Born in a Burial Gown

by Mike Craven

  ‘Yes, well. Kath’s a bit of a clotheshorse. If it had been me on the till you wouldn’t have got this much detail. I wouldn’t know my Prada from my Primark.’

  ‘You’ve no idea how helpful this is going to be,’ Fluke said, gratefully. He passed the statement over to Towler. ‘Seems Kath remembered what she was wearing as well,’ Fluke said.

  ‘She didn’t speak to her?’ Towler asked.

  ‘No, no one ever did. She always seemed to come when it was busy, around lunchtime. People rushing in and out.’

  Fluke and Towler exchanged glances. Another way of making sure she wasn’t noticed. Another indicator she’d been hiding from someone.

  ‘Matt, can you give Longy a bell and let him know what she was wearing, along with the date and time,’ Fluke asked. Towler left to make the call. ‘That’ll save us hours of work, Barbara.’

  While he waited for Towler to come back, he looked at the photo again. A pretty woman, no more than a girl really. A life snuffed out for reasons he hadn’t even started to unravel yet. Towler returned.

  ‘All done. He’s gonna give us a live update.’

  Fluke turned to Barbara. ‘Thanks again for all this. You won’t believe how much help you’ve been.’

  ‘My pleasure, Avison. Now can I get you something while you’re here?’

  Fluke looked round at the huge amount of coffee they stocked. Millions of beans, waiting to be ground, waiting for their oils to be released and for hot water to be added. A custom the same the world over. A custom older than Carlisle.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Barbara. Make me up a bag of her blend can you?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll grind it right up for you.’

  ‘Don’t, I’ll take a grinder as well.’

  Find out how the victim lived and you’ll find out how they died.

  Chapter 18

  Agreeing to meet first thing, Towler parked up at the hospital. They were in Fluke’s car. Towler lived in Carlisle so would walk home.

  Fluke walked through the huge revolving doors into the open-plan foyer. The clack of keyboards, the squeal of wheelchairs and the low voices of staff, patients and visitors combined into a cacophony of sensory confusion.

  As he headed towards Oncology, Fluke was reminded how much it looked like an airport departure lounge. It was huge. It had opened to criticism that it took up too much valuable space and when it transpired that ward corridors were so narrow that two beds couldn’t pass, the criticism appeared justified.

  ‘Is she in?’ he asked the nurse on the reception.

  ‘I’ll call her, Mr Fluke. Take a seat,’ she replied.

  Fluke elected to stand. While he was waiting, he took the business card out of his wallet and stared at it. Willing the numbers to change, to make sense. He even tried squinting his eyes, tried to look through it as though it were a magic eye picture. Nothing. But the nagging feeling persisted. They looked familiar.

  ‘And to what do I owe this pleasure?’ Doctor Cooper asked, entering the reception area.

  She looked tired but then she always did. Fluke’s job carried a huge responsibility, but in between the major cases, he at least had some respite. A chance to recharge the mental batteries. Consultants didn’t have that luxury.

  ‘I need your help,’ he said.

  ‘Okay,’ she said cautiously. ‘Am I going to like this?’

  ‘It’s nothing bad, I promise you. I just want your advice on this case. Maybe a name I can call.’

  ‘We’d better go to my office.’

  ‘Thanks, Doctor Cooper.’

  ‘Look, this is ridiculous, Avison. Will you please call me Leah. We’ve known each other long enough now.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said carefully. Fluke was one of those people who would happily call a nurse by their first name but would insist on the deferential approach when conversing with doctors. He didn’t know why that was. He certainly didn’t do it for any other profession.

  He followed her into her office and took a seat.

  ‘Okay. What’s it about?’ she asked.

  ‘This is going to be a bit left field, but what do you know about cosmetic surgery?’

  She looked nonplussed and stared at him for a few seconds. ‘Nothing, of course. I’m not a surgeon. I’m certainly not a cosmetic surgeon. There aren’t any clinics in Cumbria.’

  ‘That much I already knew. I just want the basics. Where someone would go to get some surgery done? How long it takes? Would it be possible to get multiple procedures done at once? How long to heal, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Is this something to do with that woman they found on Tuesday?’

  He paused before deciding she deserved to have some background. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘At the PM on Tuesday afternoon, Henry found extensive cosmetic surgery. Bit of an enigma. Very high quality but it made no sense. Medically speaking.’

  ‘Oh. Go on, why?’ she said, her medical curiosity obviously piqued.

  ‘She didn’t need it for one thing.’ Fluke held his hand up, knowing she was going to launch into something about how men had no right to decide what women did to their bodies. ‘No, all the changes she made detracted from her looks rather than enhancing them.’

  She folded her arms. ‘Says you.’

  Fluke didn’t have the time or the inclination to get into an argument. ‘Says me, says Henry and says Lucy.’ He was going to add Towler’s name to the list but decided against it. Although he had a young daughter, Towler knew even less about women than he did. He’d once been dumped for toilet texting.

  ‘Who’s Lucy?’ she said unexpectedly.

  ‘The bug lady,’ he said, without thinking.

  She said nothing. Continued to stare at him with her arms folded and her lips pursed.

  ‘An entomologist. A PhD working with Henry for a few weeks. She’s been a big help, actually.’

  ‘You have a theory about the cosmetic surgery?’ she said, changing direction.

  ‘She was altering the way she looked for a reason. We think she was hiding.’

  Leah leaned forward. ‘Were there any other supporting factors?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her hair was dyed. Platinum blonde to brown.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Coloured contacts.’

  She leaned back in her chair and appeared to be thinking. She flicked some hair from her eyes, stood up and retrieved a book from the bookcase beside her desk. She flicked through it, looking for something. She sighed and closed it. ‘Look I’m not an expert on this but I know the laws on cosmetic surgery are constantly changing. It used to be an entirely unregulated business. There were more regulations governing toothbrush manufacture than there were on liposuction, believe it or not. All changing now, of course. Breast implants saw to that.’

  ‘The ones that exploded?’ he asked without thinking.

  She smiled. ‘At one point, there was more money being made repairing exploding tits than there was fitting them. Did she have hers done?’

  ‘Nope, strictly above the collar. Nose, ears, chin and brow.’

  ‘And the rest is easy to hide with clothes,’ she said straightaway.

  ‘Exactly.’

  They discussed what procedures she’d been through and Leah eventually agreed that Fluke’s theory was possible. Probable even.

  ‘I take it you’d like to speak to the doctor who did the surgery?’ she said.

  ‘If possible.’

  ‘Not a chance. There’s hundreds of surgeons who do this sort of thing in the UK. You can add three noughts to whatever number we have if you include Europe and the States. Breast implants have serial numbers now but with the procedures she’s had, there’ll be nothing to check.’

  Fluke knew she was right, and had known it before he’d left HQ. Still, another potential lead had been crossed off. Even negative intelligence was still intelligence. Detectives were taught to use an acronym: TIE. Trace, interview, eliminate. It was meant for suspects a
nd witnesses but worked just as well for potential lines of enquiry.

  ‘Look, I know someone in London who may be able to help. I’ll call him tonight, see if he can get you a number to ring,’ she said. ‘You can at least hear from someone who knows what they’re talking about.’

  ‘Thanks, Leah. Anything at all will be more than we have on her so far.’

  She put the book back on the shelf and sat back down. ‘How are you, Avison?’

  ‘Can’t complain,’ he replied, his mind already on the next task.

  ‘Avison. How are you really? You look exhausted. How are you sleeping?’

  Fluke shrugged. He wasn’t comfortable talking about things like that.

  ‘Look, it’s common to feel like you did, it would be extraordinary if you hadn’t. You weren’t expected to live, remember? No one gave you a chance when they saw the size of the tumour. Whether you’ll admit it or not, you had PTSD. That’s why you were so angry with everyone. The world didn’t change when you were in hospital, Avison. You did. At first, I thought moving out of Carlisle to live on your own in the middle of nowhere was a mistake but I have to admit, you knew more about to heal yourself than I did.’

  Fluke looked at her. He didn’t realise she’d been paying that close attention. He rubbed his hands over his eyes, tried to remove some of the grittiness that came on with fatigue. The truth was he was no longer reliving his illness anymore. For a few months, he’d suffered badly from distressing flashbacks. He’d dreaded sleep, waking up sweating and trembling after he finally succumbed. If it hadn’t been for his thin blood, he’d have used alcohol as a numbing agent. ‘I’m doing better, Leah. Much better.’

  It was no longer the reaction to his illness that kept him awake now. It was what he’d done to her. A secret he couldn’t share although he knew if he was ever to enjoy a restful night again, at some point in the future he’d have to tell her.

  She leaned back in her chair and seemed to appraise him. ‘Good then. Now we just need to stabilise your bloods and we’ll be fine. How was dinner the other night?’ she asked.

  He paused. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually. He had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘Dinner at Michelle’s. I gather it didn’t go all that well?’ She laughed at his expression. ‘Sorry, bit naughty of me. It’s just that you met one of my friends. She says she gave you a lift home.’

  For once Fluke was lost for words. The mystery woman was her friend? It seemed unlikely that Michelle and Leah ran in the same social circles. Leah seemed intelligent and reasonable. Michelle’s friends were right-wing bigots. Leah must have been reading his mind.

  ‘Don’t worry, she doesn’t normally run with that sort of crowd. She knew someone called Charles and he’d invited her. She was going to say no, but I convinced her to go.’

  ‘I thought you said she was your friend,’ he replied before he could stop himself. Michelle didn’t deserve that. Well, maybe she did, but he liked to think he was above pettiness. ‘Sorry,’ he added.

  He couldn’t get her to elaborate on who her friend was. Fluke would’ve liked to thank her for the lift. He wasn’t sure he’d given a good account of himself at the dinner party.

  ‘Wheels within wheels, Avison. Wheels within wheels,’ was all she’d say.

  The drive home took just under an hour. It had started raining, only lightly, but enough to bring the visibility right down. He was bone tired when he made it through his front door and just wanted to go to sleep. When he’d lived in Carlisle, he’d have reached for the takeaway menus he kept in a kitchen drawer. Out here, he was on his own. He was debating whether he should reheat some of the previous night’s curry, or cook an omelette, when the phone rang. He looked at the clock on the oven, briefly thought about ignoring it before deciding he couldn’t.

  ‘Boss, it’s Al Vaughn. We’ve been trying to get hold of you for an hour.’

  Shit.

  He’d turned his phone off at the hospital and had forgotten to turn it back on. He hadn’t even checked in with Towler on how things were going.

  ‘What’s up, Al? I’m only just in and I’m knackered. Gonna have some food and get some kip.’

  ‘We’ve got him, boss.’

  ‘Got who?’

  ‘The man who killed our vic. Long story and we haven’t actually got him, but we’re nearly there. We know which family he’s from.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he said, hanging up and reaching for his coat, all thoughts of food forgotten.

  As soon as he was off the dirt track and onto a safer road, he phoned Towler for an update.

  ‘That E-fit Jo circulated was doing the rounds at Carlisle CID and one of the DCs recognised her. She’d reported being raped last week.’

  ‘In Carlisle?’ Fluke asked.

  ‘Yep. Looks like she was roofied or something. Says she went out for a drink, woke up the next day with no memory of the evening. Thought she’d been raped and the doc confirmed there were date rape drugs in her system. There was also some skin under her nails and a couple of foreign pubes. Got DNA from all of it, results came back this morning. Their case was a few days before ours obviously, and there was no reason for anyone to link them.’

  He went on to explain that the DNA was an interfamilial, rather than a direct match. The rapist wasn’t on the National DNA Database, NDNAD, but a blood relative was. Ten years before, that wouldn’t have been possible but with more and more people on the database and technology retrieval methods improving, hits like that were increasingly common.

  ‘Where’d she get examined?’

  ‘Preston SARC.’

  Good, Fluke thought. The Sexual Assault Referral Centre at Preston was the best in the north-west. ‘Name and address?’

  ‘Name’s Samantha Farrar, but there’s a Kay Edwards, the DC who accompanied her, who wants to speak to you about that. And she wouldn’t give an address.’

  ‘Why not?’ Fluke asked. Victims of crime didn’t have to give their addresses but it was unusual.

  ‘Dunno. Scared of reprisals, possibly? Edwards is at HQ waiting for you.’

  ‘Good.’ Fluke always preferred to question witnesses himself wherever possible. He felt at his best when the information was coming to him raw. Reports and witness statements sometimes lacked things like non-verbals or what their emotional state was. How upset or angry they were. Whether they could remember a smell or a sound. Murders had been solved on such things. ‘Tell me about the DNA hit. Who is he?’

  ‘Nathaniel Diamond? Nothing to tell really. Just a fucking thug. Twenty-nine years old. From a big family that seems to think they run Carlisle. Live mainly in Meadowby. They bring in some heroin and cocaine. Run a few women, massage parlours that type of thing. Bit of rural crime. We think they do loan-sharking and payday loans as well. He’s been arrested just the once. A Section 18 GBH. Never went anywhere. Victim refused to press charges.’

  Fluke had vaguely heard of the Diamond family. They’d never come to the attention of FMIT, though, so his knowledge was sketchy. He’d never heard of Nathaniel but Grievous Bodily Harm was a nasty assault. The Section 18 signified there’d been intent. It carried a maximum sentence of life. The next charge up was attempted murder.

  ‘They big?’ he asked.

  ‘Hard to say, boss. There’s intel suggesting they’re bigger than they let on. They certainly don’t flash the cash, so the National Crime Agency have never got involved. But there was a snout last year who said all the crime families around here have to pay them to operate. Take a percentage of everything they do. They can’t use anything but Diamond drugs apparently. The drug’s team mounted an operation but got nowhere.’

  ‘If it’s interfamilial DNA, it’s not him we’re looking for. Who’s in the mix? Who’s the likely suspects?’ Fluke asked.

  ‘Nathaniel’s the younger of two brothers. Wayne’s the elder, doesn’t have a record. Never even been arrested.’

  ‘So it’s him we’re looking for?’

  �
��That’d be my guess.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘There’s the dad. Probably the brains in the family. He lives in a big detached house in Stanwix. Bit of a show place, apparently. Never been arrested either.’

  ‘Wider family?’ Fluke asked. He knew interfamilial DNA was far reaching, it pointed at more than just the immediate family. It was its advantage and disadvantage. Uncles, aunts, cousins, illegitimate children, they would all need to be tracked down and eliminated.

  ‘Fucking mess, boss. You know what these lot are like. They’re everywhere. Some are related, some aren’t. They all fuck each other, so the children’s heritage is anyone’s guess. Most of them are related through incest or rape.’

  ‘Me mam’s me sister and me dad’s me cousin,’ Fluke said.

  ‘That type of thing, yeah.’

  ‘How many do we have on the database? I’m assuming they’re being ruled out as we speak? I don’t want to bring in twenty people who we know aren’t in the frame.’

  ‘Looks like about half of them have been arrested. The brighter ones tend to not go near the drugs at all. They have an army of mules and dealers working for them. Intel suggests that most of the wider family are enforcers and foot soldiers. They think Kenneth Diamond is the main man. Nathaniel is probably his number two.’

  ‘You got a theory on the murder?’ Fluke asked, knowing he would. He had his own, but liked others to voice theirs first.

  ‘On paper it looks straightforward. Our victim finds herself with the unwanted attentions of a Diamond. Most of the local girls would just put up with it for the night, shut their eyes and wait for them to finish. “Pull my nightie back down when you’re finished” type of thing. Better than saying no and having the family after you. But she doesn’t know the family so he goes to plan B. Being in the drug trade, he has access to Rohypnol. Slips it in her drink. Takes her back to his cave. Rapes her. Dumps her somewhere. Thinks he’s golden. How am I doing?’