Dead Sweet: A D.I. Turnbull mystery

by Sally O'Brien

  "Hi Guv,"

  "Candace, the SOCO's bringing a sample in later on today. I want it checked against the DNA database and I want it checked against the DNA we got from Penny Baker."

  "Do you think it will match?"

  "I've got a feeling it just might," Todd agreed. "Looks like we're on the final leg Candy Cane; this could be the break we've been waiting for."

  "Ok, I'll get the paperwork done."

  Todd hoped he was right and the DNA would match the Penny Baker sample. He already knew it was unlisted on the database but the IP address would soon come through and hopefully he would be bringing justice to someone very soon.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Wednesday 10th July

  12:30 hours

  Danny 'Zucko' Bradford was well and truly in the shit. He had been buying cocaine from a local dealer, known only as Boss Man, or Boss, for the last four years and had never had a problem getting it on tick and then paying Boss back later. Danny had always made his living with the prostitution and money had never been an issue before but it seemed his cocaine abuse was stripping the money from his business and his debt to Boss was now out of control. He sat with Boss in the Red Lion, trying to work out a way he could pay him back the twenty grand he had managed to rack up over the last six months.

  "I can' believe I owe you so much money." Danny shook his head. "I've been caning it I know, but fuck."

  "Well that's what happens when you don't pay up front," Boss Man chided, "It builds up Dan; you've been ticking it and ticking it and you haven't actually given me any money for about four months."

  "You never said anything." Danny protested, he couldn't fathom why Boss had chosen to let the debt build.

  "It's not my job to make you pay Dan, just to provide the goods. I'm alright ticking it for a short while but when my geezer starts asking me for money then I have to call in the debts. I've got a payment to make in a week or so and I'm calling in all the ticks." Boss took a sip of his Hendricks gin and tonic with cucumber slice. "Very refreshing on a hot day." He said. "Now Dan my man, what are you going to come up with to repay me? I need the moolah by Friday morning."

  Danny felt rivulets of sweat run down his back, he was trying his hardest to maintain a tough exterior; he knew that any sign of weakness would be jumped on by the hard man in front of him. Boss Man had a reputation for removing people's noses; he always joked that that's what got the person into trouble in the first place so he was just taking their troubles away. Danny liked his nose and he didn't want to see it lying on a table.

  "I don't know Boss Man, I could be fucking from here till Christmas and still not make twenty grand. Maybe if I can tick some more gear off you then I can sell it and make the money back."

  "Now why would I want to be giving you any more fucking tick? I've been waiting for my money now for months from you son. I'm not a charity, I don't give it away for free to the needy. You've been coming back to me almost every day taking bits here and bits there and you haven't so much as said thank you, let alone give me any fucking money. No more ticking Danny boy, it's time to start paying or your nose isn't gonna look so pretty by the time I've finished with it." Boss took another sip of his drink. "Yes very refreshing he said, spitting an ice cube back into the tall glass. The action, so normal belied the extreme violence that lay beneath the guise. Danny literally shook in his pants. Maybe it was time to start thinking about moving on, he thought.

  "There is one way you can help me." Boss Man said.

  "How? I'll do anything." Danny jumped at the chance to get himself out of this situation.

  "Obviously I need to get the money to my geezer and do a pick-up of some more gear. I don't like getting my own hands dirty, I'm too long in the tooth for all that. You can do it for me."

  Danny's heart sank; he liked to keep as far away from criminal activity as he could, he knew he just wasn't cut out to be a criminal.

  "I'd be really bad at that," Danny protested, "I would just fall to pieces if I had to carry gear around; I would definitely get caught."

  "You won't get caught you muppet," Boss Man laughed. "I've done it loads of times. It's not like you're walking around with a big bag that says 'Cocaine' on it. It's just a normal carrier bag. You walk into the park and sit on a bench, my man comes along you sit and have a chat, all normal, and then you say goodbye to each other. He's got your bag and you've got his."

  Danny was finding it hard to swallow, his saliva had disappeared. "It can't be that easy, how can you do it in broad daylight?"

  "This isn't Hollywood son, the best way not to get caught is to be brazen about it. Do it right under their noses. They are always looking for the people in the shadows, if you act normal and just go about your business the cops leave you alone. How do you think I've managed to stay in business for so long?"

  "Luck?"

  Boss guffawed. "Luck's got nothing to do with it. It takes a brain and a fucking lot of hard work and sheer determination to get what I've got and I don't appreciate dirty little fuckers like you who think you can take the piss out of me and get away with not paying. I was wondering how long it would take you to actually start giving me back some of my money. You've had ample opportunity but you just don't have the respect to even try. I'm not happy with you Danny boy and you are lucky that I am feeling charitable and am letting you do this for me."

  Danny didn't feel like he was lucky; he had an inkling that he had been had. It seemed quite convenient that Boss had let the tick continue for so long and had called it in just at a time when he needed a patsy to do the dirty work. "Yeah, thanks Boss Man I feel really lucky." He said.

  "Don't be fucking cocky Danny, are you going to do it or not?"

  "Yeah I'll do it, when?"

  "Friday morning, come and see me at my house and I will give you the money."

  "Ok."

  "I'm not paying you twenty grand though. I will knock a grand off each time you do it for me."

  "What?"

  "You don't think I'm gonna pay you twenty grand just to drop off and pick up?" Boss Man laughed. "You really do think I'm a charity. No, you're mine now Danny boy; a grand a drop, that's the payment, now off you go I will see you on Friday, 9 o'clock."

  "In the morning?"

  "Yeah just like real work isn't it? Now fuck off." Boss Man got up from the red faux leather bench he was sitting on and walked over to the bar where a long haired bar maid pretended not to hear what was going on as she read the same page of newspaper over and over again. "Same again Alicia," Boss said.

  "Gin and Tonic and a lager?"

  "No lager, he's going." Boss nodded his head towards Danny who still sat on the sofa.

  "Aren't you Danny?"

  "Yeah." Danny jumped up and walked out of the pub. In his angst he forgot that he had brought his car with him to the meeting and walked up Linkford Road contemplating his fate. He just hoped that his past criminal attempts were nothing to go by or he would probably be looking at the inside of a cell by Saturday morning.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Thursday 11th July 2014

  14:00 hours

  D.I. Todd 'Todger' Turnbull sat at his desk in deep thought. He had taken over the shift early, at one o'clock, as he couldn't think of anything but the case he was working on. It had been a week since Mandy Thomas was killed horrendously in her flat, defiled and left for her boyfriend to find. Then just three days after that, Penny Baker had met a similar fate. No one had come forward, no CCTV was available that had been found as yet and the only evidence Todd could use was a semen sample that was not registered on the database. Mandy's boyfriend's DNA did not match the sample so Todd had relegated him off the suspect list and back onto his unfortunate family member list. It was frustrating, he had worked very hard and had sent his officers all around the Elisworth area. Rarely did a murder leave so little for Todd to investigate; usually murders were committed in a rage by people going through huge emotional turmoil. They tended to be committed by family members, f
riends, enemies or even work colleagues, someone known to the victim, so there was always a lead, a rumour, a clue as to who may have committed them. These two cases, however, were completely different. There was still no known reason for why they should have been committed, no note had been left other than the words written in blood underneath Penny Baker as she lay dying on her chair - 'Feed me', Todd just didn't know how he was supposed to work out what that meant. He allowed all the evidence he had, which wasn't much, to play through his head as he waited for Candace to come into his office. A gentle tap on the door let him know she had arrived.

  "Come in."

  "Hi Guv, how are you today?"

  "Pissed off Candy," he sighed, "We need to go through all of the statements again, I really want to brainstorm reasons why this may have happened. I want to know if there is any connection between the girls, people who may have known them, places they frequent. The agent - has anyone found him or her yet?"

  "Ok, let's start, I want to get this bugger as much as you do. Maybe we could ask people who know the girls to give DNA as elimination samples?"

  "That would cost too much money and in some ways be a breach of their civil rights; we would have to have some justification for asking for their samples."

  "Well how about the murder of their loved ones?"

  "If only it was that simple Candace. If we start asking everyone for samples they will be accusing us of harassment, making complaints and the Commander is not going to be happy with that, he will tell me he is not in the business of organising a crap shoot. We need to use proper police work, we need to have a reason why we want to take that sample; can we place them in the area at the time, that sort of thing. Anyway I don't think we would be going down the right road. This isn't a crime done by a family member; there's no real problems in the home environment, both girls lived alone with little or no contact with their parents. No siblings, one had a boyfriend who we have spoken to, the other had work friends who we have ruled out as well. No we have to look deeper, we need to look at the reason for the crime."

  Candace opened the file which had been sitting on Todd's desk for the last week, gradually growing as more and more pieces of paper were added to it. Officer's notes, statements from anyone concerned, lists of CCTV cameras in the area, search books from the victim's properties, trails of evidence from capture to catalogue, all faithfully recorded and placed in the file in the hope it would lead to an arrest.

  "Ok," Candace began, "You be the murderer, try and think how he thinks. Let's start by looking at the demographics of the girls. Both lived in Elisworth."

  "True."

  "So it may be someone who lives locally to the area, why?"

  "No point going too far away from home to commit my murder, don't want to get caught. Want to stay where I feel comfortable, where I can get away quickly if things go wrong."

  "How far away from the murders will you live?"

  "Literally within a mile or so - I don't want to take my car because my car can be seen on camera, people remember a car. I want to stay on foot, inconspicuous, in the shadows."

  "Why do you hunt these girls?"

  "They are slim; beautiful, big chested. I like girls that look like that."

  "Do you like them?"

  "Yes?" Todd questioned

  "No, if you liked them you wouldn't be killing them."

  "Well I must have liked them at some point. Maybe someone who looked like that hurt me."

  "How did they hurt you?"

  "Hurt my feelings?"

  "How?"

  "Oh Candace, I just don't know. It's very hard to get into the mind of a killer - I mean he cut them and stuffed sweets into them for Christ sake."

  "Well let's look at that, sweets, cutting, stuffing; it's quite sexual."

  "Sexual how?"

  "Well the cuts make holes, the sweets are stuffed into the holes, it's suggestive of sex; maybe the perp can't perform with his actual penis, maybe he has a deformity or a limp dick, that's why he uses the sweets."

  "There was semen present." Todd reminded Candace.

  "Yes, but we don't know how it got there; he could have had a wank after he killed the girls. Maybe once he sees them dead, he finally gets turned on. Or even whilst he's doing the cutting, he may have got excited which is why he managed to spill the semen; over excited, got out of control. I'm sure he didn't mean to leave it there."

  "Yes you have a point, there aren't any other DNA clues, the scene is pretty clean of fingerprints and stuff like that; it would make sense that the semen is a mistake. What I can't get my head around is why; why would you kill them and why would you need to feed them?"

  "I still think it's someone who's been bullied, girls can be such bullies when they're at school, especially if they are slim and good looking; part of a gang of girls. Boys are bullied mercilessly by girls but they wouldn't report it, it would be too embarrassing."

  Todd pulled out the demographics of the girls and began to look through the information their parents had supplied - both girls were in their early twenties.

  "What school did these girls go to?" he asked Candace who pulled out some other information from the file.

  "Both went to St Martin's catholic secondary school; I went there, it's a good school."

  "Is it mixed?"

  "Yeah, boys and girls, I used to like it there, I didn't know these two though; they are a few years younger than me."

  "Well there's our link," Todd opined, "It's the only thing that both girls have done which is the same, they have gone to the same school. We need to start there."

  "So it's an old school friend?"

  "Or someone they bullied; we need to know if they knew each other at school, they're not the same age are they?"

  "There's a year between them."

  "So they may have possibly known each other; it's not beyond the realms of probability that they were friends. They could have hung around together at lunch times or outside of school."

  Candace nodded, but pulled a face which showed her disagreement. "The only thing wrong with that Guv, is if they were friends, why didn't Penny's mum and dad mention that? I mean they would have been aware that Mandy Thomas had recently been murdered, you'd think they would say in their statement or at some point 'Poor Mandy, my Penny knew her.' Or something like that?"

  "Not necessarily; grief is a terrible thing to be going through. You don't always think straight, it may not have even occurred to them that Penny and Mandy were friends, I think we need to speak to both sets of parents again and find out for sure if they knew each other. If we go to the school we can speak to the teachers, there must still be someone there who can remember the girls and who they used to hang around with."

  "Sounds like a plan."

  "It's the best we've got at the moment, put that on the list of things to do later."

  Candace took out her phone and began to tap the words into her calendar, it triggered a memory in Todd who grabbed his desk phone and began dialling. He waited as the phone on the other end rang and then spoke quickly when it was answered.

  "Yes hi, Detective Inspector Turnbull here, did we get the IP address for that computer that I sent you?"

  "Hello sir, yes I faxed you the information this morning."

  "Ok great, I will have a look on my fax machine, thank you." He got up and walked out into the main CID office, over to the fax machine where a single piece of paper lay face down on the tray. Todd picked it up and found an address for a Malcolm Chadwell whose IP address matched that of the 'Malcolm' who had been contacting Vixen.

  "Candy Cane, put that on the back burner for now, I've actually finally got a lead."

  "What is it Guv?"

  "Do you remember that glamour model who was moaning about the harassment?"

  "Vixen?"

  "That's the one. I didn't think anything of it until she told me he had been offering to feed her."

  "Just like the words used on Penny Baker."

  "Exactly; anywa
y I took her computer so it could be checked and I've got an address for the person who has been sending her the messages and guess where he lives?"

  "Elisworth?"

  "Yeah and just around the corner from Penny Baker."

  "Well, well, let's go and pay Mr Chadwell a little visit."

  "I think that's a very good idea Candy; a very good idea indeed."

  -x-

  15:00 hours

  Todd and Candace pulled up at Lonkford Road in Elisworth. A few empty water bottles followed Candace's feet out of the passenger seat and she had to bend down to retrieve them before throwing them back into the car.

  "This car could do with a valet Guv."

  "On the list of things to do, along with get a haircut and get a life." Todd said sarcastically.

  "Just saying."

  "I will let you clean it out for me when we get back; I am going to be far too busy charging Mr Malcolm Chadwell." Todd assured her.

  "Let's hope so."

  "I've got a good feeling we're onto something here Candace, right, which house is it?"

  "Number one hundred and seventy four."

  "My favourite number as well."

  Candace chuckled and pointed out the relevant door number. Malcolm Chadwell's house was terraced, squeezed into a line of houses on the street, the only break coming from an alleyway one side and the Red Lion pub on the other. Todd walked up to the front door and rapped on it with his knuckles, at the same time discovering a doorbell which he pressed after knocking. A short time later the front door opened and a painfully thin woman in her early sixties opened the door. She looked Todd up and down and then stuck her hip out before giving Todd a wide smile.

  "Hello dear, how can I help you?" she asked.

  "Hello, I'm Detective Inspector Turnbull," Todd said, producing his warrant card from his jacket pocket. "This is Detective Sergeant Candace Whelan."

  Candace already had her warrant card in her hand and she showed it to the woman at the door.

  "May I ask who you are?" Todd said.

  "Mrs Chadwell."

  "The wife of Malcolm Chadwell?"