Dont let him in, p.20
Don't Let Him In, page 20
‘I am sorry for your loss. I understand your feelings of helplessness, but, yes, please leave it to the professionals.’
‘Maybe I will,’ she said, and his face immediately relaxed, ‘then I can look forward to you pinning it on some teenager. That shouldn’t be too hard. Just tell him he can go home as soon as he signs a confession.’
DI Hall’s whole body tensed in anger. Rebecca had hit home with that, just as she had intended, but she had expected Hall to sneer or try to laugh it off. Instead his face turned quite red and his eyes reflected his anger. When he spoke it was a venomous hiss. ‘What do you know about it? You weren’t there.’ He was so enraged she actually thought he might hit her. Then he seemed to force himself, through a considerable effort of will, to calm down. ‘Reporters? You’re all the fucking same. You hate the police until you need us to come and help you. Well, maybe when that day comes, we won’t be there.’
‘I think I should leave now,’ she said.
‘I think you should.’
‘You’ve got a missing woman to find,’ she reminded him, ‘and I don’t want to take up any more of your valuable time.’
She got up to go. There seemed nothing more to say. Both of them were angry and Rebecca was feeling the shock that comes with the realization that the worst thing she had heard about DI Hall was true. He really had tricked a confession out of a vulnerable young man and got him banged up for life.
Rebecca reached the door but forced herself to turn back to him with one final question. She wasn’t even entirely sure why she was asking but she did it anyway. Perhaps she realized she would never get another chance.
‘DI Hall?’
‘What?’ He looked up at her and spat the word.
‘Why did you mention the wind chimes?’ she asked. ‘In your report?’
‘What?’ he repeated, sounding baffled. ‘What report?’
‘Amanda Mayhew has wind chimes at the back of her house?’
He looked at her as if she was quite mad. ‘Does she?’ Then he sounded impatient. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Never mind,’ she said, and he frowned at her as she turned and walked from his office.
33
Dominic’s revelations about DI Hall’s role in the conviction of Simon Kibbs changed everything. Now Rebecca also had proof that Rose had been embroiled in an affair with Connor Owen, the man who wanted to buy her father’s house from her. Worse, the details of that affair had been suppressed because the Owens were wealthy and prominent.
Rebecca realized DI Hall had a vested interest in keeping Simon Kibbs in prison. If he was ever pardoned or released, it would reflect badly on the men who had charged him with a murder he most likely did not commit. That would destroy Hall’s career and he did not look like the kind of man who would allow that to happen.
It also meant he would never be able to keep an open mind whenever a link was made between the graveyard murder, the killing of Katherine Prentiss or any of the other suspicious slayings in the region, including her father’s. He would always stick to the story that the murderer of those two women was already in jail. If Rebecca uncovered any evidence that might steer the authorities in another direction, there would be little point in passing it on to DI Hall. He’d ensure it was buried or ignored. Until she could find enough to conclusively prove the innocence of the wronged man and the guilt of another, Rebecca could not go public with it. When she did, she would have to go above Hall’s head or leak it to the media, if that was what it would take to get justice for her father and the other victims. As far as Rebecca was concerned, she and Dominic were on their own and would have to watch their backs from now on.
Busy, busy, busy.
You’re such a busy little bee, Rebecca.
Always running around, talking to people, asking questions: police and detectives, your father’s friends and colleagues. Is there anyone you’re not planning to speak to?
You stay up late every night too. I’ve noticed that you leave your lights on till the early hours. Spend all that time thinking, don’t you?
What keeps you awake, Rebecca? Fear or guilt? Are you haunted by regrets and thoughts of what might have been or do you spend all your time searching for answers about Daddy? I think that’s it. You’re relentless, I can tell, and that makes you dangerous. I know your sort. One day you’ll pop up on the local news being interviewed and asking more questions, appealing to everyone to help you find your father’s killer.
People have a depressing tendency to listen to pretty girls, even when they don’t have very much to say. You are different, though; you’re more than capable of telling a story and a convincing one at that. If I let you do it, then who knows where it will lead?
There’ll be more questions, awkward ones.
Frankly, Rebecca, I don’t need the publicity, so I am not going to allow it.
You’re done. You just don’t know it yet.
Dominic had arranged to meet up once his shift was over. Defiantly she suggested the hotel bar. They had been seen together anyway so what difference would it make? She asked him if he had remembered to put a word in with Simon Kibbs’s legal team and he assured her he had.
‘What did they say?’
‘Simon’s solicitor was in court but I made sure his office will pass on the message that you can be trusted.’
Rebecca thanked him, then she told Dominic about her visit to DI Hall and his mood quickly darkened.
‘What did he say to you?’
‘Quite a lot actually.’
‘Denied it, didn’t he?’ he said.
‘His role in Simon Kibbs’s confession? Surprisingly no. I reckon he thinks the ends justified the means.’
‘Warned you off again too, I’ll bet? What did he say about me? You can tell me. I’m used to it. Most of it will be lies anyway.’
Rebecca decided to be honest about DI Hall’s views, namely that Dominic was stupid and believed outlandish theories. The police constable didn’t like that but it didn’t surprise him.
‘We’ll see who feels stupid when we catch the guy,’ he said.
Rebecca wanted to gauge Dominic’s reaction to Hall’s taunts before she hit him with the most damning part of the DI’s accusations. ‘He told me about the lighthouse.’
Was that shame or embarrassment in Dominic’s face? Whichever it was, he masked it well. He just said, ‘The bastard,’ as if that was sufficient explanation, but Rebecca needed to hear the full story.
‘He said you called for a lot of back-up and when they arrived there was nothing there. He said you heard a woman scream –’
‘I did.’ He interrupted forcefully, then added with less certainty, ‘I was sure that I had. I’d had my suspicions about the lighthouse for a long while. It wasn’t a place kids and teenagers hung out in any more. They stopped going down there even before it was condemned. It was as if they knew, or sensed, that they shouldn’t be there.’
‘How could they sense that, Dominic?’
‘You could just feel it was different. A couple of years later the whole place got fenced off by the council. Health and safety and all that.’
He said the last words scathingly and Rebecca interjected, ‘Well, it was in a bit of a state and those stairs were crumbling away. They wouldn’t want kids climbing up there.’
He ignored this. ‘I used to drive to the lighthouse at night,’ he told her.
‘Why?’
‘To get my head straight. I like it there. It was quiet and I needed some peace after a long day. I’d do a day shift, then spend hours driving around the town.’
‘Looking for the killer?’ she asked.
‘It wasn’t just that. I’d try to get people to have more sense. If I saw an open window or an unlocked gate, I’d knock on their door and tell them to secure it.’ He sighed. ‘But they don’t always listen. You can explain there are dangerous people out there but some of them just look right through you. I’d get tired but knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, because I never really sleep, so I’d drive up to the cliffs and just sit there in the car with the window open, letting some air in.’
‘That must be cold at night.’
‘I don’t mind the cold and a sea breeze is refreshing. I was trying to make myself tired enough to go home and sleep,’ he explained. ‘Then one day I heard voices coming from the lighthouse. I was some distance from it, back behind the fence, but sometimes you pick up sounds carried on the wind.’
‘What did you hear?’
‘Voices, singing perhaps but more like chants. Someone was doing something up there at midnight and they thought no one could hear them.’
‘Kids? Playing music or singing? Getting drunk?’
‘No. It was all fenced off, remember?’ He said that as if she had genuinely forgotten, but determined teenagers might still be able to get through or over a fence if they wanted to. ‘And, I told you, teenagers don’t hang out there any more.’
She wondered how he could be sure of that. ‘Who then?’
‘I went round the perimeter,’ he explained. ‘Couldn’t see any sign of forced entry and the fence was intact but I knew someone was there. I didn’t just imagine it.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I stood as close to the lighthouse as I could and listened.’
‘What did you hear?’
‘Nothing. Whoever had been up there was gone.’
Rebecca wanted to ask Are you sure it wasn’t just the wind? but knew Dominic wouldn’t take kindly to someone else questioning his version of events.
‘I tried to get CID to check it out and they did, reluctantly, in daylight.’
‘And they found nothing?’
‘Well, they wouldn’t during the day.’ She let him continue. ‘I drove up there a few times. More than a few to be honest but I didn’t hear anything else for weeks, until one night when there was a bright full moon above the lighthouse. I heard them then.’
‘What did you hear?’
‘It sounded like chanting and this time a woman screamed. I couldn’t just go in there on my own and run the risk of whoever it was getting away but I had to move quickly because a woman was in immediate danger. So I radioed in, asked for back-up, then I cut through the fence.’
‘And you went straight to the lighthouse?’
‘Yeah. Trouble was I hadn’t expected a bloody cavalry charge,’ he said in exasperation. ‘By the time I’d got tools from the car to cut through the fence and was halfway down the old track to the lighthouse, I could hear them coming and so could he.’ Rebecca assumed he meant the suspect he expected to find in the lighthouse. ‘I should have told them not to go in with lights and sirens. I figured they would know not to do that. How else would we catch him?’ He sighed. ‘By the time I got to the lighthouse there was no sign of him. He had heard them coming and got away.’
‘Would he have had the time?’
He picked up on her scepticism. ‘You could hear them when they were leaving Eriston, Rebecca. Of course he had time.’
‘But where would he go, with the sea down one side and the main road running from north to south on the other? If he had a vehicle on the perimeter you’d have seen it, so how did he get away?’
‘Inland,’ he said as if it was obvious. ‘He’d head west.’
‘In the dark?’
‘Why not?’
‘How would he get past you without being seen?’
‘Like you said, it was dark. I couldn’t see much. He could have slipped by me even if he was a few yards away.’
‘What about the woman you heard?’
‘He’d have carried her off or she could have described him.’
This didn’t seem likely. ‘That would slow him down, even if he knocked her out and threw her over his shoulder.’
Dominic didn’t answer her for a while. ‘You sound like all the others. You don’t believe me either, do you?’
‘It’s not that I don’t believe you.’ And it was true that she didn’t think he was lying or making up some exaggerated version of events. She did question whether what he genuinely thought had happened could have been possible, though.
‘Oh, I don’t blame you.’ His tone suggested that might not be true. ‘He got to you first. DI Hall told you I was a fantasist when all I really want to do is catch this man because he never will.’ Then he said, ‘But if you can’t see it …’
‘I can see it, but, like every credible reporter and any good police officer, I have learned to question things, so I can work out the sequence of events and determine what’s plausible.’
‘And you don’t think my story is plausible?’ He didn’t sound angry, just sad. ‘You weren’t there, Rebecca.’
‘If there was a man there, and I am not saying there wasn’t, and if he had a woman with him, then why didn’t you mention this to me before?’
‘Because I knew you wouldn’t believe it. No one does.’
‘I want to believe it. I just need to work out how he could have escaped from the lighthouse, while dragging or carrying a woman against her will without anyone finding them afterwards.’
‘They didn’t even look for him,’ he snapped. ‘When they found me standing there and there was no sign of him, they gave up and started cross-examining me, just like you are.’
‘Oh, come on, Dominic, I’m not cross-examining you. I’m just trying to get my head around it, that’s all.’ Then she asked him, ‘Is there any word on that missing woman?’
He seemed happy to leave the topic of the lighthouse. ‘Only that she’s still missing.’
‘Presumed dead or presumed alive?’ she probed.
‘You know DI Hall,’ he said. ‘Presumed alive.’
‘But you don’t think so?’
‘You know I don’t.’
She nodded in acknowledgement, then she asked, ‘You ever go round to her house? Before we went there, I mean?’
‘I told you I didn’t. CID sent someone.’
‘You did tell me that,’ she conceded.
‘What are you saying exactly?’
‘I suppose I’m asking you if that was the truth?’
‘You know it is.’
‘I don’t,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t actually know the truth of much that goes on in this town, including why my father was killed, which is why I will continue to ask everyone difficult questions, including DI Hall and you, Dominic.’
‘It’s not that difficult. I never went to her house until the day I took you there with me.’
‘Then how did you know about the wind chimes?’
‘I told you, they were in Hall’s report.’
‘No,’ she told him firmly, ‘they weren’t.’
He looked taken aback by that. ‘You’ve read it?’ He sounded as if he seriously doubted that.
‘I haven’t but I know he didn’t mention any wind chimes. Why would he?’
‘I don’t know. He goes into elaborate detail about lots of –’
‘Dominic,’ she interrupted him, ‘I asked him about the wind chimes; he had no knowledge of the bloody wind chimes.’ She took a deep breath in order to calm down. ‘So how did you know they were there?’
‘We heard them.’
‘We heard the tiniest sound coming from somewhere to the rear of the house. You couldn’t have known that’s what it was.’
It was his turn to take a deep breath then and she knew she had caught him in a lie.
This’d better be good. This’d better be really good, Dominic.
‘All right,’ he said, holding up his hands, a gesture of surrender. ‘I did go there.’
‘When?’ she demanded. ‘And more importantly, why?’ Then before he could answer: ‘And why lie to me about it?’
‘I wanted to see it for myself. I am convinced this woman didn’t just fly away and I was looking for something that might back that up.’
‘Then why not tell me?’
‘Because no one in this town takes me bloody seriously, Rebecca! Because I walked into a crime scene once and fucked everything up. I have been hearing “every contact leaves a trace” for years now but I had to take a look inside that house. I just didn’t want anyone to know about it, including you. I’m sorry but I thought you would judge me.’ He looked rueful then. ‘And I was right, wasn’t I? You are.’
‘Only because you lied to me about it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘You actually went inside?’
‘Yes.’ And when her face betrayed her feelings about that, he added, ‘Well, the back door wasn’t secured. I’m telling you, Rebecca, CID are fucking amateurs.’
‘Did you find anything?’
It seemed to Rebecca that the last thing he wanted to do after admitting he had been there was to concede the truth. ‘No,’ he said quietly.
‘I don’t understand why you would risk so much – your job, everything – just to take a look around that woman’s house. It doesn’t make sense to me. I can’t get my head around it.’
The shutters seemed to come down then. It was as if his mood suddenly changed and he had no intention of spending any more time explaining himself to her. ‘You know what, Rebecca, I’m busy, and there are other things I could be doing right now.’ He got to his feet.
‘Dominic …’
‘I’m going to leave you to it,’ he said before she could protest. ‘That way you’ll have plenty of time to get your head around it.’
34
It had taken Rebecca a long time to get to sleep that night. As well as the usual sounds emanating from a house that seemed to groan under its own weight, she found herself thinking of Dominic’s account of the unexplained presence at the lighthouse. She was conflicted. His story was hard to believe but she felt an innate sense of loyalty to the man and now he thought she was as dismissive of him as everyone else in Eriston.
When she woke, she was just as troubled, and was pleasantly surprised when Alan called her. She was relieved when he didn’t mention their kiss or her reaction to it. He had just finished a number of jobs for Connor Owen and reckoned he had earned a day off. How did she fancy lunch?
