Be My Girl

by Tony Hutchinson

  ‘Will it take long?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really. Just a couple of details I need,’ said Bev.

  ‘Okay. Alright. I’m not sure I can help much.’

  They followed him down a long hallway then took the first door on the right into the lounge. A harsh, pungent smell like ripe blue cheese hit them like a punch, the stale odour a physical thing. Sam’s mouth twisted in a reflex and Bev’s right hand shot up to her nose, her nostrils drawing in the welcome remnants of nicotine from her fingers.

  A long, gold faded Dralon settee was against the back wall and two worn matching armchairs were either side of it. The stained, threadbare carpet hinted it had started life as brown a couple of millennia ago. Sun-faded yellow paint covered the woodchip wallpaper, and the ornate wall lights had patches of brass-coloured metal showing through the gold paint. The decor matched the era in which the house was built, the only concessions to modernisation and the movement of time an enormous flat-screen wall-mounted TV, a Sky digibox and an Xbox.

  After a quick glance, checking for things they would rather not touch, Sam and Bev sat down on the armchairs, Bev suddenly thankful of her old suit.

  ‘Michael. As I said, I’m investigating the broken window, you know, where you saw some men running away.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said shuffling on the settee. ‘I was delivering. I work for the post office, as you can probably guess,’ indicating his uniform with hands so small they looked as though they should be on the wrists of a child.

  Sam couldn’t help notice the tramline creases on his shirt and trousers. At least he keeps himself clean, she thought, not like this bloody house.

  ‘I heard the sound of broken glass, and then they ran past me. One of them was carrying a cricket bat.’

  ‘Were they running towards you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you see where they came from?’

  ‘I think they ran down one of the driveways, but I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t think the CID would be interested in broken windows?’

  ‘We’re interested in all crime,’ Bev said, her voice light, unthreatening. ‘Now, can you describe these men?’

  ‘More like boys, really. About 16, 17, I would say. I can’t remember what they looked like. I didn’t think it would be important. I thought it was just two lads who’d broken a window playing cricket.’

  ‘Can you remember anything about them?’

  ‘They had tracksuits on. Adidas, I think. Yes. Adidas. Black. Both were black. One lad was ginger, one was dark haired. About my height.’

  ‘Five foot ten?’

  ‘Yeah. About that.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, not really. I only saw them for a couple of seconds, and then they were past me.’

  He shuffled.

  ‘What about the bat? Can you remember anything about that?’

  ‘Not really no… wait… yes. Yes, I can. It was a Slazenger bat. I remember that now.’

  ‘Did they speak to each other?’

  ‘No, they were just laughing.’

  Sam glanced around the room. There was no personal footprint; not one ornament, not one print or poster on the walls, and no family photographs.

  ‘Who do you live here with, Michael?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Is that important?’ he mumbled, staring at the floor.

  ‘Just making conversation. Typical detective, always asking questions.’

  ‘I live by myself since my mother died. I used to live with her.’

  ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry but I’ve told you what I know.’

  Sam pressed on regardless. Was he getting agitated?

  ‘Michael, do you always deliver on the Gull estate?’

  ‘I do. It’s terrible what has been happening there. I mean not being safe in your own house. The papers have been full of it.’

  ‘Yes, it’s terrible. But we’ll catch him.’

  ‘I hope you do,’ said Michael in a quiet voice, his gaze fixed on the floor, his hands, clasped together, resting on his knees.

  Staring at the top of his head, Sam said nothing for about 10 seconds and then rose to her feet.

  ‘Did you know any of the girls who’ve been attacked?’

  ‘I know them by sight. I don’t know them, though. Like I said, it’s terrible.’

  Sam resisted the urge to probe further. How did he know who the victims were? They had never been named. Had he seen the police activity at the houses when he was delivering the post and put two and two together? Did he deliver those books?

  He may need to be interviewed again and they could get to the bottom of it.

  One thing was already certain: he would know who lived alone. Single women living alone didn’t get post addressed to anyone else. Chances are he would have more knowledge about single females than Crowther. He would pass unnoticed in the area during daylight. What was more natural than a postman walking up someone’s driveway?

  According to the house-to-house team, no one else had seen anyone running away from the broken window. Would he have said anything to anyone had the witness not asked him about it?

  Walking through the hallway, Sam looked over her shoulder.

  ‘Do you play cricket, Michael?’

  ‘Can’t stand the game.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Sam said, stepping outside, filling her mouth, nostrils, and lungs with cold, clean fresh air. Was she imagining her skin itching?

  ‘Michael, did you tell the occupant of the house that you had seen two boys running away?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. Okay. Thanks then,’ and she walked off down the path, Bev following.

  ‘I never see her. She’s always at work,’ he shouted.

  Sam didn’t turn around.

  In the car, Bev lit a cigarette, put the pink lighter back in her handbag, and blew smoke through the open window, her two-fingered salute to the anti- smoking brigade who had banned smoking in police vehicles. Sam hadn’t objected when they were driving here.

  Sam ignored the cigarette. Her eyes were fixed on his front door, her mind replaying their conversation.

  She had been in the house for a matter of minutes, but there was something not quite right about Michael Spence. He had looked nervous, shifty even. He couldn’t really describe what the boys looked like, yet he remembered the make of their clothing. He hated cricket, but in what could have only been a fleeting glance, he recalled the bat was a Slazenger. Two separate pieces of information, each where he remembered the manufacturers. It was almost as if he remembered too much. Too much, and yet nothing he said would lead to an identification of the two youths.

  Sam had a niggle, a feeling like an itch she couldn’t quite reach.

  Had she just been talking to the rapist?

  Why had he not told Emily? Was she always at work? Easily checked. It would be great to have Emily signing for something from him after the window was broken.

  She smiled to herself. She loved the hunt, and was an ardent believer that if you took everything at face value, trusted everything you were told, nothing would ever be detected.

  The ‘ABC’ of investigations: accept nothing, believe nothing, challenge everything.

  Paul Adams leaned against a railing, inhaled deeply on his cigarette, and gazed over the River Tyne. Alan Smith lived in a two-bedroom apartment on Newcastle’s quayside, a converted bonded warehouse, with its large living room and kitchen opening on to a balcony overlooking the river and the quayside’s lively bars and restaurants.

  The furniture was modern, neutral walls displayed abstract framed prints, while the flowers on the windowsill hinted at a feminine touch.

  Alan’s heavily pregnant-looking stomach showed a love for his work that was confirmed by the hangdog jowls and the broken veins in his cheeks. At 32, his nose hadn’t yet taken on the bulbous, angry red of the hardened drinker, but the facial signposts suggested it wouldn’t be long.

  Stubbing his cig
arette end on the top of a bin, Paul wondered how Alan Smith had ever pulled Louise. He had certainly been punching above his weight, but the world seemed full of fat men with attractive women.

  He telephoned Dave Johnson. ‘I’ve seen June. I’ve just left Alan’s, and I’m about to go back to June’s.’

  ‘How are they?’

  ‘June’s devastated, and Alan’s blaming himself, saying if he’d not left her, this wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘A bit late for that now,’ Dave said.

  ‘He’s going on about visiting June. I’ll mention that to her. June has no time for him. Understandable, I suppose.’

  He gave Dave Johnson an update of both visits.

  June Harker sat alone in her front living room. Was this how it felt when your heart had been ripped out?

  Photograph albums covered her thighs and she turned the pages, holding them with the tenderness of a historian handling a precious old book, pausing to look at each photograph of Louise. Her husband had been a keen amateur photographer when he was alive, and the pictures had always given them thousands of memories.

  She looked at Louise in school plays, on family holidays, her teenage birthdays, and her police passing-out parade. Tears flowed down her face. She knew then that her broken heart would never heal.

  Coping with the loss of her beloved Jack, who had succumbed to cancer, had been hard enough. But this? Her Louise gone. Taken from her like that? She would never recover. She didn’t even feel like she wanted to.

  Jack had been 78. She was 73. Louise was a young woman. Why? Not even her faith would provide the emotional crutch she needed to walk this path. Church? What good had come from going there? A life spent being a believer. A believer in what? No God would have left Louise so unprotected, allowed that to happen to her in her own bedroom.

  Was suicide a sin? She couldn’t remember, and in reality she didn’t care. What did she have left to live for now? Her family had been taken from her. Everything she held dear was no longer with her.

  The nice young policeman had explained the coroner would look to release Louise’s body within 28 days, whether or not anyone was charged with her murder. June knew she wouldn’t wait that long. She couldn’t go to her own daughter’s funeral. She looked at the photograph of Louise on the mantelpiece in her police uniform and vowed that her own funeral would take place before her lovely, beautiful daughter’s.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Approaching the police station door, darkness already descending, Ed was aware of someone coming up behind him. Looking over his left hand shoulder, he saw Jason Stroud.

  ‘Can I have a private word?’ Jason asked.

  Ed stopped, turned around, and walked back into the car park. ‘Everything alright?’ He looked directly at the detective as he spoke.

  Jason spoke so quickly Ed wanted to tell him to stop and breathe.

  ‘I know that you and Sam have spoken with Celine. She’s told me what she’d said, and I know she told you about the rape fantasy but whatever it sounded like, I’m not the rapist. You can’t think that Ed. Think what you want about me, but I am not the rapist.’

  Ed listened. He knew better than to interrupt and start asking questions. The words were speeding from Jason’s mouth, like a toddler scampering down a hill, each step more rapid than the last, trying to retain their balance.

  ‘There’s a world of difference between fantasy and reality. What two consenting adults do behind closed doors is a matter for them. Other people might not agree with it, but if it’s consenting, there’s no issue. That’s a world away from breaking into someone’s house and raping them. Fuckin’ hell, Ed, I’d never do that!’

  Ed’s voice, in contrast to Jason’s, was so controlled it was almost hypnotic.

  ‘Jason, believe you me, if we thought you were the rapist, we’d have arrested you. You can thank Sam for not overreacting to what Celine told us. We both know bosses who’d have shit themselves, gone running to someone else to make the decision what to do with you. She didn’t. She kept the lid on it.’

  Changing to a more assertive tone, Ed continued: ‘She’d have arrested you if there was other corroborative evidence, you know that, but there wasn’t. Fuckin’ hell, Jason, she didn’t even take you off the inquiry.’

  ‘I know. I know. I panicked when Celine told me. I could just imagine how it must have sounded. I tried to imagine how I would have reacted if someone told me that about another cop. Not sure what I would have done.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Ed said. ‘So you’ve got Sam to thank. It wasn’t my decision.’

  ‘I appreciate it, Ed.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, thank her.’

  ‘I will. Cheers. It would’ve destroyed me if that had got out.’

  It might still destroy you, Ed thought. You even had my skin crawling.

  Ed found Sam in her office, sitting behind her desk but obviously deep in thought.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m just trying to put something into perspective about Louise’s death. I’m still not sure about the rapist and the killer being the same person.’

  Ed nodded, his mind turning over the twists and turns of the investigation, all they knew and everything that remained maddeningly out of reach.

  ‘I’ve been giving it some thought too,’ he said. ‘Let’s say that they’re not the same. If that’s the case, we’re looking at someone staging a crime scene.’

  Sam pursed her lips, fatigue written across her face.

  ‘I know. And we both know that one of the reasons for staging a crime scene is to lead us away from the most logical suspect. So the key is identifying that suspect.’

  She paused, and then said: ‘How did you get on with Banks?’

  ‘I’ll ring him soon,’ Ed said. ‘He was mad as hell at first but he’s going to try to remember as many people as possible. That’ll give us a start and we can hopefully identify everyone who was in the pub at the time. I gave him the hard word, told him he was in danger of blowing the whole investigation.’

  ‘Good,’ Sam said, picturing the meeting, knowing how Ed would have handled the man.

  ‘Banks didn’t tell his mates whether the mask was left behind,’ Ed went on. ‘He couldn’t describe the knife, either. Anyone trying to have us over would have to improvise.’

  Sam nodded again.

  ‘And hopefully that’ll be their downfall.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Ed said, taking a seat. He knew these moments, bouncing ideas around, were a vital part of any investigation, but he was also aware they could take time.

  And time was something they couldn’t afford.

  ‘I was coming at it from a different angle,’ Sam said. ‘I was concentrating on the overkill aspect, all that rage.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ed said, letting Sam run.

  ‘Anyone of those stab wounds to the heart would have been fatal. She would have bled to death, no question. Yet the killer kept on stabbing her, as if he couldn’t stop.’

  Sam stood up and began pacing the room.

  ‘Overkill,’ she went on. ‘Overkill always, always, means it’s personal, an emotional attachment between killer and victim. Could be just an argument and then suddenly something becomes the trigger.

  ‘But I doubt that happened here. Neither of us thinks Louise ever got out of bed. If there’d been an argument before the attack, you would have expected Louise to at least be out of the bed. No, it’s something else, something a lot deeper than a row. Like I say, this was personal… emotional.’

  ‘So what you thinking? Family? Friends?’

  ‘We don’t have a suspect, or even a cluster of suspects. But I think she knew her killer, and she knew the killer well enough for them to have that emotional attachment.’

  Sam sat down, kicked off her shoes, and wriggled her toes. Bliss.

  ‘Whatever the trigger was, it had gone off before she woke up. Has to be. Whether that was before or after he got into the house, it was before she
woke.’ And with overkill, Sam and Ed both knew, a knife was invariably the weapon of choice.

  ‘We need to find out more about Louise’s life,’ Sam said. ‘That’s where he’s hiding.’

  Sam paused and slid her feet reluctantly back into her shoes – the price you paid for style, she thought for the millionth time.

  ‘How much do we really know about Louise?’ she said. ‘Has she any skeletons in her cupboard? Really, who hasn’t?’

  Ed thought about Louise and realised Sam was right.

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that,’ he said. ‘I would have thought the cupboard was clear but I’ve seen so much over the years nothing surprises me any more. If she has, God bless her, we’ll find them.’

  ‘Let’s go next door and get a coffee.’

  In the HOLMES room and with hands on hips, Sam stared at the surveillance photographs on the board. There were so many, most of them, perhaps all of them, worthless to the investigation, just honest people going about their lives. Sam’s scanning eyes fixed on the photograph in the top right corner.

  ‘Bev!’ she shouted, looking over her shoulder. ‘Come here! Look at that.’

  She pointed to the photograph.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Bev said, eyes wide.

  ‘Is this a private conversation or can anyone join in?’ Ed appeared beside them.

  Sam pointed to the man sat in the coffee shop.

  ‘That’s Michael Spence. The postman who delivers on the Gull.’

  ‘The one who saw the lads running away from the broken window?’ Ed asked.

  ‘The very same,’ Sam said, her heart rate rising for the second time that day, the reflex reaction when there was a potential breakthrough.

  ‘He might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Postmen drink coffee like the rest of us,’ she said, trying to keep calm and curtail the enthusiasm of everyone, herself included. It was all too easy to make things fit.