Chapter 7
Seven
Gina
Gina watched as the police van pulled away.
A forensics officer had come over and taken the evidence off them and uniform were continuing to search the area.
She and O’Connor headed back to the scene, meeting PC Smith outside Chez Ursula’s.
After updating him, she headed back to the car with O’Connor.
She wanted to be the one to speak with Lonnie Carson about his sister, but interviewing Abel Holloway had to come first. She could send one of the other team members to handle that.
What Holloway said sent chills through her.
She needed him in an interview room, now.
Just as O’Connor pulled onto the road leading to the station, her phone rang. ‘DI Harte.’
It was the police officer who had cuffed Holloway. ‘We’re having to take him straight to the hospital. He’s had some sort of seizure on the way to the station and then he passed out. No one will be interviewing him for a while.’
‘Damn, we need to turn around at the entrance,’ she said to O’Connor.
‘We’re not going back to the station? What about Holloway?’
‘He’s been taken to hospital and he’s out of it. I knew he was high. Probably the tablets we found, which I suspect were MDMA. In the meantime, we need to speak to Mindy’s brother. I know the road he lives on and it is impossible to park there so we’ll park in the supermarket car park.’
Minutes later, he pulled up in the almost empty car park. The last few shoppers were coming out and one of the staff was locking up. ‘Where has the time gone today? It’s gone ten already,’ he said.
They stepped onto the pavement where flecks of frost had started to twinkle. ‘You must be shattered. You came in earlier than I did.’ White mist coiled from their mouths when they spoke. She shivered and put her hands in her pockets.
He shrugged as he locked the car. ‘I’d rather be at work.
I’m sorry. I sound really sad.’ He checked his messages as they walked.
On exiting his messages, his screensaver came up.
It was him and Mrs O on their wedding day.
They looked like teenagers. She wondered what it was like to meet the one from the outset in life.
He placed his phone in his pocket as they reached Lonnie Carson’s house. There was a light on upstairs. Gina knocked and a moment later, someone parted one of the curtains and opened the window. A long-haired man frowned at them. ‘Hello.’
‘Mr Carson?’
‘Err, yes.’
‘I’m DI Harte and this is DC O’Connor. May we come in and speak to you?’
He closed the window and a few seconds later, he opened the door. ‘What’s happened? Is it my dad?’
Gina noticed that the neighbour was peering around the upstairs curtain. ‘No. We have an audience. It might be best if we come in.’ She held her identification up which he took a moment to scrutinise before stepping aside for them.
‘Take a seat.’
The small narrow living room leading to a kitchen seemed to be full of handwritten sheet music and lyrics. Three guitars hung up on the main wall and there were another two cradled in stands. Instead of a coffee table there was an amplifier on a trolley with a takeaway cup on top.
‘Sorry about the mess.’ He threw the cup in a bin, wheeled the amp out of the way and sat on a footstool. He frowned. ‘Is my sister okay?’
Gina nodded. ‘Can I confirm your name first?’
‘Lonnie Carson.’ He began poking his finger through his ear stretching ring.
‘And your sister’s?’
‘Mindy Carson. What’s happened? Please, I need to know.’
Gina spoke softly. ‘Her manager left work at seven this evening and saw that Ms Carson’s car was still parked up on one of the side roads close by.
Your sister had left at six and her rabbit was left in its basket beside her car.
’ Her mind took her back to the blood smear on the windscreen.
She swallowed and continued while O’Connor sat beside her.
‘We have reason to believe that she’s been taken.
There were signs of a struggle.’ Her thoughts flashed back to the blood and the video. She swallowed her nausea down.
Lonnie stood and started pacing. The veins bulged on his lean, muscular arms. ‘What?’
‘We were hoping you could help us to answer some questions. Can you talk us through your evening?’
‘My evening? Am I a suspect?’
‘No, we’re just asking routine questions and doing everything we can do to help find your sister.’
‘I’ve been in all day, gaming. I’ve been playing other people online, so not alone but on my own in the house. I didn’t get up until one because I’ve been on the road for a few days. I’m a musician, mostly session stuff but I also work with bands and tour when needed.’
‘When did you last see your sister?’
‘Two weeks ago. I looked after Hoppy while she went on a spa weekend with her boss. Ursula has really looked after Mindy. Mindy picked the rabbit up on… let me think… the third of January around lunchtime and I haven’t seen her since. Where’s Hoppy?’
‘Forensics will take him and they’ll be really gentle. He shouldn’t be needed for too long.’
‘Can I look after him when you’ve finished? Mindy doesn’t trust anyone with him. He’s her baby.’
Gina nodded and O’Connor made a note.
‘When did you last hear from Mindy?’
‘Three days ago. She called me.’ He let out a long breath and ran his fingers through his tangled brown hair.
‘I was really busy so I cut her off and now…’ His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed.
‘She thought there was someone in her garden. I asked her to go back and check again and she said there was no one there and that she must have imagined it. It was about eleven at night. I was still playing and she later messaged to tell me everything was okay.’ He linked his fingers and began nervously tapping the backs of his hands with his fingers.
‘She wasn’t okay, was she? If someone took her, they must have been following her, stalking her, and I didn’t give it a second thought after that phone call because I was too wrapped up in my own life.
Please tell me she’s okay, that she’s still alive… what if…?’
Gina couldn’t make any promises but they hadn’t found a body.
They had to assume that Mindy was still alive and that she needed them to hurry up and find her.
The clock was ticking. She cleared her throat.
‘Her manager said that she’d recently come out of a relationship and that she’d moved to Cleevesford a few months ago. ’
‘I’d been working away, touring for most of the year, playing for a singer, and when I got home she was in a right state. I didn’t press her about it. She just begged me to help her so I did. She stayed with me for a week and then I put a deposit down on a small house for her.’
‘Can I have the details of the person you or she rents the house from?’
He nodded and brought up a document on his phone. O’Connor took the details of the property owner.
‘Was she seeing anyone?’
‘I’m not sure, she didn’t say.’
‘Has she mentioned a man?’ Gina wondered if Lonnie knew who the man with the eagle tattoo was.
‘No, she has dated men. Sorry, she dates men and women, always has done, so she could have been seeing a man for all I know. I don’t know of anyone at the moment, though.’
’Do you know who she was in a relationship with before?’
‘Carmen Spelling. I have the address in my phone somewhere. They lived together in Wythall. Carmen might still be living there.’ He frowned.
‘Mindy said something that unnerved me. I tried to ask her about it but she wouldn’t talk.
I was beside myself in not knowing how to help but I thought she needed some space.
The house was rented in my name so she couldn’t easily be traced. ’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said if Carmen ever found her, Carmen would kill her.’