“Payback murder?” Bowen stated. “Someone’s pissed off that she got away with it and decided to fix the problem.”
Whitton shrugged. “Maybe, not ruling anything out right now.”
A phone rang in the background, the noise barely audible now above the chatter of ideas and facts. Colleen shouted out, “Guv, phone for you.”
Whitton nodded. “I’ll be right back. Jeff, I want an update on CCTV from you, okay?”
“Sure.” He smiled as she turned and walked into her office. Shutting the door behind her, she picked up the phone and pressed the button that would switch the call.
“DI Whitton.”
“Hello Sophie.” Whitton recognised the voice as that of DS Jackie O’Neil from Stratham. The small town was probably 30 miles away. “How are you?”
“Busy,” she answered quickly. She didn’t have time for a social call, especially not from Jackie.
“Still as intense, I always did find that quite sexy.” She chuckled, eluding to their brief relationship years ago.
“Look, I don’t want to be rude, but I am probably going to be. I don’t have time for this. A woman was murdered last week.”
Jackie sighed. “Yes, I heard about that. That’s actually why I am calling.”
“Go on.”
“Oh, now you’re interested.” She started to laugh again and caught herself. “You’d probably be best off coming here, and I can give you all the details.”
“Jackie, I really don’t…”
“Constance Martin, ring any bells yet?”
Whitton sat up straight in her chair and picked up a pen. “She was my victim’s client, killed herself.”
“Yes, she did. I remember Anita from our investigation. That’s what piqued my interest. However, the man whose body was left on Connie’s grave last year, didn’t kill himself.”
“I’m on my way.” She slammed the phone down and shouted for Dale. When he arrived at her door, she was already pulling on her jacket.
“That was Jackie O’Neil.”
DS Saint groaned. “Jackie! Oh no.”
“We need to go to Stratham; O’Neil’s got another one. Find out everything you can about Constance Martin.”
~Grave~
Stratham Nick was much like Woodington, only it was smaller. Stratham wasn’t that big a town. The population of Woodington was just over one hundred thousand at the last census. In Stratham it was barely hitting fifty-five thousand. But it was considered the better area to live in, and so it had a police station and a small force to keep all of those big houses safe. O’Neil had transferred a few years back, and most people were grateful, especially Whitton.
Holding up her warrant card, Whitton asked the desk sergeant for DS O’Neil. She listened as the uniformed officer called up to the incident room and informed someone that DI Whitton was here to see DS O’Neil. She checked her watch and raised an eyebrow at Saint. They both knew O’Neil would keep them waiting.
Twelve minutes. It was quicker than Whitton thought it would be. Dale grinned at her as O’Neil strolled casually into the room. He too had been checking the time.
“Sophie.” She smiled, a warm, hopeful smile. Then she saw Dale out of the corner of her eye and knew this was business only. “DS Saint.” She inclined her head at him and then turned her attention back to Whitton. The smile was now gone, replaced with an air of professionalism and indifference.
They were led up a narrow flight of stairs, along a corridor, and then through two rooms until they finally came to a small office. Jackie O’Neil flung herself into a desk chair and rifled through some paperwork and files lying haphazardly on the top tray. Whitton took the chair opposite and placed her phone down on the desktop.
“So, tell me about Constance. We only know the name from a conversation with one of Anita’s colleagues.”
“We didn’t get too far with it. Constance made an allegation about a George Herring. Nobody wanted to talk, not on the record anyway. It had been 25 years for most of his victims, but we hoped at least one would corroborate Connie’s story …” She lifted file after file until she found one and pulled it forward. “Unfortunately, nobody would come forward and we had to let it drop. We all knew the old fucker was guilty. Should have seen Connie, a nervous wreck. Life had thrown nothing but shit at her, and it all started because of him.”
“There’s nothing on the system about a Constance Martin…Dale searched all records before we left.” Whitton looked up from her notes, dark eyes intense as she stared across the desk.
“Well there wouldn’t be, that wasn’t her legal name. She said she had changed it by deed poll; I had no need to think she was lying. But anyway, she didn’t, so she’s recorded as Martin Tillerson by her arsehole family who didn’t recognise her as female,” O’Neil said, a little protectively.
“Okay, so Constance was transgender?”
Jackie nodded. “Yep, she was halfway through her transition when her counselling sessions brought up her past. After a lot of thought, she decided to report it. That’s where she met Anita.”
“What happened to Herring?”
“Found with a noose around his neck on Constance’s grave. Six months ago.”
“Any leads?”
O’Neil shook her head. “Nothing, we put it down to a friend maybe who decided to take the law into their own hands, but with no evidence it’s just sat there in the cold case pile. Until I read through about your case – it’s too damn similar to not be linked.”
Chapter Fourteen
The office was quiet, as much as it could be with the continuous tap tap of keyboards and telephones ringing on unoccupied desks. It was stifling. There had been an argument earlier about whether it was cooler with the window open or closed. It had almost got to the point of fisticuffs when Whitton came into the office and shouted at them to pack it in. The fan wasn’t touching it.
Now, they were coming up with every excuse to be out of the office. Patrol cars had never been more popular with the detectives.
Whitton yawned as she read for the fifth time that statistically, Woodington was the town with the smallest number of homeless. Whoever had come up with these numbers clearly didn’t walk the streets at night counting the poor sods bunking down in any spot they could find that might be safe enough, warm enough, and dry. Constance Martin would certainly disagree if she were still alive.
The knock on the closed door jolted her from her thoughts. “Come in,” she said, looking up at the door and closing the folder in front of her. She was still getting used to having her own office. She hadn’t wanted it, but there had been a re-jig of space while she had been off work after the Doll Maker case, and now she was in here.
“Sorry, guv. There’s a Gina Ashcroft downstairs, wants to talk to, and I quote, ‘the fucker in charge of Darren Barton.’” Colleen O’Leary smirked at her. “And…”
“Seeing as that fucker would be me…” Whitton smiled. “Okay, I’ll be down in a minute. Stick her in an interview room.”
She flicked through the pile of files stacked neatly on the corner of her desk. There were far too many of them. All were filled with gory details on some poor sod’s early demise. Pulling out the file that was labelled Darren Barton, she skimmed through the information it held, which wasn’t much. The medical report stated the facts. Witness reports where varied and contradictory. Darren started a fight; Darren didn’t start the fight. It was three blokes, two blokes, a gang of people. All white, two black. It was all useless information, and none of it had provided a lead worth following up.
Jeff Branson had spent an entire afternoon going through CCTV. What was available was dark and grainy. Too many people were in the way to see a clear image of the actual stabbing, but they were following a few people around town via the CCTV system.
She slid the pages together and shuffled them into a tidy pile, stuffing them back into the cream-coloured folder. Pushing her chair back, she stood, shoved the file under her arm, and prepared herself
for Gina Ashcroft.
~Grave~
Whitton opened the door to Interview Room 4 and found an irate Gina Ashcroft, red-faced and screaming at PC Carol Gardner. In an instant the woman turned her venom on Whitton.
“My Darren is dead and nobody is doing a fucking thing about it!”
Ignoring her, Whitton acknowledged Gardner with a nod. She closed the door and walked the three steps to the table. The onslaught of swear words and accusations continued as Whitton placed the file down on the table. “Take a seat, please,” she demanded calmly before looking up to stare down the glare she was receiving.
Gina stood staring, all her weight on her left foot, hand on hip. “Who are you?” Her face contorted as she continued to chew on gum while speaking, chubby cheeks bulging with contempt.
Whitton repeated her request. “Sit down.” She then pulled her own chair out and took a seat. Indignantly, the woman dragged the chair towards her, scraping the legs against the floor, before flopping into it with an audible huff. Whitton let her sit there in silence while she opened the folder and made a show of reading through it.
“Right, Ms. Ashcroft?” She looked up and waited for the woman to acknowledge her. She nodded, lips pursed together in an angry thin line. “My name is Detective Inspector Sophie Whitton. I am the lead investigator into Darren’s death.”
“Murder, he was murdered!” Gina screamed, launching herself forward in her seat. Spittle cascaded from her lips.
Whitton didn’t flinch. This wasn’t the first person to sit opposite her and try to intimidate her. Far from it, in fact; the tables were usually turned pretty quickly. “That may well turn out to be the case. Right now, I am only interested in the evidence, and we are currently in the early stages of gathering it.”
“It’s been nearly a week!” Gina shrieked again. Her face was flushed, angry and red. She looked bloated, like she had spent the week crying. Whitton’s sympathy raised a notch.
Whitton sighed. “And we have been very active in seeking out witnesses. As you can see here.” She held up the file and showed her. “Unfortunately, nobody has yet corroborated anybody else. So, we are looking into every possible lead we get, but unless we find something…”
“You’ll just forget him. Chuck him on the cold case pile. He’s just some Scrote from the estates, right? Nobody gives a fuck what happened to him.” Gina thrust a chubby finger in Whitton’s direction. “Especially a stuck-up cow like you, think you’re better than us just cos you’ve got a badge.”
Whitton’s dark eyes rested on her as she spoke. “I can assure you Ms. Ashcroft, that if the evidence is there, my colleagues will find it and I will bring those at fault to justice.”
Gina sat back in her seat and folded her arms across her stomach defiantly. “Yeah, we will see.”
Chapter Fifteen
Barnard’s office door was open when Whitton arrived for an unscheduled meeting. Gina Ashcroft’s impromptu visit had put Darren Barton in her mind, and it was interfering with her thought process over the Grave Deaths.
Knocking gently, she pushed the heavy door open and stepped inside. “Doc, do you have…?”
Standing in the middle of the room was a short bespectacled man, his chunky fingers wrapped around a file that was open as he perused the information.
“Can I help you, Detective Inspector?” Dr. Clive Perkins was a stuffy pain in the arse, as far as Whitton and her team were concerned. He was still considered new to Woodington, even though it had been almost two years, and so far, he hadn’t endeared himself to many. He cut corners and guessed too often for her liking. She dealt in facts, and so did Barnard; that was why their conviction rates were some of the highest in the county. She rarely had to work with Perkins, thankfully. Barnard seemed to keep him on a short leash dealing with accidents and natural deaths mainly, for which Whitton was eternally grateful.
“Uh, I was hoping to speak with Doctor Barnard.” She looked around the empty room. “Is he busy?”
He closed the file and placed it back down on the desk, where he obviously had found it. “I do believe that he is at a scene. Elderly gentleman, probably died of natural causes, but one can never be too sure nowadays, can we?” He was also a bit of a letch and wasn’t shy about it. “Anything I can help you with?” He leered.
“Probably not,” she muttered. “I just wanted to check there was nothing new on the Barton case?”
“Let me see, that’s the chap who was stabbed at the pub last weekend?”
She nodded. “Yep. Seems cut and dried, but with no hard evidence there probably isn’t too much we can do about getting a conviction. I was hoping something might have come up with the clothing?”
He smiled up at her. “Why don’t we go and have a look then?” He walked past her towards the door. “Follow me.” His eyes travelled the length of her, stopping briefly at the gap where her shirt was unbuttoned.
She rolled her eyes and cricked the muscle in her neck before grabbing the door as it shut and following the man as he all but ran down the hall to his own office, a room that couldn’t be any more different from Barnard’s. His furniture was modern, the kind you found in Ikea, not antiques like Barnard’s. “Take a seat, I just need to…” He pressed a few keys on the computer. “Ah, there we go. Darren Barton?”
“Yes, stabbing.”
He nodded, pulling out a different pair of spectacles that probably cost more than Whitton spent on a months’ worth of food shopping. “There were a few strands of a red material. Synthetic. Dog hairs from…a Staffordshire Bull Terrier and an Alsatian. Not much else I am afraid.” He continued to read down. “Have you any leads at all?” When he looked up, his line of sight fixed with her chest before finally meeting her eyes.
She shook her head. “No, I am hoping Jeff will find something on the CCTV. It happened in the centre of town. We must have images somewhere.”
He took the glasses off and folded them carefully. “Well, I do hope you catch them. Nasty business.”
She stood up. “Thanks, can you let Barnard know that I popped in?”
“Of course.” He stood politely. “I hear you’ve linked the Grave murders?”
She considered telling him to mind his own fucking business. “Yes. It appears we have a vigilante on our hands.”
He nodded and smiled, chubby cheeks reddening. “Well, if I can ever help, do let me know.” Highly doubtful on both counts, she thought.
“Results back on the blood from Ashton Lane yet?”
He looked back at the computer, putting his glasses back on. Hit a few more keys and read the report. “Yes, we can confirm that it was in fact Anita Simmons’ blood.”
~Grave~
She stalked into the squad room and threw her coat down on her old desk before flopping down into the empty chair. “Ugh, I feel violated.”
“Lucky you,” grinned Dale. “I haven’t been violated for days; this heat is playing havoc with my nocturnal interests.”
She grimaced. “I’m just going to think of Becky naked when you say things like that, you know that, right?”
He laughed out loud and pulled his feet down from the desk.
“Perkins,” was all she said.
“Oh, grim. Even I feel violated when I have to deal with him.”
She switched on the computer and pulled some files from her bag. “Count yourself lucky that you don’t have breasts for him to stare at.”
The computer screen lit up her face as it booted up. “You do know you have an actual office now, don’t you?” Bowen said as he passed the desk and stopped to nab a biscuit from the box on Dale’s desk.
She looked up at him and batted her eyes dramatically. “But I miss you so much.”
“It’s the aftershave, right?” he joked.
Dale grinned and stood up. He walked across the room and opened the window as far as it would go. His shirt stuck to his back. It was humid and sticky, the kind of day that only a bath of ice was going to soothe.
“Anyway.�
� She yawned as she spoke. “Blood’s a match, it was Anita’s. He took her from the scene of her own crime.”
“So, he is either in the car with her already or…” Dale thought out loud.
“Maybe he did a Ted Bundy.” Bowen said, shoving another custard cream into his mouth. When all he got were vacant stares, he added, “You know, pretended he was hurt, or had a puncture. She slows down to help and bam.” He slapped the desk with his palm. “Shoves her face into the steering wheel, she’s dazed, he takes the opportunity and puts her in his own car.”
Whitton nodded. “Completely plausible. And would mean it was someone she knew.”
Whitton stared up at the photo of Anita Simmons on the murder board. She had been an attractive woman with warm brown eyes and a big smile. She looked like the kind of woman you could sit down with and have a chin wag over coffee. “I want to find the person that did this to her,” she said, her lips pursed and nostrils flared. “Two kids are motherless…”
Bowen and Saint were silent; they all had the same thoughts on the case.
Chapter Sixteen
Whitton looked up before Jeff knocked on the open door. “Guv, I’ve got something on the CCTV re the Barton case.”
“Okay.” She indicated the seat in front of her desk and he stepped forwards, dropping into the chair. Sweat rolled slowly down his forehead and a sweat stain marked his shirt. “What have you got?” she asked, sitting back in her chair and giving him her attention.
“Trevor Hayes and Tyler Jacobs. I’ve got a clear image of both of them arguing with Darren earlier that day outside of M&S.” Both men were known to the police, the kind of men that found themselves regularly inside a cell or being at the forefront of a copper’s thoughts when looking into any petty theft or, in this case, a fight.
“Right.”
“So, it got physical, but a couple of PCSOs walking through put a stop to it before it got out of hand.” She waited, expressionless, until he continued. “Right, so instead of following Darren, I followed them. They hung around in town most of the day at various places. Coffee shops, the betting shop on Dean Street.” He shrugged. “Anyway, they ended up at the King’s Head about thirty minutes before Darren arrived.”
Grave Decisions Page 6
