Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

the charity shop along with the steamer trunk. It was a black dress for Sally’s mother. He’d planned to get his car serviced as a reason for leaving the village that morning, but had worried that such a selfish action would invite scorn, perhaps even suspicion. The purchase of the dress, so Anika could present well before the media, would make an honourable cover story instead. Might win him some brownie points with the watching world. Might even impress Anika enough to allow him to slide that dress off her body one night.

When his story was told, Lucas was a wreck, hunched over so far his chin was on his chest and he looked ready to tumble off the chair. But Turner was sitting up, alert, and he straightened his tie. He looked at Bennet and gave a smile. ‘Make that two things I was right about. Didn’t I promise you Sally had no murderer?’

68

When it was over, Lucas Turner was taken away to be arrested and processed for his part in disposing of the bodies of the film crew. Charges for his actions ten years ago would follow. His father was rearrested for his own part in the Sally Jenkins tragedy and returned to his cell. Although the conversation between him and his son had seemed genuine, no good detective would accept it at face value. Later, a pair of interrogators would reinterview both men and try to chip away at their story. It wasn’t impossible that the councillor and his son had invented the whole thing, knowing they’d fare better if a ten-year-old kid rather than an adult was charged with disposing of a corpse. Lucas’s anger at his father could have been part of the charade. Turner was certainly the sort to let his son take the blame, and Lucas was awestruck enough by his dad to go along with it.

Bennet, though, believed what he had heard. Without a further role to play, and doubtful any new revelations were on the cards, he had no reason to stay. But he got permission for a final chat with Turner. He didn’t have any questions; he just wanted the last word, although he was unsure what it would be. Turner unwittingly helped him with that.

Bennet flipped the hatch on Turner’s cell door and was pleased to see the man tearful on his bunk. Bennet had learned to suppress the hate he felt towards this man, just feet away, who’d hammered a spike into Joe’s heart. And his own.

The councillor looked at him. ‘You heard the last thing my son said to me. He was grateful. I saved him. That’s what this was all about, Bennet. And that pleases me. I’ll take that to prison and it will keep me warm.’

Bennet understood why Turner had contradicted himself so often, on the one hand arguing that a Loper had abducted Sally, while also continuing to claim she’d ran away: the latter was a lie he had to perpetuate for his son. Even long after the fallacy disintegrated as child became adult.

Bennet gave no response, but Turner clearly wanted one. ‘You and me, Bennet, are the same. We overstepped lines in pursuit of the same thing. Like you, I was just a father trying to do right by his son.’

‘You should have bought him a Lego set,’ Bennet said, and shut the hatch.

69

Bennet sipped his water and looked up from his phone, watching Joe running with the other kids in the pub beer garden. The boy was having a lot of fun, but Bennet wanted to get going soon.

He returned to his phone and the email Detective Superintendent Sutton had sent him. In the three days since Richard Turner and his son had been arrested concerning the death and unlawful disposal of Sally Jenkins, Sutton’s team had acquired more information and evidence. A search of the councillor’s surgery had uncovered a missing tool: a graft passer. It was a hook-like tool used for feeding a graft through a joint. The missing implement hadn’t been found, but the pathologist who’d performed the film crew’s post-mortems believed such an item could have caused their neck wounds. Turner couldn’t say where he’d disposed of the weapon, but he had come clean and admitted murder. Exactly as Bennet had outlined it to his face: room to room slowly, starting with the males. Each victim incapacitated by a blow to the head and murdered by throat slice.

And Lorraine, woken by a noise as Turner approached her bed, three already down, had fought her attacker, screaming for help that fell on dead ears.

The police had learned more about Lucas Turner too. Before Sally vanished, he had been known around the village as more than just the tearaway Bennet had diagnosed. Weird was the term some employed. He’d been caught on more than one occasion exposing himself to older women. He shoplifted obsessively. And there was a rumour that he’d killed four or five cats. All of these things had been spoken about in hushed whispers because he was Councillor Turner’s son.

Most telling: since the arrests, Anika Jenkins had changed her opinion on the relationship between her daughter and Turner’s son. Now unmenaced by fear of speaking out, she’d said Sally and Lucas had never truly been friends. Sally had been creeped out by his behaviour towards her, tolerating it only because she had to in order to ride his dad’s horses. Sally had certainly died by horse-kick, but had the rest of Lucas’s story happened the way he told it? He was sticking fast to his version, so maybe Sally had willingly gone with him that night, and maybe she hadn’t.

Bennet looked up to see Joe running with little Tessa on his back. It brought a tear to his eye, much as it had at Lorraine’s funeral two hours earlier when the children had met each other for the first time. They had sat together at the gathering and stood side by side at the committal.