The lawn that stretched before her was short and tidy, with two-tone stripes. Fruit trees softened the six-foot fence that embraced the property.
Kim found Mitchell Brightman sitting on a stone seat beside an elaborate fish pond. It was edged with expensive slate positioned perfectly to cover the black pond liner. A water feature at each end dribbled into the pool to provide oxygen bubbles.
The colourful fish swam languidly around the crystal clear water.
She was three feet away from him and he had not heard her approaching.
‘Mr Brightman?’
He raised his head and offered a watered-down smile. Someday, she would like to see that smile on full wattage.
‘This was Deanna’s favourite place in the garden,’ he said.
Kim took a seat beside him. She could understand why. The view was at the top but privacy was further down. From this seat Deanna would have been able to see the beauty of the house or gaze at the weeping willow trees and foxgloves.
Maybe the two of them had sat on this seat at sunset, sharing a bottle of wine and the events of their day. She liked to think so.
She regretted that she had to disturb his reverie and force him back to the horror of the present.
‘Mr Brightman, I need to ask you something about your phone records.’
Was it just her imagination or had his back stiffened slightly? It occurred to her that he knew this question was coming.
‘Your niece, Rebecca, called you at around nine o’clock on the night Deanna was murdered.’
He nodded but didn’t look at her.
‘She’s my niece; that’s not unusual, is it?’
Kim tried to think of a tactful way to phrase her next statement. ‘Not at all but there were no other calls between the two of you and you don’t seem all that close, if you don’t mind me saying.’
The suspicion in her stomach was growing by the second.
‘Oh, she’s a typical teenager. Calls when she wants something,’ he said, vaguely.
‘But she hadn’t called you any time before?’ she pushed, gently.
He rubbed at his forehead.
‘May I ask what she was calling for on Sunday night, Mr Brightman?’
He appeared to consider for a minute.
‘She wanted me to collect her from a concert or something. Her mother was out with friends and the designated driver hadn’t turned up.’
A bit too much detail. The first sentence was enough. The elaboration did not add the validity to his statement that he thought it did.
‘And did you?’ she asked.
‘Did I what?’
‘Collect her from the concert?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I’d already had a couple of drinks and never drink and drive.’
There were many things that Kim detested but being treated like a fool was a personal hate. Especially when she was trying to find the person who had murdered his wife.
She stood. ‘Would you mind coming inside for just a minute? There’s something I need to ask you all together.’
Kim made sure she strode towards the house in front of Mr Brightman. He entered the lounge, and Bryant offered her a subtle signal with his hand as he turned towards her.
She noted for once Rebecca was not on her phone. Her lower teeth were scraping over her top lip every few seconds.
‘Really sorry about this,’ Kim said, looking from Mr Brightman to his niece. ‘But there seems to be some disparity over the content of the conversation between the two of you on the night Deanna died.’
Sylvie’s eyes widened. Clearly, she hadn’t known about any conversation.
‘It was about the concert,’ Mitchell Brightman repeated, staring at Rebecca, urging her to agree. Rebecca had the good sense to realise she had already given a different story. She chose not to compound that error further.
She looked to her mother for guidance, but she could offer nothing. She hadn’t known they’d spoken and they’d managed to fill nine and a half minutes on the phone, and yet she was still waiting to see them exchange one single word.
‘Folks, we can’t help you if you won’t tell us the truth.’
Mitchell Brightman sat down but said nothing.
Rebecca’s eyes were on him, curious, hopeful, pained.
He stared at the carpet and shook his head.
Sylvie stepped forward. ‘He’s her father,’ she said quietly.
There was little emotion. Just a statement of fact.
Rebecca’s eyes had not left her father’s head. She was waiting… for something.
‘It was only once,’ Mitchell Brightman said.
Rebecca’s crestfallen expression said that was not what she’d been waiting to hear.
She rose and fled from the room.
Sylvie looked stricken and ran after her.
Bryant coughed, and Mitchell Brightman raised his head. There was no malice in his face just sadness piled upon sadness.
‘I’m sorry for not telling you the truth,’ he said, flatly. ‘I have denied her for so long it is a natural reaction.’
And she has been forced to deny you too, Kim thought, as it was the girl’s natural instinct to lie as well.
‘I’m assuming Deanna didn’t know.’
‘God, no. It would have destroyed her. You know she couldn’t… ’
Kim nodded and his words trailed away.
He stood and walked over to the window.
‘It’s such a cliché that Deanna and I were not getting along and Sylvie was there. I’m sorry for how that sounds but it’s the truth.’
It seemed that now he’d found the truth he couldn’t stop telling it.
‘I hated what I’d done the second it was over, and I hated Sylvie too. Bad enough I betrayed my wife but she’d betrayed her sister. I felt that one act had deprived Deanna of the two people she loved and trusted the most.
‘When Sylvie told me she was pregnant I begged her to have a termination, but she refused. Although, she did agree to keep the identity of Rebecca’s father a secret.
‘I can’t help that every time I look at her I am reminded of what an absolute bastard I was to do that to the woman I loved… love.’
Kim had to respect his honesty but her sympathy was reserved for the girl that had run from the room.
‘And the phone call?’ Kim asked.
‘Both Sylvie and Rebecca had been asking me to admit the truth to Deanna and I had flatly refused.’ He moved from the window back to the sofa and stood behind it. ‘Rebecca threatened to tell Deanna if I didn’t do it.’
‘The conversation was heated?’
He nodded. ‘Very. It only ended when I cut her off. I made it clear that I would never tell my wife the truth and that if she wanted to break her aunt’s heart I couldn’t stop her.’
‘Did Rebecca threaten your wife at all?’
He thought for a second. ‘No. She said some rather unkind things but no direct threat, no.’
It was a possibility she’d had to explore.
Kim felt there was nothing more here to gain at the moment, yet there was something she was compelled to say.
‘Mr Brightman, I appreciate you being so candid in your feelings towards Rebecca but you should bear one thing in mind. None of this is her fault.’
He looked at her for a long minute and then nodded.
Kim headed out of the lounge and met Anna in the hallway.
‘Where’s… ?’
‘Sitting on the patio,’ Anna said, without breaking her stride.
Kim felt like a weathervane in inclement conditions: inside, outside, inside.
She found Rebecca sitting on a patio chair, her feet up on another. It was clear from the smudged eye make-up that she’d been crying.
‘Where’s your mum?’ Kim asked.
‘Making tea. It’ll help, apparently.’
She looked beyond the garden.
‘I just want to go home.’
Kim sat beside her and stared in the sa
me direction.
‘Did you make any kind of threat towards Deanna on the phone that night?’ Kim asked, just because she had to.
‘No,’ Rebecca said.
‘But you threatened to tell her about Mitchell being your father?’
She sighed. ‘Yeah, I said it but I never would have done it. The point was that I wanted him to do it. And if he had said yes I would probably have told him not to. I didn’t want to hurt my aunt. She was a great woman. I loved her a lot. I just wanted… ’ She looked to the ground. ‘Oh, I don’t know what I wanted,’ she said, weakly.
Kim understood. ‘You just wanted your father to acknowledge you, even if it was only between you both.’
She nodded and looked behind her to make sure they were still alone.
‘My mum told me when I was twelve, and I really wish she hadn’t. I was happy enough not knowing. The knowledge only brought pain. Before I knew the truth I wasn’t hiding anything from anybody. I was just me. I wasn’t someone’s affair or a reminder of their deceit; I didn’t know I was my mother’s mascot of a man that would never love her back.
‘That’s what I got when she told me. I became the dirty little family secret, part of the cover up, and I just wanted to be a kid. All three of us were lying to my aunt, and although I wouldn’t have hurt her for the world, some days I hoped and prayed it would get out there just to end the lies.’
Kim felt the girl’s pain. Both Sylvie and Mitchell had turned their few moments of lust and passion into a bag load of shit for a twelve-year-old girl.
‘As I just said in there, none of this is your fault. Just give it a little time, eh?’
Rebecca smiled tremulously, and Kim felt that despite her demeanour the tears were never far away.
Kim would have liked to say more but Sylvie and the tea appeared at the same time her phone began to ring. She bid them goodbye and started walking towards the front of the house before she answered the call.
‘Stace?’
‘Guv, yer might wanna goo see Jason Cross again, quick smart,’ Stacey said excitedly. ‘We already have his DNA. He was arrested eleven years ago and convicted: statutory rape.’
Kim stopped walking. ‘Go on.’
‘He was eighteen and the girl was fifteen. He said she lied about her age, and she said they were in a relationship. Parents said they dow care which it is: our daughter is a minor and he should have known better.’
Kim had started walking again. Her feet appeared to be directly linked to the speed of thoughts running around her head.
‘Thanks, Stace, we’re on our way,’ Kim said, ending the call as Bryant appeared beside her.
She held out her hand for the keys.
‘Time to say your prayers, Bryant. Because it’s my turn to drive.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Kim tried to quell her anger as she tore through two amber lights.
‘Is the word idiot written on my head, Bryant?’ she seethed. ‘Why do people think they can blatantly lie to us and get away with it? Why can’t they just get it all out there? Why not just let us decide what’s relevant to the case?’
Bryant said nothing.
‘Did he not think we would investigate, you know, like do our actual job?’ she asked.
Bryant remained silent.
‘Well?’ she prompted. She wanted company in her anger.
‘Sorry, guv. I thought all five of those questions were rhetorical.’
She sighed loudly. Sometimes his easy-going nature infuriated her. Some days she wanted him to explode.
‘Okay. Just answer this one. How did he not think we were going to find out? How stupid… ?’
‘Ahem, you’re at it again,’ he interrupted. ‘But, to answer your first question, he may not have felt that something he did years ago had any bearing on events today. And to be fair—’
‘It was rape,’ she cried.
‘Statutory rape,’ he clarified.
‘Bloody hell, Bryant. It’s not called statutory sex with a person under the legal age who may or may not have consented and possibly looked older than her age. It’s a conviction of statutory rape.’
‘But we know the sex with Deanna was consensual.’
Kim shrugged. ‘We have his description of the events that day, not hers.’
‘She never reported any kind of assault,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah,’ she offered, sarcastically. ‘We all know that every sexual assault gets reported, don’t we?’
‘Umm… guv, you do know I’m not the enemy here?’
‘Well stop acting like it then,’ she snapped, even though it wasn’t him she was angry with.
Those people were not involved in this case at all. Only they weren’t here with her now. Both her mother and Alex were managing to reach her from behind bars.
Kim stayed silent and focussed on not killing people before she got to speak to the man himself.
She pulled into an empty driveway. The house was clearly empty.
‘Damn it,’ she raged, smacking both palms against the steering wheel. ‘How the hell are we going to find… ?’
‘Calm down,’ Bryant instructed. ‘Ring his office and ask where he is.’
‘They’re as bloody helpful as—’
‘Just try,’ he insisted.
Kim growled and took out her phone. She scrolled to the number called earlier in the week. It was answered on the second ring.
Kim rolled her eyes as she waited for the greeting to end.
‘I need to know the whereabouts of Jason Cross,’ Kim said, sharply.
Bryant frowned, groaned and took the phone from her hand.
She narrowed her eyes as he apologised on her behalf and asked politely if the woman could assist them in locating her boss. Her obvious hesitation was met with a plea of how urgent it was that they speak to him.
He ended the call.
‘He sometimes eats his lunch at the reservoir,’ Bryant said, handing her the phone.
‘Information I could have found out if you’d let me finish my conversation,’ she said, turning the car in the spacious drive.
Kim used the drive through Amblecote and past the Merry Hill shopping centre to calm down.
Damn those two women in her head who were making her short-tempered with everyone. However much she tried to focus on the case a portion of her mind kept wandering back to them.
‘Thanks,’ she said, quietly, as she took the turn into Netherton Reservoir.
‘For what?’ Bryant asked, surprised.
‘For knowing when to keep quiet,’ she said. ‘And for taking the phone away from me,’ Kim said as she drove slowly past the changing pavilion.
The place was deserted. She knew that the reservoir hosted water skiing, yachting and scuba diving at times, but there was no activity on the lake today.
‘Guv… ?’ Bryant said as two things became obvious very quickly.
There was no sign of a white van and a gangly male was running towards them while holding a phone to his ear. His bull terrier trailed behind.
They jumped out of the car at the same time.
‘Over there,’ the man screamed, breathlessly, pointing towards the water. He lowered the phone from his ear and pointed again. ‘He’s in there. One minute he was—’
‘Who?’ Bryant asked, although Kim didn’t need the clarification.
She stared hard at the ramp that led into the water. The water was moving in circles but there was nothing there.
‘A guy in a white van. One minute he was sitting there and the next—’
‘How long?’ Kim asked, heading towards the ramp.
‘A minute, two… I’m not—’
‘Call an ambulance,’ she instructed as she met the gaze of Bryant.
‘Damn,’ he said, as they sprinted towards the water. Their jackets landed somewhere on the ground behind them.
The reservoir had a surface area of sixty-thousand square metres and hit a depth of fifteen metres in places.
The water exploded around them as they hit it together.
Kim blinked five times rapidly to adjust her eyes to the murky green water that had been disturbed and was swirling around them.
Kim knew he wouldn’t be too far from the end of the ramp. A car could sink rapidly: anywhere from thirty seconds to two minutes.
Two strokes in and her right hand met with metal. She knew she had reached the back door, and a feeling of dread formed in the pit of her stomach.
She swam around to the front of the vehicle and drew level with the glass.
Jason Cross peered out at her with surprise. The water was up to his neck in the front of the van. She looked for the door handle and so did he.
He pressed down the old-fashioned push lock. She felt the mechanism engage beneath her fingers.
She looked through the glass to see Jason Cross shake his head at her.
Damn it, he was not going to make this easy for them.
She was fighting the instinct to gulp at the water.
She pushed herself up to the surface and coughed the water from her lungs.
Stars were exploding in her eyes, but she saw Bryant’s head pop up ten feet to her left.
She knew they were running out of time. Jason Cross was now completely submerged.
By her reckoning she had no more than a couple of minutes to bring him to the surface before there was no point.
But the bastard had locked himself into the van. He was sealed inside his own vehicle, and even if he was capable he would do nothing to help her. If only he hadn’t locked the bloody doors.
A thought hit her so quickly she had no time to share it with her colleague.
‘Bryant, follow me,’ she cried out, then took a deep breath and dived back down. She must have floated around the vehicle. As her hands worked to separate the water she hit the bonnet of the van.
As she’d suspected, the van was now filled with water and the eyes of Jason Cross were closed. His hair was floating around his face as the water continued to move inside the space.
Damn it. Even if her plan worked she could now be rescuing a corpse.
She swam to the back of the van and tried the door handle, praying it was not locked. Tradesmen in and out of their vans all day didn’t always lock the door after themselves.