by Ben Cheetham
His gaze rested on his daughter’s sleeping face. She was cuddling her favourite stuffed toy – a bear with a broken heart held together by a plaster on its chest. She’d kicked off her duvet. A black-and-white cat was curled up on her feet. Her pyjama bottoms were several inches too short. She’d grown so much recently. Her limbs were becoming gawkily long. Like a foal’s. She wasn’t far off ten-years-old. It wouldn’t be all that many years before puberty kicked in and her thoughts turned from teddy bears to boys. That didn’t overly bother him. He knew how to handle boys. He’d been one himself. What he didn’t know how to handle was the other stuff that girls went through – periods, hormones. Laura would be there to help out, but it wasn’t an aunt that Naomi needed. What she needed was a...
Jack’s gaze strayed from Naomi to a framed photo on her bedside table. In the photo, Naomi was snuggled up to a woman. Both of them were smiling. Both of them were heartbreakingly beautiful with coal black hair and piercing blue eyes. He felt a sharp twinge in his chest. Would he ever be able to look at Rebecca without feeling that sensation? He doubted it. There were some wounds time couldn’t heal.
He went down to the kitchen and made two mugs of tea. There was a knock at the front door. He answered it and Laura bustled into the house, shivering. “It’s freezing out there.”
She hung up her coat and kicked off her shoes. Jack handed her a mug. “Thanks,” she said, cupping her hands around its warmth.
They took their drinks into a living-room that was comfortably furnished if lacking in feminine touches. There were no ornaments on the shelves and mantelpiece, no pictures on the walls. The room had a clean, functional feel.
Yawning, Laura stretched out on the sofa. Her eyes were still puffy from sleep. “Yeah, I know, I’ve got a face like a smacked arse,” she said, noticing Jack looking at her. “You would too if you’d just come off a fortnight of night shifts.”
“Sorry,” Jack said again.
“Stop apologising. I’m happy to do this.” Her lips crooked into a half-smile. “And anyway, who needs sleep?”
“Not us apparently.” Jack glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to go.”
“How long do you think you’ll be?”
“No idea. The spare bed’s made up. If I don’t get back in time for breakfast–”
“I know the routine. Shower, cereal, school run.”
Laura wafted Jack out of the door. Taking a final swig of tea, he headed for his car. He typed his destination into the sat nav – Chorlton to M61 Junction 2, 10 miles, 16 mins. The journey took him south of the city centre, then north along the M60. At this time of night the roads would be quiet, mostly populated by lorries, taxis, emergency service vehicles and delivery vans. Of course, there would be other people on the roads too – night shift workers like Laura, holidaymakers heading to or from the airport, dads trying to lull crying babies to sleep, burglars, rapists, murderers...
Beyond the urban sprawl of Stretford, came the anonymity of the motorway. Concrete bridges, pylons, scrubby embankments, occasional tower blocks looming bleakly into the night sky. Jack cruised along with the radio turned down low. He didn’t think about what he was driving into – the whirlwind of pain and ruined lives that inevitably swirled around such cases. He thought about what was most important to him – Naomi. Was there enough milk for her cereal and bread for her sandwiches? Was there a clean school uniform in her wardrobe? Had she finished last night’s homework? Was parents’ evening today? Or was it tomorrow? Pyjamas. She needed new pyjamas.
Before he knew it, he was at the tangle of slip roads and overpass bridges that locals called spaghetti junction. A police car was parked where the M61 slip road merged with the M60. He pulled onto the hard shoulder, got out and showed his ID to a constable who pointed him to the north end of the slip road. Jack’s breath misted the air as he made his way along the hard shoulder. The road was hemmed in by grass embankments whose tops were lined with bushes and trees. A hundred and fifty metres or so up ahead, at roughly the mid-point of the slip road, was a cluster of police vehicles illuminated by halogen spotlights. Forensic, uniformed and plainclothes officers were doing their thing – taking photos, laying down evidence markers, removing evidence bags, rooting around with long sticks in the undergrowth.
Something crunched underfoot. Dropping to his haunches, Jack inspected the tarmac. It was scattered with particles of glass as if from a smashed window or headlight. He straightened and continued to the scene. He spotted Steve Platts chatting to Gary Crawley. Steve was pinching his mustachioed upper lip. A sure sign that something had got him puzzled. Gary was wearing the baggy-eyed, vacant expression of a man whose wife had recently given birth to twins.
Taking in Jack’s jeans and trainers, Steve gave a smiling shake of his head. “The DCI’s going to love that.”
Jack made a dismissive gesture. He couldn’t have cared less what Paul thought about his choice of outfit or pretty much anything else for that matter. “How are the twins?” he asked a yawning Gary.
“Noisy,” said Gary.
Steve gave a throaty smoker’s chuckle. “You do the crime, you serve the time.”
“It’ll get easier,” said Jack. “In about three years.”
“Three years,” groaned Gary. “I’m not sure I can survive three more months of sleepless nights and shitty nappies. My brain’s turning to mush.”
“Well here’s a job that doesn’t require any thought. I stepped on broken glass back there.” Jack pointed to the spot. “Get someone to check it out.”
As Gary slouched off to collar a forensic officer, Steve said, “You’ve got to feel sorry for him.”
Jack didn’t feel sorry for Gary. The young DS was knackered. But so what? Rather that than climb into bed every night with nothing to keep you company but memories. No, not only memories. There was also the nagging fear that you might never fall in love again. There was a time when Jack hadn’t been able to bear the thought of being with anyone other than Rebecca. But that time had passed. It was almost two years since she’d died. Increasingly, he found his thoughts turning to the future. He wasn’t ready to resign himself to a life of sleeping alone. He ached for the feel of skin on skin, the smell of hair laced with shampoo and sweat, the soft sound of someone breathing beside him. But more than anything, he wanted to feel that sense of being at peace with the world that waking up with Rebecca had once given him.
“Mind you, I wouldn’t mind a bit of what he’s got,” Steve added in a tone that suggested he too wasn’t particularly enjoying the single life. He was staring down the barrel of his fifties with a failed marriage and a couple of kids he rarely saw. His career had stalled at DI, whilst younger officers like Paul leapfrogged over him.
A trace of concern entered Jack’s expression. On first impressions, Steve came across as a sexist, misogynistic dinosaur. It was an image he seemed happy to cultivate. But Jack had seen another side to him. Once you won his trust, there was no one more loyal. And loyalty was hard to come by these days. “Aren’t you getting a bit long in the tooth to be a dad again?”
“Christ yes. I’d rather pull my teeth out with pliers than have more kids,” Steve replied with a shudder. “I was talking about Gary’s wife. Have you seen her?” He cupped his hands in front of his chest. “Tits to die for.”
Jack shook his head. “You had me worried for a second there.”
“Why? Did you think I was going soft or something?”
“Or something. Right, shall we get down to business?”
“The DCI wants us to head over to Clifton. Knock on doors. Find out if anyone knows who the injured woman is.”
“Have we got a photo?”
“Nope. They took her straight into surgery. We haven’t even got a proper description. Apparently she was so covered in blood and dirt that the lads who picked her up could only see her eyes.”
“So what have we got?”
Steve consulted his notepad. “White. We think. Shoulder length reddish hair. Brown e
yes. Five four or so. 160 to 170 pounds. Twenty to forty-years-old.”
“So she’s overweight.”
“Yes... No...” Steve pulled at his moustache again. “We’ll get to that in a bit. First I’ll give you the grand tour. So these two young lads are driving back from a night out in Bolton and they see a woman lying in the road.” He pointed to a pair of skid marks that swerved towards the hard shoulder. “They pull over sharpish and go to her aid. The woman’s in a bad way. She’s naked from the waist down. Bleeding from the head and between her legs. They carry her to the car. Then they see a figure up there.” He pointed to the tree-lined top of the embankment.
“Description?”
Steve shook his head. “It was too dark. All I’ve got is that the figure looked big.”
“So most likely a man.”
“Yeah, but these lads were scared shitless. You know how the mind inflates things. The DCI’s with them. We should have more to go on soon. Anyway, the lads drive our mystery woman to North Manchester General and that’s the end of their part in the story.”
“As long as their alibi checks out.”
“Can’t see why it wouldn’t. They’re hardly likely to have shot her in the head then taken her to hospital.”
Jack spread his hands. “Stranger things have happened. Where are the nearest traffic cameras?”
Steve pointed to where the slip road curved away from the M61’s southbound carriageway. “About two hundred metres away. We’re in a blind spot. Fifty metres back and we’d have it all on camera.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Jack commented wryly.
He followed Steve to the embankment. Their route was punctuated by numbered little yellow cones. Beside each cone were splotches of blood and other less easily identified substances. Beyond the edge of the road, an approach path of metal stepping-stone plates led up the embankment. There were more cones nestled amongst the grass and weeds. “From the blood and the flattening of the grass, we think she was crawling towards the road at this point,” said Steve, turning on a torch. There was a short space of level ground, then another wooded slope. The cones abruptly became much more spread out.
“This must have been where her legs gave out,” said Steve.
The slope plateaued again. They made their way through another fifty or so metres of trees before emerging into a small floodlit clearing cordoned off by plastic tape. Forensic officers were painstakingly sifting through the carpet of leaves and placing anything of interest on white sheets, ready to be logged and bagged. One officer was standing in a waist-deep hole with piles of soil and turves scattered around it. The steel plates led to its edge. A couple of metres from the hole there was a cluster of plastic cones. The leaves and grass thereabouts were discoloured with blood and a thick, congealing rusty-brown slime.
“Someone lost a lot of blood here,” observed Jack. “Looks like there’s some kind of discharge mixed in with it.”
“Oh yeah, there’s definitely something mixed in with it.” Steve’s eyes slide across to the hole. Once more his hand went to his moustache.
Whatever the ‘something’ was it had clearly bothered Steve. And nothing much bothered Steve. Jack steeled himself for an unpleasant sight as they approached the hole. The white-suited figure in it turned to them. Jack recognised the ever-serious eyes of senior pathologist Kim Leven.
He gave her a smile and a nod. The smile disappeared as he saw what lurked in the bottom of the hole. It looked like an alien lifeform – a wrinkled, translucent grey membrane encased a pillow of red meat. A yellowish tube, spiralled like pasta, was attached to the centre of the... thing. “What is that?”
“A placenta,” said Kim, pulling down her dust-mask.
Jack’s eyebrows lifted in realisation. “The victim gave birth here?”
“It certainly appears that way.”
“So was she sexually assaulted?”
“We thought so at first,” put in Steve. “But then we found that thing. I’m surprised you didn’t know what it is. When my ex-wife gave birth to our first, the afterbirth came out hot on Dillon’s heels.” He wrinkled his nose. “Things were never quite the same in the bedroom department after that.”
“I was too busy looking at Naomi to see what came out after her.” Jack’s reply led him to the obvious question. “Where’s the baby?”
Steve shrugged. “Poor little bugger. What a way to come into the world.”
“These were beside the placenta,” said Kim, pointing to an evidence bag containing a bundle of dirty multicoloured material. “They’re loose-fitting trousers. The sort of thing a pregnant woman might wear.”
Jack stooped for a closer look at the trousers. “They look like tie-dye.”
“That’s because they are.”
“Anything else?”
Kim pointed to more cones alongside the hole. “We’ve found several footprints. They appear to have been made by two pairs of shoes. Size five – we think those are the victim’s – and size twelve.”
“Size twelve. That backs up what the lads said about seeing a big figure.” Jack’s gaze circumnavigated the clearing. “So the woman gives birth, then someone – possibly this big figure – shoots her in the head and dumps her in this… I think we can safely call it a grave. Any idea when the grave was dug?”
“Some of the soil overlays the blood stains,” said Kim.
“So it was dug after the shooting,” said Jack. “Which means whoever did this probably hadn’t planned it.”
“But they did have a spade.” Kim ran a hand down the sheer, cleanly sliced walls of the grave.
“OK, so they anticipated that they’d need to dig a grave, but not necessarily at this spot. I mean, you don’t shoot someone in the head then hang around to dig a grave – unless you’re inexperienced.”
“How many people have experience of delivering babies and shooting new mums in the head?” Steve asked dryly. “It’s sort of impressive when you think about it. It would take a very special type of scumbag to combine those skills.”
The pathologist raised a not-entirely approving eyebrow at the darkly humorous observation. Jack merely nodded. He knew Steve’s obnoxiousness was just a self-defence mechanism. Everyone had their own way of dealing with the shit the job flung at them. More than a few found solace in a bottle. Others kept their work and home life strictly separate. Steve dealt with it by acting like an arsehole.
Jack frowned. “Something about this doesn’t make sense. Let’s assume it went down like I said. She gives birth. She’s shot. She lies unconscious while the big figure digs the grave. She’s dumped into the grave along with her trousers and the placenta. Then what? She regains consciousness, climbs out of the grave, runs away, collapses and crawls to the road. Why didn’t the big figure catch up with her? For that matter, why didn’t they just smack her on the head when she came around? She’s just given birth. She’s lost a ton of blood. She’s most likely brain-damaged. And yet she’s able to escape. And then there’s what happened on the road. The big figure just stands there watching. He or she doesn’t try to stop the lads from driving away with the victim.” Jack glanced enquiringly at Kim. “Have you recovered a bullet?”
“We’ve dug around,” she replied. “So far nothing.”
“So she could have been shot elsewhere?”
“Yes, but I don’t think that was the case. Not considering the volume of blood. It’s more likely the bullet is lodged in her skull.”
“Is that possible if she was shot at close range?”
“It’s unlikely, but possible. It depends on the calibre and velocity of the bullet, the angle at which she was shot, whether the bullet struck something else first and ricocheted into her skull. Etc, etc.”
“Why didn’t the big figure use the gun to at least scare the lads?” queried Jack. “And why was the woman so dirty?”
“Maybe the big figure starts burying her and that’s what brings her around,” offered Steve.
“She was so d
irty the lads could only see her eyes. You don’t get like that from a few spadefuls of soil.”
“You do if you’re already soaked with sweat, blood and Christ knows what else.”
Jack made an unconvinced sound. “There’s something else to consider. Where was the baby when all this was going on? The big figure didn’t have it at the road. A newborn would have been bawling its lungs out.”
The three of them were silent for an extended moment. Jack could see in his colleagues’ eyes that they were thinking the same thing as him – Unless it was dead.
A drop of rain hit Jack’s face. Kim looked skyward, muttering, “Bloody hell. The forecast didn’t mention rain.” She gestured to her white-suited colleagues. “We need a tent. Rapido!”
To the north of the clearing, a grassy bank sloped up into densely clustered trees. “Can I borrow your torch?” asked Jack. Steve passed it to him. They ducked under the plastic tape and Jack slowly swept the torch beam over the ground as they ascended the slope. Rain was pattering on the golden autumnal canopy.
