by Tim Ellis
‘Do you think it’s a serial killer?’
He shrugged. ‘Don’t you?’
She didn’t reply.
‘Why didn’t you take what you had to the police?’
‘I did.’
‘And?’
‘What do you think? They listened, made encouraging grunts in the right places and said they’d give it their highest priority.’
‘But they didn’t?’
‘If they did – it was one man and a poodle.’
‘I don’t think they have poodles in the dog unit.’
‘Maybe they should.’
‘Maybe.’
‘So, I kept hounding people, searching everywhere, showing the photographs to anyone who would look at them. Telling anyone who would listen. At some point, it became something more than a story . . .’
‘It became a monster you couldn’t control?’
‘Yes. At the end of this week I’d have been homeless and sleeping rough, but I still couldn’t stop.’
‘Then you heard about the body that was found in the field?’
‘I couldn’t sleep. I was staring at the wall and listening to my police scanner. I heard the report and drove right over there . . .’
‘It didn’t occur to me that you had a car, but I suppose you must have one to get there. It’s still parked up at the field then?’
She gave a laugh that could have been mistaken for a wolf howling at the moon. ‘Parked up is right. It has more rust on it than the Mary Rose and I had just enough petrol in the tank to get me there. If you hadn’t come along, I’d have had to walk back.’
‘For future reference – the Mary Rose was made out of wood.’
‘I was being ironic.’
‘Okay.’
‘Do you want another coffee?’
‘Very kind, but I don’t think so. Let’s have some lunch.’
‘I haven’t got much in . . .’
‘In a pub somewhere.’
‘Ah!’
‘Then we’ll come back here and you can clear that wall.’
Her face turned into a mask of horror. ‘What?’
‘You’ll be staying at my house for a couple of days. The wall is no good here. I’ll take photographs of your research with my phone and then you can recreate it in my incident room.’
She put her body between him and the wall, and spread her arms and legs out. ‘It’s taken me over a year to create this wall, and you want me to rip it all down and move it. I won’t do it. You’ll have to kill me first.’
He shrugged and pulled a face. ‘Okay. You stay here and protect your wall. I’ll take a couple of photographs and carry on with my investigation.’
‘We have a deal.’
‘I don’t think you can use that argument anymore. You’ve gone as far as you can as an unemployed reporter. You now need me to open the doors that have been closed to you.’
‘It’s like that, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t suppose I have a choice then, do I?’
‘Everybody has choices, but lately you’ve been making the wrong ones.’
‘You wouldn’t get your money back if you left me here.’
‘Money is over-rated.’
She sighed and let her arms drop to her sides. ‘I’m starving. I know a good pub nearby.’
***
They were in the Harrington Arms on Congleton Road.
He’d ordered a brie and bacon panini. Dixie had the meat pie, chips and peas with three slices of buttered bread. For afters, she chose the spotted dick and custard.
‘When was the last time you had a decent meal?’
‘Now.’
‘I meant before.’
‘Eight months ago.’
His phone vibrated.
‘Dark?’
‘It’s Polly.’
‘Well?’
‘Some small talk would be nice. Maybe an off-the-cuff joke. Or, you might ask me how I am.’
‘How are you?’
‘Exhausted.’
‘Well?’
He heard her sigh.
‘As well as the body you saw, we’ve found another three bodies in the field – four altogether.’
‘That means there’s three missing.’
‘I won’t ask how you know that.’
‘The girl in the original grave is called Erin Jameson. She’s fourteen years old and she went missing from Abbey Rose Care Home in Prestwich on April 12, 2015.’
‘I was right then – she’s been dead about eight months.’
‘So, it would seem. Is Professor Finn out there yet?’
‘Do you want him to die of exposure?’
‘He should wrap up warm.’
‘I always knew you had a rock where your heart should be.’
‘So, is he coming out later?’
‘Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow!’
‘In these conditions, the bodies aren’t going to thaw out anytime soon. We’ll be in this field for at least a week. We’ve only just uncovered the first body. I have a team working on each of the other bodies, but it’s difficult work . . .’
‘I don’t suppose you can get a digger in?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Or a handful of industrial heaters?’
‘Believe me when I say that we’ve given that some thought, but a heater would cause physiological changes to the cadavers, so we had to abandon the idea.’
‘Oh well . . .’
‘But don’t you worry about us, Dark.’
‘I wasn’t. So, Finn isn’t there, and you’ve been scratching around in the frozen ground getting nowhere fast?’
‘More or less.’
‘What about Erin Jameson?’
‘I’m not going to do Professor Finn’s job.’
‘He’s not there.’
There was silence at the other end.
‘Well?’
‘I can tell you what I see?’
‘That’s better than nothing, I suppose.’
‘She’s remarkably well-preserved.’
This time, he didn’t say anything.
‘I can’t see any obvious cause of death. Wait . . .’
He waited.
‘. . . I needed to get a brush. Yes . . . it looks like an injection site on her neck, but whether that was to disable her, or . . .’
‘What about wrist and ankle marks?’
‘There’s none.’
‘Is she wearing any clothes?’
‘No.’
‘Evidence of sexual assault?’
‘Nothing obvious.’
‘Any marks on her back?’
He heard her directing one of her minions to pull the corpse over.
‘No.’
‘You’re standing there looking down at a naked murder victim – is there anything that doesn’t seem right? Anything out of the ordinary? Anything . . .?’
‘There’s a blue butterfly on her left breast.’
‘How did a blue butterfly get inside the tent? . . . I take it you have put a tent up?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And anyway, isn’t it the wrong time of year for butterflies?’
‘If you’d be quiet and listen.’
‘Go on?’
‘It’s a tattoo.’
‘Send me a picture.’
‘Did I hear a “please” in there somewhere?’
‘It was a silent please.’
‘So silent that I didn’t hear it.’
‘You want to get your ears tested.’
‘It’s a very intricate tattoo. It certainly looks real. The artwork is amazing.’
‘Just send me a picture. I’ll form my own opinions.’
‘Do you think . . .?’
‘I don’t think anything. Send me a picture.’
‘I’m sending the picture now.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I heard that.’
‘It wasn’t that type of thank you. What about the ot
her bodies?’
‘We haven’t uncovered them yet.’
‘How much longer will it take?’
‘It’ll take as long as it takes.’
‘You’ll do another sweep of the field to find the missing three bodies?’
‘I only have your word that there are three more bodies here.’
‘Which should be good enough.’
‘And yet my word that there are no more bodies in this field doesn’t seem to be good enough for you.’
‘You’ll do another search?’
‘The search we carried out was a detailed and comprehensive spiral search. There are no more bodies in this field.’
‘But you’ll still do another search?’
She sighed. ‘All right.’
‘Good. Ring me when you have something.’
He ended the call.
‘Some “please” and “thank you’s” wouldn’t be out of place,’ Dixie said, scraping the shine off the desert dish with her spoon.
‘Would it change the course of events?’
‘Probably not.’
‘There’s your answer then.’
He showed her the photograph of the blue butterfly tattooed on Erin Jameson’s left breast. ‘Have you ever seen anything like this before?’
She examined it closely. ‘No, but it’s a beautiful tattoo.’
‘During your research, did anyone mention that Erin Jameson had a blue tattoo on her left breast?’
‘Oh God! Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, nobody said anything about . . . Wait, someone did mention that Jasmine Troop had a small butterfly tattooed on her lower back.’
‘But not Erin Jameson?’
‘No.’
‘Also, they’ve now found another three bodies in that field, but they haven’t dug them up yet. The freezing conditions aren’t making recovery easy, apparently.’
‘They’re all dead, aren’t they?’
‘It’s certainly looking that way.’
‘And it’s my fault.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I should have made people listen.’
‘You did everything you could. Anymore talk like that and our agreement will come to an end.’
‘Sorry.’
He studied the photograph. The tattoo was a beautiful work of art. Would Erin Jameson have had the money to pay for something like that? Why did nobody at the care home know about the tattoo? Although the 1969 Tattooing of Minors Act was largely ignored, it was still illegal to tattoo children under the age of eighteen, and Erin Jameson was fourteen. Well, he’d go and see Popeye at the Tat2 Emporium on Castle Street in Edgeley later to ask him if he could throw any light on the butterfly.
***
‘Where are we going?’ Dixie said.
‘Bootle Street Police Station, near Albert Square.’
‘I thought you were a member of the Serious Crime Division?’
‘I am.’
‘If my information is correct, they’re located on the third floor of the new Force HQ in Central Park on Northampton Road, aren’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, why . . .?’
‘Do you have to be so nosy?’
‘Just making conversation.’
‘Well don’t. Just because I bailed you out of a sinking boat that you’d sabotaged yourself, it doesn’t mean we’re now best buddies, partners, or anything like that.’
‘We have a mutually-beneficial agreement?’
‘And that’s all it is, so don’t get any other ideas.’
After lunch, they’d returned to Dixie’s apartment. While she packed clothes and toiletries in a bag, he took photographs of the wall – making sure each photograph overlapped. He’d print them off at the station so that Dixie could re-create her research there.
When he offered to strip the wall and stuff everything in plastic bags, she threatened to chop off his hands with a meat cleaver that was hanging from a wall magnet in the kitchen – he left her to it.
‘They don’t like you, do they? You’re an embarrassment to them. That’s why they’ve hidden you in a backstreet police station.’
He ignored her.
Bootle Street was three and a half miles away from Force HQ along the A62 in East Manchester. He’d been given an old basement office in the only 24-hour police station left in the city centre. It was a convenient staging post on the way to early retirement, and nobody would miss him when he was gone. The Chief passed him the cases that no one else wanted, the ones that would embarrass the division – Chief Superintendent John Henn – if they went unsolved.
He drove through the archway into the courtyard and parked in the space allocated to him. The one demand he’d had when the Chief had shuffled him off to Bootle Street was that he get his own parking space. Trying to find somewhere to park in the City Centre was like searching for proof of alien life.
He ignored the support officer on the desk and she ignored him. The people at the station knew who he was, knew where he worked, and knew better than to come down and annoy him.
‘So, this is where you work?’
‘No. I work out there . . .’ He jerked his head sideways. ‘. . . In the world. This is merely somewhere I keep a few things.’ He cleared a space in front of the rear wall. ‘Right, put it all back up. I’ll print off the photographs I took, so that you know where everything goes.’
‘And the blue butterfly?’
‘Yes, I’ll print a copy of that off as well.’
He sat down at his desk and turned all the computer equipment on, logged in, connected up his phone and sent it all to the printer.
‘There,’ he said, passing everything to her.
‘What are you going to be doing while I’m doing this?’
‘I don’t recall any part of our agreement that said you were in charge and I had to keep you informed of what I was doing.’
‘Just being friendly.’
‘Well, don’t. I’m quite sure that after this case, and you’ve paid me what you owe me, we’ll never speak again.’
‘That’s fine by me.’
His phone vibrated.
‘Dark?’
‘Come and brief me.’
He ended the call. He’d been expecting it. In fact, he was surprised the Chief Superintendent hadn’t already called him. Must have had trouble getting his tongue out of the Chief Constable’s arse.
‘I have to go out.’
‘I haven’t finished yet.’
‘You’re not invited. I have to go and tell my boss what a fabulous job I’m doing.’
‘Will you tell him about me?’
‘I have a mentally unbalanced unemployed reporter helping me with this case if that’s alright with you, Sir? . . . I don’t think so.’
‘So that’s what you think of me?’
‘That’s the truth, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I’ll be back in an hour. Don’t talk to anyone.’
‘What if someone comes down here?’
‘They know better than to do that. Didn’t you see the sign: Visitors Unwelcome?’
‘I must have missed that.’
‘I’ll tell them you’re working down here in case there’s a fire, or some other panic attack.’ He pointed to a worktop with a kettle plugged into the wall. ‘There’s coffee over there.’
***
He knocked on the glass.
The Chief waved him in.
John Henn was a career officer, and everything Josiah Dark hated about twenty-first century policing. At thirty-three he was one of the youngest Chief Superintendents in the GMP. He was also one of those people who’d had a private education, attended Cambridge, Bramshill Police College, and boasted all the right connections to become Police Commissioner, a Knight of the British Empire and eventually a Peer in the House of Lords. In effect, he was an arse-licker, and the one thing Dark disliked more than anything else – was an arse-licker.
Not only did Henn have the right socio-economic background, he also looked the part. Black hair greying round the edges, a strong jaw, a Roman nose and a perfect set of white teeth. He could easily have been mistaken for someone who modelled clothes for the Littlewoods catalogue.
‘How are you, Dark?’
‘Did you ask me over here for small-talk, Sir?’
‘No. Let’s get to it then, shall we? Tell me about these four bodies that have been found in Handforth.’
He told the Chief what Polly Tyree had found, about how the heart-shaped necklace had led him to Erin Jameson, and about the blue butterfly tattooed on the corpse. He didn’t tell Henn about Dixie Reyes, about her eighteen months of research, or about the other six possible victims.
‘Do you think the other three bodies in that field are connected to Jameson?’
‘It’d be a hell of a coincidence if they weren’t, and I’m a non-believer when it comes to coincidences.’
‘Yes . . . Which naturally leads onto the issue of whether we’re dealing with a serial killer, or not.’
‘I think we both know we are, Sir. As soon as Polly Tyree pulls those other three bodies out of the frozen ground, we’ll connect up the dots and be left in no doubt.’
‘Mmmm! . . . Did I offer you coffee?’
‘I’m fine thanks, Sir. I’ve found that your coffee leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.’
‘Really? I quite like it.’
‘Another difference between us.’
‘Yes.’ Henn sat back in his leather high-backed executive chair. ‘You do know that as soon as someone mentions “Serial Killer” the proverbial will hit the fan, don’t you?’
‘I won’t mention it if you don’t.’
‘What about other people?’
‘You and I are the only ones authorised to talk to the press.’
‘That’s true.’
‘It won’t be long before the vultures begin adding two and two together though.’
‘Yes, but they can only guess at what the total might be.’
‘I’ve already seen television footage from a press helicopter of five tents in that field, Dark. Sooner, rather than later, someone’s going to ask why there are five tents instead of one – if they aren’t already.’
‘I’d like to know that as well, Sir. Four bodies do not equal five tents.’
‘There’ll be a logical explanation. Polly isn’t one for wasting police resources. Which leads me back to what I was saying. When, not if, word gets out that we’re dealing with a serial killer, you’ll be replaced with a taskforce. Now, if I was asked to choose between the lesser of two evils, I’d choose you to find the killer and get all the glory . . .’