Bad Moon Rising (#1 - D.I. Paolo Storey Crime Series) (23 page)

CC whistled. “He’s not going to like that, sir.”

Paolo nodded. “I know, which is why I’m going upstairs to discuss this with the chief. I am not going to put my head in line for the guillotine without first letting Willows know so that he can arrange for a basket to catch it.”

***

Paolo and Dave spoke in whispers while waiting for Roberts to finish with a client. Once Paolo had explained the DNA possibilities, Willows himself had picked up the phone to organise the meeting and had conveyed the need for it far more tactfully than Paolo would have been able to manage.

It was the first time Paolo had been to Matthew’s place of work and he was surprised by its lack of ostentation. He’d been expecting something plush and expensively decorated, rather along the lines of the penthouse they’d visited, but it seemed as though the workplace persona and the private one were completely separate identities. The waiting area was basic to say the least. All that was offered in the way of decor was a line of padded upright chairs against one wall, a couple of side tables holding an assortment of tired looking magazines, and two tall plants, both in need of some TLC.

Matthew’s secretary was also very different to what Paolo had expected from her voice over the phone. The female he’d spoken to had sounded young, maybe in her early twenties. The woman sitting opposite them, typing so fast her fingers were a blur, couldn’t be a day younger than sixty. Her iron grey curls didn’t have a hair out of place and her face was devoid of any make up. From a distance she looked formidable – capable and without charm – but when they had arrived for the appointment she’d apologised on Matthew’s behalf for being delayed with a smile so sweet that she’d instantly been transformed into everyone’s favourite granny. And, without doubt, hers was the youthful voice Paolo had heard on the phone.

His mobile rang and the sudden noise breaking the silence of the office made him jump. He checked the display and saw Katy’s name. It wasn’t like her to call during school hours. He flipped the phone open, hoping she wasn’t calling to tell him she’d done something dreadful.

“Hi, kiddo, I’m about to go into a meeting, so can’t stay on long, what’s up?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I need you to find out for me.”

“Well, that really makes sense,” he said, relief that she wasn’t in trouble making him feel lightheaded. “You want to give me a few more details?”

“It’s Valerie. Something’s happened to her, but I don’t know what.”

“Firstly, who is Valerie? Oh, hang on, is that-?”

“Yes, she’s the one I told you about. She hasn’t been in school since the middle of last week and whenever anyone asks a teacher where she is they go all funny and won’t answer.”

“Maybe she’s sick, Katy. It’s not really any of our business, now is it?”

“No, but, Dad, you don’t understand. I haven’t told you the rest. Father Gregory has been sent away. What do you think of that?”

“What do you mean? Sent away where? Katy, I’m going to get called in to see someone any minute now, so tell me quickly what you think is going on.”

“That’s just it, Dad. I don’t know where Father Gregory has gone or why, but I’m worried about Valerie. It might be something to do with her, mightn’t it? Can you find out if she’s okay? Her full name is Valerie Simmons. Please, Dad.”

Paolo couldn’t resist the pleading note in her voice. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

The phone rang on the secretary’s desk.

“Katy, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you if I find out anything. Okay? Love you,” he said and closed his mobile.

The secretary picked up her phone and murmured a few words Paolo couldn’t catch. She stood up and smiled at them.

“Mr Roberts will see you now,” she announced and went across to the only other door in the room apart from the one they’d entered by. She opened the door and announced Paolo and Dave, holding it open until they’d gone inside and then she closed it quietly behind them.

Paolo wondered what had happened to Matthew’s client, but then saw his office had another door. Presumably that one also led to the corridor and enable Roberts to show clients out without them having to pass whoever might be in the waiting room.

“Please, sit down. I hope Jennifer looked after you.”

“Yes, she did, thank you.”

“She’s amazing. Did you know she was my dad’s secretary? Oh, no, of course, you wouldn’t have any reason to know that. I inherited her with the practice and thank God I did. I dread to think how I’ll ever replace her when she finally decides to retire. But you didn’t come here to discuss my secretary. Chief Constable Willows says it’s to do with my DNA sample throwing up an anomaly. Something to do with a possible family connection?”

He raised his voice on the final sentence and Paolo realised the moment he’d been dreading had arrived.

“Hmm, yes,” he said. “But it’s not just any family connection. Your DNA matches partially with our killer’s. It’s almost certain that the DNA we recovered from a series of murdered prostitutes belongs to a sibling of yours.”

“But I don’t have any,” Matthew said. “There must be some mistake in the test procedure.”

Paolo leaned forward. “That’s what we thought, but the test results have been checked. Is it possible that either of your parents might have...”

He left the unspoken words dangling in midair. Maybe if Matthew himself joined the dots he might not be so ready to explode. Paolo watched his face, waiting for him to start chucking threats of lawsuits around, but instead, incredibly, Matthew laughed. A genuine laugh of pure enjoyment.

“Which one did you have in mind, Paolo? You met both my parents. Can you really see either of them providing me with a sibling and keeping quiet about it?”

Paolo was stunned. Whatever reaction he’d been fearing, this wasn’t it.

Matthew still looked amused. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you, or at my parents, I’m not sure why I found it funny. I suppose it must be a reaction to shock. You see, you’ve just told me something I didn’t know, which is that I have a sibling. Now I’ll tell you something that you didn’t know – my parents are not my biological parents. I was adopted as a child. So, whoever this mysterious sibling might be, he isn’t a product of my parents’ mucky past.”

“God, Matthew, I had no idea. In fact, I’ve always thought you looked like your father, which just goes to show that we see what we think should be there.”

Matthew smiled. “Knowing how efficient my mother was, she most probably picked me because I had the right colouring and would fit the family.”

Dave had been sitting silently, but now took out his notebook. “Do you know anything about your natural mother, Mr Roberts? We need to trace the person whose DNA has been left on the bodies and the only lead we have is through you.”

Matthew shook his head. “I’ve known I was adopted since I was about ten or eleven, but funnily enough have never wanted to find out who my mother was or why she gave me up. I suppose it’s because I had a very fortunate upbringing. I didn’t need to find out where I came from because I’ve always been happy with who I am.”

Paolo stood up. “We’re going to have to look into your adoption records to find out if your birth mother had other children. If she didn’t, then we’ll have to try to track down your biological father. You do understand that I have no choice about this, don’t you? It isn’t part of any plan to cause you problems in any way whatsoever.”

Matthew sighed. “Yes, I realise that.”

“I suppose the next question is, do you want to know what we find out? I mean, if we discover anything about your birth family, would you like the information?”

“I don’t know, Paolo, and that’s the truth. You’re saying a sibling I didn’t even know I had might turn out to be a serial killer. That’s not easy to take. Give me a few days to process what you’ve told me and I’ll let you know if I want to hear all the grisly details of how he ended up as he did.”

Paolo nodded. “One last thing before we go. Do you know where the adoption took place? Do you have any paperwork, any records that might help us?”

Matthew smiled and picked up the phone. “Jennifer, would you come in here, please?”

Within moments the door opened and Matthew’s secretary came in. “Jennifer, please find whatever paperwork is available to do with my adoption and make copies for these gentlemen.”

“Certainly, Matthew, I’ll get on to it at once. Your next appointment is waiting for you.”

As she left the room, Matthew stood up. “If you wouldn’t mind going out through that door, I’d appreciate it. It gives my clients a degree of privacy if they don’t have to pass each other coming in and out. Jennifer will send the copies of whatever she has on record over to you later today.”

Matthew held out his hand. Paolo shook it, feeling as if he’d trespassed on private ground, which in a way he had. It couldn’t have been easy for someone like Matthew to give access to his personal life and allow others to claw through it.

“We’ll be as discreet as we can, Matthew, but unfortunately this relationship is bound to come out at some stage. You might want to think about how you’ll deal with the press when the time comes.”

Matthew nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said and gave a wry smile. “I imagine it’s going to be very different being questioned about this on television compared to the normal stuff I do. That’s always supposing anyone would be interested in my connection to the case.”

Paolo didn’t say anything, but knew deep inside that the press would be all over it as soon as they got wind of Matthew’s family involvement. The flip side of being a media darling came when something happened that you didn’t want splashed on the front page and you discovered that you were big news for all the wrong reasons.

C
HAPTER 
E
IGHTEEN

Paolo looked back over the last few days, reflecting how weird things had been since discovering Matthew’s adopted past. Matthew’s secretary had been as efficient as he’d promised she would be and copies of the files had arrived within a couple of hours of Paolo and Dave leaving Matthew’s office. Dave had been set the task of following up on the information contained in the photocopied pages. He’d been hard at work chasing every lead and had phoned nearly an hour ago to say that he was on his way in.

Paolo looked at his watch for the tenth time and seethed with frustration. Surely to God Dave should have been here by now? He was about dial Dave’s number to chase him up when the door opened and he came in clutching a file. From the grin on his face, it looked as though he’d won the lottery.

“Morning, sir. Sorry I kept you waiting but I got waylaid on the way here. I received a call with a bit more information to add to the rest,” he said holding the file aloft like a trophy.

“Judging by the Cheshire Cat grin I think you must have some good news for me. What have you found out? Please tell me that Matthew Roberts has a brother who looks just like him, you’ve tracked him down and he’s in the cells waiting to be put away for a long stretch.”

Dave sat down and grinned across at Paolo. “Not quite as good as that, sir, but you’re going to like what I’ve found out so far. That’s for sure.”

“Great. I like good news on a Wednesday. It makes the week go faster.” He waited, drumming his fingers on the desk while Dave sat silently reading from the file. “Come on, Dave, don’t keep me in suspense. What have you got for me?”

Dave looked up from the file. “Hang on, sir. I want to make sure I give you the pieces in the right order. It will make more sense if I tell it to you chronologically.” He read for a few seconds longer and then closed the file. “Right, here goes. Let’s start with Matthew Roberts. He was adopted just before he was three years old. I have no idea whether or not the Roberts’ lived up in the Liverpool area at the time, but I couldn’t find any records of them doing so. It’s possible there might have been something suspect about the adoption, because the records are, to put it bluntly, a bit strange. Not all the information about the mother and her background had been filled in, but the adoption took place in... you’re going to love this, sir... Liverpool.”

Paolo smiled. “And so we come back to the city where we believe the murders started.”

“Wait, sir, it gets better. The natural mother was...”

Paolo sat up straighter in his chair. He knew what was coming. It had to be... “Catherine Andrews, the Liverpool victim.”

Dave looked deflated and Paolo regretted saying the name out loud.

“Sorry, Dave. It just seemed to fit. It brings us full circle in a way. Tell me the rest. I promise to keep quiet and listen. Unless, of course, you tell me something truly astounding.”

“Okay, I’ll hold you to that. You’re right in your guess about the birth mother, of course. The woman was a prostitute called Catherine Andrews, but she wasn’t on the game when her boys were born. At least, there’s no record of it. She was married to a local thug who used to knock her around according to the court records.”

“Court records?” Paolo asked. “For what?”

“For the case against her when she was on trial for murder. She stabbed her husband in a drunken rage, although to be fair, her defence was that she killed him to protect herself from yet another beating. The jury wasn’t convinced, but that might have been because she didn’t stop even after the husband was dead. There were twenty-one stab wounds on the body; most of them inflicted long after the husband was in no fit state to fight back. Anyway, they found her guilty and she was sent to prison. She ended up serving fifteen years. She had no family that anyone could discover so her children were taken into care. There was less than a year between them. The youngest, Sean, was just a baby at the time and Matthew wasn’t even two.”