Authors: Neil White
Carson nodded his agreement as they headed away from the atrium and towards the Incident Room. Everyone was already lined up and waiting for them, and so Carson went straight to the front as Laura made her way to the back. The front two rows of desks were occupied by those keen to be spotted, the shirts pristine, pastel colours and bold ties, one uniform replaced by another. Joe sat behind Carson, in a corner, to observe, as always. The room was full, all the door-to-door detectives coming back for the press conference debrief, and everyone was attentive and quiet. The discovery of the body was still too new, and so no one wanted to break rank and crack a gag, although she guessed that the respectful silence wouldn’t last to the end of the next day.
‘Two murders in less than a month,’ Carson said, and he banged the whiteboard behind him with the flat of his hand. ‘We’ll get the blame for the second one after not catching him first time round. Remember that,’ and he pointed around the room, his finger going to each face. ‘If you miss something, you might be explaining it to the High Court, because Kinsella,’ and he jerked his thumb in Joe’s direction, ‘he reckons that this isn’t going to end here.’
Carson looked around the room slowly. The detectives had settled into clusters, with those who had been knocking on doors separate from those who had been with the extended family and friends, and they shuffled nervously as Carson met their gaze, one by one.
‘So has anyone got anything?’ Carson shouted at the room, prowling along the front, his paces making the photographs taped to the whiteboard flutter as he went past.
No one spoke at first, just exchanged glances, but then someone just in front of Laura, a small man with a crew cut and moustache, coughed and strained his neck so that he could be seen.
‘We did the houses that back onto the scene,’ he said. ‘It’s busy down there. The local kids use the path as a mini-moto run, buzzing round most nights. And if it isn’t them, it’s kids boozing in groups. Some of the residents have had abuse when they’ve looked out of their windows, been called paedos and things like that, and so they might not have noticed any noise.’
‘But if it’s busy, maybe the body hasn’t been there as long as it looks,’ Carson said. ‘We can check that in the post-mortem.’
‘Oh yeah, we got a call on that,’ said another voice, and a post-it note was passed forward. ‘Tomorrow morning. The doc didn’t want to rush it, so he’ll do it first thing and take as long as we need.’
‘Who have we got?’ Carson asked.
‘Doctor Pratt,’ the same voice said.
Carson nodded approvingly, and then he pointed to the detective who’d spoken first and asked him, ‘Did anyone make you suspicious?’
‘From the houses?’ the detective said, and then shook his head as he answered his own question. ‘No. Just normal young families.’
‘Do you know how abnormal the killer looks, or who he lives with?’ Carson said, his eyes wide.
Laura saw the embarrassment creep up the back of the detective’s neck, a blush to match his lilac shirt.
‘No, I don’t,’ the detective replied.
‘So run everyone’s name through the computer, and see if anything pops up,’ Carson said. When the detective looked to his colleague, who had suddenly developed an interest in the floor, Carson added, ‘You did get everyone’s name, didn’t you?’
The detective looked down.
‘Fucking hell,’ Carson said, and slammed his hand on the whiteboard. One of the photographs slid off. ‘That’s your next job,’ he barked. ‘Go back and get everyone’s details, and then run them, see what you get. Convictions, intelligence, incident logs. And look for any link to either of the dead women or their families!’
Carson pointed to two young detectives standing next to Laura. ‘I want you two to go through the Sex Offenders Register,’ he said. ‘Visit everyone on it who targets women. Forget about the child porn and kiddie fiddlers. I want the flashers, the gropers, the closet cameramen. If they haven’t got an alibi for either death, then they’re suspects.’
‘And look for violence,’ Joe said. ‘The flashers should be the first stop on the list. Ask around, speak to the beat cops and PCSO’s, see if they can think of anyone who is dangerous but hasn’t been caught yet. And concentrate on white offenders.’
‘Why is that?’ someone asked.
‘Common sense,’ Joe said. ‘The victims were white. The girl this morning was found in a white area. An Asian man would stand out, be remembered, wouldn’t venture onto that estate. So a white man is most likely.’
A female detective put up her hand. Laura recognised the glossy blonde hair and the frosty body language. It was Rachel Mason, sitting in the middle of the room. Laura had crossed her before, except that now Laura was a sergeant and Rachel was still a constable.
‘I spoke to the extended family,’ Rachel said. ‘They know what Jane’s parents do, but they say that Jane was different, not part of that set-up. She worked for a travel agent in town and was just trying to make her own way.’
‘Boyfriend?’
Rachel shook her head. ‘They split up a couple of months ago, but nothing in it. Childhood sweethearts who grew out of each other.’
‘If the wider family don’t know of a link between the two women, we can leave them alone for a while,’ Carson said. ‘The Jane Roberts murder is linked to the murder of Deborah Corley. We need to find out what it is that links the two women.’
‘We got a nod from an informant that Don Roberts has already put out a reward,’ said a voice at the side of the room. ‘Fifty grand, so I was told.’
‘Great,’ Carson said, rolling his eyes. ‘The security racket must be doing well. How do these people grow fortunes?’ He shook his head. ‘The back streets of Blackley will be crawling with amateur sleuths right now, none of them fit for fucking purpose. Can you imagine what it will be like when all the local smackheads think they’ve got a path to easy money. Don will get more names than fucking Lloyds.’
‘Maybe we can persuade the drug squad to muscle a bit of info out of someone,’ the same voice said. ‘You know how it is, they’ll do anything to stay out of a cell.’
‘Try everything,’ Carson said, and then turned his attention to two detectives sitting at a table near the front. ‘Anything from the phones?’ he asked.
The detectives shook their heads in sync with each other. ‘Nothing yet, except people telling us that it might be gangland, because Jane’s father is a crook,’ one said.
‘Has anyone else got anything that can take this investigation forward?’ Carson asked, his eyes scanning the room. No one answered.
Carson sighed. ‘So it looks like it’s forensic results or nothing for the moment. Anyone got an idea?’ The room stayed silent, and so Carson clapped his hands. ‘Come on, back to it. Phone your families and apologise that you’ll be out for most of the night. If they moan, just be glad that they’re alive.’
Carson grabbed his jacket and nodded at Joe. He raised his hand to the back of the room, towards Laura, gesturing at her to follow. As she excused herself past small muttering cliques, Rachel Mason flashed her a glance, but Laura turned away. She didn’t have time for squabbles about Rachel being left out.
As Laura got close, Carson said, ‘We’ll check whether anything was found at the scene, and then you go to Mike Corley’s house. We need to find out more about Deborah. People might remember more now, because the news is less fresh for her. Go over again where she went, who she slept with, who she knew. We might just find a link between the two women.’ He turned to Laura. ‘Try and speak to Corley’s wife alone, if you can. Talk to her as a mother, not as a copper. You might just get something from her that way.’
Carson walked out of the Incident Room, Laura and Joe following behind, and turned into a room that sometimes got commandeered for meetings with community leaders and criminal justice committees. It was the murder squad’s turn now. There were two officers in there, supervised by a young female Crime Scene Investigator, cataloguing everything that had been collected from the scene. The table was filled with exhibit bags, and notes were being made about which officers had yet to provide statements detailing their finds. This was part of the routine, the exhibit trail, some of the grunt work done by those away from the frontline. A CSI used to be called SOCO, Scenes of Crime Officer, but American TV had glammed them up.
‘Is there anything that looks promising?’ Carson asked.
One of the officers looked up and shrugged. ‘You’re the detective.’ When Carson scowled, he added, ‘Just the usual scrap metal collection. Ring pulls, bottle tops. There are some cigarette ends, but they are so mashed up that I can’t see them being much use.’
‘Get them analysed anyway,’ Carson said.
‘I’ll speak to forensic submissions, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope,’ the CSI said. ‘The budget doesn’t stretch to speculative stuff these days.’
Carson looked surprised. ‘Doesn’t it?’ he said, grimly. ‘Well, I don’t fucking care about pulling back, because when we have another death on our hands, the case will get even more expensive. Tell forensic submissions that if they refuse to send anything off that later proves to be crucial, I’ll give their number to the next victim’s parents so that they can explain why they couldn’t afford to save their daughter.’
The crime scene investigator looked at the floor, clearly not wanting to take Carson on.
‘We’re not looking at someone who hung around there, waiting for a victim,’ Joe said, his voice soft and quiet. ‘It’s a dumping ground. We’re looking for snags of cloth, that kind of thing.’
The two police officers shook their heads. ‘Nothing like that, but if the body had been there for a while, he hadn’t, and his traces might have gone.’
Carson turned away. ‘I guessed as much.’
‘So what now?’ Laura asked.
Carson sighed in frustration. ‘Unless Mike Corley can tell you anything new, we wait for the phone call that gives him up, or for the post-mortem to yield something. Apart from that, we just hope.’
Jack was sitting in his car, writing the story on his laptop, his phone plugged into the side, acting as a modem. This way he could send the story straight to Dolby when he had finished. He was by the Whitcroft estate again, feeling like he was spinning plates as he moved between court and assignments, looking again for quotes for the feature.
He sat back and stretched his fingers. The murder story was done. It was short, with just a description of the murder scene and the bare details from the press conference, padded with the ongoing grief of the Corley family. It told everyone what they needed to know, that a young woman from Blackley had been murdered. The police hadn’t released much else.
He read through it, saved it, attached it to an email, and then sent it to Dolby’s inbox, all from the front seat of his tired old Triumph Stag.
He looked at the estate through his windscreen. It was nearly six, and he saw people returning from work, some of the ones he had seen earlier in the day. There were some kids ahead, in their late teens, sitting on bikes and watching young girls walk past with their prams. The soft glow of a cigarette passed between them, although from the way their fingers snapped for their turn it seemed that the paper contained more than just tobacco. People who spotted them in time crossed over when they got near. The tallest of the group leaned to talk into a white van that had pulled up alongside them. It was the same security van Jack had seen earlier. He noticed letters on the side this time: DR Security.
Jack put his laptop away and strapped the bag over his shoulder as he climbed out of his car. There was no point in putting it into his car boot, because the group had seen it. He pulled out his voice recorder and hovered near the shops. Every time someone came near, Jack asked if he could speak to them about the problems on the estate, or whether the police were doing enough, but no one seemed keen. They just rushed into the shop or kept on walking. It looked like he was going to have to do the door-to-door stuff. He glanced over to the group again. They were still watching him.
Jack headed away from the shops and towards the first cul-de-sac. He was about to knock on the first door when he heard the sound of tyres scraping along the kerb behind him. As Jack looked around, he saw that it was the white security van.
‘Can we help you?’ the driver said through the open window, his hands fat around the steering wheel.
Jack bent down to his level, and said, ‘No, I’m fine.’
The driver and his companion were just as Jack expected, bulky and wide-necked and tattooed.
‘I’ll put it a different way,’ the driver said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Just doing my thing,’ Jack said.
‘Which is what?’
‘It’s my thing, not yours, which sort of ends the conversation,’ Jack said, and then he turned to walk away.
Jack didn’t expect the conversation to end there, but he had to let them know that he wasn’t intimidated.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ said a different voice.
Jack turned around and saw that they were both out of the van now. They were dressed identically: black trousers and black silk jackets, with hair shaved to the scalp. The second man was much shorter than the driver, and one thing Jack had learned from seeing drunken pub fights is that the big man will hurt you the most, but the little man is more likely to start the fight.
‘Okay, let’s talk,’ Jack said. ‘Who pays for your services?’
The two men exchanged glances, less confident now. ‘What do you mean?’ the taller one said.
‘Just that,’ Jack said, and he gestured around him. ‘These people aren’t millionaires, but they’ve got you two looking after them. The police come free. Why you?’
‘We’re here all the time,’ the tall one said again. ‘The police only ever come round with search warrants or to arrest people. You never see them just looking after people.’
‘Very noble of you,’ Jack said. ‘Who is
DR
?’
The two men exchanged glances again, until the taller one said, ‘Look it up, if you’re that interested.’
Jack nodded. ‘I think I am. Thank you.’