Something Evil Comes Page 19

‘What do you think?’ she asked, voice low and urgent. ‘Foley or Albright?’

  ‘Slacken the suspenders. We’ll know soon enough.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Hanson arrived in UCU the following afternoon to find Corrigan on the phone surrounded by papers in orderly piles. Watts was going through one of them.

  ‘Any more news?’ she asked of their early-hours visit to what had turned out to be a grave.

  He turned pages. ‘Not yet.’

  She walked to the window, looked across the parking area to the smart little terraced houses on the other side of the road. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Dangerous times, Corrigan. Brace yourself.’

  She turned to them. ‘About Alfred Best. He told me he had problems. Whatever they were, he was still very upbeat that afternoon, just hours before he died. He told me about his wife being in a care home. I assumed that was the source of the problems he mentioned.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was the way he spoke about her and his efforts to give her some quality of life. He was so positive. He saw it as a challenge, not a source of despair.’

  Corrigan’s eyes were on her, phone still to his ear. ‘What’s bothering you, Red?’

  ‘His death being regarded as a suicide. It makes no sense, given what I saw of him just hours before.’ She looked down at the table. ‘Alfred’s papers?’

  ‘Yep.’ He spoke into the phone. ‘Yeah, I’m still here.’

  Watts glanced across at him then back to Hanson. ‘Corrigan was here late last night reading through the info that Upstairs collected from Best’s house and we’ve got copies of statements from workers at the care home. Have a look.’

  She took the statements and sat on the table to read them, picking up Corrigan’s low responses to whoever was at the other end of his call. Part-way through the third statement, that of a care assistant who had greeted Alfred on his arrival, she stopped. ‘This isn’t right.’

  Watts looked up. ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘This statement made by the member of staff who saw Alfred on his arrival. Listen: “I know Mr Alfred Best. His wife has been a resident in the home where I work for almost two years. He arrived at about six o’clock in the evening. He looked very dejected and hardly spoke when I said hello to him. I took the lift with him to his wife’s room. As we stepped from the lift he became agitated, asking how his wife was, if she was upset. I reassured him that Mrs Best was fine but he remained agitated. I asked if he wanted me to accompany him into his wife’s room but he said no. He went inside and immediately closed the door on me. Again, this was unusual because Mr Best was always very polite. A short time later I heard shouts and another assistant came to tell me that Mr Best had fallen from one of the fourth-floor windows and was lying on the ground at the rear of the building”.’ Hanson shook her head. ‘That’s what I was saying. It doesn’t make sense.’

  Watts took the statement she was holding out to him and skimmed it. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Everything. It doesn’t fit with how he was that afternoon. I just told you what an upbeat and cheerful person he was. He’d made plans for that visit to his wife. He was taking some photographs to show her. He was looking forward to it. As I left he was about to get the bus there.’

  Watts frowned. ‘Yeah? So?’

  ‘What happened to make him go from that to appearing so low in mood to a member of staff barely an hour later?’ she demanded. ‘How could his mood, his demeanour, have changed so radically to what the care worker says here?’ She pointed at lines in the statement. ‘She’s describing him as agitated, possibly depressed and abrupt. Forget the how. I want to know why.’

  ‘Maybe he had some bad news after you saw him. Or, he started thinking about how long his wife had been in that home and how many years more he’d have to visit her there and started getting depressed, feeling he’d had enough—’

  ‘No, no.’ Hanson shook her head. ‘He wasn’t like that.’

  ‘You didn’t know him, doc. You’d only seen him a couple of times.’

  She took the statement from him, skimmed it again. ‘I’m telling you, this isn’t right. I’m not doubting the care assistant’s recall but I can’t believe he changed so drastically in such a short time, sufficient to make him step out of a fourth-floor window.’

  She placed the statement on the table, getting a quick rush of doubt. Watts was right. She didn’t know Alfred. She stared down at the statement. What she did know was the suicide research: prior to that final act of self-destruction, extremely depressed people were often reported as appearing lighter in mood than those who knew them had witnessed in a considerable while. It was to do with their anticipation of an end to the exhaustion of being depressed. No. What she’d seen of Alfred that afternoon, what she’d read in this statement was the wrong way round. It didn’t fit.

  Watts’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘So something happened between the time you saw him and the time he arrived at the care home. Maybe he had a phone call. Bad news.’

  ‘Did he have a phone on him?’

  Watts took his phone from his pocket, tapped it, while Hanson focused on the Smartboard’s information, wondering again where she was going with all of this. She re-tuned to Watts’s voice. ‘Chong says no phone.’

  She looked up, seeing Corrigan end his call. He and Watts exchange glances. ‘He’ll get back to us,’ said Corrigan. He looked across at Hanson. ‘An historical line of inquiry I’m following up with a pal. Might be nothing.’ He pointed to the stacked paperwork on the table. ‘Got some interesting information here on Alfred Best’s life and financial situation.’ She went and stood next to him, eyes on the papers as he pointed to them. ‘These here are his bank and other financial records. Alfred Best was a wealthy guy.’

  ‘Really? That’s good, given that his wife’s care was probably expensive.’

  Corrigan pointed to other papers. ‘Back in the 70s Alfred started his own real estate business which earned him a lot of money until around 2006 when he sold it.’

  ‘Why did he sell it?’

  ‘According to his financial adviser at the time, he wanted to retire, spend more time with his wife. They had no children. The money he got from the sale of the company, plus properties he owned which he sold at around the same time, netted a cool £1.5 million.’

  Hanson’s eyes rounded. She looked down at the papers on the table then at Corrigan. ‘You said Alfred “was” wealthy.’ She looked down at the papers. ‘Are all these saying that he wasn’t when he died?’

  Corrigan reached for various A4s and put them in order in front of her. ‘Take a look at these.’ He pointed to regular items on bank statements going back several years. ‘For a long time he was withdrawing a heap of money every couple of months.’

  ‘For his wife’s care?’

  Corrigan shook his head. ‘That was debited from his account direct to the home.’

  ‘So … what was he doing with so much money each month?’ She traced her finger down each of the sheets. ‘The withdrawals he made weren’t for set amounts.’ She looked up. ‘Maybe there was someone in Alfred’s life to whom he owed a debt or felt responsible for?’

  Watts came to look down at the records. ‘There’s another interpretation. What do you think of him being blackmailed?’

  ‘Blackmailed?’ She looked from him to Corrigan. ‘This is an eighty-something-year-old man we’re talking about. A man whose life revolved around his wife and his church.’

  ‘Blackmail can be about something in the long-ago, doc. Old stuff coming home to roost, you know? There’s a lot of that happening these days.’

  Historical child abuse allegations against several famous personalities surged into Hanson’s head. Surely not Alfred? As the thoughts crystalized she recalled men she had evaluated professionally in terms of their sexual risk: older men, one or two in their seventies, many of them married, some successful, many of them likeable, all of them admitting years-old offences. Preoccupied
, she heard the phone ring, half-listened as Corrigan took the call, his tone grabbing her attention.

  ‘Thanks a lot, Walt! I thought it was worth checking out. Yeah, you too. See ya, buddy.’ He ended the call. Hanson saw Watts’s raised eyebrows, Corrigan’s nod. He looked at her. ‘We know Delaney was in Boston twenty years back and it got me thinking. It was a long shot but I called one of the guys I worked with on the Boston force. He’s gone through all the records looking for Delaney’s name.’ He stood and walked towards the board. ‘He found it.’

  Hanson stared at him open-mouthed. ‘Are you saying that Delaney has a police record in America?’

  ‘No. But his name is mentioned. He left Boston in around 1991 and came back to the UK. Six months after he left the US, an allegation by a minor was made against him.’

  ‘Meaning, exactly?’

  ‘A person under eighteen.’

  ‘What happened to the allegation?’

  Corrigan gave her a direct look. ‘We’re talking over two decades ago, yeah? We’re all a lot savvier now at investigating sexual crime but back then the minor who made the complaint was deemed to be unreliable.’

  ‘So the allegation of this minor, this boy, wasn’t considered strong?’

  ‘Kind of, Red. Except that the complainant was an almost-eighteen-year-old female.’

  Hanson’s head was a desert. ‘Female?’ She shook her head. ‘This is like knitting smoke. What else do you know?’

  Corrigan read from notes he’d made. ‘The female complained to friends about Delaney constantly watching her when she was inside or around his church. Seems she told her folks about it. The crunch came when she alleged she saw him staring into her bedroom window at the ground-floor apartment she shared with another female. She reported him, it was investigated and on the basis of it being at most a non-contact issue, given that the police weren’t too convinced about what she was saying, they logged it and that was it.’

  ‘So, this female alleged he was a voyeur.’

  Watts looked at her. ‘Remind us what the research has to say about that?’

  She raised her shoulders. ‘It’s mixed. Those who engage in watching, spying on others, particularly when they’re engaged in say undressing as this young woman might have been if she was in her bedroom, are a diverse group. The behaviour is now considered more widespread than originally thought. One theory is that for the committed voyeur, watching becomes the primary sexual act. Like you said, Corrigan, not so much was known about the investigation of sexual crime back then. Voyeurism is now an offence.’ They looked at each other. ‘What are you going to do about Delaney?’

  ‘Not much we can do,’ said Corrigan. ‘There’s no outstanding charge against him in the US so we can’t arrest him.’

  Hanson thought about what she’d just been told. They had no way of evaluating the young woman’s years-old allegation. And what relevance could it have to their case or an eighty-year-old’s suicide? Feeling chilled, something moving inside her head which she couldn’t get hold of, she pointed at the papers on the table. ‘What about all of this? Alfred’s death?’

  Watts looked down at it. ‘We’ll keep it for a couple of days, do some checks. See what we can learn about his life. If we don’t find anything of interest we give it back to Upstairs, plus what Corrigan’s got from the financial records and leave them to pursue it.’ He looked across at her. ‘For some reason Best was out of money, he was worried about how he’s going to finance his wife’s care. He felt guilty about her and decided suicide is his way out. It works for me.’

  Hanson stared up at the board. ‘Maybe.’

  In the gathering shadow of her university room, head thumping from lack of sleep, Hanson read the email on her screen. It was from Jake Petrie: ‘Hi, Kate. I’m writing up Oscar’s performance in UCU’s investigation. I’d appreciate your letting me know the outcome of your case so I can reference it in a future article.’ Another academic preparing research papers. She sent him a quick, affirmative response. Whatever the ‘outcome’ for UCU, Jake’s drone had succeeded: it had found human remains quickly and with minimal cost. Jake was on his way to the professional recognition he deserved.

  She leant on the desk, her eyes on the flip chart and the stark black words there, plus the two photographs: Matthew. Callum. Still no news from Chong. Where the hell was UCU going with this? Probably to hell. She went to the flip chart, removed the photographs, placed them on her desk then tore off the sheet of notes, letting it fall to the floor, her eyes on the pristine sheet beneath. Taking the black marker she drew a large circle and wrote Matthew Flynn’s name inside it. Matthew, twenty years old, throat hacked out for a reason she and her UCU colleagues still did not understand. Until they did, they would not know by whom. Matthew had a caution for a drug offence, hid money inside his boot, went with Callum Foley, another drug group attendee, to get a tattoo put on his neck. An inverted crucifix. Callum Foley had a similar one. She wrote Foley’s name inside the circle. The drug support group was run by St Bartholomew’s Church. It couldn’t be established for certain, but from what UCU knew, both young men seemed to have disappeared at around the same time. Before Foley did so, he took an envelope containing a fifty-pound note and concealed it at his mother’s house. That note bore a serial number that fitted the sequence of those in Matthew Flynn’s boot. She stood back.

  What else? Matthew appeared to be somewhat distant from his family. She added more names. Prior to his disappearance he had shared a house with two students, William Graham and Zach Addison. Both of them were operating a cannabis farm within that house. For all UCU knew, Matthew was involved in that. More drugs. More money. Addison was in a sexual relationship with Matthew’s mother. More sex. Hanson added lines radiating from the circle, wrote names, thoughts tumbling into her head then onto the flip chart. Where’s the sense?

  She stepped back, looked at the two names within the circle, sure now, regardless of who Chong was working on, that Foley was as dead as Matthew. And where did Spencer Albright who was suspected of having stolen from St Bartholomew’s fit into all of this? Was he responsible for the vandalism? Were they his remains they’d seen and which were now lying in the PM suite? She added a word: pentagram.

  She surveyed all she’d written. So many names. Brad Flynn, wealthy businessman and fixer. Son Dominic following in his steps. Had Matthew felt excluded or rejected? Diana Flynn having sex with Zach Addison in the house where her son lived. Father Delaney, his plump hand on blond curls, leaving Hanson uncertain of his motive. And now they’d found a long-ago allegation against him by a female two decades ago and six thousand miles away. What about the deacons at the church? She added their names. One of them they hadn’t yet met. Was he still on retreat? Had he returned? She leant her forehead against a cool white space on the paper, straightened, added Alfred’s name, one of an army of elderly parishioners who supported the church and who was now dead, possibly by his own hand, leaving a wife who didn’t know anyone any more and more debt than money. She started as her phone rang, anxiety peaking when she saw her caller’s name.

  ‘Charlie? Is everything OK?’

  His calm voice came into her ear. ‘Fine. Why wouldn’t it be? I thought I’d take my daughter and granddaughter out to dinner tonight. What do you think?’

  ‘That’s a lovely idea. Thank you.’ The silence between them lengthened.

  ‘What is it, Kate?’

  She didn’t want to burden him. He’d been ill. The words came, anyway. ‘It’s this case. I’m – lost, Charlie.’

  ‘That sounds to me like tiredness talking. An evening out is what you need. A chance to step back. A break will give you the energy to take a look at where you are and see exactly what you’ve got.’

  Her conversation with Charlie ended as her desk phone rang. It was Watts. ‘We’ll have info on the remains found by the drone in around half an hour.’

  Fetching her coat and bag she took a last look at the flip chart. Maybe Charlie is right. Maybe
the answer or its direction is somewhere here but I’m too tired to see it. She hesitated. Something important was missing. She went back to her desk, reached for the photographs of Matthew Flynn and Callum Foley and placed them on the rim of the flip chart stand.

  She ran a finger lightly over both. They were the reason for all of this.

  Hanson went directly to the pathology suite where her two colleagues were waiting. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked, thrusting her arms into a blue coverall.

  Watts shrugged. ‘Nothing so far—’ They turned as Igor wheeled a trolley supporting a grey body bag towards them, aligned the trolley with the steel examination table and applied the brake. The door opened and Chong came inside with a nod to them.

  ‘Prompt and keen as expected.’ She and Igor took hold of the body bag and transferred it to the examination table in one practiced movement. Its weight didn’t seem to give them a problem. ‘Masks on, if you’ve got any sense.’ She unzipped the bag and folded back its sides.

  The sweetish, cloying, unmistakable aroma rolled out. The smell of the dead. A smell like no other. Hanson pressed her mask to her nose and mouth, eyes drifting over now recognisable aspects of what was lying in front of them, what they’d seen at the burial site augmented by detail. The head appeared intact, the face still an unidentifiable series of small hills and valleys. The torso and limbs were stained dark by the rich earth in which the body had lain for many months, much of the flesh gone. Hanson’s eyes settled on a darkened area directly below the chin.

  ‘DNA confirmation,’ said Chong. ‘Callum Foley, aged twenty years nine months when he was last seen approximately one year ago. Inverted crucifix tattoo on right side of neck reminiscent of that noted on Matthew Flynn’s remains.’ They waited as she pushed an X-ray plate into a lightbox, switched it on. She returned to the table, activated a water spray and brought it towards the upper body. ‘Watch,’ she said. The fine mist struck the area of the lower face and neck. Rivulets ran downwards, carrying soil debris with it to the examination table. They stared in silence at the wreckage left behind. ‘His murderer didn’t see fit to cover him with anything except the impacted earth, which there seems to be no end to on his remains. I removed much of it when I started work on him and took that.’ She pointed at the X-ray. ‘That is Foley’s throat and the gaping hole in it.’