The Eighth Witch (13 page)

Sparks shifted in his seat, flipped open the glove compartment and searched through its contents. “Haven’t you got any chocolate? You always have chocolate. I missed breakfast.”

“Bad for my heart,” Lacey said grimly. “I’m trying to get healthy. I’ve got a Medical Board examination coming up in a couple of week’s time, and I don’t want to give the buggers any reason to pension me off.”

Sparks glanced down at Lacey’s waistline bulging over the top of his belt. “I think the horse bolted years ago. It’s a bit late to shut the door now.”

“I have to make the effort though.”

Sparks shut the glove compartment and sat back in his seat. “They might be salvageable, you know.”

“What might?”

“The computers.”

“You saw the damage Tucker did. I know our IT boys are good but they’re not miracle workers. The whole lot’s kaput. I should never have let Carter take Norton’s laptop.”

“I did say…”

“If you’re going to say, ‘I told you so’, I’ll knock your bloody head off… Sorry, bad turn of phrase in the current circumstances. But I mean it. I’m quite capable of beating myself up, thank you.”

Sparks made a zipping motion across his lips.

In the Fish n’ Chicken café across the street from Cavendish House the young woman watched the comings and goings of the police, ambulances and TV crews. She didn’t look like a young woman now. The blond curls were gone, replaced by ginger hair pulled tightly back in a ponytail, and she’d gained thirty pounds, mostly around her middle. She didn’t look out of place in the surroundings of the café where cholesterol seemed to be the main ingredient of the food served there. She sipped at a disgusting excuse for coffee and thought about Ollie Tucker. She hadn’t gone there intending to kill him, simply to destroy Norton’s computer, but once she realized that he’d seen what was on there she’d had no choice.

Tucker’s death wasn’t useful. It wasn’t part of the plan, and she’d certainly gained nothing from it, except his enduring silence. “Oh well,” she said softly, pushing the mild feelings of regret to the back of her mind.

There was a man sitting at the next table. He looked like a trucker. As she spoke he turned and looked at her. “Did you say something?” he said. His arms were covered in tattoos, mostly crude depictions of slutty women in various stages of undress.

“Not to you,” she said, glancing at him briefly.

“Need a ride?”

She turned. “Where are you headed?”
 

“Carlisle.”

“I’m going to Ravensbridge.”

“It’s on my way,” he said, the lie coming easily.

She considered his offer for a moment. “Okay then.”

He smiled at her. His teeth were tobacco stained and he had a slight squint in his left eye. “It’s your lucky day,” he said.

She smiled back. “It sure is,” she said. She paid for her coffee and followed the driver out to his truck, a large tanker for hauling flour. She glanced back at Cavendish House. Two men were coming out through the door. One was considerably older than the other and much scruffier.
Police,
she thought. She stared at the older man. He stared back at her, but without really seeing her. He seemed troubled, a lot on his mind. At the same time she was picking up danger signals from him. She had a feeling she was going to meet him again further down the line and when she did she was going to kill him.

“Are you going to get in?” the trucker said, a note of impatience in his voice.

She shook herself out of her reverie. “Sure,” she said and climbed into the cab of the tanker. She took one more look at the older policeman as he climbed into his car. “I’ll remember you,” she said, almost to herself.

The trucker showed her his brown teeth again and winked. “Sure you will, darling. By the way, the name’s Dave. Dave Scott.”

“Hello, Dave,” she said.

“What’s your name?”

“It’s whatever you want it to be,” she said.

Dave nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah,” he said. “I like that. Okay, I’m going to call you Lisa. Had a dog called Lisa once, Labrador cross—fine little bitch.”

“I’m touched,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Fine little bitch.”
 

She watched him start the tanker and within minutes Cavendish House and Ollie Tucker were just memories.

Chapter Fourteen

“I’ll take you back to the station and go on to Ravensbridge to see Carter,” Lacey said.

Sparks looked at him sharply. “Why?”

Lacey shifted gears. “Why what?”

“Why go and see him on your own? I’m as much involved in this investigation as you are.”

“Don’t be difficult, Matt,” Lacey said. “There are half a dozen cases sitting on our desks. We can’t neglect them for the sake of this one. Besides, it will give you a chance to go to the canteen and get some breakfast.”

Sparks stared straight ahead, unconvinced. He suspected Lacey had his own agenda running and he didn’t like being shut out. They were partners and he felt he should be included.

“Don’t go all broody on me, Matt. I have enough on my mind at the moment without worrying about upsetting you.”

“Have you thought about sharing? All this stuff that’s on your mind, you could talk to me about it.”

“I will, Matt, I will. But in my own time. Is that good enough?”

“I suppose it will have to be.”

Lacey sighed. “You’re a good copper, Matt. You’re young, bright, and with the right breaks you could go all the way. I’m older than you. My days with the force are numbered, and I certainly don’t expect any more in the way of promotion. I’m a D.I. and that’s my limit. I’ve ruffled too many feathers along the way to expect any more. Well that’s fine. I can live with that without bitterness. Only myself to blame. But there are things I need to do now, for my own satisfaction. I might well stir up some shit while I’m doing them, and I don’t want any of that shit to stick to you. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Sparks looked at him. “I appreciate it,” he said. “Just make sure you don’t fuck up your pension.”

Lacey smiled. “I’ll try not to let that happen.”

He dropped Sparks at the station and spent a few moments sitting in the car park, sifting through the files he’d shoved hurriedly into a carrier bag before he left the house that morning. If his superiors knew he was planning to reinvestigate some of these cases, they’d bury him. As far as they were concerned the cases were closed, and they would not appreciate him spending time and resources looking into them again. But it was something he’d wanted to do for some time and now he had an opportunity to move the investigations forwards, and he wasn’t about to waste it. He loaded the files back into the carrier bag and set off for Ravensbridge.

It was obvious when he arrived at Annie Ryder’s house that the man had been drinking. Lacey couldn’t blame him. One of Carter’s friends had died in a most horrendous manner, and Lacey was very aware that he hadn’t pulled his punches when informing him of Ollie Tucker’s death.

“Come in,” Carter said and left the door open for him, walking back into the house, fully expecting Lacey to follow.

“Sorry about Tucker,” Lacey said, following him into the lounge.

Carter was at the drinks cabinet pouring a vodka. “Drink?” he said.

“It’s a bit early for me,” Lacey said. “Upsets my ulcer.”

“Fair enough. You don’t mind if I do?”

“So long as you’re not intending to drive anywhere.”

Carter noticed the plastic carrier bag hanging limply from Lacey’s hand. “What’s in the bag?”

“We’ll get to that in a moment.” Lacey dropped onto the couch and crossed his legs. “I was there earlier,” he said.

“Ollie’s place?”

Lacey nodded. “It was a bloody mess.”

Carter smiled, remembering the last time he was there. “It usually is.”

“I was referring to Norton’s laptop. Smashed to pieces. Bits of it everywhere. Tucker’s computer too. They found a hammer. The current thinking is that Tucker was a lonely type, probably a depressive. Obviously something upset him and he took out his frustrations on the computers before wrapping a power cord around his neck, tying it to the rail of the balcony and then jumping.”

Carter was listening, but shaking his head slowly.

“You’re convinced it isn’t suicide, aren’t you?” Lacey said.

“You know damned well I am. I told you that on the phone.”

“Yes, you did. You did. Would you be surprised if I said I agreed with you?”

“Not really, no,” Carter said. “You’re not exactly the average copper, are you, Lacey?”

“I like to think my mind’s more open than most.”

“What do you think really happened to Ollie?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think he was alone this morning. There was a strong smell of perfume in the flat.”

“Perfume? Ollie?” Carter said. “His flat usually smells of cold pizza and sweat, rank enough to keep any self-respecting woman away. And to my knowledge he’s never had a girlfriend. I’ve always thought of the place as a female-free zone.”

“Yes, that’s what I figured. It hardly looks the typical shag-pad.”

“All Ollie’s women were virtual. Fantasies. I think he used to obsess over the characters in the computer games he played.”

“Well, I think a woman, a real woman, paid him a visit not long before he died. Any ideas?”

Carter’s mind went back to the contact he made with Norton in his hospital room and the beautiful woman in the green silk dress. He shook his head to clear the image. “No,” he said.

Lacey stared at him for a moment and then lifted up the carrier bag and tipped the contents out onto the floor. There were five manila folders. He hastily arranged them on the coffee table.

“What are they?” Carter said.

“Case files,” Lacey said. “Files that have bugged me over the years. Although they’re officially closed, in my mind, they’re still very much open.”

“Why?”

“Because they all have the similar elements to the Ollie Tucker case. Ostensibly straightforward, open and shut cases, but I’ve never been satisfied that they were as simple as they appeared.”

Carter looked at the names on the files.
Grant
,
Gillespie
,
Brown,
Allyn
,
Clarke
—names now familiar to him. “Why are you showing me these?”

Lacey shifted in his seat, crossed and recrossed his legs. “Because I think that all these cases will interest you. I want you to read through them and see what conclusions you draw.”

“You’re asking for my help?”

“You and Department 18,” Lacey said. “Not officially, of course. The last person I knew who asked Department 18 for help lost his job because of it. Will you look at them?”

Carter pulled the Gillespie file from the table, opened it and riffled through the pages. It was all there—the initial police report, details of the investigation, a transcript of the inquest. He closed the file. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll look at them.”

Lacey let out his breath in a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” he said. “When you’ve finished we’ll talk.”

“You want me to go through them now?”

Lacey glanced at his watch. “Well, we’ve already established you’re in no condition to drive anywhere, and I’ve got the rest of the morning.”

Carter shook his head in resignation, opened the file again and started to read.

“This isn’t the way to Ravensbridge,” she said, looking through the side window of the tanker. They had entered a wood and the moorland had been replaced by trees.

“It is,” Dave Scott said. “Shortcut.” He licked the sweat from his top lip with a yellow-furred tongue and swept a strand of lank, greasy hair away from his face.
 

He was very familiar with the track through the wood. He’d lost count of the women he had brought here, but it must have been into double figures by now. He glanced around at the woman in the passenger seat. She was a little older than he liked, a bit on the plump side and she could probably make more of herself, but she wasn’t unattractive. He wondered if she’d give in without a fight. They usually did. He had ways to persuade them if they hesitated.

The eggs and bacon he’d eaten for breakfast sat in his stomach like a pile of stones. He belched and maneuvered the truck through a narrow gap between two trees. It was an entrance to a clearing. There was nobody about, but then he knew that at this time of the morning there rarely was. He stopped the truck, applied the parking brake and switched off the ignition.

“Why have we stopped?”

He smiled at her. “I thought we could have a little fun. Would you like that, Lisa? Yeah, of course you would. I saw the way you were looking at me in the café.” He reached out and stroked her leg with his hairy knuckles.

“You’re making a mistake,” she said.

“I don’t think so.”

“A very big mistake.”

He grabbed her ponytail, pulled her towards him and lunged forwards, his lips crushing hers, his free hand reaching for her breasts. As his fingers closed around the plump flesh, a searing pain lanced through his head and the world went black. He had the sensation of flying through the air. He could feel air rushing against his skin, blowing through his greasy hair, and then his whole body shook as it slammed to the ground.