latched onto it pretty quick after she joined us. And she didn’t get on with old cantilever-buttocks at all.’

The young woman giggled at Melsom’s look of surprise.

‘That’s what we call her. She’s so lazy as well as being, well, that size. Rumour has it that she’s in for the high jump and that Sarah was going to be offered her job. We were all looking forward to the change, because Sarah was really organised and was so good at what she did. Eileen didn’t like her for that, and also because she was so attractive. Sarah could be really wicked too. It was her that thought up that name for Eileen when we were out in the pub one night. Cantilever-buttocks. It’s good, isn’t it? I could never have come up with a name like that. Wicked.’

‘A bit cruel though, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not really to do with her size. The real reason is she’s just not a very nice person. I’ve got a couple of podgy friends and I’d never call them names like that.’

‘Did Sarah ever talk about any friends? A boyfriend?’

‘Not really. I think she may have had an on-off relationship with someone but she didn’t talk about it much. I can’t remember his name.’

‘Could it have been John?’

Becky shook her head.

‘Brian? Derek?’

‘Derek. That was it. But she never mentioned a surname.’

‘What makes you think it was an on-off relationship?’

Becky thought for a while before replying. ‘She never actually said so, but I sort of put two and two together. You know, from little things that she did say, and the moods she was in sometimes.’

‘Before the weekend did she say anything about what she was going to do? The music festival?’

‘We knew she was going away for the weekend and she finished early on Friday. But she didn’t say much about it, just that she was going to Swanage.’

Becky walked away as Eileen came through the door, but the office senior merely returned to her own chair. Jimmy examined the contents of Sarah’s desk. Nothing out of the ordinary. He looked through a desk diary, but it only seemed to contain work-related entries. He kept it anyway.

He then logged on to her computer, using details the receptionist had given him when he’d first arrived. He had also arranged for someone from the IT Department to assist him. He began to look through Sarah’s stored work. There was nothing that stood out among the files, but he copied them all to a flash drive that he’d brought with him. The emails were more interesting. There were a number of private messages mixed with those related to work. He noticed a few emails that seemed to come from Sarah herself and realised that she must have had a separate web-based account. He attempted to log on to her web account and was pleasantly surprised when the system allowed him in. Sarah had saved her password to the computer. Jimmy scanned down the list of messages, and then he called Melissa, the technician from IT Support. She was there within a few minutes.

‘I want all of these messages copied,’ he said. ‘I know you can do it for her company email account, but these are on the web. Can you do that too?’

‘Difficult. There are about fifty messages here. Why don’t you select them all and forward them to your own email address? That might be the easiest way. While you’re doing that, I’ll get her company emails copied for you. It’ll probably take me about twenty minutes.’

‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘Is there any way I can get a copy of her browsing history?’

‘Yes, I can do that. Anything else I can do for you while I’m here? It’s just that I’m on my own this week, so I can’t afford to be away from my desk for too long.’

‘No, I don’t think so. Did you have many dealings with Sarah? I’m just trying to build up a picture of what she was like.’

Melissa shrugged. ‘Not really. Some of the people here are really useless at using computers, but she had a good idea of what she was doing. Once she’d settled in she hardly ever needed to call us for help. I liked her from what I saw of her. She picked things up quickly. I always wished there could be more like her here. We knew that if she called us it really was a problem, not something stupid she’d done wrong. And I remember that once, when I did sort out a problem for her, she brought me in a box of chocolates the next day. There’s not many that do that, I can tell you.’

‘Did she ever talk about her life to you? Friends? Relationships?’

The technician shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

Melsom followed her out and went to find the senior personnel manager.

‘Eileen O’Neill was Mrs Sheldon’s boss,’ he said. ‘I’ve already interviewed her and I got the impression that they didn’t get on. Was there a plan to reorganise their jobs?’

The woman facing him across the desk pursed her lips and clasped her fingers together. There was a silence.

‘I’m not sure I can discuss company plans in this way,’ she said eventually.

Jimmy tried to imagine what the DCI would say. He put on his most authoritative voice. ‘This is a murder inquiry. I’m afraid I must insist.’ He held his breath, but there was no response. ‘I picked up on some unhappiness within the team,’ he added.

Fleming nodded.

‘We did have some plans in place, yes. Ms O’Neill hasn’t, er, been drawing the best out of the team, so we’ve had some initial discussions to find her a suitable alternative position. Sarah Sheldon had been asked to take over for a three-month trial.’

‘When was this due to start?’

‘Next month.’

‘Both of them knew about it?’

She nodded.

‘Is there anything else I should know? Any other difficulties?’

She shook her head. ‘No. And I don’t for a moment think that Eileen had anything to do with Mrs Sheldon’s death. The idea is preposterous.’

‘We needed to know about it, though. Thanks. By the way, had she booked this week off?’

Fleming consulted her screen. ‘Yes. We expected her back this coming Monday. So she took five days off in total.’

‘Okay. Could you thank Melissa for me? She told me she was on her own this week but she still found time to be very helpful.’

‘Yes I will. She’s a great asset. She’s very highly qualified. Her boss came up through the ranks. He’s a nice guy, though. Also very helpful. He’s on holiday this week too.’

Her eyes held Jimmy’s for some time. She seemed to be trying to tell him something.

‘Umm . . . the
same
week as Sarah, you mean?’ Jimmy said eventually.

‘Exactly.’

‘You mean, you think they’d planned it?’

‘Who am I to say?’ she added. Her eyes went wide.

‘What’s his name?’ Jimmy asked.

‘Paul Derek. He’s our network manager. No one else knows this, but there’s a pattern of them booking days off at the same time. I suppose that it could all have an innocent explanation, but then I could be a secret princess from a faraway land, couldn’t I?’

Jimmy frowned. Derek . . .

‘And it was him who suggested she should apply for the job here. Again, that’s not on any official document, but I overheard them having a conversation about it shortly after she’d started. Good hearing is a real blessing in a job like mine, believe me.’

‘I think I need to see his file,’ Jimmy answered. He moved to a quiet corner of the room and phoned Sophie Allen.

* * *

It took Jimmy Melsom two hours to drive to Swanage in the heavy, late-afternoon traffic. When he finally arrived, Rae was alone in the incident room.

‘Where is everyone?’ he asked.

‘Another body’s been found washed up, further along the coast. No strong reason to link it to ours at the moment, but the boss is suspicious. They’ve gone across to take a look.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Burton Bradstock. I don’t know it. Do you?’ said Rae.

‘I think it’s somewhere near Bridport, but I can’t be sure. Was there any information about the body?’

‘Just that it was a male, probably middle-aged. That’s all.’

Rae turned back to her work. She looked up to see that Jimmy had sat down on the other side of the desk.

‘Things going okay, Rae?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I feel as if I’m settling in fine. Early days yet, though.’

‘You’ve got a hard act to follow, you know.’

‘Really? Who was that?’

‘Lydia. She was a fast-tracker. Joined up from university. She got on really well with the boss.’

‘Why did she leave?’

‘Dunno really,’ he shrugged. ‘We’re out in the sticks here. Maybe that was it. But she was nice as well as clever.’

‘Well, I hope I’m nice too, Jimmy . . . Even though I’m also a graduate.’

‘Oh. What subject?’

‘Marine engineering. But I found out that I don’t really like ships very much. This suits me much better.’

‘Unusual subject for a woman, wasn’t it?’

She smiled warily. ‘That’s a bit of a sexist comment, isn’t it?’

‘No, I didn’t mean it like that. One of my pals did engineering and he said there were only a few women on the course.’

‘Well I’m one of those few women. Even though I didn’t become an engineer, I’m still glad I did the degree.’

‘Do you fancy going out for a drink sometime? I mean when we’ve got the time, once this case is over?’

Rae hesitated for a few moments. ‘Yes . . . but can we make it a group thing? With the others?’