Shades of Evil (17 page)

‘Thanks, Jackie. I appreciate it.’

‘You owe me,’ she said, and cut the connection.

It wasn’t until their food was brought to their table that evening that Max realized he hadn’t eaten all day. He’d had enough coffee to keep him awake for a week, but he was ravenous. Jill, sitting opposite him and looking unusually smart having come straight from the television studios, was always hungry.

They were in the Black Bull, a large pub on the outskirts of Harrington that was winning acclaim for its simple home-cooked fare.

‘Anything new?’ Jill asked him.

‘Let me see.’ As it turned out, he’d had a busy day, one of those where surprise had followed surprise. ‘Firstly, your friend Steve Carlisle has been released.’

‘You’re kidding me. I bet that wasn’t your decision.’

‘It wasn’t.’

Max’s boss had gone from being convinced that Cole had committed suicide to being equally convinced that the same person had killed both Lauren and Vincent.

‘Which means Steve Carlisle is innocent,’ Phil Meredith had said.

‘It means no such thing,’ Max had argued.

‘You haven’t got anything that will secure a conviction, Max. You’ll have to let him go.’

Max wasn’t happy about it, but Meredith was right. They didn’t have anything that would qualify as hard evidence so Steve Carlisle was a free man again. For now.

‘As you thought,’ he told Jill, ‘Cole didn’t hang himself. He suffered a fatal blow to the back of the head before he was strung up in his sitting room.’

Jill shuddered, but he knew it wouldn’t put her off her food.

‘Why?’ she asked, and Max had no explanation.

‘That remains a mystery.’

‘But why the delay? Why kill Lauren and then wait over a week before killing her father?’

‘You’re assuming we’re looking for one killer,’ he pointed out. ‘Just as Phil Meredith is.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘I’m assuming nothing.’

He was completely in the dark. If they were looking for the same man, he could only imagine that both Lauren and her father knew something they shouldn’t. At least, the killer thought they did. But if that was the case, why wait a week?

As he enjoyed his food, officers were out there knocking on doors and begging for information. Max only hoped they were successful.

‘On top of that lot,’ he went on, ‘we may, and I stress the may, have captured Yasmin Smith on CCTV in Blackpool.’

‘Really? God, no wonder you’re looking pleased with yourself.’

But he wasn’t. He was no closer to finding Yasmin than he had been four months ago. He was no closer to catching Lauren Cole’s killer, either. Or her father’s.

‘Your friend and mine, Clive White, was the one to spot Yasmin,’ he added. ‘If indeed it was Yasmin.’

‘Clive?’ He saw the way her lips tightened. ‘What the hell was he doing looking at CCTV?’

‘He called in—’

‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘What’s the point of him being suspended from duty when he’s spending more time at the blasted nick than away from it?’

‘He called in to try and get some more sponsorship,’ Max explained patiently. ‘He wasn’t there above five minutes.’ He had no idea how long Clive was actually in the building, but he couldn’t see that it mattered. ‘While he was chatting to Doug, he spotted a girl who looked a lot like Yasmin.’

‘He’s suspended from duty, Max. He shouldn’t be there.’

‘If he hadn’t been, we wouldn’t have spotted Yasmin.’ Seeing that she was about to argue, he quickly changed the subject. ‘How’s your food?’

‘Very nice,’ she said, refusing to be diverted that easily, ‘but Clive White is supposed to be at home. I’ll have to speak to him. Or to Phil Meredith. It’s ridiculous.’

‘I’ll speak to Clive,’ he promised.

He would, too. He’d warn him to keep out of Jill’s sight.

‘So how was your day?’ he asked her.

‘It was good. Nerve-wracking, but good. It’s difficult to convince people you know what you’re talking about when you’re conscious of God knows how many viewers tuning in. Not that many people watch a programme like that during the day, I suppose. But all I could think was that my mum might be watching.’ She grinned at that. ‘Why that mattered, I don’t know.’

‘Aw, the shame of seeing her daughter on TV with no wedding ring to her name.’

Jill laughed at that. ‘Don’t!’

The pub was busy and most of the tables in the dining area were occupied. Max wasn’t surprised. He’d just eaten the best steak of his life.

Jill, who’d eaten chicken with an avalanche of roast potatoes and vegetables, still had room for dessert.

‘Death by Chocolate, please,’ she told the young waitress.

‘Oink.’

‘I don’t care. I was too nervous for lunch and it’s ages since breakfast. Besides, who can resist Death by Chocolate?’

She was soon demolishing the sickly pudding.

‘So who could have killed Lauren and her father?’ she mused, fork poised in the air between mouthfuls. ‘And what does any of it have to do with Steve? It seemed to me that someone was out to lay the blame for Lauren’s death on him. Perhaps he had nothing to do with it at all. Maybe he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘There’s something we’re missing.’

‘Ten out of ten, detective.’

‘But what?’

Jill was busy scraping her plate clean. ‘I don’t know.’

Max didn’t either. They’d thought Lauren’s murder had been committed on the spur of the moment. Now, with Vincent Cole dead, that didn’t ring true. Unless, of course, Cole had learned something about his daughter’s killer.

If Steve Carlisle was innocent, and Max was far from certain about that, their killer had to be someone who knew his movements, someone who knew that, unlike every other dog walker in the area, he carried an axe with him.

And what about the dog? Had Charlie wandered off or had he been enticed away? The dog was still at the boarding kennels waiting to be re-homed and Max had paid a visit. Charlie was wary of strangers. It was unlikely he would have gone off with someone he didn’t know.

‘Perhaps Vincent Cole’s killer will prove less elusive,’ he said, looking on the bright side. ‘We may have a shoe print. There was a size-eight print in the back garden and it’s not Cole’s.’

‘That’s something then.’

‘Yeah. And maybe someone in the neighbourhood saw something.’ And maybe they didn’t. ‘Mrs Hollingsworth, his cleaner, is going to have a good look tomorrow and see if anything has been stolen. She tried today, but got too upset by it all. Hopefully, she’ll be calmer tomorrow.’

‘Maybe that’s it,’ she said. ‘Maybe Vincent Cole disturbed a burglar.’

‘But only someone who knew Cole and knew of his daughter’s death would think of conjuring up a suicide story.’

There were a lot of theories, but precious little else.

‘Let’s forget it for a while,’ he suggested.

It was impossible to forget, even for a minute, but he knew he had to try. When he pushed problems to the back of his mind, his subconscious often worked away on the puzzle and came up with a solution.

‘Good idea.’ She caught the attention of the young girl who’d brought her Death by Chocolate. For a moment, Max thought she was going to order another. But no. ‘Could we have more coffee, please?’

Max had banished Lauren and Vincent Cole from his mind only to come up with another puzzle. Like who the hell was phoning Jill in the middle of the night and delivering photographs to make sure she knew she was being watched.

Max had checked the camera they’d had installed at her cottage, but it had captured nothing, or no one, out of the ordinary.

She was right about one thing, he supposed. The person stalking her was a coward. Phone calls were the act of a coward. Photographs, too. Someone was trying to frighten her.

‘You’re frowning,’ she said.

‘Sorry. I was thinking about Christmas,’ he lied.

‘Ah.’ She smiled at that. ‘You’ll have a great time and your dad will be fine.’ Another thought struck her. ‘Who’ll be cooking lunch? I know Kate will leave the freezer and cupboards stocked up when she’s goes to America, but she can’t leave a Christmas dinner to be warmed up, can she?’

‘Trust you to think of food. Actually, I’ll be cooking it.’

She stared back at him as if he’d said he’d be performing brain surgery with a butter knife.

‘Come on, Jill, it’s hardly rocket science, is it? A turkey gets banged in the oven for however long and that’s that. Vegetables are peeled and thrown in a saucepan.’

‘
You
are going to cook Christmas dinner?’

‘Why not? How difficult can it be?’

‘Good grief. You can’t cook it on the barbecue, you know. At least, I don’t think you can.’ She grinned at him. ‘Am I getting an invite? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’

‘Of course. You have an open invitation, you know that. Besides, I can’t cope with Dad on my own.’

‘He’ll be fine. Tell you what, I’ll bring the mince pies. Hey, don’t look like that, I wasn’t offering to make them. They’ll come straight from Tesco …’

It was easy to laugh and joke; impossible to know who had wanted Lauren and Vincent Cole dead or who was hell bent on frightening Jill.

When Jill drove up to her cottage that night, she knew the rich dessert had been a mistake. She had a habit of not eating all day and then overdoing it at night. Instead of eating out with Max again, she should have been at her Thai boxing class. Too late to worry about that now though.

She killed the engine, thought about putting the car in the garage for the night, and decided she couldn’t be bothered. It meant struggling with the lock to open the garage door, going back to her car and driving it in carefully so as to avoid the pile of junk that was accumulating, inching her way out of the car without scraping the door, and then battling with the lock again. Life was too short.

She grabbed her bag, got out of the car and locked it.

A straggly clematis that would provide a splash of colour in the summer months clung to trellis by her front door and, hidden among the spindly twigs was a small camera. She was smiling as she waved at it. Given that the security light had bathed her in white light, she must look ridiculous.

Her breath caught as she heard a noise. She spun round.

Someone was out there. Someone had stepped on a twig.

She stood still to listen, but all she could hear was the drumming of her own heartbeat. Perhaps a fox or a cat was moving through her garden, hunting for food.

She had her back to the dark garden as she put the key in the lock and turned it, but she was ready for anything. At least, she hoped she was.

She closed the door behind her and made sure the locks were secure.

Perhaps her imagination had been playing tricks on her. That’s what happened when young women were murdered less than half a mile from your front door. Not that her imagination was responsible for crank phone calls or the photos that had been pushed through her letterbox.

Her three cats strolled up to meet her. She knew they’d missed the can opener more than her, but it was good to see them and hear their purrs at the thought of food. She went to the cat-flap, ready to unlock it, but changed her mind. Until she was sure there was no one outside, and that wouldn’t be until morning, it would remain closed.

She checked that all windows were locked before drawing curtains as a defence against the blackness outside.

She wasn’t frightened exactly, but she wished Max was there. Or she wished she’d taken him up on his offer and gone to his place with him. Instead of wondering if some axe-wielding maniac was outside her house, she’d be enjoying the company of Max, Harry and Ben.

She thought of having a bath, but dismissed that idea. If there was anyone creeping around and she had to put her boxing lessons into practice, she would rather do it fully clothed.

The idea of a quick shower was also dismissed as the famous scene from
Psycho
leapt into her mind. She had a glass door rather than a shower curtain, but even so…

She poured herself a generous gin and tonic and went into the sitting room with her copy of the
Racing Post.
Studying the runners and riders for tomorrow’s race card would calm her down.

All she could hear was the gentle rumble of the central heating boiler, and Tojo hitting the cat-flap with her paw.

In a way, it would be a good thing if someone
was
outside. Better still if they held a steady head and shoulders pose in front of the camera. At least that way she would know what she was dealing with.

With her horses chosen and bets ready to be placed in the morning, she took herself off to bed.

She was still awake at 1.34 a.m., possibly because she was sharing her bed with three cats, and when her phone rang she snatched it from its cradle.

‘Right, you sick pervo—’

There was a laugh before the line went dead.

‘Shit!’

She was a psychologist, for God’s sake, a highly respected one at that. What she had planned, and what she would do in future, was try to engage him in conversation. If she didn’t know how to get him to talk, she might as well get a job as a window cleaner.

She dialled 1471, just in case he’d forgotten to withhold his number. Of course, he hadn’t. He wasn’t that stupid.

She was mentally holding a conversation with him as she drifted off to sleep …

When she awoke, just after six, it was to yet another hard frost. Snow still lay thick in parts of her garden where yesterday’s sun hadn’t reached.

It wasn’t light yet, though, so her cats would have to wait a while for their highly anticipated adventure in the garden.

She showered, dressed, then made herself a good strong cup of coffee.

When she opened the front door, her cats sped past her, tails high, noses in the air scenting for mice. Sam leapt straight on to the roof of the shed to view the land from a superior position.

Jill pulled on walking boots and followed them. Funny how nothing was quite so worrying in daylight. She walked all round her cottage, looking for pawprints. Or footprints.

There was nothing.

At eleven o’clock that morning, Max was perched on a stool in the kitchen of Hill View, Longman Drive, four properties away from Vincent Cole’s home. He was with Tony Swift, an energetic-looking man in his forties. Keeping a close eye on Max was a lively German Shepherd.

‘Don’t worry about the dog,’ Swift said. ‘She’s fine with people.’

Max would have to take his word for that and try to ignore the way the dog’s enormous yellow teeth glistened from behind a lip that was permanently curled back.

‘Mr Swift, I believe you saw someone running along Longman Drive on Monday night? What can you tell me about that?’

Max had decided to visit Longman Drive because he wanted to make sure Vincent Cole’s cleaner, Mrs Hollingsworth, checked every item in her late employer’s home. As Swift had told one of the house-to-house officers that he’d seen someone looking suspicious, Max thought that, as he was passing the door, he’d have a chat with him, too.

‘I can’t tell you anything else,’ Swift said. ‘As I told the chap last night, I was late getting back from work—’

‘You’re in the fire service, yes?’

‘That’s right. It was almost eleven o’clock when I got off shift,’ he explained, ‘and probably closer to midnight when I took Tess’ – he nodded at the slavering dog – ‘for a walk round the block.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Up to the top of the road and then I turned into Kingfisher Drive. I always take the same route, every night. From Kingfisher Drive, I go into Cuthbert Street and then back into the bottom of Longman Drive.’

Max pictured the route in his head. It was a perfect square, and the ideal late-night walk.

‘It was as I got on to Longman Drive,’ Swift went on, ‘that I saw a lad running towards me.’

‘Can you describe him?’ Max asked, hoping the man had remembered more than he’d been able to tell his officers.

‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘He was wearing one of those hooded sweatshirt things. Grey, at a guess, but the streetlights aren’t very good along here. Quite a light colour at any rate.’

‘He didn’t say anything?’

‘Not a word. He was too busy running. But, like I said, he had a holdall hoisted on his shoulder. Had I seen him during the day, I would have assumed he’d been to football training or something like that. Seeing him around midnight, I thought it was a bit late to be coming back from a gym. I guessed he’d been up to no good. Cars get pinched, taken for joy rides – I thought something like that. Or maybe, given the holdall, I wondered if he’d been breaking in somewhere. Six months ago, several people had their garages broken into.’

‘I see. And there’s nothing else you can remember? Footwear? Height? Skin colour?’

Swift shook his head.

‘It was too dark to see much. I’d say he was around the five feet nine or ten mark. I think he was young, too.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘The way he ran. Sort of leggy.’ He gave Max a knowing look. ‘Because I thought he was up to no good, I did think of setting Tess on to him.’ He patted the dog’s head. ‘A word from me and she would have pinned him down. But you can’t go around doing things like that, can you?’

‘No, Mr Swift.’

Max wished Swift
had
taken the law into his own hands. He’d give a lot to know what had been in that holdall.

He gave Swift his card.

‘If you think of anything else, anything at all, no matter how insignificant it seems, will you call me?’

Swift examined the card. ‘Of course. This is to do with that bloke Cole, I assume? Some said he committed suicide but, as I told folk, you lot wouldn’t seal off the whole place if he’d topped himself.’

‘We’re asking questions in connection with Mr Cole’s death, yes. Did you know him well?’

‘Not really. He kept himself to himself. Out at work all day. At home most nights if he wasn’t at his amateur dramatics thing. That’s not my scene. We were on nodding terms, but that was all.’

‘OK, Mr Swift, thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it. And if you remember anything else—’

‘I’ll be sure to let you know,’ Swift said, waving Max’s card in his hand.

‘Thanks.’

Glad to be away from the dog, Max left Swift’s house and strode down the bank towards Mrs Hollingsworth’s bungalow. He hoped she was calmer today because he needed her to check Cole’s house thoroughly.

He walked up the short drive and rang the bell.

She looked dismayed to see him on her doorstep, as if she realized the time of execution was upon her.

‘But I’ve just made myself a cup of tea,’ she said uncertainly.

‘That’s fine,’ Max said. ‘You can drink it before we go and look at Mr Cole’s house.’

‘Thank you.’ She brightened immediately. ‘I’ll make you one too, Chief Inspector.’

She led him into the sitting room where a decorated tree dominated. Christmas cards were strung across the walls and china dogs and horses competed for space on the surfaces.

‘Now then, you sit yourself down and I’ll make you that cuppa.’

Max gazed at the house directly opposite. Vincent Cole’s. Everything about the exterior was neat, from hedges that looked as if they had been hand-trimmed with scissors to the perfectly shaped dwarf conifers that sat either side of the driveway.

Mrs Hollingsworth carried in a tray, put it on the sofa, cleared some space on a long, low table and then set it down on that.

‘Milk and sugar?’ she asked, pouring tea into cups. Presumably, she’d decided to make herself a fresh cup. Either that, or the excuse of having made herself tea had been just that, an excuse.

‘Milk, no sugar, thanks.’

Max would bet she knew the history of every single china cat, dog and horse she shared her home with. She would know how long she’d had them, whether she’d bought them herself or if they’d been gifts. He hoped she was as observant with other people’s belongings.

‘I realize you want me to look at his things,’ she said, nodding in the direction of Vincent Cole’s house, ‘but, for the life of me, I can’t understand why.’

She believed her neighbour had taken his own life so she would think it beyond strange that they were wanting her to check the contents of his house. On the other hand, if Max told her that someone had killed him and then strung him up from his own beams, she would probably go into a faint.

‘It’s routine procedure,’ Max said, opting for the well-worn phrase. ‘We always have to check everything in the case of a suicide. We have to make sure that it really was suicide.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, that’s a waste of time, isn’t it? No one can have any doubt about that.’

Max simply shrugged in answer.

‘How long had you known him?’ he asked in a swift change of subject.

‘Ever since he and his wife first moved to the street,’ she replied. ‘That would have been …’ She searched her memory. ‘Young Lauren was about to start school so it would have been about fifteen years ago.’

‘A long time,’ he said.

‘I knew his wife better back then. She invited me in for a cup of tea a few times and she came round here maybe half a dozen times. It was six years ago, when she died, that I really got to know him and young Lauren. The pair of them were lost without her and I used to pop round and see if there was anything I could do. When I mentioned I did a bit of cleaning for folk, he asked if I’d clean over there a couple of mornings a week.’

‘You knew Lauren well?’

‘At one time I thought I did.’ She sighed. ‘But children grow up, don’t they? Seeing her shouting at her dad, swearing at him even – it was like seeing a stranger in the house.’

‘Did they argue a lot?’

‘
He
didn’t. Lauren was always short of money and she kept trying to persuade her dad to lend her some. Or give her some. Usually, he handed it over. A bit of a foolish thing to do I thought but who am I to say? He’d always try and talk some sense into her though and that’s when the young madam would fly off the handle at him. The language she used made me blush, I can tell you.’

Max sipped at his tea, more than willing to let her talk.

‘I’ll tell you something else,’ she said in a confidential tone. ‘A couple of times, I saw her and a young man visit the house. They hadn’t called to see Vince because it was in the middle of the day when they’d have known he was at work. Both times, they were only in the house a couple of minutes. Now, the day after I saw them the last time, I happened to notice that a pair of silver candlesticks weren’t where they should have been. He had a bit of silver did Vince. He attended classes and made stuff himself. Anyway, I used to clean it. He was quite fussy about that. So, like I said, I noticed those candlesticks had gone and mentioned it to him.’

‘And was he able to tell you where they were?’

‘Well, it was funny that. He looked at the table where they should have been, and seemed quite surprised. Then he said he remembered. He’d taken them to have them valued.’

Max wondered why none of this had come out before. Sometimes the only thing you could do to drag information from people was sit and drink tea with them and let them talk.

‘Did he get them valued?’ Max asked, guessing the answer. ‘Did you see them again?’