by Jay Nadal
Scott explained the key points of what Raj had discovered.
“That seems to tie in what Jackie told Helen, Guv. She said Linda was very needy, and was desperate to feel wanted, desired and loved. It sounds like she had a pretty troubled life, and the bouts of depression only worsened her perspective on life.”
“And not being satisfied in love only added to her desperate plight.”
Scott thought about the perception men had about Linda. Had they seen her as a nice person looking for love? Or a sexually liberated woman keen to explore the boundaries of sexual experiences? Or a woman who was perceived as an easy lay, a woman with no ethical or moral compass? Did she get bored easily, which would explain the number of relationships she had had, or was there a small part of her that craved excitement without boundaries?
19
Lunch sat heavy as Scott stepped out of the car. His belt felt tighter, and his eyes felt heavy as he stretched his arms and pulled his shoulders back in a futile attempt to inject life into himself. He could have crawled back in the car and taken an afternoon nap, having decided that he had eaten far too much, including half of Abby’s chips.
Richards lived in a less than desirable run-down council apartment close to the station. Like most properties in the area, they had little in the way of front gardens, only small concrete spaces just wide enough to fit a dustbin before you’d step onto the pavement. Grime and dust coated the windowsills and windows, and empty cellophane wrappings collected in the doorway, blown in off the street.
A man in a faded green T-shirt answered the door after he had left Scott and Abby waiting a few minutes. He ran a hand over his stubbly beard as he weighed up the two visitors.
“Yeah?” he said in a croaky voice, his tone uninviting and cold.
Scott and Abby held up their warrant cards. “John Richards?”
Richards offered nothing more than a nod.
Scott put a foot over the threshold, to prevent Richards from shutting the door on them if the thought crossed his mind. “We’d like to ask you a few questions. We are investigating the death of Linda Allen, your ex-wife.”
Richards sniggered as he stepped to one side to allow the officers to pass.
Abby pulled her shoulders in and flared her nose as the smell hit her. A mixture of stale sweat, a lack of clean air, and dog faeces overwhelmed her senses. To the right of the corridor was a small kitchen. Empty microwave meal containers littered the work surfaces, along with empty beer cans. But it was the remnants of dog faeces scattered on the kitchen floor that caught her attention.
“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” Abby murmured under her breath. She pushed past the doorway, keen to erase the vision from her mind.
A small box room that passed as a second bedroom was opposite. With closed curtains, hung loosely from a wooden curtain pole, the room was dark, and nothing more than a dumping ground for clothes, newspapers, and several bicycles. Abby found that ironic because Richards appeared to have done no exercise in his life. His T-shirt barely covered his large belly that hung heavily over the waistband of his jogging bottoms. Abby suspected he’d come by the bikes.
A threadbare carpet lined the hallway, heavily stained. Abby’s mind raced with the disgusting possibilities.
Richards led them into an untidy and cluttered lounge. He didn’t offer them a seat but sat down himself in an armchair that faced what appeared to be a new television. As she glanced around, Abby noticed several iPhones scattered on the sideboard, an iPad, and Beats headphones. Proceeds from crime? She suspected they were stolen goods judging from her first impressions of the apartment, and records that suggested he had no means of income.
Abby stiffened, and stepped back towards Scott, when she noticed a large white Staffordshire bull terrier slumped in one corner. Its eyes were darker than a cup of coffee, its mouth drooled saliva, and it growled as it eyed the two visitors.
Richards chortled himself. “Don’t mind Oscar. He wouldn’t hurt a fly…Unless he didn’t like the look of someone…”
Tension rippled in the air, and an uneasy silence followed. Both Scott and Abby knew from experience as beat officers, how volatile situations could become with the presence of dogs. Scott had attended several incidents where dogs like Staffordshire bull terriers and American pit bull terriers had turned on officers. The pit bull had a bite force of over two hundred pounds, and officers were always advised to approach such dogs with caution.
“I think for all our safety, it would be helpful if you could put Oscar into a different room.”
Richards glared at Scott for a moment before relenting. He ordered the dog to his bed, and Oscar duly obliged, lifting his heavy bulk, and padded out of the room.
Abby stood by the window and glanced out from behind the dirty net curtains hoping the outlook was better than the room she stood in. A bleak and grey landscape stood beyond the property. Houses direly needed a facelift and the road was littered with discarded rubbish. She cast a cursory eye over the photos that lined the windowsill…different images showed Richards in front of various bars and pubs, his arm draped over the shoulder of one friend or another, his free arm aloft, and raising a pint glass in the air.
Abby sighed, and turned back towards Scott and Richards, notebook and pen in hand.
“What do you want to know?” Richards asked.
“Where were you on Sunday night between six p.m. and midnight?”
“I was here watching TV, and I can tell you everything I watched.”
“Anyone else with you?”
“Oscar.” Richards smiled, pleased with his smug reply.
“You don’t seem that surprised or upset about Linda’s murder?” Scott replied.
Richards shrugged. “She’s nothing to do with me anymore. If you think I killed her, then you’re barking up the wrong tree.” There was a hint of anger in his curt reply.
“But you displayed some aggressive tendencies towards her. From our enquiries, I understand you may have assaulted her on more than one occasion?”
“So what? She was out of order. I had had a bit to drink. I gave her a slap.”
“That’s assault in the eyes of the law.”
“She didn’t complain. I think she liked it. You know the rough stuff.”
Abby shook her head in a mixture of disbelief and anger as she observed Richards. He displayed an air of arrogance that riled her.
“The rough stuff?” Scott probed.
“Yeah. Besides, what the fuck are you doing here anyway?”
“Mr Richards. Whenever we investigate a violent assault or murder, it’s standard procedure to question everyone connected to the victim. Partners, whether current or ex, can often provide us with vital information either as witnesses or suspects.”
It was the last word that inflamed Richards as he pounded the armrests. “Don’t try to fucking blame this on me! Why is it always the exes who get done?”
Scott goaded him further. “Because in our experience, they are often the ones who have the biggest grudge.”
The two men stared at each other, Scott unperturbed, Richards incensed.
“Well, as I said, you’re looking in the wrong place.”
Scott changed tact. “Tell us about Linda. What was she like as a person?”
“She was okay, I guess. A bit of a slapper.”
“Slapper?”
“Yeah, filthy fucking bitch, always wanting it. And not just your normal shit.”
It was Scott’s turn to sigh as he caught Abby rolling her eyes. “Could you elaborate?”
“Well, she wasn’t the roll-on roll-off ferry type, if you get my drift.”
Scott read between the lines as Richards continued.
“She couldn’t get enough. She wanted it all the time. Always up for trying new things, new positions, and new toys. I’d be lying in bed and she’d be frigging herself off beside me. That’s like a sex addiction thing, isn’t it?”
“Do you know of anyone that may have wanted to harm he
r?”
“Listen, don’t get me wrong. She was a slapper, but she wasn’t a horrible person. She was a good mum to Shannon.” Richards let out a small laugh. “Better parent than me. I was a useless dad. Me and her didn’t work out, but I don’t think she could have pissed off anyone enough for them to kill her.”
“And did she meet anyone else whilst with you?” Scott knew the reply before it had left Richards’s mouth.
“Take your pick. She loved the attention she got. She was forever sticking her tits out and winking as cars beeped at her.”
“That must have annoyed you?”
“Wouldn’t it you?”
“Enough to hurt her?” Scott asked.
“She was on these dating sites. She told me as much. I had a look on one, something like Hot Milfs, but I can’t remember the name. I couldn’t see her face, but I recognised her straight away.”
“How?”
Richards stared at Scott in consternation. “Because of her tattoo, and well her…bits. It was definitely her.”
The revelation that Linda was on another site unknown to them, caused Scott to raise a brow.
Richards fell silent, he dropped his head. “She was knocking someone else off. I found her in the sack with him.”
“And that’s when you assaulted her?”
Richards nodded unashamedly.
“Who was he? Had you seen him before?”
Richards shook his head.
“What happened when you found them?”
“I came home; it was dark. I went into the bedroom but didn’t want to wake her. I saw her outline and then a second outline…and there she was, with him. I lost it and went mental. Everything after that was a blur. He legged it; she screamed the place down and…”
“You hit her,” Abby spat.
Richards fell silent and looked away.
“Did you get a look of him?”
“If I did, I don’t remember. Everything was a blur for the next few minutes. I remember he grabbed his clothes. He tried to rush past me, but I managed to smack him around the face, and then I remember steaming towards the bed, wanting to throw the bitch out the window. Next thing I can remember is seeing her crumpled in a corner holding her face and crying.”
“Was he white, black, Asian?”
“White.” Richards’s eyes narrowed deep in reflection. “Dark, short hair. And butt fucking naked.”
“What time was this?”
“Around two in the morning.”
Scott folded his arms, and slowly paced around the room, his eyes momentarily darting from one object to another. The sofas were worn, the carpet as threadbare as the one in the hallway. The surfaces carried a fine layer of dust, and bulky carrier bags, sat stacked in one corner. “You were working at the time?”
“Yeah, I was doing a bit of door work. Terry’s bar in town. I’d knock off around one-thirty a.m. But didn’t always come home. I’d hang back for a couple of hours just to chill with some punters, or crash at a mate’s house. She’d be asleep anyway, so there wasn’t any point in coming back home.”
Scott was familiar with Terry’s bar, it was an illegal drinking establishment shut down several times by the council.
“What made you comeback on this occasion?”
Richards shrugged. “Dunno,” he offered to begin with and then fell silent for a few moments. “I noticed that she wasn’t gagging for it as much. That’s not like her. She always wanted it. I checked her phone a few days earlier, and she’d been texting some guy, saying she was looking forward to getting him into her bed.”
“Did you want to catch her?”
“Yeah. I wanted to fucking nail the pair.”
“You did that,” Abby muttered under her breath, as restlessness crept into her bones.
“Have you seen much of her since you split?”
“Not really. I got the odd text off her about me not seeing Shannon. But we did our own thing. I offered for Shannon to come and stay with me occasionally, but Linda wasn’t having it. She was worried Cujo would have Shannon.”
“Cujo?”
“Oscar. You never seen the film Cujo, back in the eighties?”
Scott and Abby stared blankly at each other.
“Do you think the man in your bed was the married man she was allegedly involved with?”
“Aren’t they all? I bet most of the punters on those sites are desperate blokes with wives that don’t put out anymore. They must have thought Christmas had come early when they contacted Linda.”
“And that must have upset you?”
“Who gives a fuck anymore? She moved on and found someone else, but that didn’t last long either. She’d never be happy with her lot. She always chased the thrill.”
20
Late afternoon fatigue appeared to rob the team of their enthusiasm as they gathered around the incident board. Whether a general malaise, or a lack of progress around the investigation into Linda’s death, Scott need to keep the team focused.
Scott began by updating the team on visits to question Linda’s mum, Dalca and Richards. He noted a common pattern of fractured relationships that had blighted Linda’s life. Dalca, Richards, and her mum were the tip of the iceberg.
Abby pressed home what a lowlife Richards appeared to be and noted that it would be worth uniform following up on the items she’d seen at the apartment just in case they were stolen.
“Guv, the search for the missing items have drawn a blank. There’s no sign of her shoes, skirt, or underwear.”
Scott had expected that feedback from Mike. It was an extensive search area. The theory now being that the missing items had been removed as trophies or discarded elsewhere.
“I still believe there are remarkable similarities between our case and the one in Cardiff. The case file should be with us shortly, but I have little hope. Other than DNA evidence, they had no witnesses, no suspects, and they didn’t find Daisy’s shoes or underwear.”
“Have we got an update on the DNA analysis?” asked Helen.
“Still waiting. I’ll chase it up, but it will make our job both easier and harder, if it connects the two cases.”
Raj speculated on the possibility that someone tipped off Richards about the affair that his wife was having. No one in the team could confirm who that might have been. Helen suggested someone may have overheard her at work talking about her love life. It wasn’t uncommon in their experience for a victim to have been harassed, assaulted, or even murdered, because of a silent infatuation from a colleague. Scott knew himself, having been on the receiving end of unwanted attention and blackmail from DCI Berry.
“That will be a new line of enquiry, Helen, her employers. We are picking apart her love life and forming a picture. We now need to explore the connections with work. It’s a small firm, so everyone should know each other well. I can’t imagine many secrets being kept hidden for long. Someone will know something.”
Abby added, “Richards suggested that anyone who knew Linda well would have recognised her on the adult contact sites. As we know already, some images were full frontals. Others were discreet but features like her tattoo would have made her identifiable to those who knew her. In fact, Richards was blunter than that. His suggestion was that anyone who had been intimate with her would have recognised her by her genitalia.”
Raj and Mike exchanged a discreet smile that threatened to explode into raucous laughter, acting like naughty schoolboys who had just discovered the centrefold in a Playboy magazine.
“Don’t forget, we may never know the full extent of the contact she had with men through the site. During our visit, Richards explained that Linda went out once a month to supposedly meet up with friends in town for drinks but wouldn’t explain her reasons for rolling in at breakfast time. It’s possible she was meeting men, whose identities will remain unknown.”
Abby ran a hand through her hair and blew out her cheeks. “Needle in a haystack springs to mind? Amongst that list, we can add the married man she
had an affair with, the man Richards found her in bed with, and Leo’s father.”
There was a consensus of nods from the others.
“I will contact the psychological profiler for a different angle and a clean perspective on what we are doing.”
There was a collective cacophony of groans from the others.
“Guv, we need old-school policing here, not psycho, mumbo-jumbo bollocks.”
Scott raised his hand to quiet the ripples of laughter. “Okay, okay. Glad you say it as you see it, Mike, but we need all the help we can. Listen, if the profiler gives us nothing of interest, we’ve not lost anything, have we?”
Mike viewed him with suspicion. “I know you’re into it, Guv, but it doesn’t wash with me.”
“Yes, Mike. I know what you’re like. You’d much rather walk around the streets, smacking nine bells out the informants, the pushers, and dealers and any lowlife pond scum, to get your answers.”
“No harm with that, Guv,” Mike teased.
With nothing further to add, Scott instructed the team to knock off and get an early night.
“I feel sorry for Linda,” Abby added, as she fumbled for her keys beside her car.
Scott nodded and stared off into the distance.
“Part of me thinks she was desperate for love, and the other part makes me think she didn’t know what she wanted. As if searching for the missing magic bullet, the attention and sex filled a void in her life.”
“Possibly,” Scott replied, as he watched two officers set off in a patrol car. He recognised the driver and gave her a wave as she passed. “She lived life on the edge and craved a connection. In a way, she was being used, but she was also using men she met to satisfy something in her. She wasn’t into vanilla sex that’s for sure.”
“You’re not wrong there, Guv. I nearly died of embarrassment when Richards went into graphic detail about Linda’s bits.” Her shoulders shuddered at the thought.
“What are you up to tonight? Are you in with the kids?”
Abby smiled. “Yep. We are making home-made pizzas tonight. I’m just going to pop to Sainsbury’s and pick up ham, pineapple chunks, pepperoni, and chicken. Why don’t you join us? The kids would love to see you. Jonathon is coming over later, so it will be fun. I’ll make you my mean hot chocolate to warm you up, with added galaxy chunks thrown in for good measure.”
