Stop Dead

by Leigh Russell

  ‘I think I should pack this in too,’ she said, leaning back in her chair with a sigh.

  Nick raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I mean for today,’ she added.

  ‘I thought you were saying you’d had enough of the job altogether.’

  ‘I do feel like that sometimes,’ she admitted.

  ‘Leave it for the evening and come for a drink then,’ he suggested.

  She was tempted but shook her head.

  ‘I’ll take a rain check on that,’ she replied, turning back to her terminal. ‘I really should crack on for a bit longer.’

  He wished her luck and left, whistling cheerily.

  For a moment she was tempted to run after him. Instead, she turned her attention back to the screen and pressed on resolutely, knowing she would carry on until exhaustion forced her to stop for the night. Although that was hardly an efficient way to proceed, ideas often occurred to her when she was mentally exhausted, immersed in a case that was going nowhere, as though she found inspiration in despair. They suspected the killer was a woman, but that didn’t narrow the search down very much. She forced herself to keep her eyes open, fixed on the screen, but her concentration kept wavering.

  She must have dozed off. Suddenly she opened her eyes, wide awake, and reopened Desiree’s file with fingers that fumbled at the keyboard in her hurry. After rereading the document, she fished in her bag to retrieve her notebook and flicked through the pages to check her original record of the meeting.

  ‘Desiree met GC while she was singing at restaurant – he offered a lift home.’

  Setting the book down on the desk beside her half eaten takeaway she leaned back in her chair, frowning. Desiree was a singer. She met George Corless at the restaurant. He had given her a lift home. That was how they had met. The words revolved in her head, forming a possible new scenario which she examined from different angles. Whichever way she considered it the story made sense, apart from one glaring problem.

  A singer called Ingrid had performed at Mireille on the evening of Henshaw’s murder. The records kept by the restaurant were incomplete, but the same singer could have been there on the evening Corless was killed. The two men might both have offered her a lift home, as Corless had done at least once, with Desiree. If the cleaner was to be believed, Henshaw had ‘an eye for the girls.’ Geraldine looked up what Ginny had said. ‘He was the one wanted those girl singers, and he’d have had them do more than sing, I daresay –’ Ignoring the conundrum of Linda Harrison’s DNA in the car, she speculated about a violent encounter in the car with a singer who had accepted a lift home, an encounter that ended with a brutal murder. Sam had spoken to Ingrid in Shepherds Bush. Was it possible that the singer was the killer? Sam had described her as slight and unprepossessing. At the time she hadn’t aroused their interest. Now Geraldine wanted to know more.

  Sam hadn’t recorded Ingrid’s surname, which was irritating, but Geraldine understood that pressing someone for information could backfire. According to Sam’s notes, it had been hard to wheedle anything out of Ingrid. It didn’t matter. In a few seconds, Geraldine would be able to find out all she needed to know. The manager at Mireille hadn’t been able to help her but the information was available at the click of a ‘live music’ icon on the website of the café in Shepherds Bush. It couldn’t have been easier to find. With trembling fingers she looked up the singer who was listed only as ‘Ingrid’ and found a link to her website. Geraldine held her breath. Another click of a button revealed that the website was ‘under construction’. She was still no closer to finding the singer, but if Ingrid really was the killer, Geraldine couldn’t afford to wait nearly a week to find her singing in Shepherds Bush.

  CHAPTER 64

  For once, Charlie didn’t oversleep. His night had been restless, disturbed by a pounding headache. When he had managed to doze off, his dreams had been troubled by images of a mad woman charging at him wielding a variety of weapons: an old-style police truncheon, a long gleaming sword, a snake that hissed by his ear before snapping crocodile jaws at the side of his head, hacking off chunks of flesh until his head had all but disappeared down its gullet. The snake withdrew and Charlie saw his own face staring back at him. He wondered how he could still see when his own eyes were gazing at him from the serpent head. The snake lunged forward. He tried to run but couldn’t see where he was going. In the darkness he tripped and woke with a jolt, muzzy and fretful from pain and lack of sleep.

  By the time his mother banged on his bedroom door, bawling at him to get up, he was already awake and staring in dismay at his blood stained pillow. His head wound had bled onto his school jacket, the discolouration barely visible on the dark fabric. He could sling it over his arm when he left the house, after which he would conveniently ‘lose’ it, just to be on the safe side. He hardly ever wore it anyway. It was best not to take any chances where his mother was concerned. Once her suspicions were aroused he would never hear the end of it. He could hide his wound without too much trouble, concealing it beneath his hood. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best he could do. Once he had left for the day, he would stay out of the house as long as possible, and run straight upstairs when he got in. With any luck she would never notice he’d been injured.

  His pillow was not so easily disposed of. He could hardly throw that away. He racked his brains, trying to come up with an excuse for a missing pillow, because even if he succeeded in leaving the house without his mother catching sight of the gash on his head, the pillow would give the game away. Although he had banned her from his room, she went in there all the time, nosing around, checking up on him, ever since she had found a packet of her fags beside his bed. She was bound to go in and see the bloody pillow and then all hell would break loose. He would be grounded, and his mother would insist on marching off to the school to complain, as though that would make any difference. She was always complaining, and it only made things worse for him. All the teachers hated him because of her fussing, and the other kids knew it. Anxiously, he pushed the pillow under his duvet.

  With the stained pillow concealed for the time being, he felt more positive. She probably wouldn’t notice. By the time she saw it, the gash on his head would have healed and he could make up some bull about having cut his finger or something equally innocuous. Anything to prevent her finding out that he had been set upon again. There was no way he was going to tell anyone the truth about being attacked by a woman. The more he thought about it, the less he liked the idea of anyone finding out. Apart from the fact that he would become a laughing stock at school, it raised all sorts of awkward questions.

  Adults always closed ranks. They were bound to suspect the woman had been acting in self-defence, raising questions about what he had been up to, setting on her. The only alternative was to convince everyone he was the victim of an assault. And if he lied about his attacker being a woman, his mother would start banging on about going to the police who would check CCTV and find out he had been lying about being beaten up by a gang of lads on the estate. It was all so complicated, it made his aching head spin. Only one thing was clear. No one must ever find out what had happened. He skipped out of the house without stopping for breakfast.

  ‘Gotta go, I’ll be late for school.’

  ‘When did you ever care about being on time? And take that bloody hoodie off. What’s wrong with your jacket? I spent good money getting you a proper uniform for that school.’

  Ignoring her raised voice as he ran through the door, he raced along the walkway and down the concrete staircase. He had no intention of going back to school until his head had healed. As long as he kept his hood up, he could move around without attracting attention. His head was still throbbing but he didn’t feel too bad, and he had a tenner in his pocket that he had borrowed from his mother’s purse. Stupid cow should have been more careful. She would blame it on him, of course, as per usual, but in the meantime he was on his way to the shopping centre with a free day ahead of him and ten quid in his pocket.
Stuff her. Stuff them all. This was his time and he intended to make the most of it.

  Talk about unlucky. He still had the note in his jeans pocket and could have paid for the bar of chocolate ten times over. They shouldn’t leave goodies on display like that, if they didn’t want people to help themselves. It was there for the taking. The sodding security guard caught him just outside the shop.

  ‘Fuck off! You’ve got to be joking. It’s only a fucking bar of chocolate! Here, have it.’

  He squirmed but the security guard kept a tight grip on his arm. Inexorably dragged back into the shop, he continued his protest, keeping his head down because people had started to look at him.

  ‘I can pay for it if you let go of my fucking arm. I’ve got ten quid on me. I’ll pay for it. Take the money. Let me go.’

  The office was a poky room with a desk and some rusty filing cabinets along one wall. Charlie thought the manager would have had a more impressive place to work. He looked the old geezer straight in the eye and decided to appeal to his good nature. He looked like a goody goody sort. After all, it was only a bar of chocolate.

  ‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ he stammered.

  He tried to sound scared, which wasn’t difficult, because he was shitting himself in case his mother found out. He could just imagine her reaction.

  ‘I don’t know what come over me, sir. I’ve never done nothing like it before, and –’

  ‘Take off that hood,’ the manager barked.

  Charlie’s heart sank. So much for expecting kindness and charity.

  ‘It was a mistake, sir. I forgot I’d picked it up. Jesus, it’s only a fucking bar of chocolate. Here, you can have it and I’ll pay you the money – I’ve got ten quid –’

  He chucked the Toblerone down on the manager’s desk and rummaged in his pocket for the note.

  ‘I don’t even want it. It was for me sick granny. For fuck’s sake, it’s not fair to make such a bloody fuss over a fucking bar of chocolate. I’ve never been in no trouble before. It’ll kill me mum.’

  He stared at the old man, trying to look all young and innocent, but the manager wasn’t taken in.

  ‘You should have thought of that before you attempted to steal from my store. I’ve had more than enough of you youngsters carrying on as though the world owes you a living. It’s all take with you lot, isn’t it, all rights and no responsibilities. Do you have any idea how much money this store alone loses every month from this sort of petty pilfering?’

  Charlie tried to think of a way out, but he was well and truly screwed, his escape route blocked by the security guard who was built like a tank. The manager refused to listen to reason and kept banging on about responsibility. It was so boring, Charlie might as well have been at school. There was no getting away from it. He was nicked.

  CHAPTER 65

  Geraldine fretted at her desk, checking her phone and her screen for updates, but there was no news. Every few minutes she slipped along the corridor to check with the intelligence officer who was liaising with the borough intelligence unit, working to trace the singer. Each time Geraldine went in her colleague shook her head.

  ‘Not yet. I’m still waiting to hear, but it shouldn’t take long.’

  Trying to quell her impatience, Geraldine returned to her desk and fiddled about but she couldn’t concentrate on anything else until she had followed up her hunch about the singer, Ingrid.

  ‘Is everything alright?’ Nick asked, swivelling his chair round to face her.

  She found his fixed stare disconcerting.

  ‘Fine, thank you.’

  ‘Only you’re like a cat on heat this morning.’

  Instead of replying, she turned back to her screen. Nick was only trying to be sociable, but his approaches were increasingly grating on her nerves. She wasn’t sure if Sam’s antipathy for him was colouring her own feelings. Certainly she resented the fact that Sam rarely wandered into the office to talk over cases since Nick had returned to share Geraldine’s office. When challenged, the sergeant acknowledged so readily that she was being petty, that Geraldine suspected there was more to the falling out than either Nick or Sam had told her. Perhaps he had been insulting about Sam’s sexual orientation, without realising she was a lesbian. Whatever the cause of their bad feeling, Sam didn’t feel comfortable in Nick’s presence.

  ‘We’re getting somewhere,’ her colleague told her at last, looking up with a smile. ‘Ingrid used to sing with a band called Lazy Bones but she split from them nearly a year ago. Since then she’s been working alone, singing with a variety of different groups and doing solo gigs in pubs and restaurants mainly. She seems to float about.’

  ‘And the address?’

  ‘We’re still checking. We’re working our way through all the venues where she’s worked over the past year trying to get her full name, but it’s a slow job. All the managers who organise music seem to be taking a day off today. And we can’t raise any response from the agent listed on one of the venue’s sites. The email address doesn’t exist.’

  The intelligence officer was called Jessica, which reminded Geraldine of Hannah’s daughter, and her insistence on changing her name.

  ‘We’ve drawn a blank so far for Emily Tennant,’ she said, ‘but we haven’t tried Ingrid Tennant. Let’s try that. Ingrid Tennant.’

  ‘Did you say Ingrid Tennant?’

  ‘Yes. Go on, try it. It’s just an idea.’

  ‘OK. If you say so.’

  Reg looked puzzled when Geraldine told him she was looking for Emily Tennant, the woman she believed was the niece of a convicted murderer, Linda Harrison.

  ‘Not sure where you’re going with this, Geraldine. Just because her aunt’s a convicted killer, that doesn’t make her a suspect. I’m not sure what your point is.’

  He sounded tired and leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed as she explained her suspicion that the DNA found on Patrick might have come from Linda’s niece.

  ‘Oh, I see. Very well, of course you must follow it up in that case,’ he told her, opening his eyes and sitting upright. He glanced at his watch.

  ‘Reg you have to admit –’

  ‘Yes, yes, I said follow it up, Geraldine.’

  Narked by his apathetic response she left the office, her enthusiasm dampened. She was on her way back to her desk when a sergeant stopped her. A constable had come across a boy he thought might have encountered the killer. It sounded like a long shot, but they had to follow it up. The most unlikely of possibilities sometimes turned out to be invaluable.

  She went back to her office and was about to summon Sam when her phone rang. The intelligence unit had come up with an address for a singer called Ingrid Tennant.

  ‘What are the chances it’s her?’ Geraldine asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s her alright. We checked it out with the pubs and restaurants where she sings. Most of them were pretty cagey – no doubt paying her cash from takings on the side – but a few of them came up with the same mobile number and it checks out. She’s renting a flat from a Mr Delaney. I’ve just sent you all the details.’

  Geraldine thanked her colleague and hung up, checking her screen as she did so. A second later the details came through.

  ‘Bingo,’ she muttered.

  Sending her sergeant to speak to the constable who had interviewed the boy, Geraldine decided to proceed to Bounds Green and check out the singer’s address. Without a DNA sample from Ingrid Tennant, the evidence was circumstantial. The girl had performed at Mireille on the evening when Henshaw was killed, and may have been there when Corless died too, but that was inconclusive, as she often sang there. Apart from that, there was nothing to link her to the other two murder victims.

  ‘You’ve found out nothing at all about her earlier life?’ Geraldine asked. ‘There must be something, surely.’

  The intelligence officer just smiled and shook her head.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit unusual? I mean, doesn’t that suggest there�
�s something dodgy about her?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll dig something up, sooner or later. Do you want us to ask around? Although you’ll have to sort out the man power.’

  Geraldine shook her head.

  ‘No, don’t worry, you’ve got her address. That’s good enough. We can ask her to tell us what she’s been up to.’

  The address she had been given was only a short walk from the station but she would have to take the Northern line into Kings Cross and change to the Piccadilly line out to Bounds Green so she decided to drive to the dingy street of terraced properties where Ingrid lived. Climbing a few stone steps to the front door she rang the unnamed bell for 26a. There was no answer. She rang again then knocked loudly several times until she heard footsteps approach. The door swung open to reveal a short stout man in his fifties, wheezing from the exertion of running downstairs, his bald head emphasising his ruddy complexion and bulging eyes.

  ‘What’s all the racket?’ he demanded.

  Geraldine introduced herself and explained she was looking for the woman who lived at flat number 26a. As soon as she mentioned her business his stance altered. No longer posturing belligerently, he ducked his head in an obsequious gesture, his expression suddenly craven. He blinked up at her with eyes almost closed by creases of flesh that threatened to envelop them.

  ‘It’s about time you lot turned up,’ he declared. ‘One blinking constable, that’s all I’ve ever seen, and he didn’t do anything, just took down a few details, and that was the end of it. I never heard anything more. I’ve been calling you for months.’

  ‘I’m sorry, calling about what?’

  ‘The woman at 26a. The one who lives downstairs. It’s about time someone started to take this seriously.’

  Ingrid’s neighbour laboured his point, but what it boiled down to was that her singing irritated him. His face turned a deeper shade of red as he worked himself up into a temper.