Into the Darkness Read online

  As I got out of the car, I spied a couple of large barns, one open-ended and one with sliding metal doors that housed some kind of agricultural beast of a machine. A man with short grey hair, wearing blue overalls, leaned over the bonnet of a van parked in front of it, inspecting something in the engine bay as the motor idled.

  ‘Mr Graves?’ I shouted over the engine noise.

  The man jumped and spun around.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.’ I smiled. ‘I’m DS Carter. I’m investigating the murder of your neighbours, Mr and Mrs Jameson.’ I flashed my warrant card at him.

  ‘I didn’t hear you pull up.’ He patted the area where his heart was and gave me a grave smile. He was stocky, with the kind of physique that would’ve been muscly in his youth but was now turning to fat, late fifties, maybe, with a face that reflected a lifetime of working outdoors – red cheeks and skin like old leather. ‘I heard the terrible news. I’m still in shock about it all. Awful business.’ He shook his head and wiped his hands on a rag tucked in his pocket. ‘What’s the world coming to? Let’s go into the house and talk.’ He reached inside the van, turned off the engine, then pocketed the keys.

  I followed him to his back door which led into a spacious, airy kitchen.

  ‘Want a cuppa?’ Bill reached for an old-style kettle before I had a chance to say yes. He filled it with water, lifted the lid of an ancient-looking Aga and placed the kettle on it. ‘Have a seat.’ He nodded towards a pine table not dissimilar to the one in the Jamesons’ kitchen.

  ‘Were you at home the day before yesterday?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I was here in the afternoon.’ He ran his hands under the tap at the kitchen sink and washed them, his back to me. ‘I was pottering around out in the yard, doing a few odd jobs. But in the morning, I had some errands to run and went into town. I left about eight and got back about midday.’ He dried his hands on a tea towel and swung around to face me. ‘What time did it happen?’

  ‘We’re not a hundred per cent sure yet. Sometime between eight a.m. and eleven a.m.’

  ‘Terrible,’ he muttered as the kettle started a slow whistle. He grabbed some mugs from a wooden holder on the worktop and filled them with teabags. ‘Sugar?’

  ‘No, thanks. Did you happen to see or hear anything suspicious? Anyone hanging around? Or maybe a vehicle?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see or hear anything, I’m afraid. I didn’t pass any vehicles in the lane, either.’

  ‘Is there a Mrs Graves?’

  ‘No. Never been married.’ He poured the now boiling water into mugs and let the teabags stew.

  ‘What can you tell me about Mr and Mrs Jameson?’

  ‘They were a lovely couple. Salt of the earth, really. Good neighbours. I’ve lived here since my parents bought the place when I was eighteen, and Mike was born on that farm. They’re the kind of people you can always rely on if there’s a problem. We’ve helped each other out over the years with farming issues or if one of us needed help of some kind. I can’t understand how anyone could want to hurt them.’ He brought the mugs to the table and set one in front of me.

  ‘Thanks. Is there anything you can think of that would make them a target?’

  ‘A target? You mean it wasn’t some kind of robbery that went wrong?’

  ‘We don’t think so, no.’

  ‘Blimey.’ He rubbed at the back of his neck with a hand and stared down at the table. ‘I can’t see why anyone would target them.’ He shrugged helplessly.

  ‘Do you know what the Jamesons’ relationship with Paula and her husband Grant was like? Did they get on?’

  He looked up, opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. He took a sip of tea. ‘Look . . . I don’t want to speak out of turn, but . . .’ He stopped, scratched his head, looking uncomfortable.

  ‘We have to ask these things, Mr Graves. They’re routine questions.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’ He nodded and took a deep breath. ‘Paula had a falling out with her parents when she began going out with Grant. She met him when she started working at Grant’s scaffolding firm about three years ago. Jan and Mike didn’t like him. Grant was always getting in trouble. Getting drunk all the time, smoking drugs, drink-driving, gambling. That kind of thing. They didn’t think he was good enough for her. They were worried he’d end up getting her into trouble, and they didn’t want him at their house. So Paula’s relationship with Jan and Mike has been a bit strained for the last few years. I was . . .’ He trailed off and chewed on his lower lip.

  I waited.

  ‘I was at Jan and Mike’s house about a week ago. Mike had the flu and Jan didn’t want to leave him too long so I’d popped over with some bits and bobs of food as I was doing a supermarket run. Mike was in bed, but I was chatting with Jan in the kitchen. Then Paula phoned up. I could hear part of the conversation, and then later, Jan told me about it. Anyway, Paula was asking her parents for money. Apparently, they had some big debts that they couldn’t pay back. Construction had taken a downturn since the recession so the scaffolding business was suffering. Paula said if they couldn’t pay the money back they were in danger of losing their house and the business.’

  Interesting. Desperate times bred desperate measures. ‘How much money are we talking about?’

  ‘Thirty grand.’

  Not exactly small change, then. And now her parents were out of the picture, as their sole heir, I guessed Paula would get her money, and more, after all. ‘And I take it that Jan and Mike refused to give Paula the money.’

  ‘Yes. Jan felt awful about not helping Paula out, especially as their relationship was precarious anyway, but Mike flat out refused to give her any money. Jan said they’d got into trouble because Grant had a gambling problem and she and Mike were worried if they gave them the money, Grant would just do it all over again and they’d never repay it.’

  ‘How did Paula react to Jan refusing her request?’

  ‘Jan was trying to explain to Paula that Grant needed some help for his addiction, but Paula kept shouting down the phone at her. Jan kept telling her to calm down and stop swearing. Paula was ranting and raving at her so much that in the end Jan hung up. She was really upset by it all.’ He paused. ‘Do you think . . . Do you think Paula or Grant is involved in what happened?’

  ‘I’m not sure of anything right now. It’s early days.’ But Paula and Grant now had a motive, and I was pretty certain Paula had lied to me when she’d said she was at work all day.

  ‘If it’s not them, do you think whoever did this will come back? Could they target me next? Not that I’ve got anything much worth stealing, but that doesn’t seem to matter these days, does it? I mean, I’ve got a shotgun licence. And an air rifle licence, too, for rabbiting – the buggers eat the crops – and I’ll damn well use them if someone breaks in with a gun. But you know what happens these days. You remember Alan Connolly? He got put away for shooting a burglar.’

  I, like many thousands of others, had been absolutely disgusted by what had happened. Alan Connolly was a farmer who’d been the repeated target of a gang of youths who’d burgled him on several occasions. A rural farmer in a remote location, which were often hardest hit by police cuts, by the time the police arrived on scene after his emergency calls, the bastards had always disappeared. After the fifth time, Connolly had had enough and ended up shooting one of the burglars in the foot, but instead of the burglar being convicted, Connolly found himself on trial for GBH and was sentenced to two years in prison. It was yet another prime example of the law no longer protecting the victims.

  ‘The Jamesons never reported any incidents of burglary in the past, but did they ever mention to you that something like that had happened? Had they ever caught anyone on their land?’ I asked.

  ‘No, they never said anything of the sort, and they would’ve told me if that was the case so I could keep an eye out.’

  ‘Can you think of any other reasons someone would murder the Jamesons? Was there anything in their private
life you knew about that could attract the wrong kind of attention?’

  ‘God, no. They were both as straight as a die.’

  I took a sip of tea. ‘I believe the Simms property is empty, is that right?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, poor old Emily is in a home now. Her son, Roger, has put it on the market.’

  ‘Do you have a contact number for Roger?’

  ‘Hang on a sec, I’ll get it.’ He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and tapped a few buttons. ‘Here it is.’ He relayed it to me.

  I wrote it down before taking a final mouthful of tea and standing up to leave. ‘OK, thanks for your help. If you think of anything else that might be useful, can you give me a call?’ I handed him a business card.

  ‘Of course I will.’

  I headed back to my car and called Roger Simms. He told me he was in Hong Kong, where he’d been working for the last two weeks, so he had no information to share, but told me to head over to the livery stables behind the house as there was usually someone on site during the daytime.

  Next, I called Becky to check on the firearms licence status of Bill Graves. As he’d told me, he held both a shotgun and air rifle certificate. There were several incident logs attached to his address when he’d informed police he would be shooting rabbits at night. Another background check revealed he had no criminal history.

  I hung up and tapped my phone against my lips. Although Graves had access to firearms, the Jamesons hadn’t been killed by a shotgun blast; the damage would’ve been far worse if they had. And the 9 mm bullet recovered from the wall obviously wasn’t a match to an air rifle pellet. I couldn’t see a potential motive there, either, but I tucked the thought away for later as I started the car.

  THE VIGILANTE

  Chapter 12

  I wrote down Toni’s mobile phone number, her email address and bank account details. Ideally, I wanted to get hold of Toni’s laptop, but since that was gone, too, I asked to borrow Corinne’s laptop and found her IP address given by the broadband company she used. Both laptops were working off a router, so Toni’s IP address would be the same.

  ‘Do you remember Lee?’ I asked Corinne. ‘He was in the Signal Squadron?’

  She shook her head, looking confused and pale, her head most certainly filled with a jumble of horrifying scenarios.

  ‘When he got out of the Regiment he did a stint with some of the UK security agencies. He’s got his own cyber intelligence and security company now, and he can help us track down Toni’s digital communications. If we can find out what she was doing or who she was talking to before she disappeared, it might help us locate her. And if anyone can find out, it’ll be Lee.’ I pulled my phone from my pocket and left the room while Maya carried on talking to Corinne in a gentle, soothing voice.

  I made my way down the corridor to the back of the house and entered a square-shaped lounge with French doors that looked out on to the rear garden. At the end of the garden was a five-foot wooden fence. Behind that was a large area consisting of playing fields, a tennis and basketball court, and finally a large two-storey building with a mish-mash of smaller buildings that appeared to have been added as an afterthought. The school where I’d heard children playing earlier. There were kids in the grounds, whiling away their lunch break in various ways.

  I dialled Lee’s number and placed the phone to my ear, revisiting in my mind the previous question I’d had about someone entering the house from the rear. I leaned closer to the French doors and checked out the neighbours’ fences, looking for further possible entry points. The house on the left had a three-foot wooden fence with hedging growing another couple of feet above it. The house on the right had a six-foot fence. One set of neighbours were on holiday, and the other at work all day, so it was possible someone could’ve slipped over the fence from either side unnoticed. But there would be kids and teachers in all those school buildings – hundreds of potential witnesses with eyes on the rear of the house. And there were no signs of forced entry or a struggle. So if Toni had left through the front door at 1 p.m., I thought it was unlikely she’d ever returned. Whatever had happened to her had occurred somewhere else.

  Lee picked up on the fifth ring. ‘Mate! How are you? Everything still sorted with that thing?’

  I knew Lee’s phone would be secure and encrypted. I was using a pay-as-you-go phone. Not quite 100 per cent anonymous, but as close as I needed it to be these days. No one knew what ‘thing’ Lee was referring to, apart from Maya, so I wouldn’t be on anyone’s watch list. ‘Yeah, it’s all good. But I have another problem and need your help.’ I relayed all I knew about Corinne and Toni.

  ‘Shit. I still think about Tony now. He was a cracking guy. I didn’t know Corinne was pregnant when he was killed.’

  ‘Neither did I.’

  ‘Of course I can help. What’ve you got for me?’

  I gave him all the details I’d got from Corinne. ‘I need phone and text records, any websites accessed by their IP address, the content of her emails and social media accounts, anything suspicious she kept on cloud storage. She might’ve arranged to meet someone that day or been in contact with someone who took her.’ Lee was my equivalent of the NSA. If it left a digital trace, he’d find it. He could hack or spy his way into anything. ‘I’ll email you some photos of Toni when I get off the phone.’

  ‘I’ll check CCTVs, too. I can do facial recognition for the surrounding areas.’

  ‘Great stuff.’

  ‘OK. I’ll call when I have news. But I hope to God she turns up safe and well before then.’

  ‘Me, too.’ I hung up and was walking down the hallway when some post clattered through the door, landing on the mat.

  I picked it up, just in case it was relevant. I doubted Toni had been kidnapped for ransom – Corinne seemed comfortable but not wealthy – but if she had there would be a demand in some shape or form arriving soon.

  I flicked through two leaflets, flyers touting wares, and a menu for an Indian takeaway. Then I walked into the kitchen and put them on the worktop.

  Maya had made a brew and Corinne was clutching her mug to her chest, staring down into it.

  ‘That’s yours.’ Maya jerked her head towards a mug containing dark, strong builders’ tea.

  ‘Thanks.’ I took a swig and set the mug back down. ‘First thing. I’d like to search Toni’s bedroom. Is that OK?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Second, we speak to the neighbours ourselves and her friend Laura. By then, hopefully Lee might have something we can work with.’

  ‘After the police just did a cursory look in her room, I searched it, too. But I didn’t find anything that might help.’

  ‘There are plenty of places to hide things where people won’t look,’ I said.

  Corinne stood. ‘I’ll show it to you.’ She led us upstairs, past the bathroom, to the end of the hallway, where there were two doors opposite each other. She entered the room on the left, and Maya and I followed her inside. It was painted pale lilac. A window overlooked the street in front. The dark-purple curtains were wide open so I had a direct view of Bert’s house opposite. He’d moved inside from his front garden now and was sitting at his window, looking out at the street. His features weren’t clear from this angle, but I could see the sunlight glinting off his glasses.

  I turned away and took in Toni’s bedroom. There was a poster on the wall opposite the window with a quote from Albert Einstein in script writing: ‘The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.’ There was a bedside table with an iPhone docking station on top, a dressing table under the window, and a small wardrobe in the corner next to it. The bed was made up neatly with a black duvet set with a gold design of a huge lotus flower in the centre. Above the bed were several shelves, jam-packed full of books: Profiles of a Serial Killer, The Jigsaw Man, Helping Victims of Violent Crime, Rose and Fred West: The Full Story, A Study in the Psychology of Violence, Inside the Minds of Psychopaths, Horrif
ying Cases of True Evil, Criminal Profiling: The Science of Behaviour. All the true crime topics and psychology books you could think of were there.

  I scanned the room, taking an inventory. It was tidy for a teenager’s lair. Nothing seemed disturbed. ‘OK. Maya, can you check the drawers?’ I walked around the room as Corinne moved to the doorway to give us space to work, chewing on her thumbnail, anxiously watching. ‘Did anything look out of place when you came in here?’ I asked Corinne.

  ‘No. She’s normally tidy like this, organised.’

  ‘So this was exactly how you found the room, or have you moved anything?’

  ‘I made the bed. Apart from that, it’s as I found it. When I looked through it, I put everything back the way it was.’

  I leafed through the books, shaking them to see if anything was hidden between the pages. Nothing. I inspected the original wooden floorboards and tested them for loose ones, seeing if any had been lifted.

  ‘You think she might have hidden something?’ Corinne asked.

  ‘I don’t know what to think yet. You know your daughter best and believe she wouldn’t run away. But everyone keeps things hidden. She may have had a secret boyfriend. She may have been involved in something she didn’t want to tell you about.’

  I found no loose floorboards, nothing tucked away underneath them. I looked behind the radiator and under the wooden bed frame, then pulled back the duvet cover and inspected the bed. I removed the bedding and turned it inside out but there was nothing hidden. While Maya pulled out the bedside drawers one by one and checked underneath and behind them for something that could’ve been taped to the outside, I lifted up the mattress and found an A4 notepad with a picture of Supergirl on the front.

  ‘That’s her notebook,’ Corinne said. ‘She was always writing down bits and pieces in there relating to her coursework.’

  ‘Did you look through it when she went missing?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ She blushed. ‘I guess I didn’t think to look under her mattress for something. I thought she’d just taken it with her.’