‘What about the missing-from-homes?’ she asked Varan.
‘We’re on it. Nothing yet.’
‘Right,’ she turned to Malia. ‘We need to put a marker on the PNC and we also need to be up on HOLMES straight away. We’re going to get this right and we’re going to be seen to get it right.’
‘I’ve found a Flickr account for Jonathan Quinton, guv,’ Varan said.
‘Great – show us?’
He had it open onscreen. She and Malia stood behind him to look.
‘It looks like he actually is an urban explorer at least,’ he said, clicking from a picture of an abandoned needle factory in Redditch to a dilapidated room with an ornate fireplace, empty except for a single dining chair on bare boards at the centre, fabric seat torn.
‘Looks like somewhere you’d be interrogated by a military junta,’ she said.
‘Halesowen, apparently. The account’s nearly four years old, created in October 2015, and he’s been in all sorts of creepy places. There’s a network of them on here, these “explorers”, all commenting on each other’s posts.’
‘Could you make a list of them? Also, everywhere he’s been – let’s cross-check and see if there’s been anything at the others.’ She pointed at the screen. ‘RusInUrbex? That’s his handle?’
Varan grinned. ‘Think he wants people to know he went to the grammar school?’
‘Did he?’
‘Three years above me. He was a smug git back then, too.’
‘I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I mean, I know I wasn’t at all, trespassing on private property and …’ He stopped before digging himself any deeper. ‘What I mean is, I normally go with my mate but his shifts changed last minute. He’s a doctor.’ He offered this up hopefully, as if it might somehow be mitigating.
Indiana Jones seemed to have been Jonathan Quinton’s wardrobe inspiration for his outing this morning: he wore a khaki shirt with the top two buttons undone, the sleeves rolled to reveal tanned, lightly muscled forearms. A leather jacket and backpack lay on the sofa-seat next to him, along with a large professional-looking camera. His petulant expression was more miscreant in the headmaster’s office than Raider of the Lost Ark, however, and his dark hair trod a careful line between cool and business-appropriate.
‘What do you do, Mr Quinton?’
‘I’m a financial adviser. A small company in town, wealth management for private clients.’ He looked at her and – unbelievable – she saw self-pity in his eyes. ‘This is going to live with me forever.’
‘Where were you planning to go originally?’ said Malia gently.
Robin watched his expression soften as he turned to her. ‘West Bromwich,’ he said. ‘Most of what’s in town’s been done now.’
‘Done?’
‘Discovered already – photographed to death.’ Robin raised an eyebrow at the choice of phrase and he had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Part of urbex is finding places people haven’t been yet. That’s why it’s called exploring – once everyone’s tramped through, it’s just a wreck. But if you’re first …’
‘You’ve done a fair bit of it, then?’
‘I like it. There’s not that many places left to discover in the world, are there, but standing somewhere abandoned, seeing into lives that are gone – it’s … nostalgic.’
‘Elegiac?’ said Malia.
He stared at her as if she’d seen into his soul. ‘Yeah.’
‘So if you knew Gisborne’s was “done”,’ Robin said, ‘why did you go there?’
‘I’d been looking forward to the trip with my mate, we haven’t done one for a bit, and I’d got everything ready. I’d heard about it online, people saying that it was nearly done, and I was gutted I missed the old Co-op furniture factory so …’
‘Tell us what happened,’ Malia said. ‘From the beginning.’ She was laying it on thick; Robin half-expected her to put a comforting hand on his arm. Quinton was lapping it up.
‘I’d hoped to be there earlier than I was – really early, for the light quality? I’d read about an open security door on Warwick Street so I knew I could get in safely.’
‘Read where?’ Robin said.
‘An urbex site.’
‘So that information’s online?’ she said. Great – at this rate, she’d turn out to be the only person in Birmingham who hadn’t known. ‘We’ll need the name of the site.’
He nodded. ‘Once I was in there, I just followed my nose. For what it’s worth, I only took five or six pictures, I normally get way more. Also, there were a lot of homeless in one of the rooms at the back. I tend to move on quite fast if that’s the case.’
‘Why?’ She couldn’t resist.
‘It’s … awkward. It’s like, I don’t know …’
‘Like you’re a misery tourist? I mean, it could be interpreted like that, couldn’t it? Tramping through someone’s ruined business – the loss of a lot of people’s livelihoods? Disturbing people who’re really struggling? And some of those people are a bit frightening, aren’t they? The ones with mental-health issues?’
‘On your way through,’ Malia said, steering things back around, ‘did you feel like anyone else was there?’
‘Only when I found her. That’s when I heard them – the people who ran. I think I shouted when I realized she was dead, disturbed them.’
‘How many did you hear?’
‘Two, I think – two sets of feet. Scuffling, though – I’m not sure.’
‘Did you hear their voices? Did they say anything to each other?’
‘No.’ He looked at Malia. ‘I should have gone after them, shouldn’t I?’ Because I would, you know, I’m that sort of guy. I’d chase down the villains in the Temple of Doom.
‘You did the right thing,’ she said. ‘It could have been dangerous.’
He looked a bit sick. ‘I thought she was asleep at first.’
‘In there?’ said Robin.
‘Only from a few yards away, when I first caught sight of her – her feet and hair. She was wrapped in that carpet; I thought maybe she was homeless.’
‘Did you touch her at all, Mr Quinton?’
‘What?’ He looked outraged.
‘I mean, to see if she was warm? Breathing?’
‘No. I knew she was dead as soon as I got close. That paleness … My mum died three years ago – I know what it looks like.’
‘So we won’t find any trace of your DNA on her body?’
‘No. Jesus.’
‘Did you take any photos? Anything … elegiac?’
He gave her a disgusted look.
‘The homeless people off Warwick Street – would any of them recognise you? Could they confirm, for example, that you entered the building alone? Or that all you had with you was your stuff there?’
‘What?’ He surged from his seat, upending his tea. ‘What are you saying?’
When they got back upstairs, Varan was on the phone. Seeing them, he held up a hand.
‘ID?’ Robin mouthed.
He shook his head as he put the phone down. ‘Rafferty. Two things. First: he’s got a witness who saw two men jumping out of a window on Bradford Street earlier.’
‘Good. What time?’
‘A couple of minutes before eight.’
‘Score one, Jonathan Quinton,’ said Malia.
‘Second: the shafts you saw in the workshop floor, like the one he nearly fell down – he said you’d know what he was talking about – they used to have conveyor belts on, to bring stuff up from storage underneath. There’s a whole other floor down there, he said, rooms linked by corridors, all connected.’
‘So people could get from place to place in the factory down there, too, unseen, then pop up one of these shafts?’
‘Yes.’
Robin sighed inwardly. ‘Right. Who’s the witness?’
‘A woman called Kate Coombs, she’s an artist, does graphic novels. Her studio’s in the offices across the road.’
‘Early for a Sunda
y.’
‘She’s got a deadline so she’s at her drawing table round the clock, she told Rafferty, and it’s right in front of the window. She saw them jump out and when Response turned up minutes later, she thought it might be relevant. Being an artist, she said this would be better than her verbal description.’
He reached for his mouse and clicked on an email attachment that opened a pastel sketch of two men both in evident need of showers, barbers and a month’s worth of decent meals. ‘This one’s in his mid-twenties, apparently,’ he pointed to a man drawn with mousy, shoulder-length hair and a round, open face with high cheekbones. Ratty dirty-blond beard, navy beanie, a filthy khaki combat jacket and black scarf. The second man was taller, narrower across the shoulders, and his open blue and green plaid shirt was belted like a kimono with what looked like a tie or a pyjama cord. His hair was either short or tucked up under his black baseball cap but his facial hair had a touch of red in it. ‘He’s older, late thirties, maybe early forties.’
‘If she only saw them jump out of a window and leg it, it’s very detailed.’
‘She’s seen them coming and going quite a bit over the past few weeks; she thinks they’ve been living there.’
‘The mattresses,’ said Robin, glancing at Malia.
‘They’re using, aren’t they?’ she said. ‘Got to be. If our victim’s an urban explorer, too, maybe she had an expensive camera on her. Maybe they nicked it and everything else she had on her – jewellery, phone?’
‘Wouldn’t they just have threatened her in that case, though? Two men, one girl? Why kill her? And right where they’re living?’
‘If they’re using, they might have been totally off their heads.’
The first time Robin had seen DI Simon Webster, he’d been on TV appealing for witnesses outside Corinna’s burned-out house. He was stocky, ruddy-cheeked, and he’d been wearing a green wax jacket which, no matter how many suits she’d seen him in since, had indelibly cast him as a bumbling Farmer Giles figure in her mind and therefore – and especially given the lack of immediate progress – unfit for running Corinna’s investigation.
Their rocky start had been mutual and not only because, in the end, she’d been the one to discover who’d killed Corinna, but because she’d then been hired to fill the DCI vacancy that Webster had been angling for, despite having been a person of interest in his case only months earlier. How to make friends and influence people, eh?
She found him in the incident room across the corridor, standing in front of his investigation board. ‘How are you, Simon?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, you know. Some of them get to you more than others, don’t they? Sixteen years old, and it’s all over for him.’ He had two sons in their early teens, Robin knew.
Kieran Clarke’s name was written at the top of the board in red block capitals, underlined twice. Directly underneath was a headshot printed out at A4 size. A school portrait, Clarke in a royal blue V-neck sweater, shirt and tie against a hazy neutral background. He was sitting at an angle to the camera, posed as if in the act of turning towards it, his expression an awkward compromise between the smile without which he knew he’d get hell from his mum and the moody wide-eyed teenager-sulk that he needed to retain any cred in front of his mates. His hair was close-cropped, his eyes big and brown with curling lashes.
In the scene pictures, he lay on his back in front of a low brick wall. He’d tried to support himself on it, she guessed, but ultimately ran out of strength. One showed a trail of blood-drops the size of two-pence pieces, one after another, thick and fast; another picture detailed partial handprints on the top bar of a white gate.
‘Hand over hand,’ said Webster. ‘Trying to get himself home.’
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Robin broke the silence. ‘What have you got?’
‘Two separate witnesses who overheard raised voices and looked out their windows, saw two black lads of a similar age hoofing it down the street.’
‘A similar age – teenagers?’
‘Witnesses went to early twenties, max, but they thought younger.’
‘Did he know them?’
‘Unclear as yet. The witnesses only heard shouting, not the words. His parents are devastated, obviously – the mother’s had to be sedated. He was a good lad, by all accounts so far – neighbours, his class teacher. No trace of him in the system. We’re talking to his friends now, see if he was into any trouble that hasn’t come to light.’ He sighed. ‘What about you?’
‘A pair of men seen and heard fleeing the scene after the window for time of death but ours are older, and white. Apart from that, not much.’ The only dubious upside of which was not having to feel embarrassed now. She’d never meant to circumvent Webster or show him up, all she’d cared about was finding Corinna’s killer, but the awkwardness lingered.
‘Have you got an ID yet?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No. What time was this?’
‘Call was ten seventeen, and it was pretty immediate: our witnesses rang in one after the other.’
‘Faulkner’s saying between midnight and six this morning for ours so if they are connected, Kieran was first.’
She handed him copies of the SOCOs’ photos and watched as he looked through them, the dark hairs between his eyebrows bristling as they pulled closer together. ‘Crying bloody shame,’ he said when he reached the last one. ‘Effing knives – it’s never going to end, is it?’
‘Will you show them to Kieran’s friends and family, see if any of them know her?’
‘Course. We’ll let you know.’
‘Likewise, when we find out who our girl is. Are you doing Midlands Today, by the way?’
He nodded. ‘About to go and do my bit any minute. You?’
‘Yep. Going to look good, isn’t it, back-to-back murders?’
Chapter Four
By half past ten, the incident room had thinned out, the team pushing off one by one for a night’s sleep before tomorrow’s early start. In a circle of light at her desk, Robin looked at what she’d just written. Over the years, she’d developed the habit of getting down everything they had at the end of the day, a five- or ten-minute stream-of-consciousness jumble of notes and images that occasionally turned up a connection or shook something loose in her brain. Today, the writing barely covered half a page, and the only semi-interesting idea she’d had was that while Kieran Clarke was killed in the open, their girl had died out of sight. His killers hadn’t made any attempt to hide his body; hers had made a half-baked effort to cover her with the carpet.
Her segment on Midlands Today had aired shortly after seven and, as they’d hoped, the phones had started ringing almost immediately. They’d shown Kate Coombs’s sketch of the men leaving Gisborne’s and had three new calls from people who said they’d seen them coming and going over the past month or six weeks. No one who’d called in so far had seen Jonathan Quinton enter the building, however, or anyone else.
But more disappointingly, they had nothing new on an ID. She’d given it her best, emphasizing that any information would be handled in complete confidence, and she’d had high hopes. Not everyone combed social media or had Google alerts set up but TV reached a different audience, an older, parental one. There’d been tens of calls, some of them from hundreds of miles away – Liverpool, Devon, Scotland – as friends and relatives of families with missing girls passed on the news, but none of them were her.
They needed an ID. Webster’s segment had followed hers and with a name and pictures, it had been much more compelling. Kieran Clarke was a human being; for the public so far, their girl was a cypher.
As she logged out of her computer, her mobile rang. Samir.
‘Hi.’ He paused, apparently listening. ‘Are you still at work?’
‘Leaving now.’ In the background at his end, she heard Liz telling Harry to turn his light off, it was school tomorrow, And no torch or I’ll take the batteries out again, followed by a laugh.
> ‘Anything to report?’ he asked.
‘Not really. Honestly, I’m disappointed by what the TV’s brought in.’
‘Well, let’s keep our fingers crossed for the morning – maybe someone’ll be having a sleepless night. Gives people a bit more time to notice she’s gone, too – colleague not at work, room-mate not back from a weekend away.’
They’d thought she might be a student, living away from home, perhaps that was why her family hadn’t noticed yet, but they’d contacted all five of the universities in Birmingham, plus Coventry, Warwick and Leicester, and none were missing any female students. ‘And we’ll have the e-fit later tomorrow.’ They’d put out a description of what she was wearing but it had hardly felt worth it. When the list came in from the SOCOs, it had said Gap jeans, Gap T-shirt, plain white bra and knickers, unlabelled. It was all totally basic, there were probably twenty thousand people with the same stuff.
‘How about the homeless at the back?’ he asked.
‘Malia’s team finished talking to them. A lot of them are past being useful; the rest say they didn’t see anyone last night.’
‘Hi Robin.’ Liz’s voice in the background again, much closer now. They weren’t on speakerphone; she must have been listening.
‘Hi Liz,’ she called, hearing a clink, as if Liz had reached over Samir’s shoulder to clear glasses away. Perhaps that was exactly what had happened because Samir said, ‘Right, I’d better let you go home, it’s late.’
‘Yeah. See you in the morning.’
As she stepped outside, Robin stopped to fill her lungs with fresh air. There were still streaks of turquoise in the sky, it was only a couple of weeks until the longest day, but the air was crisp, spring not summer, and the dew gave it a damp, new-rain-on-tarmac scent. She looked beyond the railings to the houses across the road, three of which were dark already, two showing lights only in upstairs windows. Aside from the police station, Rose Road was residential, two terraces of increasingly primped-up Victorian cottages facing off from behind lines of mid-range cars. Over there, they’d been having cosy evenings watching Grantchester in their PJs; on this side, they’d been poring over pictures of dead people. The juxtaposition of the civic and domestic was very Birmingham, though. Boundaries seemed to blur here in a way they didn’t in London.
Risk of Harm Page 3
