Shut Up and Drive: DI Ted Darling Book 4

by L M Krier

  There was not a large press presence and Ted felt a moment of disgust in knowing that the lack of a body to date meant the case was not yet of great interest to the nationals. The local TV and radio stations were represented, which might help them, although he knew that as ever, it ran the risk of inviting time-wasting callers.

  Although he disliked and distrusted the man intensely, under the watchful eye of the Ice Queen, Ted made a point of going over to the local reporter and shaking his hand.

  'Nice to see you, Alastair, glad you could come,' Ted told him, trying hard to sound as if he meant it.

  'Have you got anything exclusive for me, Ted?' the reporter asked, his familiarity grating on Ted's already frayed nerves. 'It would be nice if I could have something no one else has got.'

  'As soon as I have something, Alastair, you know I'll send it your way. For now, it's as much about asking you and the public for help as giving you any information,' Ted replied, as smoothly as he could manage.

  The ordeal passed off as well as it could for Ted. It was in the hands of the media now to see if they could bring the breakthrough they so desperately needed in the case.

  Ted and three of his team would be staying later that evening, hoping there would be a flood of calls after the early evening news. Inevitably, most of them would be of no help, just the usual random collection of disgruntled ex-wives out for vengeance, which any serious sexual assault tended to throw up.

  'Tenner says the first call is Honest John,' DC Maurice Brown said to the rest of the team, naming their local regular confessor. The man always rang up to confess to a crime as soon as there was anything in the local papers or on television.

  'No one's going to take that bet, it's a racing certainty, surely?' DS Mike Hallam laughed.

  'I'll take your money, Maurice,' Rob O'Connell told him. 'I think he'll be second after an ex-wife shopping her late and not lamented other half.'

  It was good-humoured enough and Ted let it go. It was the team's way of dealing with stress, much the same as his own schoolboy exchanges with Kevin.

  'I want two people available to answer the phones all day today, so make sure you stagger your breaks. And it could be a late one tonight, for some of you, so make sure your other halves know that,' Ted warned them.

  They didn't have long to wait for the first of the calls to start, after the lunchtime news. Maurice lost his bet, as in fact the first few calls were people reporting neighbours who they claimed behaved strangely or looked odd.

  Then Ted got a call from Bill, the duty sergeant on the front desk.

  'Got someone here asking for you by name, Ted, after seeing the news. Thing is, I know her, I know what she wants to talk about and I can tell you now it's a waste of your time. But she's insistent, won't leave without seeing you. Can you come down and give her five minutes, then I'll fill you in on the history, once you've got rid of her?'

  Ted sighed as he stood up and headed downstairs. Listening to time-wasters was par for the course on a case after a public appeal for information, but he could do without it. He went first to the desk to talk to Bill who nodded to a woman, seemingly in her mid to late thirties, who was waiting.

  'Seriously, don't give her more than ten minutes, Ted, then come and talk to me,' he told him in a low voice. 'I tried to send her packing, but she wasn't having any of it. She's called Jenny Holden. She prefers Ms. Interview Room 2 is free at the moment.'

  Ted nodded and walked across to where the woman was sitting.

  'Ms Holden? You wanted to speak to me? I'm Detective Inspector Darling. Would you like to come through and we'll find an empty room, so we can talk.'

  Once they were sitting opposite one another, Ted took his notebook out and said encouragingly, 'What was it you wanted to tell me, Ms Holden?'

  'I was raped,' she began, looking him frankly in the eyes. 'It was a historic case, it happened about twenty years ago, but I didn't know about it until ten years ago.'

  She saw Ted's puzzled expression and explained.

  'I'd been having a few problems, ten years or so ago. Not sleeping, sleepwalking when I did, very stressed, difficulty concentrating. I was working as an accounts clerk, training to be an accountant. I initially put it down to that, working a bit too hard.

  'It got so bad that a friend suggested I went to see someone; a psychotherapist. She used a type of hypnotism technique to help me recover memories, things I'd buried away in the back of my sub-conscious. That's when I learned that I'd been sexually assaulted, by a man I had known and trusted for years. It happened when I was fifteen.

  'As soon as I found out what had happened to me, I went to the police, of course. I came to this station. They were kind and helpful at first, as if they believed me. Then after they'd started their investigations, their attitude towards me changed completely, as if they thought I was just making things up, deliberately wasting their time.

  'Not long after, they came to see me. They said they had investigated at length and were convinced there was no evidence of any crime, so they weren't going to take any action. I was furious, because I knew what had happened to me. I … I'm afraid I tried to take the law into my own hands. I finished up going to prison myself, while that man walked free.'

  Ted was scribbling notes as she spoke. He looked up at her and asked levelly, 'And why do you think this might have any relevance to our present case, Ms Holden?'

  'Because the man who raped me, Kenny Norman, had a thing about sports cars. He had a little vintage MG that he'd spent hours restoring. He used to love roaring round in that. He took me out for drives in it many times. And you said this rapist targets sporty cars to go for a joy-ride.'

  'And is the man still in this area? Have you had any contact with him, or have you seen him at all since this happened?'

  'He disappeared off the radar after the police told me they weren't going to pursue any charges against him. And it was one of the conditions, when I left prison, that I was not to try to make contact with the family again, in any way.'

  'Ms Holden, as we disclosed at the press conference, our current attacker is armed with a knife and has used it. Did this man,' he looked back at his notes, pushing the notebook away a short distance so he could read his own writing, 'this Kenny Norman, ever threaten you with a weapon of any kind, or show any violence towards you?'

  'Not that I can remember. But my therapist told me there will probably be aspects of the attack which I've buried so deeply, because they're too painful, that I may never recover them. I do remember, though, that he always carried a knife.'

  Again, seeing Ted's querying look, she went on to explain.

  'He had ponies. He used to rescue them from the sales at Beeston, to stop them going for slaughter. He had a little place outside town, in the countryside, sort of, a bit of a smallholding. I used to go up there after school and in the holidays to help with the ponies. He always carried a folding pocket knife for taking the baler twine off hay bales, opening feed sacks, that sort of thing.'

  Ted sat back in his chair and looked at her. If he'd not had Bill's warning, he would have taken her seriously. Whether or not what she was telling him was true, it was clear that she believed it to be. He took more detail, thanked her for coming in, then went to find Bill to hear his version of the story.

  Bill had been at the station for years and knew everything which went on inside it. He was always putting in for extra shifts since he had lost his wife young to an aggressive cancer. There were no children and he seemed glad of the company the workplace brought him.

  'So, let's go and get a cuppa and I'll tell you the full story behind our Ms Holden,' Bill said, calling out to a colleague in an office behind the desk to watch the counter while he went on a break.

  He and Ted headed to the rest room, where two young constables in uniform were sitting with their tea. They made to rise when they saw Ted but he waved the gesture away. He wasn't much for formality, although he hated to be called 'guv', always preferring sir or boss. But
at the sight of the look Bill threw their way, both young men got up with their mugs and left the office with just a brief, 'Sir, Sarge,' before they left.

  Ted laughed in admiration. 'I wish I could master that withering look of yours, Bill. It's hard to get taken seriously when you're knee-high to a grasshopper, like me.'

  'Oh, I think everyone in the station knows well enough about your martial arts, Ted. So, what did you think of Ms Holden?'

  They made drinks for themselves and sat down at the table.

  'If you hadn't warned me, I'd have taken her seriously and sent some of the team round to have a word with this Kenny Norman, at least to see if he had an alibi.'

  'Even better than an alibi,' Bill told him, taking a deliberately long slurp of his coffee, milking the moment for all it was worth. 'The reason there was never any further action on her allegations was that Kenny Norman was born a woman. He, or she, I'm not sure which is politically correct these days, didn't have the wherewithal to commit a rape. No meat and two veg.'

  Ted put his mug down and gaped at him.

  'Kenny Norman was transgender?'

  'Is that what we're meant to call it? She was born female, went to school as a girl, then later on, decided she should have been a he. As I understand it, she took pills to deepen her voice and grow facial hair, that sort of stuff, but never had any form of surgery to change her bits, from what I remember.'

  'He,' Ted corrected him. 'If he was living as a man, then he.'

  'Of course, we could never tell Ms Holden the cast-iron alibi for why her rape allegation just didn't stand up, pardon the expression. She thought we'd just dropped the case on a whim, so she set about taking her own revenge.

  'Kenny Norman loved those little ponies of his, he spent all his spare time, and his money, on them. He worked as a book-keeper, I think that's how the two first met. She went up there one time, after the case was dropped, when he wasn't there. She at least made sure all the ponies were safely in the fields, then she torched the buildings, the hay barn and the stables.

  'The whole lot was destroyed. I think in the end the RSPCA came and took the ponies away as there was no food or shelter for them. Kenny was devastated. He disappeared off the scene. He didn't even appear at her trial. She went down for six months for criminal damage. She was lucky not to get charged with arson.'

  'But she seemed so convinced that it was true. Is this the false memory thing I've heard about? Did anyone talk to the psychotherapist at the time? Are there still records of the investigation around somewhere?'

  'It's ten years ago, Ted. I only remember it as it was so unusual. I'm not even sure there would be much in the way of a record, as it never went any further than the initial investigation. If it ever got transferred to computer somewhere, your lad Steve will sniff it out, for sure. If not, send him to see me and I'll point him at the old hard copies in the archives. Though that might be quite a job.

  'But is it worth your while to go ferreting around in an old case that went nowhere? Haven't you got enough on your hands looking for a rapist who has got the tackle to do the job? What would the Ice Queen think?'

  'It's just got me intrigued,' Ted confessed. 'How could someone who's been to a professional therapist come away with completely the wrong end of the stick like this? Is she still around, still on our patch this …' he took his notebook out to check the name, holding it at arm's length as he read, 'Dr Heather Cooper? I wouldn't mind ten minutes talking to her at some point, just out of interest.'

  'You need reading glasses, Ted, your arms aren't long enough,' Bill laughed.

  'Really? Glasses?' He hadn't realised quite how far away he was holding his notebook until Bill mentioned it.

  'Comes to us all in time,' the sergeant was still chuckling.

  'Well, now you have depressed me. You've made me feel old, as well as incapable of solving this case,' Ted smiled. 'Thanks for the heads-up, Bill, I could have wasted valuable time following this up if you hadn't warned me off. I appreciate it. Erm, I suppose it was considered at the time, but there are things someone could use, if they didn't have the wherewithal themselves …' he left the sentence hanging in the air.

  'Oh, believe me, we certainly thought about things like that,' Bill laughed. 'Ten years ago we didn't all have to mind our Ps and Qs quite as much as we do now. There were some right old suggestions put forward, I can tell you. Our Kenny was interviewed at length, and in quite graphic detail, I believe, and her house was searched for anything like that. But in the end, it was just ruled out as a non-starter.'

  Ted, Mike Hallam and DCs Rob O'Connell and Sal Ahmed stayed late into the evening, answering the spate of calls which followed the early evening news. None of them was any more promising than Ted's interview with Jenny Holden. They all took copious notes, to be followed up with some phone calls and house to house the next day, but eventually Ted called a halt and sent everyone home, himself included.

  Trev put a plate of hot food on the table for him as soon as he walked through the door and into the kitchen.

  'I don't care how tired you are tonight, you need to eat something,' he told him, giving him a hug and a kiss. 'Any progress?'

  'Lots of progress. All of it backwards,' Ted told him as he sank wearily down onto a kitchen chair. 'I think I'm losing my touch on this one. I seem to be getting nowhere fast.'

  Chapter Three

  'Got one match so far, boss,' Rob O'Connell said, to start the morning briefing. 'In Folkestone. Same MO, DNA match, the same attacker.'

  'He's a long-distance lorry driver,' Jezza Vine said confidently.

  'How d'you work that one out, bonny lass? Women's intuition?' Maurice Brown asked her.

  Not long ago, Jezza would have been immediately on the defensive, seeing the remark as sexist and patronising, at best. It was a mark of how much she had become a member of the team that she didn't fly off the handle.

  'Folkestone for the Eurotunnel Shuttle. He gets bored driving a lumbering big juggernaut round all day, so he likes something sporty for his jollies in between.'

  'Where do the rapes fit in?' Mike Hallam was genuinely interested in her theory. Jezza often had a way of seeing something the others didn't.

  'We all know sporty cars are penis extensions,' she said mockingly, waggling a limp little finger at the rest of the team.

  Ted suppressed a smile but stepped in before it crossed the line into disrespect, which he would not tolerate.

  'All right, settle down. Let's not forget that three young women have been subjected to violent sex attacks in this case. Did he use the knife this time, Rob?'

  'He used it, but the wound wasn't serious. Clearly more of a warning than anything else.'

  'Let's not get fixated on the lorry driver idea, although it's a possibility, certainly,' Ted told them. 'Don't forget, when you're following up all the calls after the press conferences, we need to know occupations, just in case Jezza is on the right lines.

  'So, what do we know about the knife?'

  Blank looks greeted him. Ted tried to keep a note of irritation out of his voice.

  'Come on, everyone. Basic police work. It's all we've got for now. The type of knife might be important; it might give us a direction to go in. Mike, get someone onto the statements and medical reports, checking that. If we need more information about a likely weapon, we can always ask Professor Nelson if she has any input. He could be ex-military, a fisherman, a butcher, anything.

  'Let's get a bit more flesh on the bones of the white board, too. Similarities, differences. Days of the week, times of day, makes of car. It's a lot of work, on top of chasing up the calls, but it's what will get us the results. Rob, let's have every detail of this Folkestone case. Do it as a print-out we can all look at.

  'And we also need to collate every bit of information we have on the attacker, from the victim statements. I'll try and go through them for that today some time. What have we got so far? Ordinary looking, average height, English accent with a hint of something else, b
ut not a strong regional accent. It's not a lot to go on. We need to think about interviewing the victims further at some point, when they've had a little time to recover from the ordeal, just in case they remember anything else.

  'Thanks, everyone, let's get to it. Steve, there's something I need you to chase up for me. Come into my office, will you,' Ted said then, seeing the TDC going red right to the tips of his ears, added, 'Don't worry, it's nothing you've done wrong or not done. I just need your help with something.'

  Still looking ill at ease, Steve followed Ted into his small office. Ted was universally known as one of the easiest bosses to work for in the division, if not the force. He was always scrupulously fair and took the welfare of each of his team members seriously. Even so, Steve remained more than a little on edge around him, for reasons Ted didn't fully understand.

  'Take a pew, Steve,' Ted told him, nodding to the spare chair as he sat down behind his desk. 'This is just something which came up as a result of calls after the press conference. Something and nothing, probably, just a loose end I'd like to tie up. It may not even have anything to do with our current case.

  'By the way, how's the dental work going? It's looking good. Is there much more to do?'

  Steve grinned self-consciously, revealing impressive new crowns to replace the teeth he'd had broken in an assault whilst working on a recent case, centred on the Hotel Sorrento.

  'Nearly all finished now, sir, and I think they look better than the real ones did.'

  Even in a relatively informal setting, Steve still found it difficult to drop the 'sir'.

  'Good, glad to hear it. Now, I need you to find out everything you can for me about an old enquiry, ten years ago, which didn't lead to any action. A man called Kenny Norman, a rape allegation. Go and see the sergeant on the front desk and he'll point you in the right direction.'

  Seeing Steve looking anxious again, Ted reassured him. 'Don't worry, he doesn't bite. And he knows more than anyone about what happens in this division. I want a current address for Mr Norman, and if it's remotely possible, I'd like it by end of play today. Like I said, it's just something unfinished I'd like to be able to put to bed.'