by Dan Laughey
‘She was raped?’
‘Difficult to say – all I can be sure about is the semen on her. She had sexual intercourse not long before her death. No evidence of violence so far, but until we get her in the lab I’m not drawing conclusions.’
‘What do you know for sure?’
‘Nothing,’ snapped the doctor. ‘All I can do for now is a preliminary of the features more or less intact, such as the teeth and a small portion of the hair.’ He took off his mask and coughed into his shoulder before replacing it, his eyes redder than beetroot with the forensic exertion. ‘I won’t bore you with technicalities, but I will draw your attention to the victim’s rear teeth.’
Sant stared into the open mouth, fixed forever in a mournful gape.
‘See here and here,’ said Wisdom, using a silver-tipped pointer to indicate the relevant positions. ‘The third molars, commonly known as wisdom teeth, have been removed. But rarely do they grow to become a nuisance before the age of about twenty-two, and even then, most people put up with the discomfort for a few years before persuading their dentist to pluck them out.’
The numbers were making sense to Sant now.
‘So you’re telling me this person’s too old to be Chloe.’
Wisdom gave a slight nod.
It took a moment for the shock to sink in, then Sant breathed out and broke into a smile. He was thrilled. Positively gleeful.
The obvious question remained.
‘Who is she?’
The pathologist hesitated, his professionalism at odds with the whole bag of assumptions he was about to tip out.
‘Put it this way, my boy. The victim in front of us is as near a match to Chloe as anyone could be.’
Sant had just got over the first shock when the implications of what Wisdom was saying caused an even sharper intake of breath.
‘You don’t mean…?’
‘That’s right. What we’ve got here, God bless her, is what’s left of Chloe’s mother.’
Fresh from four hours of unbroken sleep, Holdsworth lightly pressed the accelerator of her Jaguar XJS – revelling in the purr of its engine – while Sant sipped coffee and stared blearily into the distance. It was the same dark journey they’d made three days earlier. Except this was a morning call.
Sant pressed fingers to temples and tried to meditate, to contemplate Rothwell’s suspicions of Tony Gordon. The threat of being outed as a fascist gave Tony – if he really was the extremist Rothwell judged him to be – a motive for harming Chloe. His hand could have been forced by her knowledge of the racially motivated attempt on PC Patel’s life. But where the murdered mother fitted into things was uncertain. What possible motive could Tony have for killing Vanessa Lee?
First port of call had to be Jake Downing. He was the obvious prime suspect given his relations with Vanessa and the love triangle formed by the daughter. But then there was the shifty figure of Oliver Mosley lurking in the shadows. What was Chloe’s dead mother doing in the cellar of Mosley’s previous student home?
Other unanswerable questions surrounded the round-the-world tour Vanessa was supposed to have embarked on. The state of her dead body suggested she’d never left the country, and yet her passport had been used on the day she’d boarded the flight to Amsterdam on the first leg of her great escape from the life to which she’d become accustomed. Had Wisdom been premature in identifying the body? Sant didn’t think so.
They knocked at Jake Downing’s door, rang the bell, knocked again. Sant looked at the luminous hands of his faux Rolex. Eight o’clock. The inhabitants were still asleep. He crossed into the garden and around to the side of the house where they’d met Jake on their last visit, Holdsworth cursing him for trespassing on private property. He tried the French windows and got a result. They were unlocked.
He stepped into the living room, then the kitchen, turned on the light, opened the door leading to the front, and bellowed: ‘Mr Downing, get down here fast! You’ve got questions to answer!’
A voice from above called out: ‘I know my rights. If you think breaking and entering my property will go down well in a court of law, then you’re more naïve than I thought possible!’
‘We’re not arresting you,’ called back the inspector. ‘We’ve got some news concerning one of your many lovers – that’s all.’
It took a while, but eventually Jake appeared at the top of the stairs. Slowly and grudgingly he stamped his way down, cursing the time of day. Sant guided him into the kitchen, sat him down and pulled up a chair of his own, Holdsworth inviting herself to put the kettle on.
‘I’ve got some bad news,’ he said. ‘It’s about Vanessa Lee. She’s been found – dead.’
The young man looked blank, still waking up to the world as well as a woman’s wretched fate. Soon after, his eyes glazed over as the truth hit home.
Holdsworth placed mugs on the table, the cool air amplifying the steam from the tea. It was a typical student house with a typically austere heating policy. Save money – and catch a cold!
Sant gave Jake a little space to let things sink in. Then, without even thinking about getting it wrong, he took an educated gamble on the semen recovered by Wisdom.
‘You had intercourse with Vanessa no more than an hour or two before her body was dumped in the cellar of a house on Brudenell Mount and left as rat fodder. You’re in a bit of a spot, Mr Downing.’
Jake’s eyes were watering fast. Sant could see the semblance of a pair of teardrops reluctantly, but inevitably, pouring over the eyelids.
‘You lied to us too. You said you’d never heard of an Oliver Mosley. Explain, then, why we found your over-aged girlfriend dead in Mosley’s former digs.’ The young man’s eyes were flowing now. ‘Tell us what happened. Was it an accident; a game gone wrong?’
The tears swelled into a flash flood, and Sant realised he’d cracked the cold façade concealing all that pent-up grief. He left the youngster to sob, allowing him time to straighten things out.
‘I didn’t kill Vanessa,’ he said at last.
‘Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t – or maybe you know who did.’
‘I don’t – I really don’t.’
‘Maybe you don’t, but you’re hiding something; something that happened at that house party of yours on the 24th of July. So un-hide it.’
Jake blew his nose into a tissue handed to him by a sympathetic Holdsworth. He stared into the distance for a whole minute as if in a drug-induced trance. Finally he said: ‘Okay, this is what I know; all I know. I’d had a few too many drinks and yes, I had sex with Vanessa – I admitted as much the last time we spoke, so don’t hold any of this against me.’
‘We won’t,’ Holdsworth ensured him.
‘Anyway, after we’d finished in my bedroom… I went downstairs to join the party crowd. I fancied changing the music to something a bit more ambient, instead of the cheesy pop everyone else wanted.’
‘How long before you returned upstairs?’
The man massaged his shaved scalp. ‘Maybe twenty minutes, half an hour.’
‘And then?’
He broke down again. ‘That’s when I found her on my bed,’ he sobbed. ‘Covered in blood, blue in the face. It was… revolting.’
Jake retched as the memories forced their way in, Holdsworth going in search of a mop and bucket. He stumbled to the kitchen sink and drank straight from the tap before splashing his face and drying it with a mucky tea-towel.
‘Take your time,’ Sant said soothingly, pinching his nose to stem the smell of sick.
‘I – I didn’t know what to do. I was frozen between calling you guys out and calling an ambulance, though no paramedic could’ve brought her back to life. I was about to call 999 when I saw… them… crossing the landing by the stairs, coming towards me.’
‘Them?’
Horror swept over his face as he uttered the words: ‘Chloe… and her new… boyfriend.’
‘Go on.’
Holdsworth returned with a mop of sorts. She
was in no mood for domestic chores, though, hanging as she was on every word.
‘Well, my instinct was to shield her,’ Jake went on, ‘from the awful sight of her… dead mother. But…’
‘Yes.’
‘She… knew already.’
Sant stared at Holdsworth, then back at Jake. ‘Chloe killed her mother?’
‘Yes… no… I mean, I don’t know. All I know is when she realised I knew her mother had been bludgeoned, she placed a finger over my lips, told me to swear not to tell anyone.’
‘What exactly did she say, Jake?’ asked Holdsworth.
‘I recall it word for word. She came up close to me with a face like thunder and whispered in my ear “our little secret”. Then she said “if you breathe a word to anyone I will go to the police and accuse you of murdering your girlfriend”.’
‘What did you do then?’
Jake blew into his tissue and grabbed a fresh batch to dry his eyes.
‘I – I panicked, walked out of that ghastly house, never came back. The lease was ending anyway and I’d already moved my stuff to this place, so it was a blessing never to have to cross that doorstep again.’
‘Who’s Chloe’s boyfriend?’ said Sant.
‘Who do you think?’
‘Mosley?’
He nodded.
‘You sure?’
Jake thought for a moment. ‘That’s the name I know him by.’
‘You don’t know him well?’
‘We’ve only met a few times.’
‘What does he look like?’
‘Quite short, leather jacket, round face, punk hair – not much else to say. Not sure what Chloe sees in him.’
Sant thought back to Capstick’s description of Mosley. There was more than a resemblance.
‘Do you think this boyfriend killed Vanessa?’ Holdsworth probed.
Jake shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see any blood on him. I guess there must’ve been some considering the state Vanessa was in. Maybe he changed clothes or something.’
‘What did Chloe and her boyfriend do next? Presumably they disposed of your bloody bed-sheets and carried Vanessa’s body out of your digs?’
‘Again, I don’t know. I – I…’
‘You didn’t wait around.’
He nodded.
‘And you made up your mind to obey Chloe’s orders.’
‘I was… scared, unsure what to do. Chloe had threatened me. I felt ill with worry. I shit myself… literally.’
Sant let the silence hang for a while before offering the man the briefest of smiles.
‘Thanks for being honest at last, albeit very late in the day.’
‘Am I still in trouble, Inspector?’
Sant felt an urge to punch him in the nose. He counted to ten instead. What he’d learnt in the last five minutes was more than he’d learnt at any time since the investigation had begun, weeks ago, and meantime thousands of pounds of public money had been spent, not to mention numerous people’s lives. Still, a huge slice of the truth was finally out. Chloe knew her mother was dead – whether she and Oliver Mosley were the killers or not – and she’d taken extreme measures to cover up the murder. That fact alone accounted for her disappearance.
This much was true too: Chloe had disappeared of her own accord, not anyone else’s, which marginally improved her odds of being alive.
8
I JUST CALLED…
Your name is Frank Tanner.
You were thirty-nine years old. Once.
It was the thirty-first day of October. The year was 1984. An unseasonably warm morning. Wet clothes hanging from washing lines. The way they used to be hung. From one side of the street to the other. Back-to-back bliss.
MRS GHANDI’S BEEN SHOT DEAD. The news of the day. If you recall rightly.
You remember it like yesterday…
Your usual Wednesday morning patrol. A CB call comes through, interrupting Stevie Wonder on Radio 1. Wonderful Stevie.
…TO SAY…
Millgarth Control to 2-9-7-7. Will you attend Kirkgate near to the parish church? A caller reports two men acting suspiciously, says the civvy over the radio, possibly breaking and entering a yellow Ford Cortina Mark V saloon.
You know who that caller is. It could only be Sheila. Dear Sheila.
…I LOVE YOU…
You accelerate down Eastgate onto St Peter’s Street before bearing right onto Kirkgate, the grand spire of the parish church to your left half-concealed by smoky mist.
As you approach the yellow Cortina parked on the roadside, you see nobody. But as you pull your van onto the curb fifty yards away, two heads pop up above the level of the car’s roof, the shorter of the two donning a flat cap.
It’s the backs of their heads you can see. You want to see their faces, but you can’t. The two men are leaning on the car, facing north towards the outdoor market. Flat Cap lifts a pair of binoculars to his eyes. The other glances at his watch.
They’re waiting for someone.
You wait, too. In your van.
Your first impressions? Nothing out of the ordinary; no car crime here. This car is theirs.
What happens next? Something strange. So strange, the memory of it has only now resurfaced, dazed as your head has been by flawed accounts of what happened in newspapers and official reports ever since.
It turns out that that someone the two men are waiting for is none other than your colleague and friend… Sergeant George Gray.
…I JUST CALLED…
George and the two men talk for a while. At first you think your shift sarge is questioning them. Perhaps he received the same call-out as you. But it becomes apparent he knows the men. He isn’t questioning them; he’s in conversation with them. You even see George laugh. These men are his pals.
Has Sheila framed the wrong suspects; the wrong pair of thugs? Is that so-called intelligence gathered by her and her lazy-eyed git of a workmate bogus after all? Is she leading him – and possibly George too – a merry chase?
You’re about to pull away from the curb, unconvinced by the severity of the situation, when you notice a change coming over George. He isn’t laughing any more. He’s livid; red in the face with rage.
…TO SAY…
You get out of your vehicle, walk towards the three men. The argument is escalating, the mood distinctly hostile.
You aren’t discreet enough. Flat Cap hears you coming. He swivels his neck half circle, then his whole mean frame turns to confront you. You see the black look on his face and the gun in his hand… pointing right at you.
At your belly.
Flash! Bang!
A message in a bullet.
…HOW MUCH I CARE…
You fall to your knees. Then you keel over, grab at your radio. Will yourself to breathe.
2-9-7-7 to Control! I’ve been shot. Get an ambulance! Description of gunman…
But the oxygen is running out. The mist above is sinking with you as you stare up at the grand spire, blackbirds taking flight.
Then you twist your iron neck to one side, see George fall before the echo of more gunfire.
Flash! Bang!
Message number two.
…I JUST CALLED…
George is flung back by the force of the blast. He tries to keep his footing but stands no chance. The poor sarge staggers over a wall, blood spurting out of him like water from a hose.
Then you see another uniform, helmet in hand, running towards you. Shouting and swinging his arms in all directions. Help has arrived. This is not the end.
You try to focus on the fast-approaching officer. And as his dark complexion draws closer, reality dawns. Is he who you think he is? Is that 1509? PC Patel?
Sheila and her workmate were right. Maybe they’re watching now. And that other woman with the fancy Japanese motor – Sheila’s mysterious plant.
…TO SAY…
Just when hope springs like a gushing well, it’s plugged instantly. Someone steps into your fad
ing line of vision. Flat Cap again. He faces Patel, gun outstretched, a true pro.
You cry: ‘NO!’
Don’t let it happen. You delayed too long. It’s your fault.
You should have kept faith in Sheila’s intelligence all along.
…I LOVE YOU…
Bang!
Is 1509 down? Uniform number three?
You can’t tell. By now you’re kissing tarmac, police sirens wailing in the distance as two pairs of feet flash before your failing eyes.
…AND I MEAN IT…
Police sirens give way to ambulance ones. Men get out.
This one’s D-O-A, one of them yells.
