Comply or Die

by Tony Hutchinson

  ‘Hospitals?’

  ‘All checks negative according to the file.’

  Sam dug her cigarettes out of her handbag.

  ‘Jesus, Ed, what sort of parent even contemplates hurting their own child?’

  ‘Not one you’d relate to. None that most people in this country would relate to. But we’re not talking about most people.’

  ‘Pass me her photograph please.’

  Sam looked at Aisha, a young girl sat on the sofa in her living room, wearing what looked like college uniform.

  ‘She looks like every other young girl in the country, happy, a zest for life, looking forward to the future.’

  ‘Notice how the family provide a picture of her wearing school uniform?’ Ed said.

  ‘It’s not so unusual,’ Sam told him. ‘Some parents, it’s the only photograph they have of their kids.’

  ‘Agreed, but in this case, bet your bottom dollar, it’s the only photograph they have of her in Western dress,’ Ed said. ‘Giving us a photograph of her in a sari doesn’t back up their claim of her being integrated, able to go to her mates for the weekend without telling them.’

  ‘But they all wear saris and traditional dress.’

  ‘Of course they do, at weddings, special occasions, family gatherings, but not every day. Walk the streets. See how many young Sikh girls are wearing jeans, tracksuits, whatever. I can guarantee that didn’t happen with Aisha. Just look at the way her parents were dressed on the TV.’

  Sam’s mobile rang again.

  ‘Hi Julie…shit… okay…thanks… yeah. Twenty minutes. Cheers.’

  ‘Julie Trescothick,’ Sam said. ‘Jack Goddard may have been pissed, we’ll get toxicology on that, but his death’s not a case of a drunk stumbling into a river.’

  Ed looked at Sam. Many cops got over-excited when something out of the norm occurred. Not Sam. In the main she was unflappable.

  ‘He’s got a depressed fracture at the back of his skull, caused by something like a ball hammer. Easily missed at the scene under his thick hair.’

  ‘Could he have hit something in the river?’ Ed asked.

  ‘Always a possibility, but he hasn’t drowned. He’s been asphyxiated.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘There’s a tiny piece of plastic in his mouth. It’ll need more tests but it looks like a bit of a carrier bag.’

  Chapter Five

  Sam was already getting her coat. She looked at the as-yet-unopened copy of Yachting Monthly on her desk. Maybe she should get out on the water again. ‘I’ll go to the mortuary. Speak with Mick Wright.’

  ‘Who’s doing the PM?’ Ed asked.

  ‘Jim Melia.’

  ‘Good old Jim.’

  Sam was at the door.

  ‘They’ve got an address for Jack Goddard. Lives with his student mates. Take Paul. See what they can tell you. I’ll get Bev to call out some more staff. She can also sort out the press office.’

  ‘You doing a press conference today?’

  ‘Not on a Sunday. They’ve all got skeleton crews. We’ll get minimum coverage. We need impact. We’ll arrange it for first thing in the morning. Then we’ll have a shit storm.’

  ‘The students?’

  ‘Yep,’ Sam shouted, already striding down the corridor. ‘Adds credence to their theory of the serial killer.’

  The terrace house had been built in the early 1900s. Like many period town centre houses it had gone from middle-class family home to landlord-owned student let. Not all students wanted to live in new apartment blocks.

  Five students lived in this particular house, but those inside were about to be told that, as of the early hours, they were now a four.

  A dishevelled male, early 20s, short and plump with ginger hair and a face full of freckles, answered the door. Ed and Paul stood on the stone steps, the black paint flaking, scrubbing them daily a thing of the past.

  ‘CID,’ Ed said. ‘Can we come in? We need to speak about Jack.’

  Elliott Prince turned, sprinted into the house.

  ‘Lads, lads,’ he shouted. ‘Get down here…get down here now…it’s Jack. The police are here.’

  Elliott ran upstairs leaving the front door open. The detectives stepped inside, stood in the hallway and listened to the raised voices.

  Three others, looking as hung-over as Elliott, followed him downstairs. Only Elliott had a tracksuit on, the rest were in their boxer shorts.

  ‘What’s happened?’ one of the three asked, peering over the banister, the last in the line.

  ‘Is there somewhere we can all sit down?’ Paul said.

  Elliott led everybody into the living room. The stench from stale cigarettes, cheap lager and body odour hit the detectives like the clapper striking Big Ben. Overflowing ashtrays were on the floor, discarded beer cans and pizza boxes were everywhere.

  Ed brushed crumbs and whatever else off the armchair and sat down. Paul remained standing, not wanting to risk the other armchair. The four students squashed on to the three-seat settee.

  ‘What’s happened?’ one of them asked again, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you that Jack’s dead?’

  The young man covered his face with the palms of his hands. Elliott and the other two sat in silence.

  ‘How? What happened?’

  ‘He was found in the river in the early hours of the morning,’ Ed said. ‘When did you last see him?’

  The talker stood up and walked to a small dining table buried under a mound of clothes, rummaged around, and found a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘Last night we were all out together.’ He lit up. ‘What do you mean in the river? Another one drowned?’

  ‘All of you were out together? All of you in this room?’ Ed said.

  ‘Yes,’ the young man said as he exhaled smoke.

  The others nodded slowly.

  ‘Where were you all?’

  ‘The Jolly Roger until we got thrown out,’ Elliott said.

  Ed didn’t miss the glare the smoker flashed at Elliott.

  ‘Okay, I need you all to come to the police station right now. Get some clothes on. I’ll sort out some transport.’

  Mick Wright waved when Sam walked into the morgue. Sam smiled. Wait until I tell Ed you were in the viewing room, up a height behind a glass screen, with your handkerchief over your nose.

  She and Ed always stood close to the pathologist, close to the body, close enough to smell it, but more importantly close enough to see first hand the injuries.

  ‘Hi Sam,’ Jim Melia said. ‘I’ll show you the depressed fracture.’

  Sam walked across to the metal table. Jack Goddard was laid on his stomach, his broad shoulders squeezed in between the raised sides of the steel table.

  Sam went up close, bent forward, face inches from the deceased’s head. Jim had neatly trimmed the hair around the fracture.

  ‘See what you mean. Almost perfectly round. A ball hammer is a good bet. What do you think?’

  ‘Approached from behind.’ Jim stepped away from the body, took off his gloves, and washed his hands in the sink. ‘Whacked. If it didn’t render him unconscious, it would certainly temporarily incapacitate him, knock him off his feet. Then asphyxiated, possibly with a carrier bag over his head. Julie’s got the fragment for testing.’

  Julie Trescothick held up a small, clear bag containing the piece of plastic. ‘Then dumped in the river once dead,’ Jim continued. ‘Obviously don’t go public with any of that just yet. Let me do some more tests.’

  ‘Sure. Murder then?’

  ‘If not, it’s one hell of a way to commit suicide.’ Jim smiled.

  ‘Jim, you’re getting as bad as Ed.’

  ‘I know, but it’s Sunday. I was hoping to be carving a joint of beef not this young lad. Anyway, I’ll tell you more when everything’s done and dusted. I haven’t started anything yet other than the external examination, but I wanted you to see the fracture.’

  ‘Thanks, Jim, you’re a star.’ She l
ooked across to the viewing room. ‘For continuity, you okay to stay Mick. We’ll pick up the investigation.’

  He nodded.

  Sam strode out, lines of enquiry flying around her head: tomorrow’s press conference, appealing for witnesses and information, down-playing the serial killer angle that would no doubt be raised, fingertip search of the area near where the body was found, a walking search across a broader area – she would set the parameters with the Police Search Adviser or POLSA for short – looking for discarded weapons, CCTV examination of the town centre looking for Jack, who he was with and whether he was he followed, examining his sodden mobile for incoming and outgoing calls, texts, social media, checking his background, his associates and lifestyle and enemies, probing the accounts and potential alibis of the friends he was out with.

  Her brain felt like Vesuvius; if the molten ash was the lines of enquiry pouring out of her head, Ed and the rest of the team were Pompeii, about to be engulfed in a shed-load of work.

  She took out a Marlboro and lit up, remembering again how the death of a colleague in February last year had sent her back to the bosom of her nicotine mistress, her long smoke free sabbatical gone in a moment. She inhaled deeply. Her feet were tapping.

  God, I Iove this job!

  By the time he got to the police station Ed Whelan had made a snap judgement on the dynamics of the group he was about to interview: Elliott appeared the weak link, Glen the strongest. Elliott had been taken straight into an interview room. The door was closed and he was sat alone.

  A uniform officer was sitting with the other three, his orders simple... don’t let them talk to each other, watch them like a hawk and report their NVC’s, the non-verbal communications that could sometimes speak louder than words.

  Ed stood outside the interview room, ear pressed against the door, and listened. He heard the chair scrape along the floor, then footsteps, light-footed; Elliott was pacing about. Ed stepped back from the door and nodded at a passing uniform but didn’t speak.

  He stood for another five minutes. The footsteps stopped, the resulting silence only broken by the sound of Elliott’s breathing, deep breathing bordering on hyperventilating. He could picture him, his back to the door where Ed had deliberately positioned him.

  Too many young cops gave no thought to the seating arrangements in an interview room. It was the first opportunity to try to secure a small advantage, like keeping suspects out of eye line of solicitors. When they’re under pressure they’ll forget to turn around, forcing the lawyer to either say instructions out loud, not just shake their head, or say nothing at all. By sitting them in a corner you can give the impression you’re encroaching on their personal space. The tactics had to be subtle, not overtly oppressive or intimidating.

  Elliott was a witness, for the time being at least, but Ed didn’t want to waste time getting to the truth.

  Back in the late 70s when he’d joined the police for the first time, his old Detective Inspector was always telling him: ‘Crack the witnesses son and after that the suspects will be easy.’

  It was a lesson Ed had never forgotten... get every last piece of information from the witness in the first interview, make sure there were no holes in what they were saying, no details omitted, and your case would improve in strength.

  Conversely, witnesses who were forever altering their story were weakening your case. Taking three or four witness statements from the same individual because they forgot to mention something – either through a genuine failure to remember, selective memory, or worse, the cop forgot to ask - gave the impression the investigators were trying to strengthen their case, when in reality the information was there from the outset.

  Ed burst through the door. The table jumped as Elliott’s thighs hit its underside.

  ‘You alright?’ Ed said, walking around him and sitting opposite.

  ‘Yeah… No. Not really… I can’t believe Jack’s dead. Another one in the river.’

  ‘You okay to talk to me? I just want to ask some questions about your movements yesterday?’

  Elliott pulled his chair closer to the table and sat upright, looking like a young graduate going for an interview. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Just talk me through yesterday then, from when you went out. I’m not interested in what you did from when you got up.’

  ‘Simple really,’ Elliott said. ‘We all went out together. Jack and the lads you’ve brought down here. We just went to the Jolly Roger. Got there just after 12. Watched the match. Stayed there until after nine. We all left together... well, Glen and Jack followed a couple of minutes after we left. They said they were going for another drink. The rest of us got a kebab and shared a taxi home. That was it until you came.’

  Ed watched his tongue circle the walls of his mouth.

  ‘What were you drinking?’

  He looked away from Ed and stared at the wall.

  ‘Lager. We were taking it steady. Probably had about four pints all day.’

  ‘Now answer that question while you’re looking at me.’

  ‘Four pints... ’

  ‘Elliott, the Jolly Roger’s got more cameras than you can shake a stick at. Right now you’re not in any trouble, but if you lie to me then I begin to think maybe you have something to hide.’

  He leaned across the desk.

  ‘If you want, I can pop along to the Jolly Roger and watch their CCTV while you sit here. Your choice. Now, what were you drinking?’

  Elliott took a deep breath.

  ‘Lager and shot chasers all day. By half nine I was wrecked. We all were, but as I said, Glen and Jack stayed out.’

  ‘Talking of out, in the house you said you were in the Jolly Roger until you were thrown out. What did you mean?’

  Elliott looked away again and stared in silence at the wall.

  ‘Elliott, I’ll just go and see Steve Donnelly, the boss. He’ll tell me because he won’t have been anywhere near as pissed as you lot were.’

  ‘The bouncers told us we had to leave,’ Elliott said quietly. ‘I don’t know why. Maybe because we were pissed. I can’t really remember. I know they wanted us out though.’

  He looked away.

  Ed said: ‘Go on.’

  ‘Jack told them to make him. He was being a bit of an arse.’

  Elliott told Ed, to the best of his recollection, what happened in the Jolly Roger with the door supervisors.

  ‘Did he just fall in then?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t know yet,’ Ed said.

  ‘What then? Murdered?’

  Ed pushed his chair backwards, stood up, placed his hands on the desk and leaned in towards Elliott, who shrank in his seat, pushing himself against the wall. Ed closed the gap between them until he could feel Elliott’s breath on his chin.

  ‘Let’s not go jumping to conclusions, Elliott. I don’t want to see any ridiculous theories appearing on social media. Catch my drift?’

  Chapter Six

  Ed was back at Headquarters. The students all gave the same version... Jack having an argument with the two doormen, picking up a pint glass and throwing the remnants of a drink over the taller one. Two went home with Elliott. Glen said he had another drink with Jack. He couldn’t remember where, and he couldn’t remember getting home.

  Ed rang the Jolly Roger.

  ‘Steve… Ed Whelan. Sorry to bother you. I know you’ll be busy with the football being on the box. Keep this to yourself for now but a student was found dead in the river in the early hours.’

  ‘Another one? I don’t think I’ve ever fallen when I’ve been lashed.’

  ‘Looks like he was one of a group of five,’ Ed said. ‘Spent a lot of time in your place yesterday. Ended up getting thrown out.’

  ‘Could be anyone Ed. Saturday night, students and ejections. Goes hand in hand.’

  ‘One of this lot threw a drink over your youngest bouncer.’

  ‘Dickheads,’ Steve said. ‘I remember them. All had the same T-shirts on.’

  ‘What do
you mean?’

  ‘You know when you see lads and lasses on stag and hen weekends, all wearing the same T-shirts. That’s what this lot were wearing. I’ve seen them wearing the shirts before. Yesterday was pale blue but I’ve seen them wearing red ones, yellow, green. Same logo though.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘They call themselves Mortimers. There’s a big cartoon of a mouse on their shirts.’

  ‘Mortimer? Mouse? What, like Mickey Mouse?’

  ‘It’s a cartoon mouse, but it’s not Mickey,’ Steve told him. ‘Mortimer is printed above the mouse. Underneath, in copperplate writing, it says, ‘If you love the mouse, chase the pussy’. They’re a bunch of knobs, Ed, but there’s thousands like them.’

  ‘Can I pop round?’ Ed asked. ‘Look at the CCTV?’

  ‘Yeah, come whenever you like. At least today it’s just the football. You’ll not be deafened by the music like last time.’

  ‘True. Cheers Steve.’

  ‘Steve who?’ Sam said, walking into the HOLMES room, the smell of a freshly smoked cigarette on her breath.

  ‘Donnelly. Licensee of the Jolly Roger. Jack Goddard and his mates were in there last night. Got asked to leave by the doormen. Jack refused. Threw a drink over one of bouncers. I’m going to have a look at CCTV.’

  ‘Might be interesting,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll come with you. If nothing else I get to meet another licensee.’

  ‘He’s alright…I’ve told Bev to get the files on the other students who fell into the river. We need them sharpish. You’re going to get asked about them tomorrow at the press conference.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Sam said. ‘Make sure Bev gets the names of Aisha’s friends as well. I’m still keen to revisit them. I’ve just had 20 minutes with Jack’s parents and the Family Liaison Officer.’

  Ed nodded. Nothing needed to be said.

  Sam sat down. ‘Never gets any easier does it? I get sick of meeting nice, decent people in tragic circumstances, people just going about their daily lives, not bothering anyone. Then they get dropped the worst bombshell. Lives turned upside down in an instant. They’ve got a thousand questions and I don’t even have a dozen answers.’