Kill Me Again (14 page)

Slapping the passport against her open palm, she started to wonder whether everything that was happening was somehow related to Duncan’s past – to the part of his life that seemed to be in the shadows, the dark recesses that he had been unwilling to shine too much light into. He had talked in general terms about growing up, but without the detail that would have allowed Maggie to picture him as a child. He was a bit like Josh sometimes – a man of few words when there was something he wasn’t keen to talk about.

It suddenly seemed crucial to Maggie that she uncovered every facet of her husband’s life – as if only by knowing all there was to know would she be able to understand what was happening now. It might be a wild-goose chase, but it would provide a focus. The starting point was his birth certificate. Then at least she would know who his parents were.

Back in the kitchen she pulled her laptop towards her. She had done this job many times for work and knew the websites that provided access to birth certificate details. She typed in his name then entered his birth date, expecting there to be a long list of Duncan Taylors born in 1982. A handful of names appeared, but only two had birth dates in the last quarter of the year. She requested the details of these, paid for the privilege and quickly scanned the results.

She looked again, not believing what she was seeing.

Not one of the entries matched Duncan’s details as shown on his passport. There was no Duncan Taylor with her husband’s date of birth.

It didn’t make sense. To have a passport he would have had to provide evidence of his date and place of birth. So how could it be that there was no Duncan Taylor born on the day listed on his passport?

She triple-checked all the details.

Duncan Taylor did not exist.

22

In the absence of any ID found on or near the dead woman, Tom had hoped the artist’s drawing would tell them who she was, but the results were even better than expected. From the moment the television news had broadcast the drawing of the dead girl, the phones hadn’t stopped ringing in the incident room, and one name was coming through loud and clear.

Hayley Walker.

Initial investigations had gone on through the night, and had already revealed that Hayley worked at the Manchester Royal Infirmary as a staff nurse in the cardiology department. Every loss of life felt appalling to Tom, but when it was somebody who had dedicated themselves to helping others it seemed particularly unfair.

Hayley was originally from Australia and had no relatives in the UK. Her parents had been informed there was a possibility that the victim was their daughter and had tried repeatedly to contact her, but on getting no response had decided to catch the first flight from Melbourne. Tom could only imagine what a journey that would be as the agony of uncertainty stretched for twenty-four hours.

Becky had gone to the hospital to interview colleagues of Hayley Walker to get as much background as she could, so Tom was surprised when he received a call from one of the team manning the incident room.

‘Sir, a doctor from Manchester Royal has come in. She saw the news this morning and came straight here, not realising that we were interviewing at the hospital. She said she’d like to talk to somebody. DI Robinson says she’s not going to be back for hours yet, and wondered if you’d be happy to talk to her.’

Tom asked the sergeant to show her to an interview room, and wait with her. He would be down shortly. He pulled the sparse file towards him and made his way downstairs.

When he pushed open the door to one of their more pleasant interview rooms, an attractive young woman with mid-length wavy auburn hair was pacing up and down the room, still wearing a dark grey raincoat over jeans and flat-heeled boots. She stopped when Tom entered and turned towards him.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Louisa Knight. Can you tell me what’s happened? Is it really Hayley’s body you’ve found?’

She looked up at Tom, her brown eyes pleading for a denial.

‘Please, Miss Knight, do sit down and I’ll tell you what we know.’

She reversed up to the seat, never taking her eyes off Tom. ‘It’s Doctor, actually, but call me Louisa.’

‘Okay, Louisa, I’m Detective Chief Inspector Tom Douglas.’ He held out his hand and she gave it a brief, firm shake.

Tom pulled out a chair facing her and sat down. He took out a copy of the drawing of the victim from the file and placed it face down on the table.

‘We don’t know for sure if this is Hayley Walker,’ Tom said, ‘but the body of a young woman was found yesterday morning very early, and it’s my opinion that the drawing is accurate.’

Tom turned over the picture.

‘Oh my God.’ Louisa’s hand shot to her mouth and her horrified eyes turned to Tom. ‘That’s Hayley.’

Tom could see the genuine distress in the young woman’s eyes; she was clearly fighting to retain some control.

‘How do you know Hayley?’ he asked.

‘I expect you already know she’s a nurse on the cardiology ward. I’m an anaesthetist, and I spend a lot of time with patients in that department, so I’m on and off the ward several times a day.’

‘It would be helpful if you could tell me a bit about Hayley – who her friends were, whether she had a boyfriend. Basically anything and everything you can think of. The top she’s wearing, for example. Is that something she would have only chosen to wear for an important occasion?’

Louisa nodded, looking down briefly at her hands before raising her eyes to Tom’s.

‘It’s her one and only designer item – Issey Miyake, I think. She bought it on eBay and couldn’t stop talking about it at work. She said it was the bargain of the century. She wouldn’t have worn it to go to the shops, that’s for sure. She must have been going somewhere special.’

Speaking quietly, Louisa Knight provided Tom with as many details as she could. She and Hayley had been friends but weren’t particularly close. They worked on the same ward and had done now for over a year. It was a small team, and they were quite sociable when they were off-duty.

‘Did she have a boyfriend, do you know?’ Tom asked.

Louisa frowned. ‘I’m not sure of the answer to that. I’ve been on nights, and Hayley was on the early shift, so I saw her to say hi to as she arrived and I left, but not much more than that. There was something, though. Recently she had a bit of a glow about her – a kind of secret smile. In the one brief conversation we had a couple of days ago I jokingly asked her if she had a new man and she blushed. She said she hadn’t, but she did think somebody was interested – somebody who she’d known a while but who had never seemed keen until recently. She said she’d felt his eyes watching her.’

Tom felt his pulse quicken a fraction.

‘Did you get any indication of who this person was?’

‘No. Nothing. She wouldn’t tell me any more because she thought it might influence the way I behaved towards him. I said, “Do you mean it’s one of the team?” and she clammed up completely, saying she was probably imagining things.’

Tom waited, wondering if Louisa would have anything to add.

‘If we hadn’t been chatting in the corridor I would have asked for more details, but it didn’t seem appropriate with other people walking past all the time. I should have pushed her, shouldn’t I? If she was wearing that top I bet she was on a date, and I might at least have been able to tell you who with.’

Tom couldn’t deny it because whoever Hayley had been planning to meet he or she hadn’t come forward. And that wasn’t a good sign.

Louisa Knight had seemed like the perfect person to ask to give a preliminary confirmation that the dead girl was Hayley Walker. A formal identification would also be necessary, but for now Louisa’s word would be enough to use as the basis of their investigation, and as a
doctor she wasn’t going to be fazed by seeing a body. The faster they had some focus, the better their chances of catching the killer, and after the debacle with Leo it was important they got this right. Tom asked Louisa to take as long as she needed.

‘Yes, it’s her,’ she said to Tom, her voice quiet and even. ‘That’s definitely Hayley Walker.’ She held her hand against the pane of glass, as if wishing her friend goodbye. Her eyes looked huge, swimming as they were with unshed tears, but she was composed. ‘What can I do to help you catch the person who killed her?’

Tom looked down at her slight figure and felt an urge to reach out to her. Having been through a similar experience that morning, he knew how she must feel, and seeing the body again had reminded him of Leo. He wished to God he knew where she was so that he could stop worrying about her on top of searching for this killer.

‘It would be helpful if you could try to remember everything Hayley said to you about the person who suddenly seemed interested in her. Was there anybody she was especially close to? Did she have a particular friend who might know more about this man?’

‘Not that I know of. As I said, we’re a friendly bunch and socialise quite a bit. But not in a best-friend sort of way, if that makes sense.’

It made perfect sense to Tom. Work colleagues were great to spend time with, but perhaps not always the people you chose to share your happiness or fears with.

‘Could you give me any suggestions as to who it might be, do you think? It doesn’t matter if you’re wrong. I’ll get my team to interview everybody at the hospital to see if she mentioned who she was meeting or where she was going.’

‘As far as I can tell, they’re a harmless bunch, and I’ve honestly no idea who she was talking about. I’ll go home and make a list of everybody that Hayley came into contact with, if you like. What shall I do when I’ve finished?’

Tom fished in his pocket for his wallet and drew out a card. ‘Give me a call. We’ll get a list from the hospital too, but it would be great to look at the two side by side to see who she’s most likely to have had some sort of relationship with.’

Tom’s phone rang. It was Becky.

‘Excuse me,’ he said and walked a few feet away so that Becky’s voice couldn’t be heard.

‘Tom, we’ve been through everything here at the hospital and nothing is standing out at the moment. We’ve been to Hayley’s flat – it’s only about ten minutes away. We’ve found nothing to indicate where she went on Wednesday afternoon or evening. We know she left
work early. She said she had a blinding headache and thought she was getting a migraine. It was nearly the end of the shift, so they said she could go.’

‘Did anybody speak to her later, to check how she was?’

‘We haven’t been able to find her mobile. It’s probably at the bottom of the canal, so we’re waiting to find out which phone company she was with to get her call records. But we checked her home phone, and only one call was received between her leaving the hospital and the time we assume she met her killer. It was from the cardiology ward.’

‘I assume you’ve asked everybody if they spoke to her?’

‘Of course, and nobody’s admitting to it.’

Tom ended the call with Becky and turned back to Louisa, explaining that Hayley had left early but had received a call from the ward.

‘Who would have been around on the ward? We need to concentrate on those who had the opportunity to phone her.’

Louisa frowned and shook her head.

‘I’m sorry, but if the call came at around the hand-over time between the early and late shifts, everybody except the night staff would have been there. The phone’s in use a lot, so even if we made a list of people who were seen making a call, it probably wouldn’t help.’

‘And of course,’ Tom said, ‘the call from the ward may have had nothing to do with it at all.’

23

Josh had been a complete pain that morning, and Maggie could have done without him playing up. He wouldn’t get out of bed, and then he got dressed so slowly she thought they were going to be late for school.

‘Josh, come here,’ she said as she sat on his bed watching him laboriously put his socks on. He shuffled across the floor and leaned against her legs. ‘I know you’re worried about Daddy. We all are. I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t know why he had to go when he did, but there will be a good reason. I promise you.’

Maggie stroked his hair gently.

‘Why do you have to go to work? Why can’t you stay with us?’

The last thing she wanted to do was leave her children. But yesterday she had used the weather as a barely plausible excuse and if she called in sick today she knew the partners would start to think she was a skiver. She was on a three-month probationary period and right now the last thing she needed was to lose her job.

‘I’m going to take you to school and book you into the after-school club. I will be coming for you, I promise – just a bit later than Daddy picks you up. Okay?’

She couldn’t see her son’s face, but his head nodded.

‘Come on then, and perhaps we can grab a pizza for tea tonight. How does that sound?’

This time the nod was marginally more enthusiastic.

The drive into work had passed without Maggie noticing it – all she could think of was Duncan: where he was;
who
he was. Even the thought of the interview she had to conduct with Alf Horton that morning didn’t succeed in pushing her thoughts away from her own problems. The colleague who had taken over from her yesterday had already called to say he was only too glad to hand her client back to her. Now she was at Manchester’s divisional police HQ waiting to see Horton, and every muscle in her body was taut. She had to will herself to enter the room.