Darkness Falls (Kate Marshall, #3)(80)

“He answered the landline at Bev’s house at eight forty-five,” said Kate.

“Okay, Bev says in her statement that she phoned him again at ten thirty and he answered,” said Tristan, reading from the case file.

Kate came over to the computer and searched through the case file folders.

“Two of the construction site workers at Teybridge House gave Bill his alibi to say that he arrived at the site just after four forty-five p.m. on Saturday, September seventh, and stayed for around four hours, leaving just before eight forty p.m. Where are they? Here. Raj Bilal and Malik Hopkirk are the two witnesses who worked there . . .”

Tristan watched as Kate scrolled through the scanned statements.

“They’re both signed, I checked,” he said.

“The two people willing to go on the record and give Bill an alibi are both construction workers, working for him, and presumably on a low-income wage. Could they have been lying for him?” said Kate.

“Isn’t the bigger question why Nick Lacey was also parked outside Bev’s flat on the same night?” asked Tristan.

“Yes. Why would you park a top-of-the-range BMW on that dodgy estate overnight?”

“What if Nick had a lover? A bit of rough on the council estate?” asked Tristan.

“We seem to constantly be asking ‘what if’ and ‘who is he’ questions about Nick Lacey. But are we asking the right questions? So far, we’ve heard that he’s a highly successful, rather ruthless businessman. His neighbor Elspeth says he’s a lovely man. He was around when Max had the commune, which means he could have met David Lamb, Gabe Kemp, and Jorge Tomassini.”

Kate’s phone rang.

“Speaking of. It’s Jorge Tomassini,” she said, answering the call and putting it on speakerphone.

“Hi, Kate,” said Jorge. “Listen, I had a look in my attic, and I found my photos from when I was living in England. There are eight packets of twenty-four photos. I scanned them all.”

Tristan clenched his fists and mouthed, Yes!

“That’s very kind of you, thank you,” said Kate.

“I scanned them in groups of eight on the scanner at work. It saved time. You’ll have to zoom in on the photos.”

“As long as they’re clear images, that’s brilliant,” said Kate.

“There’s quite a few from the commune, when I went to a couple of parties there. There’s one of me and my boyfriend at the time with Noah Huntley, a couple of Max, and one of me sitting on the sofa in the commune with Max and his boyfriend, Nick Lacey.”

“This is so helpful, thank you,” said Kate.

“Okay. I’ll get my assistant to email them over,” he said.

Ten minutes later, the photos came through, spread in two emails. Kate and Tristan went to their laptops. Each JPEG image in the folders contained a scan of eight photos. They downloaded the images and started to scroll through. There was a photo of an intoxicated-looking Noah Huntley, red-faced, with his arm draped over Jorge and a muscular blond-haired youth.

“Jesus Christ,” said Kate, when she came to the photo of Jorge and Max sitting on a sofa with a third man. “Tristan, come and look at this.”

Tristan got up and came round to look at her computer screen. “Jesus Christ, indeed,” he said. “That’s Nick Lacey?”

“Yes . . . ,” said Kate, shaking with shock. “Oh my God. That photo is it. The key that makes this all fall into place.”





45


Late on Saturday night, Nick Lacey was driving through Southampton on his way back from a business trip.

Whenever he visited Southampton, his route home went through its own unofficial red-light district. The street was brightly lit by the lights from the busy dockside, and over the years, attempts had been made to clean it up and banish the curb crawlers. It was one of those streets in Britain that reinvents itself every hundred meters, moving from run-down to residential and then back again.

He’d circled the block twice, passing the same brightly lit gay pub, checking if there were any street cameras or CCTV.

A hundred meters from the pub, in the shadows of a broken streetlamp, he noticed a young guy hanging around. Tall and athletic with a strong jaw. On his third pass around the block, Nick slowed by the streetlamp and wound down his window.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” said the young guy, looking him up and down. “Nice car.” He wore skinny blue jeans; expensive, new-looking white trainers; and a thin V-neck T-shirt. Nick could see he had broad, muscly shoulders and developed leg muscles.

“What you up to tonight?” asked Nick.

“What do you think?” he said, moving closer to the window and looking through the gap. He had an affected aggression that made Nick laugh. Like he was performing.

“I think you’re a dirty fucking whore, and that’s just what I’m looking for,” said Nick.

The young lad’s face showed a flash of hurt, and Nick drank it in. Suddenly, he was desperate to pick this young guy up. He kept eye contact to see if the young guy would look away. He didn’t.

“What’s your name?” asked Nick.

“Mario.”

“What’s your real name? I’ll pay you more if I can use your real name . . .”