by John Barlow
He looked at her eyes. They were brown, almost black, and he wondered if she was already judging him, whether her measured, courteous manner was simply a means of hiding her prejudices. He’d been in and around universities enough as a detective to know that they were full of judgemental types, especially when it came to coppers.
‘Perhaps someone else will know who she is.’
‘Another department?’
‘Yeah, but which one? Which ones!’ She paused, thought about it. ‘You know, I have a better idea. Can I?’ she said, gesturing to the phone. ‘I’ll send it to myself, is that all right?’
No. Not really. The image was not his. He couldn’t really copy and disseminate it. On the other hand, this was a missing person case.
‘Legally, I mean…’ he began.
‘I understand. I will ask Brian to look at it, then delete it? Is that good enough?’
‘Brian?’
‘Brian Summers. He is the Chief Administrator for the Faculty. He’ll do what I ask him.’
I bet he bloody will, he managed not to say.
She took the phone, tapped the screen a few times, then reached for her own phone from her back pocket. With a telephone in each hand she made a call.
‘Brian? It’s Claudette. Ça va? Oui, oui, merci! A quick question. We have a photo and we have no idea which student it is. Could you take a look? Then delete the image, y’know, because of Data Protection?’
She listened for a moment. Joe imagined a fifty-something administrator at the other end of the line, running a hand through his thinning hair and dribbling at the thought of doing his favourite French lectrice a favour. The Data Protection Act would never have come into the equation.
‘OK, merci beaucoup, Brian!’ she said, handing Joe his phone and ending the call on hers. ‘So, what were you doing in Lyon?’
‘Interpol.’
‘Now that is interesting!’
‘It was mainly paperwork.’
He’d never been one for bubbly conversation, but he felt it more acutely now. Mainly paperwork? Just how thoroughly could he talk himself down?
She seemed to read his mind.
‘But bilingual paperwork, no?’
He nodded, wracking his brain for something witty to say, just to keep her talking.
Her phone rang before anything came to mind.
She answered, listened, then offered the Faculty Administrator the kind of softly spoken gratitude that would give him continental fantasies for the rest of the day.
‘He knows who she is,’ she said, slipping her phone into the front pocket of her jeans.
‘Really? That quick? How many students are in the faculty?’
‘Thousands. But he knows her. Some issue with her tuition fees. Anyway, she’s called Lisa Cullen, and she’s doing Media and Communications. So, you came to the right faculty. I can show you where her department is. Or you could ring her. Brian has sent me her contact number. Do you want me to forward it to you?’
‘Do you have it there?’ he asked.
She held up her phone and showed him the number that the drooling Brian Summers had just sent, in contravention of every Data Protection policy that had ever been written. Joe made a note of it in his book.
They stood in silence for a while.
‘I’m sorry, I never…’
‘Asked my name,’ she said, smiling but not extending a hand. ‘Claudette. Claudette Lausseur.’
The smile was rich and beguiling, and immediately made him forget what the French manners were at this point. Was it a kiss-on-both-cheeks moment, or not? Shit, he couldn’t remember. And which cheek first? He always got that wrong. So many banged heads in Lyon.
He thrust out a hand, and she shook it.
With that he was off, marching down the corridor, his phone already pressed to his ear.
She watched him go, expecting a backwards glance from him. But there wasn’t one.
‘Pity,’ she told herself, weighing the phone in her hand. ‘At least I got his number.’
He walked across the campus, the wind coursing through the open spaces between buildings, buffeting him slightly more than was pleasant, his open jacket flapping like a set of ineffectual wings. He looked around for somewhere more protected, intending to call Lisa Cullen. But as he did so, his phone rang.
The conversation was short. Lisa would have to wait. He had a murder scene to attend. And Jane Shaw would need to be informed that her son was dead.
8
A small fire engine was pulling out of the entrance to Broadyards Country Park as he arrived. The occupants looked serious, their mouths closed, none of the usual banter after a call-out. There was a police officer at the gate. Joe held up his card and was waved through.
He drove in and headed across the car park, taking care to avoid the potholes in the rough dirt. In the far corner, the crime-scene perimeter had already been set up, half a dozen vehicles parked in a cluster, people coming and going.
He’d been given all the details over the phone on the journey from Leeds. The fire was called in early that morning, by which time there was little to be done. Smouldering, the dog-walker had said, before continuing his walk, quite unconcerned. This wasn’t the first time a car had been left in flames here, and it was only as the fire fighters were dousing the burnt-out shell of the Toyota that they saw the remains of a body in the passenger footwell.
He parked a few yards from the white-and-blue tape cordon and got out. First impressions: the park was large, a series of open fields rising to a peak in the mid-distance. Good dog-walking country. But here, at the bottom, there was a sizeable car park, and the Toyota was at the very back, close to a swathe of tall, mature sycamores that would have hidden the flames and disguised the rising smoke. The perfect spot.
‘Morning, guv,’ said the uniformed officer on the cordon, as he took a note of Joe’s credentials.
‘How you doing, Mark?’ Joe asked.
He knew the lad, an athletic-looking young man with a likeable face. He’d joined the Force just before Joe went to Lyon.
‘Been on nights all last week. Today was supposed to be my easy day. Now look!’
‘Yeah,’ Joe said, watching as three SOCOs in white overalls moved around the vehicle, meticulously taking samples, hardly talking as they worked. ‘Well, there’ll not be much to see here, I reckon.’
‘Black on black’s what they’re saying.’
‘We’ll see.’
Black on black. The victim was a criminal. Word had already got out. The car had been identified first: registered owner Jane Shaw, the mother of Joe’s missing drug dealer. The occupant had been identified not long after that from the remains of his wallet: Craig Shaw, convicted drug dealer. No one was going to be making much of a fuss about this one. He’d get a standard team, but not for long.
Joe surveyed the crime scene. There wasn’t even an inner and outer cordon. Just one section of ground had been taped off, big enough for a decent sweep of the immediate area, but nothing more. There were several rectangular patches with white edges where the prints of car tracks had been taken. Two vehicles in, one out? CCTV might help, not much traffic around here late on a Thursday night. Where were the nearest cameras? Out on the main road, possibly. There were none in the park itself, by the look of things. Someone had chosen well.
‘Hi, Joe,’ said a woman in white overalls and boots as she walked across to meet him.
It was a young assistant crime-scene manager. They’d met a couple of times, although he wasn’t sure of her name.
‘Hi there. You managing the site?’
She nodded. ‘They let me out all on my own! Do you know this place?’
‘Never been here before. Is it even on our patch?’
‘Right on the edge. Another hundred yards and Kirklees could’ve had it. Pity, eh?’
He managed the slightest of smiles. ‘Why? For the stats? You think I’m not gonna get a result?’
She failed to conceal a momentary
flush of embarrassment. It was quite clearly what she thought.
‘I mean, it’ll be more difficult to get witnesses, won’t it?’ she said, glancing over at the car.
‘Yep, and resources,’ he added as he struggled into his own white suit and overshoes. ‘Anyway, while we’re here let’s do the best we can. A life’s a life. OK to go in?’
‘Yes, but no touching. But I bet you knew that!’
He acknowledged her attempt at humour and turned towards the remains of the Toyota.
‘A life’s a life,’ she whispered to the uniform next to her.
‘Yeah, right,’ he said.
Joe heard them both over his shoulder and ignored them.
He circled the car. The ground was muddy underfoot where the firefighters had done their work, and the sound of water dripping from the car was just about audible in the calmness of the scene. The maroon paintwork was still visible on one side, but not on the other or at the back, where the tank had blown and burnt itself out. Inside, the fire had destroyed everything. Seats down to the springs, the plastic dashboard bubbled and deformed like a massive block of half-melted chocolate.
There was a bitter, acrid smell, and some residual heat was still coming from the front end. The passenger door was fully open. He paused before looking inside. Was this the moment when you prepared to meet death head-on? It was so long since he’d been directly involved in a murder that he hardly remembered.
Then he looked. There was a body in the footwell, recognizable largely because he was expecting it. Otherwise, he might have assumed it was a sack of rubbish, or an off-cut of carpet, rolled up and burnt. It had a shiny, irregular surface, where the fabric of the clothes had melted in the heat. Only after a minute or so did he make out the position of the body, its head and one arm on the seat, the rest on the floor. The skull, like everything else, was black, but as he looked harder he could make out a filigree of red cracks where the scalp had contracted and split. There was the outline of a cheekbone, an ear, shrivelled to the size of a walnut, and the messy remains of an eye socket.
‘Morning, Joe,’ came a voice from behind him. ‘Like the coffee!’
A SOCO stood there, a transparent evidence bag in each hand, grinning.
‘Hi, Mike,’ Joe said, looking at the bags. ‘Coffee?’
‘Morning, Joe. Y’know, coffee?’
‘Oh, right, yes. Those the victim’s?’
‘Craig Shaw’s the name. Was.’
‘Yes, I know. The fire?’
‘The interior of the car was doused with petrol. There’s what looks like the remains of a plastic fuel container on the back seat. Fairly consistent burn throughout.’
‘Someone did a good job?’
‘Yeah, pretty thorough, I’d say.’ He held up the bag. ‘We found what’s left of his wallet in his pocket.’
‘And those?’ Joe asked, gesturing to some keys in the other bag.
‘In the glove compartment. They’re from a BMW. Fire-resistant key fobs. German engineering, eh!’
Joe nodded. ‘Vorsprung durch… Or is that Audi? Anyway, what else?’
‘Some bags under the seat. One of ’em looks like cannabis. But, y’know, what with the heat and everything, difficult to say for sure. Imagine the smell in there, though! At least he’ll have died happy.’
So much for respecting the dead. The SOCO moved off as a photographer leant into the opened door and started snapping.
Joe moved out of the way to let him get on with it. What if that was Sam? he asked himself. Charred to death, his motor loaded with drugs. What if Jackie had been an addict, and Joe hadn’t been around? What was it Jane Shaw had said? ‘Mother was a junkie, dad was nowhere.’ Now this. Black on black. It shouldn’t matter. But it does.
‘Anything in particular you want me to get, guv?’ the photographer asked.
Joe looked around, still thinking about Sam.
‘You done all the usual? Inside the car? Plenty of wide shots of the whole place, different angles, from all corners of the car park?’
‘I reckon.’
‘OK. Can you do some 360s from here, looking out from the car? Let’s try to see what the quickest way out would be.’
‘Will do.’
It was always a good idea to get someone to double up on your thinking. Joe took a step back and watched the photographer work. He felt the low branch of a tree brushing his shoulder, and turned. Quick way out? The trees were so close. This was where you’d go, straight under cover. The car had been parked here for a reason, next to the trees.
The photographer seemed to be thinking exactly the same. He walked past Joe and made his way between the branches.
‘This is where I’d go,’ he said, as Joe followed him. ‘If I didn’t have any wheels.’
The two of them went through the trees. A matter of a few yards, no more than that. No point looking for footprints. The ground was thick with leaves and wispy undergrowth. After the trees was a wall, the outer limit of the park. Three feet high, and on the other side was a narrow lane, the tarmac old and scarred, no street lighting in sight.
He leant on the wall and took out his phone. Eleven-thirty in the morning? Sam was probably in lectures. He dialled anyway.
Three rings and it clicked to voicemail.
‘Sam? It’s Dad. Just ringing to see if everything’s all right. Speak later.’
He ran his hand against the wall, felt the cold, knobbly surface of the stones against his fingertips. He wondered what Sam was doing now. A month in Edinburgh, that’s all it had been. Freshers’ Week. Some intense socialising, everyone out to impress. Then down to work. Had he found a girlfriend? New mates? Too much beer? He didn’t know. He knew nothing about Sam’s life anymore.
Then an idea. He called the data desk.
‘Hi, it’s Joe. Quick one. There’s a young woman, name of Lisa Cullen. I’ll send you a photo. Can you try to find her on the DVLA database, check for vehicle ownership? We’re looking for a BMW.’
9
The white leather sofa didn’t feel quite so comfortable this time.
He sat, hands clasped in front of him, and watched her body as it shook.
‘Here’s your phone. Shall I make some tea?’
She tried to speak. There was a crackle of phlegm in her throat, bubbles of watery snot around her nostrils. She was shaking so badly that when she tried to raise her cigarette to her lips it missed her face.
He got up, left her phone on the arm of her sofa and told her he’d be back in a minute. The pain she was suffering was predictable, but that didn’t make it any easier to watch. With each harrowing whelp that echoed around the room, he thought automatically about Sam, and how the loss of his only son would destroy him completely. Yet at the same time, her pain gave him strength. It made him want to find the killer. And that, he admitted to himself in a moment of shame, was a good feeling.
No time for soul-searching, though. Something wasn’t right about all this. She reports her son missing, says he hadn’t paid his rent, that he’d been using her phone, her car… He had to know more about the victim, and it had to be now. Shaw’s death was already being written off as a black on black. There’d be no alarm bells sounding at CID. Or with the general public. Who cares about a dead drug dealer? No, this had to be now.
He made his way along the short passageway to the back of the house, preparing for the worst. The kitchen is where people leave the most obvious clues about themselves, a shiny slug-trail of personality traits, enough for any half-decent detective to form a good idea about the individual in question.
The kitchen was bright and tidy. The fittings were a little worn, but everything looked clean. Matching mugs neatly arranged on hooks, gleaming chrome toaster and kettle. And dominating everything a monster Zanussi fridge freezer. Not a mark on it.
Inside were eggs, bacon, milk, a few yoghurts, a pot of hummus, plenty of veg in the bottom drawer. And at the back were half a dozen cans of cider.
He closed the fr
idge and stood for a moment. There was no presence of Craig in here, he thought, as he looked for teabags and sugar, running his finger along the worktop surface and finding no dirt there. Craig might have bought the TV, the sofas, the enormous fridge. But there were no signs of him. It just didn’t feel like a shared house. This was his mum’s place.
But exactly who was she? An addict? Alchy? Bullshit. That was an act. Whatever she’d done in the past, her home was… what was the word? Respectable. The sense of normality was unmistakable. Not a luxurious existence, for sure, but an ordered one. What was it the snobbish left-wingers used to say? The deserving poor. That was Jane Shaw. The kitchen reeked of a decent person living a decent life. Even her social security record had proved to be unremarkable, give or take a bit of unregistered cleaning work.
As he made the tea, his phone was pinging more or less continuously with updates on the crime scene and the scale-up of the operation back at HQ. He let the messages come, glancing at them, replying briefly whenever necessary.
He caught sight of himself in the chrome toaster. DS Joe Romano: CID’s number one under-achiever now investigating a murder. A team was being assembled at Elland Road, twelve officers for the initial push. They’d be out on the streets within a couple of hours, knocking on doors, eliminating persons of interest. But they needed to know which doors, who they were looking for. They were waiting for his orders.
He heard the muted sobs of Jane Shaw from the front room, and wondered whether there was much he could do, however many officers he had. Known associates? Informants? How many CID officers would want to pull in favours from their contacts for a drug dealer? In any case, the investigation would be downgraded as soon as something with a higher priority came in. This had to be quick. He needed info, and he needed it more than Jane Shaw needed sympathy.
‘Here,’ he said, setting down a steaming mug of tea for her. ‘It’s got sugar. Is that OK?’