by Ellis, Tim
‘It’s not going to kill us, is it?’
Lola produced what sounded like an elephant’s mating call. ‘Only if’n you have two helpings.’
‘I’ll come and collect you in the morning then.’
She nodded. ‘Thank you, Ko-wall-ski. I think we should go to the incident room now. Go over what we got, and check we ain’t missed nothing.’
‘Okay, let’s do that.’
Lola started off along the corridor.
He wondered what had happened to Parish and Richards. They were usually here by this time.
***
‘I’ll never forgive you for embarrassing me last night.’
It was eight-thirty, and they were in Parish’s Ford Focus on the A113 coming up to Junction 5 of the M11. The motorway was busy. Snowdrifts were everywhere, and there was a fine smattering of snowfall.
‘Never is a long time, and as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing to forgive. The guy was an idiot and a paedophile.’
‘How was he a paedophile?’
‘He was at least twice your age.’
‘That doesn’t make him...’
‘It does in my books. And did you see those faded tattoos on his forearms?’
‘So what?’
‘So what! He’d been in prison.’
‘How did you work that out?’
‘I could tell. You know very well that I can spot the good, the bad, and the ugly from twenty paces. He was definitely bad and ugly.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘Did you see how he went for me? Said you were his. And you call me crazy. You shouldn’t be allowed to talk to men on your own. You’re the worst person ever at choosing men.’
‘I know, but he said he was twenty-seven, and he looked nothing like his picture. I was trying to make my excuses and go home.’
‘Except you’re too nice for your own good. In the end, he’d have taken you somewhere, had sex with you, and then dumped you. It’s just a good thing I came along when I did.’
‘I suppose, but you didn’t have to make such scene.’
‘I can hardly be blamed if one of your rodents attacks me, can I?’
‘What am I going to do? I’ll never find a man.’
‘I know a chief scientific officer who’s as hot as chilli peppers.’
‘Not him again. Paul may have changed his looks, and he does look quite handsome now, but he’s boring.’
‘Maybe “boring” is just what you need. The trouble with you is that you want to live on the edge, dice with danger, and court disaster. News hot off the press is that most of the time life is boring. You can’t be Lara Croft – Tomb Raider in real life, you know?’
‘I know, but...’ She sighed. ‘One day Mr Right will come along.’
‘Probably, but you wouldn’t recognise him even if he had a flashing neon light on his forehead.’
‘I don’t want to talk about men anymore.’
‘I’m not surprised. So, what are you going to ask the people at the Toxic Club when we break down the doors?’
‘Me?’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you undergoing training to be a detective?’
‘That’s just an excuse you use to get me to do all the work.’
‘You think supervising Lara Croft – Tomb Raider is easy? I have to watch you every second of the day, and that, my young sidekick, is hard work.’
‘You wouldn’t know what hard work was if it bit you on the bum.’
‘And that’s your final word on the subject?’
‘Not necessarily. I might have something else to say a bit later, but for now I’m going to catch up on my sleep.’ She put the seat all the way back, interlocked her fingers, and closed her eyes. ‘Let me know when we get there.’
‘I’m hardly going to leave you snoring in the car to frighten the passers-by, am I?’
What would they discover at the Toxic Club? Why had the killer left the ultraviolet stamps on the victim’s arms? Surely he must have known the club used the stamps. How was he selecting his victims? All the women had recently given birth, but no one would be able to tell that just by looking at them. Had he known them? How? He needed a break. There were still far too many questions without answers.
***
‘We got four victims in four different counties,’ Lola said. ‘Lisa Taverner in Wormley; Julie Watson in Tiverton, Devon; Gail Whittle in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire; and Brenda Clements in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire.’
Kowalski was sitting in a chair facing the whiteboard with his fingers interlocked behind his head.
‘All the women were on Jeremy Kincaid’s books. We know he sent Lisa Taverner white roses with a card that said, “I love you, J”, and a dead white rose was found on the body.’
‘And remember,’ Kowalski interrupted. ‘A bouquet of white roses means eternal love, but a dead white rose means rejected love.’
‘You think he knew that stuff?’
‘If he didn’t, why the dead white rose?’
Lola continued. ‘And Brenda Clements had a dead white carnation left on her, which also means rejected love. I suppose he must have known, but it be a bit odd ‘cause men don’t usually know that stuff. Did you know before?’
‘Not a clue, but then I’m not your typical wishy-washy man. I’m a real macho type of guy. Flowers are for girls. In fact, the flower shops I went to were all owned and run by women, but I do know some guys who like that stuff. Toadstone is probably one of those guys, but Ed wasn’t, and Parish isn’t.’
‘Yeah, Kincaid could be a flower type of guy. We don’t really know much about him. We ain’t talked to any of his friends or work colleagues.’
‘Has he got any?
‘Okay. We know he done made phone calls to all these women, but he could have been calling them about work.’
‘Then why send them flowers?’
Lola picked up Kincaid’s credit card record, found a fluorescent green highlight pen, and highlighted all the purchases from flower shops and their locations. ‘We should have thought of this before. Those detectives in the other counties don’t know anything about Kincaid – we the only ones that know about him.’ She recorded what she’d found on the board. That Kincaid sent flowers to all these women.’
‘Well done, Lola. It confirms what we’ve been thinking all along, that he was probably having an affair with each one of them.’
‘Like a sailor – a woman in every port.’
‘And when they ended the affair, he killed them.’
‘Maybe it weren’t them that ended the affair. Maybe it was him ’cause it’d be a bit strange for all four women to end affairs with him over such a short time.’
‘Okay, but maybe we’re reading too much into this. We’re talking about affairs, when maybe there was none. Don’t forget if he was having an affair with Lisa Taverner why did he need to break into The Snooty Pig?’
‘What you saying then?’
‘He could have been obsessed with them, sent them flowers, and then murdered them when he saw them with someone else.’
Lola shook her head. ‘No, I ain’t believing that. He had a job to do. He didn’t have time to wait around to see if’n they went with other men. I think he met the women as part of his job, he done slept with them, and then he sent them flowers. After that, he just killed them.’
‘Once they’d slept with him they became unclean.’
‘Could be, but what I don’t understand is why he started killing all of a sudden.’
‘The trigger could have been the loss of the baby. We’ve focused on his wife being affected by the miscarriage, but he would have been affected by the death as well.’
‘It all be speculation.’
‘Yes, we’re not going to find any answers until we catch him. Let’s go back to the squad room and see if we can’t find out some more about Jeremy Kincaid.’
***
The Toxic Club was on Howard Way not far from Brays Grove and Mark
Hall South, and the roundabout on the A1025. In reality it was just a large warehouse that had been converted into a dance club – if jumping up and down could be called dancing. Inside, it had been painted black. A light show hung from the ceiling. There was a stage for live groups and a disc jockey who destroyed old vinyl records on a couple of turntables; two bars that only sold bottled beer and alcopops; and two toilets where drug deals went down.
Two thousand five hundred people could be crammed inside at eleven pounds fifty a shot, and it was open three nights a week.
‘How much is that, Richards?’
‘Maths isn’t one of the competencies I need to collect evidence for.’
‘When you make DCI...’
‘Which won’t be any time soon.’
‘When you make DCI you’ll need to run your own budget.’
‘I have some time to develop my numerical skills then.’
‘Everybody needs maths. How much?’
‘You’re only asking me because you can’t work it out yourself.’
‘Well?’
‘About thirty thousand pounds three times a week is ninety thousand pounds. See, you thought I couldn’t work it out, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, I knew you’d work it out when you started using your delaying tactics, so that you had time to work it out.’
‘You make me sound duplicitous and devious like Lucrezia Borgia.’
‘What do you know about Lucrezia Borgia?’
‘I know that she was astoundingly beautiful and intelligent. If she had one flaw it was that she liked to poison people.’
‘There you are then.’
‘I don’t like to poison people.’
‘No, but everything else fits.’
‘You think I’m astoundingly beautiful and intelligent?’
‘Let’s not forget duplicitous and devious, and you also have a fatal flaw.’
‘Oh?’
‘Men.’
‘I was wondering when you’d bring that up again.’
‘You didn’t deny being duplicitous and devious.’
‘I was just about to.’
‘Are those pigs on that telephone wire?’
He phoned Kowalski.
‘Parish, as I live and breathe.’
‘Hi Ray. How’s it going with Lola?’
‘Yeah good. Hang on...’ It went quiet for a moment. ‘Okay! Lola is a rough diamond I’m in the process of polishing. You made a good call there.’
‘Excellent. How’s the case going?’
‘Don’t ask. In fact, I could do with not going with you tonight.’
‘That’s what I’m ringing you about. The Chief Constable has given me until the middle of next week to solve this case, and then I’ll be operating out of Lost Property. If I don’t find anything today, can you pick up the slack for me?’
‘Steady on, Parish. I might end up with all the glory.’
‘If you can find any, you’re welcome to it.’
‘So, you don’t want me to come with you?’
‘What would you be going for?’
‘My thoughts exactly.’
‘Listen, I’ll meet you at the station about four-thirty, and I’ll let you know what’s going on with the case.’
‘See you then.’
‘So, Inspector Kowalski isn’t coming with us tonight?’
‘Why do you find it necessary to state the obvious? You’ve just been listening to my conversation with Kowalski, so you know he’s not coming.’
‘You want to ask all those other pigs on the telephone wire to shuffle over.’
‘Maybe later. First, let’s go and see what this Toxic Club is all about.’
Knocking on the main entrance didn’t seem to work because nobody came. They walked round the side and found a Mercedes outside a door. The metal security grill was open. Parish banged three times with the side of his fist.
‘It better be good,’ they heard from the other side of the door in a foreign accent. ‘Otherwise somebody is going to die a long painful death.’
The door opened. A man with cropped hair, a goatee beard, and a plethora of tattoos on both hands and fingers filled the doorway. He wore a dark blue suit with a yellow tie and light blue shirt, and Parish noticed that the ends of two of the man’s fingers were missing on his left hand.
‘Who are you?’
He didn’t normally jump to conclusions about people, but the Russian prison tattoos and the missing finger ends marked him as Russian Mafia. He showed his warrant card. ‘Police.’
‘We pay a lot not to be hassled.’
‘I’m a detective. Here about three murdered women.’
‘What has that got to do with us?’
‘That’s what we’re here to find out. Can we come in?’
‘Wait here.’
The man shut the door.
‘He’s a bit scary,’ Richards said. ‘Did you see his tattoos?’
‘Russian Mafia.’
‘Oh God! Maybe we should call for backup.’
‘What, like CO19 with machine guns and bazookas?’
‘Do they have tanks?’
‘This isn’t America, you know.’
‘Or maybe fighter jets, and surface to air missiles. We could call for the SAS.’
‘Stop talking, Richards.’
Chapter Eighteen
After driving back to the cottage she had reversed the Range Rover up to the door, and dragged the midwife along the hallway and down into the cellar. There, she had locked a metal collar around the bitch’s neck, and chained her to the wall.
That was last night.
She didn’t want her to die just yet, so this morning she’d prepared scrambled egg, two pieces of toast, and a hot cup of tea.
As soon as she opened the door to the cellar the bitch started.
‘HELP! HELP! HELP!
‘If you don’t shut the fuck up I’ll kill you now. No one can hear you here.’
‘Karen! What the hell are you doing?’
‘You’re here to deliver a baby.’ She put the tray on the damp concrete floor and slid it towards the midwife with her foot. ‘Here – eat – you’ll need to keep your strength up. It’s cold down here.’
‘I don’t understand, you lost your baby.’
‘No thanks to you, bitch.’
‘It’s hardly my fault you can’t carry a baby to term.’
‘You knew I’d already had two miscarriages. You wanted me to lose the baby, and you made sure I did. You don’t want me to be happy. I know that you’re all conspiring against me so that I’ll never have any children. Well, I know about you now and you’re all going to pay for what you’ve done to me.’
‘I promise you, it’s all in your head, Karen. I never did anything to hurt you.’
‘My sister Trudi has told me what you did. I made her tell me everything. I know she was part of your little conspiracy, but I made her pay. I made her babies pay as well. Why should she have two babies when I didn’t have any? Oh yes, you’ll all pay.’
‘You’re crazy. You have to let me go.’
‘You’re not going anywhere until you’ve delivered my baby.’
‘What baby? You don’t have a baby.’
‘Angela Parish has my baby, she’s always had my baby. Well, not any more – I’m going to get my baby back, and you’re going to help me.’
‘Karen, you must stop this. You’ve broken the law. You’ve kidnapped me. You could go to prison. Let me go now and I promise I won’t tell anybody, but you must get help.’
Karen laughed. It was a laugh that came from another world – a world that only the crazy inhabited. ‘You’re the hired help Staff Nurse Marveen Hollingsworth.’
She sat down on the third from bottom step and began to sing a lullaby:
Star light,
Star bright,
First star
I see tonight
I wish I may,
I wish I might,
Have this wish
> I wish tonight.
***
‘Because he was their southern representative,’ Lola said after she’d put the phone down, ‘and because he lived in Essex, he didn’t have any friends at the brewery. They knew what we knew about him. As long as he kept bringing in the orders they was happy. He was one of their top salesmen.’
The phone rang.
‘This be trainee detective Lola Laveque. How may I help you?’ She passed the phone to Kowalski. ‘Sergeant Jackson for you.’
‘Hello Kristina. Can’t get enough of me, huh?’
‘You know me too well, Inspector. I’ve got the hots for you something terrible, and I need some respite from this burning sensation in my nether region.’
Kowalski threw back his head and laughed. ‘You really know how to get a guy going, Kristina.’
‘Yeah, unfortunately you’ll never find out the things I can do for a man, Kowalski.’
‘My imagination is running riot. What did you ring for?’
‘Oh yeah, I nearly forgot. That Range Rover you wanted to know about.’
‘Yeah?’
‘There’s been a sighting.’
‘You’ve got my full attention.’
‘DC Katie Walker was reviewing the CCTV records at King George Hospital and there it was.’
‘Now you’ve lost me.’
‘A woman went missing from the hospital yesterday afternoon.’
‘I think I heard something about that on the news.’
‘Glad to hear you’re keeping up with current events.’
‘Hey, I’ve got a humdinger of a current event myself here, you know. I haven’t exactly been gazing over the horizon to watch the sunrise.’
‘A nurse called Marveen Hollingsworth was snatched between the hospital reception and the car park as she was leaving work yesterday.’
‘What, and the Range Rover was involved?’
‘So, let me get this right, Kowalski. Not only was I meant to put out an alert for the vehicle, and then let you know when there was a sighting, but I was also meant to find out the details of said sighting and then report back to you?’
