Mercy Killing (16 page)

He risked a smile, wary of coming across as a lecherous old pervert who had called the new, young, attractive member of staff into his office so he could stare at her.

‘I’m pleased to hear it. I wanted to check with you that the murder of Albert Woodville was something that you’re all right working on.’

He paused to gauge her reaction. Her expression didn’t change. In fact, he noticed that there seemed to be little behind her eyes at all. She had an empty look and then slowly she moved
her head to nod at him.

‘It’s fine.’

‘That’s it?’ he asked, wanting to hear more. ‘It’s fine?’

‘Yep.’

‘OK then, Gabrielle. I’ll check in with you again, but in the meantime, if this gets too much for you, there’s always another murder, or rape, or kidnap along any time soon, or
even the arson at Norman Husband House. The chances are that at some point, probably this week, I could end up having to put you on another investigation anyway. The point I’m making is,
don’t be afraid to say if the murder of a paedophile is something that you’re uncomfortable with. I’m sure one of the reasons you decided to leave child protection was to get away
from child rapists.’

Once again, he examined her face but failed to find a single spark behind her eyes.

‘Thanks for your time, sir,’ she said as she got up to leave. ‘I’ll let you know if I run into difficulties.’

He focused on his computer screen as she left, not wanting to watch the retreating backside of a beautiful but very weird young woman.

As soon as Jonathan Tey heard his wife leave the house to take their daughter to school, he threw back the bed covers and padded over to the window to make sure the car drove
away with both of them inside.

Working from home two days per week had its advantages, especially today when he wanted no one else to know what he was about to spend his morning doing.

Jonathan reckoned on having about an hour to himself before his wife got back from the school run and the supermarket, giving him just about enough time.

He put on clothes dropped on the floor from the day before and then went out to the landing where he pulled down the loft ladder. Barely waiting for the ladder to come to a stop, he rushed up
the first few rungs, head level with the opening, feeling into blackness until his hands sought out and found what he was after. He grabbed the holdall and flung it onto the landing below. He knew
that his wife wouldn’t miss it. Besides, she was always on at him to throw more junk away and that was exactly what he was about to do. He then continued to grope in the darkness, not wanting
to waste time getting a torch.

Finally, his hand touched the laces of the training shoes he had dumped in the loft in a fit of panic days beforehand, only too eager at the time to hide them from view. Now, he carried the
cheap white trainers back down to the landing and placed them inside the holdall. He pushed the ladder back to its original place, closed the hatch and checked the landing for any sign of cobwebs
or other debris that would give him away to his fastidious wife.

Satisfied that he had covered his rapid ascent and descent, he opened the airing-cupboard and took out the newly washed black socks, black jogging bottoms and black hooded top.

He added them to the bag, ran downstairs and opened the back door.

Jonathan listened for sounds of a car and made sure that his neighbours weren’t about to look over the fence before he took three bricks from a pile stacked feet from his kitchen waiting
to be made into a barbecue.

He added them to the bag, put on his jacket, locked the back door, made a point of making sure that his mobile phone was on the work surface in the kitchen and walked to the front door, holdall
in hand.

Before he stepped outside, he listened again for sounds of a car or anyone about to knock on the door. The previous day it had been hard work keeping his wife and daughter out of the house until
late afternoon, and it had cost him a fortune in food, drink, new clothes and cinema tickets. He wasn’t about to walk straight into the police wanting to ask him questions about where he had
been over the last few days.

Satisfied that the street was empty of detectives, he left the house, attempting to adopt a walk that was somewhere between brisk and purposeful. He had timed it often over the last week and
knew that without a holdall weighed down with bricks it took him eight minutes to get to the seafront.

He stretched his legs out, partly to see if he could knock thirty seconds or so off his time. He told himself that he wanted to see how invigorating the walk could be in the blustery weather,
whereas in truth he wanted to get it over with.

The strength of the wind forced him to keep his jacket done up so as not to catch a chill from the sweat he was breaking into as he strode down one street after another. He knew the route so
well he could do it with his eyes shut, but he was on full alert this morning. The last thing he wanted was to bump into someone he had gone to school with or who was a parent of one of his
daughter’s classmates. He had no time to stop and chat. It would throw his schedule out and, worst of all, they might remember he was walking the streets with a holdall on his way to the
seafront.

The relief hit him when he finally saw the swell of the Channel, heard it rushing up the beach towards him and tasted the salt on his lips.

It was only another two minutes now until he got to the part of the harbour wall he knew would give him the best chance of not being seen.

He dabbed at the perspiration on his forehead, trying to avoid looking as though he was nervous, wanting to give the impression he was simply a man out for a morning stroll.

The nearer he got to his final destination, the more relieved he felt. Soon it would all be over, and he could see grey columns of rain making their way across the water towards him. An
impending downpour would mean fewer people in the harbour, fewer people to remember him or what he was carrying.

After all, it wasn’t every day that someone stood on East Rise’s harbour wall and threw a bag of clothes into the sea.

Jonathan knew that careful planning would be his salvation when the police did knock on his door, and if he was anything, he was careful.

Or so he thought.

Even though Monday should have been DC Sophia Ireland’s day off, she chose to work. She was tired and fancied a lie-in but not only would the money come in handy, but
also she felt guilty about taking her day off when there was so much to do.

She also wanted to keep an eye on Gabrielle.

It wasn’t her responsibility to do so, that fell to the sergeants and ranks above, but they weren’t always aware of what was going on in their incident room, and some decided to
ignore it. Doing nothing was always the easy way out of a problem. It didn’t make it go away.

Sophia had promised Tom that she would go with him to track down Jonathan Tey whom they had been unable to find on the previous day. Several trips to his house and attempts to call him had
failed, so it was their priority today.

Before they went out on their enquiry, Sophia had one or two other things to take care of but she didn’t want anyone to see what she was up to.

She bided her time until everyone was either out on enquiries or had left the incident room to grab a last-minute late breakfast at the canteen. Once she was satisfied she was alone, she made
her way over to Gabrielle’s desk amongst the banks of other empty workspaces.

Seated, she started to feel foolish and that her snooping around another officer’s paperwork was a really low thing to do. She hadn’t got very far when she heard the sound of someone
walking along the corridor to the incident room. Doing the only thing she could think of, she picked the phone up and held the receiver to her ear.

Tom appeared in the doorway and stopped short when he saw where she was sitting.

‘Really?’ was all he said.

She put the phone down and brushed her skirt, her eyes following her hands so she could avoid looking at him.

‘The phone was ringing,’ she said as she walked in the direction of her own desk.

‘I’m not sure whether to find your behaviour amusing or worrying. It’s certainly not normal.’

‘Enough of the psychoanalysing. Shall we find Jonathan Tey?’

They left in silence, Tom wondering if his colleague should have taken the day off and put some distance between herself and the problems that seemed to only exist in her head.

‘It’s not healthy,’ he said to her when they were in the car.

‘I know it’s not, but I can’t sit and do nothing if I feel something’s wrong.’

‘I’ve told you what you should do, speak to someone about it.’

‘I tried to talk to Harry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want him to think that I was telling tales on a colleague, so I told him half of what I feel. I’ve got no proof of
anything.’

‘That’s the thing, Soph, you’ve got no proof of anything, so leave it alone.’

‘You’re right, let’s go and see the elusive Tey.’

Within twenty minutes they pulled up outside a semi-detached house, far enough away from the seafront that parking wasn’t a problem, but close enough for a walk to the restaurants and bars
dotted along the front.

A dark-haired woman in her late thirties was heading from the car on the driveway towards the front door. She glanced round at the diesel car as it came to a stop in front of her house but
walked on towards the property.

It was only as she put the key in the door that she realized the occupants of the green Skoda were following her down her driveway.

With a puzzled look, she stopped and turned towards them.

‘Mrs Tey,’ said Sophia as she held her ID out for inspection. ‘We’re from Major Crime and wondered if we could come in for a minute.’

Elaine Tey’s face had a kind of fascinated horror creeping across it, but all she said was, ‘Is everything all right? I’m not sure what this is about.’

‘It’s really your husband, Jonathan, we wanted to see,’ said Tom. ‘Can we come in and speak to him?’

Her face brightened momentarily as she realized that their business wasn’t with her. She then added, ‘He should be working from home today. Come in and I’ll get him from his
office.’

Many minutes later, the three of them sat at the kitchen table, notepads in front of Tom and Sophia, and her husband’s mobile phone in front of a worried Mrs Tey.

‘I don’t know where he would have gone without his phone,’ she said. ‘It’s very unlike him. I hope everything’s OK. He would have left a note if it was an
emergency. I only went out an hour ago.’

For the fourth time since taking a seat opposite Sophia, Elaine Tey glanced up at the kitchen clock on the wall above the officer’s head.

‘I’m starting to get worried now. Can’t you tell me what you want to see him about?’

Sophia opened her mouth to answer the question but was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening.

Six foot two Jonathan Tey walked into his own kitchen and didn’t look especially pleased to see any of the three people waiting to talk to him.

No sooner had Elaine Tey shown Detective Constable Sophia Ireland and Detective Constable Tom Delayhoyde out of the front door, she turned to her husband with a look that he
knew meant she wasn’t about to be fobbed off with any answer he cared to give.

‘Explain,’ was all she said.

She might have been a foot shorter than him and a slight, petite woman who was normally so placid she bordered on boring, but today she recognized the look of a guilty husband when she saw
it.

‘Laine,’ he said, all open-palmed gestures and head held high, ‘I’ve—’

‘Cut the crap and tell me where you were this morning. I’m not the police. I won’t fall for your lies. What have you been up to?’

‘We need to sit down.’

In truth, he was stalling for time. Jonathan might not always portray the most dedicated husband and father but he knew that his family was the reason he got out of bed in the morning and kept
on going throughout the week, despite what he might have put his wife through in the past.

He walked towards the kitchen table where the police officers had sat for the last three hours, asking all sorts of questions about his whereabouts since Friday, the woman scribbling his answers
down by hand, the other one taking his DNA and fingerprints. All the while, his wife had looked on and said nothing.

By the time he reached the table and pulled out a chair, Jonathan had managed to adopt a neutral expression, or so he thought. He wasn’t kidding his wife of fifteen years.

‘And you can wipe that look off your face too,’ she said as she pulled out a chair for herself in full interrogation mode.

He opened his mouth to say something but she silenced him with a withering look.

‘Talk, Jonathan. Start with why the police were here asking about a murdered sex offender.’

His eyes tried to search out anything in the room that wasn’t his wife’s expression. He was used to being the one in charge, although he recognized that he was only the figurehead
until something went wrong. That was the moment he would claim he shouldn’t be expected to deal with so much on top of his work. Often, it was a mess he had created, such as the time he
insisted it was a good idea to de-ice the back of the fridge-freezer with a carving knife and wouldn’t hear of any other plan. As soon as he pierced the refrigeration unit, he remembered he
had to drop some accounts off at a client’s house and returned home a little after midnight.

By this time, his father-in-law had been round, removed the contents of the freezer, taken the busted unit into the front garden, arranged for its safe collection and ordered a new one to arrive
within twenty-four hours.

Sometimes he failed to plan. It was his only downfall. That and the plan he had hatched with his new ally, Jude Watson.

Perhaps his wife would see a way out onto the other side.

The issue was never going to be as simple as the council coming to take away the problem. If it was that simple, he would have made the call himself. That was how desperate he was; he was even
prepared to clear up his own mess on this occasion.