The Lost Victim, page 23
‘I can make it a priority.’
Varia nodded. ‘We have the blood samples from Janey Macklin on file, taken from around the same time she went missing.’
‘Did you find anything else wrapped inside the tarpaulin with the body?’ asked Tristan. All they could see were bones.
‘No. It’s all very clean, outside of the soil. Don’t quote me, but the body could have been buried naked or with the bare minimum of clothes. Jeans, shoes made with plastics, leather belts, particularly if they have a metal buckle, don’t decay,’ said the forensic pathologist.
Kate looked at the small skeleton. A clump of dark, matted hair still clung to the largest piece of skull, which looked like the top of the head. The tent felt clammy. Kate was sweating under her Tyvek suit, and the soil and smell of decay seemed to cling on with the damp. It was a horrible feeling she’d had before, and she wondered how many dead bodies this white tent had seen. How much residual death and fear the thin white canvas had absorbed.
‘We need to clear this area and arrange for the remains to be moved,’ said the forensic pathologist, breaking the silence.
‘Yes, I need to leave,’ said Kate, suddenly feeling as if she could breathe behind her face mask.
They came out of the tent and back into the gloomy cemetery, where the air was fresh and cold. They were silent as they took off their suits and handed them back to the forensics team, and Kate could see they were all fighting with their emotions.
‘Are you guys okay?’ asked Varia when they were back by the van.
‘No,’ said Tristan. ‘I thought Thomas Black was lying. I hoped he was. He told us that they hit Janey over the head, and broke her skull.’
‘He didn’t say they chopped off her hands, and smashed her teeth,’ said Kate, dabbing her eyes with a clump of tissue.
‘Of course. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything, if it’s Janey Macklin,’ said Varia. ‘Good work. Either way, we’ve found a body. Even if it’s not Janey. There could be loved ones out there looking for someone they thought was lost forever.’
The crow in the tree had been joined by two others, and they cawed against the grey sky. Kate wondered if the smell of death was more enticing than their fear of people.
Kate and Tristan walked slowly back to Willesden Green Tube station. The image of the small skeleton was hard to shake off.
‘What time did you ask to meet Maxine?’ asked Tristan.
‘Three o’clock.’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Not right now. I could drink something. Right now I could just go to a pub and sink a large whiskey . . . but I won’t,’ Kate added.
‘What about coffee?’
‘Yeah. Coffee will have to do.’
50
‘My mum’s out at the cinema. She enjoys her solitary afternoons.’ Maxine’s voice quivered with emotion. ‘I’m relieved she’s not here. I can’t fathom how she’d cope with this news.’
Kate and Tristan were sitting in the living room of Doreen’s flat. They had just told Maxine about the skeleton they found at Kensal Green Cemetery and who had informed them where to dig. They sat in silence for a moment. Silence seemed the most respectful response.
‘The police don’t know for sure if it’s Janey?’ added Maxine.
‘No,’ said Kate. ‘They need to run DNA tests.’
Maxine closed her eyes.
‘DNA tests. Oh my God,’ she said quietly. She opened her eyes, got up and went to the window.
‘The police will be in contact shortly. We asked if we could come and speak to you first. To tell you.’ Maxine nodded, with her back to them. There was another long silence.
‘How long are you staying in England?’ asked Kate.
‘I returned to help Mum with her move, and then we were planning to leave. But as the days pass, and the police just informed us that Janey’s case has been reopened, I’m torn.’ Maxine turned to face them, her eyes glistening. ‘I have to go back soon. My husband, my children, my life are all in California.’
‘Could we ask you some questions about the time Janey went missing?’ asked Kate.
Maxine took out a tissue and dabbed her eyes. ‘I’m not sure what else there’s left to say.’
‘What do you know about the youth club Robert, Fred, and Roland went to?’ Tristan asked.
Maxine seemed surprised by the question.
‘Gosh, er. I haven’t been asked about that before . . . I know it was on Old Street, because Janey wanted to go there, but you had to be fifteen. She was only fourteen.’
‘Did you ever go there?’
‘A couple of times, when I was older. There were Ping-Pong tables, a coffee bar, and I think there was a Pac-Man machine. I remember Janey talking about that because she was mad about those old computer games. Well, they weren’t old back then. I think it was the kind of place where teenagers could hook up.’
‘Robert, Fred, and Roland did some spray-painting and murals at the youth club. Do you know anything about that?’ Kate asked.
Maxine sat back and rubbed at her face. ‘I think a local artist went to the youth club and did some work with them. But they used to get all kinds of people to come in and talk to the kids. I remember they had a karate guy come in and sign kids up for lessons, and our dance school teacher, Miss La Froy, went there once, but I don’t think those fifteen-year-old boys and girls wanted to go and do ballet, especially not the boys.’
‘Do you know if Robert, Fred, and Roland were close with this local artist?’ asked Kate.
Maxine had to think about it again.
‘I’m sorry – so much of that time is patchy in my mind. Actually, now you mention it, I remember the woman who did the art stuff with them, she died of cancer a few months before Janey went missing, and I think there was some memorial service for her.’
‘Do you remember her name?’
‘Gabby, Gail?’
‘Could it have been Gaia?’ asked Tristan.
‘Yeah. That was it. Gaia.’
‘Did you ever meet her?’
‘No, but this was quite a bohemian place to live in the late 1980s. It wasn’t developed. It was full of artists and musicians, and hippies – especially in the warehouses down by the canal. There was so much . . .’ Maxine sighed and went to the window.
‘What?’ asked Kate.
‘I was going to say wasteland,’ she said. She turned back to them. ‘It’s very fragmented, my memories, but I vividly remember standing here by the windows a few days or a week after Janey went missing and looking out here, over what was the old canal and gasworks before it was redeveloped at all of the police dogs and people they drafted in to do a search for her body. That was when I knew I would never hear her key in the lock again. She’d never come back through the front door . . . It used to take her ages to get the key in the lock. And I’d sit here and hear the scraping. Eventually I’d get up and open the door for her.’
Maxine wiped a tear from her eye.
‘Are you okay to continue?’ asked Tristan.
‘Of course,’ she said, taking out a tissue and blowing her nose. She took a deep breath and composed herself.
‘We’ve read the police case file, and the police documented their search of Reynolds newsagent with the sniffer dog five days after Janey went missing. When was this big search that you saw from the window?’
‘It was after the TV reconstruction.’
‘How soon after?’
Maxine shrugged. ‘Maybe a couple of days. I know it was close because the police were really focused on it, after it was on TV. That was weird, the reconstruction.’
‘Because the girl looked so much like Janey?’ asked Tristan.
‘Yeah, and also because I almost ended up in it.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘They filmed the TV reconstruction right after the new year, and they originally did some filming at the dance school where me and Janey used to go. Looking back on it now, they probably wanted to give people watching on TV an idea of Janey’s personality and what she liked to do, and to play on their emotions. The TV crew asked my dance teacher, Miss La Froy, if they could film the real girls doing a dance class. And it happened to be my dance class, so the film crew came and filmed us for a bit with the actress who looked like Janey.’
‘Were you there?’
Maxine nodded. ‘Yeah. It was weird.’
‘Didn’t anyone think to protect you? Question it?’ asked Tristan.
‘It was a different time; people were less reactionary, and life was harsher, not that anyone was being harsh to me. There was a lot less focus on mental health. In hindsight, was it good that I was one of the dancers featured in the reconstruction? No. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because they cut it out of the final broadcast, along with the sniffer dog stuff. I know that because they filmed the sniffer dog stuff the same morning as they came to film us at the dance school. That was also weird. They used the real sniffer dog, the same one who went in and found Janey’s scent in the yard behind Reynolds newsagent.’
‘Molly?’ said Tristan.
‘Yeah, Molly, how do you know that?’ said Maxine, smiling.
‘It’s in the case file.’
‘Of course. Yes. I suppose there wasn’t time to audition a fake sniffer dog. And Molly remembered Janey’s scent. When they brought her into the dance studio she went mad in one particular corner, by a fire escape, scrabbling at the floor. It must have been where Janey had been sitting during a class and her scent was still there. And then when they took Molly outside, she caught Janey’s scent on the road outside and the bench. I had no idea that scent dogs were so sensitive. They had to take her away in the end. I think that’s when everyone realised I shouldn’t have been there that day, and Mum came and got me. I never told her all the details, and they never used the stuff from the dance school in the TV reconstruction. After that I stopped dancing. I didn’t want to go back.’
‘Was there anything odd you remember about Fred and Roland, after Robert Driscoll was arrested?’
‘No. They seemed to vanish. I never saw them around. I was only twelve. I’d stopped dancing. I really concentrated on school, and Betty and Stan next door looked after me a lot when Mum couldn’t keep it together. I buried myself in books for the next five or six years. I used to spend a lot of time at Stan’s bookshop. I’d go there after school most nights and help out. I liked it there, it was so different from here.’
Maxine had been standing by the window the whole time, and she came back to her chair.
‘I’m sorry I can’t be more help,’ she said, sadly. ‘It was thirty years ago. I think I’ve blocked a lot of it out.’
‘No, not at all, and thank you for talking to us,’ said Kate. Inside she was feeling a little despair. If the skeleton in the grave wasn’t Janey, then they had nothing.
‘Your investigation has made me think, about human nature,’ said Maxine. ‘Since you were here last time, I kept running it through my mind. The time we saw Peter Conway in The Jug. I really thought he was being nice, and in reality, he could have been planning what to do with me, or Janey.’
‘We don’t know that for sure.’
‘I saw the news that he’s dead. Do you think he died knowing where Janey is, and he kept it from all of us?’
‘I spoke to him shortly before he died. I don’t know, I’m sorry,’ said Kate.
‘Don’t be sorry. Not knowing has become a coping mechanism over the past thirty years. I’m more scared what will happen to me and my mum if we find out the truth.’
51
It was dark when Kate and Tristan left Victoria House. The courtyard was empty, and Kate had a strange sense of déjà vu as they passed the sad, crumbling eight-sided die statue, sitting on its plinth.
‘Odgoad. It sounds like one of those ancient kings of England,’ said Tristan.
‘And Gaia Tindall designed it. It very geometric. Communistic. Unlike the kind of person she was. Does that make you think of prosperity?’
‘No, but then look at this whole area. I wonder if the person who sprayed fuck osterity knew that the name of the statue, Odgoad, meant prosperity?’
A gloom seemed to descend over them, and the bleak January weather didn’t do much to lift their spirits. Tristan had arranged to meet Tony Carducci, Roland’s ex-flatmate, the next morning, and Kate was planning to visit the British Library to look up street maps for the King’s Cross area before the regeneration work in the 1990s. They ate dinner in a passably good pizza restaurant, and then retired to a grubby budget hotel where they’d booked two rooms.
The next morning, after they both had a fractious night’s sleep, they split up. Tristan took the train across the river to meet Tony Carducci, who lived in a quiet residential street close to Canary Wharf.
When he arrived at Tony’s house, a woman pushed a pram containing a sleeping baby down the path to the gate. She didn’t say hello to Tristan but looked back when he approached the front door.
Tony was olive skinned, with a bald patch that made him look older than his thirty-two years.
He answered the door carrying a tea-towel and seemed a little stressed out.
‘All right, mate. Come in. You’ll have to excuse the mess,’ he said, leading Tristan through a living room littered with toys and into a small kitchen, where he was unloading a dishwasher. ‘Do you want a cuppa?’
‘I would, thank you,’ said Tristan.
‘Ah, shit, no milk,’ Tony said, opening the fridge. ‘Well, I’ve got breast milk.’
‘Black coffee would be great.’ Tristan went to the window and looked out at the road, where the woman was walking with the baby. ‘New parents?’
‘Yeah. We split up a few weeks ago, though, and then got back together. You got a family?’
‘No.’
‘Lucky bastard,’ he said, grinning and filling the kettle. ‘I’m kidding. It’s amazing being a parent. Tough. Tiring. I’ve got two weeks’ paternity leave, and they’re almost up. I don’t know how she’s going to cope without me . . . Tish, she’s had depression before.’
‘If this is a bad time, I can come back,’ said Tristan, standing up. ‘I just saw your girlfriend with the baby.’
‘No! She always takes her out in the morning. And it’s nice to talk to another bloke. And you intrigued me with your phone call about Jon Chase.’
‘You used to share a house with him in Morden?’
‘Yeah. Are you from London?’
‘No.’
‘It’s right at the bottom of the Northern line, as south as you can get while still being in London. It was a cheap old house with a dodgy landlord,’ he said, taking out clean mugs. ‘There were three of us: me, a girl, and Jon.’
‘What did you do in London?’
‘I work as a copywriter, I still do . . . Can I ask why there is a sudden interest in Jon? You just said you needed some background information on him regarding a case you’re investigating? Are you a private investigator?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wow. I’ve never met one before.’
‘I do need you to keep this confidential.’
Tony raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course. Why?’
‘Jon was found dead in his flat a few days ago.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he die?’
Tristan had debated whether to give him details, but he decided it was worth it to see if it elicited any more information.
‘He was murdered.’
‘Shit. Seriously? Where?’
‘In his flat near Watford. He lived alone.’
‘I was never close to him, he was very odd, and he only lasted in our house-share for about five months.’
Tony was silent for a moment as he spooned coffee from a little ceramic jar into two mugs.
‘Why did he leave your house-share?’
‘We asked him to. His behaviour was erratic. He kept us awake most nights.’
‘Loud music and partying?’ asked Tristan.
‘No. He’d have these weird night terrors, which I felt sympathy for, but he’d wake up screaming most nights. The house where we lived had three bedrooms upstairs off a small landing, so we were all packed in like sardines. But the thing that made us ask him to leave was that he used to switch off the fridge.’
‘What do you mean? When it was full of food?’
‘Yeah. Jon would stay up until, I dunno, midnight, then unplug the fridge. I’d find it unplugged when I got up for work. He said the noise gave him night terrors, and that it was okay because fridges are designed to go off if there’s a power cut, and the food stays cold for a few hours. He did this night after night, and our food would defrost and go off. This went on for three months, and it was in the summer . . . And then there was the screaming and shouting in the night.’
‘Tell me about his night terrors, did he ever get violent?’
The kettle boiled, and Tony filled up the cups.
‘No. He’d shout out things like, “She’s falling, one of you catch her!” or “Her skin is so cold!” and “Her eyes are open and she’s watching me!”’
‘Jeez.’
‘I know, mate. Scary fucking stuff to wake up to in the night. And there’s something about the sound of a bloke screaming like a banshee. Of course, it’s hideous to hear a woman screaming, but Jon. He really curdled my blood.’
Tony handed Tristan one of the mugs.
‘Thanks. There’s some other things I should tell you,’ said Tristan. He explained in broad terms about the Janey Macklin case, how Jon had been friends with Robert Driscoll, and that Jon Chase had previously been known as Roland Hacker.
‘I knew there was something weird about that dude. In all the time he lived with us, he never had a visitor, never really had any post, never did anything.’
‘Was there ever a time when someone made contact with him?’
‘No. Never. Our landlord found him on Gumtree. We made sure that the girl who replaced him came through an agency.’
‘I know this is a long time ago, but did Jon ever scream out a name when he woke from a bad dream?’
