by Vince Vogel
She called the supermarket he worked at and found out that Cain had been working all of Saturday night. She hadn’t suspected him, anyway. He was too meek to become brave, even behind a gun. Maybe when he was a boy, that spirit of anger had pushed him to shoot a particular target who had personally bullied him, but he certainly wouldn’t repeat the action against seven strangers. William Cain wasn’t the type to make brash statements. He was the type to hide behind a door, not a gun.
44
While Alice visited dead ends and Jack looked for dead girls, Detective Constable George Lange went to see an old mate of Tommy Lewis’. Nick Morrison. The man Harry Dunn told Jack about.
Lange had already been to see several of Lewis’ family and found nothing but bitterness for the man. Though the story had been pushed further back in the news for obvious reasons, they’d still been made aware of the circumstances of Tommy’s death and it had sickened them.
“I haven’t spoken to him since he was convicted for what he did to that other poor girl,” they’d all said practically word for word.
A sister in Tottenham Hale talked about her brother always being weird. Did she or anyone she knew visit Tommy? Lange had asked. “No,” was the answer. A brother who lived out in Watford, just north of London, spoke of his brother’s infatuations with guns and young girls that started at an early age. A thriving collection of gun mags and pornography underneath his bed when he’d lived at their childhood home.
“Thank Christ Mum and Dad—bless their souls—weren’t alive when he went down,” the brother had summed up. “Me and the others hadn’t really had much to do with him up till then anyway. He were always a flash bastard. Plus, I got daughters and I’d never let them alone with him. If you ask me, this girl cutting his throat is his just desserts.”
The consensus appeared to be that Tommy Lewis was a wrong’un from the start. If some young girl slit his jugular and emptied his blood, then so be it.
So what would Nick Morrison have to say? Lange asked himself as he was admitted through the security gate of an abattoir on the outskirts of southern London, the place a network of brick warehouses and wooden cabins behind a tall chainlink fence.
The smell hit him the second he got out of his car and took in the warm, fetid air. It was a sweet, musty stench that made him gently nauseous. He’d parked in front of a large warehouse and men and women dressed in white coats, wellingtons, hard hats and hair nets went in and out through a plastic strip curtain.
The security guard came up to Lange and directed him into another building, a one-story brick near the gatehouse. Inside was a reception followed by a changing room of wood benches, white walls and tiled floor.
“I’m not going in there, am I?” he asked when he spotted the folded white coat and wellingtons waiting on a bench.
“I’m afraid old Nick,” the gray-haired guard said in a rusty voice, “don’t wanna muck his work up. He’s in the weighin’ room packin’ up. Got a lot on today with two in his team what’re sick. Says he’ll speak to you there. The weighin’ room’s pretty quiet, bein’ as it’s away from the production lines.”
“It’s nowhere near where they kill the birds?”
“Heck no! That’s the other end o’ the place. Why? You wanna take a look?”
“No,” Lange snapped.
The detective got changed into the boots and coat. Next came a yellow hat. Yellow for visitor. He also had to put a hair net on and he fretted about his immaculate hair underneath. He loosened the helmet as much as he could before placing it on his bonce as though he were the Archbishop placing the crown at a coronation.
Confident that his hair wouldn’t suffer too much, Lange was led back across the carpark towards the large warehouse he’d parked near. On the way, they passed a wooden building where several of the workers sat on benches in their coats and wellingtons, smoking cigarettes and gazing into space. Through the windows, Lange saw a canteen where they lined up to eat. He couldn’t imagine having an appetite after working in a place like this.
The plastic curtain led to a type of anteroom cut off from the rest of the place by another set of plastic strips. On the floor was a metal trough of water with brushes at the edges and railings at the sides. You were supposed to shuffle through it and remove any impurities from outside. A chemical stench mixed with the pungent aroma made Lange’s gut jump. On the other side of the curtain, it was even worse. The concrete block walls of the corridor oozed with heat and the stench almost felt solid now. Like you could chew the air.
They made their way along, past people wearing rubber aprons covered in gore, bits of things dripping from their gloved hands. They went through another curtain into a large room where the sound made it impossible to hear anything but the drone of the machinery. All along the ceiling, a circuit of hooks went along, holding plucked and headless birds by the feet, liquid dripping out of them. They flowed along to a conveyer belt, where people worked away. Pulling the birds down, they’d set them on the conveyor belt for someone further along to thrust their hand into the bird and pull out whatever they found, dumping it into a trough that ran along the belt.
Lange had to duck several times under the lines of dripping birds. At one point he got some of the juices poured down his back. He shivered and almost gagged.
They finally made it away from the loud machines and to a vast room that had fresh air coming in through a back door at one end. It was drier in this room and a forklift came in and out, lifting stacks of green plastic trays and taking them outside.
On a conveyor belt, men took the upside down birds that came out in a line, weighed them and then placed the bird in a box depending on its weight. Their arms were a constant whir of up and down like mechanical robots.
The guard led Lange to a tall man at one of the scales. His movements were as automatic as the rest and it looked like he’d spent countless hours maneuvering chickens from that line.
“This is the copper what wanna speak with you,” the guard said into his ear.
Nick Morrison turned to Lange with a blank look. He was at least fifty and Lange had to wonder how many years his body had left of this. The other men on the line looked much younger. Morrison’s skin was slightly yellow and his eyes a little bloodshot. He was a drinker, the detective thought.
“Nick Morrison?” Lange said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m Detective Constable George Lange. I’d like to ask you some questions about Tommy Lewis.”
“Then ask away,” Morrison replied, turning back to the line and grabbing down the next bird.
“Haven’t you got a break soon?”
Even though the chickens were now frozen in this section, Lange still didn’t like the feel of watching so many dead birds being tossed about.
Nick Morrison groaned.
“Half an hour,” he barked.
Lange was pleased to leave the warehouse, not even waiting for the guard, who was chatting with a colleague. The detective went straight outside and headed for the canteen. He picked a table at the far corner near an open window. Even the smell of the food turned his stomach, especially when he noticed that there was chicken on the menu, along with some other rather school-dinnerish looking food.
The detective constable sat nursing a can of Coke for half an hour before he saw the tall, gaunt figure of Nick Morrison come through the doors. First, he fetched some food from the canteen before sitting himself down opposite. Lange couldn’t help recoiling from the steaming plate of beef stew and dumplings that Morrison immediately tucked into.
George Lange studied him for a moment. Nick Morrison had black, greasy hair with strands of gray in it and ate the food with a hearty appetite. He certainly wasn’t coming across as nervous or surprised to be seeing the copper opposite.
“So what you wanna know?” Morrison asked.
“How long did you know Tommy?”
“Twenty years. We used to belong to the same gun club.”
“Is that the gun club y
ou were banned for life from when you were convicted of owning forty-six illegal firearms?”
“Not as many as Tommy, you could say.” He was grinning up from his food at Lange and winked for good measure.
“No. Not quite,” the detective agreed. “Did he ever show you his collection?”
“Huh! No. He never showed me it.”
He was still grinning. He certainly wouldn’t admit to knowing of a crime. In his mind, the cop was stupid for asking. Or conniving for trying to trick him.
“But you knew he had guns?”
“I thought he was boasting, Detective.”
The grin had grown into a smirk.
“When was the last time you saw Tommy?”
“Two weeks ago. We went for a drink.”
“So you were still friends with him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s just most of his friends abandoned him when he was convicted for rape.”
“It was only statutory,” Morrison corrected while pointing his gravy dripping knife at Lange.
“Crown prosecution backed away from full rape because the thirteen-year-old girl was seen as an unreliable witness. If they had of had the balls, Tommy would have done a lot more time.”
“Well, you lot got what you wanted in the end. Tommy dead at the hands of a young girl. I guess you all must see it as some sort of poetic justice.”
“Justice for who, Nick? Not for that girl. She’s been through a horrible ordeal and now she’s been made into a killer.”
Nick Morrison stared across his food at Lange before shrugging and continuing to shovel stew into his mouth.
“I always told him to stay away from those girls,” he said in between swallows. “He told me he’d quit it when he went inside. Obviously, he didn’t. I guess he was addicted or something.”
“An addiction to strangling pubescent girls, you mean?”
“We’ve all got our foibles, Detective.”
“So tell me,” Lange said, sitting back in the plastic chair and crossing his arms, “who else was seeing Tommy on a regular basis?”
“No one that I know of. I mean, I know the guy was real lonely. Used to ring me up all the time to go around his to keep him company. I never saw anyone else there and he always complained about being abandoned by everyone.”
“What about family?”
“Not his brothers or sisters, but he did mention some son last time in the pub. Which beat me. 'Cos I’ve known Tommy for more than two decades and I ain’t ever heard about him having kids.”
“That’s what we’ve got, too,” Lange commented. “No children.”
“I knew he was married before,” Morrison went on. “Got divorced in 2000, but I only knew him through the gun club then. It was only much later that we started being mates.”
“Tell me about this son.”
“I ain’t got much. Like I said, Tommy only mentioned him for the first time two weeks ago in the pub. Told me that they’d met back up lately after not seeing each other for nearly twenty years. I guess he was lonely. Wanted some company other than me seeing him once a month if he was lucky. Like you said, everyone kinda dumped him after his conviction.”
“You think this son could’ve gained access to his gun collection?”
Nick Morrison cocked an eye at the detective through the steam of his food.
“Is this what this is about?” he said in a sly tone. “His guns going missing?” Something seemed to spark in his brain. A knowing look flooded his yellow features. “And with this killing in the woods on Saturday. You think his guns are linked to it?”
“Eat your food,” Lange gently chided with a nod to the brown mess the other man was eating. “Tell me everything that Tommy said about this son.”
“Only that he held the boy when he was born. Loved him like a son until he was ten and then his bitch of a mother left him.”
“So the child was a product of his divorce?”
“Yeah. His divorce from Carolyn.”
“Carolyn Burke?”
“Was he married to any other Carolyn?”
“But we looked and saw that the two never had children.”
“I don’t know. Like I said, I only saw Tommy up at the club back then. Carolyn came up for the annual do once and I must have spent all of five minutes with her that night. Later, when I got to know Tommy, he never mentioned her. Heck, he never mentioned much, if it was personal. Liked to keep himself to himself. I liked that about him. Some people wanna share everything with you. Burden you with their problems. But Tommy just kept it in.”
“Good old British reserve,” Lange remarked.
“It’s one of the last things that’s actually ours.”
The two men gazed across at one another for a moment. Morrison went back to his food and Lange sat thinking a little.
“So did he say if this son had visited recently?”
“Yeah. That day apparently. He was meeting him at the house after the pub. He seemed excited.”
“He give this son a name?”
“No. Honestly. I never asked and he only ever mentioned him as ‘he’. Nothing else.”
“Fair enough,” Lange said, getting up from the table. “I’ll look into it.”
He was glad to throw the boots and coat off and drive out the gate. The whole way along the country lane back to the M25, he had the windows open and the car filled with a constant flow of air. He wanted to wash the taste of that place out of him.
45
Gemma Gibbs had worked as a waitress at Billy’s Pit Stop since she left school at sixteen. It’s where she’d met her flatmate, Candy Smith. Candy still worked there.
The place was built on the side of the M32 motorway on the edge of Bristol, a place where the grass was yellow and patchy from the constant exhaust fumes. The bushes coated in rubbish. An embankment covered in trees and discarded waste. The cracked asphalt of the service carpark was covered in weeds and huge articulated lorries. Fat men dropped down from the cabs and waddled off like parishioners to the wooden bungalow with greasy steam pouring out of the top. It was as though a bell had begun to toll.
Jack entered Billy’s Pit Stop through a swinging door. It was nothing fancy, as you’d expect. Tea-stained blue and white checkered linoleum led to rows of tables with plastic chairs. Men hunkered over steaming piles of fried food. Some women, too. Though he could hardly tell under the grease-stained jeans and sweatshirts.
Jack showed his ID at the till and asked for Candy. A plump girl in her mid twenties came over, wiping her hands on her apron. She had a red face, which he guessed came from all the grease and steam in the kitchen. Her long, black hair looked damp. They each took a tea and sat down in a far corner.
“You know, Gem was like a sister,” she was saying, her eyes drifting off into the past. “We got on straight away that first day we worked together. We used to have these jokes that only we knew. Like one where we used to…” She paused, a look of embarrassment coming over her face. “Well, you know. Just being silly girls.”
A smile pursed Candy’s lips.
“You know I hate to ask you this,” Jack said solemnly. “But have you ever had any contact with Gemma since she went missing?”
“No,” the girl answered straight away. “I mean, the cops thought she’d done a runner because of debt. But she didn’t care. She was already looking for a new job to pay it off. She was positive about it.”
“And you’ve heard nothing from her or about her since?”
“No. No one’s heard anything. What about her parents? Gemma loved them. She’d never let her mum sit at home worrying herself to an early grave. She’d hate that.”
“What do you think happened to her?”
The girl’s eyes glazed over and tears began to well at their bottoms.
“I think she was taken and that we’re just waitin’ for her body to turn up.”
She’d said it so definitely.
“What makes you say that?”
“Just a feelin’. A feelin’ I had since that day, when she never came home.”
Jack sipped his tea and brought something out of his pocket. He laid it across the table. It was one of the napkins inside an evidence bag.
“Does he still come in here?” the detective asked.
Candy gazed down at it and giggled, a grin stretching her face.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said.
“Why’d you say that? Surely you know who he is.”
“We never met him.”
Jack frowned at her. He’d come expecting a lead.
“Then how did she get these?”
“He used to leave them for her here at this place. We used to find them everywhere. Like under some magazines near the till or in the pocket of her jacket or outside clipped to the bins if it was her turn to take them out. It was like a game he was playin’ with her. It had to be one of the regular drivers.”
“And you never had your suspicions which one it was?”
“Of course. Loads. We made a list.”
“Can I see it?”
“It’s long gone now. This were years ago. You know, when Gem was alive.”
“You remember any of the names?”
“Only blokes we found out had nothin’ to do with it. No one ever admitted to it. And I couldn’t give you their last names because I never knew them.”
A wave of frustration flew over Jack like a flock of dispersing crows.
“Was anyone ever hassling Gemma? You know, hanging around the flat or around here.”
“Apart from the letters—which could be a bit weird—nothin’ really bothered her. And in truth, neither did the letters. She thought they were sweet. Only when they talked about hurtin’ people for her did they get a bit freaky. But even then, he was only tryin’ to protect her.”
Trying to protect her, Jack couldn’t help repeating in his head.
“Did you ever notice any of the drivers—the regulars—not coming back after she disappeared?”
“You think she could have run off with him?”
“I don’t know. But did any of them stop coming to the cafe?”
