Loose Tongues

by Chris Simms

  You’re going to deliver it to my house before Sunday evening.

  It’s number sixteen, Kersal Mews, Didsbury.

  Yes, Knight with a K.

  Immediately after that call, she’d spoken to her boyfriend.

  Silly boys and their stag-do rules.

  And you’ve got another two nights of this?

  A bath and season three of Crimson Rose.

  Lounge around in bed until at least eleven.

  Everything the killer needed had been in those two calls. The problem was, she’d been in a private car at the time. He went into the folder where the detailed account of each of the victim’s last twenty-four hours were stored.

  Inside Heather Knight’s file, he skimmed through to VIP Cars. The follow-up work had been carried out by DC Morris, Fuller’s acolyte. The cab company had sent a driver called Khalid Khan to collect Heather at 9.55 on the Saturday morning.

  He searched for Khan’s statement that confirmed that’s what he’d done. No sign of it in the folder. Yet Heather was back in the office by 11.00 – she left again shortly after with a colleague, who dropped her off outside Kersal Mews. The colleague’s statement to that effect had been filed.

  So where was the cab driver’s?

  Sean looked over to where Morris normally sat. All the desks were empty. An internet search brought up the name for VIP Cars.

  ‘Hello, it’s DC Blake from Greater Manchester Police speaking. It’s in relation to a driver of yours, Khalid Khan. Is it possible to speak with him, please?’

  The woman’s words were rapid. ‘Out on a job. Finishes at – let me see – lunch.’

  ‘Have you a mobile number I can reach him on?’

  ‘No. Can’t give them out.’ A phone started to ring in the background. ‘Hold please.’

  He waited a full minute before she came back on. ‘VIP Cars.’

  ‘Yes, it’s DC Blake. I need to speak with one of your drivers—’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Lunch. OK?’

  ‘No.’ Another phone went off. She’d put him on hold again, if she could. ‘This is urgent. You need to patch me through to him.’

  A massive sigh. ‘Hang on.’ The line began to buzz slightly. ‘Base to nine. Base to nine.’

  ‘This is nine.’

  ‘Got the police here, Khalid. He’s on the other end of the line and can hear you. Can you speak to him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go ahead.’ The buzz vanished. They were alone. He jotted down the number that now showed on the landline’s display.

  ‘Mr Khan, DC Blake speaking. A colleague contacted you recently about a job. You picked up a female passenger, Heather Knight, from a location in Salford Quays to bring her back—’

  ‘She wasn’t there.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘She wasn’t there. I was running a bit late. I told this already. She’d already gone.’

  ‘She’d gone? You didn’t drive her back to her office in the city centre?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But, according to the company she worked for, that’s what happened. I have a copy of the booking from their records.’

  ‘Oh, we’d have billed them for the job. But it was a wasted journey for me. She wasn’t there.’

  ‘Did you provide a statement with this information?’

  ‘He never came to the office, the detective. I said when I could sit down to do it.’

  Morris had forgotten, Sean thought.

  ‘The man running the car park,’ Khan continued, ‘he said she got a tram.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘A tram. She caught a tram. He saw her get on. Told me when I showed up looking for her.’

  Christ, thought Sean. ‘Thanks for your help.’ He cut the call and returned to Heather’s transcripts.

  Hello, this is Heather. You’ve just arrived? Even though you said you’d be there by 10:15? And it’s now? That’s right – 10:40. Bloody great, first the cab company, now you. Where am I? On the way back to my office.

  Sean reached for his keyboard. She hadn’t been talking on her phone in the back of the cab. She’d been on a tram! He opened a new browser, typed in the postcode for the development in Salford Quays where she’d been waiting and selected Street View. Directly opposite the property was the Harbour City tram stop. Not only that, the tracks ran alongside the road. Phone mast analysis would never be able to distinguish between a car journey and a tram ride at that point.

  He bowed his head. Mum had been right. The killer was listening in on conversations. Trains, buses, trams: he was using public transport. Had to be. The thought of how he’d left her all alone in the house made his teeth clench; he should ring and let her know.

  But first he had to make sure. There was tram footage of Heather Knight they didn’t know existed. If he could find Petr Kadlec in it, Janet’s theory would be proved.

  He walked over to where Maggie James sat. ‘How fast can we get hold of tram footage?’

  ‘If it’s within—’

  ‘I’m looking at this Saturday. Harbour City, going towards the city centre, 10.30 am.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, slightly taken aback. ‘We could submit a—’

  ‘It can’t be their normal turnaround. This is highest priority.’

  ‘I think,’ she said, placing her pen down, ‘that requires authority from someone with a more senior rank to you.’

  ‘DC Blake?’ Inspector Troughton was walking towards him with a look of confusion. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘There’s been an error, sir. It was … assumed … Heather Knight hadn’t used public transport in the run-up to her murder: she had. It was in the morning, about two hours before when we think she died. The footage from that tram journey hasn’t been checked and I’m certain our man will be on it.’

  ‘Hang on.’ Troughton sat on the edge of the nearest desk, looking perplexed. ‘The woman’s final twenty-four hours have been—’

  ‘Sir, I can explain to you how it slipped through. But that footage – we have to get them to send it across. Now.’

  Troughton tapped a forefinger rapidly against his chin. ‘Maggie? What’s the best estimate—’

  ‘Two hours. Maybe less. With a time frame that exact, they can locate it very quickly.’

  ‘OK, I’ll authorize the request.’ He turned back to Sean. ‘You’d better take me through exactly what you’ve got.’

  The front desk of the police station on Brodick Street hit a quiet patch just before midday.

  ‘Tanya, could you hold the fort? I need to put this on the system. It’s been bugging me all morning.’

  ‘I saw that. What is it, anyway?’

  ‘A lady brought it in earlier. A spoof package, delivered to her house by a guy in a courier’s uniform.’

  ‘What makes it a spoof?’

  ‘The fact it had nothing inside except a bit of wood and old newspaper.’

  ‘Bizarre.’

  ‘You’ve not heard of any similar incidents?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Me neither. But there’s something I don’t like about it.’

  He moved to the computer terminal in the corner then looked back at the plastic bag. It was an odd one. Obviously, it didn’t count as evidence collected in the wake of a crime. He was fairly sure no laws had been broken. Impersonating a courier driver: was that illegal? Instead, he decided to first run a search on recent crimes. He pondered which criteria to use. Anything on the system that involved:

  Confidence trick.

  Doorstep delivery.

  Impersonating a tradesman.

  Dummy package.

  White van.

  He reflected on the list. It seemed to cover the way the person was operating.

  He hit search and was surprised to immediately receive a notification. Seemed a DCI Ransford in the Serious Crimes Unit had put a flag on three of those criteria. There was an incident room number he was to immediately call.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  B
y the time the single-decker bus crawled past Dawson’s music shop, he was just able to make out the number on its front. 419. Was that the service that had been carrying the foul-mouthed one with her weirdly coloured hair? He thought it was.

  The traffic started moving forward again and the bus edged closer. Thirty metres away, it was able to separate itself from the flow of cars and enter the lane that led into Piccadilly Gardens.

  It was definitely one of the newer buses. Which meant wheelchair passengers were catered for. Something told him a significant event was about to occur. A tickle in his spine. He wondered if it had something to do with the electronic poster on the side of a nearby bus shelter. One of the images it kept flashing up was of an immaculate woman with a mobile phone poised before her smiling face. With every appearance, she stared directly at him with encouraging eyes.

  The bus now had a clear run to the turning in. He stood beside the pedestrian railings as the front of the vehicle swung past. He narrowed his eyes, trying to cut out all extraneous detail. The bus doors passed through his field of vision, then the first side window. He saw her. Her back was turned to him, but he knew it was her. Rounded shoulders. Wheelchair. It was her. Probably handing out more of those surveys.

  To reach the stand for 419, her bus would have to drive past the initial stops to the far side of the gardens, follow the U-bend and head back in his direction.

  Plenty of time to amble over. He could climb on board with all the other passengers then not let her out of his sight. She had to go home eventually. This felt good. This felt right. He tipped his head back and gave a grateful smile to the sky.

  ‘That’s bloody superb work, Sean.’

  Troughton leaned back in his chair and looked across towards DC Morris’ empty desk.

  ‘I don’t want to drop anyone in it, sir.’

  ‘You don’t?’ Troughton’s smile was grim. ‘Leave it with me. I have no such qualms.’

  Sean started to gather the printouts he’d brought over to the office manager’s workstation. ‘So what’s next?’

  ‘I need to call DCI Ransford and let him know. He should almost be in Hull by now. You’re on quite a roll with this, aren’t you?’

  Sean’s head filled with an image of his mum, leaning over the kitchen table, finger tracing Pamela Flood’s phone records. ‘One thing just seemed to lead to another.’

  ‘Very modest.’ Troughton checked his watch. ‘The tram footage is due in under an hour. I’d say a coffee break’s in order.’

  Sean hesitated. Last time he’d offered to get Troughton a drink, he’d been blanked. ‘I’ll nip down there. What are you having?’

  ‘Cheers. Americano, no sugar.’

  There was a line of people waiting for drinks. It would, he realized, be a good opportunity to call his mum. Tell her that the man she’d seen on the bus was out of the country, but on a ferry due to dock in Hull. A team was on its way to pick him up. A result wasn’t far off, now.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket and brought up their home number. She also deserved to know her hunch had been right: public transport had been the key. He could picture her alone in the house. She’d be beside herself, wondering where he’d gone, when he’d ring.

  He was about to make the call when another part of him said not to. Don’t do it. You’re only acting out of guilt. How will she ever get used to living on her own if you cave in and call her this quickly?

  He agonized for a few seconds on what was best. Then he returned his phone to his pocket and joined the queue. He’d phone her later.

  With a coffee in each hand, he had to push the door to the incident room open with a foot. Troughton immediately called him over. ‘Sorry to dump this on you, Sean, but a report’s just come in. An incident has partly tallied with a flag DCI Ransford put on the system. It needs a detective to go out and cover it off. Can you drive over to the Lightwater Academy and interview the principal? A woman called Katherine Harpham.’

  The bus idled at the stop in Piccadilly Gardens for less than five minutes before resuming its route. As it left the city centre and made its way along the Oldham Road, Janet toyed with her phone. Why hadn’t Sean called? Was he that furious with her? The possibility of him never ringing occurred. It caused her sense of being deserted to well up, threatening to engulf her. She forced herself to sit straighter. She had to be stronger than this; show that she wasn’t a sad old woman, deluding herself that she could still do the job of a proper police officer. Making herself useful: that was the way to put things right. Not ringing her son and begging forgiveness. She examined the new rows of faces filling the seats. Dutch Pete wasn’t among them.

  At the journey’s halfway point, she realized that she needed the toilet. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t factored it in. Normally, if she knew access to a toilet would be limited, she’d put a catheter in place before leaving the house. The container sat in a concealed space beneath the wheelchair’s seat. How, she said to herself, could you have been so forgetful? It’s this business with Sean. You’re not thinking straight.

  She glanced out the window and saw a B&M Bargains store. This, she realized, was the place where the poor woman who’d been killed had got on. Julie Roe. It was now all so clear in Janet’s memory. The woman’s aggressive behaviour and atrocious language. The foreign guy’s inability to get his words out. A stutter: of all the things to possess when faced with that woman.

  Janet could recall his look of impotent rage. The woman’s whiplash of a tongue that had left him belittled and humiliated. She saw once again the woman as she got off the bus before coming back to press her middle finger against the window. There’d been absolutely no need for that.

  The bus came to a halt and she looked hopefully to the side to see who was getting on. Just an elderly Asian man in cream-coloured baggy trousers and a grey jacket. The bus resumed its journey.

  After a few more stops, they neared the point that passed closest to Janet’s house. By alighting here, it would only take a few minutes to get home. The need to urinate had now grown uncomfortable.

  ‘Arthur?’

  He half turned his head.

  ‘I’m almost out of surveys.’

  ‘You need to get off?’

  ‘Yes please, at the next stop.’

  ‘Right you are. Will I see you later?’

  ‘When are you on until? Three, was it?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Maybe, then. I’ll have a spot of lunch and come back for just before two. A 419 comes past at ten to the hour, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It does, but it might not be the one I’m driving.’

  As the speed of the bus dropped, two other people also left their seats. One was a female in a Co-op uniform. Her handbag was open and Janet could see a stack of biscuits adorned by reduced stickers poking out. Getting first dibs on any deals: perk of the job.

  The other person was a man with glasses and peppery brown hair. As he waited for the bus to stop, she noticed he kept mumbling to himself. Little snatches of words, silently mouthed. The fingers of his left hand tapped against his thigh. Looks like you’re due another dose of your medication, Janet thought.

  Once the vehicle was stationary, the doors opened and the bus sank down so the floor was the same height as the kerb.

  ‘How’s that for you?’ asked Arthur.

  ‘Expertly done.’ By the time she’d manoeuvred her wheelchair off the vehicle and onto the pavement, the woman in the Co-op uniform was forty metres away. Janet looked left and right for the other passenger. No sign of him anywhere.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  As soon as the entrance for Lightwater Academy came into view, Sean realized he’d been there before. When he was following-up on possible CCTV sources for Pamela Flood. The woman had caught a bus from right outside the college and alighted a couple of miles down the road.

  He turned into the college car park, found a visitor’s space and made his way to the main entrance. The building design was imposing and intentio
nally so. Vertical banners with words like Resilience, Risk-taking and Respect hung behind huge plate-glass windows. Once inside the spacious foyer, he looked up to see a clouded ceiling of yet more glass. Flat-screen TVs dotted the white walls, each flashing up statistics or footage of students hard at work.

  Sean cast his mind back to his old school: a crappy comprehensive with rain-stained ceilings, cramped classrooms and long corridors with lino floors. In the summer, sections would bubble up and they would race to land with two feet on the juiciest lumps.

  This place was newly built and looked like standards were high.

  A side door opened, releasing a mass of squawking, swearing students. Half were hauling phones from pockets as they surged forward. A few glances went his way; mild curiosity to naked suspicion.

  ‘Slow down!’ one of the women behind the front desk snarled. ‘No phones in school hours!’

  They poured down a passageway, taking no notice. Sean smiled inwardly. And it had all seemed so impressive. ‘Detective Constable Blake,’ he said, placing his badge on the counter. ‘Katherine Harpham is expecting me.’

  The principal’s office was on the third floor. Nice views across the college’s playing fields. The room itself was messier than he’d expected. Too many folders and files lying about. He wondered if it would be a reflection of her personality. Taking a statement was always harder with less organized types.

  ‘Ms Harpham, thanks for making time to see me.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ As she stood, he saw what an unhealthy amount of weight she was carrying. Too much time in here, probably. Her face was rounded, the hairstyle a little bizarre. A big blob of hair on top of her head and trails of it hanging down over each ear. She smiled tentatively, eyes almost obscured by a heavy fringe.

  He wondered whether it would be appropriate to extend a hand. Her right arm showed no sign of lifting. ‘Your facilities look amazing. When was it all built?’

  ‘Thanks. Only five years ago. Central government money.’ She retook her seat, nodding at the empty one next to him.