[DCI Tom Douglas 03.0] Sleep Tight Page 4

  Lifting the phone to his ear, he knew he wouldn’t be able to hear a word she said.

  ‘Hang on, Philippa, I’m going to go outside. It’s a bit rowdy in here.’

  Tom put his pint back down on the bar. He wasn’t much of a pint drinker so it was no great loss, but he didn’t think it would do his credibility much good to order a glass of red wine. Forcing his way back through the group pushing towards the bar for their free drinks, Tom finally made it outside on to the pavement.

  ‘Sorry, Philippa. There’s a bit of a celebration going on and I couldn’t hear a word.’

  ‘Can you hear me now?’ she said, completely ignoring all mention of the festivities.

  ‘Yes – loud and clear. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I thought you should know that we’ve been called out on a missing-from-home case. We sent somebody out to do a risk assessment, but one of the advantages of having a duty sergeant who looks as if he should be stuffed and stood in the corner is that he has a memory as long as my arm. So he flagged this one with me even before it got into the system.’ Philippa paused and Tom waited, knowing she hadn’t finished. ‘Do you remember that I called you in London a couple of years ago about a girl from way back – the one whose Iranian boyfriend disappeared, and then her parents died?’

  ‘I do, yes. The husband had taken their kids out somewhere and hadn’t come home. Is that right? I seem to remember you sent me an email to say they’d all turned up safe and well. What’s happened now?’ Tom asked, knowing she wouldn’t have called him out of the blue about an old case.

  ‘This time the husband has come home from a business trip and claims that she’s disappeared. The wife, Olivia. And so have the children.’

  Bloody hell. What was it with this family? Tom lifted his hand and ran it through his short hair.

  ‘And is it for real this time or another waste of resources, because in the past nobody actually did disappear, did they? We all ran round like silly buggers only to find that there was a perfectly valid explanation all along.’ Tom said. ‘It might seem as if Olivia’s life has been nothing but a sequence of disappearances, but it feels more like a series of communication problems to me. What’s your thinking this time? I presume you don’t believe it’s just another stupid game or you wouldn’t be calling. You sound concerned.’

  He could hear a sigh from the other end of the phone. At this point in the investigation, it wasn’t something that would normally bother a Detective Superintendent, but he could tell she was worried.

  ‘Philippa?’ he said, pushing her for a response.

  ‘According to the PC who went to check it out, it’s a very odd situation. Her car is in the garage, her handbag’s in the kitchen. If she’s just upped and left, she hasn’t taken a purse, clothes, or any of the children’s things. Nobody leaves with nothing, so I’m not sure what to think. Our guy – PC Mitchell, I believe – is still at the scene, of course. Done a basic search, but we need to get somebody more senior out there to assess it.’

  ‘How long has she been missing?’

  ‘The husband doesn’t know. He claims he knows for sure she was there earlier today, but when he came home this afternoon, they were gone. It’s ten o’clock now, and he called it in at about eight. The youngest boy is still only four years old, so he can’t believe she’d have kept him out this late. But she wasn’t expecting her husband home until tomorrow, so it may be absolutely nothing.’

  ‘But you don’t think so.’ This wasn’t a question. Tom could hear it in her voice.

  ‘It’s something she said when he – her husband – didn’t come home with the children the last time. I got involved because of the history, and I spoke to her personally. She kept repeating the same phrase over and over: “He wouldn’t do it. Tell me he wouldn’t do it.”’

  ‘Wouldn’t do what?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. But whatever it was, it was scaring her senseless. I'll be honest with you, Tom, the look of terror on her face when she said it has haunted me ever since.’

  8

  Tom pushed his way back into the packed pub, his eyes searching for Becky Robinson. It had made his day when he discovered a few weeks ago that she had applied for a promotion to Detective Inspector for the Greater Manchester force, but he had been less happy when he had seen her. She was too thin, and her eyes seemed to have sunk into her face. He wondered whether he would get an opportunity today to find out what had happened to her, because whatever it was it had certainly knocked her for six.

  He had enjoyed working with Becky in London when she was his sergeant, and had found her smart and perceptive – just the kind of person he needed on this case. But he had to be sure she was up to it.

  Becky was standing with the rest of the team clutching a glass of what looked like orange juice, but although she was smiling, her eyes looked blank and glassy. Tom lifted his hand, and Becky plus several others turned to look at him. He beckoned Becky towards him, and she turned as if with relief to put her glass down on the nearest table. Nobody looked disappointed that he hadn’t signalled them.

  ‘Sir?’ she said, turning her dark eyes towards him.

  ‘We’ve got a job, Becky. Woman and three children missing from home. I’ll just pay for the drinks, and I’ll fill you in on the way. Is that okay with you?’

  ‘No problem. Would you like me to drive?’ Becky asked, as Tom signalled the barman, making signing gestures with his hand.

  ‘A kind offer, but no thanks,’ Tom answered, remembering some of the white-knuckle rides he had had with Becky at the wheel in London. ‘Come in my car, and we’ll get somebody to give you a lift back when we’re finished.’

  They walked in silence across the road to the car park. Tom flicked the car’s remote and waited until they were both strapped in with the engine running before speaking. He glanced sideways at her but she was staring straight ahead, clearly trying to avoid eye contact. This was so out of character.

  ‘Becky, you know I was delighted you’d applied to come and work in Manchester, and even more delighted when you got the job. There was stiff opposition, and these days it’s not always easy to get transferred, as we both know. But what’s it really about? You’re not yourself, and you look as if somebody’s kicked you in the gut, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch,’ Becky said, but at least there was a glimmer of a smile, and Tom could feel some of the tension in her spine ease a little. ‘I’m okay though. Glad to be away from London, and I really don’t want to talk about it. Not even to you. If it affects my job, just tell me please, sir, but otherwise can we just not mention this again. Nobody else knows me from before, so they probably think I’m always a miserable sod. I’d rather it stayed that way.’

  Tom nodded his head slowly, pulling the car out of the car park, and pointing it in the direction of the Brookes’ home. He knew the feeling, and if she didn’t want to tell him, he’d leave it at that.

  ‘Well, I hope you realise you can talk to me any time you want to. You know I’d never repeat a word. And by the way, when we’re on our own, Tom’s still fine. You don’t need to go all formal on me.’

  ‘Okay, got it. Are you going to tell me about the case now, or what?’ she asked, a flicker of her old, slightly cheeky self coming to the surface.

  While he was driving, Tom filled her in on everything Philippa had told him about Robert Brookes’ disappearance two years ago, and then took her through all he could remember of his first meeting with Olivia Brookes almost nine years previously.

  ‘I know at the time my radar was telling me there was something more to it, but I can’t remember exactly what. I was with Ryan and he just ran through the queries as if by rote, not even trying to dig deeper when the occasion arose.’

  ‘When you say “Ryan”, do you mean our Ryan – as in Ryan Tippetts?’

  Tom gave a single nod of the head.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell. Poor girl.’

  It cl
early hadn’t taken Becky long to get Ryan’s measure.

  ‘So what do you think happened to the boyfriend then?’ Becky asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea. Last we heard there was evidence of him booking a flight, so we can only presume he left the country.’

  They were both quiet for a few moments. Saying that Olivia had been distraught at her boyfriend’s disappearance wouldn’t adequately convey the shock and fear that the girl had appeared to be experiencing. Any woman whose boyfriend abandoned her, leaving her with a new baby, might be expected to be distressed, but it had seemed more than that to Tom.

  ‘That was only the start of it,’ he continued. ‘Two months later, both her parents were dead, and she was the one who discovered them.’

  Tom had a vision of a hysterical Olivia as she screamed over and over again that this could not have been an accident. But try as they might, they couldn’t find evidence of any crime. They’d even suspected the missing boyfriend. He was studying for a PhD in engineering, and maybe – just maybe – it was all a clever ploy to get the insurance money.

  ‘So, if I’ve got this right, boyfriend one does a runner. Parents are found dead. Future husband comes to the rescue. Seven years later he buggers off with the kids. She says he lied about where they were going – so what did she think? That he was abducting them?’

  ‘I don’t know. Philippa thinks there was something odd about it.’

  ‘So if his abduction scheme failed two years ago, is this his second attempt, only with slightly more finesse?’

  Tom glanced at Becky with raised eyebrows. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Well, if he really wanted the kids so much two years ago, he could have seen off the wife for good this time, and abducted the kids again – have them in hiding somewhere. He’s had two years to plan it.’

  Tom’s phone interrupted them at the perfect moment, before speculation took over, and he pressed the screen on his dashboard to answer. A voice filled the car through the Bluetooth speakers.

  ‘DCI Douglas?’ It was the gruff voice of the duty sergeant.

  ‘Speaking,’ Tom answered.

  ‘Just had a call from PC Mitchell, who’s at the Brookes’ house with the father, Robert Brookes. I gather you’re heading over there now?’

  ‘That’s right. We’ll be there in about ten minutes. Problem?’

  ‘Well, there might be. It’s odd, anyway. PC Mitchell has been filling in the missing-from-home form, and he asked the father for some photos of the kids. The usual stuff. He says Mr Brookes went to the sideboard to get some, and the photo box was empty. He thought his wife might have shifted them, but to make life easier he said he’d print one off his computer. There are none there, and no trace that any have ever been there – none in the trash. Nothing. Same with his phone. Same with his wife’s phone, which is still in her handbag, by the way. According to Mr Brookes, there isn’t a single image of his wife or any of his children in the house.’

  9

  Becky was delighted that Tom had asked her to go with him tonight. It wasn’t that she was naturally anti-social, but she was struggling to be normal around anybody at the moment, and at least Tom knew her ‘from before’, as she thought of it. Nowadays, she always imagined people were looking at her and pointing, sniggering behind their hands like schoolchildren.

  She had no evidence at all of this behaviour since arriving in Manchester, but life had been like that for weeks before she left the Met, and any time she entered a room she assumed that people stopped talking, or changed the subject because they were gossiping about her.

  Arrogant cow, she couldn’t help thinking. Why would anybody be interested in me? But she knew why.

  As they pulled up outside the Brookes’ home, Becky couldn’t see much detail of the house. Although it was close to the longest day of the year the sun had set about an hour earlier, but there was still just enough light for her to be able to make out that it was quite a substantial property on an attractive tree-lined road. When she first joined the police she had been shocked to learn that troubles came to people who lived in houses like these. As a girl from a rough part of London, she had lived under the misapprehension that it was only impoverished people who had problems. How wrong had she been? It had taken her a while to realise that the only difference was that those with more money had a tendency to hide their problems out of a misplaced sense of shame.

  When children were missing, though, shame didn’t come into the equation at all. Becky knew that all policemen hated any case involving the potential for harm to children, and she was no exception. She had never been religious, but in her mind she kept repeating a cross between a prayer and a promise. Wherever you are, kids – we’re going to find you. She only hoped it would be true.

  Tom interrupted her thoughts.

  ‘Okay, Becky. We’ve done enough interviews together to know the score. I’ll make the introductions, and then I’ll back off and observe. You can take over the questioning. Unlikely as it seems at the moment, this may just be a guy whose wife has taken the kids to stay with friends, but given their history I want to make sure we don’t miss anything.’

  Becky nodded and opened the car door, closing it quietly so as not to draw too much attention to their arrival on this peaceful road. The police car parked up the drive wasn’t on view to anybody except the neighbours opposite, but Becky didn’t want to have to deal with well-meaning callers at this point. ‘Well meaning’ was a bit of a euphemism anyway; the ones who came knocking to see if they could ‘help’ were invariably just there to find out what was going on.

  As they walked towards the front door a bright security light came on but failed to pick them up in its beam. Becky turned to Tom and shrugged, glad not to have been blinded by the light but wondering at its effectiveness.

  Tom pressed the doorbell, and they heard its piercing single tone resonate around the house. A PC whom Becky didn’t recognise opened the door, and she saw a flash of relief on his young face, no doubt glad to see senior officers who could take the weight off his inexperienced shoulders. He had the look of a skinny young colt – all long gangly limbs that didn’t quite know where to put themselves.

  They were shown into a living room, and a man stood up from the sofa and just looked at them without speaking. He seemed to be focusing on Tom’s face, and his eyes narrowed slightly.

  ‘Mr Brookes? I’m Detective Chief Inspector Tom Douglas, and this is my colleague, Detective Inspector Becky Robinson. You probably don’t remember, but we have met before, sir, when your wife’s parents died. I was an inspector then.’

  Becky noticed a slight jolt as Robert Brookes’ eyes opened wider. He held out his hand, and Tom shook it. He turned to Becky and gave her a brief nod, without bothering with a handshake. Clearly she wasn’t sufficiently important to warrant such a common courtesy.

  Brookes seemed small and insignificant next to Tom. He was a few inches shorter than her boss, with much narrower shoulders. His hooded eyes sat below heavy brows, and as his glance darted from her to Tom and back again, the whites picked up the soft glow of the table lamps dotted around the room, turning them into yellow beams in a shadowed face. She felt as if she were being scrutinised by a night owl, waiting to pounce on its prey.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’ Brookes said. He seemed lost, as if he needed somebody to tell him what to do next.

  ‘Can we sit down, sir?’ Tom indicated the sofa, and Robert flopped back on to the cushions as if he feared his legs weren’t going to hold him up for much longer. Becky took a seat on the facing sofa, and Tom sat down on an upright chair slightly to the side.

  ‘I know you will have already told PC Mitchell most of this,’ Tom said, nodding at the young PC who had melted into the background somewhere behind Brookes, ‘but if it’s okay with you, DI Robinson and I would like to go through things with you again, just so we understand your concerns.’

  Robert Brookes nodded his head without speaking, and Tom glanced at Becky.

&nbs
p; ‘Are you absolutely sure that your wife hasn’t taken the children away for a few days, as she wasn’t expecting you home until tomorrow?’ she asked, seamlessly taking over the questioning.

  ‘She wouldn’t have done that without telling me, and I spoke to her every single day, at least once and usually twice. She was here. I spoke to her this morning.’

  ‘Where were you, exactly, and how long had you been away, sir?’

  ‘I’ve been at a conference in Newcastle for a fortnight. Olivia took the children on holiday for the first week, but she’s been home since last Saturday. I wasn’t due back until tomorrow, but I thought I’d come home a day early to surprise her. I even stopped in town to buy flowers and wine. I just expected her to be here.’

  Becky could see Tom watching Robert Brookes from the side, and wondered if he was picking up anything. She certainly wasn’t. Brookes never met her eyes, and his glance seemed to constantly flick around the room.

  ‘So she didn’t know you were due home today? It must have occurred to you that she might have gone to stay with a friend, as you were away. I presume you’ve checked with everybody you know?’ Becky couldn’t fail to notice the flash of irritation on Robert Brookes’ face.

  ‘We don’t do that. We never go and stay at other people’s houses. We don’t have that kind of friend. And she would have called me by now. It’s past our scheduled call time. Nine o’clock every night. Seven o’clock most mornings, before she gets the children up. Just to say hello.’

  ‘How do you know she was here, sir? Did you call on the house phone or on her mobile.’

  ‘Neither. We used FaceTime on our Macs. It’s a bit like Skype. We both have laptops, and it’s so much better to talk face to face than just to listen to a voice. She always calls from our bedroom – so I can see her propped up against the pillows and picture her in our bed. It reminds me of home. She’s never missed a call when I’ve been away in two years.’