He sighed and put it away again.
Rebecca frowned. ‘I don’t know about that. Chloe loves writing stories, though. She got an A* in her last English test. I think she may have put some up online, yes, although I don’t know which website.’ She stood up, pressed the phone’s keyboard, and paced around the room listening, her slippers gently flip-flopping. ‘Still nothing. I’m getting worried. Should I be worried? I can’t believe I haven’t been more worried before, I mean, obviously, two young girls murdered around here and Chloe was friends with one and knew of the other one, I should never have let her go out on her own – but she’s not on her own, she’s with her friends – but is she? Maybe she isn’t! Oh my God, I need to ring my husband, get him to go and find her in Kingston. It’s not safe . . .’
The woman was becoming more and more distressed, so Patrick stood up too. ‘Mrs Hedges, please. We have just arrested someone for the murders of both Rose and Jessica, so it’s highly unlikely that Chloe is in any danger.’
Mrs Hedges sank back into an armchair. ‘Oh thank heavens. I’m so sorry, Detective. You must think I’m a terrible parent, letting her go out when I didn’t know you’d arrested someone. Who is it?’
At that exact moment, Patrick’s eye fell on a framed photograph that he hadn’t spotted before, tucked away in the corner of a built-in bookcase. It was of a girl, Chloe, he assumed, lying in a hospital bed hooked up to drips and monitors, deathly pale but with the biggest beam on her face. Flanking her, one on each side of the bed, were two men, each holding one of her hands. One was Shawn Barrett and the other one Mervyn Hammond.
He made an involuntary noise in his throat. Walking over to pick it up, he answered her question with another. ‘When was this taken?’
Mrs Hedges smiled fondly. ‘Last April, when she was undergoing her final chemo session. They were amazing, those two – and the other guys from the record company who made it happen for her. I honestly think that it got her through it, that visit.’ She turned serious again and repeated her question. ‘Who is it that you’ve arrested?’
Patrick knew that he shouldn’t tell her. But – in the light of the photo he was holding, and the fact that it would be all over the papers in the morning – he had to let her know.
‘Well. I’m sorry to tell you, and I shouldn’t really – but you’ll hear it on the news soon anyway – it’s actually him.’ He pointed at the photograph. ‘Mervyn Hammond.’
Rebecca’s face drained of every last bit of colour and she flopped against the back of the chair. ‘That’s impossible!’
Patrick sat back down again too, still holding the photo. ‘We’re questioning him about both murders, and another one, of an older lady.’
Her reaction surprised and worried him. She looked as though she had just been informed that her son, Brandon, was the serial killer.
She shook her head. ‘No. There’s no way!’
‘What makes you say that, Mrs Hedges?’
‘That man,’ she said, pointing a shaky finger at the photograph on Pat’s lap, ‘is a saint. A saint, do you hear me? I would trust him with my daughter’s life! Do you have any idea how much charity work he does?’
Patrick resisted the urge to cough out the words Jimmy Savile. He found it difficult to reconcile the image of the smug, nut-munching attitudinal cynic that he’d found Hammond to be with anything approaching ‘a saint’. And yet – first impressions, and all. PR people were notoriously good at projecting only the image they wished to project and, despite Winkler’s convictions, it just didn’t all add up.
Rebecca continued to sing Mervyn Hammond’s praises for several minutes more. She seemed torn between relief that she didn’t need to worry about Chloe being temporarily incommunicado anymore and genuine distress at the news about Hammond. Patrick cut her off as politely as he could, standing up and asking her to ring him the moment that she got in touch with Chloe. He dressed it up in a request to ask Chloe about StoryPad – but he still couldn’t shift a sense of unease that she was currently AWOL, arrest or no arrest.
Carmella rang him in the car as he was driving away.
‘Chloe Hedges wasn’t in,’ he said. ‘Her mum seemed devastated at the news that Hammond’s been arrested.’ He briefly told her about Mervyn’s secret charity work. ‘She said – and I quote – “That man’s a saint.”’
He heard Carmella snort down the phone. ‘Jade wasn’t home either. Nobody was in – a neighbour told me Jade’s mum was away visiting her sister. The neighbour, a Mrs Sherry Downs, saw Jade being dropped home at 3 a.m. the night before. We don’t know what time she went out again.’
‘I don’t like this,’ Patrick said, increasing his speed so he was just above the limit. ‘Mrs Hedges says Chloe’s gone shopping, but she’s not answering her phone either.’
‘Probably doesn’t want to be bothered by her mum.’
‘Maybe. But I’m going to phone the Bentall Centre in Kingston, ask them to put out an announcement over the tannoy, ask her to call home.’
‘I hope you don’t do that to Bonnie when she’s a teenager,’ Carmella said.
‘Huh. After this case, when Bonnie’s a teenager I’m never going to let her out of my sight. Did Mrs Downs say anything else about Jade?’
‘I was about to get to that. She said she was woken up, like I said, at about three by the sound of a car door slamming outside and loads of shrieking and laughing, so she looked out of the window and saw Jade coming through the front gate. She said she banged on the window to give Jade a hard time about waking up the whole street, and Jade was all excited. She called up to her to say she’d been to a party working as a waitress, that all of OnTarget were there, and Mervyn Hammond’s bodyguard had given her a lift home. Mrs Downs had assumed she was drunk, until Jade said she’d been working. Mrs Downs thought that was unusual – she’d never known Jade to have a job before. She also said she’d never seen Jade so happy and excited.’
‘Jade was at Hammond’s party.’ That was very interesting.
‘Yep. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘Call Gareth. Let’s find out everything we can about this bodyguard, assuming Gareth hasn’t gone off somewhere in a massive sulk. And I’m going to call Suzanne. I’m getting a bad feeling about Chloe and Jade. A very bad feeling.’
Chapter 51
Day 14 – Chloe
Shawn Barrett’s chauffeur, Pete, pulled off the road and drove down a small path, parking up outside huge iron gates in a tall, old-looking wall. He jumped out and deftly undid the padlock that held the chain together, opened the gates, drove in – then got out and re-locked the padlock.
‘We’ve got this place booked out, but they’re very security conscious,’ he commented as he got back behind the wheel. ‘It’s empty at the moment, but the developers were still really keen that nobody knew Shawn was coming.’
‘Oh,’ Chloe said, wondering why, in that case, there were no security guards to be seen. She wasn’t really sure what a ‘developer’ was either. Pete parked the car at the end of a long driveway, in front of an enormous house, all turrets and fancy stonework. Its front door was up a sweeping flight of stone steps, and Chloe looked longingly through the car window at it – even if it was closed, it was a place that would have a toilet! – as Pete walked round to open the door for her. That was more like a chauffeur should behave, she thought. He was carrying a black backpack that she hadn’t noticed before.
‘Could I nip in and use the loo before I meet Shawn?’ she asked shyly. Nerves were starting to get the better of her and she was desperate for a wee.
He looked at his watch. ‘Hmm. Sorry, love, time’s a bit tight. We need to get on, really. He’s a busy man. He just texted me to say he’s out there already and it’s cold!’