‘And the stuff attached to it?’
‘The bits sticking to the jagged edges of the shard, we think could be from a glove, leather, plastic, or some such material. We’ll obviously know more once all the forensic tests have been done.’
‘Well, it’s all very interesting, Derek, but you still haven’t told me how the Special Investigations Branch can help.’
Anderson started walking away from the tent and Crane followed him. ‘The officers who responded to the call, the ones I told you about, they regularly patrol the working girls’ area. Just to make sure there are no problems, you know. We can’t keep nicking them every night or we’d never get anything else done. Anyway last night one of the girls flagged them down. She told PC Daniels and his young partner that a friend of hers had gone missing, or rather not returned from going off with a customer. She’d left the line around 9.30pm and hasn’t been seen since.’
‘So it is more than likely that the customer she went off with could be the bloke who killed her.’
‘Seems a reasonable assumption,’ Derek agreed nodding. ‘But what was interesting was the car she got into.’
‘Ah, so this is the punch line is it?’
‘So quick, Crane, no wonder you’re a detective. Yes, as you say, the punch line is the car. We don’t know the make, as mid-sized, dark coloured was about the best the girls could come up with, but apparently the car had a funny number plate.’
Crane stopped walking and peered at Anderson. ‘Not a UK number plate?’
‘No, the blue bit on it had a letter D then more letters and numbers, but her friend couldn’t remember what they were. At first they thought it was Dutch...’
‘But it’s German,’ finished Crane, ‘D for Deutschland.’
‘Exactly and as Aldershot isn’t a favourite UK destination for German tourists, I was just wondering.... do you know anyone who’s recently come back from a German posting? Or can you find out for me? But first, we’re off to watch the autopsy.’
‘Oh joy,’ said Crane and stomped off across the field after Anderson.
Eighteen
Crane persuaded Derek that they needed breakfast before facing the autopsy and anyway the Major would need some time to get the girl from the field to the morgue. So as a result it was a much brighter Crane who walked into the autopsy room with Anderson.
‘Morning, you two,’ called Major Martin, a retired army pathologist, who had joined the team based at Frimley Park Hospital upon leaving the forces. ‘Glad you’re here, I’m just getting to the interesting bit.’
‘That being?’
‘The glass in her eye, we’ve taken all the photos and it’s time to get it out of her.’
Major Martin turned back to the body. Crane watched as the doctor leaned over her. The young girl, who was once a vital, alive, human being, lay displayed on the metal table. But no longer displayed for their entertainment so to speak, considering her profession. Now she was displayed in order that her body could give up the secrets of her death.
The Major grabbed what looked like a pair of pliers and clasped them around the top of the glass shard.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘I really want to get this out in one piece. Jim, hold her head would you?’
Major Martin’s diminutive assistant moved around to the end of the table and grasped the girl’s head in his hands, holding them either side of her skull, his fingers laced in her hair.
‘Okay, here we go. I’m hoping to do this slow and steady, Jim, so keep a good hold of her head.’
Crane watched fascinated as the piece of glass was slowly drawn out of the girl’s eye. The orb gave up its prize with a sucking sound, which sounded rather too much like a baby suckling on a teat for Crane’s liking. The glass was covered in blood and other bits of goo and Crane asked what they were.
‘Ah,’ said the Major in reply. ‘Well, it’s probably easiest if I explain what happens when you poke something into the eye.’ Pretending to stab himself in his own eye, he said, ‘The glass would firstly pierce the lens with ease, pass through the aqueous humor (eye jelly) and through the retina and more than likely end up fairly far into the brain, finishing about 1 to 2 inches from the back of the skull if you were using something this long.’
The Major brandished the piece of glass in Crane’s face, rather too close for comfort and with rather too much gusto for Crane’s liking. ‘It’s at least 9 inches long. So on this we can see blood, eye jelly and brains. But there are other materials on this, I reckon.’
The Major placed the shard in a long specimen tray and looked at it through a hand magnifier. ‘I’ll know more later once we’ve done the tests, but for instance there could be grass, mud and such on it, considering where the girl was found.’
‘Would she have died instantly?’ Crane asked.
‘Pretty much, she wouldn’t really have known what had hit her.’
‘A small mercy,’ said Anderson.
A sentiment Crane agreed with.
Crane and Anderson turned to leave, after a promise from Major Martin to give Anderson his full findings as soon as possible. As they trudged across the car park to their respective cars, Crane lit a cigarette.
‘Pretty nasty this one, Derek,’ he said, blowing out a lungful of smoke.
‘Yes,’ Anderson agreed, walking along with his hands in the pocket of his tweed jacket that he wore underneath a well-worn beige raincoat, reaffirming Crane’s impression of the fictional detective Columbo. All that was needed was a cigar, but Anderson was a staunch non-smoker.
‘Hasn’t Mrs Derek made you throw that out yet?’ he asked poking at Anderson’s raincoat.
‘She keeps trying, but I keep finding it. You know I found it for sale in a charity shop once,’ he laughed.
‘What did you do?’
‘Bought it, of course,’ and the two men chuckled their way back to their cars. ‘Seriously, Crane, find out about soldiers returning from Germany, won’t you? It’s the only thing we have at the moment, especially if Major Martin comes up a blank on any forensic evidence on the glass itself.’
‘Will do,’ Crane replied. ‘Where are you off to?’
Before Anderson could reply, a text message appeared on his phone. After reading it, he looked back at Crane, ‘Back into town. The girl has been named as Sally Smith and we’ve an address, it’s a room over one of the pubs.’ Anderson put the phone back in his pocket. ‘I doubt it will tell us anything. My gut feeling is she was killed by a punter.’
‘An anonymous killer will make our job harder.’
‘Exactly, but I like your use of the words, ‘our job’. I’ll hold you to that, Crane. See you later.’
As Anderson climbed into his car, Crane stubbed out his cigarette underfoot and climbed into his own vehicle. Watching Anderson’s car drive away, Crane scratched at the scar under his short, sharply cut, dark beard that he’d been given permission to grow to cover it up. As he scratched, he thought about the ways he could find out about German plated cars and returning soldiers. Staff Sgt Jones was his best bet. He was the man in operational charge of the military police and guards. Every car on the garrison had to be logged, with details recorded of the owner, registration number and make.
1976
Headmaster Thaddeus Brown closed and locked the main door to his school with relief. He turned away from it and then leant his back against it, surveying his domain. Once empty of teachers and pupils, the school settled down to rest and wait for the next onslaught tomorrow morning. He could hear the creak of its tired old rafters and sigh of the floorboards as if they were saying, thank goodness, peace at last, which was pretty much the same way Thaddeus felt. He was simply exhausted and, he believed, ready to retire. It wasn’t so much the work that tired him out, the management of the staff and the school budget, it was the children. Each year a new intake of exuberant, vocal young ones raised his excitement level. He was too old to take the strain of it anymore. The pressure he felt when he had to force himself to keep
his hands off them.
Pushing himself off the door, his tweed-clad legs and brogue covered feet walked the long corridors. He poked his head into classrooms, occasionally opening a desk drawer, or a cupboard. Not prying as such, oh no, he was just keeping his finger on the pulse of the school.
He was pleased by the classrooms that celebrated the children’s work and disgruntled by the ones of other teachers who hadn’t taken as much care. Cupboards with supplies spilling out displeased him and he made a mental note to talk to the teachers responsible for the mess. Walking into the main hall, he smelled the intoxicating aroma of sweaty young bodies and boiled cabbage. He looked at a display of photographs from the recent drama production which Year 6 had given to the whole school. He peered closely at their photographs, seeing the changes in some of his favourite charges, as they had grown from 4 years to their now 11 years of age.
How he loved his children, cherished them, revered them. The trouble was, not everyone agreed with his adoration and what he did to the children most special to him. It should have been their secret, his and the child’s. But some of the recent intake of little ones hadn’t quite seen it that way. He realised that times were a-changing and now even four and five year-olds had voices that were being heard, where once they hadn’t.
And so, it seemed, he was to resign, before those voices got louder, before they became a swell that he could not ignore. That the Governors could not ignore. He intended to tell the governing body tonight. Not about his predilection, but to announce that he was retiring. After all he was over 60 and he would say that it was time to let the younger generation take over.
He prepared the hall for the meeting of the school governors, setting out tables and chairs and then retired to his office to await his fate. He rather thought he needed a bit of Dutch courage and he had a bottle of whisky hidden in the bottom of a filing cabinet, for just such an occasion as this. Retrieving it, he poured a finger full into the glass and returned the bottle to its hiding place, so that he wouldn’t be tempted to have another and another and another. For that’s how he felt tonight, wanting the warming sensation of the whisky as it slid down his throat into his stomach. Needing the alcohol to dull his senses just enough to take the edge off any allegations the Governors might make this evening.
As he sipped his drink, he thought about his children, who would keep him company in the coming years. Years that stretched emptily before him.
Nineteen
Did that shock you, dear reader? The fact that it was a parish priest who first abused me? How could a man of the cloth reconcile the atrocities he was committing with his faith, with the preaching of Jesus? The Son of God wanted communities to look after their children. How does the phrase go? ‘Suffer little children to come unto me.’ It appears my parish priest took some of those words too literally. He just turned the phrase around to suit himself. ‘Come unto me and suffer.’ Oh and here’s another titbit of information that is even more shocking. His abuse of me wasn’t an isolated incident. It wasn’t just me he liked and felt he could partake of as often as he wanted, as though it were his right. He was part of a paedophile ring, a ring that comprised of some surprising local dignitaries. They would take turns. Pass us around like a game of pass the parcel. Once one got tired of me, I would be passed to another who was looking for a young girl.
And so it was that the second disgusting excuse for a man who decided I was the one for him, was the headmaster of the school I attended as a child. He was a figure of authority to me. Parents and children put their trust in him. He was a pillar of the community. What I could never understand was how he stood being surrounded by children every day? Was he sexually excited all the time? What a disgusting thought. What a disgusting man, that he could misuse the trust placed in him that way.
Once I’d decided on my next target, I needed to work out how best to get to him.
Louise closed the book. Peter would be back soon, she saw, looking at her watch. It was time to return the book to its hiding place and then tidy up. As she worked, her movements were mechanical. But her brain was working overtime. For the past two days she’d imagined the police were on their way, poised, ready to knock on her door. They could appear at any time of the day or night. What would they say? What would she say? Had she left anything behind that could identify her? She ran over the events in her mind. She didn’t think so. She had pushed the rug and her gloves deep into a large waste bin some miles away from the crime scene. It was very unlikely they would be found.
Louise wondered how Matilda had coped with the aftermath of her first kill. But she hadn’t recorded her feelings on the subject. Maybe the disfigurement had overridden any fear of getting caught. She’d had to spend a considerable time recuperating. It was more than likely that had been her focus, rather than thoughts of being uncovered as a killer.
As for herself, Louise had been very jittery since she’d returned home that night. But the fluttering fear was settling down now. The longer she was left alone by the police, the more it seemed she had got away with it. Therefore her overriding feeling, currently, was one of satisfaction. She was convinced she’d done the right thing. Done the right thing for her husband, for he must avoid any scandal that might threaten his career. It was her job, as his wife, to keep things running smoothly and that included their private life. She rubbed her hands together, as if dusting them off, pushing away the vestiges of her crime, wiping her hands clean of them.
And so Louise smiled as she cleaned, sang as she polished and danced as she vacuumed. She had to get the house ready. Clean away the depression still pervading their home with its debilitating tentacles. Banish her fear and sadness. She flung the windows wide, shook out cushions and batted away cobwebs. Peter was due home today and all was right with the world.
Twenty
Crane and Anderson drove through the darkened streets of Aldershot. Crane always thought of the town in terms of black and white. It was a grimy, grainy sort of town, with the odd flash of colour. An urban landscape drained of its life when the Parachute Regiment had moved their base from Aldershot to Colchester in 2003. The skeleton of the town that they left behind was only just beginning to recover from the biggest kick in the teeth it had ever had.
Suddenly the dark night was pierced by street lights and scanned by car headlights. Every few moments there was a flash of flame as someone lit a cigarette. They were in Aldershot’s red light area, such as it was. Anderson parked the car and Crane as climbed out, the cold instantly penetrated his suit. He pulled his dark overcoat out of the back of the car and as he shrugged into it, he glanced at the line of girls on the opposite side of the street. All were unsuitably dressed for the cold. Instead of coats and gloves they were wearing what they no doubt perceived to be provocative clothing. From what Crane could see they just looked tacky and totally unsuitably dressed for standing on a street corner.
But the two men weren’t there to take stock of the wares on sale. Crane and Anderson wanted to talk to the girls themselves. Traffic police officers had passed on snippets of information and the odd comment, which wasn’t enough for Anderson. Deciding it would be nigh on impossible to get the girls to come to the police station, he’d invited Crane to accompany him as he questioned the girls while they were at work.
Instantly identifiable as police officers, Crane and Anderson found the girls shrank away from them, melting back into the shadows, unwilling to talk to the enemy in case they were whisked away to the police station. Also none of them wanted to lose money and a police presence was guaranteed to frighten the punters away. Crane knew all this as they walked amongst them, bearing the hatred of their glares, easily shrugging them off his broad shoulders.
As they walked, Anderson spotted the girl he was looking for and nodded for Crane to follow him. Sally Smith’s friend, Lindsay, was the only one keen to speak to them and as they approached her, she wanted to know if they’d arrested anyone for her friend’s murder yet.
‘No, not
yet,’ Anderson answered her question. ‘We’re a bit stuck to be honest.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
Crane resented her sarcasm, but supposed he could understand it. Often the public didn’t care about the odd prostitute being killed. For they didn’t seem to see them as human beings, didn’t appreciate that they were someone’s daughter, girlfriend or mother even.
‘Have you talked to the other girls, like we asked?’ Anderson had elicited Lindsay’s help yesterday, wanting any observations of the men who regularly, or even intermittently, used their services.
‘Yes, but it didn’t really get me anywhere. No one seems to have noticed a strange customer. They’ve not come across one who was aggressive, hurt them, or threatened them. The men were described as mostly sad, old and unwashed, to be honest.’
‘Did Sally have any regulars?’
‘No, not really,’ Lindsay answered Anderson’s question. ‘Not that I noticed anyway, or not that she talked about.’
‘If you do spot anyone who looks a bit dodgy, or hear the other girls talking about a punter who was a bit different, or a bit strange, let me know, will you?’ Anderson passed Lindsay his business card. ‘And try and get them to remember the make of a car or even the number plates of anyone who is in any way out of the norm.’
‘Course,’ Lindsay replied and stuffed the card into her bra, the other bits of her clothing not appearing to have any pockets. ‘I want her killer caught. I just hope you lot do as well.’
Lindsay held her head up defiantly and walked away going to join the sisterhood she’d signed up to, for a reason known only to herself. Her black, shapely, bobbed hairstyle swung just above her shoulders, in time with her swinging hips and was in sharp contrast to her white painted face and red lips. With her eye catching hairstyle and swaggering attitude, Crane thought she would be easily identifiable from a clutch of similarly dressed girls, which was no doubt her intention. She was flaunting her unique selling point, as it were.
Glass Cutter: A Sgt Major Crane crime thriller (A Sgt Major Crane Novel Book 7) Page 6
