by Rob Ashman
‘Fucking typical!’ Kray said under her breath. ‘That’s just like Wacko to bring in a wing man so he can divert the blame if things go wrong.’
I’ve had e-fucking-nuff of this.
Kray stormed from her office and out of the station to the coffee shop down the street. She needed to put distance between her and those wankers, and she needed strong coffee.
She sat at the back of the shop as far away from everyone else as she could get. Two mugs stood empty in their oversized saucers on the table. She gazed into the distance, spinning the wedding ring on her finger.
Her mobile buzzed in her pocket. It was a text.
Do you want another?
She looked around to see Tavener standing in the queue. She texted back. Cappuccino.
After a while he heaved his large frame into the seat next to her and removed the drinks from the tray.
‘I got you a large,’ he said as Kray’s eyes widened at the sight of the swimming pool of coffee in front of her.
‘You did that alright,’ she replied, noting the double handles required to pick the mug up. She lifted it with both hands, it weighed a ton.
‘How did you find me?’
‘You drink coffee when you’re under stress or need to think, and from what I’ve just been told you must be doing a shit load of both. I’m sorry, Roz.’
‘Yeah well, sometimes shitty things happen.’
‘So now we have the dynamic duo of Wacko and Brownbag running the show. We all need to wear our underpants on the outside of our trousers to compensate for that pair.’
‘Maybe a fresh set of eyes will make all the difference.’
‘Yeah, and maybe it won’t. Who amongst them has that copper’s instinct? The insight you brought to the investigation was genius, Roz.’
‘Not sure the ACC sees it that way. My instinct has well and truly bitten me on the arse this time.’
‘Brownbag is getting us to—’
‘Whoa there, Tonto.’ She held up both her hands. ‘I don’t want to know. That investigation is nothing to do with me now and that’s the way it has to stay.’
They both took a sip.
‘Is it okay to take this personally?’ Tavener asked. ‘Because I want to catch that fucker so much I can taste it for what he did to Lucy.’
‘No it’s not okay but despite what a large portion of the general public might think, we are human.’
‘The problem is I’m not sure we will catch the bastard now.’
‘You will.’ Kray took another slurp of coffee. She could feel the excess caffeine kicking in.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Not made my mind up yet.’
‘Don’t throw in the towel.’
‘Maybe it’s for the best.’
Tavener shook his head. ‘Excuse my language ma’am, but that’s bullshit.’ His phone rang; he answered it. ‘Yeah, okay I’ll be there in ten.’ He looked across at Roz. ‘Sorry I have to go, the ACC wants to give us a pep talk.’ He screwed his face up.
‘Then you need to go.’
Tavener eased himself out of the booth with his coffee in hand and asked the man behind the counter for a takeout cup before heading back to the station. Roz went back to staring into the middle distance. After a while she pushed the bucket of coffee away from her, collected her things and left.
She had things to do.
Back at her office Kray closed the door and flipped open her laptop. Her fingers tapped away at the keyboard and a series of mug shots scrolled across the screen. Aggravated burglary, assault with intent to wound, domestic violence – the cases flashed before her.
She remembered 2014 was a hectic year but 2015 was even busier. Face after face came into view at the click of her mouse. Some were angry, some were blank and others defiant. But they all had one thing in common: they had all helped Kray to rack up an impressive arrest rate, propelling her to the rank of Detective Inspector. She buried herself in the past, each time skirting over the details of the case focussing instead on the individuals involved.
Tavener might be a promising detective but he was crap at reading people. Kray wasn’t in the café pondering on her professional future. She was there with one thought, and one thought only.
She was so engrossed that she failed to notice Jackson stood in the doorway. ‘Looks like you’ve made your decision.’ Kray rubbed her eyes and glimpsed at her watch. She’d been at it for over two hours. She closed her laptop.
‘Yes I have. I can’t go back on the sick Jacko, because I’m not sick.’ She immediately regretted using the name he liked to be called the most. He would see it a sign of friendship and reconciliation. ‘It’s best if I stay in work.’
‘Hey, I know that, Roz. You’re a real asset to the force.’ He leaned against the doorframe, positively simpering.
Shame you didn’t fucking say that in front of the ACC.
‘If it’s still okay with you I want to be reassigned,’ she said balling her fists under the desk.
‘That is the sensible option, Roz. I’m glad we could reach a satisfactory conclusion.’
I swear if he calls me Roz in that tone of voice one more time I’ll …
‘I have a shed load of paperwork to complete so I thought I’d get that out of the way first. If that’s okay?’ she said.
‘Yes of course take your time, we have everything covered.’ He bounced himself off the woodwork and swaggered away.
Patronising twat.
She opened her laptop to resume her search. A single thought crashing around in her head. The killer knows me.
Chapter 50
It was late and Kray was regretting that her diet today had consisted solely of a shit load of coffee and three biscuits. She had a banging headache and her stomach would not stop growling in protest. She rubbed the sting from her eyes and closed her laptop. She had turned up a big, fat nothing.
She had examined every case going back three years but no one fitted the description; narrow face, high cheekbones, large eyes set slightly wide apart. In fact, no one came close, not even the women. Her trawl back through the years had yielded nothing. She was tired and needed to acquaint herself with a hot bath and a bottle of wine.
‘Roz have you got a minute?’ bellowed Jackson down the corridor.
How the fuck does he know I’m still here?
She tore herself away from her thoughts and trudged to his office. He looked frayed around the edges.
‘Uniform have called in a sudden death. It looks like a drugs overdose and they want us to give it a once over.’ He handed Kray a slip of paper. ‘Here are the details, it looks straight forward.’
Kray took the note. ‘Are you sure? I thought you wanted me to—’
‘Don’t make a drama out of this, Roz. We are really up against it. Every man and his dog is working on the Gorgon investigation and I need you to deal with this, okay?’
‘Sure, I just thought—’
‘Well don’t.’
‘I’ll take care of it.’ Kray turned and walked back to her new office, leaving Jackson shoulders-deep in paperwork. She left the station pausing only to buy a packet of crisps from the vending machine and chomped on them as she cruised towards the less salubrious side of town. The flat in question was buried in a high-rise block on the Crown Estate. Not a place where people went to live by choice.
She got out of the car and brushed the crumbs from her suit. The estate should have been levelled twenty years ago, but the council decided against that when they realised they would have nowhere to house the dregs of society. It stood as a constant reminder that when it came to providing safe and secure social housing, the local authorities didn’t give a toss.
She found the tower block and walked straight past the lift, choosing instead to walk to the third floor to avoid her clothes stinking of piss. A gang of kids were hanging out on one of the landings and took off when they saw her coming. Isn’t it strange how, for some children, ‘how to spot a copper fr
om thirty yards’ is an essential part of their upbringing.
Kray flashed her warrant card at the uniformed officer standing sentry at the door and walked in.
‘SOCO are on their way, ma’am,’ the officer said. Kray nodded her response.
The living room looked like a pound of C4 had gone off and no one had bothered to clean up afterwards. The carpet was ripped in places exposing bare floorboards and half a sofa sat against the far wall. The walls had the blackened appearance of having once been in a fire and there was a broken TV stand in the corner, minus the TV. The flat stank of dirty clothes and fag smoke.
The body of a man was slouched in an armchair with his head tilted forward. In front of him was a coffee table with all the paraphernalia you would expect to see in a drug den. Balls of tinfoil, a mirror, a handful of credit cards, cotton wool balls, a set of scales and a bottle of talc all lay strewn across the top.
The dead man was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans with nothing on his feet. His hair had fallen forward covering his face and a trail of vomit ran down his front and onto his legs. A used syringe and rubber tourniquet lay beside him.
Kray looked around the chair, reached down and patted the man’s pockets with her gloved hand. She looked up into his face, he looked familiar. Where the hell have I seen you before?
Her thoughts were interrupted.
‘His name is Richard Moore, Richie to his friends,’ said the uniformed PC emerging from the kitchen on the left. ‘He is well known to us for all sorts, petty theft, D and D, that kind of thing. Looks like old Richie here had made a step up to dealing. We pulled him a couple of times for possession but couldn’t make it stick.’
‘I’m DI Roz Kray.’
‘Graham Chapel, ma’am.’
‘What are the circumstances?’
‘We got a 999 call from a male saying they had discovered a man in the flat. The caller refused to give their name and hung up. When we got here the door was open and Richie was dead in the chair.’
Kray crossed the room and examined the door.
‘I’m presuming nothing has been touched?’
‘As you see it now is exactly how we found it.’
Kray crouched down, took her phone from her pocket and flicked on the torch, shining it under the chair. She moved around each side, repeating the process.
‘Looks clear cut to me. Richie decided to give himself a little treat and overdid it. Someone shows up wanting a fix and finds him dead. Calls it in because they are an upright citizen.’
Kray stood up and switched off the piercing beam.
‘Is it heroine?’ Kray asked pointing to the white powder on the table.
‘Not sure until it gets run through the lab, but it looks like it to me.’
The SOCO team arrived outside and started gowning up.
‘Self-inflicted. Killed by a taste of his own medicine,’ said Chapel with the air of a man who’s seen this a thousand times before.
‘Not sure about that,’ Kray said handing him the torch. ‘This is now a crime scene.’
Back at the station Jackson was coming apart at the seams. ‘A suspicious death?’ He was red in the face and on his feet.
‘Yes, sir.’ Kray had decided to address her boss formally to avoid calling him Jacko.
‘I send you to a bog-standard overdose and you turn it into a suspicious death. For Christ’s sake, Roz, I’ve got enough on my plate.’
‘No, sir.’
‘No, sir, what?’
‘No, sir, I didn’t turn it into a suspicious death. The person, or persons, who were present when Richard Moore took a massive overdose turned it into a suspicious death.’
‘Don’t be fucking clever with me, Kray. I’ve had it up to here. This is going to take resources we don’t have. How the hell are we going to cover this?’
‘I’m on the job, I’ll handle it.’
‘I suppose so. I’ve had the ACC in here every hour on the hour wanting updates on progress and Brownlow has gone back to square one with reviewing the evidence. It is soaking up every last drop of manpower we have.’
‘That must be tough.’ Kray was laughing her tits off on the inside.
‘And now we have this to contend with. Why the hell do you believe Moore’s death was suspicious? He overdosed on his own gear. What’s the problem?’
‘The initial report confirms he administered a fatal dose of heroine intravenously using a syringe which was found by the side of the chair.’ Kray slid a photograph across the desk. ‘We both know that’s cooked up by holding a flame under a spoon, dissolving the powder in a small amount of water and drawing it up through a cotton wool ball.’
‘I do not need a lesson in basic drug taking.’
‘I appreciate that, sir. But as these photographs show, there was no lighter. Everything else is accounted for but where is the lighter?’
‘Did you check his person? Is it in his pocket?’
‘I checked sir, nothing. I looked everywhere in the flat and found nothing that could have been used as a naked flame. He even had an electric cooker. That would suggest to me there was someone with him when he overdosed and they took the lighter when they left the scene.’
‘Okay so there was someone with him, that doesn’t necessarily make this a suspicious death.’
‘And then there is the front door. Whoever called 999 had found the body when they walked into the flat. The door had no signs of a forced entry and had a perfectly functioning lock. Here is a copy of the transcript from the call into the control room, it says, ‘The door was open so I went inside and found him dead’.’
Jackson shook his head. ‘So?’
‘Who shoots up with the door open? Plus, there is something else you need to know about Richie Moore—’
‘I don’t fucking believe this!’ Jackson interrupted, throwing himself back into his chair with his eyes closed and his hands linked together on top of his head.
‘Sir there is something else you need to know—’
‘Are you sure about this?’
‘We can’t ignore the evidence, it warrants a full investigation.’
‘What does?’ It was ACC Quade filling the doorway.
‘Oh nothing ma’am, I’ll update you later.’ Jackson was now sitting bolt upright.
‘Okay, tell me later then. What have we got?’
Kray skirted around the desk. ‘We were just finishing up ma’am, I’ll leave you to it.’ She waited for the substantial bulk of the ACC to move, allowing her a gap big enough for her to get the hell of there.
Jackson looked like someone had let the air out of him. ‘Ma’am, it’s only been an hour and a half—’ His words were cut off mid-sentence by the closing door.
Kray left for home, once again laughing her tits off, on the inside.
Chapter 51
Having drawn a blank with her cold cases, Kray was beginning to doubt her own sanity. She had slept very little - which didn’t help matters - and when she did, her dreams were filled with phone boxes, the interior of the Purple Parrot and relaxing walks hand in hand in the park with Joe. While her rampant intuition continued to scream that the killer somehow knew her, the rational side of her brain was telling her she was fucking losing it.
She had enjoyed the intervention by the ACC the previous day. That woman had Jackson by the balls and was making him squirm. Deep amongst the shit and turmoil of yesterday it had provided a glimmer of payback that had made her smile.
Kray pulled into a slot marked ‘visitor’ and stepped out into the morning sun. It was a cloudless sky but with little warmth in the air. She crossed to the reception and approached the front desk. After a brief exchange she was escorted down a series of hallways, through a metal detector and shown into a poky interview room. There had been no time to go through the niceties of due process, a direct approach mixed with a dose of feminine helplessness had done the trick.
‘Thank you,’ Kray said, taking a seat facing the door.
A few minute
s later she could hear the squeal of rubber soles on polished floor. Two men entered the room: one looked dishevelled in a sweatshirt and jogging bottoms, the other wore dark blue trousers and a light blue short-sleeved shirt. The man in the blue shirt took up his position near the door. The second man folded his lanky frame into the chair opposite and slouched back in his seat, his arms dangling. He looked like an adult sitting in a playschool chair.
I was on the early shift this morning which means I’m back home by 10.30am. I’m on a massive high and can’t come down, and I need to have a cool head. The chatter and gossip from the ugly people at the studio was all about the murders in Blackpool. Their theories ran riot. As I brushed and puffed their blemishes away my hands were trembling with excitement. They were too busy to notice I had made mistakes, too busy speculating. That fucking idiot who spoke to the press on the steps of the police station has lit the blue touch paper. I said one day they would be talking about me and today is the day. It’s a massive turn on.
Despite the fact that I only got a couple of hours’ sleep, I am totally wired. My dreams were a ragged collection of snapshots from my time in the car. The money on the back window ledge, his face red with exertion and his eyes popping from his skull as the last vestiges of life drained away.
The light from the freezer cuts a wedge of white across the basement floor. The cold air tumbles from the cavity to chill my naked legs.
‘To chill her blood, how so divine, walk in her shoes, her face is mine,’ I chant as the pretty face of Madeline Eve winks at me from her shelf and runs her tongue around her lips.
‘With evil dripping from your pores,’ Lucy is smiling at me and flashing her come-to-bed eyes. She is such a tease.
‘The next face I need to take,’ I feel my knees tremble and my short breath condense into clouds.
‘… is yours.’
Drops of semen splash onto the concrete floor. It is my third ejaculation since I got back. I need to come down, I need a clear head.
Sampson is watching me, coiled into his favourite corner. His tongue darting out, tasting the air. It’s nearly feeding time, but I want to delay it. I don’t want his venom wasted on a dead animal. It needs to be a full load. Not long now.