Cruel Acts

‘And locked it in a room? And hid the key so we never found it?’

‘They said that Stone was worried about being burgled. He was obsessed with security.’

‘Yeah, funny how serial killers like their privacy.’ Derwent shook his head. ‘Surely there’s no way the jury would have fallen for it.’

‘You don’t need to convince all twelve of them. You can get a mistrial if you confuse three of them beyond the point where they know black from white.’ Hollingwood leaned back in his chair, amused rather than upset by it. ‘The prosecution has to play it dead straight – no showboating, no dramatics, just concentrate on the facts. The defence can do what they like.’

‘And as for being convincing, they won over more people than you’d think. Journalists, campaigners … and Sara Grey’s family.’ Whitlock’s voice dropped at the end of the sentence, and I realised with a mild sense of shock that he was angry. ‘I need to warn you about that. You’re going to have to handle them with care. They turned against the police during the initial investigation into Sara’s disappearance. My understanding is that the local CID didn’t impress them and stepped on a few toes. The fiancé was out of the country when it happened, but the detectives had their concerns about him. That bothered the family, who felt they were wasting time instead of locating her. Then they took offence at some of the questions that we had to ask. Sara’s body was well away from where we found Willa Howard. It was the cadaver dog that found her, not us. And there were differences in how the bodies were positioned. We didn’t want to assume they were both left there by the same killer. Dr Hanshaw was confident that both women had died in the same way, but by the time we found them, they had been left to nature for some time. The remains were skeletonised. He wasn’t able to specify a definite cause of death for either of them. Now, of course, the question is whether he missed something.’

Beside me, Godley was absolutely still. He wouldn’t give away how much he minded Glen Hanshaw’s reputation being questioned, but his very silence was loaded with emotion, I thought.

‘The Greys believe that we’ve never found Sara’s killer – that she wasn’t killed by the same person who killed Willa Howard, and that person was definitely not Leo Stone. They’ve bought into a conspiracy theory that we’re deliberately trying to mislead them. They don’t trust us, but they trust Stone and his son. Kelly Lambert made friends with them – can you believe that?’

‘Is that why they don’t want to believe Stone was Sara’s killer?’ I asked.

‘That and the lack of forensic evidence. They don’t think she would have stopped to talk to him that night. She was quiet – a bit shy. Timid. She wouldn’t have argued with a guy like Stone. She’d have crossed the street to avoid him.’

‘If he let her do that.’

‘Then there’s the fact that there was no trace of her in Stone’s house or his van.’ Whitlock sighed. ‘I wish we’d connected the two cases earlier, but we didn’t. I wish I’d been able to investigate Sara Grey’s disappearance. It bothered me that they hadn’t taken it seriously enough. They could have put more resources into it. Then again, we knew Willa Howard was missing almost as soon as she disappeared – within twelve hours. It was a densely populated area with a lot of footfall, even at that time of night. Halloween jogged people’s memories too.’

‘You did a remarkable job to track down the van.’ Godley leaned forward, holding Whitlock’s gaze with that intensity that made you feel you could walk through fire for him, that you wouldn’t mind dying for him … ‘Without the van, we would probably never have made a connection between the missing women and Stone, even if we’d found the bodies. The van broke the case.’

Whitlock ducked his head. ‘We did all right. I had a good team. I may be wrong but I don’t think there’s much new ground to explore when it comes to Willa Howard’s death.’

Except how she died, and where, and when. I thought of Dr Early revisiting the files, the photographs. ‘How do the Howards feel about this?’

‘They think Stone is guilty. It’s easier for them than the Greys, I think, because they didn’t believe a word of the story about him finding the cupboard in the street. There’s the van in the right area and the blood – that’s enough for them. They fell out quite badly with the Greys over it, which was a shame. Nice people.’

‘Are they the kind of nice people who would mind if we apply to exhume their daughter’s body?’ Derwent, blunt as ever.

Whitlock winced. ‘Depends on how you approach it.’

‘With great sensitivity,’ Godley said, and I wondered if he’d forgotten how Derwent preferred to work. I had a question to ask myself.

‘Tell me about Rachel Healy.’

‘A dead end.’ Whitlock’s face had hardened, stubbornness making it into a thing of angles. There was something in Whitlock’s voice that sounded final, as if the subject was irrelevant and therefore the discussion was at an end.

‘She went missing not long before Willa Howard.’

‘We concluded the disappearance was too close to Willa for it to be connected. He took one in July and one in October, not two. That’s the sort of thing a killer does when they’re losing control – when they’re running out of time. Stone had no idea we were going to knock on his door, and he didn’t take a fourth woman after Willa Howard, though we didn’t catch up with him for a few weeks.’

‘Maybe something went wrong,’ I said. ‘Maybe it wasn’t a satisfying murder as far as he was concerned.’

‘We did look for her. We never found the body. The conclusion we reached was that she was never in Stone’s house or his van. The blood from under the floorboards wasn’t conclusive. It sent us on a wild goose chase. We were under pressure to clear up as many disappearances and murders as possible and Rachel Healy got lumped in with the other two.’

‘There was a reason the CPS didn’t charge him with her kidnap and murder,’ Hollingwood said. He was watching me, his face open and friendly. I knew when I was being placated and it prickled along my nerves. ‘I didn’t want Rachel Healy on the indictment. The evidence that he was involved in her disappearance was circumstantial at best. The forensics were the weakest part of our case. I was of the opinion that including her and introducing the idea that a third woman had died in that room – whether it was Rachel Healy or not – could only damage us. It would have provided an opportunity to the defence to muddy the waters. We had no body. We were asking the jury to take too many leaps of faith – that she was dead, that Stone had been involved, that her body had been left somewhere other than the area where the other two women were found, for a reason we didn’t know. Too many questions there, don’t you think?’

‘Questions that deserve an answer,’ I said.

‘We did our best.’ Whitlock, bristling.

Derwent got there before I could. ‘No one’s saying you didn’t. There’s a reason she’s on this case.’

She being me. I opened my mouth to change the subject before he said anything else, but he steamed on.

‘Kerrigan can charm the birds from the trees and find things you never knew were missing. If there’s a way to trace Rachel Healy and tie her murder into this case, Kerrigan will find it. Once she’s decided she’s going to do something, she doesn’t give up.’ Derwent paused for a beat. ‘It makes her bloody irritating to work with, obviously, but she’s right about this one.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, and he grinned at me. A ripple of amusement ran around the table, a welcome break in the tension. I waited until they’d stopped laughing.

‘Anything on Rachel Healy will be new to the defence. If Stone killed her, he thinks he got away with it. At the moment we don’t even know where she was before she disappeared. It’s not going to be easy to make enquiries after so many years, but it’s surprising what people can remember when you ask.’

‘All this time and not a sign of her body. I really wanted to find her.’ Whitlock grimaced. ‘I dream about her sometimes. Gets under your skin, you know.’

I did know, all too well.

‘We’ll look after her,’ Derwent said to Whitlock. ‘We won’t let you down.’

The retired policeman nodded and attempted to smile. It flickered across his face uncertainly, like a lightbulb about to blow.

11 (#ulink_fe5e1371-d007-5e57-b8c6-59b1f3e3e556)

‘The rural dream. You can keep it,’ Derwent said. ‘Why would anyone want to live here?’

‘Grammar schools. Commutable distance from London. Local amenities. Decent lifestyle.’

‘Yeah, but apart from that.’

‘I don’t think we’re seeing it at its best.’

We were driving out of London towards Aylesbury, a medium-sized market town where Sara Grey had grown up. Her parents still lived there, outside the town. It was a cold day, the sky the colour of steel, and the fields were boggy from heavy rain the night before. Crows hunched in the branches of trees and along fences like witches’ familiars, their rasping call echoing across the countryside.

I went back to the opinion column I was reading out from my phone.

‘“In the era of social media, when everyone has access to the internet all the time, is it even possible to have a fair trial by jury? A case such as that of Leo Stone is the ideal test: a horrific series of headline-grabbing crimes, a suspect who seems to fit the image of a ruthless killer, grieving families and photogenic victims, and an unregulated internet full of rumours. If it’s a crime to be unattractive, then the prisons should be overflowing. Leo Stone was on trial for murder but he was judged on his past and his appearance. That’s not justice – it’s prejudice.”’

I paused expectantly, and was not disappointed.

‘What fucking horseshit.’ Derwent glowered at a driver who was failing to give way to him.

‘There’s more.’

‘Of course there is.’

‘“What must Leo Stone’s lawyers have thought when they read juror Stan Maxwell’s self-published account of the trial? They must have been pleased that they had grounds for an appeal, but I think they must have been horrified too. How easily a man can lose his freedom and his reputation. By his own account, Maxwell and his fellow jurors read the rumours that spread, unchecked, across the internet. They searched for the secrets of Leo Stone’s life: the missing pieces of the puzzle that they weren’t supposed to know. They cheated the system. They cheated Leo Stone. They cheated justice. This is how easy it is to lock up an innocent man: a few unflattering pictures, a few stories that float without attribution or evidence to tether them to the facts of the case, a few arrogant and prejudiced jurors with smartphones.”’

Derwent grunted. ‘Well, he’s not wrong there. Nice of him to mention the dead women too.’