‘You take it right.’
A tut of disapproval came from Garrett, but Doctor Reeve raised a quietening hand. ‘So what did you tell Mark?’
‘Only what he deserved to know. That we have evidence he was sexually abused as a child. I didn’t reveal anything about the people involved, except that one of them was Grace Kirby. I’d already shown him her picture, so all I was doing was putting a name to a face.’
A faint angry flush crept up Doctor Reeve’s neck, but his voice remained controlled. ‘It makes little difference that you didn’t reveal specifics, Detective Monahan. What you’ve told Mark is more than enough to potentially create a conflict between his memory and reality. I only hope that in the process you haven’t also managed to damage the connection between his mind and reality.’
‘Well he seemed to have a firm grip on his situation, but then what would I know. Like I said, I’m just a simple copper.’
Doctor Reeve stared at Jim a moment longer, his mouth set in a thin, unamused smile. Then he turned to Doctor Goodwin. ‘I think it would be in Mark’s best interest if Detective Monahan had no further contact with him.’
‘I have to say I agree,’ said Doctor Goodwin. ‘I realise the detective was only doing his job, but I simply can’t allow anything that might compromise the recovery of a patient. I’m afraid I must ask that Detective Monahan has no further contact with Mark while he’s under the care of this hospital.’
‘I understand and apologise, Doctors.’ Garrett flashed Jim a look that said,
You’re in deep shit.
‘Thank you both for all your help.’
‘Anytime,’ said Doctor Goodwin. ‘Now if there’s nothing else, I think we’d better check on the patient.’
As the doctors entered Mark’s room, Garrett gave Jim a narrow-eyed look. ‘I think we need to have a chat, Detective. I’m late for a meeting with the Chief Superintendent and Edward Forester at his constituency office. But I’ll see you back at headquarters in an hour or two.’
Jim’s mouth spread in a thin-lipped smile as Garrett hastened away. It amused him in a sour sort of way to picture Garrett sweating under Edward Forester’s questions. Forester was the Labour MP for Sheffield South-East, and a renowned political operator who traded on his reputation as a straight-talking Yorkshireman. It was in his interest to keep a close eye on the investigation. A lot of his constituents would be out of a job if SB Engineering went under, and even in a rock-solid Labour seat like Sheffield South-East, that kind of thing could affect votes.
‘I don’t know why you’re smiling,’ said Amy. ‘You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t bring you up on disciplinary charges for pulling that little trick.’
‘No he won’t. He needs every copper he’s got in the field right now.’
‘Maybe, but keep on like you are and when this is over he’ll be out for your head.’
‘I hope you’re right, Amy. I hope this is over one day. And as for Garrett wanting my head…’ Jim made a noise in his throat that suggested the possibility held little fear for him.
As they headed back to the car, Amy asked, ‘So what are you going to do with yourself while you wait for the DCI?’
‘I thought I’d take a closer look at Grace Kirby’s file. It could be worth talking to some of her childhood friends and finding out if any of them remember seeing her with a man fitting the description of the one from Mark’s dream.’
Amy cocked a dubious eyebrow. ‘Not much of a description to go on, a posh voice and a gobful of crooked teeth.’
‘I know it’s a long shot, but it might turn something up.’
Amy’s mobile phone rang as they ducked into the car. She put it to her ear. ‘Hello?’
‘Is that Detective Inspector Amy Sheridan?’ The voice had a distinctive north-eastern accent.
‘It is.’
‘This is Detective Sergeant Debra Kennedy of Cleveland Police. I understand you’ve been making enquiries about Lillian Smyth’s mobile phone. I thought you might be interested to know that a clone of her phone was used by someone we suspect may have been involved in a murder.’
‘Hang on, Debra. I have a colleague with me who needs to hear this. I’m putting you on loudspeaker.’ Quickly filling Jim in on what had been said, Amy slotted the phone into a holder on the dashboard.
‘Hello, Debra, this is DI Jim Monahan. So, what’s this about a murder?’
‘Ryan Castle, a mid-level drug dealer, was found two nights ago shot to death at Seal Sands, a nature reserve near Middlesbrough.’
‘I read about that,’ said Amy. ‘Sounds like a drug deal gone bad.’
‘That’s what we thought, but there have been some developments that suggest otherwise. The night following Castle’s murder, a woman placed a call on a clone of Lillian Smyth’s phone to James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough. She wanted to know if a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old, slim, blonde-haired female had been brought in. A girl fitting that description had been admitted the previous night. A prostitute named Nicola Clarke. She was found unconscious outside Accident and Emergency. Her blood has since been matched to blood found on the back seat of Castle’s car. According to her, Castle picked her up alone and beat her unconscious during intercourse. The next thing she claims to remember is coming round in hospital.’
‘Do you believe her?’ asked Jim.
‘I believe she was unconscious when Castle was killed. She took a hell of a beating. That’s not to say I don’t think she knows who killed him.’
‘Have you got a recording of the phone call?’
‘We’ve got more than that. Shortly after the call was made, we believe the same woman was caught on CCTV entering the ward Nicola Clarke is on. She left an envelope for Nicola containing six hundred quid. We’ve since pulled Castle’s fingerprints off several of the banknotes.’
‘What does the woman look like?’
‘She’s white, around five-four or five-five, slim, late twenties or early thirties.’
Jim and Amy exchanged a glance, both thinking the same thought – the description could easily match Grace Kirby, if she was still alive. ‘What about her hair?’ asked Jim.
‘She had a hooded top on. Give me your email and I’ll send you a file of the phone call and the CCTV.’
Amy told Debra her email address, then fetched a laptop from the boot. ‘Have you got any idea as to the woman’s identity, Debra?’ asked Jim, as they waited for the laptop to boot up.
‘We’re working on the assumption that she’s a prostitute. We think she may have followed Castle and Clarke out to Seal Sands in another car, which was subsequently used to take Clarke to hospital. We’re canvassing prostitutes who work the same streets as Nicola, but they’re as tight-lipped as priests when it comes to protecting their own. What’s unclear is why the woman didn’t know Nicola was at the hospital.’
‘The obvious answer is that she wasn’t in the car when Nicola was dumped outside A & E.’
‘That’s our thinking too.’
‘What do you know about the gun that was used to shoot Castle?’
‘We recovered two nine-millimetre rounds from the scene, but no gun. We have it from a reliable source that Castle carried a Glock. So it looks like he may well have been shot with his own gun.’
‘I’ve got your email, Debra,’ said Amy. ‘I’m going to open the voice file.’
Amy clicked on the email attachment and a recording of Debra’s suspect talking to a hospital receptionist began to play. The woman had a broad north-eastern accent, but a couple of times during the conversation Jim caught a vague undercurrent of something more like a Yorkshire accent. ‘We’ve had the recording analysed by a phonetics expert,’ said Debra. ‘He thinks the voice belongs to someone who’s lived in the north-east for a lot of years but originally comes from somewhere further south, possibly Huddersfield, Leeds, Barnsley, Doncaster or—’
‘Sheffield,’ put in Jim.
‘Exactly. Which is why I’m so eager to find out what your enquiries are about.’
‘Before we get into that, I’d like to have a look at the CCTV footage.’
Amy opened the second file. Jim squinted at a pixelated colour image of a slim, hunch-shouldered figure with a distinctly female body shape. Hood up and head down, the woman quickly passed along a corridor out of the camera’s field of view. The footage cut to another camera pointed at a set of double doors with circular windows. The woman appeared at the doors. She peered furtively through the windows. The camera caught her face as she glanced over her shoulder. Amy paused the footage and zoomed in on the woman’s face until the pixels started to blur her features.
Jim held the photo from Grace’s case-file next to the laptop’s screen. The woman’s eyes were sunk so deep that they looked black. Her cheeks were gaunt and colourless, and her nose had a bump over the bridge as if it had been broken at some point. In contrast, the fifteen-year-old Grace’s cheeks were round and flushed like ripe fruit, and her nose was straight as a knife. Both the woman and Grace had full, pouting lips, and there was something similar in the line of their jaws. ‘What do you think?’ he asked Amy.
‘It could be her, but then again…’ Amy spoke into the phone. ‘We’re not sure about the woman’s identity, Debra. We’re going to have to lift an image from the CCTV file and run it through facial recognition software.’
‘Who were you hoping to see?’ asked Debra.
Amy gave her a brief rundown of the case they were working.
‘That’s a hell of a situation you’ve got there,’ said Debra. ‘I don’t envy you your task. Could you email me a copy of Grace Kirby’s case-file?’
‘Will do.’
‘Thanks. Obviously I’ll contact you at once if there are any new developments up here.’
Amy promised to do the same, thanked DS Kennedy and hung up. Jim’s gaze was still bouncing between the photo and the CCTV image. ‘The more I look at them, the less similar they seem.’
‘The facial recognition program will pick up any similarities.’
‘I can think of someone who might be able to give us a faster, more accurate answer.’
‘Linda Kirby?’ When Jim nodded, Amy continued, ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Go home. You’ve just pulled a double shift.’
‘I don’t think you should go see Linda on your own. I don’t like the look of her husband. I get the feeling it wouldn’t take much for him to go off big time.’
Before setting off for Hillsborough, Amy forwarded DS Kennedy’s email along with a message explaining the situation to everyone on the Homicide and Major Incident team. ‘So what’s your take on the Castle murder?’
Jim stared at Grace’s photo as though trying to read the mind of its subject. ‘I think he fucked with the wrong girl.’
Angel studied the house, debating whether she should wait for its occupants to go to bed before making her move, or simply knock on the door and shove her gun in the face of whoever opened it. She couldn’t see an alarm box, but the dog would almost certainly alert its owners if she tried to break in. On the other hand, if she knocked on the door, the occupants might look out of a window to see who was calling. In which case, there was a chance – albeit a tiny one – that she would be recognised. And then the door would remain closed, while the police or someone else with the power to hurt her far worse than they could was called. As much as she was tempted by the idea, she decided the direct approach was too risky. She would wait and hope she could gain entry via a window without disturbing the dog. After all the years of feeding her habit, she had enough experience of breaking and entering to know how to smash a window quietly.
Angel scrunched her thin shoulders against the cold. It was a clear evening and the temperature was dropping faster than the light. She warmed herself with the thought of what she would do to Herbert and Marisa.
Herbert and Marisa
– those names had been burnt into her brain like acid on glass since the night Stephen had introduced her to them. She’d giggled upon first hearing the name Herbert.
He’s a right Herbert
was one of her dad’s favourite terms of abuse for royalty, politicians, the rich and anyone else he considered too big for their boots. But she hadn’t laughed later when Herbert raped her for the first though not the last time.
A light came on at the back of the house. The dog ran out into the garden. It was some kind of spaniel. It cocked its leg against one of the trees that fringed the lawn, then wandered in Angel’s direction, sniffing at the ground. It jerked its head up suddenly. Angel held herself as still as possible. The sodding thing was staring right at her. With a low growl, it warily approached her. She picked up a dead branch, gripping it like a baseball bat. A metre or so from where she was hidden, the dog stopped and began yapping furiously. She offered a silent apology to the animal. She didn’t want to hurt it, but it was only a matter of time before its owners came to investigate the racket. She sprang out, bringing the branch down with all the force she could muster. There was a loud crack as it broke across the dog’s skull. The animal collapsed, letting out a high-pitched whine. She silenced it with another blow. Then she concealed its body and herself amongst the trees.
Five minutes passed. Ten. Marisa appeared from behind the house. ‘Oscar!’ she called out. ‘Here, boy!’
A tremor passed through Angel. Marisa’s voice was the same as she remembered – loud and mannishly deep, with a cut-glass accent. The mere sound of it had once been enough to make her wince.
Marisa made her way along the edge of the garden, peering into the undergrowth. ‘Oscar! Oscar! You come here or you’re going to be in trouble when I find you.’
Angel’s mouth was suddenly dry. Cold sweat prickled her back as memories came at her like bullets. She was fifteen years old again. Herbert was writhing on top of her, grinding his lips against hers. She couldn’t move, and not just because Marisa was pinning her arms. She was groggy and loose-limbed. There was a salty aftertaste in her mouth from the wine she’d been given when she’d arrived at the house. She’d blacked out not long after drinking it, and when she came round the first thing she saw was Herbert’s pudgy face swimming above her, his thick lips contorted into a grin of lust.
Angel took a slow breath, seeking that same brutal calm she’d found in killing Castle, chasing the images away with the flame of her desire for vengeance. Marisa was close enough now that her bobbed brown hair and narrow, horsey features were clearly visible. She flinched to a halt as Angel stepped into view with the gun levelled at her face. The two women stared at each other, Marisa’s eyes swollen with shock, Angel trembling with nervous rage.