Authors: Lindsay Ashford
‘You got the crowbar?’ DS Willis was addressing the officer who had made the quip about the dead boy. He was the only one of the four uniformed officers still present, which was just as well, Megan thought. The overhead fans were going like the clappers but the atmosphere was still stifling and it was about to get much worse.
‘Don’t think we’re going to need it, Sarge,’ he replied. ‘It’s loose already.’ With a grunt he prised the lid right off. It fell to the floor with a splintering sound, particles of earth shooting in all directions. Now the smell was overpowering: like nothing Megan had never encountered. It was a stench she could only describe as old and rotten. The mummified remains of the baby had smelt of almost nothing; like dry paper kept in a cupboard for years and years. But this was an evil smell. Without looking inside she knew that the bones would be moist; greasy. There would probably be hair still attached to the skull and the tattered remains of whatever clothing Moses Smith was buried in. With her hand to her mouth, she moved towards the open coffin.
‘He was a Villa fan, then.’ This time it was Alastair Hodge who tried to lighten the atmosphere. He pointed a gloved finger at a rolled-up scarf lying near the feet of the skeleton in the familiar claret-and-blue of Aston Villa football club.
‘Shall I bag it up, Sarge?’
Willis nodded and the officer stretched out his hand slowly, grasping the frayed woollen fabric between the tips of his finger and thumb, as if the latex that covered them was not enough to protect his skin from this contaminated object. Megan noticed a bead of sweat coursing down the side of his face as he leaned in. Suddenly he froze. ‘Hold up,’ he said. ‘There’s something…’
‘What it is?’ Willis glanced at the pathologist with nervous eyes.’
With a brisk movement Alastair Hodge took the scarf from the policeman’s grasp. ‘There’s something wrapped up in it,’ he said. ‘Something hard.’
‘What is it?’ Megan stared at the bundle in the pathologist’s hands. Very gently he began to unravel the fabric. The stripes were the colour of the sky and of dried blood.
She held her breath. Could it be the knife used to murder Moses Smith? What better place to hide it than his coffin? If it
was
the knife, his killers must have been known to the family…
‘Oh.’ Alastair Hodge stopped unwinding the scarf, his finger and thumb fastening on something inside. ‘It’s a photograph.’ He slid it out of its woollen cocoon. The plastic frame was undamaged and the glass intact, although there looked to be damp inside it. Despite the wave of mildew sweeping up the left hand side of the picture, Megan could clearly see the faces of a woman and a child. Without a word, Hodge passed it to Willis, who shrugged before handing it to Megan.
‘Not really worth turning out for, was it?’ he said in the monotonous voice she’d come to loathe. She took the photograph, avoiding his eyes. The woman was very young: barely out of her teens by the look of her. This must be Moses Smith’s girlfriend: the newspaper report had said she was nineteen at the time of the murder.
She had a strange feeling of
déjà vu
as she stared at the snapshot. There was something strangely familiar about the woman. She had long, dark hair swept sideways by the wind and her eyes were heavily outlined with Goth-style makeup. Where had she seen that face before? The skin between
Megan’s eyebrows puckered as she turned her attention to the child – a little girl – who looked like a miniature version of the woman, minus the make-up. Her wispy hair was caught up in ponytails tied with pink ribbons. She looked about two years old. This must be the child mentioned in the article, Megan thought. Not a newborn baby, as she had suspected. So if this little girl was the dead man’s child, who was the baby boy found in the shoebox?
Something clicked in her brain. A memory of Dom Wilde, his hand outstretched, showing her something. It was the woman in the photograph: the snap Dom had shown her of the young mother cradling his baby daughter had the same face as the one she was staring at now. She felt a pulsing in the side of her head. Her gloved fingers tightened their grip on the picture frame as she moved it closer to her face. Were her eyes deceiving her?
‘Don’t think there’s much point us hanging around.’ Willis’ voice cut across her thoughts. It sounded different; muffled. Megan glanced up from the photograph to see that he was holding a handkerchief to his mouth. ‘How long until the DNA results come through?’
‘Hard to say,’ Hodge replied. ‘Depends how long it takes to extract a good enough sample – we’ll try the hair follicles, but we might have to take a piece of bone. We’re talking the best part of a week anyhow.’
Willis nodded, taking a step backwards.
‘I… er…’ Megan straightened up, laying the photograph down as she looked around the room for her bag. Her mind was a jumble and she blinked, trying to recall the thing she had told herself not to forget to ask Willis. ‘Before you go,’ she mumbled, ‘there’s something I need to give you.’ She spotted her bag on the hook on the door and went to fish out the Jodie Shepherd letter. ‘I’d like you to get this fingerprinted, please. It might speed things up if there’s
anything on it.’
He stood in the doorway, the handkerchief still clasped to his mouth, while she gave a brief explanation. There was plenty more she could have told him, but given his behaviour, she didn’t feel inclined to. Save it for the case conference on Thursday, she thought. It would be interesting to see his face when she told his bosses things he didn’t have a clue about.
When he’d gone she turned her attention back to the photograph. ‘Can I get a photocopy of this? There’s someone I’d like to show it to.’ She had to get it to Dom. Compare it with the snapshot he carried around with him. If there was any chance of her being right about the woman it would change everything.
So many questions were forming in her mind. Without being able to compare the images she couldn’t be absolutely sure they were one and the same. It could easily be some relative of his ex-partner – a sister or a cousin. But what if was her? She felt herself shiver. What was her picture doing in the coffin of Moses Smith – a man Dom claimed he had never heard of?
Hodge adjusted his glasses, which had slipped down his nose, and gave her directions to the path lab’s office. Once again she passed the body of the road crash victim. Apparently he was still awaiting identification before being tagged and moved into a fridge. A white sheet now covered his face. She winced at the thought of some poor relative being brought to this place; standing in terrified silence as the sheet was pulled back. As she hurried towards the office she realised that she had no idea what Moses Smith had looked like. There had been no photograph of him in the newspaper article. It was strange, seeing his skeleton but having no image of the man when he was alive.
The photocopying done, she returned the picture to the pathologist. It was nearly a quarter past nine. No chance of
going to the prison at this time of the night. She was going to have wait until tomorrow to see Dominic.
As she made her way to the car park she thought about Delva, waiting at home with the jerk chicken dish she’d promised to cook. With a twinge of guilt Megan realised that she wasn’t feeling the slightest bit hungry. Not surprising really, she thought, as she pressed the button on her key fob; the smell of the mortuary was the best appetite-suppressant she’d ever encountered.
She turned the key in the ignition and heard the reassuring purr of the engine. Moving the gear stick into reverse she edged out of the parking space. There was a sudden judder and she rammed her foot down on the brake. One of her back wheels had gone over something.
‘Shit!’ she hissed. Her hand trembled as she opened the door. Was it a speed bump she’d missed in the dark? She was trying to rationalise it; telling herself this wasn’t what she feared it might be. They couldn’t have followed her
here
… could they?
With a deep breath she walked towards the back of the car. ‘Oh Christ!’ She grabbed the boot to stop herself collapsing. In the red glow of her taillights she could see a baby’s head. She had driven over a baby. ‘God… please… no!’ she stammered, on her knees now, her hands clawing the air. What should she do? Move the car? Call an ambulance? Run inside and get Alistair? All these options tumbled through her mind as she stared helplessly at the white frilly bonnet still attached to the tiny head. Something, some instinct, made her reach out to it. And the moment her fingers touched it, she knew. There was something about the feel of it the head, even through the thin white cotton. It was hard: there was no flesh on the skull. She retched as she pulled the bonnet away. What she was expecting to see was the head of the little boy; the mummified corpse that Jonathan was supposed to
be collecting tomorrow. Some sick joker had stolen it and put it under the wheels of her car.
But she was wrong. Even in the dim red light she could see that it was too clean, too white. She was shaking so violently she could barely control her hands as she reached out again. It was smooth. Cold. Her fingers told her brain that this was plastic. That what she was touching was no baby, dead or alive, but a doll.
Megan wasn’t sure how she made it to Delva’s house. When she went over it all the next morning she couldn’t remember anything about the journey. All she could recall was ringing the bell and stumbling through the front door. Delva had been standing there in a blue and white striped apron with a spatula in her hand. Megan had opened her mouth to explain but the words had come out in a jumble. Delva had tried to catch her when she passed out. The spatula had flown into the air, smearing the wallpaper with sauce from the jerk chicken.
Megan saw the mark in the morning when she left for Balsall Gate jail. Delva had begged her not to go; told her she ought to rest. But she was fine. It had been a shock, yes, but she had been overwrought. The exhumation had got to her; made her paranoid. She told Delva that she had been making something out of nothing. It was just a doll, lost or abandoned by some child. The fact that it had been behind her car was probably pure coincidence. There was no logical reason to suspect that it had been put there on purpose.
Delva told her that she looked washed out; that she had been spending too much time on the case and needed to forget it for a while. But she couldn’t. She had to get to Dominic, show him that photograph. And then she would phone Willis. Nag him about fingerprinting the letter.
Despite what she’d said to Delva, though, she couldn’t help walking around the car two or three times before she got into it. She needed to reassure herself that no one had tampered with it during the night. She found nothing, but the uneasy feeling stayed with her. As she drove past St Mary’s graveyard she noticed that the screens and the digger had gone. She couldn’t see it from the road, but her mind’s eye recalled the deep, dark, vacant hole that awaited the return of Moses Smith’s remains. She thought about the woman and child in the photograph. Whoever had put it inside the coffin must have loved him. So why hadn’t they come forward? Tried to stop the disinterrment going ahead? Either they didn’t know or they were scared of retribution.
She was still mulling these possibilities over as she made her way to the room where Dominic was waiting. Her first impression was that he looked better than he had yesterday. His face had some colour and his eyes looked brighter.
‘I had the first decent night’s sleep I’ve had in ages,’ he said. ‘It sounds awful, I know, but I’ve got Moses Smith to thank for that. It was a big event in here, the exhumation. The lads on the cemetery side of the jail were giving a running commentary. It turned into a bit of a party – from what I heard there was a fair bit of hooch doing the rounds. Anyway, it must have tired them all out. I didn’t hear a peep out of anyone till breakfast.’ He smiled at her, but then his face changed. ‘You look tired. Are you okay? It can’t have been a barrel of laughs, seeing something like that.’
‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘It was a bit of a late night, that’s all, by the time I got back from the mortuary. Anyway,’ she looked away as she reached into her jacket in case he saw through her fake smile. ‘I’ve brought something to show you: something we found with the body.’ She took out the
photocopy of the picture from the coffin and passed it to him. ‘It was in a frame, wrapped up in an Aston Villa scarf,’ she said. ‘I’m assuming that’s the girlfriend and the child they mentioned in the newspaper report of his death.’ She passed it to him, watching his face. For a moment all she could hear was his breathing. Then his features went completely rigid. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
‘It’s her,’ he whispered. ‘It’s Sonia.’ He looked at her, bewilderment in his eyes, his hand shaking as he felt in his pocket for the dog-eared hospital snapshot. He thrust it into her hand. Side by side, there was no mistaking the likeness. ‘What the hell’s her picture doing in that guy’s coffin?’ He stared at it, raking his hair. ‘And who’s this?’ He brought a trembling finger level with the child in the photocopied image. ‘Could it… could she be…’ he tailed off, turning his troubled face to Megan
‘You think it’s your daughter?’ she whispered. ‘You think it’s Elysha?’
Megan eyes narrowed as she turned her attention back to the pictures in her hand. The photocopy was black and white and it lacked the sharpness of the original, colour version. ‘Are you
sure
that this woman is your Sonia?’
‘As sure as I can be,’ Dom replied.
Megan glanced from one image to the other. ‘The
makeup
makes her look a bit older, but it certainly looks like the same person.’ She looked at him, perplexed. ‘But I thought you said you didn’t know Moses Smith?’
‘I didn’t.’ He screwed his eyes tight shut, as if to banish the woman’s face and the memories it brought back. ‘Like I told you, I lost track of Sonia after she hooked up with Leroy Spinks. Christ, I wasn’t even sure she was still alive…’
‘Well, I guess that’s understandable, if she was moving in that kind of world. But she must have got away from her pimp, though, mustn’t she?’ Megan laid the photos down on the coffee table, thinking it through. ‘Perhaps she was taken in by Moses. If he was a heroin addict, he wasn’t exactly a great catch; but if she was desperate, if she had no money and nowhere to hide…’
‘Yes, that makes sense, doesn’t it?’
‘But why would she have put that photo in the grave with him? If it wasn’t his child, I mean?’
‘She probably told the kid he was her father. She hated my guts, so I guess she wanted to write me out of her life.’
Megan considered this. ‘But what about the baby in the shoebox? How does he fit in to all this?’
‘That might have been their baby,’ Dom picked up the picture from the coffin, his face set. ‘She looks pregnant to me.’
‘Does she?’ Megan took it from him, bringing the picture closer to her face. ‘How can you tell?’
‘That top she’s wearing,’ he said. ‘She was always dead skinny and she liked to show her figure off. She would never have worn something that baggy unless she had to.’
‘What if she was pregnant when he was murdered?’ Megan said, voicing the thought that had occurred to her immediately after Carl Kelly’s death; the idea that had surfaced when she was pondering the cause of Carl’s obsessive belief that Moses Smith was coming back to haunt him. ‘The newspaper report said there was one child, not two: could the men who killed Moses have done something to her? Something that made her lose her baby?’ She glanced at Dom, who was staring at the window. ‘Perhaps she was in shock: that would explain why she didn’t tell anyone about it; why she hid the baby’s body.’
She heard Dom suck in his breath. In a sudden movement he reached for her, grasping her fingers with his. ‘Elysha would have been there, wouldn’t she?’ His forehead was beaded with perspiration and his eyes were searching hers, wide with fear.
Oh God, she thought, a two-year-old caught up in something like that. It didn’t bear thinking about. ‘I don’t know, Dom,’ she said gently. ‘She might not have been: perhaps she was with a neighbour or a relative or…’
‘No,’ he cut in, ‘She would have been there, I’m certain. Sonia and Moses were both at home when Carl and the others came for him. The newspaper said so. What if she saw it, Meg? What if they hurt her?’
She stroked his thumb with her fingers. ‘They can’t have hurt her, can they? You know she’s alive; she’s on the
electoral roll and you’ve got her address.’
‘Yes,’ he nodded hard. ‘Yes, I have. I’ve got to find her, Meg, make sure she’s all right.’
‘I’ll find her for you, Dom.’
His eyes filled up and he blinked furiously to stop them brimming over. Without thinking she reached out and pulled him to her, kissing his forehead. She could feel his tears on her chin. ‘That letter you were going to write,’ she whispered, ‘Did you finish it?’
She felt his head shake against her neck then he pulled away, groping in the pocket of his trousers for a handkerchief. ‘I’ve been trying to work out what to say. It’s so hard, after all this time, trying to explain.’ He was looking at the floor, as if he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge what had passed between them.
‘I’ll explain it to her, if you like: it might be easier for her, hearing it from someone else. If you give me her address, I’ll go there now. Can you get it for me?’
‘I don’t need to,’ he replied. ‘Have you got a pen?’
She wasn’t surprised that he had memorised it: this was the most important thing in his life and he must have spent hours in his cell imagining the place where his daughter was living. ‘Oh,’ she said, taking the piece of paper from him, ‘It’s in Balsall Gate.’
‘Yes.’ With a heavy sigh he closed his eyes. ‘I reckon you could see the house from Alpha wing. Weird, isn’t it? All these years she’s been so close and I never knew.’
‘I’ll have to play it carefully, Dom. I can’t just come out with it. In fact I probably won’t mention you at all to begin with. I’ll have to pretend I’m looking for her mother, which I am anyway, of course, because she’s the one who’s most likely to be able to shed some light on all of this.’
He looked at her doubtfully. ‘You’ll have to come up with something pretty good. For all I know she might still
be living with her mother. Given that Sonia hasn’t come forward up to now she’s going to run a mile if she finds out who you are.’
‘I know. But don’t worry, I’ll think of something between here and your daughter’s house.’ She rose from the chair and the draught from the window caught the moisture on her chin. In a swift, involuntary movement she brushed her face with the tips of her fingers. His tears. She turned away, not sure how to say goodbye this time.
‘If you see her, will you give her this?’
She turned to see him holding out the hospital photograph.
‘I was going to put it in the letter.’
Megan nodded as she tucked the photograph into her pocket. ‘I’ll make sure she sees it,’ she said, unable to look at him. ‘Call me this evening if you can,’ she said over her shoulder as she reached the door. ‘I’ll let you know how I got on.’
Fergus was waiting outside for her. As he stood aside to let her pass she heard Dom call out to her: ‘Goodbye, Dr Rhys. Thank you.’ Strange, he hadn’t called her that since their first meeting. Why was he suddenly being so formal? Was it because of Fergus? A sudden, cold sensation gripped her, like icy fingers squeezing her heart. Something about those words sounded so…she struggled for the right word… so
final
.
She tried to push it from her mind as she made her way through security to the car park. He was upset; worried. She had seen for herself how much the shock of it had affected him. He would be fine once she had some good news for him. With an air of determination she climbed into the car and slammed the door.
* * *
The address he had given her was within half a mile of the prison. In less than ten minutes she was parked at the top end of a row of scruffy maisonettes. They had been built in the early eighties to replace one of the many bulldozed tower blocks and they were showing obvious signs of wear and tear. The window frames looked rotten, with paint peeling away from the sills, and most of the tiny front gardens were strewn with rubbish. As she walked along the pavement looking for number twenty-three she saw a couple of syringes and a used condom lying against one of the broken picket fences. Was this where Dom’s little girl had grown up, she wondered? Not the best place for a child.
She thought about what sort of person Elysha might have become; what kind of mother Sonia was likely to have turned into after seeing her partner murdered and possibly miscarrying a baby at the same time. Drugs had apparently been part of their lives before the murder. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if Sonia had become heavily dependent on them after an experience like that – especially if she’d become a prostitute.
She wondered if either of them could have any direct involvement in the murders of Carl Kelly and Patrick Ryan. It would certainly explain why neither had come forward in response to the appeals on the news. Elysha was just about old enough to pass for early twenties. Could she be the one who had hoodwinked her way into the jails? Or was it her mother? Dom had said she was always skinny. She would be in her mid-thirties now, but perhaps she could pass for someone much younger. Why wait until now, though – seventeen years after the event – to take revenge? These men had been on the loose for years after Moses Smith’s death. Killing them on the outside would surely have been a far easier option than getting into a prison to do it. And then there was the question of the baby. If it was Sonia’s,
why would she draw attention to herself by burying it in her partner’s grave within days of killing his murderer?
The other problematic piece of the jigsaw was the hall of residence. To steal the identity of two students would require a detailed knowledge of Linden House and the students who lived there. Could Elysha be a student? Did one of them work there? However unlikely their involvement seemed, she would have to call David Dunn and ask him. And it would be better to know that in advance of going to the house.
Walking back up the street she pulled out her phone then searched her bag for the card Dunn had given her. She tried his mobile first, but it went straight to voicemail. She left a message for him to call her back then tried the hall of residence. One of the porters answered. He told her rather brusquely that the warden was away at a conference and wouldn’t be back until the evening. She explained who she was and asked if there was anyone by the name of Sonia or Elysha Smith working at Linden House. He replied in a stiff, jobs-worth manner that he wasn’t allowed to give out such information and she would have to wait until the warden came back.
Swearing under her breath she ended the call. She was either going to have to put this off until the evening or go in blind. The thought of leaving it was frustrating: what if she came back tonight and there was no one in? She wanted to see Elysha and she was confident she could blag her way in without arousing suspicion.
Number twenty-three was the second-to-last house in the row. It looked no more or less down-at-heel than the neighbouring maisonettes. There were a couple of black bin liners in the garden, one ripped slightly to expose the corner of a packet of cigarettes and what looked like dried up potato peelings. There were net curtains at all the windows, so it was impossible to see inside the house from the road. There
was no doorbell so she rapped loudly on the reinforced frosted glass that formed the top part of the front door. She stepped back, listening for signs of life. But there were none. She knocked again. Still no response.
‘They’m not there, love.’
Megan turned to see a neighbour standing on the step on the other side of the low fence. She looked about fifty, her dyed blonde hair showing a tangle of dark roots. She was wearing a short, pink nightdress and a pair of huge, padded lion’s paw slippers. A curl of cigarette smoke rose from her right hand.
‘Oh?’ Megan said, ‘Do you know when they’ll be back?’
The woman eyed her suspiciously. ‘Where yer from? The Social?’
‘No. I’m a friend. Of Elysha’s.’
‘Yer from the Starbucks up the road?’
Something clicked in Megan’s brain: A café: Dom had said Carl’s girfriend worked in a café. Could it be Starbucks? Was this the connection? ‘Yes,’ she replied, sticking her chin out as if she believed it.
‘She been skiving off, has she?’ The neighbour took a drag of her cigarette, blowing it towards the sky as if this was not unexpected news. ‘I reckon they’ve done a runner. I ai’ seen none of ‘em since last week.’
‘Really?’ Megan folded her arms and took a step closer to the fence, wondering how many people lived in the house and who the others were. ‘I don’t suppose you know where they might have gone, do you?’
The woman shrugged. ‘The boyfriend’s, mebbe.’
‘Boyfriend?’ Did she mean Elysha’s boyfriend? Or someone else’s? Could Sonia be living there with a new man? Not wanting to reveal her ignorance, she said: ‘Does he live near here?’
The woman stubbed her cigarette out on the fence and
tossed it across the garden onto the pavement. ‘I ai’ gorra clue where he lives. ‘Is name’s Paul summat. It’s on the van but I cor remember it.’
‘His van?’
‘Yeah.’ The woman stubbed her cigarette out on the fence and tossed it across the garden onto the pavement. ‘PD Pest Control. I cor tell yer no more’n that.’ With a toss of her head she disappeared through her front door, slamming it behind her.
Megan stared at a flake of blue paint as it floated onto the step, dislodged by the impact. The woman’s words were ringing in her ears.
PD Pest Control.
She gave an involuntary shiver. There was no denying a connection now. She grabbed her mobile and punched out the number of one of the directory enquiry services. In less than sixty seconds the number of PD Pest Control was texted to her phone. A mobile number. She saved it in her contacts and got back into the car. She would call the number and pretend to be a client. Ask for a face-to-face meeting to discuss some complicated infestation problem.
Further up the road she had spotted a phone box. She would make the call from there. She pulled up alongside it, hoping it hadn’t been vandalised. It looked okay. She delved into her purse for coins and punched out the number. Her shoulders tensed as she heard it ring out. But after two rings it went to voicemail. A tinny male voice with a strong Birmingham accent announced the name of the company and asked the caller to leave their number.
Damn
, she thought. There was no way she was going to give him that. She was going to have to try again later, or google him back at the office, find out the address and just pitch up there.
But first she would try Starbucks.
The Starbucks up the road,
the woman had said. That had to be the one on the Heartland campus: the one opposite her office. The one
she called at nearly every day of the week. She had almost certainly been served coffee by Dom’s daughter. And there was a good chance she would be there now.
It took a matter of minutes to drive back to the office, park the car and step across the road to the café. She approached the counter a little warily. There was no sign of a female member of staff – just two young men serving. She’d seen them both before. One was a student from Greece and the other a migrant worker from Slovenia.