Loose Tongues

by Chris Simms

  They all knew full well this would be when the reporters pounced. It didn’t matter about Cahill’s history with Flood or his previous criminal activity: he wasn’t the killer.

  All Ransford could do was fall back on the time-honoured response of multiple lines of enquiry, a fast-moving investigation, and a vastly experienced team with every resource being made available.

  It would do nothing to relieve the pressure.

  ‘We need someone,’ Shipton announced. ‘God, we need someone.’

  Tina’s eyes cut to Ransford. She gave him a tiny nod of encouragement.

  ‘We cannot have five murders in the same city,’ he continued quietly. ‘Some sick bastard is chopping off tongues and we have no one – not in custody, not even for questioning.’ He shook his head in despair.

  Ransford placed his elbows on the armrests of his chair, fingers interlinking. ‘There is a person who’s been recently released. He was in for a sexual assault that involved the use of a knife on his victim. Not stabbing: slash wounds. One was to the facial area.’

  ‘You said victim? Singular?’ Shipton asked.

  ‘His ex-wife,’ Ransford responded.

  ‘Not a stranger?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And where is he currently?’

  ‘In the Sheffield area. Bail hostel.’

  ‘But the assault was sexual?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘But these aren’t.’

  ‘No,’ Ransford conceded. ‘But he cut the face of his victim. He’s one hour away by train. That’s not too far.’

  ‘His movements in and out of the bail hostel will have all been tracked, will they not?’

  ‘Yes: but they’re encouraged to be out of the building by nine each morning. Apart from Heather Knight, these murders have all taken place before lunch. I know it’s not ideal, sir, but it’s enough to bring him in for questioning.’

  Shipton weighed up the proposal.

  ‘I can arrange for his details to reach a reporter,’ Tina added. ‘Anonymously.’

  The assistant chief constable brushed at the sheets on his desk. Dirt that only he could see. ‘You’ve done this kind of thing before?’

  ‘The poisonings at Stepping Hill hospital, sir. I was media advisor on that. Initially, a nurse who had a prior history for some minor misdemeanours was arrested.’

  ‘I remember. She was innocent and her career was ruined. Did she not sue us for a substantial amount a few years later?’

  Tina nodded. ‘But it was a name, sir. That was what was needed at the time. Something to give the impression we were – that the investigation was—’

  ‘No.’ Shipton looked flustered. He got up, walked to the window and opened it a crack. ‘We’re not quite that desperate. Not yet.’ He turned round and looked at Ransford. ‘And we really have nothing else to go off?’

  ‘A white Peugeot van. We think it’s been in the vicinity of two, possibly three, of the murders. So far we’ve only got a partial registration from CCTV.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘DVLA say there are over one hundred and sixty vehicles in the Greater Manchester area with registrations that could match.’

  ‘How is that being actioned?’

  ‘We’re flat out, so I’ve handed it across to local patrols. They’ll check the address for each vehicle and talk to each owner.’

  ‘Hardly going to crack the case anytime soon.’

  Ransford looked down at his notes.

  ‘OK,’ Shipton said. ‘Give the bloody press conference, as agreed. And then find someone – a genuine suspect – and not a sodding scapegoat.’

  He sat in his front room. On his lap was a plate with broken pieces of digestives and a wedge of Wensleydale cheese.

  He disliked eating while in front of the television, but when the radio had said a statement about the string of murders was imminent, he knew he had to watch.

  They’d found the first ones, then. All five. A series of photos had appeared on the screen: he’d barely recognized them. They looked relaxed. Happy. Their mouths hadn’t been smiling when he’d finished with them. Not at all.

  The man doing the talking had said a dedicated team of detectives were working round the clock. They were all trying to track him down! He stared at the screen, slowly chewing. Nothing about the need for women to be careful when receiving unexpected courier deliveries. They couldn’t have made the connection with Katherine Harpham, then. Perhaps she hadn’t even reported the incident.

  He shaved off a slice of cheese, put it on a fragment of biscuit and popped it into his mouth. Perhaps Katherine didn’t intend to make a report. Perhaps it really had been meant as merely a lesson for him. A warning. He turned the knife over in his hand. But if that was the case, why then deny him the one from that morning? He looked at the package on the floor beside him. Leanne Kessler, 17 Crossfield Court. Why hadn’t she answered her door? He recalled crushing her smouldering cigarette beneath his shoe. Why hadn’t she been presented to him? It didn’t make sense.

  There was a fault somewhere. If it was a circuit board, he could do tests. Isolate components. Measure current. This wasn’t like that and it infuriated him.

  A dedicated team. He imagined them all at their desks, furrowed brows and hunched shoulders. The knife glinted in his hand as he turned it over. Maybe, he should go through to his garage. Open up his jars and take off a few slithers. Send them to the station in envelopes. Then they would know they were dealing with someone special. A person with the power to change the world.

  Tempting, but unwise. If anything, he needed to be even more meticulous with his approach. That was the best way to ensure his project could continue. That included changing his van; if the police really were studying CCTV, it was the sort of thing they might notice.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Janet accessed the phone book of her mobile and scrolled down to Tony Shipton’s private number. Busy. She should have known that: assistant chief constable, what else would he be?

  But Sean’s comment about the newspaper article was like a piece of gravel in her shoe. Had the officer who’d left the newspaper been making a very unsubtle hint? And if he had, how did he know? The consequences for manipulating any kind of recruitment process within the police were severe. Of course, that didn’t stop it from happening. But it did ensure that, when strings were pulled, they were pulled extremely discreetly.

  She was aware that Tony knew the DCI leading the team Sean was now part of. The two men spent time away together outside of work. Time when they could chat about things with complete freedom. It was the only reason Janet had decided to cash in on Tony’s offer. So how on earth could Tony’s quiet word with the DCI have gone any further?

  The television was playing quietly in the corner. She was circling the pad of her thumb over her phone’s call button when the news announcer mentioned the words Manchester murders.

  Immediately, she placed her phone aside and reached for the remote. As the volume increased, the scene cut to a press conference. It was Sean’s case! His boss – DCI Ransford – was preparing to give a statement.

  Janet watched closely, hanging on every detail as the officer took to the stage. The man was doing his best to appear concerned, but in control. Sombre, yet sharp. It wasn’t easy.

  The victims’ faces started to appear on the screen. Below them was a phone number. Ransford was requesting that any member of the public who had anything suspicious to report should ring the number in complete confidence. His officers were waiting.

  Janet gazed at the poor women’s faces, trying to gauge something about them from just a single image. The fact they all looked so different made it even more disturbing.

  The victim found most recently had dyed her hair a washed-out maroon. Thin-faced. Mean-looking. Janet felt herself frown. Ransford was now talking about a man being held in custody. Charges, at this stage of the enquiry, didn’t include murder.

  The reporters started going ballistic and he had to wave b
oth hands to restore some kind of order. Once it had quietened down, he gripped each side of the lectern. That was good, Janet thought. He looked like he was in control, even though she recognized the usual phrases for when the opposite was true.

  He fought his way to the end of the statement then swiftly headed to a door in the corner. A woman with wavy hair and thickly framed glasses already had it open. As they vanished into the corridor beyond, the number returned to the screen.

  Janet paused the footage. The face of the victim who’d been found most recently was still on the screen. Julie Something-or-other. Why did she seem familiar? Julie Roe, aged thirty-three. Lived in the Fairfield area of the city. That wasn’t far up the road.

  Janet closed her eyes, trying to think more clearly. Maroon hair. Sharp features and darting eyes. Skinny – yes. Stick thin, judging by her face. Janet thought she could remember seeing the woman. In real life. She could even remember thinking that she looked like an alcoholic. And an aggressive one, at that. Where on earth, she wondered, did I see her?

  A vague recollection of the woman being on her feet. But before that, she’d been sitting. Now Janet could recall hearing the woman’s voice. She’d been complaining about something. Had it been in a shop? No – a bus. Was that it? Had the woman been on the same bus?

  Over the past two weeks, Janet had spent hour after hour sitting on buses, handing out customer survey forms to passengers as they’d climbed aboard. She sifted back, trying to isolate the image. The woman’s odd-coloured hair. Her sharp nasal tones, voice filling the entire vehicle. A scrap of another image: she’d been on the phone. That was it. But why the impression she was aggressive? Something else had happened to create that impression.

  Then it clicked.

  There’d been a man sitting across the aisle from her! He’d complained. Asked her to keep it down. Janet felt her scalp start to tingle. The woman had turned on him, laid into him for earwigging, told him to get another bus. He’d told her to watch her mouth. Her mouth. The victims’ phones had been shoved into their mouths! The woman had mocked him, too. As she’d left the bus, she’d mocked his stammer.

  Janet opened her eyes. Was it the same woman now on the TV screen? The memory of the journey was clearer in her mind: a short-haired man with the broad shoulders and kindly face, sitting in a bus utterly humiliated.

  At the very next stop, he’d disembarked.

  She realized that, if he’d hurried, he could have caught the woman up. He could have followed her right back to her own front door.

  THIRTY-NINE

  As he wheeled his chair back to his desk, Sean went over Ransford’s latest briefing.

  The autopsies for Heather Knight and Julie Roe had been prioritized and, when compared to those of the other three victims, several similarities had emerged.

  Cause of death for all had been suffocation. However, they hadn’t been strangled. Alongside the previously identified bruising to the upper arms that was consistent with being forcibly restrained, they had other bruises to the backs of the heels and lower legs. Scuff marks on the hallway floors and carpets suggested the women had died just inside their front doors. They’d kicked and thrashed, but to no effect.

  Light abrasions to the latest victims’ windpipes also mirrored those on the earlier women to have died. The pathologist had surmised the killer had used the type of shopping bag that had a drawstring incorporated into it. By placing it over the women’s heads and drawing the string tight while pinning them down, he had caused them to gradually lose consciousness. Death would have soon followed.

  Toxicology reports had revealed nothing conclusive. Pamela Flood had tested positive for cocaine. Francesca Pinto and Julie Roe had very high readings of blood-alcohol. Julie had also tested positive for heroin and cannabis, though the drugs had been in her system for a few days prior to death. Both Victoria Walker and Heather Knight were clean. And no victim’s readings, with the exception of Julie Roe’s, were so high as to seriously incapacitate them.

  How each had ended up on the floor, unable to prevent their own suffocation remained a mystery. Not a single neighbour had heard any sounds of a struggle.

  Fingerprint analysis had also now been rushed through for all five crime scenes. The only house Cahill’s prints had been found in was Pamela Flood’s. There were, however, traces of the same person having been in Victoria Walker’s, Heather Knight’s and Pamela Flood’s homes. The prints were mostly partials, but with enough common characteristics – including a distinctive ulnar loop on what was probably the right forefinger – for the examiner to say they were from the same person.

  Hairs not belonging to the victim had also been recovered from each crime scene. In Pamela Flood’s and Francesca Pinto’s homes, a single strand from the same person had been recovered from the armchair the victim had been propped in. Both hairs were just under two inches long, one white and one light brown, suggesting that the person was turning grey. Unfortunately, neither hair had enough of a root to enable DNA analysis: all the forensic biologist could venture was that both had come from a Caucasian, aged around thirty-five or above.

  Sean was still a couple of metres away from his desk when his phone started to ring. Seeing whose name was displayed on the screen, he sat down and turned towards the wall. ‘Everything OK, Mum?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Sean, you need to listen. Where are you?’

  She was fighting to keep her voice under control, but she didn’t sound distressed or in pain. If anything, she sounded elated. ‘At my desk. What’s going on?’

  ‘I just saw it on the telly, Sean. The statement from your boss along with all the victims’ photos. Now, you need to be very careful how you play this, Sean. It needs to be you it comes from—’

  ‘Mum, can you slow down? I have no idea what you’re—’

  ‘I think she was on the bus, Sean! The victim they just found. Julie Roe. I think I was on the same bus as her.’

  Sean rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand. ‘You saw her on the bus. OK. When?’

  ‘That’s the point. I worked it out: last Thursday. I know because I’d just come off the phone to you. It was your very first day in the new job.’

  Sean abruptly became aware of Mark Wheeler’s empty chair facing him. He swung his focus back to what his mum was saying. Julie Roe had died at some point during the morning after he’d started.

  ‘She had an argument on the bus, Sean. I was handing out surveys in the east part of the city that day. One of the routes goes quite close to our house. She lived in Fairfield, right?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘There was this man who asked her to shut up. She was on the phone speaking really loudly to a mate. She turned on this bloke. Gobby, she was. Well-practiced, too. He said she should watch her mouth: those were his actual words. Then she got really nasty – took him apart because he had a slight stammer. I can remember actually feeling sorry for him. She got off and then – at the very next stop – he did, too. What if he doubled back? To find her?’

  Sean swivelled his seat and picked up a pen to take notes. ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Heavy set. Somewhere in his forties. Light brown hair, straight and cut fairly short. And he was wearing work clothes, Sean. Bits of paint on them, I think.’

  Sean jotted it all down. The hair matched the psychological profiler’s prediction, that was for sure. And the age.

  ‘There was something else, Sean. Apart from how furious he looked when he got off, that is. He was carrying an equipment box. You know, like the ones fishermen have? You open it and the top folds out with little compartments. Black, with red handles, I think.’

  ‘You’re saying it looked like he had this for his work?’

  ‘Precisely. A handyman, a plumber: someone who calls at people’s houses.’

  Sean underlined the words carrying a toolbox. This was … if his mum had remembered correctly, this could be …

  ‘Listen Sean: have Julie Roe’s phone records come i
n yet?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And CCTV coverage of her last twenty-four hours?’

  ‘People will be working on it.’

  ‘OK. You’ve been tasked with reviewing some of the victims’ timelines, haven’t you? No one will think it odd if you access Julie Roe’s phone transcripts. It was about nine twenty on that Thursday morning. You’ll see she had a verbal altercation – she was relaying it all to the person on the other end of the phone. You need to get hold of the CCTV footage from the bus at that time.’

  Sean was thinking about Pamela Flood. She’d caught a bus, too. She’d been arguing with Cahill for the entire journey. ‘OK – that’s easy enough.’

  ‘Then you’ll be able to see him. The camera on the back of the driver’s cab points at the rows of seats. He’ll be on film, Sean.’

  ‘Won’t you be, too?’

  ‘Me? No – the wheelchair bay is up by the front doors. It’s not covered by CCTV. Sean, find that footage. If it’s her, take it to Ransford along with the call transcript. But make a note on the system, first. If this turns out to be significant, you want the record to show it came from you.’

  FORTY

  ‘No: it should definitely be me who buys,’ Magda said, leading the way into the canteen. ‘You have earned coffees for the rest of the month!’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Sean said, shaking his head. ‘It was a bit of luck. Anyone could have stumbled across it.’

  She wagged her finger. ‘No, no, no. Plenty of people had the chance, but none did. You are the early bird.’

  ‘The early …?’

  ‘You did the hard work – and now you get your reward.’

  Jesus, he thought. I really have to get her an up-to-date book on British sayings.

  ‘Watching DCI Ransford’s face go from thunder to sunshine,’ she added. ‘That is also worth lots of drinks.’

  It hadn’t been easy getting his boss to listen. When he’d first knocked on Ransford’s door, Sean had been greeted by a raised palm.

  ‘DC Blake, you really need to—’