‘Has he got any friends still here?’
Christine looked guarded. ‘One or two.’
‘Can we have their names, please?’
‘As far as I remember he knew a guy called Johnny Ollerenshaw. I didn’t really know him. And there was someone else.’ She screwed up her face. ‘A farmer from out Rudyard way – Terence Gradbach, I think his name was. Those were the only two he was really friendly with. He didn’t make friends easy. He was a bit of a loner. But they used to go fishing together on the canal. I don’t think there’s anyone else he would have kept up with – if he’s even kept up with them.’ She looked up. ‘But Peter can’t have had anything to do with this. We’re history. He’s not wanted any contact with Kayleigh since he’s gone. You’re barkin’ up the wrong tree there, Inspector Piercy.’
‘Was he a smoker?’
Again Christine looked bemused by the question. ‘What the heck are you asking these questions for about her dad? What’s this got to do with whatever happened to Kayleigh last night?’
Joanna hid behind, ‘Just answer the question, please.’
‘He was a social smoker,’ she said grumpily. ‘Not heavy.’ She gave a sour smile. ‘Not like me.’ She glanced at the only ornaments in the room: the packet of cigarettes and plastic Biclighter on top of the television. ‘Addicted.’
‘OK. Right. Thanks for that.’ Joanna smiled. ‘And his teeth?’
Now Christine looked at her as though she’d left her senses. ‘His teeth?’ she chortled. ‘Same as everyone else’s.’
Joanna persevered. ‘There was nothing –’ she paused – ‘notable about them?’
‘No.’ The answer came flatly.
‘Do you have a photograph of him?’
The question provoked both anger and humour. ‘Not bloody likely. I hardly had any affection for him after I’d gone. I wasn’t going to keep mementoes.’
‘OK. One last thing, Christine. Do you have a recent photograph of Kayleigh?’
For a moment Christine sat still, as though thinking. Then she stood up and left the room, returning with a glossy picture. Joanna studied it. She would have found it hard to believe that the pale child in the hospital bed and this giggling, heavily made-up girl in a very skimpy dress were one and the same. The power of make-up and clothes, she reflected. They transform.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
Most mothers in this situation produce a school photograph – something to underline the fact that their child is clean and pure, even when facts point resolutely in the opposite direction.
Not Kayleigh’s mother. She wanted to portray her daughter as glamorous, tarty, older than her years: inviting sexual advances. If anything she appeared to want to blacken her daughter’s reputation, not enhance it.
Interesting.
FOUR
As Barra had predicted the images from the CCTV outside Patches nightclub showed little. Most people were muffled up against the weather and stood with their heads bowed and their shoulders hunched. It was disappointing. Everyone was anonymous. There were plenty of couples walking together: clusters of girls and clusters of youths laughing, talking, smoking, drinking. All appeared perfectly normal. They ran through the tapes and then, a little before 2 a.m., they spotted Kayleigh by her silver skirt which shimmered and glistened in the lights. She was drunk. Very drunk, and staggering against a man who looked tall and thin and had a loose-limbed, gangly gait.
Joanna zoomed in but the picture was too grainy. They could get it enhanced but this was risky. Filling in too much detail could mislead people if they got the details wrong. Kayleigh had been accurate, though, in her description. The man was a good few inches taller than her even though she was wearing skyscraper heels that she was having great difficulty balancing on, sliding around in the snow and occasionally clinging on to the man’s arm. They needed to measure Kayleigh’s height plus the shoes she had been wearing to work out her attacker’s height. But at a guess he was six foot one, six foot two. He was indeed wearing a dark leather bomber jacket. It could have been black or brown. Tight trousers displayed his skinny legs. His feet looked unusually small. Maybe a size six – round about the same size as Kayleigh’s. He had light coloured hair. Not blond. It wasn’t that light. It could have been grey or light brown and again, Kayleigh’s description had been accurate. His hair was short and spiky, around half an inch all over, sticking up, but his face was bent down. They could not make out his features except for a thin mouth. He looked faintly disapproving. Kayleigh and her alleged rapist looked like any other couple, staggering drunkenly together, the man in much better control than the girl. No one would guess that the girl was a minor of fourteen years old or that the man was about to rape her then abandon her in sub-zero conditions, without caring whether she lived or died. Joanna watched the video again at normal speed then slowed it down and had to acknowledge that under the circumstances it did not look suspicious. That was the beauty of it. They were just another couple. No one would have given them a second look. But it was to be hoped that someone had. That someone had picked up on details which Kayleigh had missed.
‘Is he still around Leek?’ Joanna murmured, fiddling with the zoom-in button and trying to decipher the man’s features, which stayed stubbornly in the shadows, almost as though he knew the camera was following him. ‘Or has he gone somewhere else to try his luck? Maybe even gone home to a wife and kids?’ She looked up at Korpanski. ‘And what if Kayleigh is lying? What if it was consensual sex?’
Korpanski’s chin was square and firm. ‘We could still get him on having sex with a minor.’
Joanna raised her eyebrows.
‘Attempted murder,’ was Korpanski’s next suggestion.
‘We’d never get the CPS to run with that. He’d get away scot-free. It wouldn’t stick, Mike. Even I can dream up the defence. His lawyer would simply say that he assumed the girl would take herself home. That he couldn’t have known that she was so drunk she would pass out and lie there all night.’ She fell silent. ‘This case is worrying me, Mike,’ she said.
He looked up. ‘Any particular reason?’
‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘Only that I feel a bit sick.’ She met his eyes. ‘Rape is bad enough,’ she said. ‘But can a man think so little of a woman that he just abandons her?’
‘Some men,’ Korpanski replied gruffly. ‘Only some men.’ He looked glum for a moment. Then he brightened up. ‘Let’s go public, Jo,’ he said. ‘We’ve got plenty to go on, and a good description. Let’s flush him out of the woodwork and see what happens.’
She smiled at him. ‘That, Korpanski,’ she said, ‘is a very good idea. We’d better prepare our statement. But,’ she continued, ‘we’ll keep it very simple. A description and just say we are anxious to talk to this man.’
They dispatched PC Phil Scott to ascertain how tall Kayleigh was, how high the heels had been on her shoes and what size footwear she wore. Kayleigh was bound to appreciate the company of the tall, blond policeman.
At half past five Steve Shand called in ready to give his statement. He looked very nervous and still a little pale and hung-over.
Joanna tried to put him at his ease by thanking him for calling in so promptly but it didn’t help. He still looked very nervous.
‘Take us through last night first,’ she suggested. ‘Who were you out with?’
He answered quickly. ‘Four of my mates. It were a night out with the lads.’ He spoke defensively in a thick Staffordshire accent and Joanna guessed that Shand’s girlfriend hadn’t been too happy about his ‘night out with the lads’.
‘Their names?’
Shand looked uncomfortable. ‘Gary Pointer, Andrew Downey, Clint Jones and Shaun Hennessey,’ he said, adding: ‘they’ve all been my mates since school. We go out fairly regularly.’
‘So they are all from around here?’ Joanna asked casually.
‘Yeah. Leek born and bred.’ Joanna gave Korpanski a quick glance but his face was sphinx still. He was
giving nothing away. And she might have imagined the look of disappointment in his dark eyes. There was nothing Korpanski liked better than a quick ‘finger on the collar’. She would lay a bet his own fingers were itching right now.
‘Perhaps you’ll ask your friends to contact us,’ Joanna suggested. ‘Now, if you could run through the events of the evening?’
‘It was Shaun’s birthday. The big three-o.’ Shand grinned. ‘So we thought we’d hit the town. We went to The Quiet Woman first then wandered up to Patches around ten thirty or thereabouts.’
‘Was Patches crowded when you got there?’
‘No. The snow had kept people away, I reckon. It was pretty quiet. It’s usually crammed.’
‘Did you notice the doorman?’
‘Andy? Yeah.’ All of a sudden Shand looked concerned. ‘Why?’
‘Just curious. Did he check your ID?’
‘No. He knows us. He didn’t bother. Just gave us the usual warning to behave ourselves. As if,’ Shand grunted.
‘And then?’
Shand flushed. ‘Drinks, a few dances, a bit of a—’ He stopped dead.
Joanna and Mike exchanged glances.
Shand looked from one to the other; a rabbit caught in car headlights.
Korpanski reassured him. ‘Look, anything you say in here will remain secret – unless it has a direct bearing on the case.’
He could tell that Steve Shand wasn’t quite convinced. He eyed them warily.
‘I might have . . .’ His voice petered away. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I had a lot to drink. My memory isn’t exactly sure what happened. I probably went outside with a girl. Bloody Claire,’ he said, ‘my girlfriend. She’d kill me if she knew.’
‘Who was the girl?’ Joanna’s voice was deceptively soft and quiet.
‘I don’t know,’ Shand confessed.
‘Was it Kayleigh – the girl you found yesterday morning?’
‘Oh, no,’ Shand said. ‘It weren’t her.’
‘Sure, are you?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘We could do with knowing who it was.’
‘Look,’ Shand said, gathering confidence now, ‘I haven’t even said that I did go off with anyone. I just said I might have done.’ He scooped in a deep breath.
‘What time did you call the taxi?’
‘Late,’ Shand admitted. ‘The club closes around two. I guess it was around about then.’
Something else to check.
‘The name of the taxi firm?’
Shand looked wary. He didn’t like all this checking. ‘Sid’s Taxis,’ he said grumpily. ‘I always use them.’
Joanna waited.
‘He took me straight home.’
Joanna smiled. Now it was time to dig a little deeper. She produced the photograph of Kayleigh that Christine had given them. ‘Did you notice this girl inside Patches?’
Shand hardly looked at the picture. ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘I didn’t.’
Joanna kept silent for a minute, waiting for Shand to speak again when he had put two and two together. ‘Is that the girl that . . .?’
‘It’s the girl whose life you probably saved,’ Joanna said.
Shand looked horrified. ‘But she looks so . . .’
‘Young? She’s fourteen.’
He shook his head. ‘No. I meant lively. Alive. You can’t imagine her freezing to death and, well – ’ His blue eyes looked confused as he stared at Joanna. He ran his fingers through the short, spiky brown hair, a movement that emphasized a receding hair line. ‘Dying,’ he finished.
‘She was wearing a silver miniskirt,’ Korpanski put in gruffly. ‘That might help to jog your memory.’
‘Oh, f—!’ Shand looked shocked. Until this moment he had not connected the half-dead girl with the sexy thing who had been gyrating around him.
‘Now do you remember her?’
Like many weak men, Shand hid behind a lie. ‘No,’ he said firmly.
But Korpanski was not going to let him off the hook so easily. ‘Sure?’
Shand looked at the burly sergeant and visibly shrank. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see her last night.’
Korpanski gave him a straight, innocent stare. ‘And yet you say that the club was quiet.’
‘It weren’t that quiet,’ Shand said. ‘There was a few people – later on.’
‘Right.’
Joanna then produced the best print they had obtained from the CCTV pictures of their suspect. ‘What about him?’
Shand gave this a little more attention. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember him.’ He looked up. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘OK. He had had a cockney accent. Did you notice anyone with a cockney accent – at the bar, maybe in the gents?’
Shand shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s OK. So you went home in one of Sid’s taxis, and presumably went to bed.’
Shand risked a moment of levity. ‘Sneaked into the spare bed, more like,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to wake Claire.’ Man-to-man, Korpanski and Shand exchanged a glance of shared male sympathy and Joanna felt both excluded and resentful. What was it about men that felt they had to play the part of Don Juan?
She hauled the pair of them back to the present and away from amorous dreams that they were irresistible to legions of women.
‘And this morning?’ she proceeded briskly.
That wiped the smile off Shand’s face. ‘I got Claire to drop me off at the car park,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t get into my car. The locks were frozen. I breathed on them and tried again. Then I heard a noise. I saw a cat and thought it must be that. But I heard it again and so I thought I’d better check it out. I went towards the bins. There was piles of rubbish.’ He swallowed. ‘Just lying there. And then it moved. I was so shocked. I saw it was a girl. I rang nine-nine-nine.’
‘OK,’ Joanna said. ‘As I said, you almost certainly saved her life. Thank you very much. Now I wonder if you’d mind giving us your fingerprints.’
The broad, open grin that had melted away was replaced by a look of wary anger. ‘What is this?’ he demanded. ‘The third degree or something? I’m not under suspicion, am I? I’m the good guy here, surely?’ He looked from Joanna to Korpanski. ‘I’m the one who found her. If it wasn’t for me she’d be dead, wouldn’t she? You’ve said that. Hey,’ he continued, ‘I’m the knight in shining armour here.’
Neither Mike nor Joanna could deny this. Shand persisted. ‘I’m the cavalry, mate.’ He was appealing to Korpanski – as another man, Joanna observed. ‘I’m the one who called the ambulance and gave her my coat.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘Why are you asking me all these questions anyway? You must know I had nothing to do with the assault on a fourteen-year-old girl.’
As Shand had elected the male option Joanna let Mike explain. ‘Purely routine, sir,’ he said calmly.
The politeness didn’t mollify Shand. He still looked cheated, as though he’d had a winning lottery ticket and then found someone had pinched it from his pocket.
‘Why do you want my prints?’
‘To exclude them from anything touched at the scene of the crime,’ Joanna said.
‘I don’t think I did touch anything.’
‘You almost certainly did,’ Joanna insisted. ‘You’d be surprised. And it could save us a lot of time, trouble and money.’ She gave him one of her wide smiles.
Shand responded and caved in. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Fine by me. So long as you destroy them after.’
‘As soon as this incident is solved, Mr Shand.’
He looked mollified at that. Joanna would have been happy to let him go, but Shand seemed to want to drive home his point.
He drew in a deep breath. ‘I was just out with a few mates. All right? Having an innocent night out with the lads. It doesn’t make me a rapist.’
‘A rapist,’ Joanna queried sharply. ‘Where do you get that from?’
‘Well, it’s obvious there was a sexual
attack, isn’t it?’ He was on the defensive. ‘She was hardly wearing anything when I found her. I’ve got a brain cell, you know. There’s your interest. And the local radio station said a “serious sexual assault”. It doesn’t take a lot of filling in.’
He squeezed his eyes tight shut. If only he could blot out that girl dancing provocatively in that shimmering skirt, right in front of his eyelids. Flirting.
Joanna was watching him carefully. Beads of sweat were breaking out like dew on his forehead. As though he needed to pretend they weren’t there he didn’t wipe them away.
She continued. ‘The description Kayleigh has been able to give us is of a tall, thin man with spiky hair, in his thirties or early forties, with a strong cockney accent. Do any of your “mates” fit that description?’
Shand shook his head decisively. He was on safer ground now. ‘No,’ he said. ‘My mates are all from round here. Not a cockney amongst them. Staffordshire born and bred. Like – I – said,’ he finished deliberately.
‘Right,’ Joanna said and tried another tack. ‘Apart from the accent, do they fit the physical description?’
Shand thought for a moment. ‘I suppose Gary looks a bit like that,’ he said reluctantly.
Mike’s pen was poised over his notebook and Shand reluctantly gave him his friend’s name and address.
‘And what was Gary wearing last night?’
Shand blew out through his lips. ‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘Jeans, I suppose.’
‘A coat?’
Shand shrugged. ‘Haven’t a clue, mate,’ he said, again addressing Korpanski. He grinned. ‘I don’t really notice what my mates are wearing. More –’ He stopped at that.
Korpanski took the questioning further, still in the same jokey, matey tone. ‘Did Claire mind you clubbing with a few of the “boys”?’
Shand looked angry. ‘Whatever’s that got to do with this? Whether my girlfriend minded me having a bit of fun with my mates is nothing to do with this. How could it be? You’re just prying.’ He frowned at them both in turn and picked on Joanna as the softer target. ‘You’re tryin’ it on. Get a kick out of this, do you?’
‘Answer the sergeant’s question,’ Joanna said flatly.
A Velvet Scream Page 5
