Murder Ring (A DI Geraldine Steel Mystery) (19 page)

She was adamant she had noticed nothing unusual on Saturday evening, just customers having fun. If anything it had been a fairly quiet night, because it had rained earlier on.

After Katy, Geraldine spoke to a young man called Rafe who told her he was twenty-nine. Sharp featured and neatly dressed, he sat awkwardly on the edge of a chair, fidgeting with his cuffs. In answer to every question he shook his head, his bright eyes never moving from hers.

‘No, I never heard anything strange that night, and I never seen any arguments. There was nothing going on. It was a dull night, not even busy, especially for a Saturday.’

Geraldine showed him a photograph of Luke and asked if he recognised him. Rafe shook his head.

‘I never seen him before in all my life,’ he said, so earnestly that Geraldine suspected he was lying.

‘Are you quite sure you didn’t see him in the bar on Saturday? Look very carefully.’

‘I never seen him before,’ Rafe repeated.

The third barman looked about twenty. Wearing a smart jacket over dark jeans, he was tall and good looking. By contrast to Rafe, Jack had an air of relaxed confidence that bordered on arrogance. He answered her questions without any hesitation. Like his colleague, Katy, he freely admitted that he had worked upstairs on Saturday evening. Like her, he couldn’t remember exactly when he had been upstairs and insisted he had neither seen nor heard anything untoward. The other two barmen were older than the first three. They told the same story. Like Rafe, they had been working downstairs all evening and, like their colleagues, they had noticed nothing unusual at the time of the shooting.

It had been a wearing day. For all her hard work, Geraldine hadn’t managed to advance the investigation at all. No one had heard a shot, and no one had noticed Luke arguing with anyone shortly before he was killed. In fact, no one admitted to even recognising Luke from the photograph Geraldine had brought in.

‘Someone must have served him,’ Geraldine said, as Sam drove them back to Hendon. ‘His blood alcohol level was way over the limit. He was completely pissed before he was shot. Why are they all lying about having served him? It doesn’t make sense. Do you think Marco warned them not to say anything? And if so, why?’

‘To get rid of us,’ Sam answered promptly. ‘He doesn’t want anything to do with this. The less they tell us about any sort of involvement, the sooner we’ll leave them alone, or so he thinks. Anyway, Luke may well not have gone up to the bar. Someone else might have been buying, or he could have been drinking somewhere else, and only just arrived there. It’s possible he walked in and went straight upstairs to the toilet, and met his killer before he’d even had a drink there.’

Back at the station, Geraldine didn’t accompany Sam back inside straight away. She didn’t want to make a private call in the office knowing Neil might walk in at any time. She watched Sam stride ahead of her towards the door, before walking back towards the road.

‘Geraldine, thank you for getting back to me,’ Louise said pleasantly, as though Geraldine was doing her a favour. ‘As you know, I wanted to talk to you about your mother.’

‘Yes?’

‘I know you’ve been wanting to meet her. You talked about this with Sandra but I see from the file there’s been no discussion about it for a while.’

‘That’s because there was nothing to discuss. My mother refused to have any contact with me.’

‘How would you respond if she felt differently about it now?’

‘Are you saying my mother wants to see me?’

‘She would like to meet you, yes. How do you feel about that?’

Geraldine felt as though she had been punched in the stomach.

‘Geraldine?’

‘Sorry, it’s been so long – I mean, she was so adamant – Sandra said –’ She took a deep breath to steady her voice. ‘Yes, I’d like to meet her.’

‘I have to tell you she’s not a well woman.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She suffered a coronary and she’s in hospital –’

‘Is she dying?’

‘I don’t think it’s that dramatic, but she’s not well. The hospital are concerned that she should avoid any stress, but she’s insisting she wants to see you.’

‘When can I see her?’

‘Leave it with me. I’ll try to fix up a visit tomorrow morning, but I’ll need to get back to you to confirm that.’

‘I’ll be available whenever I can see her. Text me the details first thing in the morning and I’ll be there.’

She hung up. She felt perfectly calm, but as she put her phone away, she began to shake so violently she could hardly walk.

35

T
HAT EVENING
G
ERALDINE
and Sam went to speak to Luke’s parents. Geraldine struggled to listen to Sam, and in the end her sergeant gave up trying to have a conversation with her.

‘I can tell you’re not listening.’

‘Sorry, I’m just preoccupied.’

She didn’t tell Sam what was on her mind. It was easier to let the sergeant assume she was thinking about the case. In the morning, Louise might call to say her mother had thought better of her decision and didn’t want to see her after all. In the meantime, Geraldine wanted to put the whole idea out of her mind and concentrate on the case. Easier said than done. Throughout the afternoon her thoughts had kept wandering back to the social worker’s words. Louise had been clear that Milly wanted to meet her, which was potentially good news, but her mother had suffered a coronary. Many people survived for years after heart attacks, even quite major ones. Presumably it was her illness that had made her change her mind about meeting Geraldine. In less than eighteen hours Geraldine could be sitting at her mother’s bedside.

With difficulty she turned her thoughts to her evening’s task. They were on their way to Catford to visit Luke’s family. Geraldine had visited families of victims before to break the terrible news of a murder. It was the most harrowing part of her job. This time was different, because Luke’s parents already knew he was dead. What they had yet to learn was that his death had not been accidental, as had originally been thought. Information that sensitive couldn’t be given out over the phone. In some ways it would be kinder to leave them in ignorance. If an accidental death was shocking to live with, murder was worse. But Geraldine had to find out if they knew of anyone who might have wanted Luke dead.

Mr and Mrs Thomas lived in a terraced house in a side street off the main high street in Catford. They were close to the shops and the bus route, and within walking distance of the station. From there it would be easy for a young man to travel up to Central London for a night out. After parking, they crossed a narrow front yard and climbed two steps to the front door. Sam rapped on the door with her knuckles and they waited. After a few moments she knocked again, as loudly as she could. This time a voice inside the house called out.

‘Who is it?’

‘Police.’

‘What do you want?’

There was a pause then the door was opened on the chain and a woman’s face peered out at her. Geraldine held up her identity card.

‘Oh yes,’ the woman inside called to her, ‘they phoned to say you’d be back. What do you want?’

‘Can we come in?’

‘What do you want?’ the woman repeated.

‘We need to talk to you about Luke.’

The woman slammed the door shut. Geraldine cursed under her breath, hoping they hadn’t driven all that way for nothing. The public’s attitude towards the police had deteriorated drastically in recent years, but she wasn’t there to arrest anyone. There was no reason for Mrs Thomas to be hostile. As she was wondering whether to knock again, there was a rattling sound and the door swung open.

‘Come on in.’

From a dark, narrow hallway the woman led her into an untidy front room where a man was snoring loudly in front of a blaring television. The woman muted it and gestured towards a chair.

‘Oy,’ the man mumbled, waking up, ‘I was watching that.’

‘Derek, the police are here.’

Having established that she was talking to Luke’s parents, Geraldine asked if they would answer a few questions about their son. Luke’s father turned to her, his expression masked by thick grey stubble. Only his bloodshot eyes revealed his misery.

‘You going to close that place down?’ Luke’s mother asked.

‘So much for bloody health and safety,’ his father added. ‘They drive us nuts where I work, you can’t hardly move without bloody health and safety breathing down your neck, you can’t do this and you can’t do that. And then they go and have a window where anyone can just fall out –’ He broke off, overcome with emotion. ‘He was only twenty. That place should be shut down and the owners locked up. The place was a death trap.’

‘We have reason to believe Luke’s death wasn’t an accident.’

‘No, no,’ Luke’s mother burst out in alarm. ‘He never. He was such a happy boy.’

‘They’re not getting away with that,’ his father broke in angrily. ‘They’re responsible, and I’m going to make damn sure they go out of business.’

Geraldine ignored their interruptions. ‘We have evidence that leads us to conclude he was murdered. The fact is your son wasn’t killed when he fell on the railings outside the bar. His death was quicker and less painful than that. In fact, we don’t think he suffered at all, because he was shot and killed before he fell from the window.’

Luke’s parents were shocked into silence for a moment.

‘Shot? What do you mean he was shot?’

‘Who shot him?’

‘I don’t believe it!’

‘There’s no doubt about it, I’m afraid. We’re trying to find out what happened. Do you know anyone who might have wanted to harm your son? Did he have any enemies? Had he been in any fights or arguments recently?’

Luke’s parents looked at her in surprise. His mother covered her face with her hands, sobbing.

‘Luke didn’t have enemies,’ his father replied.

‘Everyone loved him. No one would have wanted to hurt Luke. No one,’ his mother agreed, her voice muffled by her hands.

‘It’s a preposterous thing to say. I don’t believe it for one moment. Come on, now, love, don’t go upsetting yourself all over again,’ her husband said. He turned to Geraldine. ‘I think you’d better leave.’

Urging them to contact her if they thought of anything that might assist the police in their investigation into Luke’s murder, Geraldine stood up.

‘I’m really very sorry,’ she added helplessly. ‘We’ll show ourselves out.’

There was nothing more to say.

36

A
FTER A RESTLESS
night Geraldine got up early, but she didn’t set off for the police station. Instead she sat at home with her phone on her desk and tried to concentrate on work. She decided to give it until ten. If Louise hadn’t contacted her by then, she would call to find out what was happening. By nine forty-five the only call she had received was to tell her that Lenny had been released. At five to ten the phone rang. Without any preamble, Louise gave Geraldine the name of the hospital, and the ward, where her mother was staying. As though in a dream, Geraldine scribbled down the details.

‘Would you like to see her today?’

‘I’ll leave right away.’

The Whittington Hospital was probably about an hour’s drive away.

‘I can meet you there this afternoon –’

‘That’s OK, there’s really no need for you to come.’

‘We like to accompany people at initial meetings like this. You and your mother might experience an intense emotional reaction –’

‘I understand why you’re saying that,’ Geraldine interrupted her, ‘but it’s not as if we’re meeting somewhere private. We’ll be in a hospital ward. And I am a detective inspector. I’m used to dealing with tricky situations, not that I anticipate this being difficult, I mean, she wants to see me, doesn’t she?’ She broke off, aware that she was babbling foolishly. ‘I mean, of course you’re welcome to come along, I just thought you must be busy enough.’

‘Well, if you’re sure…’

‘Absolutely.’ Geraldine had never felt less sure of anything in her life. ‘We’ll be fine.’

After the brief conversation finished, she sat for a moment, staring at the message she had scrawled. If she hadn’t written it down, she would have struggled to believe that Louise had actually called and given her the details. Even with the physical evidence in front of her, it felt unreal. As if in a dream she walked to her car and drove to the hospital. In all her fantasies about finding her mother, she had never imagined meeting in a hospital ward, under the watching eyes of other patients and passing staff. She hoped it wouldn’t be awkward, establishing a bond in so exposed a place. When she was nearly there, it occurred to her that she and her mother might not feel any kind of connection anyway. Drawing up in the hospital car park, she started to regret having driven there without any last minute preparation. Louise should have been more strident in her warnings. But how could she have prepared herself for this encounter? She had been desperate to meet her mother for so long. The reality was almost bound to be a disappointment. She should never have come. But her mother wanted to see her. How could she have refused? She determined to assume an air of confidence, even though she felt like a frightened child.