Above Suspicion (12 page)

‘All right. All right. I have information. You get it, if you pull the bloody chair back. Did you hear what I said? PULL THE CHAIR BACK!’

‘I will. But you’d better start talking.’

‘What?’

‘I think you heard me.’

‘I’m gonna fall into the fucking pool,’ he shouted.

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll hold on to the back of the chair, just to make sure you don’t fall. So the sooner you tell me what you know, the better.’

Southwood gripped the arms of his chair. ‘It’s maybe worth shit. For Chrissakes help me out here. I can’t fucking swim, never mind bloody walk.’

Anna now positioned herself directly behind the chair, as the big man sweated in fear.

‘OK, OK, this is what I’ve got. Just hold on to the chair. Don’t let me get any closer to the edge.’

Southwood began, sotto voce, alternating between rasping coughs and puffs on his cigarette. Twenty years ago, before he moved to London, he was a DC attached to Vice with Greater Manchester Police. A well-known prostitute called Lilian Duffy had been found dead, strangled with her own stocking. Her hands had been tied behind her back with her bra. Duffy had been raped. She was forty-five.

Anna listened. She didn’t respond when Southwood asked if it was ringing any bells.

Southwood continued with his account. Duffy had been arrested numerous times before by the Vice Squad. She had served a short prison sentence for prostitution. Southwood described her as a real hardened whore: a ‘dripper’, he said. On their files there was an assault charge filed by Duffy a year or so previously. She claimed to have been raped by a man who had picked her up and then tried to strangle her.

The Vice Squad responded only half-heartedly. Duffy, after all, was a known alcoholic and drug abuser. But she had provided a very good description of her assailant and they began to run it through records. Suddenly, she withdrew the charges, which had pissed everyone off because of the time already invested. When she was arrested for prostitution again, a female Vice Squad officer had tried to find out why she had withdrawn her charges. Duffy had stunned everyone by claiming ‘personal reasons’: the assailant attacker was her own son.

Anthony Duffy, seventeen years of age, was subsequently arrested. He denied attacking his mother. A year later, Lilian Duffy’s body was found in a wooded area, strangled, with her hands tied behind her back. The murder team, now provided with the Vice Squad’s reports, brought in Anthony Duffy for questioning. There were no DNA specialists twenty years ago and with no witness and the body in a badly decomposed condition, they had not pressed charges. Anthony Duffy had been released from custody, though the feeling in the office was that he was guilty.

Southwood waited for Anna to respond. As he turned, she could see the sweat dripping down his forehead.

‘That’s it. That’s bloody it!’ he gasped.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Why what, for Chrissakes?’

‘Why did you feel that Anthony Duffy was the killer?’

Southwood wiped his face with the cuff of his shirt.

‘Just a gut feeling. He was a real odd kid, very calm. He had been brought up in foster homes, but around fifteen he traced his mother. She was living with this Jamaican pimp. Had a whole string of girls living in a shit hole in Swinton, on the outskirts of Manchester.’

‘So, was he well brought up? Had he been abused?’

Southwood was shaking. ‘Nah. Good education … very intelligent. Come on, now, wheel me back inside. I gotta have a drink.’

Anna had to really jerk the chair hard to free it from the rut. Southwood yelped with fear, sure she was going to tip him into the pool, but she managed to ease the chair round. He fumbled with the controls, but the battery was now very low. She had to push him back up the ramp. He weighed at least twenty stone, but at last she got him back into his drawing room.

Anna went behind the bar and poured him a glass of water. He almost snatched the glass from her and gulped it down.

‘Gimme some of that vodka. I’m out of Scotch. That’s why I let you in. I thought you was Mario, the guy that delivers for me. And can you plug in the battery recharger? It’s by the coffee table.’

Anna switched on a lamp and found the recharger. She then fixed him a drink as he watched her with angry, watery eyes. She calmly took out her notebook and, leaning against the bar, made notes of everything he had told her. Southwood remained silent, drinking thirstily, before holding up his glass for a refill.

‘I’ll check all this out,’ she said, pouring more vodka. ‘Is there anything else?’

‘Nah, that’s it. Like I said: it might mean fuck-all. There was just something about him.’ He hesitated. ‘Made you feel uneasy. I think it was his eyes. He’d got these big, wide-apart eyes.’

‘Anthony Duffy,’ Anna said, softly.

‘Yeah, he was a really handsome boy. Christ knows where he is now. That was twenty years ago.’ Southwood looked pitiful: hunched in his chair, clutching his glass. ‘It’s all I have, swear on my dead mother’s grave. That’s it.’

Anna put her notebook away. ‘We’ll check it out. Thank you.’ She started to walk to the door.

‘Why don’t you stay and have a drink with me?’

She glanced at him and shook her head. The big, foul-mouthed man looked vulnerable. Though he was obviously lonely, she couldn’t stand to be in his presence a moment longer.

‘No. Thank you.’

By the time Anna left the villa a crate of Scotch had been deposited on the doorstep by the front door. Southwood called after her from his chair. ‘Good night,’ she said, and walking outside, closed the door behind her. They had a possible suspect. Anthony Duffy. She’d finally got what she came for.

Ron jumped out of the waiting taxi and opened the passenger door.

‘You all right?’ he said. ‘I was getting worried.’

‘I’m fine. Just find me somewhere quiet where the food is good and cheap, and has some decent sangria to go with it. And then I need to find a hotel.’

‘On our way,’ he said as the taxi swerved down the hill, away from the decaying villa and its equally decaying, drunken occupant.

‘Did you get the information you wanted?’ Ron asked.

‘Yes,’ she said, repeating the name ‘Anthony Duffy’ to herself. It might prove to be unconnected. But if it didn’t, they had, at long last, a suspect.

Chapter Six

Langton kept staring at the memo. ‘Anthony Duffy?’ He looked at Lewis. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Travis sent a text message to Moira. Here’s the printout.’

‘This is it?’

‘Yeah, that’s all she said. And that she should be back this morning.’

‘So what’s with this Anthony Duffy?’

Lewis scratched his head. ‘We don’t have any record of him; he’s not on any files. I guess we have to wait until we get the details from Travis.’

Langton pursed his lips in anger; he returned to his office.

Moira looked over. ‘I told you to wait until she got here.’

Lewis whipped round on Moira. ‘This is a fucking murder enquiry, Moira! She needs to get herself organized: sending bloody text messages! She never even contacted the Spanish policeman we arranged to help her.’

It was a nightmare journey home for Anna. Ron’s friend with the B and B, was in fact the proprietor of a seedy, rundown hostel. The room was cramped and damp and she had to share the dubious bathroom. That, with the after-effects of the awful sangria, greasy hamburger and french fries from Ron’s favourite cafe, had kept her up most of the night before she re-boarded the plane. She staggered back and forth to the toilets throughout the trip. She wasn’t exactly sick, but she did feel like someone with a cement mixer in her stomach.

When she arrived at the station just after two o’clock, she wasn’t feeling any better. The cement mixer kept on churning, but now she was feeling light-headed, too. Moira came to her desk.

‘Gov is very spiky about your text message,’ she whispered. ‘You wanted me to pass it on, right?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Well, he’s ready to have a go at you.’

‘Go at me? My God, I’ve had no sleep, I have worked my butt off and Southwood is even worse than you described. He’s got no idea what I had to go through to get the information out of him!’

‘Travis!’ There was a bellow from inside Langton’s office.

Anna made her way there.

‘Sit down,’ he snapped. ‘What the hell were you doing? You did not contact the authorities. You did not use the patrol car provided.’

‘Nobody told me to contact anyone,’ she spluttered.

‘It’s fucking procedure, Travis! You think we’d just let you loose without any backup? Then I get handed this text message! Lost your voice, did you? Couldn’t call in?’

‘It was very late when I got the information.’ The cement mixer was churning faster, making her break out in a sweat. ‘I think I’ve got a bit of food poisoning,’ she added.

‘Take some Bisodol! You going to be sick, is that it?’

‘No. I just don’t feel very well.’

‘Neither do I. So, let’s have it! Who is this Anthony Duffy? This suspect? Jesus Christ, who the fuck is he?’

It took Anna over fifteen minutes to explain how she had eventually been able to gain the information from Southwood. Langton listened without interruption; though he made a few notes, his anger was palpable.

‘So, if the profiler is right about our killer taking his revenge against his mother, then Southwood’s suspect could be the man we are looking for.’ Anna swallowed audibly.

Staring at her, Langton now held up his hand.

‘You think this cab driver saw what you did by the swimming pool?’

‘No, sir. I am sorry if it was unethical, or against usual procedure, but I did get a result.’

‘True. Well, I hope to Christ it doesn’t have any repercussions for us. Go and fix your stomach and we’ll get on to this.’

‘Thank you.’

Langton’s expression softened a fraction. ‘I’m sorry I sounded off at you, Travis. You look terrible, by the way.’

‘I feel terrible.’

Lewis was standing by the computer. Having run the name Anthony Duffy through the ‘known felons’ database, the team still had no result. Social Services also came up blank; Passport and Immigration likewise. Anthony Duffy didn’t appear to exist. They had requested information from the Greater Manchester murder team and Vice Squad, but many files had been lost in a fire at the station fifteen years ago,

If alive, Anthony Duffy would now be in his late thirties. They contacted Housing, Benefits and Inland Revenue; no one had a record of Anthony Duffy. They had numerous Duffys, of course and even eighteen Anthony Duffys, but none of the correct age. There was not a parking ticket in his name, no police record and he had never been called for jury duty. It seemed that he had disappeared off the face of the earth.

Then their luck seemed to turn. The address for the mother, Lilian Duffy, had been found on an old electoral register. The house she had lived in was owned by Jamail Jackson, a small-time con artist and pimp in the Swinton area. But then, no sooner did they glimpse a light at the end of the tunnel than it flickered out. The house had been demolished fifteen years ago and Jamail murdered in a pub fight four years later.

Langton ordered the search to spread to foster homes and adoption agencies. But by six o’clock that evening, they still could find no trace of Anthony Duffy. He could be living abroad; he could be lying in the cemetery.

Anna had stayed the course all afternoon but by that time she was feeling even worse. She had not dared eat anything all day, only spooning in her mouth half a bottle of Bisodol. Lying in bed later that evening with a hot water bottle across her stomach, she went over and over everything Southwood had said.

Duffy was well educated. The profiler Michael Parks had described the killer as having above average intelligence. There was also the connection with his mother being a prostitute. He had to be a very viable suspect.

Could there be a link between the older victims? They were all from the north of England and had moved down to London for one reason or another. Or they had become weekenders. Could one of the victim’s relatives have a clue to Duffy’s whereabouts? Sleep didn’t come easily to Anna that night.

By the time she got to work the next day, Langton had divided up the team and sent them to interview relatives and other contacts of the victims. So it continued for the next three days, as the team worked on tracing and interviewing people. On the fourth day everybody was called together for a briefing.

Langton asked for an update. One by one, the officers detailed their interviews with the victims’ relatives. Many had moved on, or were dead, so tracing them had taken time. The children of the victims were spread far and wide, many of them on the same downward spiral towards drug and alcohol abuse as their mothers. No one appeared to have ever heard the name Anthony Duffy and there was as yet no photograph of him to show.

Langton suggested they return to Southwood and get an e-fit picture made of their suspect. Anna had written in her report that he had a very good recall of Duffy’s face. The picture could be aged, then released to the press.

Then the breakthrough they had been waiting for came. Mike Lewis up in Manchester found a possible link in the files of an adoption agency there. The woman running the agency had no papers going back further than twenty years, but acting on her own initiative she visited Ellen Morgan, who had been the administrator at one time. Since then, laws and restrictions regarding the foster programme had been tightened, but twenty years ago Mrs Morgan not only arranged foster care for numerous children, she was also a foster mother.

It was Moira who took Lewis’s call. Mrs Morgan had at one time cared for a boy called Anthony Duffy. Her address was a nursing home, Green Acres, in Bramhall, near Manchester.

Langton chose to do this interview himself and ordered Travis to accompany him. It was to be another day trip. They boarded the eight o’clock train at Euston the next morning. Langton wore a smart suit and held an armful of newspapers.

‘Mike’s also managed to track down an ex-Vice cop who might be able to help,’ he told her as they made their way along the narrow aisle to their seats.