Shut Up and Drive: DI Ted Darling Book 4

by L M Krier

  Once Steve had gone off on his mission, Ted spent some time going over the victim statements and anything else they had to go on so far. Ted was not one to delegate unnecessarily. He always worked as part of the team, probably harder than any of them. It was another reason he had their respect.

  Reading through the ordeals the young women had suffered, he realised it was going to take careful and sensitive questioning if they were to get any further useful information from them. He scribbled himself a note to ask the Ice Queen about some victim support training. It might possibly be something which Jezza would be interested in.

  Once again, he found himself holding paperwork a distance away, and had to rub his eyes once or twice while he was working. They seemed a bit blurred at times. Maybe Bill was right and the time had come to think about reading glasses.

  Steve had come up with the goods quickly, as Ted hoped he would. Although he could now discount any involvement by Kenny Norman in their current case, he still felt he needed to know the end of the story. He wanted to find out what had become of the man. He could barely begin to imagine what he and his family must have gone through. It was little wonder he had kept a low profile ever since the affair.

  Steve handed him a computer print-out with a local address on it. Ted wondered fleetingly if the young TDC ever wrote anything by hand or if it was a totally alien concept to him. He almost pulled him up on the waste of a sheet of paper but decided against it, thanking him instead for the information. He looked at the details on the paper, again having to move it further away in order to read it clearly.

  Ted took out his mobile phone and called Trevor at work.

  'Hi. I might be held up a bit this evening but I'm still hoping to get to the club at some point. If I am running late, could you take my kitbag for me when you go, and I'll come straight there in the car?'

  As well as their own judo training session, it was also the night Ted and Trev ran the self-defence club for children. Ted hated to miss it, but he wanted to follow up on Kenny Norman. The idea of what the man must have gone through was troubling him.

  Martial arts training was how the two men had first met. It was also their main leisure-time pursuit, something they both enjoyed and were good at. It kept both men in good physical shape and for Ted, it provided an essential release from the tensions of his job.

  'No worries,' Trev told him, 'but don't be too late. I've got something exciting to talk to you about.'

  Ted could tell from his voice that his partner was bursting to tell him whatever it was, but he didn't really have the time to listen. He added it to the long mental list of things he needed to make up to Trev, if and when time allowed.

  The address Steve had given him, the last known one for Kenny Norman, was not far from where Ted lived, in Offerton. It was a quiet side road of solidly built post-war houses, which probably now commanded a hefty price tag.

  Ted parked his Renault outside the address he had been given, then walked up to the front door and rang the bell. There was a light on inside but it seemed to take some time for anyone to come to the door. It was opened only as far as the safety chain would allow, then a woman's face peered out at him through the crack.

  'Miss Norman?' Ted asked, as the information on record had shown that Kenny Norman's last known address was at this house, living with his unmarried sister. 'I'm sorry to disturb you. I'm Detective Inspector Darling. I wondered if I might have a word with you about your brother, Kenny? Here's my warrant card.'

  He held it up towards the gap. She leaned closer and peered at it, then put out a hand to take hold of it.

  'I don't see very well these days, I'm afraid. May I look at it a bit more closely, please?'

  Ted relinquished it and waited patiently while she held it close to her face to scrutinise. She looked back towards him and said, 'It looks quite genuine, but then I wouldn't know. Should I phone the police station to check you are who you say you are?'

  Ted smiled as he said, 'Please feel free to do that if you like, Miss Norman. But if I was an imposter, I would probably have turned tail and run at this point, and not given you the chance to check.'

  She handed back the card, then pushed the door to so that she could release the chain and allow Ted to come in. The hallway was dim and as soon as Ted stepped inside, he could smell the familiar scent of a tom-cat who had been laying claim to his territory.

  The woman, who looked to be in her seventies, invited him to follow her. Ted noticed that she let a hand trail along the wall to guide her as she walked. She led the way into the front room, where the light was on and the television was talking away to itself in a corner, tuned to a news channel. She fumbled for the remote and turned it off, inviting Ted to take a seat, before sitting in what was clearly her customary place.

  'What can I do for you, Inspector?' she asked, folding her hands in her lap.

  Ted hesitated. He wasn't even sure he knew himself. He just felt he needed to know how the story had ended.

  'I came across your brother's name, quite by chance,' he began, rather awkwardly. 'I wasn't working in Stockport at the time of the case. I just wondered what had happened to him. Does he still live here?'

  'Well, I must say you are more courteous than some of your colleagues with whom we had to deal at the time. You at least afford Kenny the consideration of referring to him as a man.'

  She paused for a moment, and there was a catch in her voice as she continued, 'My brother is dead, Inspector. Nearly ten years now.'

  'I'm very sorry to hear that,' Ted said, his voice sincere, then, sensing her need, he asked, ''Would you like to talk about it?'

  She looked at him for a long moment, although how much she could actually see, he wasn't sure. Then she took a deep breath and began.

  'My brother was born a girl. Caroline. He went through his school years as a girl. He felt all his life that he was trapped in the wrong body, as he put it. Our mother was very old-fashioned, very religious. She wouldn't hear of it. She kept telling him they were wicked thoughts, a sin. Sometimes she would even try to thrash the idea out of him.

  'Our mother died when Kenny was nineteen. We were living in Macclesfield, so he and I moved here and he began to live the way he felt he should, as a man. He took tablets to help him to change his voice and his appearance, but he always refused anything surgical. He had a complete phobia of hospitals and any kind of procedure. He'd had a bad time having his tonsils out when he was small.

  'He was very happy, with his work, and his ponies. Children used to come to see the ponies. He loved having them around. In some respects, he was more at ease with children than grown-ups. He was highly intelligent, very articulate, just not socially very adept. Everything was fine.

  'Then, just over ten years ago, the police came calling for him. That young woman, that Jenny Holden, suddenly made all those totally ridiculous allegations. We both remembered her, from the time she used to help Kenny with the ponies. Then we lost touch, when she left school. We heard she'd got into trouble, hanging around with the wrong crowd, drinking, taking drugs, that sort of thing.

  'The police came for Kenny and took him away for questioning. Kenny was always a very private person. It was excruciatingly difficult for him, talking about himself. Of course, when he told them the truth, your colleagues insisted he was examined by a police surgeon, which Kenny found mortifying.

  'Things were said and done to him which should never have been. He was traumatised. And when your colleagues had finished with him, they just let him go. No word of apology, no explanation, nothing. I still have no idea why Jenny said such dreadful things about him, nor why she went on to do what she did to the ponies. That's what finally broke Kenny. Those ponies were like his children.'

  She paused in her narrative and looked at Ted, tears in her eyes, trying to regain her composure.

  'I'm so sorry, please excuse my lack of manners, I haven't even offered you a drink of any kind, Inspector. A cup of tea? A small sherry, perhaps?'
/>   'No, thank you, it's very kind, but no,' Ted assured her, then waited for her to continue.

  'When Kenny was at school, still living as a girl, he had a pen-friend, Marie-Anna, in Luxembourg. They visited one another, and after he became Kenny, they stayed good friends and continued to visit. Marie-Anna was a wonderful, compassionate friend to him, very supportive.

  'Kenny suffered a serious depression when it all happened. He was on strong medication and for a time he couldn't even get out of bed. As soon as he felt able, he decided to go and stay with Marie-Anna in Luxembourg, just to get away from it all. Not long after he arrived there, he went for a walk in the city. He jumped off the high bridge, the Pont Adolphe. Because he died out of the country, I kept it quiet. I just let people believe he had moved away.'

  There was a catch in her voice as she finished her story. They sat in silence for a moment, and Ted realised for the first time that there was a softly ticking clock on the mantelpiece. It broke the sombre quiet of the moment by striking the half-hour.

  'Miss Norman, I am very sorry to hear that, and so sorry for the way in which you and your brother were treated by the police. When I heard of your brother's case, I just felt I needed to know what had become of him. Please accept my condolences.'

  'You're very kind, Inspector,' she replied. 'I wish you could have been there at the time. I'm sure you would have seen to it that Kenny was at least treated with dignity and respect. I can show you the death certificate, I have it here in the bureau.'

  'Please don't trouble yourself, there's really no need …' but she stood up and made her way over to an antique writing desk in a corner of the room.

  'I don't wish to sound discourteous, Inspector, since you have shown me nothing but consideration and compassion. But my brother and I learned the hard way that police officers accept nothing at face value and want physical proof of everything they are told. Everything. So here you are.'

  She handed him an official document. It was in French, but even Ted, who was not a language scholar, could make out the essentials.

  Ted felt he really needed his martial arts session that evening after the distressing talk with Kenny Norman's sister. He was pleased to finish in time for it. His mood was sombre, after hearing the story, but he put on his professional face for the children, then used his own training session to burn off some of the day's frustrations, sparring fast and furiously with Trev.

  In the car on the short drive home, he smiled at Trev and said, 'I've had a pretty rough day, so let's hear this good news you're bursting to tell me.'

  Trev turned to him, grinning from ear to ear.

  'Geoff's offered me the chance to buy into the business, as an equal partner. He's told me before he's leaving me his share when he dies, as they have no children. But he's offering me a chance to join the business as an equal partner now.'

  Ted put a hand on his arm and patted it fondly. Trev adored his work in a motorcycle dealership. Despite being fluent in several languages and scarily intelligent, all he wanted to do was to be with his beloved bikes.

  'Fantastic. If that's what you want, bring the accounts home for me to look at, let me know the costs involved and I'll talk to the bank. Let's do it!'

  Chapter Four

  'An update on the knife, boss,' Rob O'Connell told Ted and the team the following morning. 'All four victims describe it as a stiletto, about six inches long, and two of them say the blade was black.'

  Ted felt his blood run cold. 'Sounds like a Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife.'

  'So you're saying our man is military, or ex-military?' Mike Hallam asked him.

  'I'm not jumping to any conclusions. It's an easy enough weapon to get hold of on the Internet. Alarmingly so. I'm just hoping our man isn't fully trained in how to use it. All four injuries to date have been slash wounds, rather than stabbings, haven't they?'

  Rob checked his notes for the Folkestone case and nodded his head in confirmation.

  'If that's what it is, it's a close combat fighting knife, designed to deliver a quick and lethal stab wound. It will go through the rib cage like the proverbial knife through butter. Which makes it even more imperative that we find this man, and soon,' Ted told them.

  When he'd been a Specialist Firearms Officer, Ted had trained with an ex-SAS man, so he knew all about knives and how they could be used, as well as how to defend himself against them. 'How are we getting on with following up the phone calls? Any likely suspects yet?'

  'Not so far, boss,' Mike told him. 'We can certainly eliminate a few though, completely the wrong size and build to match any of the witness statements. Also some have a record and their prints and DNA don't match our attacker's. Plus, one of them is away, so we can't check him out yet, and he's a long-distance lorry driver.'

  'Told you he was a trucker!' Jezza said triumphantly.

  'All right, let's not get carried away with that idea, it may be purely coincidence,' Ted said good-naturedly. 'While you're going door to door, though, be very careful. Don't go alone and above all, no heroics. Anything else to report, anyone? If not, let's get on and see if we can make a bit of progress.'

  Ted reached for his phone when he returned to his own office. Although not connected to the current case, the Kenny Norman affair was still troubling him, particularly the absolute certainty Jenny Holden had shown that she had been raped by the man. Ted felt the need to find out more, and he knew someone who could hopefully help him.

  'Carol? It's Ted Darling,' he said, when his call was answered.

  'Ted! Nice to hear your voice. How are you?'

  'I'm fine, it's not for another appointment for me,' he hastened to reassure the therapist who had counselled him through a difficult time. 'I just thought you might possibly be able to help me with something which has come up in the course of a current case.'

  'I don't do psychological profiling or anything like that, if that's what you're looking for,' she said guardedly.

  Ted laughed. 'I'm glad to hear it. I have yet to be convinced of its value. I think what I'm interested in is possibly something called False Memory Syndrome. Would you have any time to spare to help me with a few questions about it? Any time soon?'

  'Well, I have just half an hour between appointments today so I was going to eat at my desk. If you were to come bearing edible gifts, I could supply drinkable coffee and see what I could do to help you?'

  'You have a deal. What do you like to eat?'

  'I probably shouldn't use the expression to a police officer, but I would kill for a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel, after the morning I have lined up.'

  'Consider it done,' Ted said, thankful she had chosen something he knew where to buy locally. It was something he sometimes bought for himself as a treat, from a nearby deli. 'What time?'

  'One o'clock. See you then.'

  Ted was punctual, as always. Carol had not quite finished her last consultation of the morning so he waited patiently, relieved that for once he was not going to have to talk about himself.

  Once Carol had ushered her client out, she turned to Ted with a warm smile and shook his outstretched hand.

  'Come in, Ted, come and take a seat. I'll get the coffee on.'

  Ted waggled a paper bag in front of her and said, 'I come bearing bagels, as promised.'

  She nodded to him to sit down, while she prepared the coffee. Ted looked around at the familiar muted tones of sage and cream. He sat down in the comfortable leather chair, where he'd spent many an hour trying to talk through his difficulties.

  Carol put coffee, mugs, sugar and milk in front of them and helped herself to a bagel.

  'So, tell me what I can help you with,' she said, then took a bite of her lunch. 'Oh my, this is good. I've been day-dreaming about it ever since you called. I wouldn't have had time to go out and get myself one, so this is bliss.'

  Ted quickly outlined his visit from Jenny Holden and her evident belief that she really had experienced the rape, which she had only found out about under hypnosis.
He told her all the details of the affair, knowing she was bound by confidentiality.

  Carol interrupted him. 'Ted, I really can't comment on a fellow professional or an individual case of which I have no knowledge. If you're asking me in broad terms if False Memory Syndrome exists, then yes, it does, it can happen. Or,' she looked at him searchingly, 'are you actually asking me if your own memories of past events could be false?'

  Ted shifted his weight awkwardly in his seat. She was uncomfortably close to what had been preying on his mind.

  'Are you getting a bit too personally involved in this line of enquiry?' she asked him gently.

  'I'm trying not to,' he told her. 'It's just that I've not come across this type of thing before and it's rather unsettled me. Is it common, false memory?'

  'Not common, no, but well documented. I can email you a few links of things to look at for reference. There's a British society for it, with a website, which publishes a lot of interesting information. It's not my field of expertise, but it is something I've looked into from time to time.'

  She paused for another bite of the bagel and some coffee, then went on, 'As for your own memories, that's a different thing entirely. You were never hypnotised by me and I assume it's unlikely that you ever were by anyone else. It is my professional opinion that what you discussed with me is what actually happened to you.

  'As I said, I cannot comment on this other case, nor on the person carrying out the therapy. That would be improper and unprofessional of me. But you have told me that the young woman concerned had problems with alcohol and drug abuse in her past. It is therefore a possibility that those things may have been a contributory factor in what happened in her case. That can sometimes happen, from what I do know of the condition.'

  'But is it theoretically possible for someone using hypnosis or other techniques to plant an idea in a person's mind, which then becomes a certainty?'