A Cry in the Night (19 page)

He stopped and went back over the file. A boy’s head repeatedly smashed against a kitchen sink. He found the pathologist’s report and checked it out. The sink had been full of water. A small amount had been found in the boy’s lungs. The realisation shook within him: she had tried to drown him first. Clearly he had put up too much of a fight so she resorted to bludgeoning him to death.

A shower. Water again. Sam looked through the reports, looking for the connection, looking for water. The girl died while having a shower. But she was strangled, suffocated to death. He reread the files again and again, but there was nothing more.

He stopped there and put the pen down. He ran his finger down the list. Women in a position of trust, brutally killing young children. Water was a key factor, though there was no obvious reason why. And each time, their cases were defended by Helen Seymour QC.

Outside his office, two detectives raced past, talking excitedly about a case. They spoke high and fast, laughing with the adrenalin of the moment. Sam watched them and felt trapped behind his desk. All of these cases had been high-profile. They’d created hours of media coverage and reams of press print – the gruesome facts, latest speculation, debates about the monsters in our society, it ran and ran.
The internet had been ablaze with interest. But despite a geographical link of sorts (the North-West) no one seemed to feel there was any real connection. The fever eventually passed. And Sam was now the only one still watching. The connection wasn’t just Helen Seymour. It was water. And it was women.

Sam wrote another word on the piece of paper: ‘Witches’. Then he crossed it out and ran his pen heavily across the word until it was completely illegible. That bloody lake, he thought to himself. Those fells, that cold water and those silly, ancient fairytales. He was annoyed with himself for considering such nonsense. Why write it down? Why even think it?

He turned the other way and stood up, craning his neck to see out of the tiny window that offered some light and a tawdry view out onto the city. From where he stood, Sam could see cranes and church spires, poking up above dull lines of red tiles. The sky was a uniform grey, low and flat. Sam remembered the thick clouds that soared so high above the fells and the way the sun would make the lake change colour from grey to blue to gold. He remembered the water. He remembered Arthur Downing’s body and he worried about Lily, maybe somewhere in the deep. Waiting for him.

Zoe caught Sam trying to slip out of the back entrance and she grabbed his arm playfully, telling him she was coming along for the ride. Uniform were working themselves up into a lather over the vandalism case, so she was glad to be away from them. She also wanted to keep an eye on him.

They pushed past a stream of PCs who came flooding out of their vans, laden with heavy riot equipment that was battered and scarred, and found Sam’s car near the gates. Soon they were out and away. Zoe glanced back at the station in the car’s side mirror as they set off: a dirty-grey monolith of concrete, squatting miserably amongst its polite neighbours.

‘So where’s the adventure?’

‘Just checking through the details of an old case. One that got away.’

‘I didn’t think you ever let them get away.’

‘It wasn’t my case,’ he replied, and she laughed before
he told her the details. A boy who had his head caved in on a kitchen sink. His aunt had been arrested for his murder. One of those damn files, she thought.

They drove for about forty minutes, finally stopping in a middle-class suburban street. It had trees planted tastefully in the pavement and semi-detached houses that cared about their small front gardens. The parked cars were oversize family models with bumper stickers warning of ‘baby on board!’ and there were Neighbourhood Watch stickers on view in several ground-floor windows.

Sam pointed Zoe towards a house in the middle, a forlorn ‘For Sale’ sign hanging at an angle outside.

Sam had a set of keys and he let them in. The house had been stripped bare – the parents had taken their other child, a daughter, far away – and there was, of course, no sign now whatsoever that anything untoward had happened here. But still, when they entered the kitchen, Zoe’s eyes went straight to the sink, and then to the floor, as though she expected to spot some evidence of the crime. There was, of course, nothing.

Sam walked around the room slowly. Zoe watched him go to the window and stare out.

‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

‘There were no witnesses to the case,’ he replied.

‘None?’

‘Not one.’

She went and stood next to him, and together they looked out at the overgrown garden at the back of the house. At the bottom was a small child’s swing. The wind caught it and blew it ever so slightly, as though a ghost were riding it.

Behind the garden – which was only ten, maybe fifteen metres long – were other houses, flats, most likely. Sam and Zoe scanned the windows. Most were glazed with opaque glass: bathrooms or toilets. It was clear that nearly all the flats followed the same design and layout and that the views were on the other side of the building. But one window caught both their eyes. It was larger than the others, a study or sitting room – you could just make out the shelves and bookcases. It stared straight down into the kitchen. If someone had been in there, they would have seen everything.

They walked over to the next street and rang on the appropriate bell. After what seemed an age, a thin, crackly voice answered the intercom. A man.

‘Yes?’

‘Police. I’m sorry to bother you, it’s nothing to worry about, but we’d like to ask you a few questions, please.’

There was always a pause when you told them who you were. Always that intake of breath and panic, no matter how innocent. Zoe waited for it, got it, and then heard a small mutter before the electronic buzz on the heavy front door let them in.

Sam and Zoe took the lift to the third floor and found the front door open and a small, bespectacled man in his fifties waiting for them. He wore a dull shirt, cardigan and neat brown trousers. He held a battered book in his hands and smiled nervously.

‘Hello, sir,’ Sam said, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Sam Taylor, this is my colleague Detective Constable Zoe Barnes.’

They put on their most polite faces and showed the man their warrant cards, which he inspected carefully. Satisfied, he introduced himself as Arnold Heath and led them into the main room; a straightforward rectangular space which was lined, wall-to-wall, with shelves and books. It smelt a little musty. Arnold, a slightly effete fellow, explained that he worked as a lecturer at the university.

Zoe looked at him and then at Sam. The difference couldn’t have been more stark.

There was a comfortable armchair positioned by the window. The cops went and stood by it and saw how it afforded a perfect view into the kitchen opposite. But when Sam asked Arnold whether or not he’d seen anything, they were disappointed to hear that he had only moved into the flat one month after the murder had taken place.

While Arnold fidgeted with excitement, no doubt keen to embellish the adventure for when he later saw his colleagues, Zoe found that she was watching Sam more than him. As her boss questioned and drew polite, slightly
breathless answers from the academic, so she saw the way his eyes would always flick back to the window, to the flat opposite, to the sink. It was as though the crime was calling to him.

Zoe stared out of the window herself. The sun was shining into the kitchen and it reflected off the sink’s taps. She remembered the paper’s excitement at the gore and the now iconic photograph of the boy and aunt together, him wrapped tight in her embrace. In the photograph, it looked as though she was strangling him and the press had delighted in the misinterpretation.

Sam pushed on until Arnold had nothing more useful to offer. They took details of the estate agent who had helped let out the flat and excused themselves. They left him hopping with excitement at his proximity to a real murder. Zoe wished he’d seen it for real, then his ardour would die quickly enough.

Arnold waved to them as they got in the lift, hot and excited by their visit. Once the lift doors closed, Zoe sighed.

‘Dead end.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe? But he wasn’t there.’

‘He arrived a month afterwards, he said. Say someone moved out, they have to give a month’s notice, right?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Zoe saw where he was heading.

‘So if they gave a month’s notice, then they’d have left
immediately after the murder. What do you make of that timing?’

*

The estate agent was a boorish man called Robin Shepherd who was extremely keen to get the police out of his office for fear of losing custom. He found the details of the previous tenant and handed as much over as he could to get them out of the way. They had a name, bank details, references and a mobile phone number. The man’s name was Richard Howell. Sam didn’t budge when the agent tried to move him towards the exit and instead rang the mobile number he’d been given. The line was dead. They also had no forwarding address. The agent tersely described Mr Howell as a problem. He had often been late on rent, had let the property run down and had then disappeared without any explanation.

‘That’s all I’ve got, I’m afraid,’ he said, his hands stuffed deep into his red corduroy trousers.

Zoe sighed. This was going nowhere.

‘So he just vanished?’ asked Sam.

‘Yup.’

‘So how did you get the house on the market so quickly?’ he asked. ‘You couldn’t just let it unless he’d given you formal notice, surely.’

‘Well obviously he did.’ Mr Shepherd turned and walked over to his desk and made a show of flicking through papers. But Sam didn’t move. He seemed to grow, standing there,
dead still in the centre of that office, saying nothing, just waiting. Eventually the agent looked up. He saw Sam staring at him and faltered, blustered something about checking some more and came back with a few more details – a phone call on behalf of the tenant saying that he was leaving and to put the house on the market with immediate effect. Sam pressed for the written confirmation that would be needed for such a request, and the agent, rather tetchy at this point, disappeared into the back room again to retrieve the required papers.

Zoe wondered why Sam was pushing like this, but she was also impressed by his actions. She’d have let this one go by now. But not her boss. It’s what made him better than all the others and why she loved to work with him.

The agent returned with the forms, making it clear that he had nothing more to offer. He handed the papers to Zoe, avoiding Sam. They thanked him graciously, just to rub in how unhelpful he’d been, and left.

Sam took the papers off her once they were in the car and flicked through them.

‘What a dick,’ Zoe said. ‘I bet he drives a bloody Range Rover.’

Sam wasn’t listening. His eyes were locked on the last page of the papers.

‘What have you got?’

He held the paper up for her to read. It was a simple
letter, typed, asking for all post to be forwarded to a specific address. The address was the legal chambers of a certain Helen Seymour.

‘She hid a witness,’ Sam replied.

‘Bloody hell,’ Zoe whispered. ‘No, hang on, we don’t know that for sure.’

‘No? How else did her company’s letter paper end up in that estate agent’s hand?’

It was odd. It was undeniably contentious.

‘Maybe, boss,’ she said. ‘But even if she did, how the hell would we find the witness to prove it?’

Sam didn’t reply to this, he was too busy flicking through the papers again. Zoe could feel the heat burning off him. Usually she was the same. They were like bloodhounds chasing a newly laid scent. But this one was becoming special for him without an obvious reason why.

‘I want you to find out who’s paying the legal bills on Sarah Downing’s case,’ he said out of nothing.

‘Okay,’ she said, and he turned the key in the ignition and drove off fast. She watched him as he crunched through the gears, his mind spinning in odd directions. When they got back to the station, they were separated when some of her mates cornered her, trying to cajole her into taking part in a team run for charity, an extreme race involving mud and river crossings. Zoe was up for it, of course, but when she finally caught up with Sam, she found that he’d closed the
door and was, once again, poring over the files. Checking, circling, cross-referencing. She watched him through the glass for a while. But this time, she didn’t go in.

Sam worked late on the files. He found out little more, but absorbing all the details helped him secure them in his mind. He lost track of time in doing so and returned home later than planned.

He could hear the blaring noise as he walked up to the front door and stepped inside to find his eldest daughter, Issy, doing karaoke with two friends in the sitting room. They screamed hysterically into a tinny microphone and bounced up and down on the sofa, wearing tiny jean shorts and low-cut T-shirts – wannabe popstars. Not so mini, Sam thought to himself as he noticed the way they danced; scarily sexual and adult.

‘Hi, Mr Taylor,’ yelled Marie cheerfully as she ran her hands through her hair as an actress might do. She was fourteen, Amazonian, and had a cheery, youthful exuberance without which she could easily have passed for nineteen. Sam waved back as enthusiastically as he could. The other girl, Susan,
also waved but didn’t stop singing the inane pop tune. Issy caught her father’s eye and then blanked him. She was sporting a nose-ring and he wondered whether it was a ‘present’ for him. If he shouted at her, he’d annoy her, but if he said nothing he’d annoy her more. She was pretty, a little heavy, and her clothes looked uncomfortably tight. Sam decided to bite his tongue and went into the kitchen, shutting the door, which did little to muffle the music and girls’ voices. He remembered Issy when she was smaller, when she would run to him and cuddle him. Her face had been so open, her eyes so wide and expectant. Time had moved on.