The Cold Hand of Malice (20 page)

‘It would make sense if it was the same person in both cases,’ Molly said quietly. ‘I mean we’ve been working on the assumption that the person who killed Laura Holbrook copied the MO used in the previous burglaries. But what if the killer is the same person responsible for all the other burglaries, and he or she or
they
set out to lay a false trail? Except in the Holbrook case they had a key, so they could enter the house without alerting Laura. And they did the back door and the rest of the damage after they killed her.’

‘They’d be taking a hell of a risk,’ Tregalles said doubtfully. ‘All those burglaries just to set the scene, so to speak.’

‘Not if they knew for certain when the occupants would be away and for how long.’

‘Even so, Molly, you must admit it’s a bit of a stretch. We know there were two people involved in the other burglaries, so are you saying there were two people involved in Laura Holbrook’s murder?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Molly said. ‘One of them could have done it while the other made sure that he or she had an alibi for that time.’

‘If you’re right,’ said Ormside, ‘then I come back to Simon Holbrook and Moira Ballantyne. They did the burglaries together, but she did the killing while her husband gave her lover an alibi.’

‘And botched it completely,’ Paget said. ‘Sorry, Len, but I still don’t buy it. Besides, the same could be said about Simon and Susan Chase or some other combination we haven’t even thought of. But I’ll say one thing: it’s a theory worth pursuing, because we’ve got little else to go on. And the first thing we need to do is find out where all our suspects were on the nights the houses were broken into.’

Seventeen

Paget listened carefully, asked a couple of questions, then looked at the grandfather clock in the hall and gave a sigh of resignation. Another evening gone, he thought, and couldn’t help thinking that it was just this sort of thing that led to the break-up of so many marriages among members of the police service. The thought chilled him, but there wasn’t much he could do about that now.

‘I’m on my way,’ he told the custody sergeant, ‘and make sure you keep them separated. Better get Tregalles in as well.’ He hung up the phone and turned to face Grace. ‘Looks as if we may have a break,’ he told her. ‘That was Broughton, the custody sergeant, on the phone. Two young people were caught breaking into a house in Hatch Lane. The homeowners returned unexpectedly, tackled the two of them and held them until the police arrived. Looks like the same MO as all the others, so I’d better get going.’

Grace looked at the clock. ‘It’s twenty to nine,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t it wait till morning?’

‘It could, but I’d prefer to talk to them before they have a chance to get over the shock of being nicked. Sorry, love, but I have to go, so don’t wait up. And make sure you lock up after me. You never know who’s about these days.’

Tregalles was already there when Paget arrived, and they sat down together with the custody sergeant to review the information provided by the arresting officers.

The burglary, Broughton told them, was reported by a woman named Denise Grey of The Willows in Hatch Lane. She said that she and her husband, Evan, had caught the two youngsters ransacking the house, and were holding them. A patrol car was dispatched immediately, and a seventeen-year-old male, and a sixteen-year-old female were taken into custody.

The back door of The Willows had been forced and, although the thieves couldn’t have been inside the house more than a few minutes, drawers had been pulled out, and the contents thrown on the floor. The tool used to gain access was identified as a leaf spring taken from a car or truck, with one end filed down to make it easier to insert between door and jamb, while the other end was taped to give it a better grip. Mr Grey told the arresting officers that the girl had tried to use it as a weapon on him when he apprehended her, and showed them a bruise on his upper right arm as evidence. He also showed them bruises on his shins where he alleged the girl had kicked him before he could subdue her.

He explained that he was a marshal arts instructor, and his wife was a fitness trainer. They were on their way to the recreation centre, where they were both teaching classes, when he realized he’d left a set of instructions behind, and they’d returned to the house. His wife remained in the car while he entered the house to find two teenagers ransacking the place. They tried to make a run for it, but he caught the girl, and shouted to his wife, who tackled the boy as he tried to jump the hedge at the front of the house. The boy made no attempt to fight, and he’d accompanied Mrs Grey into the house and remained there passively while she telephoned the police.

‘Just kids?’ Paget said to the custody sergeant. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by their ages, but I am. What do we know about them?’

‘The boy is seventeen, the girl is sixteen going on thirty,’ Broughton told him. ‘Terry Coleman and Chloe Tyler. We have nothing on the boy, but the girl has quite a record. Prostitution, possession, dealing, and a couple of assaults to her credit. She’s a hard case, and she’s not volunteering anything, but the boy’s a different story. They were both cautioned at the time they were apprehended. She’s not talking, but he certainly is. He claims this is the first time he’s done anything like this, and he blames it all on the girl. And he may be right. Like I said, she’s a hard case, living rough in one of those old buildings on King George Way – the ones the local authority keeps saying are to be torn down but never seem to get around to. I knew you’d want it secured for search, so I took the liberty of dispatching one of your blokes with one of ours to turn it over. We should be hearing back from them soon.

‘Coleman says the girl talked him into it,’ the sergeant continued. ‘He said she needed the money for drugs, and the bloke who used to do houses with her is away. He says she promised him sex if he’d do it.’

‘Looks like he can forget that,’ observed Tregalles drily.

‘I’ve kept them separate as you asked,’ Broughton continued. ‘I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with Coleman – he’s scared shitless about what his parents will say when they find out, so he’s more than willing to tell us anything we want to know, but I doubt if you’ll make much headway with the girl.’

‘Have the parents been notified?’ asked Paget.

‘Nobody home at the Coleman house. We’re told by the boy that his parents are in Switzerland on holiday. As for Chloe Tyler, she left home when she was fourteen. She’s from Sheffield originally. She’s got form there and in Leeds and Newcastle. There’s no record of a father, and according to this –’ Broughton tapped the face of the monitor in front of him – ‘her mum’s been on the game most of her life, and she’s moved around a lot as well. Last known address was in West Brom, but she disappeared not long after Chloe left home. If the girl knows where her mum is, she’s not saying, and I get the impression she’s not interested anyway.’

‘You said Coleman mentioned someone who has worked with her before on other burglaries?’ said Paget.

‘That’s right. Someone who goes by the name of Josh. The boy describes Josh as “a bit of a weirdo”, and he gave us a description. Tall, thin, maybe twenty-five or so, pale eyes, nose is always running because he snorts coke. Talks like a schoolteacher. He says Chloe told him that Josh had gone off to visit some traveller friends who are camped over Cleobury Mortimer way.’

‘Shouldn’t be too hard to track down, then,’ Tregalles observed. ‘I can get someone started on that now.’

‘Right,’ said Paget, ‘then let’s hear what else Terry Coleman has to say while he’s still in a talkative mood. We’re going to need a duty solicitor by the sound of it.’

‘Carmichael,’ Broughton said. ‘He’s waiting for you.’

‘Good. At least we know where we are with him,’ said Paget as he pushed his chair back. ‘As for the girl, I think we’ll leave her until we’ve heard what Mr Coleman has to say for himself.’

Terry Coleman was a skinny, spotty-faced kid who barely looked his age. A shock of lank, unruly hair kept falling forward over his face, and he was forever pushing it out of his eyes. The interview room wasn’t particularly warm, but he was sweating profusely, and he looked as if he might burst into tears at any moment.

The procedure was explained to him, and he was reminded once again that he was still under caution. ‘Do you mind if I call you Terry?’ Paget asked pleasantly.

The boy licked his lips several times and said, ‘Yeah – I mean no, I don’t mind.’

‘Good. Now, I’d like you to tell me in your own words exactly what you were doing in the home of Mr and Mrs Grey of The Willows in Hatch Lane earlier this evening, and how you came to be there in the first place.’

As far as the burglary was concerned, despite cautionary advice from the duty solicitor, Lionel Carmichael, the boy could hardly wait to tell his side of things, and his story was pretty much a repeat of what he had told the arresting officers. ‘I was just supposed to be the lookout, that’s all,’ he ended, ‘but once we were inside Chloe said we might as well give the place a good going over, and it would be best if we both did it. She said we’d have plenty of time because they wouldn’t be back for hours. But we hadn’t been there five minutes when they came back, so we never had a chance to steal anything. Not that I wanted to in the first place,’ he added hastily.

‘Let’s go back a bit, then, Terry. Tell me when and how you met Chloe Tyler.’

‘I met her a few weeks ago at a friend’s house. His parents were away for the weekend, and he invited a few of us over, but word got round somehow, and a bunch of kids we’d never seen before crashed the party. Chloe came in with them.

‘I danced with her a couple of times, and when we left she cadged a ride home. That’s when I found out she was living in a squat down on King George Way.’

‘Cadged a ride, Terry?’ Tregalles said sharply. ‘How old are you, Terry?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Who’s car were you driving, Terry?’

Colour rose in the boy’s face. ‘My dad’s,’ he mumbled.

‘You have a license and your dad’s permission, do you?’

Terry wilted beneath the sergeant’s gaze and shook his head. ‘Not-not really,’ he admitted. ‘But you see—’

‘Never mind the excuses,’ Tregalles said roughly. ‘We’ll talk about that later. Let’s get back to your giving this girl a ride. Trying to impress her, were you?’

Terry Coleman shrugged and looked down at his hands. ‘I thought she liked me,’ he said. ‘I went down to the squat a few times, but then I realized she had something going with this bloke, Josh. It was like he had some sort of hold over her; she’d do whatever he said. But he was out of it half the time, and when that happened, Chloe and I would take off somewhere. She’s had a rough life, and I felt really sorry for her.’

‘You say it was Chloe who suggested the burglary. When was that, Terry?’

‘Yesterday. She said she needed money, and she knew of this house in Hatch Lane where the people would be out all evening. She said it would be easy; she said she and Josh had done houses before.’

‘Did she say where or when?’

‘Mostly other towns, I think. I don’t think they’ve been here all that long. The way she talks about other places, I think she and Josh have moved around quite a bit. But things have been sort of rough for her since Josh went off to see some friends, and she was getting a bit desperate. Trouble was, she said she didn’t like going in alone, and she asked me to go with her.

‘I knew I shouldn’t do it,’ he said bitterly, ‘but she kept on at me about putting a bit of excitement into my life; she said she’d find someone else if I was afraid to do it, but if I would just go along with her this once, I wouldn’t be sorry.’

‘What did you think she meant by that?’ asked Paget.

‘That she’d sleep with me,’ the boy said sheepishly. Then, more spiritedly, ‘See, she never had before, although we’d come close, and I thought if I could just prove to her that I wasn’t afraid, she’d . . .’ He shrugged the thought away.

‘All right. Now, tell me about the burglary itself. Were you watching the house?’

Terry nodded. ‘We watched from the car. There’s a sort of curve halfway down Hatch Lane, and we sat back there waiting for them to leave, and when they did, we waited a few minutes, then went in the back.’

‘This was your dad’s car, was it?’

‘No. It was hers. Well, she said she’d borrowed it from a friend.’

‘
Borrowed
it, Terry? Surely you didn’t believe that? Who would loan a car to a sixteen-year-old girl living in a squat?’

‘Sixte—? No, you’re wrong. She’s eighteen! She told me.’

‘And you believed her? Come on, now, Terry, I thought you were going to tell me the truth. Chloe Tyler is sixteen, and she has a long record with us. Did you tell the constables who arrested you about the car?’

‘No, I never even thought about it and they never asked.’

‘So it should still be there?’

‘I suppose so,’ the boy said miserably, ‘but if it was stolen, I didn’t have anything to do with it. Honest!’

‘Make? Colour? Style? Registration?’

‘Ford Focus. Dark blue. Not very old. That’s all I can tell you. Honest,’ he said again, ‘if it was stolen, I didn’t know about it. You have to believe me.’

Paget caught Tregalles’s eye. ‘Better have someone bring it in,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Tregalles is leaving the room at . . .’ Paget checked his watch and entered the time.

‘Now, then, Terry, let’s get back to the burglary itself. Who used the bar on the back door?’

‘Chloe. She had it open in a couple of seconds. It made a hell of a noise, all that splintering wood, and I was sure the neighbours would have heard, but next thing I knew Chloe grabbed my arm and pulled me inside.’

‘She used the metal bar? The leaf spring?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Did that belong to you or to her?’

‘It was hers. She brought it with her. She said she got it out of an old car down at the junk yard at the bottom of Fox Lane.’

‘Who pulled out the drawers?’

‘I started to, because she told me to look in them for money while she looked around to see if the woman had left a purse or wallet there. But Chloe told me I was doing it all wrong, and pulled them all the way out and dumped everything on the floor. She said it was quicker that way.’