by Paul Kane
Expert liars like a woman who could be anyone for anybody? Could play any part, from a dominatrix to a school girl? Hammond always shook away the thoughts before they could take hold. It would only ruin how he thought of her, his Sindy… his Ella.
They’d slept together eventually, of course they had – at his flat, never hers – though the first couple of times they’d come close, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to. “It’s okay,” she’d told him. “It happens to everyone sometimes.” He’d nodded, not able to explain it was the sight of Sindy in all her glory that had done it, the reality even more breath-taking than he could have possibly imagined. The thought that all he could offer her was his lacking body, past its prime but every molecule of it hers if she wanted. Then it had happened, and it was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. All the others in the past, including Karen who he’d almost married, were like shadows – pale imitations of the real thing.
Real emotions, real feelings. Real… love.
The subject had come up more than a few times after that, about their respective occupations. He’d even felt brave enough, after talking about his own history – growing up in a family where you either landed on one side of the law or the other, and sometimes straddled both – to ask her how she’d gotten into this game, if you’d pardon the expression. He thought she wasn’t going to answer him at first: it took so much for her to let her guard down, to properly trust. But then he found out why. She’d spoken in vagaries about a dead father, and about how things had changed after that. About a step-mother she hadn’t seen eye-to-eye with and who had her own kids anyway. About running away, living rough from the age of 16. About a woman called Ruth who’d taken her under her wing for a little while and shown her the ropes of that particular world, before moving on to bigger and better things. Last she’d heard of the woman she’d married rich, taken on a daughter of her own.
It had been a start, though, and this job was a way for her to earn a bit of money and not be reliant on anyone. Be self-sufficient. But oh, those dreams of the coast… of being by the sea. She’d always loved the sea.
Not the time nor the place to talk about her jacking it all in, just being with him – even if it meant moving to somewhere else entirely. And the more Hammond left it, the harder it became. The more he felt it would look like trying to strong-arm her, that he was attempting to take over her life, tell her what to do. That hadn’t happened until the murders began…
Then he’d started, subtly at first with the warnings – that it wasn’t safe out there. “Patrick, it never has been,” she would tell him.
Finally, in the end, he’d argued with her about it; hadn’t been able to get her to see reason. To see the danger. He’d even offered her the money if she’d stay off the streets, which she’d taken quite badly. That had led to the row, and those words he wanted to take back more than anything. That he couldn’t now she was gone; now that bits of her were being sent to them. The first time their killer had kept the body (no, they didn’t know she was dead) and just dumped the foot. A reversal of all the other times – but why?
The cutting off of the feet had led them to conclude they might be dealing with a fetishist, which in turn had seen them trawling sites where they hung out. Sites like the ones Nichols ran (he’d actually been a suspect for all of five minutes). Or more specifically a young DC called Crabtree, who was an IT specialist, had been trawling them. He’d come up with some interesting finds as well, but nothing that ever amounted to anything concrete. This one threw everything into confusion, though; why would their perp give the foot away instead of keeping it as a trophy, as he must have done with the others?
Why. Keep. Sindy (Ella)?
Hammond had spent a couple of very sleepless nights – on top of the ones where he’d been worrying about her – trying to figure it out, but drawing a blank. Of course, it’s always when you’re trying of think of an answer that something else hits you. Something which turned out this time to be just as important.
“It’s been fucking staring us in the face, don’t you see?” he’d said to Balfour. The man’s expression told Hammond he clearly didn’t. “The box. The box that the foot was delivered in.”
“What about it?” asked Balfour, still looking confused.
“It was a shoe box,” Hammond said.
“So what? Probably just because it was the right size and shape for a foot.”
Hammond shook his head. “He could have used any kind of box. Didn’t Crabtree say that a lot of the weirdos on those sites were into shoes as well?”
“And you’re suggesting we arrest everyone who bought a pair of shoes in the last… what, ten years?” Balfour laughed.
“I’m saying what if our guy used that box because he had it to hand. What if he’s around this kind of shit all the time? Works in a shoe shop, or a factory that–”
“Hammond, you’re reaching. Whoever this is wouldn’t be that stupid, not after covering themselves like they have.”
“Didn’t one of those knobs from the local college who came in to talk to us about psychology say that deep down all these creeps want to get caught?”
Balfour sighed. “We don’t have the manpower to go talking to everyone in shoe factories all over the land, on the off chance your flights of fancy are right.”
“Just give me a few people. Look,” he said as she wandered past, causing the woman to pause, “give me Charlie. She’s not assigned to anything at the moment, she knows the case.”
Reluctantly, Balfour agreed: Charlie, plus a couple of other PCs, until the weekend – that’s all he could spare. So they headed off to talk to those who had any kind of connection to the trade. There was a mall not that far outside of town, so they started there – Hammond and Charlie. Two large stores, but staffed with tweenies who looked to Hammond like they barely had a brain cell to share between them. Certainly nobody who could have engineered half the things they’d seen, or would have wanted to. He’d caught Charlie examining the items on offer more than once and just rolled his eyes at her. “What?” she’d said in return. “Women and shoes…”
But it was as they’d grabbed a quick lunch of Mega-Burgers and fries there in the “Oasis” that she’d said to him: “This is personal for you, isn’t it?”
Wasn’t just shoes women were known for, Hammond thought to himself, it was also their intuition. More powerful than anything he could muster. “How do you mean?”
Charlie took a sip of her coke before answering. “I’ve seen you with this, like a dog with a bone. You care about those girls, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Hammond said, but didn’t clarify that he cared about one more than any of the others.
“I like that,” said Charlie, smiling at him and taking a bite of her burger. “You’re a nice guy, Pat, you know that?”
He offered a smile back but said nothing in return. A few years ago, before he’d met Ella, he would have been in there like a rat up a drainpipe. Wouldn’t have worked out, obviously, but that wouldn’t have stopped him with a woman like Charlie. Shit, he’d have been getting down on his hands and knees and kissing the ground that she might be interested. But there was no-one else for him now, never would be. That’s what made it personal, and that’s why he could never tell anyone about it.
They checked out a couple more places that afternoon, but it wasn’t until the following day there was a development. Nothing was reported by the other officers, and it was the last store on their list – a mom and pop place as the Americans might have called it, name of Wilkinson’s – that bore fruit. It was run by an elderly man who’d owned the place since the 1960s and also offered shoe repairs, as well as selling new ones. They’d talked to him, looked around the place, chatted to the assistants, and come up empty. No odd feelings that anything was wrong, nothing. It was only as they were leaving and Hammond happened to look up – his “Spider-sense” swiftly and forcefully kicking in – that he saw the curtains twitch in the flat above the shop. Cou
ld have been anything, just someone being nosy, but Hammond insisted on going back inside and asking about it. About who exactly lived above the store.
“Well, I do,” said Mr Wilkinson. “Why?”
“Alone?” demanded Hammond.
The white-haired man had scratched his head. “Since my wife passed away. There’s my son, of course. But he’s only been back a few…”
Hammond wasn’t listening anymore, had already clocked someone through the open side door – heading down the stairs, sloping away towards the back of the building. He pushed Mr Wilkinson aside, probably a little too roughly but then he wasn’t thinking clearly. He was thinking only of Ella. Then Hammond was out through the back door and in pursuit, the man ahead of him running down the rear alley – and though it was only from the back, Hammond could see that he might well be a match for the person on that CCTV footage. That he might well be their guy.
“Stop!” he shouted, even though in all his years on the force that tactic had never, ever worked. In spite of his size, the man was fast and it had been a while since Hammond had set foot inside a gym, let along used any of the equipment. He was lucky, though, in that there was a fence at the far end of the alley. The man leapt at it, scrambling to get over the top, but Hammond had his legs before he could reach that height. “Oh no you don’t,” he grunted, holding on to the writhing figure. Wilkinson’s son kicked back, catching Hammond in the cheek and pitching him backwards. Seconds later, he was up and over, leaving the Inspector behind.
It took Hammond a bit longer to clamber over the fence, but he made it – and still had the man in sight: just. He was running towards the road now, not stopping even for the traffic. Hammond ran as fast as he could after him, halting cars coming from the left and right, one clipping him as it braked. “Bastard!” he growled, not even sure himself if he meant the driver or the man he was chasing.
There was a park ahead, and Hammond knew if the man reached that he’d be lost. The detective put on a spurt, but had no chance of catching his quarry before he reached the gates. Then, out of nowhere, Charlie entered stage left and flew at the guy – tackling him and bringing him to the ground. Hammond couldn’t help grinning. She was already cuffing the man as he joined them, winded and trying to catch his breath. “Thought I’d skirt around,” she told him. “You did a good job of distracting him, though.”
Hammond nodded his thanks to the woman and she nodded back, still having no idea what this actually meant to him.
***
The suspect hadn’t spoken a word on the drive back in the car, and continued to remain silent in the interview room, even after a grilling from both Balfour and Hammond.
“You sure this is our guy?” his boss had asked when they’d taken a break.
“Why else would he have run?” argued Hammond.
“If I saw your ugly mug coming, I’d probably do a runner as well,” replied Balfour, but he conceded his inspector had a point. Why would the man have fled if he didn’t have something to hide?
Turned out he did. Not in the shop itself, which was scoured inch by inch, but in a shed on the allotment Toby Wilkinson’s father owned but didn’t really use any more. Toby had made use of it, though, as they’d discovered when they searched it and found all the missing – all the severed – feet inside, plus the handsaw that had been used to detach them. Not to mention what else they’d seen when a black light had been flashed around the place.
“The sick fuck,” Balfour had whispered after he’d been told.
When Hammond confronted the man with photos from the scene, he’d looked up at the inspector and smirked, the grin threatening to split his fleshy face in two. Then that grin had turned into a giggle, before evolving into a full blown guffaw.
“You think this is funny?” Hammond had snarled, rising and banging his fist down on the photos.
“Easy,” Balfour cautioned, placing a hand on Hammond’s arm – nodding over at the camera to remind him that the interview was being recorded for posterity.
Hammond nodded and took his seat again. The last thing they wanted was for Toby to get off because of a cry of police brutality. Although right at that moment all Hammond wanted to do was ram his fist into that face; ram it so hard it exploded out the back of the man’s skull. But there was something he needed to know first.
“So you kept the feet, dumped the rest of their bodies…”
“Only bit I needed,” said Wilkinson, who’d become a bit more talkative once he knew they had their evidence. Even confessed to using thick bootlaces he’d then disposed of as his murder weapon of choice. He’d grown up around shoes, around feet – helped out in the shop sometimes, though he’d admitted he had to stop because the temptation was too much. The temptation to kiss the feet of female customers, to lick them (and Hammond again had to switch off the memories of doing the same with Ella). Inside that shed, he’d been able to do whatever he liked with them, whenever he liked. It didn’t bear thinking about.
“But why change it up? Why send us the foot this time?” Balfour enquired.
“And,” Hammond asked yet again, “where is the rest of her? Is she even still alive?”
Toby Wilkinson simply shook his head, the remains of that smirk lingering. Hammond grimaced, his hand still balled into a fist.
“Answer me, damn you!”
“Patrick,” Balfour warned again.
“Tell me!” Hammond said, getting up once more and rounding the table. Grabbing Wilkinson and screaming into his face, removing all traces of that smile. “Tell me you little shit, or so help me I’ll–”
Balfour was there in a flash, pulling Hammond away. “Inspector!” But it took a couple more PCs to actually wrestle him out of the room.
“What the hell has gotten into you?” asked the DCI when they were outside.
“What’s the matter, did he put his foot in it?” said the smart-arse Wells; just passing by, wrong time, wrong place.
Definitely the wrong thing to say.
Hammond lashed out before anyone could stop him, striking the man with a fist that was still looking for a target. He backed off, backed away – looking around at startled faces, then down at the ground, at the copper rubbing his jaw. Then his eyes found Charlie in the corridor. She’d seen what had happened and they exchanged a look. Her lip was trembling and Hammond thought he saw her eyes watering – because she knew for sure now. Knew what she’d only suspected before.
He got out of there before anyone had a chance to say anything, left the station and got into his old Nissan, driving away at speed. Hammond got about a mile from there before he had to pull over. Before he started slamming the steering wheel.
Before he started crying himself. Crying, and thinking that he might never, ever stop.
***
In light of what had happened, both inside the interview room and just outside it, Hammond was taken off the case and suspended.
The comedian Wells decided not to press charges, especially after Balfour explained it was in his best career interests not to. It was all put down to the stress of such a high-profile investigation, although Charlie had called, left messages to say that if he needed to talk she was a good listener. Hammond didn’t need to talk, he needed to know what had happened to Ella.
Had Wilkinson garrotted her, like the rest? Would she be found in some skip or washed up on the banks of the canal? It seemed less likely, the more time that passed, they’d ever get the answer – and especially when Hammond wasn’t allowed access to the prisoner. And seemingly all but impossible once Wilkinson took his own life whilst in custody. He’d bitten into his wrists to open up his veins after being visited by his distraught father, who’d disowned him. Those family ties having more impact than any screaming policemen. You could take away belts and laces, but if someone was determined, they could still find a way to end it and take their mysteries with them.
Mysteries like Ella.
Hammond would dream about her, when he could get to sleep that
was – often with the aid of large amounts of vodka. In those dreams she would be running towards him on a beach, like in all those god-awful romance movies. It was usually the thing that tipped him off he was dreaming in the first place, the running. But he would try to push that to the back of his mind and enjoy the fact he was with her again, even if he knew it wasn’t real. He could look into those blue eyes, stroke that golden hair and kiss those lips. Then he’d wake abruptly, be wrenched away from her all over again and end up reaching for the vodka.
At some point he decided that he should visit her home. Not the one she had in town, that dingy bed-sit she’d tried to keep hidden, but he’d followed her to one night anyway just to be able to picture where she was when she wasn’t with him (and not have to think about her with all those other guys). That had also given Hammond her second name, Tyrell, which was on the lease.
No, the place she’d come from, the place she’d told him about. If nothing else, her mother – her step-mother – had a right to know exactly what had happened to her daughter, face-to-face rather than just being told about it impersonally on the phone. If he couldn’t have any part in Ella’s future, then perhaps he could connect with her past. Sure, they hadn’t got on (which family ever really did?), but they were still family – and family was all important. Family ties…
So, he’d got the address and set off, locating the property in a nice little corner of the suburbs. Looking at all those houses, it was hard to imagine why Ella had left in the first place; he certainly wouldn’t have done. Cushy, very cushy. Her mother was one Hester Tyrell, who was at Number 24, Langley Avenue: a white, two-storey property with a 4x4 outside on the driveway that made the Nissan he was parking up look like a horse and cart by comparison. This family had money then, maybe not fortunes, but they were doing all right. Again, he wondered what kind of argument could have led to Ella storming off and never coming back.
