A Deadly Thaw Page 5

  ‘I’m not planning on kissing anyone, so it doesn’t matter.’

  She heard Lena twist the packet into a tight ball and saw it, out of the side of her eye, hurtling towards the corner of the room. It made a popping sound as it bounced off the wall before landing in the wicker bin. ‘The whole point of film snacks is that you eat them during the movie. Not scoff the lot beforehand.’

  Lena shuffled off the sofa and, with a blanket over her shoulders, sat cross-legged on the floor next to Kat. ‘Which one are you putting on?’

  She showed her the thin white strip on the cassette. The Kiss of the Vampire was written in Lena’s impenetrable loops.

  ‘Ooh, one of the good ones.’

  Kat felt Lena snuggle into her. ‘I bet Jennifer Daniel’s breath doesn’t smell of barbecue crisps.’

  ‘Don’t be cross, Kat. There’s more in the bag. Cheese and onion. Your breath can smell as bad too.’

  Despite herself, Kat sniggered. She pushed the cassette into the player and leant back against the sofa, feeling her sister’s arms around her as she reached for the crisps. ‘It’s a good one this. Really scary.’

  16

  Connie had grown up ten miles, as the crow flies, from Bampton. In many respects, she and the Gray sisters had a lot in common. Connie’s mother had been a pharmacist, a good one, and the family were well known in Matlock. Lena and Kat Gray were the children of GPs, who, according to interviews given to the police at the time of Lena’s arrest, had been well respected in the community.

  Connie’s upbringing had been solidly working-class. Tea at half five as soon as her mum came back from the pharmacy. The house spick and span, no books but the TV constantly on. They’d never have been able to afford a house like Providence Villa and no way would her mother have wanted the creaking old building.

  Connie quickly read through the file, looking for any inconsistencies. She could find none, but there could easily be something there. She was an expert in family secrets, because her mother, despite the respect given her by the community, had hidden a dark secret. When the pharmacy shut at 5 p.m. every evening, her mother would come home and start drinking, often late into the evening. Everyone had turned a blind eye. No reason was offered when she would walk rather than drive to the pharmacy in the mornings. Nor were her mysterious ailments, which culminated in an early death from a heart attack, ever alluded to.

  Whatever secrets the family might be hiding, Connie wouldn’t find them in the files. The information there seemed innocuous enough, although there were plenty of questions to be answered. The social status of the parents’ job would explain the large house but not why Lena had chosen to stay there after her wedding. Both parents were deceased by the time Andrew Fisher and she had married. The house, surely, should have been sold and the proceeds divided between Kat and Lena.

  As Sadler had said, Andrew Fisher was from Bampton too, but with ideas beyond the constraints of the Derbyshire town. After university in Leeds, he’d married a local girl, but it hadn’t lasted. Following his divorce, he’d transferred from the consultancy firm he worked for in Leeds to their London head office and had stayed there. He had a flat in the City and returned home, or rather to Lena’s home, at the weekends.

  Connie inwardly groaned. She really did hope that she wouldn’t have to take a trip to the capital. She didn’t like London. She mistrusted its busyness and was wary of the conspicuous wealth it shrouded itself in. She hoped Palmer would be assigned the task if they were forced to follow that line of enquiry. It wasn’t her decision to make, of course, but surely Palmer would relish a trip to London.

  Of Andrew Fisher’s next of kin, there was just his mother, Pamela, still living in Bampton. He had an elder sister living in Australia. Another one keen to spread her wings, by the look of it.

  Connie frowned and looked around the room. Damian Palmer was leaning over his desk, flicking rapidly through a report and frowning. She shouted over to him. ‘Do you know who told Andrew Fisher’s mother about the discovery of her son’s body? The recent discovery I mean. There’s no note on the file yet. I want to read her reaction to the news.’

  Palmer lifted his head and took his time to focus on her. He looked like he was in another world. ‘Sorry, mind elsewhere. She was told by a family-liaison officer but Llewellyn’s also been to see her. Damage limitation and all that.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Palmer looked across at her. ‘He’s just come back and is in a foul mood according to his secretary. I wouldn’t go chasing him for a report if I were you.’

  ‘As if I would. Interesting, though. I wonder what her reaction was.’ She walked across to him. ‘What are you so engrossed in anyway?’

  He sat down, as if staking claim to his chair. ‘I’ve been going through the post-mortem file of the man we thought was Andrew Fisher in 2004. We need to give him a name, and I’ve thought of one. How about Joe Tagg?’

  ‘Joe Tagg?’ said Connie. ‘What’s wrong with John Smith? It’s what we usually use.’

  Palmer looked defensive. ‘Joanne and I went to a folk night in a pub a few days ago. The band played some local tunes, and one of them stuck with me. It was about a Derbyshire man named Joe Tagg.’

  Connie stared at him. ‘Are you taking the piss? We’re not a bunch of yokels around here to be laughed at.’

  Palmer was smirking at her. ‘Don’t be so touchy. It was only a suggestion. John Smith gives us no idea about his personality. I think my choice is better. Gives us something to help construct a real person.’

  ‘And you think Joe Tagg sounds better? Suit yourself. I’m not sure Sadler will go for it though. Anyway, what did you discover from the PM?’

  ‘Well, Joe Tagg’s physical description is very similar to that of the real Andrew Fisher. Listen.’ He picked up the report and started to read. ‘Muscular build, height five foot ten, weight 201 pounds, and so on. Virtually identical to Andrew Fisher, in fact.’

  ‘You think it was deliberate? An intention to deceive by killing a physically similar man?’

  Palmer was peering at the report again. ‘Well, maybe. But listen to this. On the deceased’s right arm is a scar indicative of excision.’ He lifted his head. ‘That’s surgical removal at some point in the past.’

  Connie rolled her eyes. ‘I know what excision means, thanks, Palmer. Do you think I’ve never read an autopsy report before?’ She snatched the file out of his hand. ‘You think it’s important? The fact that at some point he had something removed? A tattoo maybe? It could have been a suspicious mole or something.’

  Palmer calmly took the report back from her. ‘I don’t know. It’s the only thing I can find that might help with identification. I’m going to run with this for the moment. Try to find an ID. Can you give me a hand? You know, with the database?’

  Connie pulled a face and looked at the clock. Time to go home. She thought of her empty flat. ‘Of course.’

  17

  Kat set the alarm for 6.30 a.m. and reached for the phone after stumbling out of bed. Her eyes were gritty from the lack of sleep, and there was a heavy pressure behind them. It was a bad sign. If she started the day with a headache it was unlikely to clear until the next morning. She looked to see if there were any messages on her phone from Lena. Nothing. Charlie was curled up in the middle of the landing, and she stepped over him to check Lena’s room one final time. The space was devoid of her presence, and there was an unfriendly chill to the air.

  Bampton that morning was covered in a shroud of mist waiting for the pale spring sun to rise. The first part of the drive was slow. She could see nothing further than a few feet in front of her, and, although she knew the roads well, the speed of other drivers hurtling towards her made her fearful. As she left Derbyshire behind, the promise of sunshine proved to be false. The day opened out into a bleak morning, clouds gathering and darkening in the grey sky.

  She switched on the radio and let music soothe her frayed nerves. By the time she had reached North Yorkshire, th
e rain was pelting fat blobs onto the windscreen.

  The sky reflected the black hues of the moor in the final miles to Whitby. As she drove down the narrow streets, she was suddenly aware of the futility of what she was trying to do. She knew that Lena came regularly to the town, but the only clue was an address she knew her sister had stayed at years ago.

  Parking was clearly an issue in Whitby. When she finally found a space and hunted around for enough change to pay for a few hours, she retrieved the piece of paper she had from her pocket. The ink had faded only slightly, and Lena’s swirls were still legible on the yellowing paper. Crowther Terrace. Kat took out her phone and found the street on the map. She had parked on the wrong side of the river. She not only had to go down the steep incline, her ankles groaning in protest at the unfamiliar pull, but then puff up the hill on the other side. When she got to the street, she quickly found number 43. One look at the house, and she sighed. It was a holiday cottage now. Or perhaps it had been all those years ago. A card in the window was advertising Whitby Holiday Homes with a mobile number underneath.

  Her call was answered by someone with a husky male voice, his Yorkshire accent immediately apparent. Kat plunged in. ‘I’m standing outside 43 Crowther Terrace, which I’m thinking of renting at some point in the future. I just want to know, has it been on your books for long? I’m looking for something with an up-to-date interior.’

  There was a short silence. Then a cough. ‘Hold on. I can check.’ Silence, and then he came back on. ‘It’s been with us since 1995. Not that recent, I suppose. I’ve just called up the property on the computer. The rooms are traditionally furnished with—’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ Kat was making some mental calculations. Lena must have rented the house off this company when she stayed here. ‘Do you have a list of people who have used the cottage over the years?’

  It was a long shot, and too much for the man at the other end of the phone. ‘Hang on, who are you?’

  Kat cut the connection and stepped into the road to take a good look at the house. It was a traditional fisherman’s cottage, built in the days when houses and shops were jumbled together on the same street. Next door was its mirror image, the brick whitewashed less recently, though.

  Kat went to the house and rang the bell. The door opened immediately. ‘I thought you were a potential burglar staring at my house like that.’ He was a tall man with a black beard, roughly trimmed. A thick-ribbed green jumper was half-tucked into his jeans and his feet were bare.

  ‘I wondered if you could tell me something about the cottage next door? My sister stayed there, I think. A few years ago.’

  ‘You’re Lena’s sister? It gave me a shock when I saw you outside. I thought you were her for a moment. You look like her, you know.’

  Kat sighed. ‘I do know. I’m Kat Gray and I’m trying to find Lena. Have you seen her? This week, I mean?’

  ‘Lena?’ The man stared at her. ‘I haven’t seen her for years. That’s why I was surprised to see you standing there. It would’ve been nice if it was her. I miss her. You okay?’

  Kat suddenly felt exhausted. The three-hour drive, conducted in nervous tension, had drained her of all energy. She wondered if he would invite her in, but he made no move to open the door any further. ‘Can you remember when you last saw her?’

  ‘Lena? Like I said, years ago. She used to come here all the time.’

  ‘Can you remember what years?’

  The man looked at her in amusement. ‘You’re kidding, right? Of course I don’t know what years. She was always by herself. She used to come a lot. It’s how I got to know her.’

  ‘You were friendly?’ She wondered if he’d tell her his name, but, standing over the threshold of his home, he was revealing nothing about himself.

  ‘Fairly. It’s not a huge amount of fun living next to a holiday cottage. Some people can be noisy and, of course, people rarely come more than once. But Lena was different. She came back again and again. Until—’

  ‘Until?’

  The man shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She just stopped coming. A long time ago. It was a shame, us not getting to say goodbye.’ He looked at her in consternation. ‘She’s all right, isn’t she?’

  Was Lena all right? wondered Kat. It was difficult to say for sure. Her abrupt disappearance from Whitby must have been a result of her arrest and imprisonment. ‘I haven’t seen her for a while, that’s all. You know how it is with families sometimes, don’t you?’

  The man looked like he did. ‘Sorry I can’t be any more help, Kat. When you track her down, tell her from me that it’d be nice to see her.’ And without saying goodbye to her, he shut the door gently.

  18

  Andrew Fisher had either hidden himself away since 2004 or had been hidden. This was the only indisputable fact that Sadler’s tired head was able to crystallise. He’d slept badly, waking at approximate half-hourly intervals and checking, pointlessly, his alarm clock. He’d never overslept in his life and yet the fear was always there – the possibility that one day he would miss the shriek of his bedside alarm.

  And yet what if he did? As a detective inspector he had some flexibility with his hours. It wouldn’t be a complete disaster if he turned up late once in his professional career. The thought made his head ache even further.

  The thing giving him the biggest headache was where Andrew Fisher could have been since 2004. Twelve years was a long time to hide yourself these days. Even overseas there were ways of tracing you. Although, Sadler suspected, if you weren’t being looked for, why would anyone find you? But until the identity of the dead man had been uncovered, and Lena Gray found, Andrew’s whereabouts would be an area of focus.

  Connie walked through the door with her usual bustle of energy, remembering to knock only as she was three-quarters into the room. ‘There’s something I want to run past you, if that’s okay?’

  Sadler gestured to the chair in front of his desk.

  She flopped down and sat with one foot over her knee. ‘Palmer’s concentrating on the identity of our original dead man. There’s a distinguishing feature in the PM report that he wants to investigate. A possible surgical procedure on his arm. He’s looking at an ID that way and I’ve been giving him a hand by researching persons reported missing around the same time. But something else came up while I was going through the database.’

  ‘Go on.’ Sadler reached into his drawer and took two tablets from a blister pack, swallowing them with the remains of his cold coffee.

  ‘Well. In 2012, a report was made by a member of the public who claimed to have seen Andrew Fisher while she was on holiday in Whitby. She’s from Bampton and was visiting Whitby as part of a coach tour.’

  ‘A coach tour? How old was the witness?’

  ‘The report doesn’t say but I would guess over retirement age. Doesn’t mean she’s not reliable though, does it?’ Connie held out the report to him. ‘Would you like to see it?’

  It was a few lines. A Jane Reynolds, resident of Curlew Road in Bampton, had called the station in the summer of 2012 to say that she had seen Andrew Fisher alive in Whitby while she was there on a weekend trip to the area. The officer, PC James Walker, had recorded the action but had done nothing to follow up the report.

  Connie saw him looking at the name. ‘I rang him. Before coming to you. He remembers the call but only in vague terms. He thinks the woman began by being positive that it was Andrew Fisher she had spotted but by the end of the call had talked herself into believing it was a case of mistaken identity. So he made a note of the call and filed it away. I’m sure I’d have done exactly the same.’

  Sadler smiled. ‘Me too.’ He handed her back the report. ‘Whitby? Interesting mix of Dracula, chip shops and early Christian religion. Don’t we have enough on our plate?’

  ‘It seems not. She’ll need checking out. Jane Reynolds lives on the other side of Bampton. It’s not far.’

  ‘Go and see her and get a proper statement from her. Then let me know
how you get on. Whitby? What the hell would Andrew Fisher be doing in Whitby?’

  Connie left the room, and, in the silence, Sadler thought back to his teenage years. He had shared many classes with Andrew Fisher while at Bampton High. They had been in the top set for most of the subjects and had progressed through school in the classrooms, thrown together by a shared capacity for doing well in exams. But they’d never been friends. Sadler had liked reading and cricket, and that was about it until he was fifteen. Then he had discovered music, and he and a group of friends would travel to Sheffield to see the latest bands.

  Andrew Fisher had been sporty but was a rugby-playing drinker, even as a teenager. He would come into class hungover, smelling of stale beer and teenage sweat. Then they had gone their respective ways to university, and Sadler had seen him only very occasionally.

  As Sadler had climbed the ranks of the police, the casual acquaintances of his childhood could basically be divided into two reactions. Those who were impressed by the status that the job of a police inspector afforded, and those who gave him a wide berth. Sadler had long learnt not to make any assumptions about the latter group, which had included Andrew. People steered clear of the police for a variety of reasons, not all of them criminal. Not all. But some.

  Another knock on the door. This time it came in advance of the person entering. It was Llewellyn. Sadler stood up, but his boss waved him back to his seat. ‘Needed to stretch my legs. Get out of the office. You know how it is.’

  ‘I do. I’m about to go out myself. How did the visit to Mrs Fisher go?’

  Llewellyn sat down in the chair opposite and clasped his large hands together behind his head. ‘She’d already had the news broken to her, of course. The family-liaison officer was still with her. She seemed to be taking it okay, though.’

  ‘She was surprised? His mother, I mean. About her son being alive all these years?’