Gina knew they were both up to no good but now they both had an alibi. As long as Phillip Brighton said the same thing, she had to brush them aside in the murder investigations. She felt her hands tensing up. She wanted to screw them into a ball and slam them into the table. All that time wasted on Phillip Brighton and Robin Dawkins and there was still a murderer out there. Her mind wandered back to Edward Powell. She still couldn’t confirm if he was in the park alone and the answer would be revealed just as soon as O’Connor had contacted the owner of the Volvo. Powell had recognised the account number on Holly’s statement and he was Holly’s baby’s father.
‘If you’re not going to charge my client, you need to let him go. It’s seventeen hundred hours. He’s never been convicted of a drug-related offence before and he is being cooperative.’
No, Robin, Elvis, Mr Dawkins – whatever he wanted to be called – he was not getting off with a slap on the wrists. She wouldn’t allow it. He’d hindered a murder investigation with his lies. ‘Robin Dawkins, we will be charging you with the supply of Class A drugs. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention now when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ Gina slid the paperwork to Jacob. ‘Can you follow up on the charges with the CPS?’ Jacob nodded as Gina stood to leave.
Hurrying along the corridors of the station, she almost bumped into O’Connor as he came from the incident room. ‘I was just coming to see you, guv. Take a look at these bank statements. Wyre dug a little deeper and found the company that this account number was registered to, a TAR Holdings Ltd.’ She stared at the company name. She’d never heard of a TAR Holdings, it certainly wasn’t a local company – then it clicked.
Her heart began to pound but what she was thinking didn’t make sense. She’d have never suspected that this person could be involved but the more she went over his interview her hands shook. He’d taken full control of everything, misdirecting the investigation, casting suspicion on another. The another he’d brought up might not be innocent of everything but this person had been clever. Not any more. She wanted answers and she was going to get them. If her mind had drawn the right conclusions, she had to rethink everything. Had Holly told him that the baby was his?
‘What is it, guv?’
‘Is this company based abroad?’
‘Grand Cayman, guv.’ She knew it. What she’d seen of him, business-wise, was only the tip of the iceberg. It was easy to look at the Phillip Brighton’s and Robin Dawkins’s of the world and see guilt; they were guilty of things and trouble for them was easy to get into. But looking at the man whose image filled her mind, all she could see was respectability. He was clever but he wasn’t going to outwit Gina.
‘You and Wyre are a pair of geniuses! Did you get me the owner of the Volvo?’
‘Yes, guv.’ A smile spread across Gina’s face. ‘I just spoke to him myself. He can confirm that he remembers someone matching Edward Powell’s description sitting on the bench. His family walked around the lake a couple of times with their dog and he said that Powell was there the whole time. Apparently, he looked worried so the man with the dog made some light conversation with him when the dog’s stick had landed by his feet.’
‘Is he prepared to put that in a statement?’
O’Connor nodded. ‘Yes, his wife can confirm the same too.’
‘I need to check something but I think we have him.’
‘Who?’
She smiled. ‘Give me five and be ready to leave. I’m on my way. I just need to grab Jacob from the interview room. Someone else can finish up with Dawkins.’
In her mind she saw Holly struggling under the pillow until she’d breathed her last. She saw his strong fingers clenching her around the throat, digging his nails into the back of her neck. The hairs on the back of her own neck prickled, the same as they had on her wedding night when Terry held her down on the bed and strangled her until she almost turned blue. As she escaped his clutches, falling off the bed, he lay back and laughed as she coughed.
She gasped for breath and leaned against the wall. Now wasn’t the time for dwelling on her past. A surge of adrenaline had kicked in, giving her just what she needed to finish the job. She had to stop this very same thing from happening to anyone else. He was not going to get away with his crimes.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Cass half opened her swollen eye and flinched as an ice-pick headache struck. She tried to shout but the taste of her own scarf in her mouth mingling with metallic blood was making her gag. One of them turned her way; she clenched her eyelids closed. If they knew she’d seen what had just happened, she’d die, she was sure of that. Don’t let them see I’m awake.
Her stomach clenched as she thought of Holly and Fran. Why had he killed them? She knew from the way he was standing that he was the man who’d followed her home from Lilly’s house. What she couldn’t understand was why he’d tied his wife up in their cellar.
‘Get a move on. Let’s go,’ the man shouted as the wine rattled on the shelves. ‘Move it, we don’t have much time.’
Cass half opened an eye and spotted the man placing a pink tablet into a holdall.
‘I am moving it. We’ve got an hour and ten before check in closes. We’ll be fine.’
‘Shut up!’
As they glanced over Cass closed her eyes again. A moment passed. She could feel her pulse hammering through her head. She slightly opened one eye and the man stared right at her, the same man who’d once been like a second father. A trickle of blood hindered her vision. As she went to speak, her muffled words were lost behind the material, then he laughed before pressing his firm fingers around her throat. How could she have been so stupid as to think that Kerry wanted to be her friend? Was this Kerry’s doing? Kerry had messaged her, she’d lured her here with the promise of friendship and Cass had fallen prey to the trap. Once again, she’d been humiliated, just like back then in the school playground as she lay there crying over her bloodied knee, now she was weeping over the fact her friend had deceived her. Nothing had changed over the years except instead of being on the ground with a bleeding knee she was tied to a chair with a banging, bloodied head.
The cellar looked like it had tilted and shifted as more blood seeped into her eye. As she gasped, he gripped harder. In the distance she heard a laugh. Who was laughing? The jewel like bottles of red and white were beginning to fade as her peppering vision took her sight. Her head flopped and the chair overturned, banging her ear against the stone floor. As the laughing faded she knew her end had come. No one would save her, she couldn’t be saved. Maybe she didn’t want to be saved. There was no point in fighting an end she half wanted. Everyone had to die, at least she had nothing to live for. She had no family, her colleagues hated her, Kerry was never going to like her and her boyfriend wasn’t who she thought he was. Lying in a pool of her own blood in a dark cellar was her end. She shivered as her short sharp breaths became less frequent. It was time to say goodbye to the world.
Chapter Sixty-Six