by Helen Phifer
His mum would take the dark red reporter’s notebook from her handbag, along with the silver Parker pen that he was never allowed to draw with, and began to ask him questions. Sometimes he’d answer her and sometimes he wouldn’t. There had been a few times when John had just sat and stared at her, for the whole hour they were there. Not talking or moving, he’d just stared at his mum, those unblinking eyes watching her every move. He wanted to beg her not to come here, to this bad place. He’d asked her last time why they had to come and she’d cried for hours. She told him that she had to know the truth and the only way to find out was to keep on coming, even though she didn’t want to. He didn’t understand, but he didn’t ask her again because he didn’t like to see her cry.
Today was a lot different from the last time they’d visited. John was smiling and talking as if his mum were his long-lost friend. She kept her head down and wrote everything he said in the notepad. He did the same, keeping his head bowed; he didn’t look at John unless he had to. He knew the man behind the table was staring at him with those eyes so dark that if anyone asked he’d tell them they were black. It felt as if they were burning into the back of his brain. He looked down at the car in his hand, turning it over and over.
‘Is the kid a mute?’
‘No, he is not!’
‘Why doesn’t he speak?’
‘You scare him.’
This made John laugh. The sound was so alien to him, and what must have been every other person in the room, that a hush fell over it. All eyes turned to look in their direction. John was laughing so loud that he lifted his head to look at him. Then he stopped as abruptly as he’d started and winked at him.
‘You don’t need to be scared of me, kid. If I’d wanted to hurt you I’d have done it a long time ago, same with her. I could have killed her with one hand, squeezed her neck until it snapped in two and carried on eating my bacon sandwich with the other. That’s how easy it is.’
The two guards stepped forward; one of them drew the truncheon from his belt and poked John in the back with it.
‘Watch your mouth.’
He held his hands up and the heavy chains securing them rattled. ‘Sorry.’
His mum looked John straight in the eye. ‘Then why didn’t you?’
‘Because I liked you, I always did. You were much prettier than your sister; she had a mouth on her, that one. It didn’t do her any good in the end though, did it? She had a smart mouth and look where that got her.’
He looked at his mum, waiting for her to speak and tell John to shut up. He knew exactly where it had got his Aunty Linda. She was dead – her body had been found on the playing fields near to the house they lived in now. He’d heard the kids at school talk about the naked woman who had been found stiff and cold near the swings. It had upset him at first to hear people talking about his Aunty Linda like she was nothing, and he’d got into a few fights over it which had made it worse. One day he’d gone into school and found a yellowed piece of newspaper inside the desk he always sat at. Someone had written the word ‘prostitute’ in black felt tip across his aunt Linda’s smiling face staring up at him. He knew that a prostitute was a bad woman and he’d crumpled the paper up and thrown it into the bin. There had been sniggers from Mitchell and his gang of mates, who sat behind him on the back row. Now he never talked to them. He didn’t talk to anyone except his mum and his friend Jake. It was easier that way.
Chapter Four
Lucy walked into the empty major incident room. It hadn’t been used for a while. There were still some photos of the previous crime scenes Blu-Tacked onto the whiteboards; she walked across and pulled them down. She picked up the whiteboard rubber and began to scrub out the lists that she’d written on there, annoyed that no one had bothered to come in here and clean up properly. She’d been off work for a couple of weeks and assumed it would have been done.
Peter Browning walked in with a mug of coffee for her and put it on the desk that she always used. ‘Useless bastards could have cleaned the stuff away properly.’
She nodded. ‘If you want something doing…’
He sat down on a chair. ‘So what’s up, boss? Is this going to turn into a major investigation?’
Lucy tried not to let it show that he’d just pissed her off with his flippant attitude. He should know better; any murder was a major investigation.
‘It looks that way. I want a briefing in an hour, can you let the others know?’ She didn’t bother turning back around to speak to him and he got the message. Nodding to himself, he stood up and left her to it.
She went and sat down, logging onto the computer. Amanda was good; she’d already uploaded the photographs so Lucy could have access to them. Lucy printed out a couple of the victim and stuck them on the whiteboard. She liked her staff to be able to see the faces of the victims – it made them keep it real. It was all too easy to forget you were dealing with actual people when you worked long hours trying to catch killers. But she never did. They stayed with her and she continued to think about them long after the cases were closed and the offenders had been locked away. Usually when she woke up in the early hours of the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep.
She sipped the coffee, wondering how the woman had ended up at Strawberry Fields. No one would have chosen to be out walking late at night in that weather and where were her shoes? She’d been driven there. Judging by the amount of blood that had soaked into the gravel and filled the puddles on the ground, that was where she’d been killed. It was the primary crime scene, so who had taken her there? Why did they want her dead?
They’d found a bankcard with the name M. Benson on it in her jeans pocket, along with a soggy ten-pound note. Colin Davey was searching the intelligence system to see if there were any matches for the name, as well as the usual social media sites. She grimaced as the cold from her feet reminded her they were still damp. She needed to change her shoes. Going down to the locker room, she took out her spare pair of shoes and put the pumps she’d been wearing on the boot rack in the drying room next to the biggest pair of standard-issue Magnum police boots she’d ever seen. She’d have to try to remember to fetch her shoes later. When she arrived back upstairs, the phone was ringing in her office and she dashed to answer it.
‘It’s Catherine.’
‘What’s up?’
‘This is going to sound strange, but it’s really bothering me – the fact that she’s been bludgeoned over the head and her shoes are missing.’
Lucy smiled, relieved that the pathologist was as puzzled as she was. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘Post-mortem is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon; it’s the quickest I can do it. At least it will give you time to identify her and hopefully find her family. That’s another thing that’s bothering me. I feel as if I know her. She looks familiar, only I don’t know her – why am I thinking this?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘I can’t help you there, Catherine. Maybe you did know her.’
‘I don’t think that I did, though. There’s something about how she was found and I can’t put my finger on it. Christ, maybe it’s my age. I’ll see you tomorrow, Lucy.’
The phone went dead and Lucy put the receiver down.
The briefing room wasn’t as full as Lucy had hoped. She looked at Mattie, who shrugged, and she wondered if Browning had bothered to pass on her message. As she took her place at the front of the room, Tom came in late, as usual, with a stack of papers tucked under his arm. He stood next to her and whispered, ‘Can’t stop, there’s a management meeting and I can’t get out of it. I’m supposed to be doing a presentation.’
Lucy had to bite her tongue. A murder investigation should take precedence over a bloody management meeting. But who was she to dictate to the powers that be? She was just a pawn in the whole bloody mess. He left her to it.
‘Right. Col, do we have a positive ID on the victim?’
Colin stood up and passed her a printout of an intelligence report. There was a large picture
of the dead woman staring defiantly back at her from her custody record.
‘That’s Melanie Benson, forty-five years old. She has previous: drunk and disorderly, a couple of thefts from Debenhams, mainly small stuff. Nothing major and she hasn’t come to our attention in the last four years. She has a son, Andrew Benson, who was taken into care when he was six. According to her last Facebook update, she had been to visit him and take Christmas presents for her grandkids.’
‘Does he live locally?’
‘No, Manchester.’
‘At least we have a next of kin for her. Someone phone GMP and ask them to assign a family liaison officer once they’ve delivered the death message, and give them my contact details. Have you run background checks on him?’
Col nodded. ‘He’s as clean as a whistle. Works for some IT company. It seems he’s done well for himself, considering his childhood.’
Lucy smiled. ‘It’s nice to know that it happens, that sometimes there is a happy-ever-after. That gives us a starting point. If he comes to identify his mum’s body we can interview him then. Could he have been seeking revenge for her messing up his childhood?’
Mattie shrugged. ‘You never know, it’s always a possibility.’
Lucy secretly hoped it wasn’t. Would her son leave her lying naked? She didn’t think so but until he’d been interviewed and his alibi checked he couldn’t be ruled out.
‘Seeing as Melanie wasn’t dressed for the inclement weather, let’s start working our way through the most recent associates on the list. I want the nearest pubs to her home address checked. See if she was in there last night – she was out somewhere. Find me someone who spoke to her, saw her leave. Who was she with?’
She passed the sheet of paper around the room. Browning lifted his hand. ‘I remember her – it’s a few years since I dealt with her. She used to drink in The Ball and Chain. I remember going to arrest her there once for nicking.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Can you go there, take a copy of her picture and see if she was in last night? You know the score. Once we have a timeline of her last movements we can concentrate on some door-knocking. At the moment there’re no doors to knock on – there are no houses overlooking the part of Strawberry Fields where she was found. There’s no CCTV either, and the nearest shop that might have some is the Co-op on Harrel Lane, but we know that it will more than likely only cover the entrance of the shop, so that’s no good. I’ll get the PCSOs to check all the houses along the stretch of road before the Fields start, just in case any of them have their own CCTV. Is there anything I’ve missed?’
She looked around the room at the shaking heads – she wasn’t too proud to take advice or suggestions from anyone if it would help them to catch whoever had done this.
Chapter Five
Lucy went back to her office. Just as she closed the door her phone began to ring and she answered it, pleased to hear her teenage daughter’s voice.
‘Can I come around tonight?’
‘Of course you can, Ellie, you don’t need to ask.’
‘Just checking that you didn’t have a hot date or anything.’
Lucy giggled. ‘I most definitely don’t. I might not finish until late, though; there’s been a serious incident. But I’ll see you later.’
‘Okay. Bye.’
The phone went dead and Lucy released the breath she’d been holding. Since she’d come out of hospital Ellie had been on her best behaviour. She’d been worried that Ellie would explode about her working late and she hadn’t. It was nice to spend time with her daughter without wanting to kill her. They’d been through a rough couple of years and it was good to see the girl Ellie had once been slowly re-emerging through her teenage angst. With all the pizzas and Chinese takeaways they’d been eating, Lucy was glad that she no longer had to wear her uniform because she didn’t think it would fit her any more. Even her suit trousers had been a bit on the snug side this morning, so that was it: no more takeaways. At least until she could breathe out without fear of her button popping off. Her phone beeped signalling a text message and she saw Doctor Stephen King’s name flash up. He was supposed to take her out for a meal last night, but had phoned to cancel. There had been an emergency at the hospital and he couldn’t leave. She had understood because she knew from her own experience what it was like. Her job was the same, most of the time you floated along nicely until a major incident happened. Then it was all hands-on deck. George and Ellie had been the casualties of her workaholic life. Now that her relationship with Ellie was back on track she would do her best not to jeopardise it. She read the message and sighed.
Sorry about last night, I’ll pick you up at 7.30 and we can go for supper.
Lucy felt her heart sink, instead of wasting time texting back she dialled his number.
‘Good afternoon, beautiful.’
She felt the warm rush of blood as her cheeks began to glow.
‘Hello back, I’m sorry, I can’t make it tonight. I promised Ellie she could come around.’
There was a slight pause and she immediately detected the hint of annoyance in his voice when he spoke, her fingers curled into a tight ball.
‘Then why don’t I pick both of you up?’
‘No, it’s fine. Thank you, she isn’t the most sociable teenager in Brooklyn Bay. I’m too busy anyway, there’s been a murder.’
She heard his intake of breath.
‘It’s shocking, the number of murders in this town. Do you have to be involved?’
‘It’s my job, Stephen, so yes. Technically I do have to be involved.’ Lucy could feel a wave of anger building inside her chest. Yes, he was nice to look at, had good prospects and seemed like a decent enough bloke. But there was something about his attitude which was getting on her last nerve. He changed the subject and Lucy wondered if he was a little bit psychic or whether he was just good at reading women.
‘So why can’t we do something later? Is it because Ellie is jealous and doesn’t want you to have your own life?’
‘It has nothing to do with what Ellie thinks, I want to spend some time with my daughter. If you asked her what she’d rather do I’m pretty sure it would be to hang around with her friends.’
‘She’s old enough to share you. Maybe you should put your foot down, tell her you want to live your own life.’
Lucy felt a vein in her head begin to throb as the blood pulsated around her body.
‘You know what, Stephen? I like you. I liked the idea of us, but this is the thing. I decide what I want to do and when I want to do it. My family will always come first to anyone that I might date. This has been nice and I’d like it if we could stay friends, but it’s over.’
‘But why? I thought that we were good together? Why would you want to call it a day over something so trivial?’
She hissed. ‘Because none of this is trivial, it’s major and I haven’t got the time or the energy to juggle my family, work and a relationship.’
Lucy ended the call, a wave of relief washing over her. It was true, she wasn’t ready for a relationship.
There was a knock on the door. ‘Come in.’
Mattie walked in, carrying two mugs of coffee. He passed her one, then sat down in the chair opposite her.
‘That was a bit of an early morning eye-opener. I was just getting used to having some run-of-the-mill, non-suspicious deaths.’
Lucy smiled. ‘You can say that again. I really thought things were going a little too smoothly. It was nice while it lasted.’
‘You’re losing your touch, Ma’am. So what do you want me to do?’
Lucy hadn’t realised she hadn’t given him any direct tasks to complete. ‘Well, if you call me Ma’am again I’ll have you on the house-to-house enquiries.’
He lifted two fingers to his temple, making a gun and pretending to fire. ‘I promise I won’t ever call you that again.’
‘Good – you can come with me back to the crime scene. I need to know if they’ve found her shoes. Where could they be?’
‘Slung in the bushes, in the car of whoever took her – I don’t know.’
She picked up the mug, blowing on the steaming hot liquid before she took a sip.
‘She was killed there on the gravel and dragged onto the wet grass. I don’t think we’ll find them. I would bet that he’s taken them with him.’
‘They could be anywhere; those fields are huge. He might have thrown them over someone’s wall – hell, he could have put them in one of those clothes-bank bins at Tesco for all we know.’
‘Or he could have taken them away with him.’
‘Because he has a shoe fetish?’
‘Possibly: stranger things have been known. Or because he wanted to take a trophy away with him, a keepsake of his kill – and if he has, then you know what that means.’
Mattie was shaking his head. ‘Fuck no.’
‘Well, I’d say it was highly likely. It’s a fuck yes. This isn’t some domestic gone wrong. Especially in last night’s weather, there’s no way it’s even likely they would have used the Fields as a cut-through. It’s nowhere near her address, for a start. What would they be doing there, in the middle of nowhere? I think this is a stranger-killing.’
‘What does what mean?’ Both of them looked up to see Tom standing in the open doorway.
‘Sir, I was just telling Mattie that everything points to this being a stranger-killing. If the perpetrator has taken the victim’s shoes away as a trophy then we have a huge problem.’ Lucy’s phone began to ring and she looked to see who was calling. Stephen’s picture was flashing across the home screen. She silenced the call and pushed it back into her pocket. She didn’t have time to talk to him now; she’d ring him back later.
