Behind Dead Eyes (26 page)

Lonely
Lane was twenty miles from Newcastle and they used the journey time to discuss their options. Tom told Bradshaw his theory that he had been sent to London deliberately by Dean to sidetrack him and how the club owner Devine had mentioned Jimmy McCree on his way out of the building.

‘It always seems to come back to McCree, Camfield and Lynch doesn't it?' observed the detective. ‘Want me to have a word with Councillor Lynch?' Bradshaw asked Helen, even though he knew the last time he'd had a word it only made things worse. He hoped a councillor, even one in a gangster's pocket, might be made to see sense more easily.

‘Don't waste your time, Ian,' she said as they climbed out of the car.

‘Talk to the leader of the city council without good cause and you'll be on traffic duty before your feet touch the ground,' Tom assured him. ‘I don't think there is much you can do. You have no proof that Jimmy McCree ordered the attack on Helen or that Joe Lynch or Alan Camfield influenced it. I say we keep digging into the Sandra Jarvis case until we find a link to any of them, then, when we have proof, we bring them all down.'

‘You make it sound easy,' said Helen.

‘It won't be,' Tom assured her. ‘It never is.'

They walked down Lonely Lane, which was wide enough for one car to travel along, as long as it didn't meet another
one coming the other way. Here and there bushes had been trimmed back and chunks taken out of the banks of grass on the side of the road to create hollows that allowed vehicles to pull in and let oncoming cars pass. Presently they ran out of road and the land changed so that Lonely Lane became a grassy surface between farmers' fields that had been worn down by cars and generations of dog walkers. A low barbed-wire fence separated the fields from the lane but its ancient fence posts sagged in parts and dragged the wire fencing down with them, making it an ineffective barrier to anyone who wanted to roam the nearby woods. The sky was dark and overcast now with the ominous promise of rain. The only building for miles was a single grey stone farmhouse that overlooked parts of the lane, but as they walked along it they came across numerous blind spots and sheltered bits of land, which fell away from the lane to create discreet parking spaces. No wonder this place was favoured by illicit lovers and the voyeurs who preyed on them.

There was no one here today though. Autumn was turning cold, making it a less desirable spot, and the notoriety of the Rebecca Holt killing would have put a lot of people off Lonely Lane as a romantic destination. Tom was willing to bet there were others who were less faint-hearted and still likely to come here once darkness fell.

He turned his attention back to the detective. ‘Did you take a closer look at those alibis for me?'

‘While you were swanning round the flesh pots of London? Bradshaw asked Tom. ‘I did.'

‘And?'

‘Freddie Holt was seen by a number of people that day. He visited a construction site, had a meeting with a supplier and signed some papers at his solicitors. Interestingly
enough, there are a couple of gaps in his day where the only person who can account for his actions is himself.'

‘Are the timings of those gaps significant?'

‘I'd say not. If he murdered his wife in between his other appointments he is not only a very cool customer but extremely good at weaving through traffic.' Bradshaw added, ‘You look disappointed.'

‘I figure Freddie Holt is capable of just about anything, but if he was going to buy an alibi, surely he wouldn't leave any holes?'

‘That's what I thought.'

‘What about Annie Bell's alibi?'

‘Pretty watertight.' Bradshaw found the relevant section in his notebook. ‘She went shopping that day and a lot of people saw her. She was in town for hours and can account for most of the time before, during and after Rebecca Holt's murder.'

‘How is that possible?' wondered Helen out loud.

‘She dropped the kids at school first then parked in the old open-air car park at the edge of town before walking to the shops.'

‘Why there?' interrupted Helen. ‘Why not the multi-storey?'

‘She told us she doesn't like multi-storeys because she worries she's going to scrape her car on the pillars. She prefers the old car park because she has used it for years. We know she was there because her ticket had the entry time on it,' continued Bradshaw. ‘We also know when she left because she outstayed the expiry time by twenty minutes and had to go to the office and pay a fine. They slap a ticket on your windscreen but you can settle up with them instantly on the day instead of writing off.'

‘She doesn't strike me as the kind of person who forgets how long she's paid for,' said Tom.

‘Once in town,' Ian said, reading from his notes again, ‘she went to the dry cleaners to drop off some clothes and had the collection tickets to prove it. Then she took a dress back to a store because it didn't fit properly. The transaction showed up on her credit card as a refund, so we know that was legit. Her next appointment was with a travel agent, where she spent half an hour talking to a woman about a package holiday and left with some brochures.'

‘Doesn't just browse aimlessly, does she?' remarked Tom. ‘Very organised, likes to get things done.'

‘She stopped for lunch at a café called Oscars and there was an argument.'

‘What about?' asked Helen.

‘Her order.' He glanced at his notebook to confirm. ‘A jacket potato. She wanted cheese and they gave her tuna.'

‘And that caused a row?' asked Helen. ‘Couldn't they have just exchanged it?'

‘They did offer,' said Bradshaw, ‘but only after the waitress had told her she got what she originally asked for.'

‘And Mrs Bell didn't take kindly to that?'

‘She made a bit of a scene, gave the waitress a right dressing-down and told off the manager, said she'd been coming there for years but the food was always cold or she got the wrong thing and she was never coming back again. There were a couple of regulars and a number of casual diners who witnessed this. We traced some of them. They recognised her photo and confirmed she'd lost her temper with the staff.'

‘Interesting,' said Tom. ‘Where'd she go next?'

‘A bakery, where she ordered a replacement lunch of a sausage roll and a coffee. She ate it in the place, kept the receipt.'

‘Why would you?' asked Helen. ‘Keep the receipt, I mean. You've eaten your sausage roll and drunk your coffee, what use is the receipt?'

‘No use, but she probably stuffed it in her purse with her change and forgot about it. Next stop was the cinema.'

‘I'm guessing she had the ticket?' asked Tom and Bradshaw nodded.

‘She keeps everything,' said Helen.

‘Lucky for us.'

‘And for her,' said Helen. ‘What did she see?'

‘
Schindler's List
.'

‘Good choice,' said Helen and Bradshaw suddenly remembered wanting to see it on video with Karen but she said it would be too depressing, so they watched
Mrs Doubtfire
instead.

‘A long film too,' said Tom. ‘Did anyone ask her about it?'

Bradshaw nodded. ‘She'd seen it all right and described it well enough.'

‘And after the cinema?'

‘Back to the car park, paid her fine for overrunning, then home to see the kids, who'd been picked up from school by the au pair. She confirmed Mrs Bell returned around fifteen minutes after she left the car park.'

‘Is there any way she could have driven out of the car park and gone back in again?' asked Helen.

He shook his head. ‘That car park isn't automated. It's one of the last old-fashioned ones with an attendant and she parked right by the old guy's booth. Her car never left and he reckons she was very flustered about overrunning and having to pay the fine.'

‘Busy day,' observed Helen. ‘She packed a lot in.'

‘And scarcely a minute of it unaccounted for,' added Tom, ‘so, like you say, it's absolutely watertight.'

‘Absolutely.' And the detective gave a sly grin.

‘What?' Helen didn't understand what was so amusing.

‘I know what he's going to say.'

‘What is he going to say?' She looked at Bradshaw and then at Tom.

‘He's going to say,' Bradshaw began, ‘that an alibi that perfect …' and he let Tom finish.

‘… Can't possibly be real.'

‘Exactly.' And the policeman's grin grew broader.

They walked in silence for a while until Tom said, ‘This is it.'

‘Is this the exact place?' Helen asked.

‘The case files mention a spot between the river and the woods with a gap in the barbed-wire fence and two felled trees close by,' he said, and pointed out each of those landmarks in turn. ‘This cut is where Rebecca Holt used to meet Richard Bell. It's also the spot where she died.'

Helen found it hard to imagine. The location was so peaceful. She realised it was foolish but somehow she expected Lonely Lane to show signs that a brutal murder had occurred at this solitary spot; not ghosts exactly, more of an atmosphere of some kind, but it was as if nothing bad had ever happened here.

‘I wanted to see it,' said Tom eventually, ‘even though I knew it was probably a waste of time.' But neither Helen nor Ian questioned the wisdom of that idea.

By the time they dropped Bradshaw the rain was coming down hard. Traffic slowed so much Tom wondered if everyone just forgot how to drive once the roads were wet.

‘It's time we checked out that alibi on the ground,' Tom said, ‘and you could buy a few things in town.'

‘Thanks.' Though the prospect of spending money Helen did not have to replace her lost items was galling.

‘Darren's letting the plumber in today,' he added, ‘so by the time we get home you'll have hot water.'

‘Great,' she said, though his use of the words
we
and
home
in the same sentence panicked her a little.

He must have read her mind. ‘I'll clear the junk out of the spare room tomorrow and get a bed put in it.'

‘Oh, please don't go to all that trouble.'

‘I have to do it anyway. I was planning on getting a lodger to help with the mortgage. I figured you probably wouldn't want to carry on sharing my bed for too long.' Tom could also think of someone else who wouldn't be keen on that idea.

‘I meant I shouldn't impose on you by staying any longer.' Perhaps she was also thinking of her boyfriend now.

‘Where else are you going to go?'

He was right. There was nowhere else. Staying in a hotel for even a few days was prohibitively expensive on a local journalist's salary and Helen didn't know anyone else well enough to stay with them.

Tom seemed to think that was the end of the discussion. ‘I am going to park where Annie parked, then I'll walk every yard she walked to see if her alibi really stacks up.'

‘According to Ian's colleagues it does.' Annie Bell's alibi was a little too good to be true, but if she really had proof she was elsewhere when Rebecca Holt was murdered, then how could she be in two places at once?

‘There are some good detectives working this patch,' Tom admitted, ‘but they're not all as diligent as Ian, and you have to remember they weren't looking too closely.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The assumption has always been this killing was the
work of a man,' he reminded her. ‘From day one it was Richard Bell or Freddie Holt, even a psychopathic stranger – but never a woman.'

‘That's because most violence against women is committed by men,' she reminded him.

‘True, but that initial assumption was backed up early on by an expert's report, which said the attack could not have been carried out by a woman – and we now know that had no basis in fact.'

‘But if virtually every moment of Annie's day is accounted for, what are you actually looking for?'

‘A window,' he told her.

The social worker looked weary, harassed and overworked, but she was at least helpful. Ian Bradshaw told her he was concerned about residents of some of the care homes in the area being targeted and used by a gang of professional shoplifters and she seemed to take this at face value. He didn't mention Meadowlands at first because he didn't want anyone to know he was particularly interested in the home. Instead they had a general conversation about the types of young people who end up in care and the merits or defects of the various places that housed them all.

‘I'm afraid the stories are often pretty harrowing.' And she proceeded to tell some of them, leaving out names in the interests of confidentiality. She painted a bleak picture of neglect and abuse, and her sympathies very clearly lay with the children she was tasked to protect, no matter what they had done.

Her tone altered slightly when he asked her, ‘And what about the Meadowlands home?'

‘Oh,' she said, ‘that place? A bit of a last-chance saloon if
I'm honest. Meadowlands houses quite damaged young girls who have already been in a lot of trouble. I'm not saying we've given up on them exactly …' But it sounded to Bradshaw as if she and her colleagues probably had.

‘What exactly is the problem with the Meadowlands girls?'

‘They are too difficult to manage elsewhere, so they've been corralled together in one place to prevent them from influencing girls who might still have a chance of avoiding trouble. Unfortunately they tend to egg each other on, so the reoffending rates are highest there. Meadowlands houses teenagers who run away a lot, girls who are violent and are frequently picked up by the local police.'

‘What for?' he asked though he obviously had an inkling from the night he watched the place.

‘Well, a number of things, but prostitution basically,' she said, ‘though I would be loath to call it that.'