Baby's Got Blue Eyes: Introducing DI Ted Darling

by L M Krier

  DS Hallam had come in, still looking in a lot of pain, but could easily hold the fort whilst Ted was out of the office.

  When Mrs Fielding arrived, the officer who had driven her was having to support her gently by the elbow as she was so unsteady on her feet. It did not seem to be because of grief. She had at least changed her skirt for one which was marginally less dirty, but she smelled as if she had not changed her underwear in a long time.

  Ted formally introduced himself and offered his condolences, but even he stopped short of shaking her hand, which was filthy.

  'It's no surprise,' the woman said harshly. 'She always was going to finish up dead in a ditch somewhere, with her knickers round her ankles, the little whore.'

  The identification was peremptory, the woman barely glanced at her dead daughter before saying, 'Yes that's our Mags, poor little cow,' she said, although there was just the hint of some nostalgic affection in her tone of voice. 'Can I go now?'

  Ted and Tina looked at one another. 'Mrs Fielding,' Ted said patiently, 'I want to catch whoever has done this to your daughter,' he stressed the personal pronoun, with a touch of rebuke. 'I would really appreciate a few moments of your time. Anything at all you could tell me about your daughter may be helpful to my enquiry. Perhaps we could go and get a coffee?'

  'I'd rather have a proper drink,' the woman grumbled. 'Who pays for the funeral? I can't afford to.'

  Ted looked at the constable who had brought the not-so grieving mother and said, 'This officer will make sure you have all the information and support you need, Mrs Fielding. Now, shall we all go and get a coffee?'

  He nodded to the officer to accompany them as they headed for the hospital coffee shop. She once again had to steady Mrs Fielding by the elbow a few times on the short walk.

  Ted steered them to a table for four. 'What would you like to drink, Mrs Fielding?'

  'I'd like a large gin, but I don't suppose I can have one. I'll have one of them fancy frothy coffees instead, with lots of sugar,' she said.

  Ted produced his wallet and got out a twenty pound note which he handed to Tina. 'Can you do the honours, please, Tina? Whatever you and the officer want. I don't suppose they have green tea here?' he asked wistfully.

  'You never know, boss, I'll see what I can find for you.'

  'Mrs Fielding, I appreciate that you haven't seen your daughter for a few years but anything at all you can tell me about her, about what sort of person she was, may be of great help to me,' Ted began.

  'A little tart is what she was,' the woman spat. 'Always at it, from very young. That time with Henry wasn't the first, it was just the last straw. He wasn't the first of my boyfriends who said she was always leading them on, always giving them the come on.'

  Ted sighed. 'But Mrs Fielding, who was the instigator of those incidents?'

  Seeing the puzzled look in the bleary eyes, the officer who had driven her translated for her. 'Who started it? Was it her or them?'

  'She'd go with anyone, from a young age,' the woman said. 'For sweeties when she was little, then for money when she got older. Always had been like that.'

  Tina came back with the drinks. She put an ordinary cup of tea in front of the boss, with his change, and reported, 'No green tea, sir, sorry, I got you this instead.'

  'Mrs Fielding, we think your daughter may have been working as a prostitute to fund a drug habit,' Ted told her bluntly. 'It's possible she got into a car with someone who proved to be her killer. We're working on that assumption now.'

  'Well, I hope the poor cow was getting paid better than just sweeties, at least,' the woman said, noisily slurping her cappuccino. 'I'm sorry she's dead, don't get me wrong, she was my daughter, but I'm not surprised. I hope you get whoever it was, though, the filthy bastard.'

  Ted downed his tea fast and nodded to Tina to do the same with her black coffee. He stood up abruptly, motioning to the Uniform constable not to do so as she half rose. 'Can you see Mrs Fielding safely home, please, Constable, and please ensure she has some help available, so she knows what she needs to do.'

  He surprised the constable by shaking her hand then steeled himself to do the same to Mrs Fielding, as a courtesy, before he and Tina left. He stopped at the first medicated hand-wash dispenser he came to and pumped out a generous quantity of gel which he massaged thoroughly into his hands as he and Tina walked back to her car.

  'I could do with the mind bleach, too, after that,' he told her. 'That poor kid, what chance did she ever have?'

  'Abused by a string of the mother's boyfriends from an early age, do you think, boss? With a mother too drunk to know or care what was really going on?' Tina asked.

  Ted shrugged. 'You know I hate to be judgemental,' he said. 'We can't know why that woman is like she is, what things in her own life brought her to the state she's in.'

  There were some parts of his private life Ted didn't mind sharing with his team, like his father's accident and subsequent descent into alcoholism. He felt it helped them to understand him a little better. It certainly meant that none of them ever drank heavily in his presence, nor came into work complaining of hangovers.

  'My dad was teetotal, you know, before the accident,' he reminded her. 'Very strict Methodist, never touched a drop in his life until he lost his independence, his dignity and his wife.'

  'Yes, sir,' Tina said. 'But at least we now know who our victim is and have confirmation of her lifestyle. There's no question that she would have got willingly into a car with a complete stranger, and gone anywhere, not just up the nearest alleyway for a quickie. So it does give us a definite direction to go in.'

  'And now I know her background, I'm not going to rest, and nor are any of the rest of you,' Ted warned, 'until we have some justice for this poor kid. It looks like there is no one else in this world who cares or cared for her.'

  Chapter Twenty

  'Mike, got a job for you today, if you're up to driving a bit now, not too heavily medicated?' Ted said at the next team briefing.

  The DS instantly looked decidedly wary but said, 'Yes, sir, I think I can manage that now. What's the job?'

  'You look like the perfect mild-mannered family man, squeaky clean, nothing dodgy,' Ted told him. 'Later on this afternoon, once it's getting dark, the girls will start appearing on the streets. Find out from the team where the hotspots are and I want you to go cruising.'

  Hallam's face was a picture. 'I haven't got my car today, sir.'

  'No problems, take one from the pool,' Ted told him. 'Pick up a few of the girls, ask them what they know about Maggie Fielding, anything at all that might be helpful to us. They'll probably talk to you because of how you look. Let the missus know you might be a bit late, most of them don't come out to play early, just the ones who are desperate.'

  'Yes, sir,' the DS replied, but he still looked decidedly uncomfortable. Ted couldn't quite tell if it was physical discomfort or something else.

  He turned to the rest of his team. 'Tina, can you get round to the soup kitchen and ask some more questions? Talk to anyone who comes in, see if you can get any clearer idea of where Maggie's patch was, where she dossed. Did she mention any of her recent pick-ups to anyone?'

  Turning to Virgil, he said, 'Virgil, huge apologies in advance for the appalling racial stereotyping, but I need you working a late one this evening so take a bit of a break this afternoon in exchange. I also need you in your best pimp's threads.'

  'Word, blud,' Virgil drawled with a wink and despite the seriousness of the briefing, the rest of them had to laugh, even the DI.

  'That's the idea, method acting,' the DI smiled. 'I need to know if this girl had a pimp, and who it was, or was she just moonlighting. Always worth looking at the pimp in a case like this although, of course, this world is light years from what we have found out about Vicki Carr. Which brings me on to links.

  'Any ideas, any theories, anything, and I do mean anything, we need to explore them. Anyone got anything they want to propose?'

  'Sir,' Steve
said hesitantly, so much so that Ted was surprised he hadn’t put up his hand before speaking. 'This may be nothing, but we now know both victims had blue eyes.'

  'Yes?' Ted said encouragingly, pleased the young man was finding his voice a bit more.

  'Well, sir,' the TDC continued, 'this is probably just rubbish, but as the second victim's eyes were removed, I just wondered if the eyes were significant in some way? Whether he was drawing our attention to a link, some sort of message …' he tailed off, clearly thinking his idea sounded too far-fetched now he had voiced it.

  'It's a point worth bearing in mind, Steve,' the DI told him. 'At the moment I'm not sure where it would lead us but it is a link and we need to look at them all. Well done.'

  'Sir,' the DS asked, 'will you be using a psychological profiler on this case?'

  There was a low chuckle from the longer-standing members of the team and even Ted smiled. 'DS Hallam,' he said, 'the rest of the team will tell you that whenever the words “psychological” and “profile” appear in the same sentence anywhere near me, the red mist starts to descend.

  'There's been a study done which suggests it has no real-world value and can even take cases in entirely the wrong direction, which is the last thing we need. It works wonderfully on television. Some over-weight hard drinker with a Scottish accent comes along and tells us our killer had a troubled childhood and liked to torture small animals. I think we can probably work out for ourselves that these are not the actions of a normal and socially well-adjusted person.

  'Having said that, if I thought me singing England's next Eurovision Song Contest entry would help us catch this killer, I would do it, willingly. We will do whatever it takes. Just promise me you won't suggest that idea to the Big Boss before we have exhausted every other possible route. In fact I'll talk to him first, nip any such idea in the bud.'

  He looked round at his team then continued, 'Right, Maurice and Sal, I want you to dig deep into Vicki Carr's background and find any connection, no matter how tenuous, between her and Maggie Fielding. Sal, you also make time to go and see Honest John.'

  'Really, sir?' Sal groaned.

  'Really, DC Ahmed,' Ted said dryly. 'We know it's not him, of course. But if someone is so desperate for human contact they resort to confessing to crimes, it would be a sad world if we couldn't give them ten minutes now and again. Don't go out of your way, but when you're passing in his direction, call in. He's always there. Ask him a question only the killer could answer, then tell him he's eliminated from our enquiries. It will make his week, probably make his year. Look on it as community service.

  'Rob, go and have another chat with the ex-boyfriend. I can't see it for a minute, he's short of money, can't see him affording to pay a girl, but maybe he got money from somewhere and maybe a bit of what Maggie was offering is the most he can manage these days. Check it out.

  'Since that hatchet job in the local paper, I'm really worried about the possibility of copycat crimes. Steve, no one is better at research than you are. I want you to go through the press articles and find out twice as much as they found out about historical killings in this area. I'm worried some sick joker will try to mimic one of those. We can't prevent it, but at least if we have all the information we can find, it puts us in a stronger position.

  'Right, you all know what you have to do. Now go do that voodoo that you do so well.'

  Mike Hallam looked thoroughly confused. The rest of the team knew that one of the boss's favourite films of all time was Blazing Saddles, from which he would sometimes trot out quotes to lighten the mood.

  Ted headed for the DCI's office. Since Mike had mentioned the dreaded 'psychological profiling' phrase, Ted thought he'd best pre-empt that idea just in case Jim Baker was having the same thoughts.

  Ted was not averse to taking help from anyone when working a difficult case. It's just he liked to go with things which had some scientific basis or proven track record, and he had yet to be convinced of either in the case of psychological profiling.

  He knew the DCI had tried every method known in trying to find his missing daughter, including contacting a so-called medium. She had taken a lot of his money and fed him a load of mumbo-jumbo, raising his hopes only to dash them again when nothing she said was borne out on investigation.

  The DCI was a good, solid copper with an impressive conviction rate of his own, but something of a steady-Eddie plodder. He and Ted made a good double act, for bouncing ideas off each other, and Ted wanted to bring him up to speed as well as exchanging ideas, in case there was anything he was missing that was staring him in the face.

  He filled in the DCI on the identification of Maggie Fielding. It was always acutely painful for both men to talk about runaways. Maggie's leaving home had been understandable. Rosalie's was much more complex.

  She had hated the way her mother treated her father and wanted him to leave her, or preferably to throw her out. But the DCI was a religious man who took his 'till death do us part' very seriously. Rosalie was effectively asking him to choose between his daughter and his wife and it nearly broke him. He was now left with no daughter and a wife he only saw occasionally when she wasn't out sleeping around.

  Ted mentioned the profiling idea and was relieved when the DCI agreed that it was too early to consider any such thing at the moment.

  'Coming up to Christmas, Ted,' the DCI said conversationally. 'Got any plans?'

  'Get this bastard behind bars first,' came the swift response. 'Then if that's done and dusted, Trev will be cooking something fabulous as usual. You're very welcome to come and join us, Jim, if you want to. I know Trev is thinking of asking Hard G's ex, Willow – they've become quite good friends.'

  'That's kind, Ted, but I'll be spending Christmas with my wife, of course,' the DCI said, although both men knew he probably wouldn't.

  'Well, the offer's there, if your plans fall through,' Ted told him. 'Right, I'd better get on. We have a killer to catch.'

  Chapter Twenty-one

  DC Dennis 'Virgil' Tibbs really enjoyed undercover work on the streets. He loved getting into a role, it gave free rein to his vivid imagination. This evening he had taken the boss at his word and gone for shiny suit and bling, for the perfect pimp look.

  His car didn't quite match the image. It wasn't new or polished chrome enough, but at least it was a Beemer and at least it was black. He had the car's sound system cranked up to the max, belting out rap tracks that he would never normally listen to. It wouldn't really work with his undercover image to be cruising the streets talking to prostitutes with the soft tones of his preferred Michael Bublé discs issuing forth from his car speakers.

  Virgil was drenched in aftershave which smelled expensive but was actually a cheap copy from the market. Not a counterfeit, of course, or the Boss would have had his guts for garters. He looked the part, especially with his carefully honed figure, the result of his passion for body building.

  He was so enthusiastic about throwing himself into the role that he was actually out on the streets a little earlier than he had intended, although on these wintry days, darkness fell even before late afternoon. So he knew some of the girls would already be stirring.

  As well as being a good detective, Virgil was known as a bit of a joker on the team. He could never resist the chance of a laugh. When he saw the pool car ahead of him, cruising slowly along the kerb, he couldn't help himself from tucking in behind it and waiting for his chance.

  As DS Hallam slowed the pool car to a crawl, having spotted a girl lurking on a street corner, Virgil was out of his car and round to its passenger door in a flash. It was unlocked, as he'd expected in the circumstances. He slid in and drawled a 'Yo, dude.'

  The DS went ashen-faced and nearly leapt out of his seat, a hand that was visibly shaking flying up instinctively to steady his heart, which had suddenly gone into overdrive.

  'Whoa, sorry, Sarge,' Virgil said contritely, 'didn't mean to scare you. I just couldn't resist.'

  'You nearly gave m
e a heart attack,' Hallam told him, his voice sounding a little unsteady. 'These bloody pills they've got me on make me a bit twitchy as it is. Just as well they don't let us out armed. And you could have blown both our covers.'

  'Sorry, Sarge,' Virgil said again, 'but no danger of that. What could be more natural than a pimp having a word with a john who's maybe not paid his dues in full? You got anything?'

  'Some very interesting offers,' the DS smiled, more relaxed now that his heart-rate was coming back down nearer to normal. 'Talked to a couple of the girls who knew Maggie slightly. Seems her style was always a quickie for cash. She was more interested in having money for the next fix than saving into a personal pension fund, so she didn't work as much as some of the girls, too off her face a lot of the time.'

  'Poor kid,' Virgil said with feeling. 'Sad way for her to end up. Anyone know where she hung out?'

  Hallam shook his head. 'One of the girls thinks she sometimes squatted in an empty house round the back of Wellington Road somewhere, but nobody I've spoken to yet knew for sure. They don't think she had a pimp, but you'll be able to find out more on that score.'

  He turned and looked at Virgil from head to toe. 'I must say you look, and smell, the part. I'm glad this is a pool car, would hate to have mine stinking like that for days.'

  'Hard to see what she had in common with Vicki Carr, so far,' Virgil mused. 'No doubt that Maggie would have got into a car with anyone flashing the cash, but would Vicki? Doesn't really seem to fit what we know of her. Although I suppose she'd have accepted a lift from someone she knew or at least recognised. But the two didn't exactly move in the same social circles.'

  'Don't be too sure of that,' the DS laughed. 'You'd be amazed at the types that do go with the girls for a quick knee-trembler up an alleyway. I was gobsmacked when one of them asked after a copper from our nick when they realised I wasn't just another punter. Not one of our team, but still someone you'd be shocked about.'

  'Really?' Virgil said. 'You have to tell me now, Sarge, you can't leave me in suspense.'