Death Call (3 page)

Carroll remembered seeing the white, silky blouse of the victim on the living room floor. None of its buttons were missing, he thought, making his way to the bathroom. If the woman was raped, then surely her clothing would have been ripped or at least missing a few buttons? She must’ve taken the blouse off willingly, he thought, surveying the room.

The bathroom was white. So white that it almost hurt the eyes. Two toothbrushes stood guard by the wash hand basin, along with a near-empty tube of toothpaste, that had as its companion, a couple of cheap-looking condoms in different flavours and colours. Not, Carroll thought, what you might expect to find in the bathroom of a married couple.

Retreating down the stairs, Dan moved out to the kitchen at the rear of the house. It was an old kitchen and, by the look of the place, the Gibsons appeared to be in the middle of a restoration job. Examining the kitchen window, Carroll found several chips of paint that had come loose. It was as if the window had been forced open – though it wasn’t immediately noticeable. It would’ve been easy to force the window, he thought, looking at the near rotted wooden sash window-frame before him. This is where the killer got in, he thought, pleased with his discovery.

Chapter 3

Grant was interested to hear what Carroll had to say upon his return to the squad room. He was sure that the forensic science people wouldn’t have missed the things that Carroll had found. It was, after all, their job. Carroll quickly replied, saying that the paint chips from the window frame were still on the kitchen floor, and that the condoms were still on the bathroom sink unit. Surely the forensics people would’ve removed them if they had searched these areas already? Grant begrudgingly agreed, suggesting a quick call to the forensic science laboratory to see what, if anything, they had established.

It was six in the evening when Grant was told in no uncertain terms that the science lab was closed for the night. There was nothing left for them to do except go their separate ways homeward.

As Grant went to get his jacket from the back of his chair, his mobile began to ring. Pulling it out of his pocket, he hoisted the thing to his ear and listened.

‘Samuel? I know you’re listening. I want you to baby-sit for me tonight. Samuel? Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, Victoria, I can hear you,’ Grant replied, hearing his wife’s voice for the first time in nearly two weeks.

‘I’m going out at eight thirty, so I want you to be here by around eight, okay?’

‘You could’ve given me a little bit of notice, Victoria....’

‘Are you or are you not the father of my three children?’

‘You tell me. Who is it this time? Your African king, is it? Or is it your Yardie ‘gangsta’ boyfriend?’

‘That’s really none of your business. I’ll see who I want to see. And, by the way, you should be receiving the divorce papers in the next few days. I’ve had my solicitor working on it.’

‘I just can’t...’

‘You just can’t do anything right, can you Sam? The only thing you’re good at is that bloody job of yours. Well, you’ve made your choice, and now you’ve got to live with it. I want the papers signed, sealed and delivered this week, okay?’

‘Look, can’t we talk this thing through?’

‘I want you here at eight. I don’t want to be late getting out. We can talk about it later in the week – not that there’s anything to talk about.’

‘Don’t push me on this, Vicky....’

‘Or what? You’ll send the goon squad around to arrest me? Grow up, Sam. Now, are you going to come and see your children tonight, or do I have to hire a babysitter?’

‘I’ll be there.’

‘Don’t be late,’ Victoria said, hanging up.

Six years of marriage, three children and a beautiful house. All going down the tube. Grant was, above all else, a family man. At least in his own mind. His estranged wife, Victoria, would have called the cards differently. To her, Grant was no more than an absentee father and part-time husband, always out working on some case or other with precious little time to spend with his children. Samuel could also see this aspect of himself, and he didn’t like it one bit. He had tried to change over the last few years, but the previous Christmas had been too much for him, too much for Vicky. The job, he had admitted to himself on more than one occasion, was more fulfilling than his marriage had ever been. The only thing that got to Grant was that he had three children who needed a father, and he wasn’t there for them. He’d done the best that he could for the six years they were together, even buying a house in the north London area of Holloway. It had taken him two years to get enough money together for the deposit, and for most of that time he was begging for overtime from his boss. But Victoria never understood, never appreciated his efforts. At least that was the way that he saw it.

The times when he’d come home at twelve or one in the morning, tired from office work or sitting in an unmarked car doing a surveillance job, didn’t seem to matter anymore. Sure, he was still paying the mortgage – and rent on a flat in Dalston – but he didn’t have as much time as he wished he could have with his three kids.

The idea of their mother stepping out on the town with other men while he was still married to her, drove him crazy. What was worse about her new ‘man-friends’ as she liked to call them, was that they were little more than boys in his eyes. Boys who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. One, a Jamaican man of around thirty, was known to Grant through his dealings with the police. He had been suspected of many things in the past, but nothing had ever been proven. Not that Grant hadn’t tried his damnedest to ensure a conviction for something. The very thought of this man, a criminal in Grant’s eyes, moving in on his family, drove him to despair.

He had tried every trick in the book when it came to wooing back Victoria, but all were to no avail. There was nothing he could do in her eyes to make up for the past few years of neglect. The prospect of spending the rest of his life seeing his children at weekends, while another man slept in his marriage bed, was more than he could stand. What was worse was the thought of having to continue paying the mortgage on the house he had bought for them. Grant would, in effect, be paying another man’s rent while the guy screwed his wife. There was no justice when it came to relationships, he thought, driving through the rain to his flat in Dalston.

The emptiness of the place hung over him like a guillotine waiting to fall on a condemned man. His last meal always seemed to be of the frozen variety, too. Five minutes in a microwave and PING! instant dog food waiting to scald your mouth. Grant had never really taken to cooking and was now suffering as a result.

The absence of a vice in Grant’s life left him watching TV and reading books, where other men might have gone to the local boozer or, like many of his brothers, roll a nice fat joint of the best Jamaican weed. But drugs and drink weren’t his thing. Instead, it was frozen food and soap operas. He didn’t know which was worse; the wooden acting in the soap operas or the cardboard taste that all microwave food had. But then, it wasn’t something that he was inclined to dwell on.

Tuesday morning, Carroll was late again and Grant was eager to get going. His blood was still boiling from the night before, having had a small run in with his wife’s Yardie boyfriend. He had driven up to the house, honked his horn, and Vicky had run around getting ready like a seventeen year old going on her first date. It was a sickening sight for Grant. It was hard to believe it was the same woman who was bitching at him on the phone earlier in the evening.

The fingerprint people had been on to the CID squad looking for Carroll and Grant first thing on the Tuesday morning, having what they regarded as an almost positive identification of the woman found dead in Horseferry Road. The fingerprint technician, Hughie Osborne, gave her name as Joanne McCrae. He had said there was a file on computer, and that they should look it up if they wanted to know more. To that effect, he had left them her last known address, social security number and date of birth. That was all that was needed to get a good background on someone.

When Grant received the message on his arrival, he had gone straight to the National Criminal Records’ computer terminal in the squad room, punching in the young woman’s details. Within a minute, the following details had sprung up on-screen:

Name: Joanne McCrae

D.O.B: 5 April 1969

N.I. number: NY3 4BCA

Last address: 33 Thatcher Towers, London EC2

Convictions: Soliciting in King’s Cross area.

Carroll arrived looking suitably hungover and parked his rear end in a chair beside Grant.

‘Howya Tonto!’ he smiled.

‘Do you think you could ever manage to get in on time?’

‘Whaddaya got?’ Carroll asked.

‘The National Identification Bureau records for our victim.’

‘Already?’

‘Yeah, Osborne left us a message with her details. All from a set of fingerprints. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?’ Grant said with a wry smile.

‘Amazing. Well, let’s see who she is then,’ Carroll said, squinting at the computer screen.

‘You need glasses, man.’

‘I need a fucking holiday. That’s what I need.’

Carroll read down through the records, picking out her previous convictions and noting her last date of arrest. It was quite some time ago. There had been no sign of her on computer or in the eyes of the police for over a year, but she must’ve still been on the game. There was no other explanation for her turning up naked and dead in a strange house. Carroll had had a gut instinct that she was a whore from the first moment he saw the body, but had dismissed it, as he had been taught. Gut instincts were no match for hard evidence. This time, however, his guts had been right.

Joanne McCrae’s post mortem examination was due to take place in the afternoon down at the city morgue, but before then, Carroll wanted to find out where Joanne had been employed in the last year. It was fairly obvious that she must have been operating in the area up to the time of her death, so it should not be too difficult finding where she had been working from, he thought, turning to Grant.

‘Is Tracy Goode still working?’

‘Tracy who?’ Grant asked.

‘Tracy Goode, you know, the young hooker up at the Cross. She’s always being brought in....’

‘Well, we can always go check her out, I suppose. Do we have an address for her?’

‘I’ll get it from the uniforms, downstairs. They seem to keep an eye on her....’

Carroll made a quick call to the desk sergeant and they were soon on their way to a flat in Highbury Place to see Tracy Goode.

For a common or garden variety street-walker, Tracy was not doing too bad for herself. A nice two bedroom apartment in what could quite easily be a listed building seemed somehow inappropriate for a hooker. Visions of squalid and damp flats came to Carroll’s mind when he thought of where a prostitute might live. Grant seemed to think it was a housing association flat, where the rent would have been quite low. Either way, Tracy was not exactly ecstatic to see her two visitors.

To the sound of a child crying, the two detectives were ushered in and told to sit down while she took care of the baby. They did as they were told. Tracy looked good for her age. Most young whores were either ugly or so wracked by drugs that you could not really tell what they looked like. Hell, she was only in her late twenties. Without the make-up, Grant thought, she could’ve looked like any mother on the street. He wondered what could make a woman turn to prostitution.

Sitting down in front of the two detectives, Tracy seemed calm – as though she was used to dealing with the police and knew that being unhelpful only made her life worse than it already was. She didn’t need the hassle.

‘What can I do you for?’ Tracy asked.

‘We’re trying to find someone. She used to work down by the Cross. A blonde girl in her late twenties. Joanne McCrae. Do you know her?’ Carroll asked.

‘I haven’t worked down King’s Cross for over a year, mate. I can’t remember her.’

‘She was a good-looking girl. Scottish accent, maybe....’ Grant added.

‘Joanne... Jo Mac? I knew a Scottish girl called Jo Mac, but she left the streets. She said she was sick of doing hand-jobs in alleys. I think she was looking for an in-house job. You know, a brothel or escort agency....’

‘But you don’t know which one?’ Carroll asked.