Team Spirit (Special Crime Unit Book 1) (7 page)

The
chair was hard, and the pain still gnawed in her abdomen like a parasite. But
at last exhaustion overcame her, and her eyelids drooped closed as her body
sagged. In a nervous sleep she dreamed of a vast dark room where her mother and
father were, of the hallowed kingdom where dust motes flew in the sunbeams, and
which would never again hold such terrors for Larissa as her own company.

Thursday

Detective Constable
Jeff Wetherby had been walking in and out of the building for seven years now,
and his provincial sensibilities still failed to be impressed by it. Jeff
played to a fine pitch the lugubrious Yorkshireman who revelled in grandiose
Victoriana and the mossy ruins of old castles. Croydon Police Station, five
storeys of rectangular 1980s functionality on one corner of the town’s busiest
intersection, was neither of those things. The only remotely romantic features
it possessed were the address - Park Lane - and the traditional blue lamp by
the entrance, transplanted from the late, unlamented old Victorian station
across the road, long since demolished.

On
his way in Jeff paid the architecture as little attention as he did most
mornings. Following the familiar routine, he showed his pass to the security
guard on the barrier and parked in the first available space. Once indoors, he
stepped into the empty lift and pressed the third floor button.

‘Hold
the lift!’

The
issuer of the plea was a woman in her late twenties with skin the colour of
ripe chestnuts. High, prominent cheekbones gave her face an impish character
accentuated by a sharp, triangular chin and fiery brown eyes. Her long straight
black hair was tied back with a polished wooden clip carved like a bow; a few
strands she’d teased forward into a thin fringe. She had a classic hourglass
figure, broad shoulders and hips and a slim waist, although her short legs made
her look thicker set. She wore a man’s grey houndstooth sports jacket over a
mauve t-shirt, black cotton trousers and black leather shoes. A pair of large
black plastic earrings rested as daintily as such things can against the
hollows behind her jaw. Slung over her shoulder was a large black bag, and a
briefcase was tucked under one arm. She was Detective First Class Jasmin
Winter, on a year’s attachment from Amsterdam. Jeff had fallen for her almost
the moment they’d met, on the team’s first day of operation six months ago.
Jasmin did not - he believed - know this. He’d been careful not to let on, to
keep his adoration secret, afraid to be anything more than friends in case
knowledge sparked her to any word or action that could be construed as denial.
Working together didn’t make life any easier.

He
blurted, ‘Eh up.’

‘Hi.’
Jasmin’s face bunched into a smile that transformed it into a second sun. His
stomach churned. Pleasantries over, the smile disappeared and an expression of
intense earnest transformed the coal-dark eyes. She said, ‘You remember Mrs
Abernetty - the assault we worked a couple of months ago that turned out to be
a domestic?’ Her English was measured, accented, American-taught.

After
a brief guilty second’s recollection, he answered, ‘Aye.’

‘We
maybe were right in the first place,’ Jasmin said. ‘I spoke with Nina in the
canteen. I think she has something.’

‘Should
see a doctor about it.’

‘Huh?’

‘Nothing.’
He mumbled, wishing his mouth would stay shut on these occasions when it, and
he, knew he hadn’t the slightest chance of impressing her. It was impossible,
anyway. In six months she’d be on her way back to Holland, and he would never
see her again. He should drop it. But the knowledge only added to his sense of
helpless urgency.

‘You
are a twit,’ she said affectionately, in that way of hers which never gave away
whether she’d understood or not. Balancing her briefcase on one raised knee,
she scrabbled about inside and handed him some crumpled notes. From the state
of them, they’d been scribbled over breakfast. He took them, adjusting his
focus to Jasmin’s huge, unruly handwriting, and skimmed through her resumé of
the attack on Violet McMinn. Into his mind came recollections of the other
incident, recollections that were sketchy and would need to be confirmed by a
look at his own notes. Maureen Abernetty, a housewife in her fifties, had
complained to the police of being sexually assaulted by a burglar, a claim
which, supported by her husband, she’d later withdrawn. The assault had
supposedly been committed using an African statuette, a holiday souvenir, which
the intruder had then stolen. Jeff and Jasmin had been forced to end their
investigation after the Abernettys admitted the whole thing was the result of a
domestic row, a fumbled attempt by Mrs Abernetty to get back at her husband for
hitting her, and that the statuette had in fact been broken in the fight and
then thrown away. It was a conclusion that had not felt right to either of
them, but there was nothing they could do.

‘Mm-hmm,’
Jeff said, handing the notes back as the lift opened on their floor.

‘You
think?’ Jasmin broke off eye contact, struggling to get the papers back in her
case.

‘Means
of entry in that other one,’ he pondered. ‘You remember?’

‘They
told us ground floor window, just like here.’ She patted her case. ‘There were
size twelve footprints found in the front garden, but the eldest son also was a
size twelve.’

‘You
remember a lot.’

‘I
pulled the file,’ Jasmin said. She yawned.

He
looked at her. There were dark rings round her eyes. ‘How long’ve you been in?’

But
now they’d reached the office. Jeff pushed open the door to a cacophony of
noise. He held it for Jasmin and followed her through. Work had apparently been
suspended. Sophia wasn’t around, but the only other absentee was Brian Hunt,
and that was because he was on leave. Advantage of the guv’nor’s non-arrival
had been taken by Detective Constable Sandra Jones, who was holding court.
Zoltan stood to one side and watched, arms folded, the glassy smile on his face
suggesting he thought Sandra’s bridges were well overdue burning, and if Sophia
walked in now he couldn’t care less what fate befell her.

Sandra
sat behind her desk with her feet on it. She had on a short brown dress and
blue tights, and her shoes, kicked off, were deployed at random angles across
some half-finished work. The others sat on their desks and listened to her.
Jeff booked in and went and parked his backside on his.

The
issue under consideration was DC Anne White’s leaving do. Anne had just been
promoted to Acting Sergeant and was transferring to the Met’s Film Unit at
Southwark. Next week would be her last with the team. Sandra Jones had been
opining for some time that the occasion needed to be marked in a fitting way.
The organising of most of the team’s social functions was left to Sandra, as
she was the only one who seemed to have the motivation. A date had been agreed,
and now a heated discussion was taking place as to venue.

‘I
still think the Casino,’ Marie Kirtland said.

‘I
dunno, I don’t like casinos,’ Kim Oliver said.

‘The
Casino’s not a casino, it’s a club, you brain-dead old witch,’ Sandra
reprimanded her lightly.

‘The
amount of dosh changes hands there of a night,’ Helen Wallace remarked, ‘it
might as well be.’

‘Drug
money?’ Larissa Stephenson asked.

‘Yep.’

‘Not
when there’s a horde of plods there, surely?’

‘Ha
ha.’

‘Casino’s
the best club in town,’ Marie said.

‘No,
it ain’t,’ Kim said.

‘All
right, Barkeley’s, then.’

Jeff
said diffidently, ‘Does it have to be a club?’ To his surprise there were a few
murmurs of agreement. Fairly feeble, granted, but he could have sworn one of
them came from Anne White herself.

‘Well,
we’re not hiring a hall because it’s too expensive,’ Marie told him. ‘And a
restaurant’s too civilised.’

‘Pub
crawl?’ someone suggested.

‘Could
do a pub crawl
and
a club.’

‘I
just don’t want to wear a tie.’

Sandra
said to Jeff, ‘We all know what you’d have given the choice. Fish and chips and
a couple of DVDs round somebody’s house.’

‘You
calling me boring?’ He said this rather forlornly, knowing he was no match for
Sandra’s fire axe wit. But she’d already been distracted.

She
was saying, in response to someone’s suggestion, ‘All right, votes for the
Casino?’ She put an arm up and counted with the free one. ‘Barkeley’s?’ She
looked around. ‘Fuck,’ she said.

There
was a breathless pause.

‘That’s
settled, then,’ Anne White said sarcastically, from her corner.

Five of them sat
round Zoltan Schneider’s desk. A dozen or so files and notes were piled up in
front of them, the result of Nina Tyminski’s airing of the possible link she
and Jasmin had established between two aggravated burglary cases. They didn’t
make pleasant reading. Zoltan still had his nose in a file. After a while he
stopped reading and looked up.

‘So?’
He peered through the thickest part of his lenses at Nina and then at Jasmin.
‘Is someone making a habit of it?’

Nina
glanced at the others. ‘We’ve found two other possibles.’

‘Which
are the ones you’ve rejected?’

She
pointed. There were two piles on the table. Zoltan dumped his folder on the
larger one, leaned back and said, ‘I’m listening.’

‘These
stretch back over quite a period of time; possibly why no-one’s made the
connection before.’ Nina reached out and took the folder Larissa Stephenson was
holding. She opened it. ‘Denise Cole,’ she said, ‘age at time of complaint
twenty-four, single, address Flat 1, 60 Natal Road, Thornton Heath. Crime
report’s dated the day after the incident. Victim lived alone, came home from
the cinema to find two intruders in her living room.’

‘Two?’
Zoltan cradled his hands and tucked them behind his head.

‘They
surprised her as she walked in. One of them, described as a very tall man,
stood behind the door and grabbed her before she could put the light on.’
Nina’s eyes flicked back and forth as she skimmed through the witness
statement. ‘The other man seemed more anxious to get the hell out of it. Said
something like, “Come on, you stupid little basket.” He didn’t take any part in
the assault.’

‘Stood
and watched, though,’ Lucky said.

‘Yeah,
but it was the other one who did the deed. Says here he forced her to strip by
the expedient of beating the crap out of her, then penetrated her with a silver
trophy she’d won for youth club drama.’ She looked up, paler even than usual.
‘Which he then nicked.’

‘Aggravated
assault, then, not actual rape?’ Zoltan said.

Nina
frowned. ‘By the legal definition, no.’

‘And
no-one was ever found for it?’ Zoltan combed his beard with his fingers. ‘This
accomplice.’

‘Apart
from him,’ Jeff Wetherby spoke up, ‘it fits the MO.’

‘“You
stupid
little
basket,”’ the DI repeated. ‘But Miss Cole described the rapist as tall?’

‘
Very
tall,’ Nina said. ‘She seems
to’ve been emphatic.’

‘Funny
way of putting it, then,’ Jeff said.

‘Figure
of speech?’ Lucky suggested.

‘Possibly
something else.’

All
eyes turned to Jasmin Winter.

‘My
English is not that great,’ Jasmin said modestly, ‘but if a person is very
young, don’t you say also sometimes he is little?’

They
became thoughtful.

‘So
young but tall,’ Zoltan said.

‘An
apprentice burglar with a sideline as a perv,’ Lucky said sharply.

In
the next chair, Jeff glanced at her, his hazel eyes neutral. ‘Did CSI find any
footprints?’

Nina
flipped through the file to the scene of crime report. ‘First thing Denise did
when they’d gone,’ she said, ‘was springclean the place from top to bottom.
That includes hoovering the carpet and curtains, mopping the kitchen floor,
wiping down all the surfaces and stuffing everything that would fit into the washing
machine. The upshot of which,’ she snapped the file shut, ‘no forensic.’

There
was silence for a moment, then Zoltan sighed. ‘No wonder they never got
caught.’

‘Can’t
blame her, though,’ Lucky said in a small voice.

‘No.’
He uncrossed his legs, crossed them the other way. ‘Let’s hear about the other
one.’

‘Before
our time and all,’ Nina said. The file was on Jasmin’s lap and she passed it
over. ‘Lisa Harkness, age thirty-three, divorced with a fourteen year old son,
of 209 Alton Road, Waddon. Woken by an intruder who assaulted her using a
foreign object she thought was a perfume bottle from her dresser, although none
of the ones Forensic examined had traces.’

‘He
took it again,’ Jeff said.

Zoltan
said, ‘Method aside, what links it to the others?’

‘Size
twelve footprints on the carpet and in the garden,’ Nina said, after a glance
at Jasmin. ‘And means of entry. In all these cases, McMinn and Abernetty
included, we’ve got B and E followed by sexual assault, which is very unusual
in itself. Access was through a sash or drop catch window on the ground floor.
Plus all the attacks took place in darkness, and all the victims describe a
tall or very tall man.’