Lurch offered no greeting as he dumped the cider laden carrier bag down beside George. Tired of even bothering to try and make conversation with the coiled newcomer, Neil just sat back and watched Lurch step towards the river’s edge and stare into the rapid water.
Yeah, he thought, one more step and whatever demons are haunting those glazed eyes of yours will all be exorcised for good. Take the easy way out, weirdo, and leave us the fuck alone.
‘Early today,’ George said, finally acknowledging their newest friend and reaching into the shopping bag. ‘So what’s the news, Lurch?’
Lurch ignored the question, choosing instead to pick at the ridiculously long key chain that hung from his jeans waistband.
Neil glanced at his drinking buddy, who yesterday had made a sport out of trying to goad Lurch into speaking. Yellowed by jaundice, and with a death rattle cough, George had little time left, and so even littler reason to waste it. So if lecturing about the city’s football team’s glory days and teasing Lurch made him happy, who was Neil to deny an old man his last bit of fun?
‘Hey, Lurch,’ George called. ‘What’s with that fucking keychain, anyway? I mean, you got the keys to your mansion and your Ferrari on that thing or something?’
Sitting beside George, Ricky, whose time on the street had earned the twenty-five-year-old a jagged scar over his left eye, let out a laugh. ‘Yeah, Lurch...You gonna pick us up and take us for a spin to your mansion for cocktails some time?’
Neil fidgeted, his honed instinct for trouble alerting him something was different about Lurch today. Sure he was dressed the same, but something about his initial appearance as he’d dropped the bag differed from yesterday.
‘It’s a dog lead, not a keychain.’
Lurch's hoarse voice sent a chill down Neil’s back. He sat up and frowned his concern at his two buddies.
‘It speaks!’ Ricky announced.
‘So where’s the dog?’ George pushed. ‘In your pocket?’
‘Spartan’s dead.’ Lurch turned from the river bank, pulled a knife from his coat pocket. ‘There is neither happiness or misery in the world: there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.’
And that’s when Neil saw it, the difference between Lurch yesterday and today. A minute detail, sure, but noticing such details was what had kept Neil alive on the streets all this time. Where yesterday Lurch's trainers were scuffed and dirty, now the laces and toes were blotched with crimson, as if someone had bled on them.
Chapter Five
Six blocks of six flats, all within a fifty meter diameter of one another. All with the same view of the grass roundabout in the centre of the cul-de-sac. All occupied on this dreary, damp Sunday morning. Excluding Tanya and Carly and the residents’ kids, that meant thirty-four potential eyewitnesses.
And yet, not one of the single mothers had seen a damn thing.
Of course, Jessop knew this not to be true. People generally had a survival instinct that kicked in when it came to inviting avoidable trouble into their lives. Gone was any compassion toward their fellow man, replaced with a sudden attack of deaf dumb and blindness. Why admit to seeing the bad man knowing by doing so you could find yourself face to face with him later in court? Or worse still, back on the street after his release? No thanks. I got my own problems and my family to think about without having some psycho lusting for my blood. And anyway, isn’t that why we have the police?
Standing outside Tanya’s cordoned off block, she surveyed the surrounding flats, each window now with a face spying between the curtains, where three hours ago there had been none…allegedly. However, there was one resident for whom she believed: Sophia Cox, Tanya’s clubbing partner and keen collector of African art, whom Jessop had just finished talking to.
The heavy set mother of three took the news of her friend’s death by signifying the cross across her ample bosom and bowing her head in silent prayer. A cup of hot tea was then insisted upon, to which Jessop accepted and received gratefully as she asked about their night out down Revels a fortnight ago when Tanya had lost her keys.
‘Yeah, that happened. Lord knows where they got to.’
When she asked if Sophia and Tanya knew Lennox Tyler, the club’s manager, Sophia’s sad brown eyes hardened into bullets. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘Did you see him that night?’
‘He’s always there, sniffing around skirt like one of those truffle pigs or something.’
Thinking how easy it would be for Tyler to get someone to lift Tanya’s keys from her handbag on his jailbird cousin’s request, she asked about Junior Dennis and the letters he’d been sending Tanya.
‘Yeah, Tanya told me about ’em. Junior thinks he’s found salvation in the good book and wants to prove to her he’s changed when he gets out. But let me tell you this. Just because I read a cookery book don’t turn me into Delia. Know what I’m saying?’
‘So Junior wanted Tanya back?’
‘Uh-huh, but she weren’t having none of it. Saw straight through him and told him so.’
‘Bet that pissed him off.’
‘Hope so. I’m surprised they build cells big enough for that boy’s ego, let alone that stupid afro of his.’
Learning Tanya had dumped Junior three years ago, she had then asked Sophia how Junior with his big ego had reacted. The reply came as a shock.
‘He didn’t react. For Keisha’s sake. For all his many faults, Junior cherishes that little girl more than life itself.’
‘So he just accepted it?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’ Sophia had sat forward then, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘You got kids, Detective?’ Jessop said she had an eighteen-year-old girl. ‘Unique, aint she?’ grinned the mother of three. ‘But they always are in their mother’s eyes, right?’
Jessop had a gnawing feeling she knew where this was going.
‘Tanya never saw the similarities between Carly’s little Robbie and Keisha, but I sure as hell did. Junior didn’t get nasty when Tanya dumped him, he got even in his own sick way by knocking up her best friend. Course, Carly’s never admitted to this. Says Robbie’s daddy is some DJ she bumped uglys with one night in town. But that girl aint been out since I can remember. Poor cow got herself a real inferiority thing going on. Suppose it didn’t help having Tanya as a best friend.’ Sophia had fixed her with conspiratorial eyes. ‘Course, I can’t prove any of this, but the timing’s all right, and I got a sense for these things… Just like you, right, Detective?’
Right, Jessop thought as she finished telling Mason about her chat with Sophia.
Mason took a moment to ponder what he’d been told. ‘So Tanya rejects Junior. Junior’s big ego takes it badly, so he gets his cousin to lift her door keys from her bag at the club then hire some sadistic son of a bitch to do the deed and preach some of his new religious philosophy to his daughter. That sound about right?’
‘It would if not for both Carly and Sophia agreeing on one thing,’ Jessop said.
‘Which is?’
‘Junior worshipped Keisha. He wouldn’t subject her to having to watch her mother bleed to death.’
Mason cut her a look. ‘So you think Junior had nothing to do with this?’
She peered up at Carly’s kitchen window. ‘I think I would like to know why Carly had four-hundred B&H on her shopping list when she smokes Silk Cut.’
‘Come again?’
‘I would also like to know why she had a Carphone Warehouse bag in her collection under her sink when her mobile is at least three years old.’ She cocked an eyebrow at her confused looking DI. ‘Inmates love their ciggies and mobile phones. And Junior, if I recall, also loved Bob Marley and Arsenal.’
‘Carly’s ringtone…One Love by Bob Marley, right?’
‘Right.’
‘And Daley wore an Arsenal strip.'
‘Uh-huh. And I bet it won’t be long before little Robbie will be wearing one,
too.’
‘Junior’s kid, according to Sophia, right?’
‘And I believe her. I also believe Carly’s short on the self-esteem front, and when Junior showed her a bit of attention after being dumped by Tanya, she fell for him and has been secretly in love with him ever since.’
‘But then Junior gets banged up and starts sending Tanya letters saying he wants her back,’ Mason added as if reading her mind. ‘And suddenly Carly feels threatened and bitter. I mean, she’s the one who’s been taking him fags and smuggling in mobiles all this time. So she finds herself some psycho lowlife to off the competition.’ Jaw knotted, Mason glanced up to Carly’s flat, mumbled, ‘That’s pretty fucking cold.’
As was the heart of the green eyed beast that drove people to such extremes, Jessop mused as Brooke came barrelling through the door.
‘It’s Carly…’ she panted.
Chapter Six
‘She said she was going to take a shower,’ Brooke explained. ‘I heard the water running and thought nothing more of it.’
‘How long?’ Jessop pressed her ear hard against the locked bathroom door.
‘Fifteen minutes ago.’
She banged on the door. ‘Carly…Open up, sweetie!’
No reply, just the sound of the shower running. She nodded to Mason, who took a step back, braced himself against the hallway wall then launched a hefty kick at the door handle.
A splinter of wood, but no access.
He drew a breath, grunted, repeated the powerful kick.
A crack of wood, and the door swung open.
Flesh prickling with apprehension, Jessop stepped into the small bathroom and found Carly in the bathtub. Fully clothed and drenched, she was hugging her knees to her chest and rocking to a beat only she could hear.
She approached the bath slowly, checking the girl for any obvious wounds, of which there appeared to be none. Relieved, she turned the shower off. Carly, pallid and shivering, did not appear to notice.
Crouching down beside the bath, Jessop said, ‘Hey. What’s going on, sweetie?’
Carly continued to rock, her eyes fixed and centred on a shampoo bottle perched on the end of the bath. Jessop grabbed a towel from the rail behind her, gently draped it across the girl’s trembling shoulders. ‘What you say we get you out of here and dry you off, huh?’
‘I heard her.’ The voice was but a whisper, but loud enough for Jessop to hear the anguish in the words.
‘Who, sweetie?’
‘Tanya. I heard her scream when I was taking the rubbish out this morning. Me and Tanya shared an Indian last night and it was stinking up the place.’
‘You were with Tanya last night?’
‘Girls night in. I love those nights. Indian, X Factor, and wine. Good times.’ Thin, quivering lips attempted to curl into a smile but failed.
‘Did Tanya know about you and Junior?’
Carly shook her head. ‘I think she always suspected, but she never said anything. That’s a true friend, and I loved her for it.’
Jessop exchanged a glance with Mason, whose knitted brow echoed her confusion. ‘You said you heard her scream?’
Carly hugged her knees tighter. ‘I did. And I did nothing. Just blocked my ears and ran back in here and turned the TV up.’
‘Why did you do that, Carly?’
‘I was scared.’
‘I understand that, but why not call the police?’
‘Because I weren’t scared of what I heard, I was scared of how I felt.’
‘And how was that?’
A shiver wracked Carly’s frail body. ‘Excited, I think. That maybe something bad was happening to Tanya and that I wouldn’t have to lie to her anymore.’ Carly turned to Jessop, fixed her with dark eyes haunted with regret and guilt. ‘I hated lying to her. She was my best friend…My only friend.’ Carly’s eyes flickered shut, and her body went limp, slumping down in the wet tub.
A tiny clinking noise as something fell from Carly’s hand.
‘Shit.’ Jessop jumped up, reached into the bath, and grabbed the brown pill bottle. ‘Call an ambulance!’
Chapter Seven
‘You believe her?’ Mason asked.
Carly’s stomach had been pumped clean of the sleeping pills she’d swallowed before any major damage was caused. Jessop watched the paramedics wheel the dazed girl into the back of the ambulance. Despite wanting to believe Carly had instigated Tanya’s murder, the girl’s confession was as sincere as any she had heard. For some, guilt was a small cross to bear. For others, it was the cross to which they were nailed upon never to escape. ‘Yeah, I do,’ she said as a familiar figure stepped from Tanya’s flat onto the landing.
Dressed in the familiar white Tyvek suit she’d always mused complimented his snowy white goatee beard, Mike Knowles puffed out his chubby cheeks and exhaled slowly. ‘That’s a cruel way to go.’ Knowles, a recent grandfather for the first time, shook his bald head. ‘And the kid watched it happen, huh?’
‘With the knife to her throat,’ Jessop sighed.
‘Then we should bag her clothes sooner rather than later. She well enough for me to exam?’
‘She’s tough, but in denial. Hasn’t accepted her mum’s dead yet.’
Knowles offered a tight sympathetic smile. She had always liked Knowles, not just because he was the best at what he did, but because he was kind and wise, and always smelt of sweet tobacco from the pipe he liked to smoke. Nodding to the open door through which Knowles’ team were busy taking pictures, she asked, ‘Any joy yet?’
‘Won’t know about fingerprints until I sample the victim’s and her friends’ and family’s prints.’
‘Keisha said our boy wore gloves.’
‘In which case we’re gonna have to hope we get lucky with a hair.’
‘What about footprints?’ Mason asked.
‘Laminate flooring in the hallway and linoleum in the kitchen don’t make for great imprints.’
‘Keisha’s bedroom is carpeted.’
‘It is, and fortunately it’s raining. However, I only found traces of two sets of shoe prints, an infant’s, and one consistent with the victim’s boots.’
Mason frowned his confusion at Jessop. ‘Keisha did say this all went down in her bedroom, right?’
‘No trace of blood in any other room,’ Knowles confirmed. ‘Blood spatter on the bedroom carpet is consistent with the wounds. I assure you, the vic’ was killed where you found her.’
‘So the doer floated in?’ Mason hissed as his mobile rang. ‘Maybe we should call The Ghostbusters.’
Mason excused himself to answer the phone leaving Jessop thinking about his impulsive quip, born from a frustration every detective was familiar with. To Knowles she said, ‘According to Keisha, she and her mum left for the shops just before nine. Rain began just after nine, meaning our boy snuck in with dry trainers around nine o’clock.’
‘He must’ve been staking the block out from somewhere close,’ Knowles mused aloud. ‘Any witnesses?’
Jessop shook her head, thinking: probably, but no one foolish enough to risk inviting some blood happy psycho into their life. Either that, or maybe Mason was right and they should be calling The Ghostbusters, especially since Knowles had yet to find any trace evidence. ‘All we know from Keisha is our boy was wearing a generic black jacket, dark hoody, scarf, blue jeans, and trainers.’
‘Not exactly Mister Conspicuous then,’ Knowles said snapping off his latex gloves.
‘Are they ever?’ She turned to Mason, whose phone conversation had snared her attention. She watched his shoulders and neck tense as he finished the call and pocketed the phone. ‘And?’
‘We got something.’
Chapter Eight
Situated on the south shoulder of the city, the bridge was part of the busy inner distribution road that circled the city centre. At some point or another every driver in the city would have been stopped by the traffic lights on this part of the fly-over, and would no doubt have glanced at the ri
ver below whist waiting for the lights to turn green. Such were the low grassy banks on this stretch, in the summer it was not unusual to see this stretch of water strewn with kayakers practising Eskimo rolls whilst dodging swans and rented holiday boats.
Jessop was familiar with this spot for another reason.
Eight years ago she’d stood on the south bank on a rain lashed day similar to this one, watching Santos Vickers’ fourth victim being dragged from the icy grey water. As with his previous three victims, Carol Phelps was naked with a large tear in her abdomen.
She was also fingerless.
Jessop shivered at the memory, but not because of the gruesome image in her head or the cold rain whipping her face. She shivered because this was yet another part of the city she’d grown up in that she would forever associate with death and evil.
In a growing city fast becoming unfamiliar to her, she feared the ghosts of the dead victims she’d investigated would soon be her only friends from the old days. .
Or maybe such grim thinking was just another symptom of her Short Timers Disease?
And maybe she needed that honeymoon now!
A constable she knew vaguely greeted them. His name was Bennett, was in his early fifties, and had the job etched into every line in his soft face.
She wondered if Bennett had made the same observation about her face, and had noted the recent lines and crevices where once her flesh ran tight and smooth.
Worry lines, her mother used to call them.
In the seven years she had known her mother, not once could she remember the kind and easy natured woman ever being worried, only old. That was thirty-five years ago, and now she was seven years older than her mother had been when she'd died. And had the “worry lines” to prove it.
‘Hell of a mess,’ Bennett said, leading her and Mason beneath the bridge. Discreetly recoiling from the stench of stale urine, she surveyed the dismal scene of violence and death. Two paramedics were attending to a scruffy looking guy slumped against the tunnel wall, whilst two uniformed officers were leading a tall shaggy-haired guy into the back of a police van. Pacing the river bank smoking a cigarette, a man wearing a black beanie hat, threadbare duffel coat and navy tracksuit bottoms acknowledged her and made his way over.
Hurt (The Hurt Series) Page 3
