‘What is it?’ Her first thought was Jonathan. A car accident. He drove like a maniac.
Rosie was panting, trying to steady her voice so she could speak.
‘It’s Mel,’ Rosie said. ‘She’s dead. Someone found her body today on one of the footpaths by the cemetery. She was stabbed.’
Hannah’s first thought was, Thank God it’s not Rosie. Then she pictured her daughter frightened and alone in the house.
‘We’re coming,’ she said. ‘Leaving straight away.’
She clicked off the phone and stood up. Porteous was already on his feet, blocking the door. ‘Do you know Melanie Gillespie, Mrs Morton?’
‘Not well. She was my daughter’s best friend.’
‘Why?’ Arthur asked.
Porteous looked down at him as if he were considering whether or not to answer. ‘I’m running the investigation into her murder.’
‘A bit far from your patch, isn’t it?’
Hannah knew what Arthur was up to. Being deliberately provocative in the hope of prising more information from the detective.
Porteous hesitated then chose his words carefully. ‘We have reason to believe that the deaths of Michael Grey and Melanie Gillespie are connected. Go back to your daughter, Mrs Morton. Of course she’s upset. I’ll be in touch shortly when I’ve checked the information you’ve given me.’ He paused. ‘You’ve nothing more to tell me now? About your visit to the cemetery?’
‘No!’ She understood for the first time how Audrey had felt, when she’d crumpled in a heap on the floor.
‘There will be more questions. Of course you understand that.’ He turned and let himself out.
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty-Two
Peter Porteous stood in front of them looking more than ever like a teacher at a second-rate college for further education. He’d set up a flip chart and there was an overhead projector to show slides of the victims and crime scenes.
‘If Carver hadn’t done the Gillespie post-mortem we’d probably never have made the link,’ he said. ‘But the Michael Grey inquiry was still fresh in his mind. He’s convinced the same knife was used in both murders. If not the same, so similar that it’s still significant. Not an ordinary kitchen knife. A dagger. Short bladed but wide. Very sharp.’
He flicked through half a dozen slides – grey flesh, Carver’s hands holding steel instruments, wounds which looked now very tidy and clean – then he paused. It was hot again. He’d taken off his jacket, loosened his tie just a touch.
‘So, let’s look at the victims.’ He turned a page of the flip chart. Stuck to the next page was the old photograph of Michael Grey playing Macbeth. Porteous stretched and wrote in felt-tip at the top: Theo Randle. He had no problem accepting the new name of the boy. He had more important things to worry about. He flipped the page again and scrawled a rudimentary family tree. The felt-tip squealed on rough paper.
‘Maria died when Theo was very young. Crispin remarried and had a second child, Emily. She was killed in a house fire when she was still a baby. Two tragedies. Perhaps that explains the family breakdown and the fostering.’
A young DC at the back stuck up a hand.
‘Yes?’
‘How did we get a positive ID on the boy in the end, sir?’
Porteous thought the man already knew the answer and intended to rub salt into the wounds. He was a cocky little sod. And it did come hard to admit that an enthusiastic amateur had got there before him. But he kept his voice friendly.
‘With the help of a member of the public. A psychologist who works for the Home Office. He had information we didn’t have access to, but I’ll come to that later.
‘Let’s turn now to what we know about Theo Randle. Quite a lot, considering how much time has elapsed. He was bright, well educated, personable. He seems to have come from a wealthy family. Just before he died he had a row with his girlfriend because she caught him making love to someone else. He was a talented actor and was starring in a production of Macbeth in the week before he disappeared. One of his props was a dagger. According to witnesses it was very sharp. I’d like to trace it. The school is doing its best but I don’t hold out much hope… He was lodging with a couple called Sylvia and Stephen Brice. Everyone says they were very fond of him. There was no question of ill treatment or abuse and I think we can rule them out. They’re dead now, but perhaps we can trace friends who knew Theo, knew how he came to be living there. None of this might be relevant, but I want to know.’
He turned to the next page on the chart. This was covered with a montage of photographs of Melanie Gillespie. Before she’d dyed her hair red she’d been blonde. In the centre there was a picture of her, blown up. She was half turned, caught unexpectedly. She had a wide mouth, high cheekbones and she was supermodel thin.
‘Despite the gap in time these two have a lot in common. Not just their age. The Gillespies are wealthy. They’re both prominent business people, often in the news. Theo’s dad was an MP. Melanie was bright and articulate. Her teachers say she could be moody but she was often charming. She wasn’t into art and acting like Theo, but she was a skilled musician. So they had similar backgrounds. Now, let’s look at the differences. Most obvious, of course, is gender…’
The cocky DC raised a hand, languidly, as if it were hardly worth the effort. ‘Is that important?’
Porteous wanted to yelclass="underline" Don’t be fatuous. Everything’s important. Two young people have been killed.
‘We don’t know at this stage. There was no indication of sexual assault on Melanie Gillespie, according to Carver.’
He turned his back on the audience as he regained control, wrote DIFFERENCES on the flip chart, added GENDER, then AGE with a question mark. ‘Theo was a year older than Melanie, though as they were both in their A-level year, that hardly seems important.’
‘Could we be looking for a teacher?’ Claire Wright asked.
‘Possible, isn’t it? I’d be very interested to know if anyone who taught Theo at Cranford Grammar went on to work at Melanie’s school. Can you take responsibility for checking that out?’
She nodded.
‘Then there are the temperaments,’ he went on. ‘Not so easy to pin down, but we seem to have a difference here. Theo is described as organized and conscientious but he doesn’t seem to have been over-stressed by exams. He still felt able to take part in the school play. One witness says he told stories, you couldn’t believe what he said, but she was his girlfriend and he betrayed her. I’m not sure we can rely on her objectivity. There was no record of any emotional problems, nothing more than you’d expect in any adolescent. On the other hand Melanie was moody, given to bouts of anger and depression. For the past two years she’d been seeing a psychiatrist for an eating disorder.’
Porteous looked out at his team. Some were scribbling notes. He thought that soon they’d have no need for that. Soon they’d know these teenagers as well as they knew their own families.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Two victims. The big question is – Are there any more? Would a killer keep a knife for nearly thirty years, resisting the temptation to use it, then murder again, out of the blue? We need to check the old files and make sure this isn’t a part of a wider pattern. Pull up all the post-mortem reports for stabbings when the victim was a teenager. I don’t want the search restricted to the local area – I’m sure we’d have picked that up. But the killer might have been working away.’
He stopped again, abruptly, and seemed lost in thought for a moment. A fan on one of the desks in a corner hummed. Someone coughed uncertainly. His audience didn’t know him well enough to tell whether or not he’d finished the briefing. He let them sit in an awkward silence for a few minutes longer before continuing slowly.