The Backs (2013)

by Bruce, Alison

  Sheen was an information hoarder, the man with the tidbits that added flesh and perspective to the skeleton of the Cambridge street map. And all this without ever appearing to leave his desk.

  Sheen peered out from behind his computer. ‘Which murder brings you here today?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Mary Osborne or Paul Marshall?’

  ‘Oh, I see. I’m looking for a . . .’ that sentence was about to end badly. He started again. ‘I’m trying to locate a woman who may have accepted payment for sex.’

  Sheen beamed. ‘You’re looking for a prostitute? I never thought those words would come from your lips, Gary. I’m sure someone would . . . several in this building possibly . . .’

  Goodhew held a dead-eyed expression as he waited for Sheen to finish.

  ‘Well,’ Sheen pulled a lever-arch file from the shelf behind his desk. ‘Let’s see if we can’t put a smile on that face of yours.’

  ‘Sheen, I’m in a hurry and I know this is a tricky one.’

  ‘There are a few individuals here but most of the pages list escort sites, classified ads and so on. So much of it is online these days, that there will be plenty of sites we haven’t spotted yet, I’m sure. Who are we looking for?’

  ‘The girl on the Gogs.’

  ‘With the daisy tattoo?’

  Goodhew finally smiled. ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘Your mate Sue told me.’ Sheen opened the file in the centre. ‘Some of this stuff is old now, and keeping it up to date is like trying to count a pond full of fish.’

  ‘The answer would be one.’

  Sheen scowled at Goodhew. ‘One what?’

  ‘One pond. Never mind.’

  ‘The fish, Gary. The fish.’ He sighed. ‘Tell me about her.’

  ‘Late teens, early twenties maybe. IC1, probable native English speaker, blonde, slim.’

  ‘Local?’

  ‘I think so, or at least with a connection here. As far as I can work out, she came from Cambridge and was heading back when she was seen up on the Gogs.’

  ‘Could she be a student? There’s a lot of it amongst them at the moment. Pressure of increased tuition fees, apparently. Personally I’d rather skip the education.’

  ‘Thanks – that’s put some unpleasant images in my head.’ Goodhew had skipped through the file but now closed it. ‘Student prostitution, then?’

  ‘Some sign up to contact sites, some advertise directly, though that’s risky. It means they’re out on their own then, without any protection or without the client having the impression that someone might know where they are, or who they’re currently with. We’ve come across quite a few discreet agencies in town over the years: small-scale operations usually, but with some kind of access to the students.’

  ‘Surely first-timers would be more likely to be introduced to it by someone they’ve met in person?’

  ‘Careful you don’t start making too many assumptions about her.’

  ‘I don’t think I am. Think of Marshall for a minute. If his game was to humiliate her, then he’s not going to pick a girl who’s already been systematically abused. Where would his thrill be then?’

  Sheen shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘And, equally, where would be her incentive to stay quiet. This girl so far hasn’t said a word.’

  ‘There’s plenty of prostitutes who wouldn’t be prepared to speak to us.’

  ‘Yes, but also plenty who would – or would at least make sure we got to hear about any mistreatment, right?’

  Sheen nodded. ‘Yes, word often makes its way back.’

  ‘But regarding a student, pretty much all of them would want to keep it very quiet.’ He knew he might be wrong there, but instinctively it felt right.

  Sheen reached up for a different file. ‘There are thirty thousand students in Cambridge. At least thirty thousand. This one’s packed with every student adviser, official organization, and society I can find.’ Sheen kept one hand on the file and with the other reached inside the top drawer of his desk. He pulled out an A4 sheet of printed card that had been folded in two as if to make a tent. He stood it on the desk. ‘What d’you reckon?’

  It was emblazoned with thick lettering: No files to leave this area.

  ‘I know your rules already.’

  ‘Well, stick to them. Sit here and go through it.’

  Goodhew checked his watch: it was 3.45. So much for his ambitious hour. Still, fifteen minutes was fifteen minutes. ‘I’ll come back,’ he told Sheen. ‘I have to see Marks at four. Actually, it might be better tomorrow.’

  Sheen tapped the sign. ‘Don’t forget what it says.’

  Gary next grabbed a coffee, making a call as the kettle boiled. He was waiting outside Marks’s office by 3.55, hoping their meeting would be quick, because he now had another appointment to keep at 5.30 p.m.

  Marks arrived with his own mug of coffee and Goodhew followed him into his office. ‘How are you feeling?’

  The report on Paul Marshall’s boat lay in its envelope, and was back in the prime spot on Marks’s desk.

  ‘Good, thanks.’

  ‘You don’t look any different to me. I’ve seen you like this in the past, Gary, and I assume it is only tiredness?’ Obviously content that it was, he carried on talking without waiting for a reply. ‘Is it that you can’t sleep or because you avoid trying?’

  ‘I’m just awake,’ Goodhew replied, and didn’t elaborate. In reality he would lie in bed thinking through all the things that called for his attention, and even when he fell asleep he dreamt about them until they pulled him into consciousness again.

  ‘See a doctor if you need to.’

  ‘I will, sir,’ he lied.

  ‘I’m serious. You don’t seem to realize you’re the kid that gets one-to-one time with me for the wrong reasons. I’m keeping you on track because I want you to run a great race, not end up as supermarket burger meat.’

  Goodhew nodded silently. He’d long since decided that, when Marks began mixing metaphors, he was irritated over something. Often it was lack of resources or lack of progress, and today Goodhew could understand if it were both.

  ‘I held a briefing this afternoon, most of it you’re already aware of, but there are a couple of points you will have missed. The family have been officially informed of Mary Osborne’s death. I visited them this morning.’

  ‘How did they react?’

  ‘Jane wasn’t surprised. I assumed that might be because she’d spoken to you. What exactly had you told her?’ Marks looked interested rather than annoyed.

  ‘She asked me whether the body was her mother’s. I didn’t tell her that I thought it was, but I didn’t build her hopes up either.’

  ‘That’s fine. Lack of tact with relatives has never been one of your shortcomings. I spoke to Gerry, Dan and Jane Osborne all at the same time. Dan’s wife Roz was there, too, and I had the impression that it was the first time that she and Jane had ever met. More than anything, they seemed incredulous when I told them. Dan asked how long her body had been there, while Gerry kept asking us about the house.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Whether we’d caused damage, whether its address really needed to be publicized, and so on. Quite bizarre questions from both of them, really.’

  ‘Especially as the search has already been reported in the press. If anyone knows Cambridge, then they know where that house is.’

  Marks nodded. ‘Have you seen the news this afternoon? Mary Osborne’s murder’s now out in the public domain, complete with pictures of the property itself.’ Marks opened a drawer in his desk and slid the latest edition of the Cambridge News across to Goodhew. ‘I pushed those photos of the house out there just to see whether they’d generate some kind of reaction that Gerry or Dan Osborne had hoped to avoid.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing yet.’

  Sometimes the incident room would be taking calls within minutes of the first announcement, but there seemed little c
orrelation between the volume of calls and the number of truly helpful ones; one productive call could turn everything around.

  ‘But we’ll see,’ Marks added. ‘Jane asked when she’d be allowed to move back. I noticed Gerry Osborne open his mouth to answer, then he realized she was asking me from the point of view of the investigation. None of them objected, just seemed surprised she’d want to return there. In fact, she’s back there now.’

  ‘Although I’m used to being alone in a house, I’d find that creepy.’

  ‘But there was no reason to stop her either. The second point you missed from this afternoon’s briefing is the announcement that the investigation into Rebecca Osborne’s murder will now be reopened. It’ll be days before we have much back from forensics, so until we have conclusive evidence that the two Osborne murders aren’t connected, we have to assume that they are.’

  ‘There’s no way Jackson could have killed Mary. That means he’ll be in the clear.’ The tension rising in Marks’s expression was unmistakable, though it subsided almost at once.

  ‘Unless he wasn’t working alone,’ Marks suggested, though he didn’t look convinced. ‘I now want your opinion on something. What impression do you have regarding how Jane felt about her sister?’

  Goodhew thought carefully before he spoke. ‘She clearly had some bond with her or she wouldn’t have come back here, and when you told her about Becca’s death, you said her grief seemed real. She clearly has issues with the rest of the family, and perhaps that’s why she left in the first place.’

  ‘Since you told me that Jane was actually in Cambridge when Becca was killed, I’ve spent the entire day mulling that over. If she cared about Becca, you’d think she’d want to help.’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me anything.’

  ‘Of course. She says she can’t remember. She’s coming in tomorrow to make a statement, then we’ll go over it with her until there’s some progress. At the moment she flatly denies even remembering where she was when she first heard about Becca’s death. I don’t believe that for a second.’

  Neither did Goodhew.

  ‘I thought perhaps you might have picked up on something?’

  ‘No, I can’t even work out whether she’s angry as a form of defence or just naturally aggressive.’

  Without further comment Marks moved on to the next topic. He picked up the envelope that still lay in front of him and reached inside it, sliding the sheaf of pages half out before he spoke. ‘The business of waiting round for DNA analysis delays everything. It’s frustrating in the Mary Osborne case, and just as irritating in this one. I’ve read it, by the way, and I’ve decided to keep you over on this investigation, more specifically following up evidence contained in here.’

  Goodhew shuffled forward in his chair. ‘OK if I look?’

  Marks finished sliding them out and handed them to Goodhew, who scanned carefully the first few lines, then flicked through the batch of photographs. ‘I’ll read it right now, if you’d like me to.’

  ‘By tomorrow will be fine. I’ll be going to visit Carmel Marshall shortly.’

  ‘Really?’ Goodhew had wanted to do the same as soon as he’d finished looking for the girl from the Gogs.

  ‘Her fingerprints were found on the boat.’

  ‘And Paul Marshall’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Goodhew packed the report back into its envelope. He’d gone too far to come clean and admit he’d already read it, but playing dumb would be foolhardy. Insulting to Marks, in fact, and that wasn’t something he was prepared to do. ‘Can I take it?’

  ‘Back to your desk. Not out of the building.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ll speak with you again sometime after I’ve met with Carmel Marshall.’

  ‘I don’t mind coming along, if that helps.’

  Marks shook his head. ‘You’ll see why when you read it, but I need to take a female officer with me. Three of us going in mob-handed isn’t what’s needed here. But thanks.’

  Goodhew checked his watch as he returned to his desk: 5.20. Just ten minutes to spare. He opened out the report, but only for show. He next dialled the number, still remembering the pattern of digits from earlier. It rang for close to two whole minutes before anyone answered. He then introduced himself and explained what he wanted. She agreed to wait until he arrived. By 5.24 he was heading out through Parkside’s front entrance.

  For a little while now, the area of Cambridge that was home to the greatest concentration of independent shops had been called the Boutique Quarter. Maybe if someone explained the logic of the term, then Goodhew might have thought it made more sense. But, as it was, every time he heard it, it bugged him. Firstly, plenty of Cambridge streets brimmed with shops offering quirky, artisan and specialist items, and they weren’t all located in the ‘Boutique Quarter’ by a long shot. Secondly, apart from hearing the odd mention of the ‘Art Quarter’, he didn’t know if there were any others. With all Cambridge had to offer, the idea that the Boutique Quarter and the Art Quarter were the only two to deserve this extra recognition seemed a little pretentious.

  But Tizzi’s in All Saints Passage wasn’t at all pretentious, just a small family-run shop, selling clothes that had, in the main, come from local designers. The owner/manageress/sales assistant was called Val. She had a great smile that offset her overly severe eyebrows and tightly pulled ponytail.

  ‘So you’ve come about the underwear? The Ingénue Lingerie?’

  ‘I believe you’re the only stockists of that line locally?’

  ‘It sells here, online and in Covent Garden.’

  ‘I take it it’s expensive, then?’

  ‘Not compared to what some women will pay. Having said that, Ingénue would not sell for any more; it’s found its price point. So which items are we talking about?’

  Goodhew used his phone to show her the pictures: one of the knickers, one of the bra.

  ‘Astonish – that’s the name of that range.’ She looked back and forth between the two shots. ‘Yes, the thong and the balcony bra. They’ve both sold well.’

  Oh good.

  ‘I will have all the sales records, so I’d know when the items were sold but not who to, unless they paid by credit card, of course. You do know the sizes, I assume?’

  ‘Size 8 and 32D.’

  ‘That’s a good start.’

  ‘In what way?’ he asked, because he actually wasn’t sure whether she was being sarcastic.

  ‘We would have had either four or six of those bras in stock. Do you know when it was purchased?’

  ‘Before 28 July, but I don’t know how much before.’

  ‘Yes, this is making sense.’ She spoke partly to him, partly to herself, and then pulled a diary out from beside the till. She also tried drawing her sharp eyebrows into a frown, though the muscles barely moved. On 1 June she’d written a list of bras and sizes which included the Astonish in a 32D. ‘I rarely reorder,’ she explained, ‘but several models had sold better than their matching knickers. I queried whether more were available, and they weren’t, but I’m sure it was selling the last 32D that would have prompted me to check.’ She part-frowned into the book. ‘No, perhaps it was the 34D.’

  Goodhew waited.

  Val chewed her lip and gazed up towards a corner of the ceiling. ‘Something’s ringing a bell,’ she pondered. ‘Any idea who ended up with them?’ She looked at Goodhew. ‘Or can’t you say?’

  ‘I don’t know. The description is of a young woman, late teens, maybe, or early twenties. A tattoo of daisies across her foot?’

  She brushed that comment away. ‘It feels like most of them that age have tattoos. Unless they covered her face, I wouldn’t have noticed.’

  ‘One witness described her as kind of Scandinavian . . .’

  The memory clicked into place and Val’s eyes widened. ‘Long blonde hair. I do remember her now. She came in with a hundred pounds in vouchers. Oh, yes, that’s right. She looked at only this range of underwear,
but spent quite a while choosing. My daughter was working with me that day, and neither of us had seen her before.’

  ‘Did you speak to her?’

  ‘Briefly, and she was English, not Scandinavian at all.’ She clicked her fingers several times. ‘Hang on, there was something else. My daughter might remember.’ She whipped an iPhone from her pocket and assaulted it with some rapid double-thumb texting. He couldn’t read whatever she’d written, but joined her in staring at it and willing it to flash up a reply. The incoming message made the sound of a repeated plinking of a piano key. She tutted, then tapped a message back, spelling I-n-g-é-n-u-e under her breath. When it plinked the next time she read it swiftly, then passed the phone across to Goodhew. ‘The woman said she’d been hand-painting on silk as part of her degree.’

  ‘An art degree?’

  ‘Fashion or textiles, I would think. I do actually remember having a conversation with someone who was asking if we’d consider selling anything like that here on their behalf, but I would have said no. It wouldn’t work in here. I don’t know anything else, so I hope I’ve been some help?’

  ‘Definitely. And, one more thing, you wouldn’t know who originally purchased those vouchers, I suppose?’

  ‘No. We’re a small business so our vouchers are printed like cheques in a book, and numbered. There won’t be many for a hundred pounds. I’d be able to go through the accounts, find out which vouchers have been used and let you know when they were sold, but nothing more.’

  He passed her a card printed with his landline number. ‘That would be very helpful. Just let us know when you’ve found them, and an officer will come back for the details. If that isn’t me, just repeat everything you’ve said.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  The fact that it was now 6.15, with everybody dispersing for the evening, was the precise reason Goodhew resented the idea of having been sent home to rest right in the middle of the day. Of course he hadn’t slept, but if he’d followed Marks’s instructions to the letter, then he’d be even further behind. If, on the other hand, he’d been able to read the report an hour sooner, he might have made it to the Cambridge School of Art before the staff had left for the evening.