Preacher Man: 'their blood shall be upon them' (Ted Darling crime series Book 9)

by L M Krier

  ‘Dal’s a bit more settled now he’s got his mam with him, though he’s still not saying much that makes any sense. Mrs Lee is planning on staying as long as it takes. She works as a cleaner. She’s phoned her regulars to let them know what’s happened.’

  ‘What are the doctors saying?’

  ‘Physically he’s doing a bit better, boss. They need to get him eating a bit. He’s clearly not had very much while he’s been missing so they need to take it gently. It will be difficult for him to start with. Mentally, they’re a bit more guarded. He’s not even said much to his mam, apart from just repeating his name and occasionally still spouting the bible stuff. They’re trying to get a psych consult for him but they just wanted to stabilise him a bit more first.

  ‘I was planning to go back as soon as we’ve finished up here, if that’s all right? Just to see if I can get anything out of him?’

  Ted nodded. ‘That’s what I was going to suggest. You’ve clearly made a good start at gaining his trust, so let’s build on that.

  ‘Jo, are you and Rob finished up in Bolton now?’

  ‘All over bar the shouting and a bit of paperwork, which one of us can handle, boss,’ DI Jo Rodriguez, Ted’s right hand man, informed him. ‘Do you want me on this case, if I leave Rob to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on the Bolton one?’

  ‘I’d like you coordinating house to house near where Darren was found. Ask Inspector Turner what Uniform officers he can spare you and take some of our team with you as well,’

  He looked round the room to see who would be best suited for which role.

  ‘Megan, you’re with Jo. I want every property anywhere near where Darren turned up to be visited and the occupants questioned. Steve and Sal, brief Océane on what information you’ve found so far then you’re with Jo, too. Océane, can you look further and see if you can find anything else similar anywhere? Also let’s look at previous offenders with anything like this kind of form. Don’t discount anyone who’s still inside. There’s the possibility they may have boasted to another inmate who’s since been released and gone on to commit copycat crimes.

  ‘I’m hoping to have something more up your specialised street to get stuck into, Océane. I want to find out about mobile phones belonging to our victims. Were they were ever found, and how thoroughly were their contents gone over? There’s a chance someone may have overlooked the possibility that these young men were taken by someone they all knew, someone they were already in contact with. So we need to get hold of those phones and get you to dig out all their secrets, even anything which may have been deleted, if that’s possible. They may never have been traced, of course, but let’s check in all cases.’

  Océane nodded in understanding. She was their civilian computer expert. Ted liked to split Steve up from her when he could. They spent a lot of their off duty time together. So far they were both being professional about it, but Steve was the youngest member of the team and the least experienced. It was good to get him out doing some legwork and not just to separate him from computers and Océane for a time.

  ‘Right, I need someone to go over to Lincolnshire to talk to them and to get the full file on their victim. Also to ask about the phone in that case.’ Ted slipped his reading glasses on to check his notes for the name. ‘Tim Phillips. Disappeared from Gainsborough, found near Market Rasen, so start with a phone call to Gainsborough to see who’s been dealing with it.’

  ‘I could go and talk to the Yeller Bellies, boss?’ DC Jezza Vine offered.

  Ted gave her a stern look over the top of his glasses. He wouldn’t allow any hint of disrespect from his team members and that sounded to him as if it might be on a par with calling Uniform officers Woodentops.

  Correctly interpreting his look, Jezza reassured him. ‘It’s not offensive, it’s a nickname for people from Lincolnshire.’

  Jezza was a walking edition of Trivial Pursuit. It was one of the main obsessions of her younger brother, Tommy, who was autistic.

  ‘Right, fair enough, just as long as no disrespect was intended. You take the Lincolnshire case for now, bring us back all the available details. And ask about the phone in that case, too, please. Bring it back with you if you can unearth it, or get it sent over to us soon as. Sal, how are you getting on with the file from Preston? Is there anything there that helps us at all? Anything about a phone?’

  ‘Not finished it yet, boss, and so far nothing more than you told us from his mother. Darren seems to have been a diligent student, not in any trouble, and nothing at all to indicate if he went off with someone of his own free will or was forcibly taken. I’m still going through it all, making notes. I’ll give Preston a call and find out about a mobile phone.’

  ‘I’m doing the same with the Humberside files on Robbie Mitchell. We need a get-together at the end of play today to pool our resources from the day. Virgil, I haven’t forgotten you. We need someone to stay relatively free for anything else which comes our way while we’re all on this case. Can you also help Océane to trawl previous offenders, cold cases, anything at all, for any similar pattern. And give DS Groves at Humberside a ring about the mobile phone in that case, if it was ever found. We need it.

  ‘For the time being, Darren Lee is our number one priority. We need to find who’s done this to him and stop them before they think of doing it again.’

  It would take Jezza a couple of hours to get over to Lincolnshire in her Golf Limited Edition, sticking carefully to the speed limits. If ever it got back to the boss that she’d picked up a speeding ticket whilst on duty she would be in deep trouble. He expected his team members to set an example by obeying the law – all of the laws.

  She’d spoken by phone to the local police and had been told to go to the county headquarters building in Nettleham and to ask for a DS Streeter who was handling the file on the victim from Gainsborough.

  Jezza hadn’t visited the area before and went with a preconception that the whole of Lincolnshire was as flat as a pancake and probably rather dull and grey. She was surprised to discover that Nettleham itself was an attractive, quintessentially English village with warm red-tiled roofs, a square-towered church and a red brick pub which looked as if it might do a decent lunch.

  By contrast, the police headquarters building was an uninspired slab of grey concrete which was hopefully more functional than it was attractive.

  She made her way to the front desk, warrant card held up ready, where an older uniformed PC greeted her with a ‘Yes, duck?’

  Jezza had a tendency to be prickly. She’d encountered enough sexism in her career to date, although the official line was that it had been rigorously stamped out. She scrutinised the man’s face to see if there was any implied meaning behind the word, but he was smiling pleasantly enough so she assumed it must be a local expression.

  ‘I’m DC Vine, from Stockport. I’m here to see DS Streeter.’

  ‘Right you are, duck. I’ll let her know you’re here, and we’ll get you signed in.’

  He made a phone call while Jezza signed herself in, then he smiled at her again.

  ‘The DS said to go straight up. Those stairs over there, up to the next floor, along the corridor and it’s the room at the end on the right.’

  There were three male officers sitting at desks in the open-plan office which Jezza entered without knocking, knowing she was expected. She was wearing her photo ID round her neck. The men looked up at her with varying degrees of interest, though none of them greeted her.

  ‘I’m looking for DS Streeter?’

  One of them nodded towards a desk at the far end of the room, up against a window. Jezza suspected there might be a nice view from there on a fine day. Its occupant raised a hand and waved at her, then stood up as Jezza crossed the room. She was short, smaller than Jezza, her build sporty, hair pulled back into neat cornrows.

  ‘I’m DC Vine, Sarge, from Stockport. Jezza.’

  ‘I’m DS Streeter. You can carry on calling me Sarge,’ she said, then her face cr
acked into an infectious smile, showing dazzling white teeth with a pronounced gap between the front upper incisors. ‘Only kidding. Call me Bryony, if you like. Park yourself,’ she indicated a chair, then raised her voice to address one of the other officers. ‘One of you lazy gits go and get some drinks for my visitor and me.’

  The youngest-looking of the other officers, glancing round at the others and seeing no signs of movement, got reluctantly to his feet.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Thanks for telling us in advance what it’s going to be, Nigel. I can never tell from what you produce. How do you take it, Jezza?’

  ‘Cautiously, by the sound of it. Could I have a tea, no sugar, please?’

  ‘You can ask for whatever you want. I can guarantee you won’t be able to tell from the taste what it is,’ the sergeant told her. Then she smiled again as she explained, ‘You have to jump on them from time to time, to stop them getting above themselves. Especially being a woman, as short as me, and black, to boot. All in good fun, of course, they know that. They love me really.

  ‘Now, how can I help you? I wasn’t on the case, it was before I was transferred here to keep this lot in check, but I’ve got the file and one of my crew is making you a copy to take back with you. I flicked through it when I heard you were coming over. I gather you’ve had something similar in your neck of the woods?’

  Jezza gave her the brief details of their case and as much as she knew about the one in Humberside.

  Bryony was nodding as Jezza spoke.

  ‘Sounds very similar to this one. Tim Phillips, sixteen when he disappeared, had his seventeenth birthday while he was missing, poor sod. Found six months later, wandering naked in a village near Market Rasen. Initially the first responders thought he was off his face on something because he just kept reciting the same thing over and again. On closer examination, they found marks on his body indicating he’d been kept tied up and subjected to some pretty nasty goings on.’

  ‘What was he reciting?’

  The DS looked at the notes in front of her.

  ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’

  ‘The Lord is my shepherd? I sang in a school choir for a bit, believe it or not. That’s the only reason I know it.’

  ‘If you say so,’ the DS said with a grin. ‘I know nothing of that stuff. But yes, it says that here in the notes: Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd, KJV, whatever that means. There was another bit he kept saying, too:

  ‘He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.’

  ‘KJV is King James Version of the Bible.’ When the DS looked at her inquisitively, Jezza explained, ‘I’m not into religion but I live with a kid brother who’s mad about Trivial Pursuit. He’s making up his own set of questions as he knows the answers to all of the published editions.

  ‘Did Tim Phillips ever say anything about what had happened to him? Where is he now? Would I be able to speak to him?’

  ‘So many questions! Anyone would think you were a detective or something.’

  The DS certainly liked a touch of humour. She was about to answer when Nigel reappeared with two mugs of seemingly identical dark brown liquid.

  ‘Ah, this is the office initiation test,’ the DS said. ‘If you can tell which is meant to be your tea, you win a prize. Go on, then, Nigel, give us a clue. Which is which?’

  ‘Dunno, Sarge. Taste them and see,’ the officer said helpfully as he headed back to his desk.

  ‘They’ll both be crap, I’m warning you. Just pick whichever you fancy. Or whichever repels you the least.

  ‘Now, our young man, Tim Phillips. No, to my knowledge, he never said anything about what happened. From the notes, it looks as if they really did try everything, including a consultant forensic psychologist. His report is included. In a nutshell, it says that whatever happened to him was so dark he shut it away in a corner of his brain and he may never let it out again.

  ‘Where is he now? I’m not sure. The last mention of him on the file he was in some seedy squat on the edge of Lincoln. Would you be able to speak to him? First we’d have to find him, which won’t be easy. Secondly, again from the notes, the last record of him suggests he became a total smackhead, refused to have anything to do with his family or anyone from his past.’

  ‘How does he find the money to fund his habit?’

  Again, the DS flicked through the notes in front of her.

  ‘No idea but maybe he’s on the rob. Or pimping himself out? He was a nice-looking boy, from the before photos.’

  ‘Is he gay?’

  She was again consulting the file. ‘Is that significant?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Just that our lad, Darren Lee, had apparently been to a gay bar with friends on the night he was taken and he reappeared spouting verses about homosexuality. What was the nature of Tim’s injuries? What was done to him?’

  Bryony raised her voice again, addressing the other officers who were studiously ignoring the two of them, getting on with their own work.

  ‘Close your ears, boys, you don’t want the visitor to see you with tears in your eyes. According to the medical report, some very nasty things were done to him involving, from the hypothesis in the report, feet in a bowl of water and something like a cattle prod or electric fence unit being applied to his delicate bits. Probably repeatedly, over a prolonged period of time, and he was missing for six months. You can understand why he wouldn’t be feeling all that talkative after something like that.

  ‘I’ve freed up a bit of time today when I heard you were coming so we could go for a drive around the seedy side of the city, just on the off-chance that we might find Tim. It’s a long shot, and an even longer one to expect that we might get anything out of him where others have failed. Perhaps if we could find him and if you could get him to understand that what happened to him is still going on, he might just tell us something useful.

  ‘From what I’ve seen of the file there’s absolutely nothing for anyone to go on about his actual disappearance. No one saw him vanish, no one ever found where he’d been held for all that time, and no one saw how he reappeared. No CCTV or anything anywhere. His mobile phone was found near to where it’s assumed he disappeared from, so there was no means of tracking his movements from that. Incredibly, it was handed in, but that’s perhaps because it was found in a churchyard where probably only the righteous and honest would venture.’

  ‘What happened to the phone? Can I get hold of it? We have a CFI who’s brilliant at digging out any secrets that others may have overlooked.’

  The DS looked impressed. ‘You have your own CFI on tap? I’ve heard on the grapevine that you’ve got a good team over there, with an outstanding track record. It must certainly help having the right resources at your disposal.’

  ‘What about family? What happened to him when he left hospital?’

  ‘By all accounts he should have been placed in a secure psychiatric unit and helped to get over it. But, typically, there was nothing available for someone of his age. People don’t realise but the mental health services have seen some of the worst cuts in recent years, especially for younger people. I’ve had some personal experience of that, so I’ve been looking at the statistics.

  ‘The hospital couldn’t put him anywhere with adult males. He’d go hysterical near any man he didn’t know and there was simply nowhere else to put him.

  ‘His mother was a single parent. The father had long since disappeared off the scene and she clearly couldn’t cope on her own, which seems to be why Tim went off to sofa-surf with anyone who’d have him, or to live in squats with other young drop-outs whilst pickling what was left of his brain.

  ‘Right, so if you’ve finished your absolutely delightful drink – thank you, Nigel, you truly excelled yourself this time – we’ll get the car and I’ll give you the guided tour. I’m not promising anything and I’m not hold
ing out much hope. But with luck, by the time we get back, Vinnie will have finished copying the file for you and you can take it with you. Nigel, your punishment for a worse than usual drink is to track down the mobile phone from the Tim Phillips case and have it on my desk by the time Jezza and I get back from our little outing.’

  Jezza spent an interesting if depressing few hours with the DS, doing the rounds of back streets, occasionally knocking on doors to ask if anyone knew of Tim Phillips’ whereabouts. A few of those they spoke to claimed to know who he was but said they hadn’t seen him recently. It wasn’t much for Jezza to take back to the next briefing, but at least she now had the full file on the case. Nigel had also managed to recover Tim Phillips’ phone from somewhere and that too was waiting for her when she and DS Streeter returned to the HQ building. Jezza suspected that despite her flippant humour, the DS ran a tight ship and when she said jump, her team members asked only how high.

  Bryony shook her hand as Jezza started gathering up all the items relating to the case.

  ‘It was nice to meet you, Jezza, and I hope you get somewhere with the cases. It was a pleasant change to have some female company. I love the boys dearly,’ she threw an ironic glance at the other officers, still working at their desks, now having been joined by another DC who had been introduced to her as the Vinnie who had copied the files for her, ‘but the smell of your perfume makes a pleasant change from testosterone and sweaty feet. Dior’s Poison, is it?’

  ‘You’re very perceptive, Sarge. Anyone would think you were a detective or something,’ Jezza jokingly used the DS’s own line back to her. Bryony laughed.

  ‘We’ll keep an eye out for Tim Phillips and I’ll let you know if we do track him down anywhere. Though like I said, I wouldn’t be too optimistic about getting anything out of him. It was bad enough immediately after the incident. I would say that your chances now are somewhere between nil and bugger all.’

  Chapter Seven

  It was Thursday before Ted could bring together everyone he wanted for a full briefing between officers from the three forces involved to date in their enquiry. He’d left the complex negotiations required for a joint operation to his bosses. There had been lengthy conference calls between senior officers from all three forces before they could go ahead.