by David Carter
The policemen stood in the background, their hats in hand; their faces sorrowful. They were used to the drama of death, but this was the pits.
Perhaps it hadn’t really sunk in.
Children do not think of death as adults do.
Perhaps it seemed to Armitage like playing dead in the playground. One minute you’re down and out, the next, you’re up and grinning and running again, smiling at the non-existent camera of life, as if nothing had happened.
Adults’ deaths are somewhat different.
One of the policemen came over and said, ‘Now then young man, you are going to have to be incredibly brave, I’m afraid you won’t be able to go home tonight.’
Perhaps at that point Armitage experienced something of the difficulties he was about to face.
‘That’s all right,’ he said, trying to be brave, ‘I shall go and live with Mrs Greenaway, won’t I?’ and he glanced across at her and smiled.
Mrs Greenaway didn’t smile.
‘Oh, but you can’t do that,’ she said. ‘I only have a small cottage, just the one bedroom, there simply isn’t the room, and anyway, I can’t possibly look after a small boy.’
It was Army’s turn to appear downcast.
What was happening to the world?
Why couldn’t Mrs Greenaway look after him?
What would become of him now?
Where would he sleep?
Where would he go?
Who would feed him and wash his clothes?
The second policeman stepped forward, for he thought the boy was about to cry, and said, ‘Now, now, you’re not to worry about a thing, you hear me? Everything will be fine; we’ll look after you. You can be sure of that. You can come with us. You will be taken into care.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was four days before Jago Cripps’s body was discovered. He had taken occasional unscheduled periods off work before, he had never been considered the reliable type, but after four days of absence, the credit card company grew angry and rang the emergency number they had on file, his mother’s.
She possessed a spare key for the flat and with great trepidation she set out to visit. Horrific thoughts rushed through her head as she drove the twenty-minute journey across town. She slipped the key in the door, and let herself in, seeing the general untidiness and empty wine bottles, smelling the dreadful odour, crossing the flat to push open the main bedroom door, seeing the corpse of her only son, and all that dried blood, so much of it. A sight never to be forgotten.
Jago’s mother’s hands went to her mouth.
She bent over as if she were about to vomit.
Nothing came, other than a hideous wail from the far-flung reaches of her cold soul. It wasn’t like her Jago to commit suicide. Not at all. What had gone so horrifyingly wrong?
The wailing went on for sometime.
Three other people in the block of flats heard it.
No one came running.
It was ten minutes before she had gathered herself. She had retreated to the sitting room and had sat and cried, alone in the stink, and the silence.
Her eyes alighted on the landline phone. Who should she call first, her estranged husband, or the police?
The police. It had to be the police.
She grabbed the phone and poked in 999, so slowly because her fingers were shaking, and she didn’t want to miss a number.
Karen was the first in the incident room to connect things together. She called over to Walter, ‘We may have another one, suspected suicide, maybe, maybe,’ and the look of doubt on her face alerted him.
‘Where?’
‘Harberry House, close to the new gym.’
‘Get a car, we’ll go and see.’
––––––––
Ten minutes is all it took. Some paramedics were already there. One of them was standing in the bedroom doorway, peering down at the mess; the other was comforting the mother whose blood pressure had skyrocketed. Walter sent the medics on their way, explaining that as it was a crime scene, nothing was to be touched. The body was not going anywhere. They could take the mother away though, ostensibly for a check-up, Walter explained that he would see her later, he would deal with everything, and she wasn’t to worry.
Some hope.
After they’d gone Karen summoned reinforcements. SOCO, and the doctor, and sufficient manpower, personpower, to search the grounds, and interview everyone who lived in, or had recently visited, that big new block of flats. Walter removed his raincoat and hung it in the hallway, slipped on rubber gloves. Karen was already gloved up.
‘This is the crime, the killing, that will nail this bastard,’ muttered Walter.
‘I bloody hope so.’
‘He’s crossed the Rubicon.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Pushing people under a train, into the canal, running them down, even gassing them in the car is one thing, but here, here we have actual physical assault. The bastard’s growing bolder. It’s the first time the killer has done the killing. One car, one train, one drowning, one gassed, but here the killer stared down at the breathing body of a live human being, looked directly into that crazy face, and attacked him with the single intention of ending his life. This is quite different. It’s a big step up.’
‘And it can’t be suicide?’
‘Not unless the victim went to the window and threw the knife outside afterwards, closed the window, and then lay down to die.’
‘He could have hidden it,’ said Karen, still not ruling out suicide.
Rule nothing out until the evidence tells you to, she recalled her college CID training.
‘With what purpose in mind?’ asked Walter. ‘If you are going to kill yourself why hide the bloody weapon? No, the killer brought the weapon with him, and took it away again; I’d stake my pension on that. How many flats are there in this block?’
‘Fifty, ten on each floor, five floors.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Rodney used to live here, top floor, number forty-one.’
Ah yes, thought Walter, the rakish Rodney, he’d almost forgotten about him.
‘He doesn’t live here now?’
‘Nope, been gone a year, when we split up.’
Walter pulled a face.
‘I want every occupier interviewed, and any recent visitors logged, I want detailed descriptions of any strangers that have been seen in or near these flats in the last week, and that includes delivery people and estate agents, I want to know who Jago Cripps has been fraternising with, been seen with, and I want to know every God damn thing about this unfortunate young man.’
‘Got you, Guv.’
‘Seal the whole block off, no one comes in or goes out.’
‘There’s loads of people live here.’
‘I know that! No one comes or goes until they have been thoroughly interviewed.’
Karen nodded and said, ‘You still think it’s a man?’
‘Course it’s a man!’
‘Not a he-she thing?’
‘If I knew what a he-she thing was, I might be more amenable to the idea.’
There was a knock at the door, the doctor, with SOCO close behind and behind them, Walter’s eager foot soldiers, awaiting to be directed, awaiting their tasks.
‘Find out if the guy’s got a car. Find out where it is,’ rattled off Walter.
‘Got you, Guv,’ muttered Karen, already gabbling into her mobile.
Moments later she said, ‘It’s a blue Vauxhall, ten years old, I’ve sent someone down to check the garage.’
Walter was in the kitchen, looking in the cupboards, glancing at empty glasses, lined up, gleaming, silent witnesses. He could feel a presence there. Imagined wine bottles being opened, happy pouring into clean glasses, laughing and joking, and all the while one of the two had murder in mind.
‘Guv?’ Karen called.
Walter returned to the sitting room.
‘What?’
‘Found
this, nice little box of sweeties.’
Walter peered inside.
‘Quite a collection, E’s, uppers, downers, and God knows what else.’
‘And this,’ she said, pointing to spent silver strips of Temazepam.
‘That’s a weird one. Quite a little party.’
‘I wonder if the neighbours heard anything.’
‘Find out!’
‘Yes, Guv.’
‘There must be fingerprints here, no one could be so careful as to wipe them all, unless...’
‘Unless what?’
‘They were wearing gloves.’
‘What? All the time, seems unlikely, and another thing, Guv, who’s more likely to wear gloves, a man or a woman, woman for sure, and a woman could get away with never taking them off, don’t think a man could.’
Maybe she had a point.
A foot soldier came in and said, ‘The garage is empty, the car’s not in the car park either.’
‘Find the bloody car!’ said Walter.
‘Yes, Guv.’
They found it in six minutes flat, parked outside the swimming pool. Traced there by the four overstay parking tickets, flagged up and already logged into the system.
‘No one’s to touch the car, no one, you hear me? SOCO, that’s your next job.’
A couple of guys grunted and bobbed their heads; annoyed they would be working late, again. The sooner they caught this bugger the better.
‘So how did the car get there?’ said Karen.
‘Let’s see,’ said Walter, attempting to imagine the sequence of events. ‘Jago here went out to meet someone, a friend maybe, they had a few drinks, a meal perhaps, then Jago drove them back here with promises of a nightcap, or drugs, or sex, or all three, only to be murdered by our killing fiend. The killer then jumped into the car, and drove back to the swimming pool and dumped it. Maybe his car was already there. Doing a switch over. Find out if there is any CCTV by the pool, and get someone on the CCTV coverage on the ring road. If the car went from here to there, there must be some coverage somewhere. With any luck we might have a pretty pic of the perpetrator just waiting to be viewed. And another thing...’
‘Yes, Guv?’
‘As soon as we have a definite time of death, find out if Jago here was seen about town that evening, dining, and if so, with whom?’
‘Yeah Guv, I’m on to that,’ said Karen. ‘I’ve thought of something else too.’
‘Yeah, like what?’
‘Was the guy gay?’
Walter gave her a look.
‘How the hell would I know?’
‘Well, whether he was or not, he could be using the Internet to line up dates. There might be records of who contacted him.’
‘You think he might use the Internet?’ said Walter, well out of his comfort zone.
‘Could be, looks the type. Everyone’s doing it these days.’
‘OK, good, find out, and get someone to check his computer over, it’s in the bedroom. Read his emails, check the sites he’s been visiting, there must be any number of leads and clues there, and while we are on the subject of technology, where the bloody hell is his mobile phone?’
‘There Guv,’ shouted back one of the SOCO guys, pointing to the windowsill, and the modern expensive phone that looked as if it had been abandoned to fend for itself.
‘Good,’ said Walter. ‘If we can’t mine a bucket load of information from this scene we don’t deserve to be paid. None of you, that is!’ he shouted and everyone knew that Walter Darriteau was angry.
This time the killer had gone too far.
This time the killer had made mistakes; surely he must have made mistakes.
‘And another thing,’ shouted Walter.
‘Yes, Guv?’ she said, trying to listen, while doing three things at once.
‘Get his phone records. I want to know who he’s been ringing, and who’s been ringing him.’
‘Yes, Guv, I’m on to it,’ and Karen grinned at him as the adrenalin pumped around her body, reminding her of precisely why she enjoyed her job so much, and why she enjoyed working with him.
‘Has he got an answering machine?’
‘Can’t see one, Guv.’
‘Mmm, well we can’t have everything,’ mumbled Walter, thinking of other things. Was Jago gay? Homosexual? Were the preachers closet homosexuals? The lonely fisherman too? Could be. Maggie O’Brien certainly wasn’t. The preachers had kids, not that that meant anything. No, it didn’t stack up. There must be something else. Why and where had the killer found Jago Cripps, and more pertinently, why had he ended his life?
He wondered what Cresta Raddish would make of this mess. She had said he would kill again, except she was still stuck in the he-she thing nonsense, but she’d been right about the killing.
There was one tiny consolation, too late for the unfortunate Jago. At least it hadn’t been a child. But what about next time? What then? They had to catch him before that. They had to. Walter didn’t want a child killing on his hands. He had to catch him before that, and at that very moment he knew there would be another ill spelt letter winging its way through the mail.
The gloating season was about to re-open.
‘And another thing, Karen.’
‘Yes, Guv. What?’
‘Find out if he had money worries.’
‘Sure, Guv.’
‘And another thing...’
Karen shook her head and half smiled and shared a look with a dishy SOCO guy and said, ‘Yes Guv?’
‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Desiree Holloway came from an archetypal English middleclass family, brought up in the green hills above Lancaster. Her father was a bank manager at the local branch of a Hong Kong based bank. It was a steady job that paid well, and Desiree and her elder sister Louise wanted for nothing. Both of Desiree’s parents adored books, indeed dabbled with writing themselves, and both read stories to Desiree and Louise as soon as the infants were old enough to pay attention.
By the time they went to primary school the sisters were competent readers and capable writers. It gave them a head start they would maintain all the way to university, and beyond. Louise became a maths teacher at the best school in Lancashire, while Desiree majored on the sciences in which she excelled.
When Desiree was fifteen she discovered boys, and by the time she was sixteen, she’d discovered sex. When she was seventeen she ran two passionate affairs, one with the nineteen year old head boy from the same high school that she and her sister attended, the other with a twenty-three year old local builder who specialised in lowering the colours of the local fifth and sixth form young women.
Desiree wanted them for one thing alone.
Sex, and if they weren’t good at that, she’d cut them dead.
She was not a beautiful girl in the classical sense, but she was comfortable with her striking looks. Her straight shiny black hair, parted in the centre and worn down to her shoulders, and red tinged skin gave her a slight appearance of a Red Indian. She rarely applied lipstick, she didn’t need to, indeed behind her back some of the more unkind pupils referred to her as Marcus’s squaw, Marcus being the blond tanned head boy who had a following all of his own.
Desiree didn’t waste a moment’s thought or sleep over spiteful gossip, there were far more important things to think about, and for so long as Marcus continued to cut the mustard, she would visit him after school at his house, where he would remove her school uniform before his parents came home.
In the previous two years she had discovered a great deal about herself, most of which had been enlightening, educational, and pleasurable, though one discovery troubled her, something that she could never discuss with another living soul.
When she was nineteen she walked out through the school gates for the final time, never to return, and headed for university where she could really be free. Marcus offered to write. Desiree declined, and wished him well in the future, and boarded
the train out of town, armed with her straight A’s in Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Mathematics, and headed south for Liverpool, and the famous university there that majored in the subjects that were Desiree’s true loves.
She excelled at university in all things.
Bedded several of her contemporaries, and two tutors for good measure, but never once let her affairs and outside interests, few though they were, interfere with her work. Desiree Holloway was a high flier. Everyone knew that, including an aging professor by the name of Jack Robertson, who had been recruited as a talent scout way back by some faceless London organisation.
Jack recommended her highly, gave her his full five star rating, something he’d only ever awarded twice before, once, years ago to a future prime minister, and once, more recently, to a highly strung young man who turned round and murdered his lover, Julian, in a dispute over a darts score in The Eagle & Child.
In the mundane London office that peered out through dusty windows over the grey Thames, Jack Robertson’s recommendations were always treated seriously. A missionary was dispatched to the far away territories of the Duke of Lancaster, one Mrs Bloemfontein, a woman who bred roses and black Labradors, whose family had returned a generation before from the South African town that was famous for roses, and happened to share the family name. Mrs Bloemfontein had devoured all the reports and couldn’t wait to interview one Desiree Holloway.
Their meeting did not start well.
The young and headstrong Desiree couldn’t figure out what the freckled, greying woman wanted. The weird interloper seemed to talk in abstracts and vague possibilities. Unusually, Desiree struggled to grasp the bigger picture. Yet by the time the second meeting came round, (Mrs Bloemfontein was staying three days in the Swindley Hotel, and longer if necessary), a clear promise had been made, or at least Desiree thought it clear, that all her tuition fees, and indeed more than that, additional extra curriculum courses at the very best colleges, would all be fully covered, gratis. She would never have to pay a penny again, nor her father, not a bean.
