by Anita Waller
‘They’re in the lab, liquid being checked, and glasses fingerprinted. You’ll know if we’ve any print matches within the hour, the liquid within two hours. We’re pulling out all the stops on this, Dave. I’m moving on to our lady. I’ve already fingerprinted her, so you may know pretty quickly who she is.’
‘Concentrate on her knees, will you, Ray. Last time she was caught on CCTV, this lady had soil on her knees and legs, and as she’s still wearing the same dress, I’m hoping she didn’t wash it off before she was killed. And the soil should match the sample from the Walmsley scene.’
‘Will do,’ Ray said, and wheeled Grausohn’s trolley back to the fridge. ‘I’ll give you a ring when I’ve finished the next one.’
‘Thanks.’ Dave Roberts left the room before Ray pulled out the body; she was decomposing, and the smell wasn’t Roberts’ favourite. He knew Ray would still have her on the table when he next came down, and once a day was enough.
As Roberts headed back up to his office, Heather waved him over. ‘These addresses, sir. They don’t make sense. The addresses are genuine, but nobody with these names live there.’
‘All five of them?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Let me look.’ She handed him the copy of the list, and he quickly read down it. Five names. Five.
He moved to his office, still holding the list, and placed it flat on his desk; David Williams, Max Williams, Fay Jones, Dylan Cartwright and Scott Layton. Four male names, one female name. Five names in total. A gang of five.
His gang of five. His children he was trying desperately to protect, from somebody who had managed to kill one and injure another.
Why the name changes? He had no doubt that this list represented the remaining kids, but why?
He called in Heather and handed the list back to her. ‘It’s fictitious,’ he said.
‘I’d gathered that,’ she laughed. ‘Nothing matched.’
‘Okay, let’s suppose these aren’t adults on this list. Now, does that suggest anything?’
She looked at the list once again, although Roberts guessed she already knew it by heart. ‘Five kids,’ she muttered. ‘Oh my God! Five kids! Our kids!’
‘I can assure you, Heather, I have had no children with you,’ he said with a smile, ‘but I know what you mean. Our kids who found Vinnie Walmsley’s body, our five kids. I have no idea of the significance of this, not yet, anyway, but I’m sure we’re on the right track. The Christian names on the list have the same initials as our five.’
He sat down at his desk and hit the space bar on his keyboard. The computer sprang into life. He typed in his password and saw he had mail.
Results were starting to come in, and fingerprints had been found on both glasses. The one with liquid in it, which proved to be whisky with nothing added, bore the fingerprints of the deceased. The other glass bore a set of fingerprints traced to Kenneth Lancaster.
‘Yes!’ Roberts punched the air. ‘I knew that bastard was involved in all of this.’
He repeated the results to Heather, and she said, ‘I wonder if they’ll find his fingerprints on this as well,’ indicating the list of names and addresses.
‘The original’s been sent down, so the results could be here now. In itself, it’s a document that doesn’t mean anything, everything on it is false, but fingerprints will tell us a lot.’
He opened up a second email to find that the black and white dressed female lying on a table in the morgue was a lady called Johanna Fleischer and known to German police as well as English forces. Prostitution and drugs had brought her into contact with both police forces, hence her fingerprints being on file.
Three Germans, Roberts mused. Grausohn, Johanna Fleischer and Gerda Bauer. And Johanna’s body had been found mixed in with refuse from the Cardale Apartments, so who had killed her? Grausohn?
Or did Grausohn employ others to do the dirty work? His gross size would preclude him from actually committing such acts; he wouldn’t have the agility required. Fleischer had looked to be an extremely fit lady, so unless a bullet had killed her, he didn’t think Grausohn was in the frame for the job, maybe just the instructions.
A third email confirmed there were no fingerprints anywhere on the list of names, other than Grausohn’s.
Roberts picked up the phone and rang through to the morgue.
‘Dave, I was going to ring you. You might want to pop down.’
‘On my way.’
He stopped outside the doors of the autopsy suite and put a smear of Vicks under his nose. Even after that precaution, he could sense the smell as he walked through the doors.
‘Ray? You have something?’
‘I do. She had sex, either pre-mortem, or post-mortem. Very close to the time of death, anyway; we’ve been able to harvest a significant sample of seminal fluid. It’s been sent for DNA analysis. We found traces of saliva on her breasts, and that’s also been sent for analysis. Off the record, I’m inclined to think the sex was post-mortem, because whoever killed her tried to get rid of her undergarments. If the sex had been before she died, she would have put them back on. There was no seminal fluid on the white undergarments. We can link those panties to her, because there was a small discharge stain. It’s also gone for testing, to provide you with that confirmation. And I did find soil on her knees, so that’s gone off to be compared to the soil we took from the Vinnie Walmsley scene.’
‘She was called Johanna, Johanna Fleischer.’
‘I’ll tag her properly, then. I’ve not checked my emails yet.’
‘We’ve also got fingerprint results on the glasses. The empty glass had prints from a person of interest, Kenneth Lancaster. The liquid in the other glass was whisky, nothing added.’
‘Are things any clearer?’
‘Not really. We know that it took two people to push Grausohn over, but we’ve only got one person’s fingerprints. Who else was there? Maybe the person who had sex with Johanna? I need that result urgently, Ray. I don’t want to pick up Lancaster, until we know who the partner is. I don’t want this second man doing a runner. I want them at the same time.’
And he wanted them both in a line-up, with young Daryl viewing the faces.
It was several hours before they had results from the semen. Thomas Raines. And the soil on Fleischer’s knees matched exactly the soil taken from the Walmsley crime scene. Suddenly, science was giving them answers.
‘What the fuck? Craig! I need to know everything about a Thomas Raines. He must be on file, because they’ve got his DNA.’ Roberts passed over the handwritten name. ‘That’s how it’s spelt. Quick as you can, lad.’
Thomas Raines? That name hadn’t come up once, until then.
Within five minutes, Craig had returned bearing printouts of his searches, and it appeared that Thomas “Tommy” Raines lived locally, not far from the penthouse recently inhabited by the late Nicolas Grausohn.
His file confirmed he had been held at her Majesty’s pleasure in Armley jail, for assault and aggravated burglary, serving twelve months of an eighteen-month sentence, back in 2002.
‘Right, Craig, you’re with me. Let’s go and get this chap, bring him in and ask him a few questions.’
Fran Raines saw the police car pull up, and she watched with almost an air of detachment. Since Kenny had told her about Tommy, she’d not felt well, almost as if she wasn’t in this world. He’d brought lots of money for her, but all she wanted was her Tommy, or at least his body, so that she could say goodbye properly.
Perhaps that was what the police were there for – to tell her that Tommy had been washed up on Dover Beach. She didn’t stand but watched them walk up her path. She waited for the knock, then the open letterbox; Thomas Raines was the name shouted.
At that point, she stood. Why would they be shouting his name if they had found his body? It didn’t make sense.
Craig, looking through the letterbox, saw her walk out of the lounge door and down the hallway. ‘A woman’s coming to the door, s
ir,’ he said quietly.
The door opened a few inches and then stopped. The chain was on.
‘Yes?’ she said, and Dave Roberts stepped forward, holding out his warrant card for her to inspect.
‘DI Roberts, ma’am. We’d like to speak to Thomas Raines, please.’
Chapter 23
Fran hesitated for a moment, then closed the door slightly and removed the chain. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘Are you Mrs Raines?’ Roberts asked.
‘I am, but my husband is dead. He said he would clear it with the police.’
‘Who did?’
‘Kenny. Kenny Lancaster.’
‘Clear what with us?’
‘Tommy. He’s dead, but there’s no body because he was pushed… fell off a ferry coming back from France. I thought you’d come to tell me he’d washed up in Dover.’
Craig Smythe looked bemused, and Roberts asked him to find the kitchen and make them a cup of tea.
‘Right, Mrs Raines, let’s start at the beginning. When did your husband disappear?’
‘A couple of weeks ago, maybe three. I didn’t know he’d disappeared until Kenny came to tell me. I didn’t even know he’d gone to France, but that was nowt unusual. He was always going off somewhere for that boss of his.’
‘Who was his boss, Mrs Raines?’ Roberts held his breath.
‘That German bloke. Nicolas summat. Can’t remember. And call me Fran, please.’
‘Thank you, Fran. And what did Kenny tell you?’
Her hesitation was clear. ‘He said… he said that the Dover gang had taken against my Tommy being on their patch, and one of them had pushed him overboard. He gave me an envelope with some money in it and said it was to help us get back on our feet.’
‘How much was in the envelope, Fran?’
‘Twenty thousand. I’ve not touched it, though. I’m okay for now. Tommy saved some money. And I keep finding envelopes with money when I clear his things. It’s not nice chucking his stuff out, or taking it to the charity shop, but I do check the pockets.’
She took a handkerchief from her jeans and dabbed at her eyes. ‘I miss him. He was a lovely man.’
Craig brought the drinks through, and Roberts stood. ‘Can you excuse me for a minute, Mrs Raines? I need to make a phone call. Craig will keep you company while I’m gone.’
She nodded and watched as he walked through her kitchen and out the back door.
‘Brian? Take Heather, Dan and George, and perhaps one of the others that you can trust to do the job properly, and head over to Grausohn’s place. I want it taken apart. I need everything back in the office, and I want it sealed off. It’s a crime scene, nobody there but authorised personnel. And I want somebody on duty until further notice outside the door. Okay?’
‘Okay, Dave. I’m on it now.’
Roberts disconnected and headed back in to continue interviewing Fran Raines. ‘Fran, have you got rid of all your husband’s things?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’ve not touched his suits. There’s about twenty of them, loads of pockets to go through. His T-shirts and his shirts have gone. I’ve chucked all his boxers and socks, and I’ve not done his shoes.’
‘Then, I have to tell you, Fran, that I’ll be taking them with me. I’ll give you a receipt for everything that we take, and eventually, they will all be returned to you. If you can show Craig where they are all kept…’
She stood, looking flustered. ‘Come on, then,’ she snapped.
Craig looked at his cup of tea, then followed her from the room. Roberts contacted the station and asked for a van to be sent, along with evidence bags and large boxes.
Once organised, he stood and walked around the room, inspecting photographs and waiting for the return of Fran and Craig. Eventually, they both staggered downstairs with their arms weighed down by suits; expensive, designer suits.
‘There’s a van coming to collect everything. They’ll collate it all and give you a receipt.’
She nodded. ‘Have I done something wrong?’
‘No, but I don’t understand why you didn’t come to us when Kenny told you this story of your husband being thrown overboard. It’s a death, Fran. It should have been investigated, and will be now, of course. Please don’t contact anyone. We don’t want charges of perverting the course of justice, do we?’
He saw the look of fear cross her face, and she shook her head. ‘I’ve not heard anything from anybody since Kenny turned up that day, and I don’t suppose I will.’
A large van pulled up outside, and Craig let the two officers into the house. They quickly bagged and tagged everything, then handed over a receipt.
Roberts and Craig left Fran, who had been joined by her son, and both of them felt concerned by her fragile state. She hadn’t seemed to understand that a person had to be reported missing if they had suddenly disappeared. Roberts suspected maybe Tommy Raines had controlled her to the extent that she no longer thought for herself; Roberts comforted himself with the thought that she had the rest of her life to recover.
‘Let’s call at Cardale Apartments before we head back.’
‘Okay, sir. You have the key?’
‘No, we’ve got a team in, looking for anything and everything. Whatever’s happened in this case, I reckon it originated in that penthouse.’
Ten minutes later, they were showing warrant cards and ducking under crime scene tape before travelling up in the penthouse lift. The door was open, and boxes were stacked outside in the small lift foyer.
Heather was standing at the desk, her hand across her mouth, her eyes wide open, and… Roberts didn’t know what it was, maybe sickened.
‘Heather?’
‘You have to see this, sir.’ Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘If this is Grausohn’s bedtime reading… I found it in the bottom drawer of his bedside cabinet. It was hidden inside a very neatly folded pair of pyjamas.’
It was a small photograph album, the kind normally favoured by grandparents for showing off photos of their grandchildren. This was not the work of a doting grandfather.
Roberts slipped on his gloves and took the album from her.
The first picture was of a man with a rope tied around his wrists and hanging from a hook in the ceiling. He was clearly dead; he couldn’t have lost that amount of blood and lived. Roberts stared at it for some time, but he couldn’t give him a name. The second picture was of a man tied to a chair, and it looked as though it was the same location – a garage. There were tools hanging on the wall in the background, and the same tools were in both photographs.
Roberts closed the book with a snap. ‘I’ll take this back with me. With the facial recognition programme we have, I bet we can trace quite a few of these.’
‘Wait,’ Heather said. ‘I went all the way through the book. It’s sickening, but you need to look at the end.’
Roberts re-opened the book and flipped quickly through to the end. It was a picture of a little girl lying in the road. ‘Ella Johnston,’ he breathed. ‘What sick bastard would take this picture?’
‘Somebody who needed to prove to the boss that this had happened? I can’t see that huge fat man doing his own dirty work. If you look at the picture before Ella’s, you’ll see it’s a grave in some woods. He would have had to walk to get to it, I’m guessing, and I reckon carrying all that blubber, he’d have struggled to even walk to his bedroom at night. No, I think he has others who terminate people, but he needs proof, so he can drool over it.’
He flicked back to the picture before Ella’s, to see if it resembled the woods at the side of the station, but he didn’t recognise it. He did recognise the body in the grave though.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘He was pushed overboard from a ferry, was he?’ He handed the book to Craig Smythe. The picture showed Tommy Raines in a grave, covered in blood. ‘That, PC Smythe, is our Tommy. Does he look as though he’s swimming in the channel?’
‘How do you know it’s him, sir?’ Craig was p
eering closely at the picture.
‘While you and Mrs Raines were upstairs sorting through this poor bloke’s clothes, I was nosing around downstairs. There are several pictures of him in the lounge, and this is definitely him. No doubt at all. We need to find where this wooded area is and go dig him up. Then, Mrs Raines can have the closure she said she wanted. Heather, when we get back I want you to circulate this photo to all our stations in and around Sheffield. Ask them if anybody can enlighten us with the location.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right, has anything else earth-shattering showed up?’
‘Yes, lists of people, with phone numbers. No addresses. And loads of journal type books, covering transactions. Lots of cash amounts listed. It’s going to take an expert to decipher this lot.’
‘We’ll send it through to fraud. They’re the best people to tackle it. Anything else?’
‘There’s a safe,’ Brian called from the lounge. ‘Can’t get in it, so I’ve sent for somebody.’
‘Is it a legal somebody, Brian?’ Roberts called back.
‘Yep, we’ve locked Harry ‘Safecracker’ Cooper up for the duration, haven’t we?’
‘Unless he’s picked t’lock on his cell,’ somebody else wisecracked.
Roberts grinned and moved into the bedroom. He could see that Heather was still upset by the photo album, so he indicated to her to follow him. ‘Have you checked the clothes?’
‘Only a brief glance so far. We’re going to be here for ages, sir. His suits are enormous, and he had dozens of them.’
‘Did you look through the whole album?’ he asked quietly.
She nodded.
‘Did you recognise anybody else?’
‘Yes. The black and white dress woman. I’m sorry, I can only remember her first name, Johanna.’
‘It’s unravelling for the whole set-up, isn’t it? Grausohn going off that balcony has virtually given us all the answers, because we really had very little before that happened. Just guesses and supposition. Is there a mobile phone anywhere?’
