The Truth Will Out Page 15

  They stood in silence for a few moments. Helen was just about to pull rank, when Taylor finally reached down for her keys and worked her fingers through them until she found the right one. “You’d better come through,” she said and moved to the door beside the desk.

  The door clicked open into a large storeroom. Shelves upon shelves were stacked with bagged items, carefully arranged in numerical order. These pieces formed the basis of the case. They would be included in the file that Detective Inspector Fitzpatrick’s team would now build for the coroner, who was responsible for examining the evidence and deciding whether Paton was responsible for the murder of Naomi Spence and his own suicide.

  The case would not be closed before the coroner’s decision had been made and recorded, although after her conversation with Jenkins yesterday afternoon, Helen was pretty convinced that he considered this a formality.

  She glanced down at the inventory list clutched in her hand, then back up at the numbers of bagged items and moved down the racks slowly. Helen tried to ignore DC Taylor’s footfalls behind her. Her diligence was impressive, although right now Helen wished she was completely alone.

  Everything was in order; Taylor had done her job well. She passed the black leather jacket, stopped and pulled it off the shelf. Sure enough the label read Toujours. She looked down and could see that the button last up from the bottom was missing, consistent with the one found on the victim.

  Helen replaced the jacket, and moved further along the aisle. Just as she reached the last rack but one, she saw it - the suicide note. Helen pulled it down to take a closer look. There were fragments of dust in the bag where forensics had checked it over for prints. She read it through again: So sorry for what I’ve done. Naomi didn’t deserve that. It was the drugs talking. I can’t live with myself. There was no signature. She stood and stared at it for a moment.

  Helen thought back to the other suicides she had attended during the course of her career. Two of them had left notes. In both cases the notes rambled, were incoherent in places, as if the victims sought to mention everyone close to them, deal with all their misdemeanours, before finally ending their life. Paton’s was four lines of type: short, perfunctory, almost emotionless…

  “Ma’am, are you done?”

  Helen turned to face DC Taylor, suddenly aware that they must have stood there for a good few minutes. “Yes, thank you.” She replaced the bag.

  “Good. Are you all finished?”

  The detective had already started for the door. Helen watched her a moment as a thought jabbed her. “Just one minute.” She retraced her steps down the aisle back to the jacket, picked it up and read the size. Forty-eight inch chest. She looked at it again, more closely to make sure she hadn’t been mistaken. No, it definitely read forty-eight inches. She cast her mind back to Jules Paton’s svelte hanging body, and Dean’s description of him, ‘We call him Willo the Wisp’.

  A knock at the door shook the thoughts from her brain. She swung round just as DC Taylor pulled it open to display a very familiar face.

  “And what’s going on here?”

  ***

  Leaving her car at the guest house, Eva trudged into the city. It was a damp, grey Glasgow morning. The low clouds obscured her surroundings, mirroring the blurred images in her mind. Breakfast offerings had left a lot to be desired at The Hollies. After coffee that tasted like wood smoke, she declined the offer of a cooked breakfast. What she really needed was a proper caffeine fix.

  As Eva turned onto the main road, cars whizzed past, a couple walked out of a music shop pulling their jackets around their shoulders deep in excited conversation; a woman passed carrying a bouquet of flowers, a cyclist in fluorescents wove in and out of the traffic. A thick stench of damp fumes mixed with last nights’ fish and chips sat in the air.

  Further up the road, the sound of a high-pitched yelp caught her attention. She turned to see a Jack Russell, tied up outside the newsagent. That’s when she saw the newspapers fastened to the stand, beneath the awning. … She approached the stand and bent to look at the headlines. Prime Minister in crisis, Fuel Prices Reach All Time High, Duchess Set to Return to Canada.

  Eva stepped back and relaxed her shoulders. Paranoia was eating away at her, gnawing off tiny chunks at a time. What did she expect? A nationwide search, her face covering the front of every newspaper with accompanying headline: Do you know this woman?

  She moved on until she reached a cafe and took a table in the far corner, out of sight from the road. The waitress approached to take her order. They made eye contact. Did she linger a little longer than normal? Eva fidgeted uncomfortably.

  As she drank the fresh coffee, Eva felt a familiar rush of adrenalin. She ordered another along with a poached egg. The coffee sharpened her senses. She stabbed at the egg and watched the yoke ooze out onto the plate. From her corner she could see a man in a suit on a high stool at the bar, reading a newspaper; an elderly man carefully tearing open a sugar sachet to add to his tea, a woman sitting alone, working her iPad. It felt warm and inviting, like hot chocolate on a winters eve.

  Eva considered her parents’ bungalow. She couldn’t go back there. She raised her hand and ran her fingers through her hair, twisting it around her thumb and forefinger as she had done as a child, deep in thought. Absently she pulled a clump around and looked at it. Her hair had always been her hallmark - naturally blond, long and silky. People commented on it from her early teens and she’d rarely cut it. It was also how people recognised her. People who saw the Facebook appeal, people who searched for her, people who wanted to hurt her. Her life had changed irrevocably in the past three days. Perhaps now it was time for her to change with it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Helen took another sip of coffee. After their surprise meeting in the detained property store, Dean had guided her back to his office in silence. She felt a bit like a teenager caught playing truant, although she wasn’t sure why.

  “So, how are you this morning?” he said.

  “Fine.” She managed a fleeting glance, a flat smile, before turning her attention back to the styrofoam cup in her hand. The gentle aroma of his sporty shower gel filled the room.

  “I didn’t hear you leave last night.”

  She looked up in time to catch the softness in his eyes. Her reserve instantly weakened. “I had to get back,” she said uncomfortably, averting her eyes.

  The marked contrast in his mood was not lost on her. His old sparkle had returned, bolstered by the evening’s events no doubt. “I understand. I just wanted to say… ”

  She missed the rest of his speech, consumed in her own guilt. Was that guilt over sleeping with him, betraying her family that he had upset last year? Or guilt over mixing her private and professional life? But that wasn’t a mortal sin. She could be forgiven a moment of pleasure. It was later, after they’d collapsed into a sex-induced sleep, that he had awoken her - gently at first, kissing each of her eyelids, her forehead. Brushing his nose softly against her cheek, moving his lips down, running his tongue over her neck before inserting it firmly into her ear. Spasms of delight ran through her body and she longed for him, pulling him towards her again. But he had resisted, turned her over, brushed her hair away from the back of her neck, caressed it with swift movements of his tongue until she was practically crying out for him. Then, eventually he moved her round and entered her, cradling her body in his strong arms, before leaning down to whisper into her ear, “I’ve missed you so much.” That’s where she committed the mortal sin: the tender, slow love making that she couldn’t put down to primal need or alcohol. Love making that she could have stopped at any moment if she hadn’t enjoyed herself so much. Love making where her feelings for Dean became entangled like a spider’s web.

  Even now, her head screeched warning signs while her heart told her to rip his clothes off and take him over the desk. In this mood, he was addictive.

  “Helen, are you okay?”

  She looked up to see his face creased in c
oncern and shook herself tall. “Yes.”

  He grinned. “Thought I’d lost you there for a minute.”

  Helen cleared her mind. They had to work together, for now.

  “So, we’ll take things slowly?”

  She raised a flat hand. “Let’s just get the investigation out of the way first. Then, we’ll see.”

  “If that’s what you want.” His face transformed into a cheeky, boyish grin. “Shouldn’t take too long to wrap this one up.”

  Thoughts of the case pushed Helen back into her comfort zone. “I’m not so sure.”

  “Oh? Is that why I found you in my property store this morning?” he said with a wink.

  “Something doesn’t feel right.”

  “Helen, we have evidence that places Jules Paton at the scene, an admission of guilt and a murder weapon. What else do we need?”

  “Doesn’t the suicide note seem a bit strange to you?”

  “Strange? He was mentally unstable. We can’t dissect the words of a deranged man.”

  “And the jacket… ”

  “What about the jacket?”

  “It’s about four sizes too big. You said yourself, you nicknamed him ‘Willo the Wisp’.”

  Dean snorted. “He wouldn’t be the first person to buy an oversized jacket.”

  She could feel his eyes glued to her as she stared past him out of the window. A robin landed on the sill, hopped up and down, before fluttering its wings back in flight. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  He sighed heavily. “Why?”

  “We still haven’t spoken to Eva Carradine.”

  “Eva who?”

  “Naomi’s best friend. Don’t you think it’s odd that she disappeared on the night of the murder?”

  He shrugged a single shoulder. “I understand she’s taken a holiday in Scotland.”

  “She was seen at her parents’ holiday home, north of Glasgow, yesterday, but hasn’t been back. We can’t locate her.”

  He let out another huge sigh, fidgeted in his seat. “We have no reason to suggest she’s involved in any way. It’s not a crime to take a holiday.”

  Helen chewed her lip. Hopes of getting Dean on side were slipping through her fingers. “How do you explain the female informant?”

  “Perhaps Jules paid someone to make the call, to take the heat off himself? We may never know. But that doesn’t… ”

  “The call to the control room was made from within two hundred metres of Eva’s home.”

  Dean lifted his coffee to his lips and rolled his eyes in dismissal.

  Helen decided to change tack. “What size foot is Jules?”

  “Look, I see where you are going with this. He was size eleven. We haven’t traced the actual shoes that match the tread of those found in the victim’s neighbour’s garden yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense. You said yourself you hadn’t seen this coming. That Jules was so young, with his life in front of him. That it was such a waste.”

  “That was shock talking. You know what it’s like, Helen. We’ve since discovered that he’d exceeded the limits on his credit cards, was behind with his rent and hadn’t made any cash from cars, his legitimate source of income, for months. He was in too deep with drugs.”

  His words shook her. Yet more information that she wasn’t party to.

  Dean sat forward. “Helen you’re picking holes in a case where the evidence is compelling. You’ve done a good job. Let’s not make work for ourselves.”

  He lingered on the word ‘you’ve’. Was she really picking holes? And, if so, why? Was it because the evidence was flawed or she was sore about losing the case? Or, was an affair with the DI clouding her judgement? She cringed inwardly. The word ‘affair’ sounded serious. It was a while before either of them spoke.

  “Maybe you are getting a bit too close?” Dean eventually said. His tone was gentle, soft.

  She looked across at him.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure that everything ties up before we close the case properly.”

  Helen formed her lips into a thin smile.

  “Hey. Enjoy the moment,” he added, “It’s a good result.”

  Helen blinked and stared into space, feeling defeated. ‘A good result… ’

  ***

  Back out on the street, Eva turned in the direction of the guest house, glancing at the shop fronts she past, hunting vigorously. A hundred metres down the road she stopped and looked around. A convenience store, a Chinese takeaway and children’s clothing store faced her; the Victorian stone fronted buildings with sash windows above them long since converted into flats and offices. A group of school children approached, herded by an anxious teacher. She stopped to let them pass, then pressed on further down the road. She was just wondering whether she’d imagined the salon when she saw it - on the corner of the road leading to The Hollies.

  ‘Movers and Shapers’ was a modern hairdressers decorated with black and white striped wallpaper across the back wall in contrast to white side walls, black appliances, and a shiny, black tiled floor. A bell trilled above her as she opened the door and approached the counter. Just as she reached it a face capped with a pink fringe popped up and smiled.

  An elderly lady, the only other client, sat at the far end with hair curled into rollers, leafing through a magazine as a girl with a sharp blond bob fussed around her. Eva stroked her own hair protectively. She felt the urge to turn back.

  “Can I help you?”

  Eva hesitated, biting her bottom lip. “I want a complete change.”

  The girl’s eyes widened. She glanced down at the book in front of her. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Eva’s voice faltered. As the girl leant over the book, Eva could see there was a long band of pink wound into a bun at the back of her head.

  Pink hair looked up, a smile spreading from ear to ear. “No matter. We’re pretty slow this morning. Let’s take a look, shall we?”

  ***

  Back home, Helen’s foot clipped a pair of trainers as she passed through the hallway. She kicked them aside. A grey fleece spilt out the top of a rucksack leant against the wall. The dense beat of Matthew’s music thudded the ceiling.

  “Hello?” Her voice dispersed into the air around her.

  She wandered through the hallway, surprised to find the downstairs so empty. It was the day before the Easter holidays, a teacher training day, which meant the kids broke up from school the day before. Usually her house was a hub during the holidays.

  She made her way into the kitchen and flicked the kettle switch. Feeling a presence behind her, she turned to see Matthew’s beaming face.

  “I thought I heard someone come in. Alright, Mum?”

  “Hi! I’m surprised you can hear anything past that noise.”

  “Hey! Don’t diss the Train, man. They’re huge!”

  “Yeah, right.” Helen chuckled. “All packed?”

  “Think so. Can’t wait!”

  When Matthew shared his ambition to join the Air Force last year, Helen had felt sick to the stomach. If that wasn’t bad enough, he followed it up with his longing to fly aeroplanes. Losing John in a freak helicopter accident ten years earlier had made Helen fiercely anti-forces. To this day, any mention of the Army on the radio, of war on the news, of new Navy battleships, made her curse.

  But Matthew had done his homework and investigated university courses before he raised the issue. She’d felt compelled to support him, even though the thought of him in the air still made her lightheaded, and encouraged him to join the Air Cadets, secretly hoping a taste of military life might put him off. He’d embraced the idea wholeheartedly. This was his first field trip. Canoeing and rock climbing. At least this time he would be keeping his feet on the ground, although the flying would come soon. She just knew it.

  “That’s good,” Helen said. She glanced at the clock. Just after twelve thirty. “What time are you leaving?”

  “A
round four. Gran’s dropping me at the centre. Are you coming?”

  “I can’t I’m afraid, I’m sorry. I have a meeting with the super.” Her heart dropped. “Thought I’d come back now and wish you all the best.”

  “Never mind.”

  Helen smiled warmly. “Where’s Gran, and Robert?”

  “Robert’s gone to Jack’s and Gran’s gone shopping with Auntie Jo.”

  Helen stretched her neck back. “Really?” She couldn’t imagine Jo and her mother browsing M&S, picking out clothes in Next and Wallis. Jane Lavery hated trawling the shops.

  Matt laughed. “Well, Gran dropped her off in town while she went to the supermarket.”

  “Oh right, listen Matt… We need to have a quick chat before you go on your trip.”

  “We do?”

  “The other night… ” Helen cleared her throat.

  “What?”

  She hesitated. “The other night in your room, with Leah.”

  He shrugged. “What about it?”

  “Look Matt, I know you are getting older, exploring… ”

  He stepped back and dug his hands in his pockets. “Look, Mum, if this is what I think it is, you’re about six years too late. They started teaching us this stuff in year five.”

  “I realise you know. I’m trying to be practical.” Helen paused searching for the right words. “I don’t like the idea of your exploring right now, you’re still underage. But if you must… ”

  Matthew’s face folded. “I can’t listen to this.” He turned to go.

  “Just make sure you’re careful,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I mean… if you need me to get anything… or your gran…”

  “Mum! If I need anything, which I don’t, then I’ll get it myself. Jesus… I’m going to finish packing.”

  Helen listened to his feet hit every step of the staircase and his door slam. The music throbbed louder. She pressed her fingers to her temples and leant back against the kitchen side. Once again she longed for John’s easy temperament and jovial manner. He would have definitely handled that conversation better. Matthew was so like his father, they plucked the same strings.