Page 51 of Her Deadly Promise

‘My client has insisted that I use his exact words.’ The man puffed out a breath before picking up the piece of paper to read. ‘I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused. I didn’t want to scare my son, but I knew how everything looked. I wanted to explain to him that I didn’t hurt his mother. She was a good mother and I regret not being there for my son. I admit I hurt Mr Reeves earlier, but it wasn’t my intention. He went to close the door on me and as I pushed it back open the edge of the door caught his face and he fell backwards into the hall. I did not intend to injure or harm him in any way, it was merely an accident. It happened so fast, he may have thought that I hit him, but I didn’t. I’d like to send him a full apology.’ Brock leaned in and whispered to his solicitor again. The man turned over the sheet of paper.

‘Is there more?’ Gina asked.

The solicitor nodded. ‘Just continuing with the statement.’ He paused. ‘My intention was not to deceive you when I didn’t tell you that I already knew about Billie’s murder.’ The solicitor took a sip of water. ‘I felt that because I’d been trying to contact her about seeing Kayden and things were becoming heated, I’d get the blame. The blood on the toy in my mother’s car is my own blood and now that you have taken a swab, you’ll be able to check. I suffer with nosebleeds. I admit going to the pub and seeing Billie’s neighbour. Yes, I tried to ask her about Kayden, what he was like now and how he was doing at school. That’s when she told me about what had happened to Billie. I think at that point, she too saw me as a potential suspect and things got heated. I followed her to the car park, and I shouldn’t have but I didn’t mean to make her uneasy her. She drove off and that’s the last I saw of her. I did not murder Billie. I was nowhere near Billie’s house that day. I spent some time on my own, trying to get my head around everything. I bought myself a new top from the charity shop on Cleevesford High Street, then I went to the gym to see if I could join. They will provide me with an alibi. I do not have anything else to say except I want to make it up to my son. I’ve been a bad father, but I want the opportunity to show that I’ve changed.’

Jacob made a note to follow up at the gym and the charity shop. Gina bit her bottom lip. If his alibis came through that would take Brock off their suspect list and with it looking more unlikely that it was Edward Anderson, they were once again in a corner. She leaned back.

‘Can I speak to my mother?’ Brock looked up. ‘She’ll be worried and none of this is her fault.’

Given that he’d lied, and he had injured Mr Reeves and taken Kayden, the man was asking for too much. ‘You will be taken back to the cell while we process your charges.’

‘Wait, I told you the truth. I haven’t done anything. All I wanted was to see my son. I’m guilty of being a father. I need to tell my mother where I am. She’ll be worried about getting her car back. She has a bad heart.’

Gina shook her head. The man in front of her had left it too many years and he’d gone about everything in the wrong way. But her heart and sympathy went out to his poor mother. She couldn’t leave the woman in the dark. ‘I’ll let your mother know where you are.’

Jacob finished speaking into the tape, ending with the time. ‘Seventeen hundred hours.’

Someone tapped at the door and O’Connor peered through the glass. ‘Excuse me.’ Gina stood and opened it, before following him from earshot of the door. ‘Please tell me you have the blood results back?’ She didn’t trust anything Brock said. The man was a habitual liar and only irrefutable evidence would help at this stage.

‘No, sorry, guv, but there has been a development.’

‘Okay. What do we have?’

‘It looks like there has been a struggle at Nadia Anderson’s house. There’s blood in the garage and in red pen, on the wall, someone has written the word “Bitch”.’

A fluttering sensation stopped in her throat. ‘Is she dead?’

He shook his head and patted his shiny head with a handkerchief. ‘No, she’s missing and there’s not that much blood. Bernard’s team is already on the way to the scene.’

‘Will you deal with Brock and let his mother know where he is and that he’s okay? The woman is in bad health and seemed lovely, so please treat her delicately.’

‘As always it’s the families that suffer.’

Gina darted back to the interview room and caught Jacob’s attention. ‘We have to go, now.’ She knew full well that Brock had been otherwise disposed all afternoon and the writing on the wall suggested that the person who had murdered Billie had now taken Nadia. One thing was for certain, she knew where Brock had been for the last few hours so the timeline would be crucial to the investigation. She had to find the woman before it was too late.

THIRTY-SEVEN

As Gina pulled up behind Jacob, she turned off the engine and stepped out of the air-conditioned car into the wall of evening heat. The tarmac on the road shimmered, adding to the misery. Magpies cawed in the trees at the side of the house and a blackbird hopped on the front lawn. The red-haired woman was trying to placate her bored daughter at the roadside, choosing not to bake in her car. Her oversized sunglasses masked any expression she might be harbouring, but Gina heard her sniff before she wiped her nose delicately with a tissue.

PC Smith clumsily hurried over and checked her in on the crime scene log. ‘Where are we with it all?’ Gina asked, holding her hands above her eyes to shield them from the sun before it disappeared over the rooftop.

‘We’ve just got the cordons in place. That should keep any passers-by away from the scene. The husband, Edward Anderson, has just arrived back, and he showed Bernard into the garage. Mrs Anderson’s friend, Candice Brent, said that Nadia hadn’t been there to pick up her son from school, so she brought him home. That’s when she found the scene in the garage. She’s already given elimination prints as she did enter the scene. I asked what she touched but she was in shock and couldn’t really remember. Her husband is on his way to collect their daughter just in case she needs to go to the station. Bernard has said that anyone entering must suit and boot cover up. Mr Anderson has tried to call his wife repeatedly, but her phone keeps going straight to voicemail.’ Smith used his hat to fan himself as he blew out a puff of breath. ‘This heat is a killer.’

‘Who’s knocking on doors around here?’

‘Kapoor has already started, and she’s enlisted a small team to help.’ Gina glanced down the road and watched the young officer’s ponytail swish as she turned into another house. ‘The main problem being, most people were out at work and, as you can see, it seems like a quiet road. There are no people about or children playing. So far, she hasn’t managed to find anyone who saw a thing. It’s like a ghost came in and took Mrs Anderson. We live in hope that someone might have CCTV. But the cameras we have found only point towards where cars would be parked on drives.’

Gina sighed. ‘The houses are so spaced out as well.’ Each one had a long drive, most of them separated by hedges that appeared to reach the clouds. The beginnings of a pink sky began to form above, reminding them all that night was slowly approaching. The sun was finally vanishing for the day. In one sense, Gina was grateful that it was summer. Daylight would last longer, and they could continue searching the property and the garden with ease. There would be no need to set up portable lights for a while. ‘Have we found the entry point?’

‘The utility door was unlocked, and the side gate was too. Unless the perp left them unlocked when they left, there are no other clues. There’s no damage to any windows or doors.’

‘Do the Andersons have CCTV?’

‘They do but it’s not connected. Mr Anderson said he had a few problems with it and was meant to call someone to fix it, but he hadn’t got around to it.’

Gina glanced through the snug window and watched Edward Anderson pressing his phone to his ear. Had he intentionally not got the CCTV fixed? Given that he was having what seemed like an intense relationship with Meera, was that motive enough to want to get his wife off the scene? The words on the wall had linked Billie’s murder with Nadia’s disappearance. The same red writing in capital letters, both misogynistic in nature. Due to the blood at the scene and the fact that Mrs Anderson was missing, they had all they needed to search the property. The man still hadn’t given them his other phone to look at and they couldn’t verify that he was at Jimbo’s Hot Tubs in person on the day of Billie’s murder. His history of approaching a sex worker in the past kept him in the suspect limelight. He glanced out of the window and sharply turned his back to Gina. She hurried to the front door that was ajar. ‘Mr Anderson.’

He ambled to the door. ‘Sorry, I was just calling my mother to check on my son. As you can appreciate, he is wondering why he couldn’t go in his house and why his mother wasn’t home.’

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