Talking to Strangers, page 17
“Is she?” Elise said, raising an eyebrow. “Did she give permission?”
“She won’t mind,” he mumbled.
“Get her to sign a consent form, Andy—okay? Has anyone contacted you yet?”
“Yeah. I’ve kept it local—radius of twenty miles from Ebbing—and so far Stud and Sailor have swiped right. They’re really keen to message me privately—classic technique. Get the women off the app so there’s no safety net. I’ll carry on messaging with them—and there’ll be others. It’ll probably get more interesting later. After closing time.”
“How romantic,” Caro said, appearing with a cup of tea. “What are Stud and Sailor offering?”
“Er, a good time.”
“Go on, then, Angie. Get them talking.” Caro grinned. “Find out where they want to have this good time.”
Thomson typed his reply, and Elise noticed there was a slight tremor in his fingers.
“Everything okay?” she asked quietly. DC Thomson was young and relatively inexperienced. Maybe she should give the job to one of the older guys?
“Yeah, course.” Andy Thomson tried to laugh, but it turned into a nervous cough. “But can I just ask: How far will I have to go? Am I going to actually meet these blokes?”
“Not sure you’d get far as Angie with that stubble.” Elise laughed but stopped when Andy reddened at his gaffe. “Look, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she went on. “Your job is to identify the sharks—the men who pressure you to meet in dodgy places like Knapton Wood.”
Thomson nodded uncertainly.
“I thought you’d used these apps already?”
“I have, but I was batting for the other side. I was the one offering the good time. This just feels a bit weird.”
“Well, that should give you a big advantage in spotting the fakes and creeps, won’t it? This man is still out there. We need to find him before he targets anyone else.”
Elise’s phone rang and she groaned. Bloody Kiki Nunn again.
“Hello,” she said sharply.
“Hi,” the reporter said, apparently completely unaffected by their last exchange. “I’ve just been to the Claytons’ bungalow. Noel likes taking pictures of women. Thought you’d want to know. And he wears blue gloves.”
FORTY-FOUR
KIKI
Friday, February 21, 2020
“Okay, where are you?” I ask the smudged faces in the video clips when I’ve parked up on the harbor, waiting for the reconstruction. My car windows have steamed up, and I wipe them with my sleeve to get a bit more light on the subject. I think I’ve found Eamonn, hat pulled down to his eyebrows, and I’ve got Lenny, aka Noel Clayton, but there’s no one with either of them. I search outward with my fingertips, zooming in and out, but with everyone bundled up against the cold in big coats, I can’t even tell if they are male or female. But the Captain was definitely there. I grit my teeth in frustration. And then realize I’m only looking for middle-aged men like Eamonn. The Captain could be any age.
I look with fresh eyes. There are two younger blokes in the middle of the crowd—Elise King pointed them out when we looked at the footage together that night. I zoom in on them.
They’re standing with a woman in a red hat. One either side. Like her guards. They’ve got their heads down. It must be the two minutes’ silence.
But that red hat is like a flare, pinpointing the trio in several of the clips as I fast-forward and freeze frames, trying to catch a glimpse of their faces.
It is only when the crowd begins to fragment that they move. The woman heads off on her own, and the two men follow a little way behind. Where are you going? I ask the figure battling against the flow of people leaving.
I find her again with her arms wrapped around another woman. When she pulls back, I can see it’s Mina Ryan. And there’s Ash Woodward. He was there. Standing right beside her.
I dial Mina’s number immediately.
“I hugged hundreds of people that night,” Mina says when I ask about the woman. “It was a real scrum.”
“But this happened at the end, when everyone was leaving. She was wearing a red beanie. And had two lads with her.”
“Oh! Hang on,” Mina says. “I think I remember her. She said Karen used to do her hair years ago, when she’d been a young mum in Ebbing. I don’t know if she said her name—she probably did, but there were just so many people there that night, I can’t remember. I couldn’t believe how many came. Some traveled from the other side of Brighton. Karen would have been made up.”
“Did you talk to the young lads with her?”
“No, just her. But, actually, I think one of them called her Mum.”
“What about Ash Woodward? He was there, wasn’t he?”
“Well, he adored Karen—trailed after her like a puppy. It was a shame, but she just didn’t fancy him. Don’t get me wrong, Karen was sweet with him. She said we needed to look after him like he did with his birds. Did you know he nursed his mother until she died last year? He told Karen all about it when she was cutting his hair. Every week. Karen didn’t want to charge him anything, but he insisted. And he’s rung me several times since she was found, to make sure I’m okay. He’s got a kind soul.”
“Ash left some flowers up at the wood,” I say, moving on carefully.
“I’m not surprised,” Mina replies.
“And a note saying he was sorry.”
“Sorry? Really?” Mina squeaks. “Why would he say that?”
“That’s what I’m wondering. He didn’t look happy at the Free Spirits thing I went to, did he? Did they argue?”
“No, he adored Karen.” But she doesn’t sound as sure now.
* * *
—
I park poor lovelorn Ash while I search for the woman who used to be a customer of Karen’s. She must have had hundreds of customers over the years. Where will I even begin?
Ebbing High Street is quiet. It’s too cold for the Ebbers to hang around gossiping. I put my head into the supermarket, but the aisles are empty. Destinee Amos is standing behind the till at the checkout, peeling off her gels.
“Oh, hello,” I say. “Are you working here now?”
“It’s only temporary,” she mutters, her face a picture of misery. “I’m not staying. Not if I have to wear this horrible uniform.”
“Poor you,” I say, stopping myself from adding: You’re lucky to have a job. “Anyway, where is everyone?” I ask. “It’s like a ghost town out there.”
Destinee shrugs. “There were a few people in earlier. But nothing’s normal at the moment, is it?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Destinee is too young and uninterested to recognize the woman at the vigil, but she directs me across the street to the town’s oracle.
Ronnie Durrant is a small bird of a woman with a sharp nose and bright eyes. She strips off her rubber gloves at the door. “I’m cleaning the kitchen cupboards as therapy. I’m about to run up and down the High Street naked, I’m so bored. Are you a reporter? Come in.”
I love her instantly.
“I saw Karen the evening she died, you know,” she carries on as we walk through to her kitchen. “She waved when she walked past my window on her way to the Neptune. I still can’t believe it’s happened.”
“People must be very jittery about her death,” I say, pulling out a chair while she puts on the kettle.
“Women, you mean? We are. I’ve started a Safe Ebbing group so we can spread the word if we see anyone odd.”
“Oh.” I note it down. “And have there been any sightings?”
“Not yet,” Ronnie says. “It’s early days. But we’ve got people joining the WhatsApp group—including local men volunteering to walk us women home after dark.”
God, I hope she hasn’t asked Noel Clayton.
“That’s a good idea as long as you are checking everyone out,” I say.
“Course,” she chirps as she plonks a cup of tea in front of me. “I know most people anyway.”
“Well, I’ve come to the right house, then,” I say, and she beams back at me. “I need help identifying someone from the vigil footage, and Destinee at the Co-op says you know everything about everyone. Because you and your husband have lived here forever.”
“Well, don’t ask Ted anything!” Ronnie snorted. “He wouldn’t notice if my head fell off. Let’s have a look, then?”
Ronnie pores over the frames of Mina and the woman, tutting quietly to herself.
“I didn’t see her at the vigil, but I definitely know the face,” she murmurs. “When do you say she lived here?”
“Not sure,” I say, “but she told Mina Ryan she was a young mum in Ebbing, and one of the boys who’s with her looks in his twenties. The other mid-teens, perhaps. So, early noughties, maybe?”
Ronnie closes her eyes and starts humming tunelessly.
Oh, dear…red flag alert.
“You’re not communing with the spirit world, are you, Ronnie?” I give a loud fake laugh.
“Sorry!” Ronnie grins, eyes still shut. “I’m flicking through my filing system. So, my Meggie must have started at the bank and I was full-time at the library. The hairdresser’s where Karen first worked was still above the paper shop in the High Street, so…” Her eyelids suddenly spring open. “Oh, bloody hell, I know who it is.”
“Who?”
“She’s the mother of Archie Curtis.”
“The boy who was murdered in Knapton Wood?” I cry out. I can’t believe it. The boy in the tree house.
“Yes. It’s Annie Curtis.” Ronnie smiles, well pleased with herself, then frowns. “And she came for the vigil? That’s strange, isn’t it?”
Good strange, though, I think. Another day, another story. I start looking for an address for her as soon as I get outside.
FORTY-FIVE
ELISE
Friday, February 21, 2020
Elise whistled softly to herself when she opened the email and the image filled her screen. It was the last person she had expected to find when the techies ran the vigil footage through facial-recognition software.
But Annie Curtis had been in the crowd. She’d come back to the scene of her child’s murder. Elise rocked gently in her chair while she tried to imagine why the grieving mother had returned. Not for Karen, she thought. This wasn’t nostalgia for haircuts or highlights. The killing must have reawakened all sorts of terrible memories. And drawn her back to the place they were created.
“What made you come?” she murmured to the face creased by grief, hair lank and as lifeless as the eyes.
Elise pulled up a photo of Annie Curtis from the days following the murder of her son. She’d only been thirty-three, according to the newspaper reports, but she looked twice that.
Caro put her head around the office door. “Can you put one of your special rockets up the lab? We need to know what we’ve got from Karen’s shoulder. Fibers from the glove might help us find the make and nail the wearer.”
“Yep,” Elise said, only half listening. Then she sat bolt upright. Oh, God, had she told Caro about Kiki’s call? About the blue gloves at Noel Clayton’s? She scrambled back through every exchange they’d had since lunch. But there were gaping holes she could no longer fill. She’d forgotten if she’d forgotten. Elise slumped down in her seat, exhausted by the effort required to stay in the saddle.
“Noel Clayton has got blue gloves,” she murmured, as if she could sneak the information under the wire and into Caro’s consciousness.
“Yes, you said,” Caro retorted, peering over her shoulder, and Elise felt a burst of relief in her chest. “What are you looking at?” Caro asked.
“The mother of a child murdered in Knapton Wood sixteen years ago. Do you remember little Archie Curtis? And his tree house?”
Caro nodded. “God, was it Knapton Wood?” she muttered.
“Yep. And we’ve identified Annie Curtis as one of the women who showed up at the vigil. This was her at the time of the killing.”
“Really? Let’s see. God, she looks destroyed. I suppose she was. How did you ID her?”
“Digital magic upstairs. My neighbor Ronnie told me the family moved away immediately afterward. They used to live in the road at the back of the wood—Yew Tree Lane. It must have been unbearable to see the scene of the crime every day. No one heard from them after they went. But Annie Curtis came back this week.”
“So sad,” Caro said, and Elise could hear the “anyway…” coming.
“Anyway,” her sergeant said, “they caught the bloke, didn’t they? And we’ve got a lot on our plate already…”
Me—she means me. That I can’t cope with more than one thing at a time. Elise forced her hunched shoulders down, away from her ears.
“Doing it,” she chanted and lifted her phone. But as soon as Caro left, she put it down and woke up her screen again.
She’d already located the Archie Curtis case file and gave herself fifteen minutes to speed-read the important bits: They’d found DNA evidence of the encounter on Xander’s T-shirt and skin and Donovan’s jeans—and, crucially, a couple of strands of Nicky’s blond hair had been found on Archie’s clothing. Given the chaotic, unplanned nature of the attack, she might have expected more on the second victim. But it’s never entirely predictable, she told herself as she flicked through the scene-of-crime photos. Of course, the victim wasn’t there. Archie Curtis had been found a matter of minutes after his death, if the timeline was accurate, but his body had been scooped up by his mother. They only had her witness statement—and the ten-year-old brother’s account—to rely on.
After Donovan’s suicide, inquests and two funerals were held. And the case had been closed. All nice and tidy.
But at the back of the file, she found Nicky’s criminal record. It was a bit of a surprise, if she was honest—he’d been convicted at the age of twenty-three of paying two lads aged sixteen and fifteen to give him hand jobs in a park. No threats or violence used, as far as Elise could see. And no under-thirteens. Not then, anyway. Maybe a year in prison with other sex offenders had changed that.
Elise wrote down the names of the original detectives. She knew she should be focused on the current case, but there were loose ends tickling her. She’d just have a quick chat.
She found DS Larry Agnew on a forum for retired coppers. He was now running a pub in Portsmouth old town.
“Hello,” he said when Elise rang and told him who she was. “Caught up with me at last…”
Odd reaction, Elise thought, but maybe it qualified as banter in his book.
“Ha!” She gave a fake laugh. “Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted a quick chat about the Archie Curtis murder.”
“Right. Is it about the woman in Knapton Wood? I’m not sure what I can help you with, Elise.” No rank given, she noted. Is he being matey or making some sort of point?
“Of course, we got our man straightaway,” he continued, firmly. So, not matey.
“Right. Nicky Donovan.”
“Yep. A sex offender they dumped on Ebbing. No one knew who he was. Who they’d got living in their little town. Until he killed one of their kids.”
“Yeah, I’ve been having a look at the case—and his record. His previous was with older lads, wasn’t it? A fifteen-year-old was the only underage victim, not children of Xander and Archie Curtis’s age. And he’d never used violence before, had he?” Elise asked.
DS Agnew exhaled noisily—the “here we go” sigh she knew so well. The “you might be senior to me, girlie, but I’ve been around the block more times than you’ve had hot dinners” sigh. Bet he gets my name wrong. Just to show me he couldn’t care less, Elise thought.
Look, Elsie,” he said, and she gritted her teeth. “This was different. You have to realize that Donovan must have been terrified when Xander Curtis ran off—he knew he’d be straight back in prison. And he must have panicked when he chased after him and came across Archie Curtis. We think the younger boy shouted and he was trying to shut him up and used more force than he meant, and the boy suffocated.”
“Okay. You picked him up very quickly after the attack.”
“If you’ve read the case file, you’ll know Xander Curtis gave us the name. Xander said a man called Nicky had touched him and the boy banged his head against a tree when he tried to run off. Xander said he hid for a bit and when he got back to his little brother, he couldn’t wake him. Listen, I looked Donovan in the eye. He was guilty as sin. And he confessed before he hanged himself.”
“Did he?” Elise asked slowly. “There’s no statement under caution to that effect, is there? Unless I’ve missed it?” She knew she hadn’t, and her unease about the speed at which the case had been handled was building.
Larry Agnew breathed heavily. “He left a note. Look,” he growled. “I’ve got a bar to bottle up.”
“Oh, well, there are a couple of other matters,” she added, but the phone had gone down. “I’ll be in touch, Harry,” she told the dead air.
FORTY-SIX
KIKI
Friday, February 21, 2020
I look at my watch for the umpteenth time, as if it might be playing tricks on me, but no, it hasn’t suddenly gained an hour. I groan. The day has got away from me, and there isn’t time to drive to Southsea to see Annie Curtis now. The reconstruction of Karen’s last walk through Ebbing is taking place in an hour or so. I ring in to tell Miles to expect my holding piece—five hundred words on a town held hostage by fear.
“It’ll make a nice color piece,” I say.
“Haven’t they caught the bloke yet?” Miles grunts.
“No. Have you found the rest of the brotherhood?”
“Got some new ideas, actually. Get lots of visuals.”
