Cruel Justice (DI Lorne Simpkins (Book one))

by Comley, Mel; Tirraoro, Tania

  Lorne shook her head. "Tom, I was buggered when I got home, give me a break, will you?"

  "I don't doubt that, you're always buggered lately," he snapped back at her.

  Without realising it she rolled her eyes and set him off again.

  "Don't bloody do that, you know I'm right. You're always too tired to do anything when you get home from that place, but that doesn't excuse you from not having a shower. You should've had one at work. What gives you the right to bring the smell of death into our home?"

  "Are you finished?" She folded her arms defiantly. "For your information I was at the mortuary last night —"

  "That much is evident," he retaliated with narrowed eyes.

  "As I was saying, I was at the mortuary and it was quicker to come home rather than go back to the station. I've never done that before, have I?"

  He shrugged and had the grace to look ashamed at his uncalled for outburst.

  Tom bent down and took a couple of cereal bowls out of the cupboard. "Do you want some breakfast?" he asked his tone much softer.

  "I'll grab a shower first and then have some, thanks."

  As she turned to leave the room, she heard him mumble an apology.

  "No problem," she called back over her shoulder and headed up the stairs.

  Half an hour later she found him at the hob frying bacon and eggs. "Not for me, hon, I'll just grab a bowl of cornflakes and head off. Sorry, but I have to be at the station for a nine o'clock meeting with my team."

  That was it. The storm clouds gathered again, he threw the frying pan in the sink and stomped out of the room like a five-year old.

  Why do I bother? Her appetite suddenly gone, she left the house moments later. She was tired of fighting. Tired of stepping on eggshells. Tired of saying the wrong thing.

  When did it all change?

  The happiness they'd once held so dear now seemed light years away. She didn't have a clue how, or if, they would be able to sort things out. Was their marriage really at breaking point or was it a case of her imagination working overtime?

  Chapter Five

  "Morning, ma'am," the desk sergeant greeted her as she marched through reception.

  "Morning, Burt, anything I should know about?"

  "All quiet around here, ma'am, but the chief asked me to tell you he'd like a word ASAP."

  "What kind of mood is he in?" she asked the balding sergeant.

  "The usual, I guess," he replied vaguely.

  The chief was an unknown quantity to her team. But Lorne had been with him for many years and understood his quirky ways. He was her mentor, it hadn't taken him long to figure out her potential. He had pushed her to the limit, knew she'd have to work harder than any male under him. He had showed continued faith in her when others obstinately neglected to see her strengths.

  Without his guidance, she wouldn't be half the detective she was today, and would have probably been driven from the force years ago, like most of the female colleagues she had trained with at Hendon. The force, unfortunately, still lived in the dark ages where female recruits were concerned. Something that Lorne fought hard to combat daily.

  "So, Burt, retirement won't be long now."

  "Yep, looking forward to it after forty years on the job."

  "And exemplary service, it's been."

  "Nice of you to say so, ma'am."

  "And knowing you, you'll enjoy every minute of your retirement, eh?"

  He threw her one of his broad smiles that she would miss when he left.

  "I'd better see what the chief wants then. Can you contact the incident room for me? Let the team know the meeting will be delayed a few minutes?"

  "Roger that, ma'am," he replied reaching for the phone.

  "You wanted to see me, sir?" Lorne said, poking her head around the chief's door.

  "Come in. Take a seat, Lorne, I shan't be a moment." He didn't look up from the pile of documents he was signing and handing back to his secretary.

  He dismissed the older woman, who scurried from the room.

  "What happened to you?" he asked, noticing the plaster over her eye.

  Lorne hesitated for a moment wondering whether to confide in him, but decided against it when she saw how pale he looked. "Oh, it's nothing, the dog tripped me up last night and I head-butted the door," she told him, avoiding eye contact.

  He eyed her suspiciously, knew when she was lying, but Lorne could tell he wasn't willing to press her further.

  He sighed. "Fill me in on the body discovered last night, will you?"

  "Nothing much to tell yet, sir. There was no form of identification found at the scene. Dental records are a no go as the head was missing. Someone did everything they could to hinder us. The victim's right arm is missing and the fingers on the left hand have been chopped off at the knuckle."

  He bounced back and forth as Lorne gave him her report. "You couldn't have got much sleep last night, Lorne."

  That's strange, he's never been concerned about my sleep pattern before.

  "About four hours I guess, average for this job, I suppose. I'll be fine once I've had my first six cups of coffee." She laughed but her brow remained furrowed.

  "I'm worried about you. That last case you solved must have taken a lot out of you. Going undercover is never easy, especially when you have to deal with scum such as that. You look a bit peaky. I can arrange for you to talk to someone if you like."

  It was true. There was no denying that her last case had taken its toll on her. She'd been asked by The Serious Crime Squad to pose as a Madame of a newly opened massage parlour. All the regular girls had been WPCs. They'd had intelligence that a gang headed by Gripper Jones, a notorious dirtbag in the community and business partner of her long-time nemesis The Unicorn, was demanding protection money from the other parlours in the area.

  Once the protection commenced, they forced the owners to employ illegal immigrant girls, supplied by them. The girls' families back home were badly beaten if they refused to work for the gang. Lorne's world had been turned upside down — even Tom didn't have a clue what she had been involved in.

  Although they caught Jones and his gang, Lorne had been roughed up a little before reinforcements had arrived. Just a few bruises here and there, but mentally her scars ran deep, which was why she needed Tom's support now. Perhaps she was wrong not telling him about the case and maybe her decision was now back-firing.

  "I'm fine. What's going on, boss, this isn't like you?" She knew seeing a shrink would only add to her problems, but his concern puzzled her.

  He shuffled a few papers on the desk before him — it was his turn to avoid eye contact.

  She feared the worst.

  "What I'm about to tell you goes no further."

  "Of course, that goes without saying, boss."

  "I'm leaving."

  A ten-tonne truck couldn't have hit her harder. Her mouth flew open. "You're what?" she whispered.

  "My, what a lot of fillings you have, my dear," Jeff Chalmers joked, trying to make light of the situation. He continued, "I'm taking early retirement. I wanted you to be the first to know."

  Lorne shook her head in disbelief.

  "Excuse my ignorance, sir. But forty-eight isn't considered to be that old, is it?" She was babbling, didn't know what else to say.

  Reluctantly he admitted, "Ill health, I'm afraid. Something I'd rather not go in to. You understand, don't you, Lorne?" His gaze switched to the family photo proudly standing on his desk. In it was his beautiful wife Anne, whom he described as having a red-hot temper to match the colour of her hair. Alongside her sat their two strapping sons, who had both graduated from law school over the past few years. He proudly called them 'the oxygen in his life.'

  She watched him closely, saw the changing expressions in his face as his finger traced his family one by one. Lorne feared the worse. She wanted to ask him what was wrong, but there was a tiny part of her that couldn't bear to hear the truth.

  No, no she didn't bloody unders
tand. She was losing the best boss she'd ever had the privilege of working with. His departure meant she'd have to spend years proving her worth again. Shit and double shit, as if her life wasn't hard enough at the moment.

  You selfish bitch! She reprimanded herself. Jeff has just told you he's ill, seriously ill, and all you can think about is your own misfortune.

  "I don't know what to say, sir. When are you leaving?"

  "Two weeks."

  "Two weeks," she screeched, like a frustrated parrot. "Can I ask who the new chief will be?"

  He glanced down at his desk. "It hasn't been decided yet. I doubt they'll consider promoting anyone around here," he told her, no doubt with little satisfaction.

  There was nothing left for either of them to say. With a heavy heart, Lorne left his room. She threw herself dejectedly against the wall outside his office, which was where Pete found her minutes later.

  "Fiver for them? That's inflation for ya," he said buoyantly, mimicking her position against the wall.

  "You could pay me all the money in the world and it still wouldn't be worth me telling you what I'm thinking, Pete …"

  "Time's getting on, boss. We've got a killer to find."

  "What are you holding me up for, then? I haven't got time for idle chitchat, man." She propelled herself away from the wall and Pete broke into stride beside her as they marched down the long grey corridor towards the incident room.

  Chapter Six

  The team, more boisterous than normal, failed to notice Lorne and Pete's arrival.

  Mitch was bragging about his latest conquest, "So I said to her, how would you like your eggs in the morning darlin'? And get this, she replied, 'fertilised will do'. Jesus, can you believe that, and I thought I had an answer for everything. I can tell you she certainly floored me with that one."

  "If you've quite finished, DS Mitchell," Lorne warned.

  Mitchell looked embarrassed. If it had been any other day Lorne would have been the first to rib him about his male prowess not being up to much. But not today. With all that she'd encountered already that morning, her sense of humour had gone AWOL.

  "You're probably all aware that Pete and I were called out to a suspected homicide last night."

  Pete handed her an envelope containing the crime scene photos. She passed the set of 10x8 inch photos around as she spoke.

  "Tracy, I want you and Mitch to carry out the door to doors. Specifically around the entrance to the forest, a couple of hundred yards either way. Someone must've seen or heard something. The teenage lovers, the only witnesses we have at the moment, were down there last week and are sure the body wasn't there then," Lorne told them. The photos returned to her one by one and she passed them to Pete who pinned them up on the notice board.

  "Was there any form of ID, ma'am?" asked Sergeant Tracy Cox, the newest member of the team.

  "Nothing. The search team are out there now. The pathologist's early assumption is that the crime was committed elsewhere, therefore I don't hold out much hope of finding anything substantial at the scene."

  "How did the victim die? Obviously, we can all see her head was cut off but, I mean was that the actual COD?" Mitch asked, his frivolity forgotten.

  "Again, waiting on the path's report. It appears the torso suffered several blows with a blunt instrument. It's anyone's guess what condition the head will be in, if or when we find it."

  "Do we know when the crime occurred?" DS John Fox queried.

  Lorne shook her head. "Until it's substantiated by the report, we can't give a definite answer, but the doc suspected it happened approximately a month ago. John, I'd like you and Molly to trawl through the missing persons database, widen the area to say a fifty mile radius of the forest."

  "That could take hours," Molly moaned, pulling a face as if she was about to get a bikini wax.

  At thirty-five, Molly Cornell was the one member of the team Lorne found hard to tolerate — she suspected envy often got in the way of the woman's work. Lorne had confronted her numerous times about her lousy attitude disrupting the team. But Molly had always insisted there was nothing intentional in her attitude; it was just the way she was.

  "It'll take as long as necessary, Molly," Lorne snapped.

  Pete took over before anything escalated between the two women.

  "Molly, leads are thin on the ground at this stage of the enquiry. So we have to make a start somewhere, right?"

  Molly smiled sarcastically and turned back to her computer.

  Lorne's eyes blazed with fury as she stared at the back of Molly's head. It was another confrontation she could do without. Pete was the master at dealing with Molly's obdurate behaviour and Lorne was happy for him to step in.

  "Pete, get in touch with neighbouring forces, see if any body parts have turned up. That includes the river police."

  "Sure thing, boss."

  Lorne left the group to get on with their tasks and walked through to her office. She rang Arnaud's secretary, who informed her that the post-mortem report wouldn't be finalised until late afternoon.

  After completing hours of mindless paperwork, Pete came to rescue her. His suggestion of grabbing a bite to eat was just the tonic she needed. Her head was pounding and her stomach felt empty after missing out on breakfast.

  They decided to eat at a little Italian restaurant on the edge of town.

  "Did Molly find anything of use?" Lorne asked, as the waiter placed a bowl of Penne pasta topped with a tomato and basil sauce in front of her.

  Pete delayed answering until the waiter had served him his lasagne, and side order of chips. "We've got three missing women to follow up on. They all disappeared about a month ago. A twenty-two year old, looks like she's run off with an old boyfriend. Next a forty-six year old bank assistant who suspiciously vanished along with ten grand from the safe, she's a possible. Finally, we have a woman in her sixties, who should've turned up for a family christening. Her family listed her as missing a week later."

  "Why the delay?"

  "It's a regular occurrence, her taking off and forgetting to tell the family, I mean." Between large mouthfuls of lasagne, he rattled off the details of possible victims.

  Lorne listened but kept her eyes focused on her meal; she found her partner's eating habits disgusting. A sandwich from the local deli was usually a far less messy option.

  "We haven't got a definite age from Arnaud yet, so until we do, we better check out the two older likely candidates. There's no way that was a body of a twenty-two year old." Lorne finished her meal and washed it down with a glass of iced water. "While we're on the subject of Molly, what the fuck is her problem? Next time you see her remind her she's on a final warning for her bad attitude, will you? Because if I have to put up with any more of her unnecessary crap…"

  "Yeah, she knows she's on a final warning, she just takes pleasure in winding you up, boss. I'll have a word when I can. The only thing I can say in her defence is that she comes up with the goods. Without her, we wouldn't have these names to go on. Leave her to me, I'll sort her."

  Lorne glanced out of the window then back at him and asked, "Have you brought the details of the missing women with you?"

  "Yup, I guessed you'd want to start chasing things up straight away. I thought we'd start with Sharron Fishland, she works, or worked, I should say, at the DFL bank in Castleway, about twenty minutes from here."

  Chapter Seven

  Lorne drove, much to the 'Sherman tank' driver's annoyance.

  "You might want to wipe the remains of your dinner off your chin before we begin questioning people, Pete," Lorne suggested before they got out of the car.

  "I was saving that bit for Ron." The puzzled look on her face forced him to explain the joke. "Later on, Ron, get it? I despair of you at times, boss, your sense of humour or lack of it can be so embarrassing."

  "Oh. Sorry, Pete was that supposed to be funny?" She shook her head and rolled her eyes as they both got out of the car.

  They entered the busy
bank and joined the long queue.

  "If there's one thing us Brits love to do more than talk about the weather, it's bloody stand in queues all day," Pete grumbled, shuffling nervously on one foot then the other.

  "Stop complaining and stop fidgeting. You seem damn suspicious, one of the girls will probably push the panic button soon," Lorne told him, in a hushed voice.

  Finally the computerised announcer invited them to make their way to cashier number 3. Lorne produced her ID card and asked the attractive blonde if the manager was free to see them.