Dead End (12 page)

Ben was interested in spite of himself. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at his sister. ‘What are you talking about, you freak?’

‘That's why he wanted a divorce. So he could get married to Charlotte, whoever she is.’

‘So how come you know all this?’

‘I heard mum and dad arguing one night. He wanted a divorce and she said no, and that's why he killed her. So he could marry the other woman. I heard them talking about it.’

Ben flung himself back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. ‘That's a load of bollocks. You're making it up. I don't know why you hate him so much, but he's our dad and he's all we've got now, so if that's all you've got to say, then fuck off and leave me alone. Go on, get out of my room, freak.’

Lucy didn't budge. ‘Why do you think I hate his guts?’ she asked angrily. ‘He killed mum.’

‘Shut up, shut up! I don't believe a word of it.’

Lucy stood up. ‘You're a complete pillock. You're an idiot!’ She crossed the room, trampling on his clothes and magazines. ‘I don't need him and I don't need you, and I don't need Aunty Evie poking her stupid nose around.’ She went out, slamming the door behind her.

19

Witness

‘T
here's a lad asking to see someone in charge of the Abigail Kirby investigation.’ Geraldine was on her feet before the constable had finished speaking. They were all eager for a lead. As Geraldine entered the room, the boy looked up through a greasy black fringe that flopped sideways across his eyes. He looked about sixteen or seventeen. His pointy nose and chin gave him a gnome-like appearance as he dropped his gaze and sat twisting a chunky silver ring nervously on one finger.

Vernon Mitchell told her he was seventeen. ‘I'm nearly eighteen,’ he added earnestly, as though it was important.

‘I understand you might have some information for us?’ The boy hesitated. ‘Something that could help us in our investigation into the death of Abigail Kirby?’

Vernon nodded uncertainly. ‘She was my headmistress. I recognised her straightaway. I couldn't believe it when I read she was dead.’

‘You read about her death?’

‘Yes, I saw it in the paper. It was a shock, seeing it like that.’

Geraldine closed her notebook. ‘You have my sympathies, Vernon. You knew Mrs Kirby and it's understandable for you to feel disturbed. It's hard to read about the death of someone you know, when they've been murdered.’

Vernon shook his head. ‘I didn't exactly know her.’ He turned sullen and all at once looked very young for his age. ‘It's not like she showed me any respect.’ He told Geraldine that everyone at school was afraid of Mrs Kirby. If it hadn't been for her, Vernon might have applied to university. Mrs Kirby had joined Harchester School when Vernon was in his final GCSE year and she'd made it clear she had no time for pupils who weren't prepared to apply themselves in the hope of going on to further education. ‘I'd have had to retake English and maths, for starters,’ he explained. The previous headmaster had been decent, Vernon went on, but Mrs Kirby had been determined to weed out the less able pupils. ‘All she cared about was the reputation of her precious school. She didn't care about us.’

Geraldine tried to hide her impatience. ‘Vernon, your opinion of Mrs Kirby will help us to build a picture of her, but if you can't give us any information that might help us to find out who might have wanted to be rid of her…’

Vernon snorted. ‘I can't think of many people who wouldn't have wanted her to go. I mean, like I said, she wasn't exactly popular – like, everyone hated her – but killing her is something else. No one would have wanted her dead. It freaks me out to think I might have seen her just a few minutes before she died.’

Geraldine sat forward, interested at last.’ ‘What do you mean, Vernon?’ His dark eyes flickered in alarm at the urgency in her voice and Geraldine sat back in her chair again. ‘Vernon, take your time. What is it you came here to tell us?’

‘I saw her,’ he began and hesitated, twisting his ring again.

‘Mrs Kirby?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go on.’

‘I work in Smith's, in the shopping centre.’ Geraldine nodded. The receipt in Abigail Kirby's pocket confirmed she had been there on Saturday morning.

‘What did she say to you?’

‘No, it was nothing like that. She didn't speak to me. I doubt if she recognised me. But it was weird. There was this man.’ He paused, struggling to find words to explain what had happened. He had spotted Mrs Kirby as she stood waiting to pay. As the queue shuffled forwards she had glanced around impatiently. Vernon hadn't noticed what Mrs Kirby said to the man behind her in the queue, but he saw the expression on the man's face when Mrs Kirby turned away.

‘I mean, I've left school, she doesn't get under my skin any more. School's history. But this guy –’ He shook his head and his long fringe lifted and flopped over his eyes again. ‘It was funny, a grown man like that looking so worked up. I mean, he was old and he was shaking, he looked so mad. I thought he was going to hit her.’

‘You thought he was going to hit Mrs Kirby?’ The boy nodded. ‘What time was this?’

‘Before my morning break at eleven. Probably about ten, maybe ten-thirty.’

‘Did you recognise the man?’

‘No. I'd never seen him before in my life.’

‘Can you describe him?’

Vernon's earlier reticence had vanished. ‘He was tall, dark hair, in a dark jacket or coat. Mrs Kirby didn't seem to care. Maybe she didn't even notice because this man was behind her in the queue and soon after that they all moved forward and then it was Mrs Kirby's turn to pay and I didn't see her again. I was busy on another till.’

‘Can you remember anything else about the man you saw?’ Vernon shook his head. ‘You said he was old. How old was he?’

The boy shrugged. ‘Not old old. I mean he was maybe around forty. It's hard to say.’

Geraldine quizzed the boy for a few minutes about the incident, but Vernon wasn't able to tell her anything more about the man he had seen.

‘You said,’ Geraldine glanced down at her notes, ‘you thought he looked so angry you felt he might hit Mrs Kirby. Why did you think that?’

Vernon shrugged. ‘I don't know,’ he replied. ‘It was just something I thought.’

Back at her desk, Geraldine stared at her notes. A vague impression reported by a casual observer probably had no bearing on the case. ‘What do you think? Time waster?’ she asked Peterson. ‘Let's take a look at the CCTV from Smith's. There's probably nothing there, but at least we'd better check.’ As she stood up, she saw her own excitement reflected back at her in the sergeant's eyes.

Abigail Kirby was spotted on CCTV in the shopping centre at ten fifteen on Saturday morning going in to WH Smith's. She was picked up shortly afterwards on another camera, queuing in a coffee shop. At eleven ten she left the shopping centre, walked past the station, and vanished in the surrounding streets. In the throng of shoppers entering and leaving they picked out a tall man in a dark coat leaving the shopping centre immediately after Abigail Kirby. They were keen to trace him, but they had very little to go on.

An announcement was made over the local radio and sent to the local paper for inclusion in the following week's printed edition. It went online on their website straightaway.

‘Police are keen to speak to a tall man wearing a dark coat who left the Harchester Shopping Centre at eleven ten on Saturday.’ No one was surprised when they received no useful response.

‘Just the usual nutters, ma'am.’

‘There's a chance this man might be involved,’ the DCI agreed. ‘Geraldine, get a team of constables out to all the shops to see if anyone saw a man matching this description or, better still, if they can find him on their CCTV making a purchase by credit card before eleven ten. This is our best lead so far. Find him.’

‘Yes ma'am.’

Geraldine co-ordinated the search. A bevy of constables asked in every shop and checked through film after film working solidly throughout the day, studying every tall figure in a dark coat or jacket they could find in an attempt to come up with a decent image of his face, and tracking Abigail Kirby's movements in case she encountered him anywhere else.

‘Every other bloody man is tall, and half of those are wearing dark coats,’ one of the constables complained and her colleague nodded. It was a hopeless task trying to identify a single shopper on the fuzzy shopping centre CCTV on a busy Saturday in November.

20

Hannah

G
eraldine slept badly on Wednesday night and awoke feeling tired and uneasy. The team were brought up to speed at the morning briefing, but the only new development was frustrating. On blurry CCTV film they could make out a tall man talking to Abigail Kirby for a second in the queue in WH Smith's, but was impossible to see him clearly. The woman wasn't even identifiable, but only one figure fitting Abigail Kirby's description appeared in the queue at the right time. Together with the eye-witness evidence from Vernon Mitchell, they were satisfied they had identified her correctly.

‘Vernon Mitchell knew her by sight,’ the DCI pointed out. That clinched it. They could see her, in the queue, talking to a man who could be her killer. But they had no idea who he was and his shadowy figure gave them very few clues. ‘Right, we can estimate his height pretty closely,’ the DCI went on. ‘And we can be reasonably certain we're looking at a man. Either that or an unusually tall and masculine-looking woman.’

‘Could be a tranny,’ someone suggested quite seriously and there was a faint ripple of amusement around the room.

‘They could be arguing,’ the DCI went on. ‘Let's see if we can trace anyone else who was in the queue at that time through the tills. Any customer who paid by credit card should be easy to find and most people pay by card these days –’

‘In Smith's?’ Peterson interjected. ‘Buying newspapers and pens?’

Kathryn Gordon ignored the interruption. ‘Mary,’ she nodded at a constable, ‘get onto it. We need to speak to anyone who witnessed the encounter in the queue.’

‘Yes, ma'am.’

The atmosphere in the Incident Room was buzzing with muted excitement as they dispersed to check their duties for the day, but the mood rapidly deteriorated as witness reports from shoppers and shop assistants led nowhere. The image of the man in the queue was so vague that someone fitting the description had been sighted simultaneously in just about every store throughout the morning.

‘One step forward, two steps back. This is a complete waste of time.’ Peterson scowled. Geraldine was inclined to agree with him. They were wasting valuable man-hours chasing a shadow. ‘Do you think the DCI's losing her edge, gov?’ Geraldine didn't answer. Kathryn Gordon spent more and more time shut up in her office and when she was around she gave the impression that she was tired of the case. Or perhaps she was just tired. ‘If you ask me, she never should have come back to work after she was ill,’ the sergeant went on, referring to the DCI's period of convalescence earlier in the year after she had suffered a minor coronary.

‘I didn't ask you,’ Geraldine retorted, all the more sharply because she thought Peterson was right. As if it wasn't enough that her personal life was a mess, she now had to worry about whether her sergeant was losing his enthusiasm for the case. ‘Coffee?’ she asked, seeing her colleague's crestfallen expression.

‘Don't worry,’ she told him when they sat down. ‘We'll get a result.’ The sergeant grunted and stared into his cup. ‘It's not like you to be so down.’

‘It's not this.’ He rolled his eyes around. ‘Well, that too. But –’ Geraldine waited. ‘It's Bev.’ They sipped their coffee in silence. ‘I don't know what gets into her.’

‘I thought you were an expert on women, with all your sisters.’

Peterson didn't smile. ‘Something's up with Bev, I can tell. She's been really snappy lately.’ Not for the first time, Geraldine was gratified he was confiding in her, but his fretting concerned her. He was usually so positive. ‘Having problems with Bev on top of all this, it's just getting on top of me,’ he explained. ‘What if she wants to end it? I mean, I don't know what she wants any more.’

‘You're just tired and stressed, Ian, that's why you're suspecting the worst. I expect everything's fine, but in any case it's better to know if there's a problem.’ Geraldine thought about her own long-term partner Mark who had walked out on her after six years. Worse than his leaving had been the realisation that she hadn't even suspected he was seeing another woman. ‘If you want my advice, sort it out with Bev as soon as you can. There's no point letting it drag on and if there is anything going on it's always better to know.’

‘You're right, I'll talk to her. Thanks, Geraldine. I mean it, thank you. It's good to have someone to talk to. The lads here, they're good mates, but –’

‘You don't want them to see your sensitive side?’ She was pleased when he grinned. ‘Come on then, back to work.’

At half past eleven Geraldine logged off and stood up.

‘Where to, gov?’ As usual, Peterson was eager to be away from his desk and the seemingly interminable paperwork.

‘I'm going out.’ Geraldine slung her bag over her shoulder. ‘I'm meeting a friend, Ian,’ she added, noticing his disappointed expression. ‘I've got the afternoon off.’ She hurried from the room.

Geraldine had arranged to meet her friend, Hannah, for lunch at midday. They had fixed the date several weeks earlier, before Geraldine had been assigned to the Abigail Kirby case. She didn't really want to spare the time, but she had put Hannah off so often that she was reluctant to let her down again. And she wanted to talk to her friend about Paul Hilliard.

They met for a pizza in Hannah's home town of Faversham.

‘Are you all right?’ Hannah asked. ‘You look awful.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Seriously, you look really washed-out. ‘Don't tell me, it's this case you're working on.’ Geraldine nodded. ‘Why didn't you say? We could've postponed getting together. You know I don't mind. Really, I'd hate to think you felt obligated –’

‘What are you talking about, obligated?’ Geraldine interrupted her. ‘I wanted to see you. It's been too long already.’