Evil Impulse

by Leigh Russell

  As far as they could see, only the driver of the van was involved in transporting the bin. He had jumped out, already dressed in his refuse operative’s outfit, pulled the bin down a ramp from the van, and wheeled it along the street. With the bin deposited in the alley, the driver had hurried back to his vehicle and driven to where the vehicle had first appeared from a maze of side streets.

  ‘There are a few properties with security cameras in the surrounding streets, but none of them films the road itself. They only capture the front of the houses, the driveways, and side and back entrances. They’re designed to act as security for private properties,’ Andrew explained. ‘So we’ve been unable to track where the van came from. We’ve widened the search, but it could have been driven out of a private garage almost anywhere. It’s like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, trying to identify where it came from.’

  No one challenged Andrew’s assessment of the situation.

  ‘Can we at least tell if we’re looking at a man or a woman?’ Geraldine asked, staring at the image on the screen.

  ‘The height is around five feet seven,’ Andrew said, ‘although the hood makes it difficult to be accurate. It looks as though there could be a hat under the hood, giving it extra height, so it could be a woman, although I think that’s unlikely.’ Andrew paused and glanced around, as though he was half expecting someone to contradict him. ‘The hi-vis jacket looks several sizes too big for him, and it rather looks as though the shoes have thick platforms, although it’s impossible to be certain about that because the trousers are too long, dragging on the ground. From their size, the shoes appear to belong to a man, but this could be a woman with unusually large feet.’

  ‘Or a woman wearing shoes several sizes too large for her with the deliberate intention of misleading us,’ Geraldine added, and Andrew frowned.

  ‘The weight of the bin also suggests we’re looking at a man,’ Andrew continued, ‘and getting it down from van would take some muscle power.’

  ‘It’s rolled down a steep ramp out of the van,’ Eileen pointed out. ‘That wouldn’t necessarily take much strength, and the pavement is fairly even along there. It’s not conclusive.’

  Andrew nodded. ‘The evidence points to a man, but it could be a woman. I’m sorry that’s not very helpful,’ he concluded apologetically.

  If Geraldine had been unaware of what had happened between Ariadne and Andrew, she would probably have missed how her friend’s eyes lingered on the constable, or else interpreted her friend’s attention to the constable’s words as proof of her focus on the case. As it was, Geraldine understood that Ariadne was not yet over her infatuation with the good-looking newcomer to the team, and she wondered how their relationship would play out. She hoped Ariadne would not end up feeling hurt and let down, and resolved to keep a close eye on her friend.

  That afternoon, Eileen issued a press release. Along with the usual flannel about pursuing vague leads, and unspecified people helping the police with their enquiries, she mentioned that they were looking for a large hi-vis jacket whose wearer had been spotted near the scene. The comment provoked the usual flurry of calls, one of which was especially interesting. Someone called from the local council’s household waste collection department to report that a hi-vis jacket belonging to one of their operatives had been stolen.

  ‘It could have been stolen by the killer,’ Ariadne said, her eyes lighting up.

  ‘Or perhaps one of their refuse collectors disposed of his uniform himself because he was afraid it might reveal evidence that he had been handling a dead body?’ Eileen added, her expression reflecting Ariadne’s excitement.

  35

  Geraldine went to question the refuse collector, Harry Mellor, whose jacket had been reported stolen. The door was opened by a diminutive woman who gazed up at Geraldine with a worried expression.

  ‘Are you from the council?’ she asked.

  She visibly relaxed when Geraldine introduced herself, which was a change from the usual suspicion or outright hostility she faced on announcing she was a police officer. Mrs Mellor led the way to a small living room where a man was seated watching television. As soon as Harry stood up, Geraldine suspected they had been premature in allowing their hopes to be raised. He towered over her, at least six foot in height, with long limbs and wide shoulders. Not only did his height not appear to match whoever had been pushing the wheelie bin, but his head looked larger than that of the figure captured on film, as were his hands and feet. Everything about him looked huge, unlike the person they were looking for. She could be mistaken and, even if she was right, it was possible Harry might still be able to help them. Having introduced herself, she sat down and asked him to repeat his name and tell her exactly what had happened to his jacket. Harry Mellor frowned. Beneath heavy overhanging brows his dark eyes glared at her, yet he somehow gave the impression that he was normally a good-natured man.

  ‘I already told my manager what happened, didn’t I?’ he said, in an incongruously reedy voice. ‘I can’t believe they’ve reported this to the police. It was only an old jacket. They’ve given me another one. It’s no big deal.’

  Geraldine noted that he seemed keen to play down the theft, as though he was reluctant to involve the police. Casting her eyes down, she noticed that the back of his left wrist was grazed.

  ‘You’ve hurt your hand,’ she said, as though she was concerned for him.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  Harry shook his head. ‘I can’t rightly remember. Scraped it on a wall or a gate while I was collecting bins, I guess, or I might have done it gardening.’

  ‘Harry loves the garden,’ his wife added, with a complacent smile.

  ‘Tell me about the stolen jacket.’

  ‘It was nicked off the back of my bike in broad daylight, would you believe? Trouble is, it’s not mine.’

  ‘Whose jacket are we talking about?’

  ‘No, I mean, it was my jacket all right, but they provide it for me. It’s the uniform that comes with the job, see. And now they expect me to pay for it out of my own pocket.’

  ‘When did you last have it?’ Geraldine asked.

  ‘I was on my way home, on –’ Harry screwed up his craggy face. ‘It must’ve been a week ago, anyway. They made a right stink about it at work. And now they’re getting you lot involved. I can’t believe the fuss over an old jacket, and now I’m in trouble over it, like it was my fault some fucker nicked it.’

  ‘In trouble?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who’s getting the blame when it wasn’t my fault at all. I only stopped off to get some fags.’

  ‘I see,’ Geraldine said. ‘I can’t promise that we’ll be able to find your jacket, and even if we do, it’s unlikely to be returned to you straightaway.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘Who in their right mind would steal an old hi-vis jacket? And now I’m in trouble.’

  ‘This wasn’t your fault,’ Geraldine assured him. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. So don’t worry.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘They don’t see it like that. They warn us, we’re responsible for our gear.’

  Geraldine did her best to calm Harry down about his manager at work giving him a hard time, but he continued to grumble. He was so emphatic in insisting that his jacket had been taken from the back of his bicycle that she began to wonder if he was telling her the truth. She probed him further about where his jacket had been taken, and he described in meticulous detail where he had left his bicycle.

  ‘I just nipped in for a moment to buy some fags,’ he explained. ‘I left the bike outside, padlocked, because you can’t be too careful, can you? But when I came out again, blow me if my jacket hadn’t gone. That’s it. That’s what happened. I left the jacket rolled up in the basket on the back, in full view of anyone passing. How was I to know some fucker was goin
g to nick it? I mean, who would want a thing like that?’

  ‘Was anything else taken?’

  ‘Yes it was.’ Waxing indignant, Harry told her that his hat and scarf had been rolled up inside the jacket. ‘I’m cut up about it because my wife knitted that hat for me for last winter.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, dear,’ his wife interrupted him. ‘It won’t take me long to make you another one.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think it was anything special,’ Harry told Geraldine, ‘just brown with a couple of wide black stripes, but she made it for me. She’s making me another one, but that’s hardly the point is it? It was a nice scarf too, but at least they were mine. The jacket belonged to my employers and now they’re saying I shouldn’t have left the jacket there, unprotected. But I was only gone for a moment, and I never expected anyone would nick it. I mean, who would think an old jacket like that would need protecting?’

  He told Geraldine he had left his bicycle briefly unattended at around seven in the morning, quite possibly the day before Leslie had been wheeled into the alley. If Harry had told Geraldine the truth, and they could trace who had stolen his jacket, they might find Leslie’s killer. Now they knew exactly where and when the jacket had allegedly been stolen, they could start to search through any CCTV footage within sight of the newsagent’s.

  ‘Did you often go to that newsagent’s?’ Geraldine asked.

  Harry nodded and glanced at his wife who pursed her lips, leading Geraldine to suspect that Mrs Mellor disapproved of her husband smoking.

  While Ariadne was organising collection and downloading of CCTV footage, and gathering a team to study it, Geraldine went to the newsagent’s to find out whether anyone working there had noticed the theft. The newsagent told Geraldine that he and his wife both worked in the shop on Thursdays. Neither of them was sure they recognised Harry from his photograph, or even if they recalled a tall man coming in to buy a packet of a popular brand of cigarettes. Geraldine didn’t reveal that Harry had told her he went to that same newsagent’s every morning to buy cigarettes.

  ‘We are a busy shop,’ the man explained apologetically.

  He seemed to have sensed her surprise, despite her determination to remain outwardly impassive.

  ‘We sell a lot of cigarettes,’ he went on. ‘Even if this man came in here every day, I’m not sure I’d recognise him. When we hand over cigarettes and take the money, we hardly look up at customers’ faces. Why would we? Our attention is on the money.’

  His wife nodded her agreement. ‘But what is this about, please? What has he done?’

  Harry hadn’t returned to the shop to tell them that his jacket had been stolen, but he was visible on the internal CCTV. Entering a few minutes before seven, he had walked straight up to the counter, waited patiently while some unidentifiable customer was served, before purchasing his cigarettes and leaving. The film merely served to confirm that Harry had gone into the newsagent’s at the time he had said. It did not help them to find the thief, or even to confirm Harry’s story that the jacket had been on the back of his bicycle when he had arrived outside the shop. Other officers were questioning the shopkeepers in the small parade, but no one remembered seeing anyone take anything from the back of a bicycle. No one even recalled seeing a bicycle parked there for a few minutes.

  ‘The thief, if he existed at all, must have been opportunistic,’ Eileen said. ‘Harry’s bicycle was only there for at most five minutes, probably less because we’ve seen he was only in the newsagent’s for under three minutes. So someone passing saw it, grabbed it, and went on their way. It can’t have been planned. We don’t yet know that the stolen jacket is the same one worn by whoever was wheeling that bin into the alley.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a coincidence, a hi-vis jacket like that being stolen a week before we catch sight of the killer – or his accomplice – wearing an identical jacket,’ Ian said. ‘I’d put money on it being Harry’s jacket the killer was wearing.’

  ‘The killer could have spotted the jacket on the back of the bike and been following him, waiting for a chance to take it,’ a young constable called Naomi suggested.

  ‘Harry told us he went to that newsagent’s regularly so perhaps someone expected him to be there and was waiting for him,’ someone else said.

  ‘We don’t know the thief is the killer we’re looking for,’ Eileen corrected them sharply.

  ‘And we don’t know the jacket was stolen,’ Ian added. ‘We only have Harry’s word for that. If he killed Leslie, he might have accidentally got her blood on his jacket, or was worried her DNA was on it.’

  ‘So you’re saying you think he disposed of the jacket to destroy evidence from the murder?’ Eileen asked.

  ‘I’m saying it’s possible,’ Ian replied.

  Although Geraldine was convinced the jacket thief was the killer they were looking for, she doubted Harry was the man they had seen on CCTV wheeling the bin.

  ‘I think Harry’s too tall to be the person wheeling the bin into the alley,’ she said.

  There followed a brief but heated debate about the possible accuracy of an impression gained from a blurred CCTV film.

  ‘It doesn’t look like him, but it could be,’ Eileen ended the discussion.

  Despite all the evidence they had gathered, they were no closer to tracking down the killer.

  36

  By Friday, Geraldine was tempted to try Helena’s phone, to arrange to see her. The problem was that, for all she knew, Helena was already being watched by the criminal gang who were trying to influence Geraldine. Without knowing who the criminals were, she had no way of discovering the extent of their powers. It was possible they had access to sophisticated surveillance equipment, and were monitoring Helena’s phone. Unlikely as it was, she could not take that risk. She would have to visit Helena again on Saturday, without being observed, and hope her twin had not yet been moved from her home. It was possible she was still living there, and had simply been out when Geraldine had last called on her. As she was wondering what she was going to say to her sister, two unfamiliar officers strode up to her desk, a young woman with strawberry blonde hair and a square-jawed man in his mid-thirties. They were both wearing dark jackets and their expressions were completely blank.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Geraldine Steel?’ the man asked, with a curious kind of apologetic authority.

  Geraldine nodded. ‘Yes. Is there something I can do for you?’

  ‘Police Integrity and Corruption Unit, North Yorkshire,’ the blonde woman announced curtly, holding up her identity card.

  ‘DS Steel, we need you to come with us,’ the man said.

  Geraldine cast a puzzled glance at Ariadne, who was watching in surprise.

  ‘Is there a case I can help you with?’ Geraldine asked, reaching to switch off her computer.

  ‘Leave everything,’ the woman snapped. ‘Please don’t touch your computer, and move away from your desk.’

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ Ariadne demanded, rising to her feet.

  ‘This is a mistake,’ Geraldine stammered.

  ‘I’m going to tell the DCI about this,’ Ariadne cried out. ‘You can’t do this. We’re working on a murder investigation and you can’t remove her from the team without the permission of our senior officer.’

  ‘Tell Ian what’s happening,’ Geraldine said. ‘Go!’

  Startled, Ariadne hurried from the room without another word. Geraldine was led to a waiting car and driven to an interview room in an unfamiliar location, her thoughts whirling. It crossed her mind that these people who had come for her might be members of the criminal gang who were targeting her, and not police officers at all. Although their identity cards looked genuine, they could have been fake. Whoever they were, their visit must be connected to her abduction the previous week.

  As well as threatening to destroy Helena’s life, her attackers would have
ruined Geraldine’s career, but she could not imagine how they could have infiltrated the anti-corruption unit. In any case, she had not yet refused to carry out any demands made by the criminals, so they could not yet be sure of her noncompliance. It made no sense that they would want to remove her from her post while there was still a chance she might be of use to them. There was only one possible conclusion. Her escort must be part of the criminal gang, and she had gone with them without even attempting to resist. Within the space of a week, her whole life had started to fall apart, and she could not see how she would be able to straighten matters out. Her only hope was that Ian would realise what had happened, and rescue her.

  The truth was she still had not come to any decision about how to react when the criminals asked her to carry out their wishes. To obey the demands of a criminal gang went against everything she believed in. Yet one injection of heroin would undo the painful months of withdrawal and rehabilitation Helena had suffered, on Geraldine’s insistence and at her expense. Ian had remonstrated with Geraldine, insisting that she could not hold herself responsible for Helena’s problems. But they were sisters, identical twins. Had Geraldine experienced the upbringing Helena had endured, she might easily have become an addict, and if Helena had been brought up in Geraldine’s adopted family, she could have been a DCI by now. Besides, Geraldine had promised her dying mother she would take care of Helena. Whatever happened, and whatever the cost, she could not abandon her sister. She had been caught in a trap from which there was no escape.

  She was not sure whether to feel relieved or terrified when her two companions drove into a police compound and led her down into a basement. When they set up an interview and started a tape, there could no longer be any doubt that they were indeed members of the anti-corruption unit. The blonde officer placed an evidence bag on the table. Geraldine could see it held a transparent bag containing white powder.