The Thirteenth Room (Kempston Hardwick Mysteries Book 4) Read online

  ‘Is it open that late?’ Hardwick asked.

  ‘Until half past, yes. Bit daft of them really, as they had to drive back to London in the morning. Not very sensible for a new driver to risk something like that. I presumed they were getting the train back, else I would’ve suggested they didn’t drink any more. Apparently Kimberly — that’s the one who died — had only passed her test recently so it was a bit of a road trip for her.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Perhaps it wouldn’t be quite so easy on the train from their part of London?’ Hardwick suggested, hoping to tease some further information out of Barbara, who seemed only too happy to talk.

  ‘Greenford, they said, so yes. Straight round the M25 and up the M1. Would take forever on the train.’

  ‘Oh, you spoke to them then?’ Hardwick asked.

  ‘Oh yes, absolutely. I was working behind the bar again. Been difficult since Owen left. I think because I live-in it’s just easier for them to ask me to do things. Seeing as I’m always around anyway.’

  ‘So did you get any idea as to why this Kimberly girl might want to kill herself?’ Hardwick asked, trying to steer the conversation back onto topic.

  ‘No, not really. I mean, she was quite emotional about it all when she got back. Saying how much she idolised this Alvarez chap. Can you imagine? But then again, you never know what goes on behind people’s eyes, do you?’

  ‘Very true,’ Hardwick replied, before thanking Barbara for her time, draining his drink and heading for the exit. As far as he was concerned, Detective Inspector Rob Warner had some explaining to do.

  As he passed the reception desk, Hardwick called over to the ever-present Mandy. ‘Barbara said could I ask you to pop over to the lounge and help her with something on the bar. Something about an ice machine.’

  ‘Ah!’ Mandy replied, instantly diligent and assiduous. ‘I’ll just go and see what’s the matter.’

  As he heard Mandy’s footsteps fading into the distance, Hardwick swung around in the porch, skipped back to the reception desk and glanced at the guest book, committing Kimberly’s address to memory.

  22

  Detective Inspector Rob Warner was never happy at having to work on a Sunday, and particularly not on a Sunday afternoon. He had hoped that by now he would be sat at home with his feet up in front of the TV, watching the day’s football results as they rolled in. No such luck.

  Even a simple cut-and-dried suicide required a mountain of paperwork, as was the norm in modern-day policing. Warner often hankered after the days when he’d first joined the force, when coppers could be coppers. Sure, those days were filled with corruption, wrongful arrests and police brutality and crime rates had fallen drastically since then, with public safety increasing and corruption charges at an all-time low, but that wasn’t the point. Warner liked things to be done in the old-fashioned way. It had worked for him just fine, thank you very much.

  His afternoon was made slightly less bearable by the appearance of Kempston Hardwick at his office door. Through numerous attempts at moving towards privatising the police service, successive governments had sought to introduce new ‘initiatives’, as they’d been marketed, in order to produce a more ‘cohesive’ and ‘structured’ approach to policing. The upshot of this is that they’d been encouraged to use more external assistance. Unfortunately for Warner, Kempston Hardwick counted as external assistance. Although he wasn’t a qualified forensic scientist, distinguished psychological profiler or, hell, even a ‘handwriting expert’ with a certificate printed off the internet, Hardwick did have a knack of managing to solve crimes.

  Hardwick’s knocking at the door was forceful, indicative of him having a bee in his bonnet. Well, Hardwick always had a bee in his bonnet about something, but it wasn’t usually a reason for him to be rapping at Warner’s office door on a Sunday afternoon. No, Warner knew exactly why he was here. Kimberly Gray was practically still warm but he had no doubt that Hardwick had not only already heard about her death but had already formulated all sorts of wild theories about what had caused it. The fact that it was a clear suicide wouldn’t deter him in the slightest.

  Warner opened the door. ‘Hardwick, how wond—‘

  I think we need to have a chat, Detective Inspector Warner,’ Hardwick said, walking past Warner and his outstretched hand and sitting in the chair next to Warner’s desk. ‘Kimberly Gray,’ he said, waiting for Warner to speak.

  ‘What about her? It was a suicide, no doubt about it.’

  ‘Has the pathologist confirmed yet?’ Hardwick asked.

  ‘No, of course not. She’s barely been dead a few hours.’

  ‘Well there you go then,’ Hardwick said, as if this proved some sort of point.

  ‘And before you say it: no, I don’t think there is anything to link the suicides of Kimberly Gray and Elliot Carr.’

  ‘Really? So the fact that they both died in the same room of the same hotel, using the same method of suicide and even the same way of doing it — with a dressing gown cord — and within a week of each other, doesn’t seem in the slightest bit odd to you?’

  ‘If those details had been kept back, perhaps. But the fact is that Elliot Carr’s suicide made the local newspapers and even a couple of nationals. Slow news day, but what can you do? All of those details were publicly available. What’s to say Kimberly Gray didn’t read a report of Elliot Carr’s suicide and plan to kill herself in the same way?’

  ‘Why on earth would she do that?’ Hardwick asked.

  ‘Because people do. Copycat suicides. Just like copycat killers. There’s a big market in it, unfortunately. There are literally hundreds of cases where people have committed crimes or murders based on others. And as for copycat suicides, they’re more common than you’d think. Look at the Bridgend suicides.’

  Between 2007 and 2012, there were seventy-nine known suicides in the Bridgend area of South Wales — an extraordinarily high number, considering the average before this period was around three to five a year. All involved young people, and in the first two years all but one death was due to hanging. The media dubbed it a ‘cult suicide’ phenomenon and were eventually asked to stop covering the suicides for fear of compelling more young people to take their own lives.

  ‘That was on an enormous scale, Detective Inspector. You know that. Here, we’re talking about just two suicides. Hardly a cult effect.’

  ‘The Bridgend suicides had to start somewhere, Hardwick,’ Warner said. ‘Don’t you worry, we’re taking this very seriously. Anyone taking their own life is a tragedy, no doubt about it, and if there’s any chance of these suicides being connected we’ll ensure as best we can that we put a stop to it before any more lives are lost. But bear in mind that that’s what they are. Suicides. We are not entertaining the idea that a third party was in any way involved.’

  ‘And why not?’ Hardwick asked. ‘Surely you need to eliminate all possibilities instead of just defaulting to what happens to look most likely at the time? Most likely does not mean certain, Detective Inspector.’

  Warner leaned forward on his chair and steepled his hands on his desk.

  ‘Listen, Hardwick. If I had to treat every suicide or death as a murder investigation, it just wouldn’t be possible. We have to use our knowledge and experience,’ Warner said, emphasising the word, ‘to uncover the facts and provide a satisfactory conclusion.’

  ‘Satisfactory to whom?’ Hardwick asked. He could see he wasn’t going to get anywhere and that Warner was not budging, so he had now decided to resort to making the man feel as idiotic as Hardwick felt he was.

  ‘To everybody involved.’

  ‘So not to the families of the deceased, then? Because I’m pretty sure that if there was even the slightest chance of someone else having been responsible for their loved ones’ deaths, they’d want to know.’

  ‘But there isn’t the slightest chance, Hardwick. You have to accept that.’

  ‘Do I? Isn’t there? Can you honestly say, with one hundred percent certainty, Detect
ive Inspector, that there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that you might just be missing something, however small or seemingly insignificant, which could possibly show otherwise?’

  Hardwick could see Warner’s jaw flexing as the Detective Inspector ground his teeth. ‘Listen to me. You never know what’s going on under the surface. People who should know better can’t see that sometimes what’s behind closed doors...’ Warner trailed off as his voice began to crack. He took a moment before speaking again. ‘The people who are left are the ones who feel guilty. They feel they should’ve known, seen it coming, done something. Trust me, it would almost be better if it were murder because then at least the people who were left would know it wasn’t their fault.’ He swallowed hard. ‘But that’s not the case here, Hardwick.’ Hardwick watched with interest as Warner took a long blink and a deep breath. ‘I think you should leave now.’

  23

  Ellis’s train trundled in to South Heath station, the brakes squealing and hissing as the carriages came to a halt and the doors slid open. Cabs weren’t cheap around here, but he’d be buggered if he was walking back to Tollinghill after all that traipsing around Brighton.

  Granted, he didn’t need to have covered the mileage that he did, but he’d found out from Googling on the way down that there were a number of good pubs and eateries in Brighton, and it would’ve been rude not to have tried a few of them. The day had seemed to be going well and the flowing beers had not tipped him over from tipsy into full-blown drunk thanks to the enormous meal he’d eaten at the American diner down on the sea front. His ‘one last pint’ at the Evening Star, near Brighton Station, had been his downfall. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t have his glasses on at the time and couldn’t see that it was an 11.5% Norwegian stout. Heigh-ho. Let the taxi take the strain.

  He slid his backside ungracefully into the seat of the taxi and asked the driver to drop him at the Old Rectory in Tollinghill. It would be best that he didn’t arrive home to Mrs F in this state. A few black coffees first would be a far better idea.

  When Ellis got to Hardwick’s house, he noticed that the front door was slightly ajar. This wasn’t a particularly odd sight, as Hardwick often left his door slightly ajar when he didn’t want to be disturbed by having to get up to answer the doorbell or, more frequently, when he couldn’t be bothered to do so.

  Ellis pushed the door open, stepped inside and closed it behind him before clip-clopping through into the kitchen, where he found Hardwick sat at the table, arms folded across his chest.

  ‘Ah. You spoke to DI Warner, then?’ Ellis asked, in his own observant way. Hardwick didn’t reply. ‘What did he say?’ Ellis continued.

  ‘What do you think he said, Ellis?’ Hardwick said in a terse, tired voice.

  ‘That despite the suicides of Elliot Carr and Kimberly Gray being almost identical and happening in the same room a week apart, he couldn’t see a link.’

  ‘Yes. Well no,’ Hardwick said. ‘He said he could see the link but explained it away by saying it must’ve been some sort of copycat suicide.’

  ‘Like the Bridgend ones?’ Ellis asked.

  ‘Don’t you start.’

  ‘Seriously, though, he might have a point. How do we know it’s not a copycat suicide?’

  ‘I just know, Ellis, all right?’ Hardwick replied, before petulantly thrusting his tongue into the inside of his cheek.

  ‘I just mean... Well, like you always say, it’s best to consider all of the possibilities before coming to a conclusion, right?’ Again, Hardwick didn’t reply. ‘Mind if I make myself a coffee?’ Ellis asked.

  ‘Help yourself,’ came the terse reply.

  ‘Want one?’

  ‘No.’

  Ellis busied himself with making the coffee, taking a little longer than he was usually accustomed to. He was quite sure that at any moment Hardwick would have to say something. Hardwick, though, was a man who was more than happy to sit in silence if there was nothing to say. Eventually, as Ellis spooned the fifth sugar into his mug, he broke the silence.

  ‘Look, Kempston, you’ve obviously got a feeling about this. I think the copycat suicide thing is worth looking into and I can see that you don’t. So why don’t I look into it? If it’s a waste of my time then that’s no problem. In the meantime, you can start to look at motives and stuff and follow the theory that they were murdered. Yeah?’

  Hardwick sat in silence and nodded.

  ‘Don’t be upset, Kempston. You know what Warner’s like. He’ll do anything to get out of filling in another form. You stick to your guns. I’ll keep him happy by looking at copycat suicides and stuff. Don’t worry about it.’

  For the first time since Ellis had arrived, Hardwick looked at him.

  ‘You’re a good man, Ellis,’ he said.

  Monday 23rd March

  24

  The thoughts and possibilities rattled around Hardwick’s head as he sat in his armchair with his eyes closed, trying to piece together the jigsaw of the deaths of Elliot Carr and Kimberly Gray without so much as the picture on the front of the box.

  There seemed to be no link between the two apart from the manner in which they’d apparently killed themselves. Hardwick wasn’t quite sure that they had killed themselves, though. He’d spent enough time catching murderers now to know when a death had been caused by someone else. His main problem was that he couldn’t explain why he felt this way. Sure, there were inconsistencies with the suicide theory but that wouldn’t be enough to convince DI Warner or anyone else that a third party was responsible for the deaths of Elliot Carr and Kimberly Gray.

  His only real ally seemed to be Ellis. Unfortunately, Ellis wasn’t quite as preoccupied with the theory of murder as he was with the notion that some sort of supernatural, paranormal force was at play and somehow responsible for the deaths. This wasn’t a theory that Hardwick was particularly keen to entertain.

  But if it was murder, who murdered them? From what he’d been told, Kimberly Gray had no real enemies to speak of, there was no sign of any sexual interference and no-one had any motive to kill her. Elliot Carr’s wife, Scarlett, did have a motive in that she had a secret lover who she’d planned to leave Elliot for, plus she was at the scene of the crime. If there was a crime. Hardwick was sure there was. But if there was only one killer, that would mean Scarlett had killed Kimberly Gray, too. Why? The only other theory was that Kimberly Gray’s death was not a copycat suicide, but a copycat murder. Again, the same problem arose: no-one wanted Kimberly Gray dead.

  Something was missing. Some piece of the puzzle hadn’t yet been found and that frustrated Hardwick, knowing that he couldn’t get to the bottom of what had happened no matter how hard he tried, because a vital piece of information was still missing.

  His frustration was cut short by the ringing of his doorbell. He made his way to the front door of the Old Rectory and opened it to find Detective Inspector Rob Warner stood on his doorstep with a manila folder under his arm.

  ‘Morning. Can I come in?’ Warner asked as he came in anyway.

  ‘Yes, of course, why not?’ Hardwick replied over his shoulder. ‘Why don’t you make your way through to the living room?’ he added as Warner rounded the corner into the living room.

  By the time Hardwick had sat down in his armchair, Warner had already opened the manilla folder and had begun leafing through what looked to be a stack of bank statements.

  ‘These are the financial records we obtained regarding Elliot and Scarlett Carr,’ Warner said, getting straight to the point. ‘Here, a credit card with £36,340 outstanding. That was originally a balance transfer of just under forty grand, paying off three other credit cards, here,’ he said, showing Hardwick another three sets of statements. ‘Interestingly, they’re all cards in Scarlett’s sole name. The new card which consolidated them all was in their joint names.’

  ‘Presumably Elliot would’ve known about that, then, in order to give authorisation for it to have been set up,’ Hardwick said. ‘Besides, Scarlett
wouldn’t have needed to share the debt as such, as they were married so it would’ve been joint debt anyway, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘That all depends. It can get tricky and messy. There were also finance agreements against two cars: the 3-series Beamer and a Range Rover Evoque. The Evoque was in for repairs, apparently.’

  ‘Blimey. They don’t have much luck on the car front, then.’

  ‘Less a case of mechanical failure on the Evoque and more the fact that Scarlett had reversed it into a lamppost, apparently,’ Warner said, chuckling. ‘Anyway, the point is there’s nearly forty grand still owing on the BMW’s finance and just under thirty on the Evoque. Plus the house had been mortgaged to the hilt.’

  ‘Christ,’ Hardwick said. ‘How did they manage to get all that credit?’

  ‘Well, Elliot had a decent job,’ Warner said. ‘Once they’d got that house, finance companies and banks would throw credit at them. They know a house in Bellingham is worth its weight in gold.’

  ‘I presume you’re going to tell me they were struggling to keep up with paying it back,’ Hardwick said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Warner replied. ‘Even with a job like Elliot’s, that’s just a stupid amount of credit. All interest bearing, too. He’d tried to minimise the growth of it by shifting the cards across to a lower rate, which shows he was wise to it, if not worried about it. We know from his chats at the bar and our own experience of Scarlett Carr that we can quite safely say she would’ve wanted those cars, that house and probably 90% of the items bought with the credit cards.’

  ‘So you’re suggesting that Elliot Carr killed himself to escape the debt?’ Hardwick asked, skeptically.

  ‘It’s looking likely. And even to possibly punish Scarlett. It was her debt after all, and he knew that if he topped himself the life insurance wouldn’t pay out, so she’d be lumbered with it all on her own. God forbid, she’d even have to get a job.’