11.30am Sunday 23rd December
Veronica sat on the edge of her bed waiting for the phone to ring. She’d been about to go to church with her sister when Palmer had called to say he needed to ask a few questions. She explained it was a bad time and that she would have to talk to him later. He agreed to call her back after she’d returned from the service.
The spare room at Francesca’s house was small. It had once been Natalie’s bedroom, but all the posters and her personal belongings had been boxed. The single bed was now made with a floral quilt and the curtains had been replaced to match. Apart from a chair in the corner and a single wardrobe the room was rather bare and unwelcoming.
At 11.37am Veronica’s mobile phone rang and she answered almost immediately.
‘Mrs Wade,’ DI Palmer’s calming voice travelled down the line, ‘sorry for interrupting earlier. Thank you for agreeing to speak to me now.’
‘Have there been any developments?’ Her head had been going around in circles ever since he’d first called.
‘Actually, there have. I’m sorry to tell you there has been a third victim.’
Veronica hung her head and closed her eyes.
‘This information has not been released to the general public yet, but his name was Eddie Kilpatrick. Does that mean anything to you?’
Veronica’s eyes sprang open and she nearly fell off the bed.
‘I’ve not heard that name in a very long time.’ She felt her stomach turn. ‘Yes, he was a member of the golf club Dennis played at in the spring and summer months. They used to play together quite regularly but then Eddie left the club and I’d not heard Dennis mention him since.’
‘What about the name Wendy Connor?’
‘You mean Matlock?’
‘No, I mean Connor. Matlock was her marital name.’
‘No, that’s not familiar.’ Veronica shook her head with certainty.
‘Did you ever meet Eddie Kilpatrick?’ Palmer asked with interest.
‘I never did. They did men’s things together. I didn’t like going to the golf club much. It wasn’t for me.’
‘The manager at the club mentioned that Dennis had been involved in the scouts. Is that true?’
‘Oh yes. He’d loved it. But that was many years ago now. He stopped volunteering in the late nineties. It was taking up too much of his spare time, he said.’
‘Was Andrew ever a scout?’
‘We tried.’ Veronica let out a long sigh. ‘But he didn’t like it. He never participated so we gave up making him go. It was a shame. I think it would have done him some good.’
‘I see,’ said Palmer furiously writing notes.
‘Can you tell me which scout troop your husband led?’
‘Cambridge, I think. They used to meet once a week at a hall in Chesterton. Occasionally they’d do trips.’
‘What sort of trips?’
‘Oh, you know, camping, fishing, that sort of thing.’
Palmer stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Fishing?’
‘Yes. Lots of outdoorsy stuff. Songs round the campfire, canoeing, building dens. The children loved it.’
‘So why did Dennis stop then?’
‘Well…’ Veronica paused for a moment and started to pick a piece of loose cotton from the quilt. ‘There was an accident.’
Palmer kept quiet, giving her time to tell the story.
‘One of the boys, he… he died.’ It was something she hadn’t thought about for a long time.
‘How?’ Palmer encouraged.
‘It was so sad. Dennis was distraught,’ she said. ‘He’d been a member of Dennis’s group for a few years. One day his parents came home from work and found him.’ She swallowed hard. ‘The boy had killed himself.’
‘When was this, Mrs Wade?’ Palmer’s thoughts were whirling.
‘Soon before Dennis stopped volunteering. Ninety-eight, I think.’
‘Do you know the boy’s name?’
‘It was Jack, I think. I never met the poor lad. Scouts, like golf, was Dennis’s thing.’
‘Do you know how he died?’
‘I just told you it was suicide.’ Her back went rigid. She was not comfortable remembering.
‘Is there anything else you think we should know?’
Veronica paused. ‘I don’t see how any of this is relevant. It was years ago now.’
‘Please,’ Palmer said gently.
‘Dennis was so distraught he couldn’t even attend the boy’s funeral. It was a difficult time,’ Veronica replied softening.
‘Okay, Mrs Wade. You’ve been extremely helpful. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions or if there are any further developments.’
‘Thank you,’ Veronica said standing and going over to the window to look out over the fields. ‘Tell me, before you go, is it still snowing in Cambridge?’
‘Erm, no. Not at the moment. We’ve had rain.’ Palmer wondered why they were discussing the weather. ‘But the forecast says more snow is due.’
‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said as her eyes filled with tears. ‘I hope you have a white Christmas, Inspector.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Wade.’ He felt himself choking up. ‘I hope so too.’
‘Make the most of your family,’ she said through her tears. ‘Every moment is precious.’
‘I will. Take care of yourself.’ Palmer hung up and sat back in his office chair.
He looked around the incident room at everyone busily working and for a moment had a desire to pick up his computer and hurl it through the window. Most of the time he managed to compartmentalise his emotions from his work but hearing the sadness in her voice brought everything crashing through.
He knew that being a policeman was important. He was helping people and keeping the city safe, but he also knew that these moments with his son would come and go, and he wished he could find a better home and work life balance.
Trying to control the sudden rage that was building in him he went and looked out of the window. What was he doing, working on a Sunday, two days before Christmas when he could have been with his wife and son? Palmer wondered how much longer he could remain in the force. He loved his job, and he was good at it, but he knew he was missing out with his family.
‘Are you okay?’ Elly appeared behind him and rested her hand on his shoulder.
‘I’m fine,’ he said shrugging her off, sniffing and getting a grip of himself. ‘I’ve got something I need you to do.’
‘Okay.’
‘I need you to find anything you can on the suicide of a boy named Jack that happened in the late nineties. I don’t have a last name, but it was possibly in ninety-eight. Come back to me when you have something.’
‘Is this related to the case?’ she asked putting her hands on her curvy hips.
‘I think it might be.’
‘I’ll get onto that right now,’ Elly said turning and walking back to her desk, her heels clapping on the floor as she went.
Palmer returned to his desk and sat looking at his notes. He could see a link forming. Fishing, scouts, Dennis, Jack. Somehow, he was sure it all came back to this. But where did Wendy and Eddie fit in to it? He could feel that all of the pieces of the puzzle were there: they just needed to be slotted into place.
Picking up his notepad he moved over to the incident board and examined the evidence. The pictures of the victims, scenes of the crimes, maps and the timeline – none of it yet added up. His eyes finally rested on the artist’s impression of the suspect. There was something generic about the face yet strangely familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
When his stomach rumbled, he knew it was time to take a break for lunch and decided it was the perfect opportunity to call home and speak to his son and wife. He needed to hear their voices and, more importantly, he needed them to know he was thinking about them and that he wished he was with them at home.
After consuming a serving of cottage pie and peas in the police station canteen, Palmer stepped outside the front of the building to call his family. To his bitter disappointment there was no answer. He remembered his wife was taking their son to visit Father Christmas. He wanted so badly to call and hear their voices, but he refrained from making the call. He’d have to speak to them later.
Looking up at the white sky he could feel that snow was in the air again. The chill had returned and the threat of rain was long gone. On the road in front of the station puddles were beginning to freeze over, a paper-thin layer of ice forming almost in front of his eyes. Rubbing his hands together for warmth he returned to the station and was met by Elly who was tearing down the stairs.
‘I found it!’ she said holding a printout in her hand. ‘Jack Hucknell. He was a boy scout who killed himself in 1998. His parents found him at home. The newspaper doesn’t give much information, but I’ve managed to track his family down. Here’s the address.’
‘Excellent.’ Palmer took the papers from her.
‘Poor little mite was thirteen.’ She shook her head. ‘Same age as my little sister. There’s so much pressure on kids now. Social media, exams, it’s so much for them to contend with. Doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘No. It doesn’t,’ Palmer said thinking about his own son again. ‘Fancy a trip.’ He paused to look at the address. ‘To Sawston?’
Palmer had called ahead and warned the Hucknell family that officers were on their way over to the house to interview them. He felt awful having to dredge up their painful past, especially with it being so close to Christmas but, in order to save another family pain, he had to subject this one to it. It was a dilemma he’d never got his head around properly.
Sawston, a large village south of Cambridge, was busy with shoppers. The high street was bustling with families doing some last-minute Christmas shopping. But it was a relief to be somewhere where the traffic flowed more freely than it did in the city. The Christmas lights came on just as darkness began to fall and the car pulled onto the high street.
‘My son would have loved seeing that,’ Palmer muttered to himself as he searched for The Dairy House through the window.
‘Stop!’ Elly exclaimed. ‘It’s just there.’
The grade-two listed terraced cottage was picture perfect. On the front door hung a large wreath. Through the window the warm glow from the lights flooded out onto the street. It was inviting. Like a Christmas card you might wish to step into.
‘I always wanted to live in a house like this,’ Elly said while getting out of the car and admiring the cottage.
‘Nice place.’ Palmer agreed locking the car. ‘Let’s not keep them too long, shall we? I’m sure they’ve got other things they’d rather be doing right now.’
‘Yes.’ Elly nodded remembering the reason they were there and knocked on the door.
‘Hello?’ A balding man opened the door.
‘Mr Hucknell?’
‘Yes that’s right.’
‘I’m DI Palmer and this is Sergeant Hale. We spoke to your wife a little while ago?’
‘We’ve been expecting you,’ he said beckoning for the officers to come in. ‘It’s getting chilly again.’ He closed the door behind them. ‘Won’t you follow me.’
Palmer and Elly followed Mr Hucknell through the hall and into the large L-shaped sitting room. A fire was burning and the room had a gentle smell of wood and coal.
‘Thank you for agreeing to talk to us,’ Palmer said, while Elly admired the beautifully decorated tree which stood proud and tall in the corner of the room.
‘My wife is just in the kitchen,’ the man explained. ‘Can I get you both a homemade mince pie?’
‘Yes please,’ Elly and Palmer both said in harmony.
‘Wonderful. I’ll just bring them through. Do take a seat.’
He pointed to the large red sofa covered in silky cushions and Palmer and Elly did as instructed. The sofa was placed opposite the fireplace and, while the pair waited for Mrs Hucknell and her husband to return, they found themselves getting lost watching the flames dance and lick around the charred logs.
‘Here we go.’
A woman appeared carrying a tray with a plate of steaming mince pies on it. She placed it down on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Both Elly and Palmer sat up having relaxed and sunk into the cushions.
‘That’s very kind,’ Palmer said salivating. ‘We really appreciate you agreeing to talk to us.’
‘I have to say,’ the woman said turning to look at her husband, ‘the call did come a bit out of the blue.’
‘We understand it is a very difficult subject, but we think that a spate of recent murders might, somehow, be linked to your son’s death.’ Palmer refrained from picking up a mince pie yet. It didn’t seem appropriate.
‘You mean Dennis Wade?’ the husband asked.
‘Yes. There have been two further murders. Do the names Wendy Connor or Edward Kilpatrick mean anything to you?’
Both husband and wife shook their heads.
Mrs Hucknell said, ‘We knew Dennis a little bit, of course. He was the scout leader for Jack’s group. He seemed like a nice man, from the small amount of contact we had with him.’
‘I hate to ask, but would you mind telling us a bit about your son’s death?’ Palmer had already seen the death certificate, so knew more than he was letting on, but wanted to hear what happened from their point of view.
‘He’d been a happy boy,’ Mr Hucknell said clenching his hands together. ‘Jack was smart. He did well in school and he was popular.’
His wife reached out and rested her hand on his knee. The twenty years that had passed only helped to lessen the pain. They would never fully recover from losing their child.
‘It all changed when he started secondary school,’ Mrs Hucknell took over explaining. ‘He suddenly became introverted. His schoolwork slipped, and he stopped being interested in things. He’d always loved his sport, was always out kicking a ball, but he even lost interest in that. We took him to the doctor. They said he was depressed but they didn’t want to medicate him because of his age. We all hoped it was just a phase and that it would pass. But he started to have trouble sleeping and things got worse.’ The pain in her voice was evident and Palmer couldn’t help thinking about his own boy. ‘He’d loved scouts and even lost his enthusiasm for that. We thought maybe it was hormones, a teenage thing.
‘At the time his father worked for a bank and I worked as a doctor’s receptionist. That day he went off to school as usual and the two of us went to work. The school was only a ten-minute walk from our house so we’d given Jack a key, so he could let himself into the house after school. He’d been doing it for months.’ Her voice wavered. ‘School finished at three twenty and I came back from work at five thirty.’ Mrs Hucknell’s bottom lip began to quiver and the officers could see she was doing her best to control it, which only made it harder to watch.
‘His brother, Matthew, found him,’ Mr Hucknell cut in, saving his wife the agony. ‘Jack hung himself. Nina came home after work and found Matthew and Jack together. Matthew had come home later than Jack. He’d been playing tennis after school. He found Jack. He cut him down and sat on the floor next to his body until Nina came home and discovered them together.’
‘I see,’ Palmer said gravely.
‘Matthew was never the same again. We sold the house, it held too many memories, and moved a few streets down. We’ve been here ever since. When Matthew was eighteen, he had a breakdown and was hospitalised. He lives on medication now.’
‘Where is Matthew?’ Elly asked.
‘He moved away. We don’t see him very often. He finds it hard being around us after what happened to his brother,’ Nina said.
‘He blamed us,’ Mr Hucknell spat. ‘As if we were to blame. We did everything we could. Yes, he lost his brother but we lost our son. We still don’t have any answers. “Depression” the doctors said and that’s it. Nothing else. Why was he depressed? He had a loving family, a nice home. It never made any sense.’
‘He was hurting, Anthony, he didn’t mean it.’
‘It felt like we lost both our boys.’ His eyes misted up.
‘I know this is painful, but can you confirm what Jack used to kill himself with?’
‘Rope. He must have got it out of the shed.’ Nina’s voice continued to quiver. ‘I’ve got a picture of him if you’d like to see it?’ It was clear she needed to replace the image in her head with something else.
‘That would be lovely,’ Elly said softly.
‘I’ll just go and fetch it.’ Nina got up, her navy floral dress swishing as she went.
‘My wife still finds it difficult,’ Anthony said reaching for a mince pie. ‘We’ve never had proper closure because we still don’t know why he did it. I know that people who suffer from depression commit suicide but the change in him was so sudden, it just doesn’t make any sense. We still don’t have answers.’ He wiped some loose pastry crumbs from his moustache. ‘I suppose we never will.’
Palmer looked at Elly for a moment before deciding to speak.
‘It is possible that these murders are somehow connected to what happened to Jack.’ He was cautious not to say too much. ‘Where does Matthew live?’
‘Northampton.’
‘Could I have his address please?’ Palmer got out his trusty notebook. ‘We’d like to speak to him.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t advise that.’ Anthony glared at Palmer. ‘He’s very unstable.’
‘I understand. We’ll be very sensitive, but I think it is important that we do speak to him.’
‘It might spark an episode,’ Anthony said warily.
‘If you’d like, you are very welcome to be present when we speak to him?’
‘I’d be no use.’ Anthony shook his head. ‘But his mother might be. He’s better with her than he is with me.’
‘Here we are,’ Nina said brightly coming back into the room just as Elly and Palmer both gave in and helped themselves to a mince pie each.
‘This was taken in ninety-six. Look,’ she said pointing at a figure, ‘there’s Dennis. This was one of their camping trips, I think. And here, in the middle, is Jack.’ Nina handed the photo over to Palmer who studied it for a moment.
It was a picture of a scout group outside. Palmer looked at Jack. He was a slip of a boy, blonde, gangly but smiling. The other boys were smiling and looking happy too. On the right of the gang stood Dennis looking proudly at the camera. To his left stood a young woman. She was younger than Dennis but older than the boys. She must have been about eighteen. Palmer pointed her out to Elly without saying a word. It was Wendy. There was no doubt about it. She was younger, but her face hadn’t changed much.
On the other side of the group stood another man, also smiling at the camera. It was Eddie Kilpatrick.
Palmer and Elly looked at each other and put down their half-eaten mince pies.
‘May we borrow this for a while?’ Palmer asked.
‘Why?’ Nina looked uncomfortable.
‘Just for our records,’ Palmer answered quickly. ‘We’d like to make a copy of the picture. I can assure you we will return the original to you shortly.’
‘Well, I suppose so.’ Nina still wasn’t convinced. ‘But you must bring it back. It’s the last picture I have of Jack looking happy.’