by John Mead
‘Thanks,’ Merry stated, watching Lukula as she ferreted around Madeline’s room, ‘anything that links her to the other two victims would obviously help but also anything that might link her with mental health support or drug issues.’
‘Her stash was well hidden,’ Julie quipped, having pulled a plastic zip-lock bag from the toe of a boot in the back of the wardrobe, ‘hardly original but as the mother said, nothing more than you’d expect to find in eight out of ten households.’
‘Not mine,’ Merry muttered, knowing his wife’s vigilance on such matters. ‘What else?’ he asked, surveying the room which, in line with most teenagers’ bedrooms, looked as if a small tornado had passed through it.
‘Birth control pills,’ Lukula stated, working her way through a set of drawers. ‘Sensible at her age though she doesn’t seem to have been that rigorous in taking one each day. Also some condoms, different types, a vibrator, range of clothing, shoes, some magazines, no books apart from those for her college course. Given that she was nearly seventeen nothing to be too shocked about. Some of this underwear looks pricey, and this…’ Lukula handed Merry a small photo album she had just found at the back of the undies draw.
The two uniformed constables were entertaining the confused and sleepy eight year old step-brother in the kitchen, on the pretence of making the British cure-all: a cup of tea. The lad might not fully comprehend what was going on but was not going to miss the opportunity of seeing what kit the two officers carried around with them, his mates were going to be as envious as hell.
‘We found these photos in Madeline’s room,’ Merry explained, ‘a dozen Polaroids, nine of which seem to be standard family pictures, shots of your son when he was younger sitting on Madeline’s lap, a couple of yourselves and Madeline at Christmas or birthdays,’ the inspector flipped through the album showing the pictures as he described them, the parents’ faces growing stonier as he progressed. ‘Then we get to these three, from the dates in pencil on the backs Madeline would have been about twelve or thirteen.’
‘God, not this again, not now,’ Maureen put her head in her hands, despairing, whilst Alan went quiet and pale. ‘She swore blind they had all been destroyed, we burnt them all having shredded them first. It isn’t what it looks like,’ Maureen emphatically stated, raising her face to look the two scowling police officers in their eyes.
‘How is that?’ Lukula demanded. ‘What do you think they look like? These three photos: two of you and Madeline and one of your husband and Madeline, the three of you naked and, how would you describe what you are doing?’
‘Tickling, that’s all, it’s the only way to describe it,’ Maureen tried not to sound defensive, she knew she had nothing to defend against but decided to have the whole thing out. ‘We used to be naturists, that’s how Alan and I met, through a magazine after my divorce. I didn’t want Maddy to be afraid of her body, not to be embarrassed about it, to feel she could share any concerns with us. When I was small I was as thin as a rake as I got older I got fatter. Now look at me, five two in a size twenty dress – that’s me. I don’t care what I look like to others, I diet for my health not their approval. For Maddy it has been the reverse she was podgy as a child then during puberty it went to her hips and bust, but at twelve that wasn’t obvious and I didn’t want her obsessed with her body shape, not to have to go through what I did.’
‘So these photos?’ Merry asked, trying to understand what the mother was telling him.
‘Taken on two different holidays, the ones with me are in our hotel room, the one with Alan is on the beach, look at the edges you can see the sand under the towel. He was just putting suncream on her that’s all,’ Maureen paused, glancing at her husband who was staring into the middle-distance as if he was some uninvolved bystander, while the two officers continued to watch her with the intensity of someone looking to detect a lie. ‘Social services have already looked through everything and found nothing amiss.’
‘Social services?’ Lukula asked, pushing the mother to dig the hole deeper.
‘We had a couple of bigger albums with photos, taken on one of those Polaroids, Maddy showed them to one of her friends about a year after we had taken them. Her friend told her mother who reported us to social services, didn’t even think to ask us what it was all about first. It was three months of hell but in the end they concluded there was nothing to answer, the photos were returned and we were left to pick up the pieces. We shredded the photos and gave up on naturist holidays, it was like a witch hunt, guilty until proven innocent,’ Maureen looked more angry than repentant, her tense body posture revealing the memory of the stress of those three months. ‘It was years ago, past history, and was never taken up by the police. We still have a copy of the social services report if you want to see it.’
‘That would be useful, though we will have to check with social services as well,’ Merry stated trying not to sound suspicious, the photos probably had nothing to do with Madeline’s death and he didn’t want to stress the parents over something that had happened and been dealt with a couple of years previous.
‘What do you think?’ Lukula asked as they got in the car, the uniforms would stay a bit longer taking details before leaving the family to their grief until family liaison would call later in the morning. ‘It may have been innocent tickling in the mother’s eyes but the step-father’s dick shows he was enjoying things more than he should have been.’
‘Very observant of you, Sergeant,’ Merry smiled. ‘Though it was more the step-father’s silence on the whole matter that caught my attention, rather than the size of his semi-erect penis.’
‘Believe me I have no interest in men’s junk, semi-erect or otherwise,’ Lukula sardonically replied. ‘Now how exactly did you get into a fight with the young Ricky Towers? And, has Donald Key always been that big?’
It wasn’t worth going home only to come straight back, so the pair busied themselves, preparing and swapping ideas in readiness for the early briefing. Merry shared a text from Swift with Lukula which simply said ‘Twitter shit hits fan’, by which they assumed that social media sites had picked up on the killings. Lukula settled at a desk to go through various sites to see if she could see what was being said, as Matthew brought the others up to date as they arrived for duty. Swift and Hayden arrived last, laden down with trays of coffees and Danish enough for the whole team.
‘Right,’ Swift began, putting his muffin and coffee to oneside, ‘we have something of a Twitter storm, with #WhitchapSmash, #WhitchapEdBanga and, my least favourite, #RipperHitsAgain. Why these fucking morons don’t have better things to do with their lives defeats me but some shit has got to Madeline Turner’s Tumblr account before we could get it shut down, so there are some nude pics of her she posted now going viral. There’s also stuff starting to appear on Madeline’s and Lynsey’s Facebook accounts that the FLO’s are monitoring. Fortunately Jody Grahame doesn’t seem to have had much of an online presence. Although we are having the trolls traced, I have instructed family liaison to work with the families to get everything shut down and help them through this. They will also inform them about the press conference called for later today, it’ll be led by the chief superintendent and myself. We will be confirming Madeline Turner as the third victim and appealing for witnesses but also asking for the privacy of the grieving families to be respected.’ Swift paused for the team to take in what he’d said and ask any questions but getting none continued, ‘You all need to be aware that the people you question might have picked up on this crap and have altered their perception of what they know or have seen.’
‘Perhaps,’ Lukula suggested, ‘we should start a #whitchapcopssayfuckoffandletusdoourjobs?’
‘I’ll run it pass the press office,’ Swift said joining in the laughter and allowing the tension in the room to dissipate before saying, ‘Right Matthew, the floor is yours.’
9
Once again Inspector Merry fo
und himself pointing at photos of a young, dead woman and reviewing a brief list of details about Madeline Turner, her death and her family. ‘Hayden, I believe you interviewed the man who found the body?’
‘That’s right, sir, he didn’t give a name or number at the time but the call was traced,’ Hayden explained, ‘Antoni Kowalczyk, has some priors but all traffic offences. Claims he was out for a late night stroll to help him sleep, saw the girl, panicked and phoned it in.’ Hayden paused, to take a sip of coffee before continuing, ‘When pushed he admitted the park is a place couples and singles go to pick up like minded individuals, or “dogging” in popular parlance. I brought him back to make a formal statement and he has alibis for the other two killings, claiming he was at work, I’ll check that out immediately after this. He also said things were very quiet when he found the girl and he’d only gone down to the canal path to see if anything was happening, but didn’t see anyone else around.’
‘OK, let’s list him as a witness for the moment,’ Swift concluded, ‘though check out the rest of his family.’
‘He lives with his two brothers and an uncle,’ Hayden said, she was an experienced DC and not inclined to leave stones unturned. ‘The uncle has a suspended sentence for theft, he nicked some power tools from a DIY superstore, but the brothers have no history. They all cooperated readily enough, though the uncle seemed annoyed Toni, as he’s known, got involved.’ Swift gave an exaggerated bow of his head in acknowledgement of her work.
‘We know Madeline knew Lynsey, we need to check any links at school and work and exactly how Jody fits into the picture,’ Merry stated but got no further.
‘Talking of pictures,’ the SOCO, who had taken Madeline’s laptop, had slipped into the room as Hayden had been speaking, and now interrupted the inspector, ‘you might want to know what was on Madeline Turner’s laptop, iPad and phone.’ He moved to the front of the room as Merry motioned for him to continue, using an iPad to show the others samples of what he had discovered. ‘I’m still going through, checking dates, etc. as some of the files and photos have been moved around, probably transferred from older tech. There is also a lot of stuff stored in the cloud and on different app sites. Most of what I’ve found so far are selfies of her in different poses, both partially clothed and nude, though often in underwear, and in a variety of places. These include a few photos of her posing with men, though only showing their private parts and no faces.’
‘Maybe we should have a national database of men’s dicks,’ Hayden muttered to Rosen who pulled a face, as the SOCO continued.
‘A lot of the outdoor selfies were taken around the canal path, Wapping Woods and the central library.’
‘Book worm was she?’ Rosen quipped.
‘More about all the quiet corners and no CCTV,’ the SOCO explained, unsmilingly. ‘She seems to be using the photos to attract men to her website, on which she is selling advertising space. Everything is all very soft core, much of it from this year. She claims to be eighteen…’
‘Any regular fans?’ Lukula interrupted.
‘We have a list of subscribers, under 3000 which is microscopic for a website of this type, few originate in the UK and hardly any resubscribe beyond an initial one month free trial. The five top spenders all originate in the far east and account for about eighty per cent of the revenue paid to the site.’
‘How much has she made doing this?’ Hayden wanted to know, causing Rosen to mutter something about her needing to stick with the day job, which in turn caused the two DCs from CID to chuckle.
‘To be certain we need more time but roughly three or four grand, which in internet terms is nothing,’ the SOCO explained, ‘the site is amateurish, which might give it some appeal but you would have to spend a lot of browser time to find it.’
‘The UK subscribers?’ Lukula asked, wanting to bring things back on track.
‘We will be following up but I need to hand this over to a specialist, they would be able to get a lot more out of this than I can. However, there is other stuff on here you should see first,’ the image on the iPad shifted from a slide show of stills to a video shot, as Merry and Lukula recognised, in Madeline’s bedroom. ‘I reckon these were taken on her laptop camera and I doubt if the step-father was aware. The first two videos show her giving him a hand and partial blow job, the last one depicts them groping each other, then he masturbates over her.’
‘Do you have date stamps for these?’ Merry asked, he had moved to see the screen better and was watching closely to see if the acts being performed were anything less than consensual or constituted a rape.
‘All of them were taken when the girl would have been between fourteen and fifteen,’ for the first time the SOCO smiled, knowing he had produced a good result.
‘That’s good work,’ Swift stated, getting to his feet, ‘I’ll go with Julie to arrest him and bring him in for questioning, we will need a team to go over the flat again. Under the circumstances we should bring the mother in as well, so we will need to notify social services. Hayden can you deal with that?’
‘The mother alibis the step-father for the time Madeline was killed,’ Merry cut across the sudden activity. ‘His brother provided one for Lynsey’s murder, and he is vague on where he was when Jody died.’ Swift and the others had stopped and were again listening to the inspector, intrigued by his line of thinking. ‘The trace evidence found at both of the first two killings shows a potential link, although the threads found are from fairly generic clothing material. We don’t have anything yet from Madeline Turner’s crime scene. However, it suggests that the killer was wearing a black, cotton and polyester jacket or top; the colour would have hidden any blood splatter. There were shoe prints from Jody’s scene, though they couldn’t be solely, forgive the pun,’ – not that anyone listening smiled – ‘attributed to the killer, there was a clear print at the edge of the bushes where she was dumped. A size five which is small for a man, but Alan Turner is on the short side, about five three or four.’
‘It’s a bit of a jump from porking his underage daughter, to killing her and two other girls,’ Rosen pointed out. ‘He doesn’t have any priors either.’
‘But, he used to take Madeline to and from work, so he could have seen the other two girls in the area,’ Lukula sided with Merry, though not addressing Rosen’s point.
‘What is his motive, the videos were taken two years ago, so why now?’ Swift wanted to know, his gut telling him Matthew was onto something but he wanted it laid out.
‘Her rather expensive MacBook was a sixteenth birthday present from her step-dad. It’s still on her Facebook page,’ the SOCO revealed, thinking he had more than earned his wage for the week.
‘And, Madeline was saving for a salon of her own after she finished her course,’ Merry pointed out. ‘Her mum said Maddy had a practical head on her shoulders, although perhaps not in the way she thought, so it’s possible she expected more than a laptop from the step-dad.’
‘It’s certainly a line of questioning we should take with Turner,’ Swift agreed warming further to the idea, beginning to wonder if things, at last, were coming together on the case.
‘They didn’t seem to have a lot of money,’ Lukula pointed out, she had moved next to the SOCO and was looking through the iPad with him as she spoke, ‘finding money for the Mac would have been a struggle. If Madeline was pushing Alan Turner for more then it’s possible he was starting to look for another way out.’
‘Everyone knows that with an unexplained death we always look at the family first,’ Hayden joined the bandwagon. ‘So it’s possible he hoped to divert attention by attacking someone else first.’
‘He’s seen Jody and Lynsey at the Berner Centre and starts to follow them,’ Merry continued, expanding on his theory. ‘He picks Jody first because she’s been sacked and there is no obvious connection with his daughter, she also started to hang round St George’s so it’s easi
er for him to plan an attack.’
‘Only Nowak is arrested for killing Jody and his plan falls apart,’ Swift could now see a clear picture and the lines of questioning they needed to take with Turner, ‘after a couple of weeks he realised he is going to have to start again and this time goes after Lynsey Hensley.’
‘Here is something else,’ Lukula suddenly piped up, turning the iPad to show the team. ‘Recognise the hair colouring?’
Everyone peered closely, but it was Rosen who had worked on Jody Grahame’s case who got it first, ‘Jody had those rainbow streaks in her hair.’
‘They are not cheap, and difficult to do properly yourself,’ Lukula explained, smiling as another puzzle piece fell into place, ‘but Madeline has examples of her work on her Facebook page, nails and hair colouring, Jody probably got it done cheap for being Madeline’s model.’
‘Right we need to get moving on this,’ Swift was convinced and wanted action. ‘Hayden, take Constable Porter and bring Maureen Turner in, we’ll see if she changes her story once she realises what her husband has been up to. Matthew, I want you to see if you can take the brother’s statement apart. You said Turner’s alibi for Jody’s killing was already flaky but pull it apart in any case. If we can shake Turner’s alibis we may get him on the back foot. David, I want you to coordinate with forensics, to go over Turner’s flat and van, check if he has a lock-up and get that searched as well.’
‘He’s a builder so don’t forget to check his recent places of work,’ Merry put in, ‘perhaps Barry could look into that and sort it?’
‘Good thinking,’ Swift acknowledged, nodding his approval of Youlden’s role, ‘Julie, you are with me, we will arrest Turner for sex with an underage girl and then work up to the killings. Any questions? No? Excellent.’
