A Reason to Kill (24 page)

The only thing the two dwellings had in common, Mac noted, was the lack of personal stuff. No pictures, no photographs. There was a car magazine on the coffee table but an absence of books or even music. A sizeable television dominated the corner of the room and the sofa had been angled, the better for the viewer to recline, but the handful of scattered DVDs on the floor were the only indicator of personality or interest.

‘I hear the boy's done a runner.'

‘He has. Mr Parker, you were waiting outside the school. When challenged you were abusive.'

‘Some woman asking questions,' he said. ‘None of her damn business, was it?'

‘She's a teacher, Mr Parker. If she sees a stranger loitering outside of her school, then it becomes her business.'

He shrugged. ‘I wanted to see my boy.'

‘And if he didn't want to see you?'

Parker barked a laugh. ‘Course he would. What boy wouldn't want to see his dad? It's those other two, poisoned his mind against me.'

‘Your wife and daughter?'

‘What wife? She was never a wife. Useless bit of … And as for that other one.' He touched the scar on his face. ‘Little bitch. She gave me this.'

‘Karen?'

‘Dead right.' Parker sat forward in his chair and pulled the crisp white shirt out from his trousers. Displayed for Mac's perusal a second scar that ran from just below his ribs and disappeared behind the waistband of his trousers. ‘This one too. I want her brought in for it. Arrested, you got that?'

This was taking a bizarre turn. ‘Mr Parker, when is your daughter supposed to have assaulted you?'

‘Four year or more ago. Time I got out of hospital, she and that other one had long gone, taken my boy with them. Poisoned his mind against me.'

‘I rather think you assaulting his mother might have done that,' Mac said slowly. ‘Four years ago. That would be the last time you put her in hospital, wouldn't it?'

Parker got to his feet and glowered over Mac. ‘She press charges, did she? She take me to court over it? No, because the bitch deserved all she bloody got.'

‘Sit down, Mr Parker,' Mac said. Kendal had risen to his feet, reached for his phone.

‘I want to see my boy and I want her punished.'

‘You'll leave your family alone, Mr Parker,' Mac said.

‘You threatening me?' That bark of a laugh again. ‘Bloody funny that is.'

‘I'm warning you. Keep away.'

‘Or what? You'll make me, will you? You and whose army? I don't need your help to find them any road.'

‘And are you threatening a police officer?' Kendal asked quietly.

Parker turned ice-blue eyes upon him. ‘No, like the man said, just delivering a warning.'

Mac's phone rang, breaking the tension. He flinched as the shrill note cut through him, but he hoped no one noticed. ‘McGregor.' He listened to the news that George and Paul had been found, safe and well. He schooled his expression not to change, not to let Parker senior know, though the delay, Mac realized, would be small enough. He was glad that he'd acted upon Karen's fear and moved them from the house, but didn't figure that his flat would be safe for long. He stood up.

‘Goodbye, Mr Parker,' he said. ‘We can see ourselves out.'

‘Nasty bugger,' Kendal declared once they were outside. ‘Sooner we get something concrete on him the better.'

‘Just concrete would do,' Mac smiled wryly as Kendal laughed at the bad joke. ‘His son's turned up,' he said. ‘And the other boy.'

‘Both OK?'

Mac nodded.

‘Well that's a small relief. What do you reckon to what he said?'

‘That was news to you too?'

Kendal nodded. ‘Have you met the daughter? What do you make of her?'

Mac considered. ‘Mature, capable, very sensible. Do I think he could be telling the truth about what she did? Maybe. I really wouldn't want to say.'

‘Deserved all he got if you ask me. I'll have a go at tracking down the hospital records.'

‘Thanks,' Mac said. ‘Look, this is probably not related but …' He explained about the lights, the cave and what Rina had found there.

Kendal laughed. ‘Sounds like you've got yourself a resident Miss Marple,' he said. ‘The coastguard has reported odd activity all along this stretch of coast. Nothing conclusive. Look, tell you what, get Miss Marple's evidence to me and I'll put it through to forensics. Not that we could use it, of course; there's the chain of evidence problem for a start. But I think it would be worthwhile taking a look at that cave.'

Mac nodded. He stopped off at Kendal's car and collected the reports Kendal had copied for him, then took his leave. Mac glanced up at the third-floor flat before getting into his car. Edward Parker, glass in hand, was looking down at him.

I
t was five o'clock on the Tuesday afternoon when Mac drove back to Frantham. He'd been told that the boys were at the police station, having been reunited with their families, fed and watered, and checked out by the doctor. Paul had come in with his parents and George had Karen there to protect his interest.

‘They want to talk to you,' Eden told him. ‘They don't want to confess their all to anyone else. Seems your friend Rina put them up to it.'

‘Rina? What's she got to do with it?'

‘Oh.' Eden hadn't realized Mac didn't know. ‘She and that lodger of hers, Timothy Brandon, they were out with the search teams.'

‘Right,' Mac said. ‘I'll be ten minutes.'
Definitely a Miss Marple clone
, he thought.
Or should that be Lydia Marchant?

Passing the Dowling house he noted that most of the searchers had now departed, their numbers replaced by television cameras and local reporters all busy staking their claim to a scrap of verge, fenced in behind a cordon of traffic cones and tape. The road had been closed for much of the day, traffic facing a ten-mile diversion through half a dozen villages and back on to the coast road. The road was partly opened now, with uniformed officers checking the cars that wanted access. Andy, on point duty, saw Mac and waved him through. The press, bored with the lack of action and alerted to Mac's known status, craned forward to see just who he was. Mac was grateful for the cordon, flimsy as it was. Cameras captured his image for the morning news and the locals, knowing him from the Freer murder, acknowledged him, gaining themselves a little kudos in the process.

Mac parked up behind the police station, squeezing his car between a Range Rover and a scientific support unit van. Usually there was his car, the patrol car and Eden's motorbike installed in the tiny yard and it felt full even then. He opened his door as far as he could and tried to make himself as thin as possible. How, he wondered, was everyone going to manage to get out? There wasn't room to swing a moggie, let alone turn a car.

Sergeant Baker handed him a cup of Eden's coffee as he came in through the rear door. ‘Saw you drive into the yard,' he said. ‘The boss said you'd need this.'

‘Thanks, I do.' When had he last slept?

‘Upstairs,' Frank said. ‘Everyone's waiting on you.'

The interview rooms had not been much used since Mac had been at Frantham. In fact, the smaller of the two was used for storage and was packed with box files. The two boys, along with their guardians, Eden and an officer Mac did not know, were waiting in the one remaining, sitting silent around a Formica-topped table that looked like a relic from a 1950s café.

Karen spared him a small, tight smile. The unknown officer was disclosed as DI Newman, the new officer in charge.

Mac sat down in the only vacant chair. ‘Hi, George. Paul, we met when I came to your house. Do you remember?'

Paul nodded sullenly.

‘I've discussed things with DI Newman,' Eden said quietly, his tone somewhat chilly, Mac thought. ‘He's agreed with me there's no need to interview the boys separately at this stage. They're not about to try and pull the wool, are you, boys?'

George shook his head. Paul swallowed hard and just stared at Mac. The tape was started and those present listed. It sounded like a three ring circus, Mac thought. ‘Now,' he said gently. ‘Suppose we begin with Sharon Bates's cider.'

It took time to coax their story from them and Mac wished more than once that Paul's parents weren't there. Paul would have found it easier without their shocked silences and horrified exclamations. Karen held George's hand tight, as though scared he'd try to run away again, but she stayed calm and quiet. But then, Mac thought, she already knew all this, had already absorbed much of the shock.

George helped Paul through the early part of their story but by the time he had reached his account of the beating he had received from Mark Dowling, he was effectively on his own. Mrs Robinson began to cry. She didn't stop. Her weeping became an audible backdrop to her son's words but he was speaking more fluently, more determinedly now, and Mac did not want to break the flow by asking her to leave. All he could hear was the sobbing, Paul's words. There was no other sound.

‘I thought he'd break me arm,' Paul said. ‘He'd grabbed me and twisted it up behind me back and then he started thumping me in the ribs and I couldn't breathe and he hit me in the mouth and across the face and me lip was bleeding and me eyes were swelling up. I tried to tell him I'd been lying about the gun. That I never saw no gun. That I'd just lost me nerve, but he just said that liars deserved a beating anyway. He weren't going to stop, no matter what I said.

‘Then he made me go with him to that old lady's house. He said if I didn't go he'd beat up George and me mam, only worse, so they wouldn't be able to tell on him. So I went with him.'

‘You believed him?' DI Newman asked; Mac wanted to tell him to shut up and listen.

‘Yeah, I did.' Paul's face was white, his breathing shallow. He was back there, on that night, scared half to death. ‘He took a hammer from the tin huts where his dad works. I told you, that was where we were. And he smashed the panel in her door. We got in and she was just standing there, in the front room, leaning on her frame and with this statue thing in her hand and Mark said … Mark said, “Where's the gun?” and she said she ain't got no gun. The police took it away. But he didn't want to know. He grabbed that statue thing from her and he hit her with it and she fell down and then he started on wrecking the place and I tried to go to her, but he had a knife in his hand and he told me to stay where I was and then he told me to go upstairs and look and I tried to get out the front door but he came and grabbed me and hit me again.'

That explains the blood on the stairs
, Mac thought. ‘And what happened then, Paul?'

Paul sighed. ‘He dragged me up the stairs and he started wrecking the stuff in the little room and then he pushed me into her bedroom and told me to look there. I didn't know what for. I didn't ask. I started to look through drawers and stuff and then I heard him go back down and I just stopped there, in that room, then when I heard him in the hall again I thought I'd better go back down.'

‘And when you went downstairs?'

Paul flushed bright red and then the colour drained again. Now, Mac noted, his skin was grey, his lips pale. ‘He made me look. He grabbed my arm and he dragged me into the room and he made me look. She was lying there, on the floor near the bed and her head was all bashed in. She was … He said that's what he'd do to me mam if I said anything – and to George and George's mam too.'

Finally, the tears began to flow. He tried to wipe them away but now they'd been released he just could not stem the flow. Eden signalled the end of the interview and then stopped the tape. Mrs Robinson's sobs seemed louder still in the silence. Her son wept silently, sitting quite still, and when Karen reached out and placed his hand as well as George's between her own, he did not pull away.

Instinct to protect
, Mac thought.
Some might say what better reason to kill?

M
ac had finally slept. Rina's tiny spare room was cramped but the bed was comfortable and breakfast something to celebrate, just himself and Tim and Rina at the kitchen table with a full English and a large pot of tea.

Rina had told him how they'd found the boys but had made little comment upon Mac's quietness and reluctance to talk. Tim didn't seem quite awake enough for conversation. Mac was grateful of that. His mind was buzzing and not with pleasant thoughts. Yesterday, at the end of the interrogation, he had suddenly and irrationally
known
that Karen had taken Mark Dowling out of the picture.

He asked himself if the thought would even have crossed his mind if he'd not spoken to Edward Parker that afternoon and heard his accusations.
Was she capable of it?
Kendal had asked, and now more than ever Mac wondered if the answer was yes.

The day's work brought the post-mortem report on Mark Dowling. It had been rushed through late the previous night. Mac studied it but it told him little he did not already know. Someone had hit Dowling a total of seven times. The killing blow had been to the head or possibly to the back of the neck, just where it met the skull. Either would have done it, so which came first was a moot point. Mac thought about it, reading between the lines of the report. His killer could have hit twice in quick succession. One blow while he was standing and the second as he fell. That would make sense. Not, Mac concluded, that it really mattered. The outcome was the same.

The weapon was a pipe or a bat or something similar. It was ridged, at least on some part. Small, parallel indentations showed in two of the wounds.

Mac put the report aside and checked to see what else had come in overnight. He was surprised to find details of Edward Parker's stay in hospital, which had been faxed through to him by Kendal.