“Exactly. Anyway, I’ve consulted him before when I’ve been doing articles on legal issues or the prison service. Well, I’d talked to Jerome on the phone about the questions you’d put to me…you know, Michael Brewer’s release from prison and his subsequent movements, and last night, over dinner, he told me what he’d found out.”
So animated was Gita as she spelled this out that Carole began to wonder whether there was a romantic element in her friendship with Jerome Clancy. Or maybe it was just the excitement of achieving something concrete after her months of evident depression.
“Michael Brewer was released from Parkhurst Prison in October 2004, having served the full term of his thirty-year sentence for the murder of Janine Buckley. To the end, incidentally, protesting his innocence of the crime.”
Gita Millington left another dramatic pause, and Carole took advantage of it to ask, “But there was never any question of his guilt, was there?”
The journalist shook her head. “No. Brewer’s lawyers made two appeals against the conviction, but both claims were rejected. The amount of evidence against Michael Brewer was overwhelming.”
“All right,” said Jude excitedly. “So where is he now?”
“This is the bizarre bit.” Gita Millington frowned at the incongruity of what she was about to say. “Since his release, Michael Brewer has vanished off the face of the earth.”
“I heard that,” said Carole, “but do you have any detail on what happened to him?”
“From the moment he left Parkhurst, there’s been no sighting of Michael Brewer anywhere.”
“Well,” said Jude reasonably, “after what he’d been through, you could hardly blame him if he just wanted to slip off the radar, settle down somewhere quiet with a new identity or…surely it’s up to him.”
“Yes, it’s up to him, but there are still obligations he has, as an ex-prisoner. He has to keep in touch with the authorities, turn up for appointments with his probation officer. Weekly at first, then at greater intervals.”
“And has he not turned up for any of them?”
“Not a single one, Jude.”
“But surely he can’t just get away with that? Aren’t the police looking for him?”
“Oh yes. There’s been a warrant out for him for some time. But I’m not sure that finding him was that high up the police’s priorities – until recently.”
“So, as you say, he’s vanished off the face of the earth.”
“Yes, he has.”
There was a silence while the two women took in the implications of this news. Then Carole said, “Which could mean one of two things. Either he’s lying low, for reasons of his own – possibly plotting revenge on the people who he believes to have done him wrong…”
“Or?” asked Jude.
“Or he’s lying even lower.”
“How do you mean?”
“In a shallow grave, perhaps? Maybe somebody wanted revenge on Michael Brewer?”
Carole heard it on the early evening news. A man’s body had been found in a burnt-out car on a lonely part of the South Downs near Fedborough.
Twenty-One
“That’s all they said, Jude. I’ve been listening to other bulletins and watching the local news, but there’s been no more detail. Certainly no indication of who the victim might be.”
It was Monday morning, and the two women were sitting over coffee in the kitchen of High Tor.
“Of course, it’s entirely possible,” said Jude thoughtfully, “that this death has absolutely nothing to do with Howard Martin’s.”
“But the modus operandi – ”
“Oh, come on. Villains who want to get rid of other villains have been using that method for years. The same modus operandi doesn’t necessarily mean the same perpetrator. You can’t patent a murder method.” Carole looked so cast down that Jude grinned and said, “But we mustn’t allow boring old logic to get in the way of our conjectures. Let us assume that there is a link between the two deaths.”
“And if that is the case, the victim’s identity does become rather pivotal. But,” Carole continued glumly, “we have no means of finding that out until there’s an announcement from the police.”
“Perhaps we should put Gita on the case? No doubt she’s got a convenient friend in the police force, just as she had a convenient friend who knows about prisons.”
This was said with a little mischief, because, although Gita’s researches had already proved so useful, Jude knew Carole was still unhappy about having got her involved.
“I don’t think that’ll help.” Carole was predictably huffy. “We’ll have to wait till it’s on the news.”
“Well, just running with the logic of our conjecture for a moment – If this latest body is connected with the Martins, who might it be? Who’s missing?”
“Phil…Bazza, I suppose.”
“Or what about the mysterious Michael Brewer?”
“As victim, are you suggesting?”
“Why, Carole? Were you thinking of him more as perpetrator?”
“That had been the way my mind was moving, yes. If he was behind Howard’s murder, then he must have had contact with Phil and Bazza.”
“Assuming that Phil gave Bazza the order to steal the car in which Howard was driven off?”
“Yes. So either Phil or Bazza might know too much about Michael Brewer’s activities – or indeed whereabouts – and might need silencing.”
“Mm. So if one of them does turn out to be the victim, you’d reckon Michael Brewer was responsible for both murders?”
Carole nodded, then gave a little shudder. “I get this feeling that Michael Brewer is not far away. Worthing was his old haunt thirty years ago. I think he could be hiding out round here again. And I feel he represents a real threat.”
“To whom?”
“To Gaby.”
But Gaby didn’t look threatened when she met Carole at the Crown and Anchor later that morning. In fact, she looked better than she had at any time since her father’s death. Because it was a nice morning, she had walked from the Dauncey Hotel, over the road bridge which crossed the Fether. The mile’s stroll in the fresh air had brought colour to her cheeks and restored the sparkle to her eye. Though her protectors had gone – Robert Coleman back to Essex, and Stephen Seddon to his work crisis – she looked relaxed.
She didn’t mention the latest body in a burnt-out car, and Carole reckoned, after some casual probing, that the girl hadn’t yet heard the news. Carole wasn’t about to tell her, either. The longer Gaby remained in ignorance, the longer her sunny mood might be preserved.
Because the day was sunny too, they sat at one of the pub’s outside tables, looking over a stretch of rough grass to Fethering Beach. Early holiday-makers – mostly couples with pre-school children – added splashes of colour to the sandy expanse.
Having unwittingly established that she didn’t know about the new murder, Gaby proceeded to eliminate one of its potential victims. “We’ve heard from Phil.”
“Oh, what’d he been up to?”
“God knows. Out drinking somewhere, I imagine. Anyway, he was back in his flat yesterday evening, and said he was going in to work today.”
“Did he say anything about Bazza?”
“No.”
“And you haven’t seen or heard anything of him?” Gaby shook her head, puzzled by the question. “Why should I?”
“No reason. I must say, you’re looking so much better.”
“Thanks.” Gaby ran her hands through her bubbly curls, and grinned. “It was good to see Steve at the weekend, got things in proportion. I feel a lot more relaxed about everything, as though it’s possible that normal life can, one day, continue.”