Trespass (P.I. Johnson Carmichael Series - Book 2) (26 page)

Matthew Green felt physically sick as he started the engine of his van and put it into first gear. Since the trial in ninety-three he had pretended that he didn’t have a brother: it had been easier than admitting the truth, especially when he was introduced to new people. It wasn’t until a year after the conviction that strangers stopped asking, ‘You’re not related to
him
are you?’ He had always met the question with laughter and staunch denial. Thankfully the surname Green was sufficiently common that there was a chance they weren’t related.

It had not been easy. After their mother’s passing, Matthew had tried to look out for his younger brother, particularly when their father was drunk or in ‘one of his moods’. The age gap had not helped, of course; he had been leaving secondary school as Nathan had started so they had had little in common. Matthew had enjoyed reading and mending things, whereas Nathan had been into climbing and get mucky outdoors.

When Margaret Green had passed away, it had come as a major shock to the small family. The doctor revealed that she had had the cancer for over eight months but she had not told a single one of them, choosing to rely on God’s mercy instead. It had been the year he took his O-Levels and, whilst he would never blame her, the grief played a big part in his lack of revision. These days, a student would receive counselling and maybe even be offered the opportunity to sit the exams later, but not back then. O-Levels were renamed G.C.S.E.’s the following year and maybe he would have achieved higher grades had he sat them instead. As it was, his grades were not good enough for college and he had ended up taking an apprenticeship at a local mechanic’s garage. That had lasted until the garage had gone bust and the proprietor had been locked up for not paying the taxman.

Unemployed, he had applied for everything that appeared at the Job Centre, eventually securing a role on a sales helpdesk at the telecommunications company. The job had migrated to Manchester, then up to Edinburgh and he had gone with it, keen to escape his father’s clutches.

Tony Green had spent his youth and adulthood as a labourer and had been proud to be a working man. The money had been adequate, but not exceptional, and he had had neither the brains nor the cunning to take on additional duties or even start out on his own. They had been blessed that Margaret’s life assurance had paid out, and in turn cleared the mortgage on the house in Honeysuckle Road. On the other hand, the fact that the money saved was now being spent on alcohol was less of a bonus.

Tony had always been an angry man. If he wasn’t angry at what the politicians were doing, he was angry with the cost of stamps or the lack of tax breaks for working class families. There just always seemed to be some reason or another for him to be in ‘one of his moods,’ and when the pubs kicked him out for shouting at other customers, he would return home and continue drinking, shouting at his ‘lazy layabout sons’. Matthew could remember one week, shortly before he moved north, when his father had drunk ten bottles of whisky in a single week. He remembered this as he had been the one to empty the rubbish bin. God only knew what state Tony’s liver was in.

When the dark mist descended and the mood grew, Tony would lash out at both of his sons, although Matthew bore the brunt of most of the beatings. He had been hit with belts, shoes and bricks down the years but, having seen some of the bumps and cuts Nathan had sustained, he knew that his brother had felt the wrath too.

He had met Anna in Edinburgh. She had been a student at the University and they had fallen madly in love. She had been pregnant within three months and had had to drop out of her degree when her father cut off her finances for ‘being so stupid’. He had done the honourable thing and proposed and they had organised a quickie registry office affair. Nathan and Tony had both attended but neither had stayed for more than the one night before returning home. Matthew had vowed to work hard to build a life for the small family and they had bought their first house in ninety-nine, although it had been barely big enough for the three of them.

A second child, a daughter, three years later had meant they had had to upscale, and they had taken out a massive mortgage to pay for the three bedroom terrace that had been their home until Anna had decided to reinvent herself last year. He had just managed to sell it, but the equity the house had gained was barely enough for a deposit on a two bedroom property in Southampton.

He had been on a decent wage in his Edinburgh role when he had decided to transfer to be closer to home, but the only job available was the engineer role he was currently undertaking. It paid enough to rent a two bedroom flat in Totton, just outside the city, and so he had given his children the main bedroom to share, whilst he hunkered down in the small box-room.

The engineering job allowed him the freedom to drop his children at school in the morning, with them catching a bus to their grandfather’s house afterwards; he then collected them from there. That was where he was headed now.

*

Carmichael watched as the telecoms van indicated at junction-five of the M27 and pulled into the slip road. He was two vehicles back but he followed suit, watching closely to see which lane Green would take. They came to a halt half a mile down the road at a set of traffic lights, before proceeding right onto Burgess Road.

He’s going to his dad’s house
, Carmichael mused.

One of the two cars between them had continued straight on at the lights, and now the second one was turning off into a
McDonald’s
car park. Conscious that he didn’t want to be spotted, he quickly pulled over to the side of the road and allowed three cars to drive past before pulling back out and maintaining his distance. Sure enough, further up the road he could see Green turning into the
Flowers Estate
.

He made the same turn when he reached it, but decided to pull over almost immediately so that he would have a good vantage point of the Honeysuckle Road house, without being seen. It was dark now, but the street was well lit by street lights. Green remained in his van for a number of minutes, as if summoning up the courage to go in.

Maybe I hit a nerve
, Carmichael thought.
Maybe it is him after all
.

The door to the van opened and Green clambered out, heading to his father’s house. He looked like he was physically shaking as he crossed the road but that might have just been the chill in the air. He knocked on the door and looked around as he waited, but at nothing in particular. The front door opened and Carmichael saw Tony Green in jeans and a t-shirt. He was smoking a cigarette and Matthew seemed to be having a go at him.

Carmichael exited his car and moved closer to try and hear what was being said. He crouched down near a neighbour’s bush, and could hear Matthew saying something about not smoking in front of the children. As if on demand, the pimply face of a fourteen year old boy appeared and sauntered off to the van. He looked moody and sullen but otherwise a spitting image of his father.

Carmichael could see the two men talking through the leaves of the bush. He saw a second child appear; this one younger, the girl he had seen the day before. He was saying something to the older man and laughing. Tony stretched out and lifted the girl and as he did Carmichael saw it.

The action of lifting her had caused Tony Green’s t-shirt to raise slightly.

The dragon tattoo.

Even from his crouched and hidden position, it was too distinct to miss. He remembered Lauren Roper’s words:

As he attacked her, his dark sweater lifted slightly and I saw a dragon-shaped tattoo on his lower back
.

Carmichael glanced back at the tattoo but it was hidden again by the shirt.

Could it be…
?

It seemed too silly to consider but everything suddenly seemed to fit into place.

Beth had told her daughter that her attacker had seemed confident and mature; Tony Green would have been in his early to mid-forties in nineteen eighty-nine.

Beth had spoken of his stale, cigarette breath and cheap cologne; Carmichael had experienced both of those himself.

Beth had said how strong her attacker was, how he had lifted her by the throat effortlessly; Green was naturally muscular through days of labour on building sites.

Lauren had spoken of the man’s gloved hands; he would have worn gloves to cover his dirty and cracked skin.

It had been the intruder’s eyes that Lauren had remembered so clearly from her encounter; the same eyes she had seen in Nathan Green’s mug shot; the same eyes genetically passed down from Tony Green.

It would certainly explain why
he
paid Carl to put the frighteners on.

And then there was the tattoo.

Sure, a tattoo in the shape of a dragon probably wasn’t uncommon, but what were the chances that Beth’s attacker and the father of the man Lauren suspected both having the same tattoo?

Carmichael felt paralysed with fear.

Had he mentioned Lauren’s name to Tony Green? Is that how
he
had found, raped and killed her? Was it his fault?

He tried to remember the first meeting with Green, but all he could recollect was mentioning Beth’s name…but he did mention his client was Beth’s daughter. Would Green have been able to find her through that?

How frightened Lauren must have been to come face-to-face with the man who had haunted her dreams
.

He glanced back up but Green had retreated behind his front door and Matthew was heading back to his van. Carmichael waited until the van had pulled away and then he headed back to his own car; his mind awash with uncertainty.

He drove to the Police Headquarters building, with one thought on his mind: justice.

He pulled into the public car park and marched purposefully up the stairs to the main desk, demanding to see D.C.I. Jan Mercure. He refused to accept the officer’s lame attempt to dissuade him and shouted that he would not leave until Mercure had seen him. The officer reluctantly phoned her and she said she would come down. Five minutes later she indicated for Carmichael to follow her to a small interview room where they could have a ‘private chat’.

Once inside, he told her everything: the tattoo, the tobacco-stained breath, the age Green would have been at the time of Beth’s assault.

‘Hold on,’ she interrupted. ‘Yesterday you told me Nathan Green had assaulted Beth Roper in eighty-nine and that some kind of copycat had attacked Lauren; then this morning you were adamant that Matthew Green was responsible for both attacks and were ready to be judge, jury and executioner. Now, you’re saying what? It’s neither brother and in fact it was their father? What have you got against this family?’

‘I was mistaken before…’

‘But you’re not this time, right? And what about tomorrow? Will it be a distant sibling or maybe a second cousin twice removed?’

‘No! I
know
it’s him.’

‘You still don’t have anything concrete.’

‘It’s all there: you just need to look into it!’

‘Look into what? A twenty-four year old crime that was never reported, with a victim who is dead and a child witness who is also now deceased? Come on, you know how the game works.’

‘Ah, but you haven’t got a suspect for Lauren’s murder have you? Look into Tony Green.’

‘We will investigate your suspicions but we will have to do it by the book. We can’t present grounds to the C.P.S. that we arrested Green simply because you believed he is a rapist like his convicted son.’

‘The apple doesn’t often fall far from the tree, does it?’

‘That’s very helpful, I’ll be sure to suggest the prosecution use that as evidence in court.’

‘Matthew told me that their father used to beat them as boys. What if it was more than that? Huh? How many times have perverts been identified as victims of assault themselves? A child abused in early life; it changes their outlook on life; shifts the boundaries. Maybe Tony’s abuse of Nathan had a direct impact on his son’s adult behaviour?’

‘These are sweeping accusations to make and, as I said, we will look into Tony Green’s whereabouts at the time of Lauren’s murder, but there is nothing I can do about Beth’s assault. I’m sorry.’

‘When I was at Green’s place on Thursday I saw an email to some kind of escort service:
Madam Sissocho
. See what you can dig up on that.’

Mercure eyed him cautiously. ‘That’s not an escort service, it’s a sadomasochism website.’

It was Carmichael’s turn to look puzzled.

‘Our tech guy found a list of websites on James Benold’s laptop,’ Mercure explained. ‘He had cleared his internet history but they were able to find fragments still on the hard drive. We asked him about the sites and he said that
Madame Sissocho
, an anagram of sadomasochism, was a particularly gratuitous site.’

‘There you go then,’ said Carmichael triumphantly. ‘It proves my theory.’

‘One step at a time, Carmichael. It doesn’t prove that Tony Green is anything more than a bit of a pervert.’