[Alicia Friend 01.0] His First His Second Read online

  “Please, Alicia, let me explain everything.”

  She left one hand on the wheel, picked up the gun and pointed it at Richard’s head again. She forbade herself to cry. “My name is Detective Sergeant Friend. You do not call me Alicia ever again.”

  A tear rolled down his cheek and Alicia couldn’t bear to think about it. The man was a complete psychopath. And by “complete” she didn’t mean devoid of humanity. Everyone who kills either for a living or enjoyment is a sociopath, someone who has no empathy for their victims. But a psychopath will hide inside a shell, a cleverly constructed camouflage, designed to allow that person to blend into society. He knows he is different, that his thought processes are not like those of everyone else. But he also knows he is right, that everyone else is wrong, that their misguided way of life exists to supplement his. He is the centre of the universe. But a psychopath’s false self, his outer skin, will fade after time, his madness spiralling to an often violent conclusion. Usually it slips along the way, this camouflage, allowing psychiatrists and psychologists a glimpse of what lies beneath.

  Richard’s camouflage was that of a loving husband and father, now widower, then lover; a kind, special man who deserved happiness. And Alicia had been only too willing to oblige.

  No. By “complete”, Alicia didn’t think of it as a random adjective to describe the man beside her. She meant “absolute.” She meant “flawless.”

  Perfect.

  And to produce a tear on cue, that would have been no problem for someone like him.

  She put the gun back under her thigh. “Now talk.”

  And talk he did.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Ball’s car rolled up the driveway. Due to the abundance of pine trees and other non-deciduous foliage, it was largely untroubled by the weather, but when he came to the end, where the path to the house began, he had to get out and walk. It was only a ten-foot path, but he pulled on his bigger coat anyway.

  Inside this place, he told himself, was someone in a lot of trouble. There was also a guy twice his size, able to “crush his head like a ripe plum.” And DS Friend wanted him to go act as a delaying tactic. He assumed there was a lot of backup on its way: ARV, paramedics, the works. She must’ve got that warrant after all. Good girl.

  But in the meantime, he was Katie and Siobhan’s only hope.

  The hero?

  In younger days he’d done a little undercover work, which was similar to how he felt now. He had played a drugs mule, a john, a vagrant acting as bait for kids who liked to set fire to vagrants. That was the worst one. Knowing that if this gang were to select him, and something went wrong, he’d be beaten, doused in fuel, then set alight.

  As he walked up the short path to the towering front door, Ball felt that same sensation, that this thing he was doing might make him a hero, but not in the sense he’d hoped. At least, unlike last time, his wife didn’t give a shit about him anymore. He needn’t worry about her.

  He rang the bell.

  He stamped his feet to stay warm.

  Nothing.

  He stamped his feet some more.

  Rang the bell again.

  Noises came from within. He couldn’t tell what it was, just that they got steadily louder. No, not louder. Nearer.

  Some suited guy in a wheelchair answered. “Can I help you?”

  Ball showed him his ID. “I need a word with your, er, master.”

  The crippled guy rolled his eyes and backed up, and without a word he trundled into a cavernous anteroom with a huge Christmas tree. Ball stepped inside and closed the door, and the butler disappeared into one of the doors. He emerged seconds later, rolled up to Ball, and said, “My ‘master’ will see you now.”

  Ball went into the room as directed. The man he’d only seen in file pictures, Henry Windsor, stood posed beside the fireplace wearing a ridiculous padded green smoking jacket, of the sort comedians wear when imitating stupid rich folk.

  “Good evening officer,” he said. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

  “I need to talk to you about a few things,” Ball said, overheating in his winter coat.

  “A few things?”

  “Well, one thing specifically. James. Your son.”

  The butler rolled halfway in the room. “Is there anything else, sir?”

  “No,” Windsor replied. “That will be all, Lawrence.”

  The butler nodded his head respectfully, backed out, and closed the door.

  “Now,” Windsor said, sitting in an impressive-sized armchair, legs crossed. “My son..?”

  Sergeant Ball told him how much the police knew, and urged him to stop lying.

  Henry Windsor said the word, “Preposterous.” He repeated it several times, shaking his head with each utterance.

  “I assure you it is not,” Ball said.

  “It is preposterous I tell you. James is in India, distributing Tanya’s money to the poor. He’s an idiot.”

  Okay, maybe daddy really believed it. But Ball had to keep him talking, and the half-hour grilling he’d set upon the man was starting to grow cold.

  “So, let’s talk about Tanya’s money,” Ball said.

  “Am I being accused of something, Detective?”

  “I’m a sergeant.”

  “Well, sergeant. Am I?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then I don’t see the need to discuss money.”

  “You don’t have a hell of a lot do you? You’re technically rich but it’s mostly in property and businesses, right?”

  Henry Windsor reached in a desk drawer for a box of cigars and offered one to Ball, who accepted. Thick, eight inches, smelled divine. He hadn’t smoked a cigar in years.

  They lit up, puffing exuberantly.

  “My money,” Windsor said. “I still have substantial liquid assets from the sale of land to a developer. I made the sale a year or so before Tanya’s parents tragically passed on. Tanya’s money was a luxury when it came, one she insisted on bandying about. Enough for her to live the life of a royal if she chose—yachts, mansions, a small island if she desired. She lavished gifts on those close to her, even myself whom she saw as a … disciplinarian compared to her own father. But she knew I didn’t have to take her in, and she knew I knew nothing about the money she was to inherit.”

  “This was from her family’s business assets?”

  “And an enormous insurance pay-out after the crash.”

  Ball racked his brain for where to go next. He held the cigar aloft, pretending to examine it, appreciate it, while he searched for another angle. “And James was heir to her fortune.”

  “She was good for him. After his mother died, James went off the rails a bit. No doubt you know about the problems with the RSPCA.”

  “Problems, yeah.”

  Windsor stood and ambled over to the mantelpiece. He carefully took down a photograph and passed it to Ball. The frame was A4 sized and heavy enough to be silver. A boy of around six, a girl of eight, and two women, both about forty. All four hugged in front of a sunny landscape, hills like the ones surrounding the estate in the background. One woman was blonde and slim, while the other had dark hair, with a bigger frame, and pretty face.

  “That’s Jimmy there,” Henry said. “Before he got in with a bad crowd. We had to send him to a … comprehensive school.” He shuddered. “We were waiting for the sale of our section of Roundhay Park to go through. After that, I was able to put him in a proper school.”

  Ball examined the photo again. “Who are the others?”

  “My wife Paula is the one with Jimmy. The others are Tanya and her mother.”

  “How did James’s mother die?” Ball asked.

  “An accident. On a shoot. I used to keep pheasants wild on the estate. A gun went off and my wife was stood in its path.”

  Ball had a thought. “It wasn’t Jimmy’s gun was it?”

  Windsor puckered up an indignant face. “No! It was not. Someone left theirs unattended and it fell over. It went off.
At least fifteen witnesses—”

  “But was Jimmy there?”

  Windsor sighed, the anger leaving his face. “Sadly, yes. He didn’t see the gun fire, but he watched his mother die.”

  Ball returned the photograph to the mantelpiece. The sadness in Windsor sounded genuine. Then he twigged what it was that bothered him about the picture. “They were both beautiful women. Your wife, your sister-in-law.”

  “Indeed they were. Yes.”

  “What was Tanya’s mother called?”

  Henry sighed. “Rachel. Her name was Rachel.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  No stars, no moon. The road was a blanket of white, headlights cutting bright columns through the dark. Theirs were the first tracks and it was hard going. Alicia found controlling the van difficult. She was as close to the wheel as she could get but it was still a tippy-toe operation.

  “Wellington claimed he didn’t know at first,” Richard said. “But later, he sort of guessed it. After the first week, he was sleeping with the Carmichael girl—called something else then, I can’t remember.”

  “Collins. She was Hillary Collins then.”

  “She was looking for a sugar daddy, someone fairly well-off who’d be dead by the time she was middle-aged. At least that’s what he told me.”

  “Stick to the task at hand.”

  “This is the task at hand. When the police put pressure on James Windsor over Tanya’s disappearance, Henry had to protect his son. The family name was at risk, after all. Even when Henry tried blackmailing Wellington, a respectable police officer shagging a witness—”

  “Keep on topic.” She couldn’t bear to hear Richard talk about S.E.X.

  “Henry ordered Wellington to leave his son alone. Said he knew things looked kind-of bad, but insisted Wellington was doing nothing wrong. As far as Henry was concerned, James was innocent. Keep away, and Wellington’s superiors wouldn’t hear about his … indiscretion. He also sweetened the deal with a pile of cash.”

  “Let me guess. Wellington didn’t want it but Hillary persuaded him.”

  “On the actual money, Al—um, Detective. But Wellington never suspected murder. He figured they bought her off after some assault, hid her away in the tropics or something.”

  “So he knew pretty much from the beginning about Paavan, about running away to uni. All that. But why did they both want her to stay at home so badly?”

  “It all came out when Wellington couldn’t look the other way anymore. He was under pressure from above, and he no longer cared about the money, and he’d take his chances over Hillary. He wanted the disappearance solved. He insisted they tell him what happened.”

  “Are you stalling?” Alicia said. “Out with it!”

  “James broke down, said how much he loved Tanya, how he couldn’t see her leave with some dirty foreigner, and ruin her life. Henry agreed, suggested she was mentally ill.”

  Alicia thought it through. Nothing she hadn’t figured out. But she had no proof. “So how did they stop Wellington from blowing the whole thing?”

  “They told him Tanya was already dead.”

  They were approaching the estate. About five minutes away on a normal day. Probably ten tonight.

  “Henry was very persuasive. He said it was an accident. That Tanya fell down some stairs whilst trying to escape their intervention. His word, apparently. They were holding her in the old air raid shelter, and when James tried to stop her … tragedy struck.”

  “Doesn’t explain it. One: the air raid shelter was converted to a garage years before Tanya disappeared. And two: he’s a police officer. Before he learned about the kidnapping he was prepared to lose his job and everything. When he heard it was murder, that should have motivated him even more.”

  Richard looked sternly at her. “Hillary.”

  “Of course. They threatened her. Like you did.”

  “Two months after meeting her, and he was ready to settle down with a girl half his age.”

  “Wellington was fifty-nine, she was twenty-one. Nearer a third.”

  Richard smiled. “At least I’m less than twenty years older than you.”

  Alicia shot him a look that needed no words.

  Richard said, “Left his wife of thirty years for Hillary, so he didn’t want to lose that, his pension, and his reputation.”

  “So he called the case an unsolved, got it signed off by his boss, and took early retirement. And, what, someone better came along for Hillary?”

  “Her parents are self-made millionaires and didn’t believe in hand-outs. Unfortunately, Hillary grew up surrounded by society kids, so when Julian Carmichael expressed his disappointment that Hillary was spoken for, she broke up with merely well-off Mr. Wellington and took up with stinking-rich Mr. Carmichael.”

  “Nice girl. Okay, what else?”

  “That’s about it. As far as Wellington knew, Tanya was dead, his hands were tied, and that was the end of it. He doesn’t know about the current girls. I assume they’re in the same place.”

  “A place that doesn’t exist.”

  “And isn’t patrolled by dogs.”

  Alicia let the information run through her mini-computer. An army nut, fantasies of imprisonment, hence the animal traps. Compelled to watch them fight. Even attaches razors to some of them.

  “James Windsor,” Alicia said. “How much did Welly say?”

  “He loved to play army, got really into weapons and combat. Once, he showed Wellington a picture, from Iraq or Kuwait or somewhere. Two American soldiers, captured, fighting one another in a cage, with enemy guns trained on them.”

  And with that simple image, Alicia knew everything. What James was doing to the girls, why Henry remained adamant he was out of the country. Yet she still didn’t know where to look. She’d been in the old shelter. There was nothing down there but nice old cars.

  “James is pairing the girls off,” Alicia said, working the data, spitting it out to help clarify. “He’s acting out fantasies he’s had since childhood, and the prospect of losing Tanya to Paavan was too much.” She wondered how much pain the lad felt as his favoured competitor was killed by Katie. She wondered how Katie had summoned such courage, and how on Earth she would ever recover. “You trained Katie to fight, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. Why do you think I’m doing all this?”

  “To keep her safe, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That age-old refrain of men with control issues.”

  “I’m protecting my daughter.” It sounded almost like a growl, his teeth bared, and Alicia instinctively pressed herself against the door. He must have sensed the slip in his mask, as he took some deep breaths before resuming his act of normalcy. “All parents protect their young. It’s our duty.”

  “To keep her under your control.”

  “I prepared her for the real world. You know how many young girls get raped? You know how many get beaten up by real monsters?”

  Dissociating himself from other killers. Thinks he’s special. Bloody typical.

  “Of all the killers in the world, I get stuck with a textbook case of psychotic megalomania.”

  “She has never been hurt, never been assaulted, never got into a situation she couldn’t control. She doesn’t go home high with strange guys or flash her knickers at horny drunks—”

  “Now you’re into victim-blaming too?”

  “No. Not blame. Control. Giving her control. Over her own life. And it worked. She was never in trouble at school, never dumb enough to get herself pregnant—”

  “If she had got pregnant you’d have forced her into an abortion, I suppose?”

  They crested the hill and the Windsor estate unfolded before them like a fairy-tale landscape.

  “I would have strongly urged her to, yes. It would be the responsible thing to do.”

  “Because having a baby so young would ruin her life.”

  “Yes.”

  “All my study, and I still don’t understand a society that
demonises teen mums, those under eighteen especially. We terrify them into believing the nonsense that you can’t have a life and a child, that your life automatically ends with childbirth. If teen mums received support instead of judgment and parental disappointment, sympathy instead of being harangued in the newspapers, perhaps those that Murphy bangs on about wouldn’t live the lives they did; perhaps they’d know there was more to life, and society would be a better place.”

  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

  “Alicia, what are you talking ab—”

  “He’s testing them,” she said, back on topic. “Making them fight to the death. It’s the ultimate control. Getting them to do your bidding like that. If Tanya was as perfect as James thought, she’d win every time.”

  Richard’s left hand remained in view, on his lap.

  “How many people did you kill to get this far?” Alicia asked. “To protect Katie.”

  He thought for a moment. “After the prostitute? Just the one, actually.”

  “Doyle.”

  Richard nodded.

  The van entered the little Windsors’ long driveway. She switched the lights off and pulled over to the side and turned off the engine. Nothing lay ahead except a dark gauntlet of trees.

  Alicia said, “But you didn’t get much further. You didn’t get to Paavan.”

  “You got there first.”

  “And when you asked me about the case, all that was so you could get to her first? Deal with him yourself.”

  “You didn’t ask about the others. The ones from before.”

  “I don’t want to know.” She opened the door and placed a foot on the step.

  “I take it I’m not coming with you,” Richard said.

  “You take it right.”

  “That gun. Once you release the safety it’s ready to fire. Point, and squeeze the trigger. Don’t pull. Ease your finger tighter. It’s not a professional weapon, so there’ll be a strong recoil. Aim for the chest. The head’s a more lethal shot, but the chest’s the biggest target.” He used his free hand to make a gun, pressed his thumb like a hammer. “Then when he’s down you can shoot him in the head.”