The Girl in the Green Dress

by Cath Staincliffe

  ‘To date, three separate DNA profiles have been identified at the scene. Profile one, consisting of blood on the ground, and blood and fingerprints on the victim’s phone, has led us to a full match on the database.’ There was a stir of excitement at this and, beside her, Jade gave a little jump in her seat and muttered, ‘Yes!’

  Donna smiled. She pulled up the details on the projection screen. ‘The prints match those of Mahmoud Jamal Bishaar, a Somali national and failed asylum-seeker, missing since July 2015, when he absconded after the failure of his appeal. More than likely this individual is our nine-nine-nine caller. We will be actively looking for Bishaar. Given he fled the scene and is here illegally, it’s highly doubtful he’ll come forward voluntarily.’

  There were nods and murmurs of assent.

  ‘We’ll circulate his description to the force but at this stage I’m not releasing his details to the public. If he’s still in the area, a move like that could spook him and send him further afield.’

  Martin scoffed. ‘He’ll already be long gone.’

  ‘How?’ Jade said. ‘He’s illegal, he’s no cash.’

  ‘That doesn’t stop them,’ Martin said. ‘Jump on a lorry.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Donna interrupted them, ‘I’d like the CCTV team to see if we can find Bishaar on camera, alone or with others.’

  She looked back at her summary. ‘Profile two has been drawn from saliva on the victim’s face, and skin under the victim’s fingernails, with further traces of DNA material on the upper arms and the clothing. We know it’s a male but there is no match on our database.’ In effect the person had no prior record of criminal activity. ‘There were traces of cocaine and alcohol in the saliva.

  ‘Profile three, also male, was retrieved from short red hairs on the victim’s clothing and from skin cells at the scene. This individual is not on our database either. We also have traces of fibres on both the victim and at the scene, and these are undergoing further testing. And we have partial footwear impressions from three different shoes.’

  ‘Then Bishaar could have been in on the attack,’ Jade put in.

  ‘Anything is possible,’ Donna said, aware it sounded like a mantra. But she didn’t want anyone getting fixated on a particular hunch or hypothesis to the detriment of other scenarios. Jade seemed keen to finger Bishaar and Donna made a mental note to keep an eye on that, make sure the young DC didn’t start trying to make the evidence fit her pet theory.

  ‘Any progress with potential suspects on CCTV?’ she asked Martin.

  ‘Barely scratched the surface. The short hair of one individual that you’ve outlined should help narrow potential sightings down but it’s still going to be a long, hard slog with no further description of them.’

  The public had a false impression of working with CCTV, imagining it took a matter of hours to isolate footage of suspects, when it was often weeks or even months. The recordings were frequently grainy, the quality of the images affected by factors like rain and light or the lack of it. Distance, camera angle, the number of people in the area, the wearing of caps and hoods, all influenced whether or not you could pick out an individual, whether you could see their face, if it was in focus, the features clear enough to read, if it was anything more than a blurred disc.

  ‘If they kicked and beat her like that, they’d have had blood on them,’ Jade said.

  ‘They would,’ Donna agreed. ‘Reported sightings of Allie are being checked up on and eliminated where they contradict the hard facts. We’ve only five minutes between the footage of her leaving Mansion’s House and the nine-nine-nine call. GPS coordinates confirm that the call was made from Swing Gate Fold itself. So in five minutes she’s not going far. It’s most likely she went directly down New Mill Street to Swing Gate Fold. We just don’t know why.’

  ‘We know she was looking for Bets,’ Jade said, ‘so she’d go down to the side door recess, expecting her to be smoking there. That was when something happened.’

  There was a moment’s quiet, everyone imagining what that ‘something’ had been.

  Donna checked her notes. ‘The pathologist tells us our victim had consumed cannabis and alcohol but not in amounts likely to seriously impair her faculties.’ She surveyed the team. ‘Early days yet but we’ve made a good start. Thank you all, and let’s get to work.’

  Jade

  The witness, a young woman with pink and blonde hair and several nose-rings, had been asked to come into the station and now sat with Jade and the boss in a small meeting room.

  They’d seen a transcript of her call to the investigation but now they needed to hear from her at first hand and, as long as she wasn’t a time-waster, get a written statement.

  Before they went in the boss suggested Jade do the interview while she take notes. Jade felt her skin tighten. Yes! But that also meant the boss would be observing her, assessing her, so she had to get it right. Open-ended questions, no leading, no pressure. A general outline, then the details and clarification when needed. And all the formalities done in the right order to make sure it was legally sound.

  The witness confirmed her name, Louise Hill, her date of birth and address.

  ‘You rang the incident line last night. Can you tell us what you’d seen?’ Jade said.

  ‘Yeah, two lads on Deansgate.’ She coughed. ‘They were walking quickly, then one stops and he looks upset . . . Well, I think he was.’ She stopped, as if Jade might confirm her opinion.

  Jade just said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘Then the other one – he was arguing with him. He grabbed him and made him walk on. I think that’s why I remember it – because I thought there might be some bother.’

  She was nervous, fiddling with her hair and clearing her throat so often Jade wished she could give her a Fisherman’s Friend or something.

  ‘What made you think that?’ Jade said.

  ‘Just the vibe between them at first. And then they hailed a cab and it pulled in and the one who was arguing, I could see these marks on his sleeve . . . like blood . . . Well, it could have been . . . That’s what I thought. So, the cab pulled in and they got in.’

  That was the bare bones of it. Next Jade walked her through each step of the account, pinning down facts and figures. The time, the direction she was coming from, the distance between her and the lads on the opposite side of the road. With the help of a street-view application, she got Louise to point out where she had been when she saw the men and where they’d picked up the taxi. A black cab.

  Next came the work on identification of the two suspects. Age, race, height, build, hair, clothing. ‘I’m sorry,’ Louise said eventually. ‘I’m just rubbish with faces. That’s all I know.’

  Jade summed it up: ‘So they were both white and the first man, the one who seemed upset, he was about six foot tall, average build, shortish light-coloured hair. And you can’t recall his clothes.’

  ‘Right.’ She gave a hacking cough.

  ‘The other man, the one who was arguing and making the first man walk on, he was average height, average build. You don’t know what colour hair.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘He wore a light-coloured, long-sleeved shirt, which had dark stains on the sleeve. Can you remember anything else? Shoes or trainers on either of them?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Any tattoos or scars?’ Jade said.

  ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t think . . . Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Was either of them smoking?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looked like she was going to cry.

  ‘Was either of them carrying anything?’

  She shook her head.

  Before Jade could continue, the boss barged in: ‘Thank you, Louise, that’s very helpful. DC Bradshaw will type this up for you to check and sign. If you do remember anything else, anything at all, please get in touch with her directly. One thing I’d like to ask is whether you’d be willing to meet with one of our artists. They work on photo-fit sketch
es in cases like this and they’re very experienced in helping witnesses build a clearer picture of what they’ve seen. Would you be happy to give it a go?’ She’d had to come steamrolling in. So much for leaving it all to Jade.

  ‘Yes. I’m not sure I’ll be any good, though.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the boss said. ‘If you don’t mind waiting here for a few minutes we’ll find someone to work on that with you while your statement’s prepared. And thanks again for coming in.’

  ‘Thanks,’ the witness said.

  They didn’t speak on the way upstairs, not even a ‘nicely handled’ or a ‘well done’ from the boss, until Jade said, ‘I’ll get this written up, then. Do you want me to talk to the artist?’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ the boss said. ‘A word in my office first.’

  Oh, crap.

  Once they were in there, the boss took her time getting comfy behind her desk.

  Like school. The head’s office. Time and again.

  ‘OK. The witness interview. Anything you’d change?’

  The witness. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘She was a bit anxious, wasn’t she?’ the boss said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I didn’t see you doing anything to reassure her. You didn’t thank her, not once. You didn’t even thank her for coming in. You didn’t tell her she was doing well. You didn’t say anything positive for the duration of the interview.’

  ‘Well, she wasn’t exactly on the ball,’ Jade said.

  ‘You don’t know that.’ The boss was scowling. It made deep grooves above her nose, chiselled deep lines either side of her mouth. ‘You can’t possibly know that. Any of those small pieces of information, the light-coloured shirt with blood on it, the different build of the two men, their location, the fact one had short hair when we already have short red hair recovered from our crime scene. There’s a wealth of material there. Any one of those items could be gold dust. But even if there had been nothing, a half-baked story with no useful detail, we should still treat every witness with respect, appreciation and gratitude.’

  ‘Fine,’ Jade said. She wanted to take the fancy snow-globe paperweight with its photo of gap-toothed children inside and smash it over the DI’s head.

  ‘You don’t have to get all touchy-feely, Jade. It’s simply a matter of making the person feel that what they’re doing is valued and valuable. Because it is. That’s how we get the best results. OK?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ The boss was staring at her: she expected more. She could whistle for it.

  Then Jade imagined her writing this up, some management-speak about failure to progress in the area of interpersonal skills, so she swallowed her resentment and added, ‘Sorry, boss. I’ll remember that next time. It makes sense.’

  That worked: she was released. She escaped to the toilet and swallowed a couple more tablets. Practised mouthing thank you, thanks, thank you so much and smiling at the mirror, then leant closer and told her reflection to just fuck the fuck off.

  Martin

  Martin spent the day tracing the taxi driver who had picked up the two men from Deansgate. With it being a black cab, there was a central booking office where all the records were kept. But because they’d hired the taxi on-street it would take longer to identify which driver had caught the fare.

  When he spoke about it with one of the operators, she said, ‘It might be quickest if I circulate a notice rather than go through the log. I can ask anyone who was covering Deansgate at that time to call me. Could be teatime before we hear, if it’s someone on nights, still in bed.’

  ‘Let’s try it,’ Martin said. ‘You’ve got my number.’

  ‘I have. You any photo-fits?’ she said.

  ‘No.’ They had tried to get something from the witness Donna and Jade had interviewed but there was so little distinction between the two faces that the boss had decided it was better to wait, in the hope they might get something stronger from somebody else. A misleading sketch could do more harm than good, steering people who had seen the suspects to distrust their memories because they didn’t look anything like the police impression.

  Martin was hoping the cab would have CCTV fitted: some of them did now, and there was a move under way at the city council to extend it to all black cabs.

  He was eating a late lunch when he got word back with details of the cab driver, currently at home up in Moston. Martin arranged to meet the man straight away. He informed the boss and drove north out of the city centre.

  The cabbie, Feroz Hassan, was British Asian, a middle-aged man, with a bigger pot-belly than Martin’s, ’tache and huge eyebrows. The house was smart, new-build detached. A log-burning stove sat in the fireplace, a huge mirror above it, and on one wall a professional photograph of Hassan with his wife and four kids. None of the clutter you usually got in family homes. Maybe the kids weren’t allowed in the living room.

  Martin declined the offer of tea and, once he’d explained their interest in the passengers picked up on Deansgate, Hassan said, ‘I thought there was something off. You think they did it?’

  ‘We’re just making inquiries at the moment. Why do you say there was something off?’

  ‘The atmosphere – you know? Not talking to each other, like they’d fallen out. I thought perhaps they’d been in a fight. One of them had blood on his shirt.’

  Martin nodded. Nice one. Hassan had seen blood, same as the other witness.

  ‘I wouldn’t have picked them up if I’d noticed that,’ Hassan went on. ‘I said to them, “Had some bother?” He said he’d had a nosebleed.’

  ‘Where did you take them?’ Martin said.

  ‘Chester Road, outside the tram station.’

  Martin had been hoping for a residential address. ‘Did they both get out there?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Have you got a camera in the cab?’

  ‘No. They reckon it’ll improve security but would you want every hour of your working day on record?’ His eyebrows sky high in disgust.

  Martin grunted. ‘They’re bringing in body-cams for us too, frontline officers.’ He wouldn’t be expected to wear one, thank God. ‘Can you describe the passengers?’

  Hassan rubbed his moustache with a fingertip, obviously thinking. ‘The one who talked, who gave me the destination, he was the one who had blood on his shirt. He’d got dark hair, clean-shaven – they both were clean-shaven. It’s hard to tell age but I’d put them at around twenty or so.’

  ‘Can you describe the other guy?’

  ‘Ginger, crewcut, freckles. Bit podgier. More than that I can’t tell you.’ The hair fitted but their earlier witness had said the short-haired man was taller and average build. Still, discrepancies were par for the course with eyewitnesses. It was a bloody miracle anyone ever got ID’d and taken to court.

  ‘Anything about their faces, features?’ Martin said.

  ‘No. I only remember that much because I thought they might be trouble.’

  Martin would run it past the boss but he couldn’t see it was worth putting Hassan in with a sketch artist.

  ‘How did they pay?’ Martin said.

  ‘Cash.’ So, no credit-card trail to follow.

  ‘Where’s the car now?’ Martin said.

  ‘John’s got it. We share the licence.’

  ‘We need to get in touch, examine the vehicle,’ Martin said.

  ‘Well, how long’s that going to take?’ Hassan objected, clearly worried about his livelihood.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you.’

  Hassan gave a dramatic sigh.

  ‘This is a murder investigation . . .’ Martin said.

  Hassan dropped the injured act. ‘Fair enough.’ He rang John, who was doing a run from the airport. ‘Where do you want him?’

  Martin took the phone and gave John the address of the garage the police used for forensic vehicle examinations. ‘I’ll meet you there, sort out the paperwork.’

  ‘When did you last clean the inside?’ Martin said to
Hassan.

  ‘I swept it out Saturday morning before John picked it up. Wiped the seats down. Nothing worse than starting work in a dirty car or having to clean up after the other fellow’s shift. We have it valeted every month, unless someone’s been sick, so it’s not due for another couple of weeks.’

  Promising, very promising.

  * * *

  Martin’s day got even better when an initial examination of the cab’s passenger area, using luminol, showed blood traces on the carpet, traces that had not been visible to the naked eye. Martin watched the blue light, the chemical reaction and felt a punch of satisfaction. He knew he had to bide his time: this pair might not have had anything to do with Allie Kennaway’s murder. Sometimes it turned out like that – suspects faded away as evidence eliminated them. But so far it was looking pretty damn sweet.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jade

  Jade didn’t go home at the end of the day but instead began a trawl of the arches and back alleys around the canals where some of the city’s homeless slept.

  She picked her way between rotting rubbish and the remains of campfires, stopping to ask people nursing bottles of booze or puffing away on whatever they could get their hands on, weed or baccy, if they’d seen DD. No one spotted her for a cop: her brown skin and leather jacket served as camouflage. All she got was vacant stares, shakes of the head and a smattering of fuck-offs until one guy, Polish at a guess, said, ‘You looking to buy?’

  ‘Only from DD. You know where he’s dossing?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  ‘You asking me for money?’

  ‘Maybe.’ His fingers were bitten raw, his lips scabby. The stink of skunk hung round him.

  Jade turned away. ‘We’ll see what DD says about that, then.’

  ‘Wait,’ the bloke called after her. ‘No need to be nasty. He’s down the river, Chapel Street, near the old flyover.’

  At the river basin, a horrible stench of burning plastic hit Jade’s throat. It was coming from a fire in an old oil drum. Some of these rough sleepers had cheap tents, the sort discarded by festival-goers, and outside the largest she spotted DD. A couple of lads with him, money changing hands.