Baby's Got Blue Eyes: Introducing DI Ted Darling

by L M Krier

  'What are your plans for Christmas this year?' he asked.

  'Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas it to catch a killer,' Ted said ironically. 'If we do, Trev and I are going to have a quiet day at home, with some of Trev's fabulous cooking and probably some rubbish films on TV or DVD. Trev's invited Willow.'

  'How adorable,' Hard G said mockingly. 'They do make the most beautiful couple. Doesn't it worry you?'

  'No,' Ted said emphatically.

  'This one's a sniffer, not a needle user,' the Professor told him, switching back into professional mode. 'You can clearly see the early signs of damage to the nasal septum here,' he indicated. 'It's possible she's another street girl, funding a habit. I take it you've no clue yet as to identity?'

  'Nothing found at the scene again, not that I'm aware of. The team are trawling MissPers for any likely matches,' Ted replied.

  'Your killer is not making it very easy for you, is he?' the Professor said. 'Let's see if we can't find something more helpful on this body. I read an intriguing crime novel recently where the killer was identified by a single nasal hair found in a bath tub. Ah, if only reality were like fiction.'

  Ted knew that the Professor loved to read crime novels and watch police and forensic science dramas on television, just so he could dissect every error and laugh uproariously at any basic mistakes in procedure. Ted had heard that Hard G was once asked to act as a consultant for a drama series about the work of forensic pathologists but had refused saying, in his typical fashion, 'It's so much more fun when they make such basic mistakes.'

  'I'll run full tox screens on her blood again for you,' the Professor was saying, 'with the caveat of what I mentioned before about the length of time since death. The same applies to stomach contents but I really am testing everything I can think of, Ted. I want to give you the breakthrough you need, old boy.

  'By the way, if you and the gorgeous Trev want to take a break at any time, I have a chalet at Serre Chevalier which I hardly ever use. You would be most welcome to go there.'

  Ted was taken aback. He'd known Hard G for a number of years, but this was the first time he had made such an offer.

  'Thank you, Roger, that's extremely generous,' he said. 'Will you be using it yourself over the festivities?'

  'Oh, my dear boy, no,' Hard G said, as if the idea were unthinkable. 'The current blonde job and I will be flying off to St Moritz for some snow and some very lively après-ski, then possibly to the Riviera for some winter sun. I have small houses in both places.'

  Ted had a sneaking suspicion that his and Hard G's definition of a small house might differ considerably.

  'How's it going with Willow's replacement?' Ted asked, intrigued in spite of himself.

  'Very well,' the Professor said with a suggestive chuckle. 'Handles very well, high performance, starts on the button every time. A little less temperamental than dear Willow, knows which side her bread is buttered.'

  'Do you even know this one's name?' Ted asked.

  'Luckily, I call them all God in the sack, so there's no chance of a mistake,' Hard G said, spreading his feet apart and making suggestive pelvic thrusts. 'You know, oh God, oh God!'

  Even Ted had to smile at that. Just as quickly again, the Professor was back to professionalism. 'Talking of sex, as we were, there is evidence of recent sexual activity and yet again it's been rather rough. There's evidence of bruising and some tearing. As I've said before, this may be normal activity between some couples, so it could be consensual.

  'Not wishing to be boastful but I've inflicted the same, and probably worse, on more than one occasion, just by over-enthusiasm. There was one unforgettable occasion when the young lady in question needed medical treatment. Thank goodness for private hospitals.'

  Ted always got uncomfortable talking to Hard G about sex. The Professor insisted on telling him far more than he wanted or needed to know. Ted's view was that what happened in the bedroom stayed in the bedroom.

  To lighten the mood and change the subject, he asked, 'Will you be gone for Christmas?'

  'No, the blonde job and I will have a small and intimate dinner at the pile on the Edge,' Hard G replied, referring to his house at Alderley Edge. 'We fly out on Boxing Day. Luckily I can use the family Gulfstream. Commercial flights are so tedious over the holiday period. So handy when I want to pop off for a weekend's jollies somewhere'

  Ted knew that the Professor's family had made obscene wealth in the pharmaceutical industry. Hard G had chosen not to go into the family firm, but he still enjoyed the privileges of belonging to such a wealthy family and was a major shareholder in the family's companies.

  'Small and intimate?' Ted queried, knowing that it would translate into having an extremely expensive outside caterer come in and provide everything, as was always the case whenever he had eaten there.

  'Very intimate,' the Professor smirked. 'The staff will have the night off and I've ordered plenty of messy food which needs to be eaten with fingers, which will need licking and sucking afterwards.'

  'Going to have to stop you there, Roger, definitely too much information,' Ted said. 'Can we stick to the task in hand?'

  The Professor laughed at his obvious discomfort. 'Now this is also interesting,' he said, peering more closely at the body in front of him. 'Do you see here, near her right hip? She wasn't very fleshy at all, poor thing, but just here on the gluteus maximus. A little scratching, very fine. I would almost say from a hypodemic nerdle.' The Professor could never resist his own jokey little Spoonerism. Ted found very little to laugh at at all during post-mortems.

  'It's strange because she has no other evidence of injected drug use and that would be an odd place to do so,' he continued. 'I doubt it was insulin, no signs of any other previous use. I wonder if we have finally found how your man keeps his girls still long enough to have his wicked way with them? It would certainly explain how this poor young lady lay still for him to carve out his message.

  'A vet might administer an intramuscular injection of something like ketamine for pain relief and light sedation in horses, for instance, although I believe it's less effective in bovines. And the very good news for us, Ted, my dear boy, is that ketamine is obligingly detectable post-mortem. We may just be on the brink of our first breakthrough.'

  Chapter Thirty-one

  'Right team,' Ted addressed them when he got back from the latest post-mortem. 'First the bad news. If any of you are planning last-minute shopping trips with the family on Christmas Eve, please revise your plans. We're up to the wire on this, the top brass are complaining about overtime so there won't be any. As you know, I always try to let you all go early on Christmas Eve. This year that's not likely to be possible.

  'So warn your other halves, mail order the kids' toys, arrange home delivery for the turkey, do what you need to do, but be advised I need everyone in right up to the end of play that day come what may. Unless we suddenly get a confession out of someone, which is looking like a slim chance.

  'The good news. Because I'll be keeping you back, you're all invited to The Grapes as soon as we finish for Christmas, as usual. My shout, and Trev will make nibbles. Bring your other halves.'

  A cheer went up from all the team except DS Hallam and the TDC, who'd not yet experienced either the boss's Christmas tradition, or Trev's incredible cooking.

  'Will Trev be making mince pies, boss?' Tina asked dreamily. Ted had often told Trev if he'd made pastry earlier on in their relationship, they would have ended up in bed together far sooner. It was so good, it was sinful.

  'If he doesn't, I'll arrest him,' Ted grinned, wanting to raise a few smiles before they needed to return to the serious business, now with three murders on their books.

  He filled the team in on what little the post-mortem had revealed, then asked for progress reports.

  'We're going to start out round known dealers, sir,' DS Hallam told him. 'Everyone will be out shortly, checking with their sources, see if she's known on our patch. Then there are a few from
MissPers we need to check up on. We'll try the street girls again, too, in case she was a regular tom.

  'But Steve and Maurice have something for you, boss. A possible suspect from offenders in the area.' He nodded to Maurice to take up the story.

  'Boss, you're going to love this one,' Maurice Brown said confidently. 'How about a former medical student who once carved his name on his girlfriend's thigh with a scalpel? Steve found it, as usual. We've been checking on said potential suspect. He was out of the area for a time but he's been back on our patch a few months now.'

  Ted looked from Maurice to Steve and back again. 'This had better not be a wind-up,' he said. 'It sounds too good to be true. Tell me.'

  Maurice looked at his notebook, knowing it would be quicker for him to fill the boss in than waiting for Steve to stammer his way nervously through their findings.

  'Nigel Foden, boss, twenty-four. Was studying medicine at Leeds and doing quite well but was always a bit of a party animal,' Maurice Brown told him. 'His tutors had a few words with him about his drinking, and there were suspicions of recreational drug use. But his grades were very good so he got away with it for a while.

  'About eighteen months ago there was an unfortunate incident. He finished up having to haul the girlfriend off to casualty when they were both pretty well tanked up and he'd taken a scalpel to her leg to carve his name. In isolation, it may well have been overlooked as it was not a serious injury, though messy enough. Coming on top of everything else, his tutors were a bit worried about his suitability and had a discreet word with him about re-evaluating his direction.

  'He left and took himself off to South America, doing voluntary work as some sort of medical auxiliary. Now he's back and not far away. Last known address was a flat in Hazel Grove. Do you want us to bring him in, boss?'

  'Can you think of any good reason why not, Maurice?' Ted asked ironically.

  Maurice laughed. 'None, sir, I'm on it now.'

  'Take Steve with you,' Ted told him. 'Good work, again. Just one thing, though, and I'm not niggling. How has this only just come to light? I thought you'd been checking on knife crime before this?'

  'Nothing ever came of it, boss,' Maurice Brown told him. 'The file went to the CPS as an advice file, but the Chief Crown Prosecutor advised against proceeding. The girlfriend was an unreliable witness, kept changing her story. They were both off their faces so much she couldn't remember if she'd given him permission to do it or even if she had asked him to. So it was a bit of a dicey case to take to court.'

  'Even more impressive work, in that case, Steve, can't have been easy to track that one down,' Ted told him. 'Extra mince pies for you on Christmas Eve.

  'I suppose it's too much to hope for that there are any connections between this Foden and our first two victims but do some cross-checking, just in case. Let me know when you've got him. I'm very much looking forward to talking to our scalpel artist friend. Oh, and Maurice, take a pool car. Don't subject him to yours.'

  Whilst Ted was waiting to see if Maurice and Steve could find their potential latest suspect, Ted turned his attention to the white board that was taking shape. Their latest unidentified victim – Tina had christened her Alison – was up there.

  'There's something else we need to map onto here,' Ted said to Tina who was sitting close by, working. She was the only one left in the main office now.

  'What's that, sir?' Tina looked up.

  'Me,' Ted replied. He picked up a marker pen and started to scribble. Tina got up and came across.

  'The third victim makes it clear that there is a personal message here to me,' Ted said, drawing a line to connect Alison's name to where he had written his own. 'Maybe I knew this young woman in some way. I'll know more when we get a positive ID on her.

  'Vicki Carr. Victim number one. Trev and I have eaten in the bistro a few times. I didn't recognise her but it's possible she served us there.' He drew another connecting line.

  'Maggie Fielding. I have never been with a prostitute in my life but anyone who knows anything about me knows how I feel about runaways and she was one. That's pretty much public knowledge, from the press conferences I've sat in on.'

  He had Tina's full attention now. She was watching the boss, fascinated. He perched on the edge of the nearest desk as his mind went into overdrive.

  'We've been going on the basis that this is a woman-hating random killer,' he said. 'But what if we've been wrong all along? What if it's me they hate and they just see the victims as collateral damage, necessary to get their message across to me? That I'm somehow not doing enough to protect runaways?

  'Perhaps we need to be looking at runaway cases I've worked on. Ones with a tragic outcome, like the girl down Otterspool, found dead in a field two weeks after she was reported missing. Someone in her family? Check that out.'

  'Sounds a bit drastic, sir,' Tina said. 'Why would someone who had been through something like that themselves want to inflict it on other sets of parents?'

  'Grief can do terrible things to people.' Ted replied. 'Grief, guilt, if they felt to blame for their child going missing in the first place. What about cases I've worked on where there's been no outcome, good or bad?'

  Ted's team had been working with Uniform branch officers on a Crime Prevention Initiative involving runaways. The theory was that keeping youngsters off the streets would help reduce crimes like drug dealing and prostitution on their patch.

  Tina was staring hard at him at the same moment as Ted realised what he had just said. He shook his head emphatically.

  'No, Tina, you're completely wrong,' he said adamantly. 'Look further afield.'

  'Sir, you always told me that to do a proper job we need to look at all angles,' Tina said determinedly. 'You've been steering the search for the DCI's daughter for, how many years now? And there's still no sign of her. That kind of grief and stress could drive anyone to do crazy things.'

  'No,' Ted shook his head. 'I know him too well. It can't be him. Look into other similar cases.'

  'Sir, if you want me to work this up the right way, the way you taught me, I'm going to have to look at the Rosalie case as well,' Tina said stubbornly.

  There was a long pause. Then, grudgingly, Ted said, 'All right. Work up your notes on all the runaway cases I've worked on. One copy, my eyes only. No hard copies, wipe anything from your computer.

  'And I hope I don't have to say, DC Bailey, that you talk to no one about this, other than me. No one at all. Is that clear?'

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Ted wasn't sure what he had expected the ex-medical student to be like, but he was certainly surprised by the young man Maurice and Steve had brought in, as he and Tina sat down opposite him in the interview room.

  Tall, rather gaunt-looking, with a neatly-trimmed beard and dark hair, his skin still had the weathered look and darker tint which spoke of time spent in warmer climates than south Manchester in December.

  'Thank you for coming in, Mr Foden,' he began. 'I'll try not to take up too much of your time. I'm hoping you can answer a few questions for me that would help us in our enquiries. You're not under arrest and you're not obliged to answer my questions.'

  'So, from what I've seen on television and read in the papers, I'm guessing this has something to do with the use of a scalpel?' the man asked calmly. 'You have a slasher on the loose, so naturally enough you're talking to anyone with an unfortunate history of wielding a scalpel and I fit that profile.'

  Ted said nothing. He often found it was useful to leave a pause for a suspect to fill with their own words.

  'Well, Inspector,' Foden continued. 'You did say Inspector, didn't you? I carried out one random act on a very drunken night, when Joanna and I had both had far too much to drink, mixed with some rather silly stuff. It's something I bitterly regret – we both do. Joanna and I are still very good friends, by the way. I'm paying her as much as I can towards surgery to remove my pathetic effort, which left a scar.

  'I've never done anything remotely l
ike it before or since, and I paid a heavy price for my stupidity. I think the fact that I was never charged with anything should indicate to you that it was exactly as I said – a very stupid and infantile prank that got totally out of hand.

  'Does that help you with your enquiries, Inspector?'

  'It's a start, Mr Foden,' Ted replied, 'thank you for that. But given that previous history, I hope you will understand why you have been asked to come in?'

  'Oh, yes,' Foden said bitterly. 'At least Joanna's scars will soon be gone completely. Mine have a habit of following me round and probably will for the rest of my life.'

  'Would you mind telling me where you were on Wednesday evening, Mr Foden?'

  'I would be delighted to, Inspector, as I can offer you an impressive roomful of witnesses for that evening,' Foden said, smiling with something like relief. 'Believe it or not, I am determined to get back into medicine one day. But a blot like that on your copy book takes a lot of erasing. I've been doing voluntary work overseas, partly as penance, partly to have something worthwhile to put on my CV other than “kicked out of uni for carving up girlfriend with a scalpel”.

  'On Wednesday evening, I was on a training course for volunteers being sent into areas affected by Ebola. There were about twenty of us, plus the training staff. I'll give you full details so you can check.'

  Ted sat back in his chair, stunned. They had the wrong man, again, it seemed and this time spectacularly so. Still, he was determined to get something out of the interview.

  He pushed a sheet of paper and a pen across the desk to Foden and said, 'Would you mind writing your name on that for me, in block capitals?'

  'Ah, subtle,' Foden said, mockingly. 'Happy to do so, but to save you time, I am left-handed, if that is relevant to your case. However, like many medical students, I learned to use a scalpel, amongst other things, with both hands. It's incredibly difficult to get hold of left-handed surgical instruments, so we quickly learn to become ambidextrous. I take it that is significant?'