Shades of Evil (20 page)

She had their interest, but she could see they weren’t convinced.

‘He took the key from Lauren, the one to her dad’s house,’ she went on. ‘Remember, he’s an opportunist. He broke in, thinking he could take what he wanted while Vincent Cole slept in his bed. But Vincent was too distressed to enjoy a good night’s sleep. He confronted our man and suffered a blow to the head that killed him.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s my theory.’

She waited for the usual ridicule. It didn’t come, but she could see that Max was looking bemused by something.

‘What?’ she asked him.

‘I’m just wondering why Lauren didn’t keep the key to her dad’s house on the fob with her car and house keys. Or are you suggesting that our killer removed that one key from the bunch? And if so, why? She was dead. He knew she didn’t need her car keys.’

She hadn’t thought of that.

‘She obviously kept her dad’s key separate,’ she said, although that didn’t make much sense. Still, that was their problem. ‘Now, I have no idea how he came to be friends with Lauren,’ she went on, ‘but something will have happened, something that helped them bond. She trusted him because she believed they were alike. My guess is that she got to know him after her mum died. She was at her most vulnerable then. Something might have happened to him around the same time.’

There were a few raised eyebrows, but no one spoke.

‘OK,’ Max said at last. ‘The graveyard shift needs to gather mug shots of all likely suspects. Male. Late teens, early twenties. Local. On file for burglary. Take them out in the morning and show them to people who knew Lauren. Cole’s cleaner, Mrs Hollingsworth, will be a good place to start. She might be able to recognize someone.’

As he barked out orders, Jill prayed she wasn’t wasting everyone’s time.

It was almost one o’clock when Steve Carlisle heard his wife’s car pull on to the drive. He’d been about to make himself something for lunch, but that could wait. He didn’t have much of an appetite; he was simply acting on auto-pilot.

He stayed where he was, sitting at the kitchen table, the
Daily Mail
open in front of him.

‘I’m home, darling!’ she called out.

The greeting echoed with falseness, and he felt his heart start to race.

‘In here,’ he called back.

She came into the kitchen, dropped her handbag and laptop case on the table, gave him a casual peck on the cheek and went straight to the coffee-maker. She’d be expecting him to rush out and fetch her clothes from the car as he usually did.

‘The motorway traffic was murder,’ she said.

‘Really?’ His radio had been tuned to BBC Radio Lancashire all morning and nothing had been mentioned. It was rarely too bad on Saturdays.

He could see her mind ticking over, trying to fathom out why he hadn’t leapt to his feet when she came in, why he was being distant. And still his heart raced with anger. All the anger he’d felt for the last twenty years was gripping him now. He made a conscious effort to breathe deeply and calm himself.

‘Everything all right?’ she asked.

He folded his newspaper and stood up.

‘I’m leaving you,’ he said simply.

‘You’re—’ She’d been about to reach into the cupboard for a cup and her hand froze an inch from the door. ‘You’re leaving? To go where? What do you mean?’

‘I’m renting a flat in Harrington,’ he said, surprised at how calm he was managing to sound. ‘It belongs to a friend, an ex-customer of mine. The rent’s reasonable and, most important, he doesn’t object to Cally being there.’

‘But I don’t understand.’

‘I can’t live with you, Alison, so I’m moving out. I’ve packed some stuff. The rest can be sorted out later.’

She stood across the table from him, her knuckles white as she gripped its edge.

‘But – what’s happened?’

‘Nothing’s happened. I just thought it courteous to let you know. I’m going now.’ He couldn’t wait to get out.

‘You won’t go until you’ve told me what the fuck is going on!’

This was the Alison he was used to. The one who barked out orders.

She looked as she always did. Immaculate. Expensive highlights in her blonde hair caught the light from the window. Her beautiful face was carefully made up, the perfect advertisement for the cosmetics she was so good at selling. Black trousers fitted perfectly, as did her white blouse. Several hundred pounds worth of jewellery sparkled from her fingers and wrists.

‘Dad believes you’re having an affair,’ he said, and he saw the blush creep up from her neck.

‘Oh, for …’ She shook her head, probably to hide her heightened colour. ‘And what, pray, makes him think that?’

‘He saw you with the man in question. You were meeting him on the Burnley Road.’

This statement brought more colour. Now, even the tips of her ears were scarlet.

‘What complete nonsense,’ she said. ‘He’s obviously made a mistake. It’s ridiculous, I tell you. You know that, Steve. Now, if that’s what this little tantrum is about, we can forget it and get back to normal. It’s all right for you sitting here all day, but I’ve been working. I’m whacked.’

‘I don’t really care if you’re having an affair or not,’ he said. ‘That’s the sad thing, isn’t it? It no longer matters to me. I want out, Alison. And I want a divorce.’

‘What?’

From blushing scarlet, she was now deathly pale.

He’d known how she would react to mention of the d-word. It didn’t fall in with her plans. If it had, she would have dragged him through the courts long ago.

‘You’re being ridiculous, Steve. Petty and downright spiteful, too. What do you want, hm? What do you want me to do or say? You know as well as I do that we can’t get divorced.’

‘Plenty of couples do. What’s so different about us?’

‘You know damn well.’

‘That’s just it, I don’t.’

‘Well, I’m sure as hell not volunteering to tell Uncle David!’

‘Ah, dear old Uncle David. He won’t like it, will he? Hell, he might even cut you out of his will.’ Steve shrugged. ‘It doesn’t mean we can’t get divorced.’

‘Of course it does,’ she hissed. ‘I’m all he’s got!’

‘He’ll still have you. And I’m more than happy to tell him. All I know is that I’m sick of you. I can’t live with you. In fact, I wish to God I’d walked out years ago. Instead, I took the blame for our misery. I accepted that Maisie’s death was all down to me. It wasn’t, though. At least I was here for her when she died. Where were you? Working. You were staying in a hotel overnight, probably with your man of the moment.’

‘Shut up!’

He felt the bitter, angry smile tug at his mouth.

‘Shut up,’ he repeated. ‘How very apt, my dear. Those were the last words you said to your daughter, weren’t they? “Shut up,” you said. Do you remember the last words you said to me before you left that day? You said, “You’ll have to figure out a way of shutting the little brat up because she’s doing my head in.” How the hell—’

He had to break off as the memories flooded in. At the time, he’d tried to put Alison’s hostility towards their daughter down to post-natal depression. All these years later, it still sickened him.

‘You never wanted her anyway, did you?’ he went on furiously. ‘Children get in the way, don’t they? No one was supposed to get in the way of your perfect life.’

The only thing that surprised Steve was that he’d put up with her for so long. And why? Because he loathed conflict. Because he hadn’t wanted his parents to know that he’d made the biggest mistake of his life in marrying her. Nor had he wanted anyone’s pity. Or to appear a failure in the eyes of that hypocrite, Father David Gosling. Dear old Uncle David.

‘I narrowly escaped being sent down for murder,’ he reminded her, ‘and, while I saw how little that meant to you, it meant one hell of a lot to me. It gave me time to think. It made me appreciate my freedom. And that’s all I have now, my freedom. I’m free to live where I choose. Free to take life as it comes. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

He walked upstairs and carried down two holdalls. The rest of his stuff was already in the back of his car, along with Cally’s bed, blankets and toys.

Alison was standing at the bottom of the stairs, arms folded across a chest that was rising and falling rapidly as she took each furious breath.

‘You can’t fucking leave me,’ she screamed at him. ‘I won’t stand for it!’

‘Watch me!’

*    *    *

DS Grace Warne could have done without working on a Saturday. Her favourite shoe shop was having a pre-Christmas sale and she would have liked to have been first in the queue.

But work she must. She enjoyed her job, she liked her boss and she got along well with her colleagues. Well, most of them. Also, she considered this area of Lancashire as her patch and no way would she rest while someone out there thought he could get the better of her.

So this Saturday morning found her driving out to Longman Drive and the home of Mrs Hollingsworth. She had DS Fletcher for company, and they had the grand total of eight photographs for inspection.

The trouble with police mugshots was that everyone looked guilty. Even Mother Theresa would have looked like a mass murderer if she’d ever had the misfortune to be photographed at the nick. And since they’d been taken, the subjects could have dyed their hair, grown beards and picked up scars.

‘We’ll call on Lauren Cole’s flatmate after we’ve done Mrs H,’ Fletch said. ‘I know she claims she never saw Lauren with anyone, but she must have. These might jog her memory.’

‘Good idea.’

As soon as she stopped the car, Grace took the photos from Fletch and shuffled them.

‘What are you doing?’

‘If Jill’s right – and I know it all sounds like a load of crap, but I bet she is – my money goes on him as our likeliest candidate.’ She pointed to the photo of the young man now in the middle of the stack.

‘Why?’

Grinning, she tapped the side of her nose. ‘Come on. Let’s hope she can recognize someone.’

Mrs Hollingsworth must have been watching out for them because the front door was opened before they reached it.

‘Come in,’ she said.

‘Thank you. And thank you for seeing us,’ Grace added. ‘We do appreciate it.’

‘That’s all right,’ she replied, ‘but like I said on the phone, I’m not sure I’ll be able to recognize the young man. As I told the Chief Inspector, I only saw him once in town. I might have seen him visit Mr Cole’s house with Lauren, but I can’t be sure of that.’

‘That’s OK,’ Grace assured her. ‘We’d still like you to take a look.’

She hunted for her glasses and Grace took the opportunity to look around a sitting room that was crammed with junk. Christmas decorations vied for space with china animals. It resembled an Oxfam shop that was in dire need of expansion.

When Mrs Hollingsworth had found a pair of worryingly thick spectacles, Grace handed over the photos.

‘Take your time,’ Fletch said.

Grace watched the woman closely as she discarded first one, then two, then three.

At the fourth, she stopped. She carried the mugshot to the window and examined it closely in a better light.

‘This is him,’ she announced. ‘This is the person I saw in town with young Lauren.’

Grace could have punched the air with joy.

‘You’re sure? You don’t want to look at the rest?’

‘I’m sure. Yes, this is definitely him.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Hollingsworth. You’ve been a great help.’

‘I’m not sure if it’s the same one who came to the house with her, though,’ she reminded them. ‘I couldn’t really say what he looked like because he was wearing a hood.’

‘That’s OK. Thank you,’ Grace said again.

If it hadn’t been so icy, Grace would have skipped down the drive to the car.

‘OK, fez up,’ Fletch said, fastening his seat belt. ‘Why did you think it was him?’

‘Just a stab in the dark, Fletch.’

She fired the engine and drove down Longman Drive. But she felt sorry for Fletch and knew she had to explain.

‘Maurice Temple, the one in the photo? He’s twenty-one and has been in trouble for nicking stuff since the age of twelve. Oh, and his mother died,’ she added.

‘So?’

‘So she was at the same hospital as Lauren Cole’s mum. They died within a couple of weeks of each other. Both had breast cancer.’ She grinned at him. ‘Looks like Jill was on to something after all.’

As a rule, Colin Pierce liked these jobs. Whenever a new tenancy agreement was signed on one of the flats, Colin had to check the electrics. It was a doddle. The estate had been built twelve years ago, a mix of flats, or luxury apartments as they were called, town houses, and small detached homes. The wiring was relatively new so he only had to take a quick look, sign the forms to confirm that the necessary regulations were satisfied and send in his invoice. Wesley Housing Group were prompt payers so it was money for old rope.

This appointment had been arranged through the landlord.

‘Can you do it early morning?’ Jackson had asked. ‘It’s just that the tenant is going to be out and about this week so he wants it out of the way.’

‘Nine o’clock on Monday morning?’ Colin suggested.

‘Great stuff. Thanks for that. And you’ll let me know if there are any problems?’

‘Of course.’

There wouldn’t be any problems though. The properties had been built by established reputable builders. No corners had been cut. The wiring, like everything else, was spot on.

It was 8.55 a.m. when Colin rang the bell and waited for the security phone to crackle into life.

All was silent so he rang it again.

This was typical. Tenants wanted the early appointments and half the time they weren’t even out of bed.

Colin stabbed a finger at the bell for a third time.

This job would take fifteen minutes tops, and that included filling in the paperwork, but if he couldn’t gain access to the property, he would be putting in a bill for time wasting.

‘Come on,’ he muttered, ‘open the bloody door!’

He read the notes on his clipboard and realized that for once he had a phone number for the tenant.

Back in his van, his gaze not leaving the front door, he called the number from his mobile. There was no answer. It was possible, he supposed, that the tenant was in the shower and unable to hear either bell or phone.

The dashboard clock read 8.58. Colin decided to smoke a cigarette and then try again. He had a busy day ahead and he didn’t want to have to call back later.

The nine o’clock news came on the radio when he’d smoked half of it. Knowing his luck, he’d be moaned at for being late now.

He tossed the butt out of the window and left his van.

Three times he rang the bell, but no one answered.

It was the ground floor apartment so he walked round the back of the block and peered in through the kitchen window. No one was there. He couldn’t see signs of movement through the bathroom’s frosted glass either.

When he looked into the lounge, the first thing he saw was a dog. Odd that it wasn’t barking.

The second thing he saw—

‘Bloody Nora!’

He ran back to his van, grabbed his phone and punched in 999.

‘I need an ambulance,’ he gasped out. ‘And the police, too!’