Suspects, page 8
But no one ever did take it further. The money he asked for was never so much that they couldn’t afford it, and they clearly thought paying him off was a smarter move than risking exposure. Dee, of course, received half of the money.
Rudi must have realized that before long she would play him at his own game and rip him off. So he quit his job at the hotel and gave her a big payoff, thus buying her silence.
When Dee tearfully told Alfie she’d lost her job, he comforted her, then asked her to marry him and move to Cheltenham. The year before, he’d moved his replacement-windows company to Gloucester as business premises were much cheaper there, and he’d bought the house on the Pinewood estate in Cheltenham. At that time, he didn’t have the slightest suspicion of what Dee had been up to at the hotel. He was a classic ‘love is blind’ candidate.
However, within three months of their lavish wedding and expensive honeymoon in Barbados, Alfie started to see Dee wasn’t the sweet, kind, generous woman he had taken her for. As long as he was buying her expensive presents, taking her out to restaurants and for weekends away in good hotels, she was sexy, loving and fun. But one word of recrimination about her spending, a suggestion that she iron his shirts or prepare dinner, and the playful kitten unsheathed her claws and turned into a hellcat.
He remembered ruefully the time he’d suggested she become the receptionist at his company. ‘Me? Work in a two-bit replacement-windows company?’ she said disdainfully. ‘On a trading estate? You’ve got to be joking.’
He often wondered how she had managed to hide this side of her from him for so long, but she was a good actress and a very plausible liar. Almost every aspect of her past she presented to people was false. Alfie found out the truth only when he tracked down Rudi, the former hotel manager ‒ by then he had taken over the running of a string of massage parlours. Alfie had to rough him up to get the truth, and it all came out ‒ he even saw some of the videos Dee had starred in.
Alfie wanted a divorce, but he knew she would fight him tooth and nail and get half of everything he had. Plus, she knew a couple of dodgy deals he’d done and wouldn’t think twice about grassing him up.
‘So.’ Alfie put down his newspaper and grinned at his wife. ‘Tell me what you think Brian and May might be up to.’
‘The sunbed salons are a front for something else. Drugs, maybe. Or prostitution.’
Alfie wanted to laugh. They were far too inhibited for either business but he agreed with Dee for now. If he argued, she’d only get mad with him. What was he doing with a woman he couldn’t stand up to? If any of his old mates in south London could see him now, they’d laugh at him.
12
Later on Monday morning DI Marshall glanced sideways at Tex as he drove him to the children’s playground by the Pinewood estate. He noted that the man showed no sign of tension or nervousness, the opposite, in fact: he seemed happy to be having an outing in a car, the way a child would.
‘As we walk through the park, I want you to try to remember who you saw on Friday, where they were, what they were doing,’ Marshall said, once they had arrived. ‘Can you do that for me? It’s important.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Tex said, frowning a little as if in concentration. ‘I’m good at remembering.’
As they got out of the car, Tex put on his Stetson and they walked towards the playground. All the grass was very brown and dry now. Marshall hoped for rain soon as his own garden was crying out for it, but he’d like it to wait a few more days so he could be sure they’d found all the remaining evidence here.
‘Did you come in this way?’ Marshall asked. The children’s playground was to their left.
Tex nodded. ‘The blonde girl was on that swing,’ he said, pointing to the frame that held six. Two had been swung up and over the top rail so they couldn’t be used. ‘She was on the middle one,’ Tex went on. ‘The two boys was either side of her talking. They was smoking too. But not her.’
Surprised that Tex recalled such details. ‘Who else was here?’
‘Not many people, I expect they’d all gone home for their tea. There was a woman with her little boy on the seesaw ‒ she was pressing it up and down cos no one was on the other end. There was a couple of small kids on the roundabout too. That’s all.’
They were walking beyond the playground area now. ‘Who was out here?’ Marshall asked.
Tex thought for a while. ‘There was a man with an Alsatian dog throwing a ball for it, and a lady with some little kids, sitting on a blanket. They was right over the other side, looked like they’d got a picnic.’ Tex pointed into the distance, where a man was now throwing a Frisbee for his dog. ‘There was a man running. He had a bare chest and shorts. He was going that way.’ Tex pointed to the way Marshall intended to take him, up the slope to where Chloë was killed.
‘How old was that man, do you think? Can you describe him?’
‘He was young and fit, maybe twenty. About as tall as me, dark cropped hair. Muscular.’
Marshall was impressed by Tex’s memory and that he took in so much about people. He was already intending to send some officers up there later today to question everyone to find out if they were there on Friday evening. But he wanted to know more about the runner. People weren’t normally suspicious of runners, so it might have been good cover for a man intent on killing. ‘So where did you go on Friday?’
‘Over there.’ Tex pointed to a spot some twenty yards from where they stood. ‘I sat down on the grass. I like watching people. Soon after I sat down the man with the dog came. His dog was called Sam ‒ I heard him call him.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘The blonde girl’s friend come. She’s fat with brown hair, but she were with two other kids about the same age as her. They came from down the bottom.’ He pointed through the park to a gate. ‘But I didn’t pay them much attention cos I was watching the dog.’
‘Then what?’
‘I don’t remember anything else till the boys with the motorbikes come. I’d lain down, and dropped off. But the bikes woke me ‒ they was revving them up, showing off, like, to the other kids. They did some wheelies, and the blonde girl was laughing. I started to go up the slope, but then, like I said before, I heard the bikers coming so I hid in the bushes till they’d gone past. I was too scared to go on that way, in case they come back. So I come back down the slope and went out the way I came.’
‘The blonde girl, Chloë, was she still on the swings when you left?’
‘Not on the swings. She walked up the slope ‒ I saw her go past while I was hid.’
‘Alone, or with someone?’
‘Alone. But I think she liked one of the motorbike boys.’
‘What about her friend? Where was she?’
‘I dunno, I didn’t see her. Maybe she’d gone home.’
‘Do you know anything about the motorbike boys? Their names, where they live?’
‘Nope, only that they’re mean. But I’ve seen ’em scare kids too. The blonde girl could tell you who the kids they scared are ‒ she was there one time when they was doing it. She ran over to ’em and told ’em to stop.’
Marshall sensed that Tex had absolutely no idea Chloë was dead. ‘Did they stop?’
‘Yup! Guess they was surprised at her being so brave. Most people are like me, scared to say anything in case they does something worse.’
Marshall was touched by Tex’s honesty. ‘Is there anyone in here now that you recognize from last Friday?’
Tex looked around carefully. ‘No. The teenagers mostly come early evening. During the day it’s old people and mums with little kids. People with dogs come anytime, though.’
Marshall made a mental note to come back alone around six. ‘Let’s walk up there now, Tex,’ he suggested, pointing up the slope. ‘Show me where you hid in the bushes. If you remember anyone else you saw on Friday, just tell me.’
They had only gone some fifty or sixty yards when Tex pointed to a large clump of brambles to the right of the slope. ‘I hid behind there,’ he said.
Marshall went round the bush. The grass and weeds were trampled but then the police had been all over the entire area. He picked up a cigarette butt and put it in an evidence bag to get it checked.
He and Tex moved on. ‘Did you see or hear anyone else come this way?’ Marshall asked, as they continued up the slope.
‘Not that I remember,’ Tex said. ‘But someone could’ve come up or down while I was hiding. I wouldn’t have heard them over the bikes’ noise.’
Not for the first time, it seemed to Marshall that Tex had better powers of observation than many of his officers.
The spot where Chloë had been killed was about three hundred yards further on. As they went round a slight bend and the taped-off crime scene, with two officers guarding it, came into view, Tex stopped in his tracks and looked questioningly at Marshall.
‘The blonde girl you spoke of, Chloë Church, was killed here on Friday evening,’ Marshall said.
Tex was suddenly rigid, his horrified expression proof he had known nothing of Chloë’s death and could not have had a hand in it. ‘Why? What had she done?’ Tex’s voice shook and his eyes filled. ‘She was nice ‒ she always waved to me.’
Even from twenty feet outside the cordon, Chloë’s blood was still clearly visible on the grass. It was dark brown and dried hard from the sun, a few flies buzzing around it.
‘We don’t know why she was killed. Have you any ideas? Or have you ever met or seen anyone around here who you thought was odd or suspicious?’ Marshall asked.
Tex shook his head mournfully. He looked pale now, clearly badly shaken. ‘She were nice.’
‘Okay, then, I’ll drive you back to Pearl Street. I’m sorry, Tex, that I had to bring you here.’
‘You thought it was me what done it.’
It was a statement, not a question, and Marshall felt ashamed. ‘No, not me. I just brought you here because I hoped you might have seen something that would lead us to the killer.’
On arriving back at the station, Marshall told his team firmly that Tex was not the killer and instructed them to make finding the two youths on scramble bikes and the running man a priority. He also wanted four of them to patrol the park, not just to question people about whether they’d been there on Friday, but to warn them to be careful and watch out for anyone who looked or behaved suspiciously.
He did the television appeal for information in the afternoon. He hadn’t asked Mr and Mrs Church to join him ‒ they were too distraught. But he planned to do a re-enactment in the next couple of days. They would find a girl similar in size and age to Chloë to be filmed in the park on the swing, then walking up the slope. He hoped the boys she was talking to at the time would take part. They were in the clear: the officers who had tracked them down said they’d left the park around six o’clock, which was before Chloë was killed, and called into the fish and chip shop on the way home. The owner had confirmed he’d served them, and both boys’ mothers confirmed they were back indoors by seven.
Everyone on the other roads on the Pinewood estate had been questioned now. Some of the women had been alone at home at the time and there were a couple of men who had no alibi, but according to the team who interviewed them, none of them were suspicious.
A few of his men were working their way through sex offenders in Cheltenham and the surrounding area. Marshall did not think that paedophiles, who by their nature were secretive and had the patience to groom children, would suddenly savagely attack a child in broad daylight and in a public place. But it was good practice to check everyone on the register from time to time, if for no other reason than to let them know they were on the police radar. Besides, some of those loathsome men might have heard something useful on the grapevine. Most would have grassed up their own grandmother to get on the right side of the law.
But if that failed to turn up any leads, Marshall knew he’d have to widen the search area, and do a house-to-house investigation, possibly all over Cheltenham. Yet he was still sticking by his original hunch that the killer was very local, someone who knew the park, scrubland and woods around the Pinewood estate very well. He also felt the killer must have been well known to Chloë. Even though she was a confident, outgoing girl, she was sensible and would never have gone off with a stranger.
Marshall had only the last two couples in Willow Close left to question, and from what the neighbours had said about them being quiet, reserved people, he didn’t bear much hope they’d be the killers. But he’d go and see them now so he could tick them off the list.
Wilma Parkin slid their emptied suitcase under their bed and smiled at her husband, who was folding a sweater and putting it away.
‘Oh, Terry, it was such a lovely weekend. I wish we could’ve stayed all week. I love the New Forest.’
‘Maybe we can go again in a month or so,’ he replied. ‘By then I’ll be able to ask for the Monday off again, like this time.’
He was glad Wilma seemed so happy about the long weekend, but he was relieved to be going back to work in the morning. Three whole days with Wilma was more than enough. He loved her for her gentle sweetness, but so much placidity made him feel stifled and irritated.
It had been the same when he was in the army: he’d looked forward to his leave, but once he was home, he wanted out. Now he was happiest at work. The other engineers were a fun bunch, lots of laughing, taking the rise out of each other, and the women in the office joined in too. Some of them were very bawdy, shockingly so sometimes, and there was always a bit of intrigue about who was having a dabble with whom. He thought he was the only one of the engineers who had never had an affair with one of the office girls.
Martin, his twenty-eight-year-old son, was just as dull and self-righteous as his mother. On the rare occasions he agreed to join Terry at the pub he could make a half of lager last a couple of hours, then go home. Terry was proud that Martin had done so well, a first-class degree at Bristol University, and now lecturing on history and geography there. He was much too self-effacing to boast that he was good at his job, but Wilma had an old friend at the university who said he brought his subjects to life, and his lectures were some of the best-attended.
It was good to hear that his son’s students thought him a great lecturer, but even if he was Terry’s son, he failed to see how that could be. His wife Sandra was as sweet and kind as Wilma, but also as dowdy, and the couple had chosen to buy a bungalow in a road full of old people. Terry was astounded that he’d produced a son who had slipped into staid middle-age while still in his twenties.
Once, when he’d had a few too many drinks, Terry asked his son why he hadn’t gone for a woman with more fire. Martin looked puzzled. ‘I wanted a wife like Mum,’ he said, totally surprised that his father wasn’t a hundred per cent behind his daughter-in-law. ‘I can’t imagine anything worse than being married to someone flighty or quarrelsome. Sandra is such a good housekeeper, and a fantastic cook, and she makes all her own clothes too.’
Terry thought her clothes looked homemade ‒ at times she resembled a Plymouth Brethren woman, long, full skirts, baggy cardigans and sensible shoes. She didn’t wear make-up or colour her hair. Terry just hoped she was good in bed, but he doubted she was. He suspected Martin wouldn’t even know what that was because Sandra had been his first girlfriend at the age of twenty-one. Terry didn’t have to imagine what seven years of boring shags would be like. He’d lived through more than twenty years of them.
‘What shall we do now? It’s only three, too early to start preparing dinner,’ Wilma said, as she sat down on the dressing-table stool to brush her hair and fix it up again. She had pretty hair, a pale reddish gold ‒ he thought they called it strawberry blonde. Years ago he had begged her to wear it loose, but she refused. Her parents were extremely religious, and they’d given her the idea that it was sinful for a married woman to flaunt herself. Hence the plain, drab clothes and hair always twisted up in a bun.
She was upset to learn when they returned home that the murdered girl they’d heard about on the news was Chloë Church, who lived three doors down from them. She had sat crying in the kitchen for some time, but Terry ignored her as he always did when she cried. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel bad that a kid in their street had been murdered, but Wilma was inclined to hysterics if he reacted to her tears. Besides, she’d annoyed him the previous day by saying they must find a church so she could attend communion. He refused to drive her to one and she began wailing.
‘Missing one Sunday won’t hurt. I paid a lot to stay here and I’ve been looking forward to a slap-up breakfast. After that we can have a nice walk in the forest,’ he said firmly. ‘And stop crying and putting on that sour face.’
She had stopped crying but the sour face remained. She was silent during breakfast, irritating him further by eating barely anything. He hated it when she did the martyr bit.
Now, though, she was asking what they were going to do with the remainder of the day, which was a good sign.
‘How about you leave your hair down and get in bed with me?’ he said hopefully.
Her face was quite lined because she never used face cream, and it stiffened in disapproval at his words. ‘Oh, Terry, I can’t do that in broad daylight.’
Terry didn’t bother to argue or beg, he just turned away and went downstairs as if unconcerned by her response. But he was angry. He was often angered by her puritanical outlook, but he could never bring himself to show it to her. He could feel that anger rising now, like a volcano that was likely to erupt and make him do something he’d regret. Usually when he felt this way, he went to a massage parlour and relieved the tension. But he couldn’t go there now: the one he used didn’t open till seven. Another four hours.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs the bell rang. He pulled the door open. ‘Yes?’ he said, to the two men standing there.
‘Mr Parkin? Police, we’d like a word with you and your wife.’
