Silent Playgrounds Page 14

  She looked at Michael’s picture. I hold you responsible … responsible … responsible … She had tried to keep Michael safe the only way she could. Listen to me, Suzanne …

  She sat up, remembering something. The Alpha tapes! Ashley’s tape! She ran up the stairs to her attic study, and looked at the row of cassette tapes on the shelf behind her desk. She frowned as she saw how disordered they were getting. Then she remembered. She’d left the tapes in her desk at the department. She sorted through the pile of notes in her in-tray until she found the transcript. There it was! She went back downstairs and began to read.

  Q. So what do you like to do then? In your spare time?

  A. So … ?

  Q. What do you do?

  A. I thought we were together.

  Q. What? Sorry, Ashley, I didn’t get that.

  A. So, I’m sorry.

  Q. Ashley, do you want to do this? Only …

  A. I’m telling you!

  He’d said it, I’m telling you! Like a plea, like the way Adam had said Listen to me! And she hadn’t listened, she’d just transcribed the tape and felt good because Ashley couldn’t communicate what he wanted to say. And now he was in trouble. This time she would listen. This time she would do something.

  There was a knock at the door and she jumped. The door was locked; it took her a moment to find the key. It was Jane, a tatty cardigan pulled over the top of her paint-spattered work jeans, a look of agitation on her face.

  ‘In the park,’ Jane said, ‘It’s in the park again …’

  Suzanne stared at her in bewilderment. Jane took a breath and tried again. ‘The police, they’re all over the park again. Suzanne, they’ve found something else, someone else.’ Jane had been walking to the shops and had seen the cars outside the park. Curiosity had sent her closer. ‘I thought it might be something to do with Emma,’ she said, but there were police at both gates and they wouldn’t let her in. ‘They wouldn’t tell me, either.’ She’d gone to the newsagents in the end, her intended destination, and the woman there had told her. ‘She said they’d found a body in the Shepherd Wheel Dam.’

  Suzanne had a picture in her mind, a picture of a tall, dark-haired figure, his pale face looking back at her as he turned towards the allotments. She could no longer remember the face she had seen. ‘Ashley …’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Was it a man, a young man?’

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t know.’ Jane twisted her hair round her fingers.

  Suzanne’s mind worked frantically. What had McCarthy said? We think he was at the scene. Except he hadn’t been … Or had he? McCarthy had said Ashley was missing. And now a body had turned up in the park. Ashley, I’m sorry!

  The temperature of mud is constant and cool. Bodies buried in mud are often well preserved, the processes of decay slowed down. The woman’s features were still discernible, blurred and waxy, but someone who had known her in life could well, now, know her in death. Barraclough knew her. Barraclough had only seen her photograph, but the transformation of the vivacious young woman snapped in the disco lights of a nightclub into the still, putrefying cadaver on the mortuary slab made her eyes sting as the pity of it overcame her. TO EM. She felt her nose clog up, and sniffed to clear it. Crying in the autopsy suite was hardly the act of a professional. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and glanced across at McCarthy, who was assessing the body with dispassionate interest.

  She wondered if any of the work he did affected him. She had seen him like this before, looking at the victims of road accidents, reading reports of child abuse, looking, as now, at the victims of brutality, talking to the relatives, people who had lost loved ones to that same brutality, with a level, emotionless gaze. She had thought, at one time, that he was just better than most at concealing his feelings. She was familiar with the importance of machismo among the male officers – women, too; but the emotion came out – in sick jokes, in drinking, in anger towards perpetrators. She had never seen anything much disturb McCarthy’s equilibrium.

  The pathologist was brisk and matter of fact. ‘I can’t tell you if it’s the same killer or not. Yet,’ she added. ‘The lab results might give us something. I can’t say that it isn’t either.’

  This slow deliberation irritated McCarthy, who wanted to push the woman into some kind of speculation. ‘So what can you tell us?’ he said.

  ‘She was young – under twenty-five. She was, as far as I can determine, in good health.’

  Come on! McCarthy thought irritably. ‘So how did she die?’

  The pathologist picked up her clipboard. ‘It’ll all be in my report.’

  McCarthy wondered why he always thought of her as the pathologist, rather than – what was her name? – Anne, or even the more formal Dr Hays. He never saw her outside of her professional environment. She seemed to have no life other than that of the dead. Maybe that was it. ‘We need a summary before the briefing,’ he said.

  She looked at him over her glasses. He wondered if she had perfected that gesture as a way of asserting her authority. He waited. ‘Briefly, Inspector,’ she said, ‘there is very little to report. Cause of death is undetermined at present. She appears to have drowned in the mud. How that happened is a matter for speculation. There is some evidence of a struggle but not much. Like your previous victim, she did not put up much of a fight for an apparently healthy young woman. The lab reports may give us more information.’ For a minute, McCarthy thought that that was all she was going to give them, but she frowned, her eyes focusing into the distance, and went on, ‘We’re looking at a murder victim, and I think she’s another victim of the same killer. That’s unofficial.’ She looked at the two officers, and for the first time she seemed to McCarthy to be taking a personal rather than a professional stance. ‘You wouldn’t drown in that mud if you just fell in. Well, you’d be unlucky. If you were unconscious, if you landed face first, if the mud was particularly soft … it might cut off your air supply. There are bruises on her arms as if someone held her down.’ She caught McCarthy’s eye. ‘Like the first one,’ she agreed.

  McCarthy tried to picture a struggle by the dam, someone caught in the mud, another figure, shadowy, but becoming clearer, someone with murderous intent. The victim’s terror, the assailant’s … what? What emotions did a killer feel at such a moment? He pulled his mind back to the practicalities of the situation. It would have been messy, noisy, likely to attract attention. ‘How quick would it be?’

  ‘Not quick enough, I shouldn’t think,’ the pathologist said briskly.

  The Duttons lived in a small village outside Hull. The M18 was quiet, and McCarthy was happy to let Barraclough drive while he ran aspects of the case through his mind. How likely was it that both women were victims of the same killer? They were close friends, they were physically alike, they had died – or at least their bodies had been found – in more or less the same place. That was pretty conclusive. How did it look with Ashley Reid as the main suspect? A scenario with a single murder had given McCarthy no problems. His own interpretation had been an abortive sexual encounter and a sudden, vicious attack. But the evidence of planning, the evidence of a drugs connection, had made him revise his thoughts. Reid was, apparently, not very intelligent. Another murder, and one that had been successfully concealed, didn’t fit, and he was adjusting his mental picture to find ways to accommodate it.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked Barraclough, out of the blue.

  The sudden interruption of the long silence startled her for a moment. ‘About this latest, you mean?’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about the last budget.’

  ‘It’s not—’ He registered the brief flash of protest on her face at his tone and reflected that he probably hadn’t been very fair. He didn’t intend doing anything about it. He waited. ‘Well,’ she said, cautiously, ‘it looks as though it must be the same person – or people.’ She checked her mirror and pulled out to pass a heavy lorry. ‘It must have involved some planning
, which suggests that the first one – I mean the first one we found, Emma, was probably planned as well.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ but McCarthy nodded to show that he followed her logic.

  ‘We think that Emma’s killer knew her. So did he know Sophie as well? Or was Sophie the only intended victim and did Emma just get in the way somehow?’ She was quiet for a moment, thinking. ‘Sophie’s been in the mud for three or four weeks, they said. She was still at the university in May. Do we have a last sighting?’

  McCarthy shook his head. ‘They’re looking for that now.’

  ‘OK.’ Barraclough ran the details through her mind again. ‘The obvious thing is the drugs connection. If Emma was dealing on the campus, trod on someone’s toes …’

  ‘It’s possible. But don’t forget there are a lot of small-time dealers around the university. If she got in someone’s way, she might have got beaten up, but why take the risk of killing her?’

  ‘Do you think Sophie left because someone was threatening her?’ Barraclough looked at him for a moment and then back at the road.

  McCarthy shrugged. ‘Something happened. But don’t forget the trouble in the Allan family.’

  Barraclough said, ‘Emma left home in March. After a row with her mum. A few weeks later, Sophie is killed. You think there’s a connection?’

  McCarthy nodded. ‘It might all tie in with the drugs thing again. They have a row because they find out that Emma’s got herself involved in trouble? They have a row because they aren’t getting their cut? Or it’s something else altogether.’

  They needed to put more pressure on Dennis Allan, find out what he was hiding. McCarthy went back to his thoughts as Barraclough negotiated her way through the centre of Hull. Too many connections.

  The Duttons lived in an old farmhouse about half an hour’s drive from the centre of Hull. The village, Penby, was typical of the area: small, dispersed, set in the middle of flat spreading fields separated by dykes. The houses were red-brick with pantile roofs; the outbuildings were utilitarian. The roads were narrow and in poor repair. ‘Third one along,’ said Barraclough as they came to a T-junction. She turned the car and pulled up on the grass verge. The ground was muddy. There was a short drive up to the house that ran past the kitchen door and along to a garage. The door stood open, but there was no one in sight.

  ‘Are they expecting us?’ Barraclough thought it was probably a stupid question as she asked it, and McCarthy’s lack of acknowledgement confirmed this. He knocked on the door, waited and then knocked again.

  ‘Sorry. I was feeding the hens.’ A woman came round from the back of the house. She gave them a smile that tried to conceal her anxiety. She was wearing trousers and rubber boots. Her short hair was jet black. Barraclough found herself wondering where Sophie had got her colouring from – if this was Sophie’s mother. Barraclough could see no resemblance.

  ‘Mrs Dutton?’

  She nodded and offered McCarthy her hand. ‘Maureen,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector McCarthy from South Yorkshire Police …’ Barraclough listened as he went through the formalities of introduction, watching the woman’s face. ‘Mrs Dutton, is your husband here?’ McCarthy moved nearer to the purpose of their visit, and Barraclough found she didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to see the woman’s friendly, worried face collapse into grief and dismay. For her, Barraclough thought, her daughter was still alive. For McCarthy, and for Barraclough herself, Sophie Dutton was almost certainly dead.

  The woman’s eyes began to hunt around the room, as if she was looking for something normal and everyday to fix on. ‘He’ll have seen you arrive. He’s been expecting you,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Or coffee, or something?’ She crossed the kitchen and filled the kettle as she spoke, looking at them inquiringly.

  ‘Shall we wait till your husband gets here?’ McCarthy said, and the uncharacteristic gentleness in his voice surprised Barraclough.

  Maureen Dutton looked round, cleared her throat, said, ‘We could go through to the other room. It’s a bit more comfortable.’ She took them through to a sitting-room at the front of the house. It had the same rather shabby used look about it that the kitchen did. A pair of boots stood on the low table. Books and magazines were piled up in corners. A settee in one corner, opposite the television, presented a homely enclave with some knitting stuffed under a cushion, an open book on the arm, a pair of slippers on the floor.

  Maureen Dutton’s eyes looked through the window behind them and her face cleared. ‘Here’s Tony now,’ she said. Barraclough looked at the big, solid man coming across the field towards the gate. Thick black hair, grey beard, dressed in working clothes, like his wife. They waited in silence as he pulled off his boots and came through from the kitchen. He shook hands with McCarthy, and, after a slight pause, with Barraclough. ‘You don’t have to be embarrassed,’ he said, looking at them. ‘You’ve come to tell us our Sophie’s in trouble. We know she’s been mixing with a bad crowd. She’s been a bit … headstrong, lately.’ They had prepared themselves, braced themselves for the worst. Sophie was in trouble, and they were going to deal with it. They were going to stand by her and help her get through it. Barraclough could tell by the expression on the man’s face, and the way the woman straightened her back. We don’t want to hear this, but we’re ready.

  ‘In what way, Mr Dutton?’ McCarthy said.

  ‘It’s Tony. Well, she was …’ He looked at his wife.

  ‘She wanted to find her mother,’ Maureen Dutton said, baldly. ‘We always knew she might want to do that. We’d never have stood in her way.’

  ‘Sophie was adopted?’ McCarthy’s voice was that of someone clarifying a point, but Barraclough could detect the slight edge in his voice.

  ‘Yes. We took her when she was four. There was never any question of her not knowing.’ Maureen Dutton looked at her husband, and the two of them moved closer together. ‘Then, when she started looking, there was a letter. Her mother had written a letter to be given to her if she ever tried to find her birth family. That’s why she took the place at Sheffield, I think. That’s where her family came from.’

  ‘And did she find her mother?’

  ‘No. I don’t know … She hardly writes or phones.’ Maureen Dutton bit her lip.

  ‘Did you have a …’ McCarthy tried to select a diplomatic word. ‘Was there any disagreement about it?’

  ‘No.’ She looked sad. ‘Not from us. But I think Sophie felt guilty, felt that she was letting us down – we’d perhaps try to persuade her against it.’

  ‘I did.’ Tony Dutton looked grim. ‘Whoever her mother is – well, she wasn’t that interested in Sophie when she was little. Put Sophie into care. You don’t do that to your kid.’ McCarthy was aware of Barraclough’s nod of approval. ‘I’m worried she’ll get hurt, that’s all.’

  ‘Tony’s right.’ Maureen Dutton shook her head. ‘But you can’t budge Sophie once she’s made her mind up. I’d just like to know what’s happened. I don’t push it, because she’s very touchy about it. She’ll talk when she’s ready.’

  Tony Dutton shifted his feet uncomfortably. ‘Look, there’s no point in beating about the bush,’ he said after a moment. ‘You’d better tell us what it is she’s got herself involved with.’

  Before McCarthy could answer, Maureen picked up a small photograph from the mantelpiece. ‘Sophie,’ she said. McCarthy looked at it and showed it to Barraclough. The girl from the photograph found in Emma’s bag looked back at them. In this picture, she looked younger, less sophisticated. It was taken outside the house they were now in, and she was smiling in the kitchen doorway, muddy boots on her feet and a small white dog in her arms. Barraclough had a sudden flash of the blurred, waxy face on the autopsy table. She braced herself.

  McCarthy looked at the Duttons who were waiting, their tension becoming more apparent, for him to tell them why he was there. ‘Mr Dutton, Mrs Dutton. I’m not here because Sophie is in trouble with the law. I�
�m afraid it’s more serious than that. We’re investigating a second death.’ Barraclough saw the woman’s face clench, her lips move silently. ‘The body of a young girl was found this morning, in Sheffield, and we think’ – Barraclough saw the man’s hand grip his wife’s arm – ‘that it’s your daughter, Sophie.’

  9

  The life on a smallholding doesn’t stop in the face of tragedy. Neither of the Duttons would let the other go alone to identify the body of their daughter, and it was the small hours of Wednesday morning before Brooke’s team had the confirmation they were expecting. The lady in the lake was Sophie Dutton. Her father, trying to numb his grief with rage, had insisted on talking to Brooke, had threatened to lay complaints against the whole team, had hit out blindly against an attack that came from inside him. McCarthy recognized guilt. This was the useless, agonizing guilt of the parent who had not been able to protect his child.

  Sophie’s background, after her adoption, had been unexceptionable. Her mother had, according to Tony Dutton, effectively abandoned her, signing her over to local authority care and vanishing. In consequence, they knew very little about her family background. ‘We think her mother may have had another child,’ he said. ‘She talked about “the other baby”, used to ask about “the other baby”. Me and Maureen, we’d have given anything …’ He stopped talking for a moment and looked at his wife. ‘But those that don’t care for them can just have them like shelling peas.’ He was reaching for his anger again.

  Maureen Dutton sat in calm silence, and Barraclough thought that she looked like a porcelain figure, like a doll, like someone whose reality had been hollowed out of her from the inside, leaving no visible damage, no wounds, leaving … nothing.

  Kath Walker, Ashley Reid’s aunt, greeted Barraclough and Corvin with a grudging, ‘You’d better come in,’ and sat unsmiling as they explained what they wanted. There was no point, she told them, in their asking about her husband. ‘Bryan and I separated ten years ago,’ she said, in answer to Corvin’s query. ‘We’re divorced now. I haven’t seen him since two Christmases ago. He drinks,’ she added. ‘Our Michelle keeps in touch. He sees her sometimes. When he’s short of cash.’ Barraclough looked at the woman’s severe face, her carefully groomed hair, the way she sat upright and rigid, and wondered what it would have been like to be delivered to this woman at the age of four, young, bewildered, vulnerable. ‘There was nothing but trouble from the word go,’ she said, when Corvin asked her about Ashley and his brother, Simon. ‘Not surprising, really. Bryan’s sister, Carolyn, she was into all that hippie stuff. Drugs. Music. “Free love”, they called it.’