The Lost Victim, page 20
42
They found Robert Driscoll sitting in The Jug with a pint of Guinness and a plate of chips, looking out of place amongst the city workers and media types having lunch meetings.
‘I thought I might hear from you again,’ he said, indicating the two seats opposite him in the booth. Kate noticed that he had a walking stick propped up against the window.
‘Can we get you another pint?’ asked Tristan when the waitress came to their table.
‘I’ll have another half, love,’ he said, holding up his glass.
‘I’m not your love,’ said the waitress.
‘’Course not, sorry.’ Kate and Tristan both ordered tea. ‘This place has changed since I used to come here,’ he said when the waitress left.
‘Did you come here often?’ asked Kate.
‘Is that a chat-up line?’ He grinned, baring his tiny teeth. Kate and Tristan remained silent. His smile dropped and he looked uncomfortable. ‘Yeah. I came here loads back then.’
‘And you never saw Peter Conway drinking here?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Forrest told us he saw Peter Conway here, and Maxine, Janey’s sister, also says she saw him more than once.’ Kate took out her phone and found the picture of Peter taken in 1989. ‘Do you recognise this picture?’
Robert squinted at it. ‘Yeah, but I never saw him.’
‘Did Forrest ever tell you about seeing Peter Conway in the toilets?’
‘No.’
‘Have you been back here since Janey went missing?’ asked Tristan.
‘No, but when I heard about Roland being found dead . . . Thought I should have a drink in his name . . . That’s what you want to talk to me about, isn’t it, Roland?’
‘Yes,’ said Kate.
He sat back and crossed his arms. ‘Go on.’
‘Why did you lie to us about not being in contact with Forrest?’ asked Kate.
He looked between them, his eyes beady. ‘How did you know I lied?’
‘Forrest admitted to us today that he regularly sent money to Roland. Or Jon Chase, as he changed his name to. He also told us that he went to your mother’s funeral and you spoke occasionally on the phone.’
‘You have done your research,’ he said, still sitting with crossed arms. Kate couldn’t read him.
‘Did Forrest tell you he was still in contact with Roland?’
‘He did. Forrest has been good to both of us. He sends me money, too.’ Robert shrugged. ‘I’ve got health problems, so I can’t work.’
‘Were you in contact with Roland?’
‘No.’
‘Why would Forrest send you money at the same time as cutting off contact?’
‘It’s a working-class thing. You’d understand that, wouldn’t you?’ he added to Tristan.
‘May I ask how much Forrest sends you?’ said Kate.
‘No. You may not,’ he said, imitating her voice. He swilled the last of his beer around the glass before knocking it back. He placed the glass down on the table.
‘Forrest is an out-of-work actor. How can he afford to send you and Roland money every month?’ asked Tristan.
Robert shrugged. ‘You’d have to ask him. Although . . . was he still sending Roland money? Roland would often go off the radar and move around. I had no idea that he was living near Watford. The last I heard was that he was living in Morden down in South London.’
‘When was this?’
‘Couple of years ago.’
‘Why did he move around?’
‘He rented rooms in houses around London, and then he got on the council house list and they got him a flat in Morden. Although it took an age for him to get a place. They tend to give the more needy, like single mothers, houses first. I don’t know why he left Morden.’
‘Did you have direct contact with Roland?’
‘No. Forrest told me.’
‘Why didn’t you just tell us all of this when we first spoke to you?’ asked Tristan.
‘Listen, mate. You knocked on my door, out of the blue. You’re not law enforcement. You’re just a fancy business card away from being nosy bastards. I have every right to tell you what I want to.’
‘Why lie about it?’ asked Kate. ‘Don’t you want us to find Janey, especially if you’re innocent?’
Robert leant forward and jabbed his finger on the table. ‘I am innocent.’
‘How do we know you’re not lying?’
Robert sighed, exasperated. ‘I just want a quiet life! I don’t need any of this. I have no interest in dredging up the past.’
‘I don’t understand why you and Forrest can’t just be friends again? It seems ridiculous.’
‘Oh, does it? Forrest is an actor. He’s done some quite high-profile stuff . . . You know how many idiots there are out there who can’t separate creative people from the fiction they create as part of their job? There will always be a grey area around me: Did I do it? Did I kill Janey Macklin?’
‘And you were happy with this?’ asked Kate. ‘To have him reject your friendship, but send you money on the sly? Charity?’
‘Do you know what it’s like to be poor? Do you know what it’s like to be registered disabled and have the government threaten to take away your benefits? I’m lucky that I own my flat, but even then, life isn’t cheap. I took what Forrest offered me gratefully.’
‘Don’t you miss the friendship?’ asked Tristan.
‘Jeez. Mate. You didn’t come all this way to ask me if I missed our friendship? People change. We’re not the same carefree lads we were back in the late eighties.’
Their drinks arrived, and Robert waited until the waitress was gone before he spoke again.
‘We’ll both be at Roland’s funeral. Me and Forrest. No one deserved to die like that. Stabbed sixteen times in his own flat.’
‘Who do you think killed him?’
‘If I knew that, I’d tell you,’ he said. Kate watched him as he sipped his drink. She almost believed him.
‘We’ve had the chance to look at the police case file for the Janey Macklin disappearance. You gave Forrest, Fred as he was known then, an alibi the night of 23 December 1988. You said he was out clubbing at the Astoria?’
‘Yeah. It was a long time ago.’
‘And Roland was at home with his parents?’
‘Er, yeah. I think that’s what I said.’
‘You did say that.’
‘OK, why are you asking me if you’ve got it written down?’
‘I just don’t understand something,’ said Kate. ‘You three were close mates. Working-class close, as you’ve just said . . .’ Robert squinted and nodded, taking another sip of his stout. ‘The night Janey Macklin went missing was the last Friday before Christmas. Yet you all chose to spend it separately. Not only that, the two other lads left you to package up a load of murals from the youth club. You say that you dropped off Janey just before six thirty, and you then went to move the murals. Why didn’t they help you?’
‘Bloody hell. It was thirty years ago!’
‘And if Roland hated his parents so much that he cut them off, why did he choose to spend the last Friday before Christmas at home?’
‘You’d have to ask him. Oh, wait. You can’t,’ snapped Robert.
‘Forrest wasn’t able to give us much of an answer, either,’ said Kate. ‘You all seem to have one thing in common. Withholding the truth.’
She glanced over at Tristan, and they both got up. Kate took out a twenty-pound note and dropped it on the table.
‘That’s it?’ said Robert.
‘Yes. Thank you. We’ve got all we need.’
‘What do you mean? All you need?’ he said sharply.
‘You’ve given us more than you think,’ said Kate, and they walked out of the pub.
43
‘It’s those three guys,’ said Kate, fiddling with the empty sandwich packet on the table.
After their meeting with Robert at The Jug, they’d gone back to the flat in Percy Circus to collect Jake and their things, and caught an early train back to Exeter, managing to get seats at a table by the window. The sun was just starting to set over the fields as they raced through the countryside.
‘You think it’s all three?’ asked Tristan.
‘They were this tight-knit group until Janey, and then, they all . . .’ Kate mimed something blowing up with her hands. ‘It was like an explosion went off.’
‘I’m surprised he said he didn’t see Peter Conway in The Jug in the weeks leading up to Janey going missing,’ said Tristan.
‘I think the only person we should take seriously is Maxine. I believe she saw him.’ She shrugged. She bit her lip, and a thought came to her. ‘Do you think it’s weird that they didn’t all go out together on that Friday before Christmas?’
‘Who?’ asked Tristan.
‘Robert, Forrest, and Roland. You’ve got mates, haven’t you?’ said Kate to Jake. He was sitting opposite, hunched down in his chair with the hood up on his sweatshirt.
‘Yeah. Four of us who met at uni,’ he said.
‘You go out drinking when it’s a special occasion?’
‘Mum. People don’t do out on the lash like they do here.’
‘What about you, Tris?’ asked Kate, impatiently.
‘Yeah. If it was the last Friday before Christmas, I’d be going out and meeting up with Ade, definitely.’
‘Yes. And didn’t Robert and Forrest say that Roland liked a drink? In my drinking days, my early drinking days, I used to love an excuse to go and get pissed. And what’s more of an excuse than the Friday before Christmas? Why didn’t Robert, Forrest, and Roland go out that night?’
Tristan and Jake were silent.
‘Didn’t Robert say he had to package up some murals for the youth club?’ said Tristan.
‘Yes, why did they leave him to do it himself?’ said Kate.
‘Yeah, but also, close mates sometimes can be honest with each other. Maybe they’d been partying a lot in the weeks running up to it and they all needed time to chill,’ said Jake.
Kate rubbed her tired eyes. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m clutching at straws. Maybe it’s unsolvable? If we sign that NDA, we gain our fee, but we’ll lose any rights to finish or even talk about the case.’
‘What if we went to Janey Macklin’s mother and asked if she would like us to take over the case? She’s just won the lottery. She could afford to pay us,’ said Tristan.
Kate chewed her nails, thinking.
‘I don’t know. Didn’t she say she just wants to move on? And people are supposed to hire us. It would feel wrong to go to her cap in hand.’ Kate could see Jake wanted to say something else, but he hesitated. ‘What is it? Speak.’
‘You won’t like it,’ said Jake, sitting up in his chair and taking off his hood.
‘Right now, we don’t have many options. Try me.’
‘Okay. You were both hired by this agency to investigate the case and they forgot to get you to sign an NDA, which is pretty basic, and right now as things stand, they have no rights over what you’ve discovered.’
‘But they owe us a lot of money,’ said Kate impatiently.
‘You also told me that this Faloola—’
‘Fidelis.’
‘This Fidelis said that Audible and Apple were interested in the idea of a true crime project about Janey Macklin. Mum. I know you’ve never wanted to profit off the whole Peter Conway story, but—’ Kate opened her mouth to protest. ‘Let me finish. This could be something bigger that has nothing to do with Peter, beyond the fact he’s a bit-part player.’
‘We can’t rule him out,’ said Tristan. ‘There’s evidence to show he was in the area when Janey went missing.’
‘Listen. I work at a huge talent agency. So many production companies are gagging for content like true crime drama, documentaries, podcasts, you name it. What if you and Tristan tried to sell the story of this investigation yourselves?’
‘We don’t know anything about making podcasts,’ said Tristan.
‘You wouldn’t need to. You would be selling the story of your investigation. “The Lost Victim of Peter Conway.” Or “The Case of Janey Macklin, the Missing Girl in King’s Cross.”’
‘We haven’t solved it yet,’ said Kate, her interest piqued.
‘The point is, this agent, Fidelis, is shopping something around she doesn’t own outright.’
‘Isn’t a lot of it in the public domain?’ said Tristan.
‘Yes, but I think if we shopped the idea with the whole angle of your private detective agency investigating, and Mum, your link to Peter Conway. And with Peter dying, there’s a huge amount of interest in his past, his present, and everything. I had a call from the solicitor who’s administering Peter Conway’s estate. I’m his sole heir. There’s not much, but I do inherit the recorded interviews he made with the ghostwriter of No Son of Mine. Imagine the interest if there’s a last victim that he could have killed. That’s enough in itself. If you two solve it, then that’s bankable content.’
‘Listen to him. My son talking about bankable content,’ said Kate, unsure of how to feel about this.
‘That journalist wanted you to sign his copy of No Son of Mine because your signature made it more valuable,’ said Jake. He leaned over and took Kate’s hand. ‘Mum. I respect that you haven’t wanted to profit on anything to do with Peter Conway. But this is different. Imagine if you could be paid to solve the Janey Macklin disappearance on your own terms, in your own time, and you could put the agency, you and Tristan, on a secure financial footing for many years to come.’
Kate rubbed her forehead. She could feel a headache coming on at the base of her neck. The idea had a spark of attraction. And she cared more about Tristan being able to pay his mortgage than she did her own.
‘Do you know how long I had to work at being anonymous? After I caught him?’ she said.
‘Mum, you would be selling the idea. You could remain in the background. They would hire actors and writers. You could even specify you don’t want to be involved in its promotion. The story is strong enough in itself. Think about it.’
Kate looked out the window. The sun was setting, and she could just make out her tired refection looking back at her. Being fired from the case really stung, and now they were returning home with their tails between their legs. She had no money, and bills to pay. The water damage to the field in the caravan site still needed to be fixed.
She’d worked so hard to escape Peter Conway and her association to him. What if she stopped fighting it? Could this be the way forward?
44
It was dark when they arrived at Exeter St Davids. Tristan’s car was parked in the overflow car park, a few minutes’ walk from the train station, and they trudged through the icy, cold streets, dragging their luggage with their heads down. Just as they got to the car, Kate’s phone began to ring in her pocket. She took it out, and her face went pale.
‘What is it?’ asked Tristan. She held up the screen. It was displaying PETER CONWAY.
‘He’s calling from the grave,’ Jake said.
‘No. It’s the number he rang from. The stolen mobile phone,’ Kate snapped.
‘Yeah. I know that, Mum. I was joking,’ Jake snapped back.
‘Answer it,’ said Tristan. Jake climbed in the back seat and slammed the door. Kate answered the call and put her phone on speaker.
‘Hello. Is this Kate Marshall?’ asked a croaky male voice.
‘Yes.’
Tristan got his phone out and pressed record.
‘My name is Thomas Black. I understand you’ve been very interested in my letters to Judith Leary, among other things.’
‘How did you get this phone?’ asked Kate.
‘I was given it, just as Peter was given it. I’ve been speaking to a woman called Fidelis. I take it you know her?’
Tristan rolled his eyes and mouthed ‘Jesus.’
‘Yes.’
‘Slippery, isn’t she?’
‘How so?’
‘She told me that she’d spoken to the prison governor. She lied.’
‘Why did she give you her name? Did Fidelis organise that phone to be smuggled into Peter Conway’s cell?’ asked Kate.
‘Clever detective, putting two and two together. Yes, she did. She wanted to get a recording of Peter Conway’s voice answering some questions about your case. Presumably, in the hope she could sell it.’
‘Do you know if she got a recording?’
‘If she did, I doubt she can use it. With all the swelling after his tooth surgery, Peter sounded like someone speaking Welsh with a mouthful of pencils.’
‘Who gave you the phone?’ asked Kate.
‘Commerce, my dear. The original courier of said phone, who is of no real interest, realised he could increase his fee if the phone came to me.’
‘Why are you now calling me?’
‘Because Fidelis has lied to me. I’m here up north. She outsourced her work to go- betweens. Peter Conway told me you are a woman who gets things done.’
Kate felt surprised by this, but doubted it was true.
‘What do you want?’ she asked.
There was a hissing sound as he tried to catch his breath.
‘Peter is dead. But we shared certain information before he died. I want you to visit me. You and your associate.’ Tristan’s eyebrows shot up with alarm. ‘I don’t want to discuss any more on the telephone. You both have to come and see me in Wakefield.’
‘Wakefield is a long way. Can’t you just tell me over the phone?’
‘No!’ he growled with an almost demonic rumble. ‘This is serious. This will be worth it, I promise you.’
‘I need more than just a cold call and a vague promise,’ said Kate.
‘I can tell you where the body of Janey Macklin is buried,’ he said. There was a click, and the line went dead.
Tristan stopped his phone recording, and he started the engine.
‘Fidelis was working Peter Conway,’ said Kate. ‘Trying to get a recording of his voice. Sneaky cow. And it’s illegal to smuggle a phone in to a prisoner.’
