Broken Angel

by Diane M Dickson

  “You didn’t, you didn’t let it happen. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Just get to work and get me a likeness I can use. You’re our best hope up to now, we need your help to find him and to get the word out, to make sure he can’t do this to anyone else.”

  Tanya nodded at Charlie, he was already opening the interview suite door. “This way, Trevor, I’ll take you down to see the police artist.”

  She listened as they strode away down the corridor, the young soldier still apologising. If they were too late, which surely they were going to be, he would have to live with this for the rest of his life. She knew he was tough, he must be to follow that profession, but she had seen the pain in his eyes and knew that he would carry the guilt for a long time.

  She picked up the phone, rang through to Bob’s secretary. “I need to have a word, quickly if I can. Is he out of his meeting?”

  “On his way back right now. If you come along, you can wait for him.”

  She felt the change, the tension eased, the way seemed a tiny bit easier.

  Chapter 32

  Tanya followed Bob Scunthorpe into his office. She didn’t sit, she wanted to cut this as short as possible, needing to get back to the team.

  He slid in behind his desk, opened the file and then looked at her. “I’ve just been with the Assistant Chief Constable.” He grinned. “He’s at home today, as you’d expect. Anyway, what we are going to do is assign mixed teams.” He held up a hand as she moved forward on her chair, prepared to argue. “It’s not politically sound to segregate male and female officers. It sends out all sorts of messages, the media would have a field day. ‘Can’t we trust our own men to work alone’ and so on. Now we both know that it’s rubbish. We both know the reasoning. But it’s sticky and difficult. So, we are going to assign mixed teams to stick together, joined at the hip.” He gave a wry smile. “It’s going to play havoc with my overtime budget, but it can’t be helped. We are going live on television in…” he glanced at his watch, “about an hour, and we are putting it out there that members of the public must avoid speaking to officers alone. We are not going to specify male. However, we need an image to go along with this. I believe you have some CCTV that is unclear but does definitely show it’s a man we are dealing with.”

  “We have a witness, sir.”

  He looked up at her now, his face alive with interest.

  “He’s with the police artist right now, we should have a good likeness quite soon. I like this witness, he’s switched on and clever, and he is tormented because he didn’t do more to help Jane.”

  “Wonderful. Well done, Tanya. Well done.”

  “It was DS Harris who found him, sir.” He nodded, approved of her honesty. “I think he worked most of last night. The team are working their butts off.” She blushed as she realised what she had said. Bob just grinned and moved on.

  “I know they are, and I’m sorry about what’s happened with this but at least when you hand it over, you’ll have nothing to reproach yourself with. Right, so, you haven’t done a live press conference before, I don’t think.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’d like you on this with me. I’ll do most of the talking. It can be a bit daunting, they have the manners of farmyard animals. We won’t take questions, but you put together a list of the things you want to get across, we’ll get our heads down with the chap from the Press Office, knock it into shape and so on. I’ll meet you downstairs at half past one. Well done.”

  She strode back down the corridor, ran down the stairs, her mind whirling, she mustn’t miss anything, she had to get this right. She had to protect all those other women. It was the weekend, the motorways were busy. They hadn’t found Jane yet, but he had taken Millie while he still held Sarah. She had to get this right.

  She stopped by the locker room and grabbed her blue blazer. It was smarter than the puffa jacket she had worn to work. She picked up the new boots. Would Bob notice if she changed her shoes, would he think her vain, shallow? She stroked the fine, soft leather, sighed, and pushed them back into the metal cabinet. She went next door, into the ladies, ran a comb through her hair and pulled it back, away from her face. She gathered it into a pony tail and then wound it round a couple of times until it was a neat bun. She pulled a few strands loose, curling around her face. She slapped on a tiny bit of lipstick, not enough to notice if you were a man, but enough to brighten her face for the cameras. She smoothed down her skirt and had a quick turn back and forth in front of the long mirror. She would do.

  She dragged out her mobile, phoned Charlie, and brought him up to date. She would have to tell him soon about the Major Crime Team; she should have done it already, but it was too embarrassing.

  He promised to move the artist along but warned her that he didn’t think there was enough time to have anything ready before the broadcast. “You’ll have to use the stills from the CCTV for now and tell them there’ll be a better image soon. We can email it to the media offices and print hard copies for anyone who can wait.” He told her that the soldier was proving pretty sure of himself and they already had a decent start. “Later we need to have a word about George Simpson. He hasn’t come back from his days off, and he hasn’t been in touch with anyone. Trouble is this picture isn’t looking anything like him.”

  She made a note. Could there be more than one man involved with this?

  * * *

  The whirr and flash of cameras wasn’t completely new, she had seen it before, had waited on the sidelines while her last boss had done just what she was doing now. The Chief Inspector had been right in his assessment of the press pack; they yelled, waved their arms about, jostled and pushed against each other. They needed them though, to make this work. Bob Scunthorpe had his say. He outlined the disappearances, the discoveries of both bodies, the concern about Jane Mackie. He deliberately kept some things back, he didn’t mention the tinsel, it was unlikely that the poor old man who had discovered Millie would have noticed it, and it had fallen to the floor in the graveyard where they had found Sarah. They did have images of the dresses, it was possible someone would recognise their wedding dress, after all. It might give them a narrower area of search.

  He turned to Tanya, and nodded.

  She held up the image from the closed-circuit cameras and apologised for the quality. She stressed they were preparing an image that would be much more reliable and to make sure that the press office had the email addresses for it to be sent on. “There will be hard copies available as well. All I can do is ask that you be patient. We need it to be as recognisable as it can be, but we will have it ready within the next hour.” She crossed her fingers mentally as she put a time constraint on the work that the artist was doing.

  When they released that, surely something would break. They were prepared for the fact that a lot of people would call about innocent men, either because they had a grudge, or were simply mistaken. They had to weed them out, they had to pick out the weirdos and the attention seekers, the ones who didn’t understand that tying up the civilian call takers, jamming the phone lines, could have terrible consequences; that someone with genuine information may give up if they couldn’t get through.

  First though, they had to get the image finished and she was itching to get back to the office, to call and chivvy them along. She paused a moment, waited to gain their full attention, then repeated what Bob had said about police officers only working in pairs. “This man is very dangerous. We believe that he has been responsible for the deaths of two women and the abduction of a third. I want to stress to the public, especially women alone using the motorway services, that you will not be approached by a lone police officer.” She had been told to avoid using gender references wherever possible. “If anyone has been approached by an individual who made them uneasy, or saw anything at all that seemed suspicious – in the toilets, the shops, cafés or parking areas – please contact us. A young girl’s life may well depend on information that you have. Please come forward if you h
ave anything that you think may be of help. But it is just as important that you stay safe. Police officers will not ask you to go with them and they absolutely will not ask you to go with them alone. Please take care.”

  * * *

  Bob Scunthorpe held out a hand. She knew that in past times he would probably have given her a quick hug, patted her shoulder, but physical contact was a minefield. He did beam at her though, and told her that she had done a sterling job. He was proud of her.

  “Thank you, sir. Let’s hope it gets a result.”

  She couldn’t wipe the grin from her face as she ran back up the stairs.

  She went immediately into the incident room. “Well done everybody. I know how hard you’re working but it’s paying off. Thank you.” She went back to her office, called Pizza Hut and ordered up lunch for everyone. It was the least she could do, it was team building.

  Her team.

  She phoned Charlie, “How’s it coming?”

  “Nearly there I think. We’re printing out a copy now.”

  “What has he said, the soldier?”

  “Well you know how it is, he didn’t see him for long, and he dismissed him when he thought he was official. I reckon he’s done his best. We can never really know, not until we catch someone, but I should think that if you knew the guy, and this is close to right, you’d recognise him.”

  Chapter 33

  Jane knew she could go two days without eating. It was easy, she’d done it before, many times. If she had water she could do more, she did three once, nearly four. Three full days and then her mum had insisted they go out to eat. She threw up afterwards but it had broken the run.

  She knew she would be dizzy, that she would feel weak, but that didn’t matter. Water filled her belly and eased the feelings of hunger. She didn’t even want anything yet.

  She’d used the bucket in the corner, she knew that was what it was for because there was a roll of toilet paper on the floor beside it. That was another advantage of not eating. The bucket smelled faintly of bleach but that was okay because it was a clean smell. The bucket had been blue but now there were pale streaks on it. She’d felt a chill ripple down her spine. Had there been someone else, some other woman using this, sitting here where she was? Had he kept them until the bucket overflowed?

  She had crawled around the loft, pulled and poked at anything that looked as though it might be loose, might give her access to the outside. She had shouted. Before she had peed in the bucket she had used it to rattle on the boards in the roof. It was plastic and cheap, it made a noise but wasn’t tough enough to batter a hole through, nothing like that. She heard the birds cooing. Pigeons, she thought, and when she shouted she heard them fly away and then, when they felt brave enough, they came back again. She kept doing it, scaring them away. Maybe someone would notice and wonder what they were afraid of. There was nothing here but the papier-mâché tray, the flimsy bowl. The plastic spoon had broken as soon as she had tried to dig around the edge of the trap door. She still had one bottle of water, she needed to save that until the hunger began. She had no idea how to do anything to save herself. She was so bloody stupid. Stupid and useless.

  She heard the ladder and backed herself into the corner. She clenched her fists and straightened her shoulders. She was in no doubt that this asshole could overpower her easily, but she would go down fighting. She would never be able to live with herself if she didn’t fight; if he raped her, she would at least have done her best and that had to be good. They had a woman visit school one time. She had been raped and she said that the thing that ate at her – that was what she had said ‘ate at her’ – was that she thought she should have fought more. ‘Give it everything,’ she had said, ‘you have everything to lose’.

  His head poked above the hole in the floor. She should have gone over there, she could have stamped on him. Next time, if there was a next time, that’s what she would do; she’d stamp on his head, jump on him, force him off the ladder. She’d kick him and stamp on his face and then she would run. But this time it was too late. She was in the corner and he was there, coming up through the hole.

  He stopped with his head and shoulders poking up like a whack-a-mole, looked at the tray, and sighed. “You didn’t eat the soup.”

  “I’m not eating your stinking soup, asshole. You can take the soup and stick it up your arse.”

  He shook his head. “You need to eat something. It will help. We won’t move on until you eat something. You can’t go home until then. I’ll make you something else. I’ll make you an omelette. You’d probably like that better.”

  “Piss off with your omelette, you pig, I’m not eating anything. They’ll be looking for me now. My dad will be looking for me and when he gets his hands on you, he’ll turn you into a friggin’ omelette.” She felt the rage building, like nothing she had experienced before, fizzing in her nerve endings, clutching at her gut. She pushed away from the wall and ran across the boards. She kicked out, as hard as she could, aiming for his ugly, stupid head.

  He’d taken her shoes. As he ducked away below the level of the trap door, her bare toes collided with the edge of the hole. She felt the bones in her foot snap, heard the crack somewhere inside herself. She screeched, as her stomach roiled and tears filled her eyes. She fell to the floor rolling and groaning. The world was a blur of agony. The edges of her vision darkened, the room, the horror, the man, receded, and she fell into the blackness.

  When she awoke it was dark, it was the pain that made her aware. He’d turned the light out and all there was to illuminate the space was leaking in through the edges of the roof where the tiles had moved. Her foot was swollen to twice its normal size, it throbbed and ached and when she tried to move, pain shot right through her body and nausea and faintness threatened again. She lay where she was on the dirty, dusty boards and let the tears roll across her face and drip onto the floor.

  She managed to turn onto her back but that was the extent of it. She couldn’t move her leg without shards of agony. She was lost. Now, she wouldn’t jump on him, she wouldn’t kick him down the stairs, she wouldn’t run from this place. She hadn’t even had the satisfaction of hurting him and she knew that now she would never be able to get away. She screamed, an animal cry of terror and desperation, and she heard the birds leave the roof with a clatter of wings. She lay back and wanted to die.

  Chapter 34

  Tanya heard Charlie in the incident room. She looked through her office window to watch as he pinned the picture onto the board they had set up for Jane Mackie. The team clustered around.

  Back in the office he slumped in his chair. “We’re sending off the digital copies. As soon as we’ve printed them we’ve got patrol cars taking them to the services, we’re going to do the town centre as well. It’s a good picture. I think that definitely if you know this guy you would recognise him. ‘Course we are relying on Sergeant Connolly’s memory being good. Fingers crossed.”

  “Have you got one?” Tanya held out her hand.

  “Sorry, I just pinned one up, I left some on the table out there. He turned to the door, but she stopped him. “I’ll go and look out there, it’s okay.”

  The team were still examining the board, Paul turned when Tanya walked up behind him, “You know he looks like a sergeant I worked with a couple of years ago. Transferred to Yorkshire.”

  “Really, can you remember his name?”

  There was silence, the tension in the room was building as they acknowledged the idea that this could turn out to be a colleague after all.

  “Keiran, yes that was it. Keiran Laing. Older than me, similar build to him in the CCTV and he had those eyes; a bit slitty, aren’t they?”

  “Are you sure enough for me to take this to Bob Scunthorpe, Paul? It’s quite an accusation.”

  “I’m pretty sure.” He seemed to be wavering and they all felt for him. If what he was saying was true, the repercussions would be awful; if he was making a mistake it would be even worse.

  �
��Tell you what, I’ve got a mate up there. Why don’t I send him the picture through and just ask him if he thinks it looks like anyone? Not lead him on, you know. Let him decide.”

  “Do we want to involve other officers? How well did you know him?”

  “Pretty well, it does look like him. You know if someone had asked ‘Who’s this?’ that’s who I would have said.”

  Tanya spoke again, “Are you sure enough for me to take this to the Chief Inspector?”

  Paul looked tormented, “I suppose, but…” He paused and looked around the group. “Okay. Let me put it this way, if he wasn’t on the job, I’d be pretty sure.”

  She went back into the office and put in a call.

  As she waited for Glenys to ring her back she stood gazing at the image, Charlie stood behind her. “It’s good isn’t it?” he said. “So much better these days with the computer imaging. They look like real people.”

  Tanya didn’t answer, but took a step nearer, peering up at the print out. She reached for it and pulled out the push pins.

  “Trouble is that they are a bit everyman aren’t they, unless there’s something outstanding, a mole or a scar. See, in spite of what Paul’s just said, I have the feeling that I’ve seen him, Charlie.” As she spoke she looked up at him, her forehead creased, she was chewing the side of her lip. “I’ve seen him somewhere, or someone who looks awfully like him anyway.”

  “Someone you’ve worked with?” Charlie dreaded the answer.

  She shook her head vigorously, “No, not that. Recently. Somewhere, hell, I should be able to remember.” She scratched at her hair, closed her eyes. “Damn it won’t come. I wonder if it was one of the charity shops, it was something like that.”

  “Best thing is let it stew a bit, think about something else, that’s what I find and then it’ll come to you.”