by Conrad Jones
“You ever tried to give it up?”
“Every day since I started,” Janice inhaled deeply as she spoke. “I was aiming to save enough to go travelling but it never happened. I always wanted to inter-railing you know. London, Paris, Rome and Venice; Venice was the one place that I really wanted to see. You know the canals and the gondolas.”
“Romantic, yes?” Tasha laughed.
“Like the Cornetto advert,” Janice said.
“You silly cow!”
“Oh well, they were my dreams back then.”
“There’s still time,” Tasha cooed.
“For you maybe,” Janice shrugged. “I’ll just take one day at a time.”
“We could work this spot together, keep each other company and keep an eye out for each other.” Tasha fluttered her eyelashes and tilted her head. “You could teach me the ropes. You’re an old pro!”
“Fuck off,” Janice laughed. “Cheeky bitch.”
“Serious though, we could team up?”
“I’ve struggled enough out here without having to babysit you.” As she spoke, Janice watched the transit slow down again before it came to a complete stop. The driver made a tight u-turn and pulled into the opposite kerb. “Looks like white van man has changed his mind.” The headlights dazzled them, impeding their view of the driver. Janice could make out a black beanie hat and dark glasses. “Sunglasses in the dark,” she scoffed, “how not to look like a kerb crawler in one easy lesson, idiot.”
The van edged closer, almost level with them and white exhaust fumes drifted into the cold damp air. Yellow hazard lights blinked, warning passing traffic that the vehicle was stationary. The wipers flicked back and to silently. The driver stared across the road at them. He didn’t smile. He didn’t indicate that he was interested in their services. He just stared.
“I’m not walking over there.” Janice shuddered as she returned the driver’s stare. She could almost feel his eyes boring into her through his lenses. “That’s trouble, if ever I saw it.”
“Well, I can’t afford to be picky,” Tasha sighed. She flicked her cigarette into a puddle. “If you’re sure that you’re going to pass?”
“Go for it, if you want to,” Janice shrugged. The hairs on the back of her neck bristled. “Just be careful.”
“Always am.” Tasha held up clenched fists. She turned and jogged across the road, narrowly avoiding being flattened by a Fiat. A horn blared loudly making Janice jump. The noise broke the hypnotic effect of his stare. Janice watched as Tasha raised her middle finger to the driver of the Fiat and then ran around the far side of the van. A few words were exchanged and then Tasha was in the passenger seat within seconds. The driver removed his shades and Janice took a sharp breath. His eyes bulged unnaturally from his face. They were prominent from the sockets to an unusual level. She could clearly see the whites of his eyes directly above and below the iris. He reminded her of a footballer she had seen recently on the television, but she couldn’t place his name. He turned and stared at Janice and she shivered involuntarily. He looked at her like she was something from a freak show. A thin smile crossed his lips. He seemed to enjoy the look of shock on her face.
Tasha leaned over and waved as the van pulled away, a worried expression on her face. The driver gave Janice a last look as the vehicle moved off. He looked her up and down, as if sizing up how tall she was and then put his glasses back on. A cold shudder ran down her spine and she felt her legs tremble. She watched transfixed as the van’s brake lights faded into the distance and then disappeared as it turned off the main road. The persistent rain turned into a deluge and she had a terrible sinking feeling in her guts.
Chapter 5
The Major Investigation Team gathered on the fifth floor of Merseyside’s police headquarters, situated on the banks of the River Mersey. Built in an era when public unrest was one of the considerations given to an architect, the concrete fortress looked conspicuously out of place against the backdrop of the stunning historical buildings at the water’s edge and the aesthetically designed shopping complexes behind it. That morning, the hardcore of forty detectives who made up the team had been boosted to sixty members by an influx of seconded officers. The urgency of the case was reflected in the quality of detectives which had been loaned. A bank of ten high definition screens displayed images relating to the scene. Annie could feel the tension in the room. It was like the moments before a thunder storm breaks.
“You can see from the crime scene photographs that we are dealing with an organised killer.” Annie looked at the faces in the room. The gathering could have been a cross section from the United Nations. The borough’s diversity policy had worked. “Forensics can’t give us an identification of the victim yet, fingerprints are out of the question and dental records useless.”
Confused glances were exchanged between the team but no one wanted to stop Annie mid flow. The newer members of the team didn’t want to attract unwanted attention to themselves by asking an obvious question. “I know that you’re all wondering why we have no prints or dental evidence,” she grimaced. “At least I hope you’re wondering why we can’t recover any prints or dental imprints, or you shouldn’t be here.” She smiled.
A ripple of laughter spread through the room. “Why can’t we lift any prints, Guv?” Stirling asked with fake enthusiasm, “for those of you who don’t know me, I’m DS Jim Stirling.” There had been no time for formal introductions. He smiled at the gathering although to most, his smile was more frightening than his frown.
“Thanks for asking that question, Sergeant,” Annie smiled briefly. “You need to know everything, so if you have a question, no matter how obvious, ask it. Are we clear?”
“Guv,” the gathering mumbled. She clicked a series of postmortem images onto a bank of digital screens. The smiles in the room disappeared. “The killer removed her teeth before he sewed her lips closed with twine.”
“Fishing twine?” A female detective asked. All eyes turned to her. “DC Mason, from the Matrix Unit,” she looked around and introduced herself.
“We’re assuming that at the moment.”
“Do you want me to check it out, Guv?” Mason asked keenly. She had olive skin and dark brown eyes contributed by her father’s Lebanese genes. “My dad was a keen angler and he would only use one brand. Fishermen are creatures of habit. If we can identify the brand, we can narrow down the retailers.”
“Put it on your list.” Annie nodded making a mental note that Mason was a sharp cookie.
“What about the fingerprints, Guv?” A voice from the back of the room asked. “Why can’t forensics lift them?”
“The killer super glued her hands to her thighs, and her legs were glued together,” Annie said, as she clicked another series of images to demonstrate the point. “Kathy Brooks is trying to salvage something from the resin used but it appears that it was so strong, it dissolved the skin on her fingertips.”
“Was she sexually assaulted?”
“It’s too early to tell for sure, but bruising to the inner thighs would indicate that she was.”
“Do we know what the cause of death is, Guv?”
“She choked,” Annie grimaced. “The killer sewed her eyes closed and then cemented tubes into her nostrils before she was buried standing upright in the sand. The post postmortem shows traces of blood, mucus and a mixture of saline and electrolyte solution in her lungs and her stomach. Kathy thinks that she was being fed with saline and electrolytes from the surface via a tube in her nose but her throat swelled blocking the oesophagus and the fluid found its way into her respiratory system.”
“Oh my God!” murmurs rippled amongst the crowd.
“How long was she alive down there, Guv?”
“It’s impossible to say, but Kathy estimates that it could have been a week or more.” The impact of the gruesome nature of the victim’s death stunned the detectives into silence. “We’re looking for a very sick killer.”
“This is a complicated MO,”
Stirling spoke. “We’re absolutely positive that the killer has worked up to this.”
“There’s no doubt about it,” Annie agreed. “We need to scour all historical cases where anything remotely close to this has occurred. I want the search for similarities thrown country wide. This killer has developed his style over years not months. He also has knowledge of remote sites in the locality so we’re going to narrow the search down to men who were born here or have lived here for a length of time.”
“What about the victim, Guv?” DC Mason asked. She clicked her teeth with the nib of a ballpoint.
“That’s why you’re here from the Matrix unit, Detective.” Annie raised her eyebrows. She addressed the rest of the group. “As you all know, Matrix works undercover on the city’s streets. Their help in identifying the victim will be invaluable.” She smiled at Mason. “We’re going to have to wait for a possible hit in the DNA banks but while we do, your unit is best placed to find us a missing girl who fits our victim’s description. I want you to use all your contacts to find us a possible name.” A computer enhanced photograph appeared. “We have no missing person reports of anyone who fits her age or description, so we have to assume she hasn’t been missed by anyone. This is what we think she looked like.”
“A working girl?”
“Possibly,” Annie nodded. “Vice are talking to their regulars to see if there’s been any assaults, attempted abductions, or anything out of the ordinary lately. They’ll be feeding back to us with any information.”
“Has anybody else thought that it might be something to do with the iron men?” The room fell silent and all eyes fell onto a detective named Lewis. He shifted uncomfortably and blushed. “It might be way off but when I saw that the victim had been buried standing with her arms glued to her sides, the first thing I thought of was the statues on the beach nearby.”
Glances were exchanged and the general consensus seemed to be that it was a possibility. “I hadn’t considered it, Lewis but you are making a valid connection there. Let’s find out who worked on the construction of the statues, contractors, labourers and the like. You may have a point.”
“Could be much simpler than that; it could be just personal, Guv,” another strange face offered an alternative theory. “The killer obviously wanted the victim to suffer by prolonging her death.”
“Maybe, but it’s not my first choice of motive,” Annie shook her head. “A crime of passion may well display excessive violence but this has the hallmarks of a well thought out and well executed pattern killer.”
“Are you suggesting we have a serial?”
“Not yet and neither will anyone in this room. Understand?” Annie made sure that everyone understood her meaning before she moved on. “This is what we think she looked like before she was mutilated and put in the sand. We have a digital impression of what she may have looked like.”
“We’ve printed copies off and they’re piled on the desk over there.” Stirling pointed to the far side of the room. “Take a handful when you’re out and about. Someone knows her and they know that she’s missing. We need a starting point for this and we need it quickly.”
“I’m holding a press conference at two o’clock and this image will be in the evening editions of the Echo and on Granada Reports, so the telephones will be red hot by teatime.” Annie raised a finger as she spoke. “The details of this murder will not be released in any depth.” She looked at as many pairs of eyes as she could in a pause. “Let me be very clear. As far as the press are concerned, we have found a woman aged between eighteen and thirty with shoulder length brown hair and brown eyes. She’s below average height, five two.” She paused for effect. “Nothing more will be released and that’s the way it stays. Are we clear?”
“Guv.” The room replied in unison.
“Where does Lacey Taylor fit into this?”
“I’m glad you asked me that,” Annie nodded. “The answer is categorically that she doesn’t. The K-9 units are searching the tree line at the reserve this morning and until we find Lacey, she is not to be mentioned in the same sentence as our victim.”
“I’m handling the Lacey Taylor search,” Stirling explained, “we’re going to keep the investigations separate for now but you all need to know what we have on her disappearance.” He gestured to Annie and she changed the images with the remote. “This is Richard Tibbs, convicted sex offender and this is the dog collar, which he witnessed being dumped in a litter bin a hundred metres from where we found our victim. He says that he saw two men leaving the scene in a white Mercedes Vito and he also claims to recognise one of the men. He came in to divulge that information, although he’s since changed his mind on that.”
“How come?” A Chinese detective asked. Stirling recognised him as an experienced Drugs Squad officer.
“We know that he purchased sweets from the burger van here.” He pointed to an aerial shot of the beach. “Then he walked through the nature reserve to this housing estate, where funnily enough, there’s a primary school.” Shaking heads and muttered derogatory words were exchanged as the detectives clicked onto the reason why Tibbs was there. “He was demanding anonymity and immunity for breaking his bail conditions but once we were aware of his breach, we couldn’t agree to his terms.”
“So he’s conveniently forgotten who he saw?”
“Basically, yes,” Stirling nodded. “The fact is that we know this dog collar belonged to Lacey Taylor. She’s been missing now for nine days without any communication to her family or friends and no activity on her mobile or bank account. It doesn’t look good for her.”
“We are assuming the worst,” Annie added. “Given that Tibbs saw the collar being dumped and the fact that there was a van in the vicinity, we think Lacey is in the woods somewhere.” The gathering seemed to agree with their theory. It was difficult not to in Annie’s opinion. “Okay, you know which teams you have been assigned to. We recap today’s findings at twenty-two hundred hours.” She looked at their facial expressions to gauge the reaction to the thought of an extended shift. There wasn’t a hint of dissension. “Let’s get on with it.”
Chapter 6
“Take a left here, innit?” Tasha pointed to an alleyway as she spoke. “Pull in anywhere down there. It’s quiet and safe and I need the money upfront, okay?”
The driver indicated and steered the van down the alleyway between two rows of derelict terraced houses, which backed onto each other. It was wide enough to fit a bin wagon through but too narrow for two vehicles to pass. The ground was littered with soggy fast food wrappers, a rotten double mattress and a rolled up carpet. Tall weeds had sprouted at the base of the walls, which sheltered the backyards. Shards of broken glass were cemented on top of the walls, anti-intrusion technology at its best in the 1960’s. The van smelled of disinfectant and a musky aftershave that she couldn’t identify. He hadn’t said a word since she agreed the price and climbed into the van. Some of them were like that while others didn’t shut up even when she was servicing them.
“You don’t say much do you?” He ignored her. His silence was unnerving. “You know one of my regulars talks about his pigeons continuously until he’s finished, which I found strange at first, but it takes all sorts doesn’t it?”
He looked out of the window oblivious to her chattering. Some punters were kind and gentle, others brutally rough and ice cold. This one was different again. There was something creepy about his silence and his eyes were scarily abnormal.
“Here is fine,” she said wanting to get the job and get out as quickly as possible. The van slowed to a stop and he pulled the handbrake on. The engine idled and the wipers squeaked back and forth, struggling to clear the incessant rain from the glass. The driver sat still, staring out of the window, his face expressionless. “There’s no need to be nervous,” she said trying to coax a reaction, “I won’t bite you, unless you want me to, of course.” She smiled and then rolled her eyes when no response came. He took a deep breath and sighed. His hands re
mained on the steering wheel as he turned to look at her. She felt anxious beneath his gaze. “Do you always wear sunglasses at night?” she joked. “If you’re trying to look suspicious then you’re doing a good job of it.”
He took his shades off and looked at her. His bulbous eyes threatened to pop out of his face. “I wear them because my eyes protrude,” he grinned. “They make people, uncomfortable, should we say.”
“I can see why,” she said too quickly. She instantly regretted saying it. The protrusion made his gaze feel like a piercing glare. He had a haunted expression as if his thoughts were somewhere else whilst his eyes drilled into her soul. They were unblinking eyes.
“Shut up and get on with it,” he said flatly. His accent wasn’t local. His voice was smooth and tinged with an accent from the Middle East maybe, she thought. He removed his hat revealing neatly trimmed black hair. His appearance was foreign, his skin olive. Apart from his eyes, he was handsome.
“You should leave that hat off,” she commented. “It makes you look ten years younger.”
“I removed it because it’s warm in here,” he said staring through her. “Not to impress you.”
“Sorry I spoke.”
“Do you have any children?”
“What?”
“Children?” he tilted his head as if analyzing her thoughts. “Do you have any children?”
“No,” she replied confused, “not that it’s any business of yours.”
“It is my business,” he corrected her. “Too many children are left alone while their mothers prostitute themselves. Now I don’t have to worry about it. Get on with it.”
“Erm, there’s no need to be an obnoxious asshole and there’s the little matter of the money first,” Tasha tried to speak in an assertive tone but the crack in her voice said she was nervous. “Twenty-five with, or thirty without, just like we agreed.”
