by L. J. Hutton
“I know how she feels! I’m starting to feel like I’m being tethered out like the sacrificial goat!”
“Well if it’s any consolation, I’ve got involved in another territorial bun-fight,” and Bill told him about the shenanigans with Setty and the other superintendant. “So compared to that, your issues positively pale into insignificance,” he concluded. “The Estonian called in his lawyers, and now everyone is treading very carefully – or so Suzanne, my immediate governor, rang me to tell me. She’d been told to ring me and tell me not to speak to the press, although she knows I’ve got more sense than to do that, but ‘upstairs’ insisted. All arse-covering, of course. They can say I was told, so if I leak anything, I’m the one hung out to dry. But at least it gave me the chance to hear how things were going, and it was that that made me think of you.”
“Thanks.”
“So did you ever get anywhere with that third little girl?”
Tim sighed mournfully. “We didn’t, but Dr Whitmore did. She established that the kid must have grown up mostly in somewhere in the region of Poland near to what was East Germany, or the part of Germany close-ish to the Polish border. She said something to do with her partner providing comparisons from some war graves she’d worked on?”
“Ah, yes, Sylvia is an osteo-archaeologist,” Bill confirmed. “She’s worked on digs all over the place, so it wouldn’t surprise me that she’d have that kind of information to hand. Those two make a formidable team when they get to work together.”
Tim looked glum. “Well I wish our bloody teams worked as well! Because that’s as far as we’ve got. While that lot are squabbling about jurisdiction, I’ve only been able to scour missing persons’ files, and there’s nothing on there for anyone who comes close to matching that kid. ...But then why would there be? Her parents probably come from somewhere where it’s been indoctrinated into them that you don’t tell the police anything they don’t try to wring out of you. To them we’d be part of the problem, not the solution – you only have to talk to some of the migrant agricultural workers we get around here to know that. We had a nasty rape case last summer, but getting anyone to talk to us was nigh on impossible, even though it was one of their own.”
“It’s uphill work,” Bill sympathised, “and I can’t say that I’m surprised that you haven’t tracked the kid down. I was asking more in hope than expectation, if I’m honest. But what a tragedy that we might never be able to give her the burial she ought to have, and her parents the closure.”
“I’m pushing for her to have a Roman Catholic burial,” Tim added, “because the one thing we did find on her was a cheap little crucifix, which again Dr Whitmore and her partner narrowed down to being typical of the region, and her partner said it was something that would be given to a child in church. Of course the kid might have been Orthodox, but your two ladies said they thought the Catholic Church more likely.”
“And a burial would be good, because if by some miracle we do eventually find her family, then at least she could be taken back to wherever.”
“You’re thinking the same way as me,” Tim said with a faint but relieved smile. “It’s too easy to forget the human side of things once investigations get taken over. What’s not helping is that the two other kids’ families are now kicking up a fuss. Not that I blame them. Their girls should have been found much sooner. If it had stayed with us, once we’d realised what Pickersleigh was like, we’d have started checking around schools in the area with the photos we knew he’d taken, rather than bought.
“We’d still got the girls on our open case files as missing, and my mate Mick, who was the leading investigator on that one, had had to scale the search back once we’d combed the immediate area, but it was far from over. What scuppered us even so much as being able to show him the photos of the pair was that there was just so much on Pickersleigh’s laptop – literally hundreds of images! Well we’d barely scratched the surface of them before the other lot zoomed in and took it off us. I tell you, Mick is fuming over that! And not just because he couldn’t tell the parents what had happened – though of course that was a priority – but because of all the man-hours he carried on using up trying to find the kids.”
Bill nodded sagely. “It’s hardly like we sit around on our hands just waiting for the next big case to come in, is it? You have to prioritise, and a live victim is always going to come top of the heap, if only because you want them to stay that way.”
“Exactly!”
“Have you had any sense that Pickersleigh might have done this before?” It was casually put, but for Bill this was an important question. If Pickersleigh had already been personally predatorily inclined, even if sporadically, then the watchers in the trees might have seen him earlier. If so, then that raised some very uncomfortable questions about how long they’d waited to act.
“Oh I think we’re pretty certain on that score,” Tim answered readily. “Just from checking his movements with people like his mum’s carers, we’re as sure as we ever can be that this was his first foray into finding victims of his own.”
“That’s a relief!”
“Isn’t it,” though Tim had no idea that there was the second meaning for Bill. “It’s always good to know that we weren’t so bloody useless as to miss any previous victims.”
“You weren’t useless,” Bill said firmly. “And I’m not happy about you being lined up to take the fall for this. It needs to be made clear that the deposition site of the girls was well over in another force’s territory. In your shoes, I’d be getting your mate Mick to make some noise about what searches were done for the girls across the border. Because his lads could hardly go tramping across there, and presumably some kind of basic search should have been done by the Powys lads, given how close the school is to them? The kids couldn’t have walked there, but it’s a short drive. Get back in touch with Dafydd Parry. Tell him what’s been going on, and ask him if he’d mind sending some kind of statement about what his lot did. If it only takes the heat off you with the parents, it would be a start. If you like, I’ll give him a ring first and prepare the way. I got on well with him this last time, and we were very much on the same page when it came to being disgusted at the way Setty jumped the gun on the other case. I reckon he’ll be sympathetic.”
“Would you? Bloody hell, I’d really appreciate that,” Tim said with feeling.
It meant that Bill left the pub and drove home feeling he’d accomplished something, even if it wasn’t what he’d hoped.
Chapter 19
A LESS AMIABLE MEETING was the one Bill was called in for on Monday afternoon with the Assistant Chief Constable, Superintendant Williams and with Pete – who was Sean’s DS – with him as his union rep. He wasn’t surprised at the summons. In fact he’d been expecting it ever since the dreaded TV news conference. His home TPU would have had to be idiots if they hadn’t wanted to make very sure that none of the blame was going to head their way.
So luckily Bill had already thought through how he was going to play this, and what his answers ought to be. The harder part was delivering them so that they didn’t sound as though he’d rehearsed them.
Why had he been out in the Kington area? ...Because after spending time with the Shropshire guys, he’d realised that this was a part of the country he’d not explored much.
Did he do that often? ...Well here were the photos he’d taken on Wednesday up over Wenlock Edge, and the ones he’d taken the next day across in Wales on one of his favourite walks up the side of Cadair Idris.
Had he been anywhere on Friday? ...No, because his knee had been telling him he’d overdone it a bit on the last few days.
So had he walked anywhere while he’d been in Knighton? ...No, because he’d only just got to the hotel when he’d had the thought about which way Sanay Costa might have been brought, and rung Likesh Setty as a result. But he’d been planning a nice walk along the River Teme, had he had the chance.
Why there? ...Because of what he’d just
told them – he’d been to the crime scene as soon as he’d arrived in Shropshire, but had thought it a lovely spot regardless of the crime. He’d half been thinking of trying a section of the Offa’s Dyke long-distance path, except that he’d not had the chance, as it turned out.
Had he had any inclination or suggestion as to what he might find when he was asked to go and search the area? ... (Bloody hell, that was too close for comfort!) No, how could he? He’d thought he was just going to check on the location of a couple of missing vehicles. For all he knew, Bose and Harbottle could have had someone who knew their vehicles, and who had removed and subsequently dumped the tracking devices there. Wasn’t that what the Walsall guys had said Caesar Costa was good at?
What had been his impressions of DI Likesh Setty at that point? ...On the phone he’d come across as a switched-on and amiable kind of guy. In fact Bill had been taken aback at his attitude at the crime scene. Hadn’t understood why he’d been so damned quick to scurry off, until the TV report had come on in the morning!
Had he thought DS Chaudry had known what his boss was going to do? ... (Much easier to answer!) If you’d seen his face that morning you would know that the answer to that was absolutely not. DS Chaudry behaved impeccably throughout, and was respectful to the Powys DI, Dafydd Parry.
On and on it went, sometimes doubling back to things, sometimes jumping forwards, as if they were trying to catch him out. But Bill stuck to his guns. Yes, he’d guessed immediately what the context was of what he’d found, but purely because he’d been told that Vijay Bose and Tufty Harbottle had gone missing even before he’d returned from Shropshire, and well before he’d taken his fortnight’s leave. And it had been acting-DI Ray Villavarayan who’d told him of the Walsall division’s suspicions about Bose being wrapped up in prostitution but also people trafficking. So it didn’t take a genius to work out that this had to be where the girls who’d gone missing in the city had ended up. However, he’d had no idea what had gone on between Harbottle and Bose until Dr Whitmore had told him a few days ago, and no, he couldn’t even begin to shed any light on the strange death of Bose, though it did look as though Harbottle hadn’t been the total villain the West Midlands DI had painted him as if Bose had killed him.
When they staggered out over two hours later, even Williams was too wrung out to argue, and the only thing he said to Bill was,
“At least you’ve confirmed that there’s no blame to be attached to us,” before hurrying off to his office alone.
“Hmph!” snorted Pete in disgust. “Not so much as a kiss-my-arse for having ensured that the blame for that unholy fuck-up stays with Setty! I despair of that man, I really do. ...Bloody well done in there, Bill! I’m not sure I’d have stayed that cool if they’d kept asking me to repeat myself like that. There’s a witch hunt going on at the higher level, you mark my words, but I reckon you’re well out of it after today.”
Bill grimaced. “I’m just hoping I did enough in there to make sure that Harbir Chaudry stays blameless too. God, I feel so sorry for that lad. He was right to fear that he’d be the scapegoat, because unless I’m very mistaken, that glory-seeking superintendent won’t want to throw Setty to the wolves unless he has no choice. Setty was the one who brought him his moment of TV fame, after all, so it might be that he could it again in his boss’ eyes. But it was Harbir who stayed and did the dirty work, and who’s having the nightmares after what he saw.”
“Request him as your new DS,” Pete suggested. “Tony’s only got another couple of months before he goes back to his old job after covering Jess’ maternity leave. Jess has already said she’s not coming back after her maternity leave is up, and Tony’s said to me that the commute is too much for him – he’s hardly seeing anything of his family, and his missus is complaining – so he won’t want to make it permanent, though he told me he’s dreading telling you that. He loves working with you. It’s just that he lives too far away to be based here, and he can’t move his kids because they’re coming up to important exams at school.”
“I’ll come down to the office and do that now,” Bill decided. “I wish Tony had said something to me earlier, though. I would have understood, and I could have sounded Harbir out without his boss being present.”
What he wasn’t expecting was to get a phone-call off Carol the following evening.
“Bill, why do you do it to me?” she began.
“Me? What have I done?”
“Well you personally, nothing,” she admitted. “But you know you prompted me to expect a call from the Hawthorn House Hotel?”
“Yeah...” he didn’t like the way this seemed to be going.
“One body, you said!”
“Yeah...?”
“There were bloody three!”
“What? Oh you are fucking joking! No!”
Carol obviously heard the shock in his voice and relented. “Aah, you weren’t expecting that, then?”
“God, no! Do they all look as though they might be Damien Farrah’s victims?”
Carol huffed. “Hard to say. Okay, I know you were ‘told’ that one was, but at the moment I’ve only just got them into our morgue. If we hadn’t been so clogged up with the bodies you found out with Bose and Harbottle, I could get onto them faster. As it is, I might be able to prioritise them over the girls from the quarry on the basis that I’ve done those bodies which looked the most recent from there, and the others can wait a day or two.
“I couldn’t get that much off most of Bose’s victims, but I will tell you this – that bastard strangled at least two of those girls, and I’m pretty sure at least one more. They weren’t all shot. I’m hoping I might even have got some DNA, because it doesn’t look as though he had the wit to wear gloves while he was doing it, and the most recent one certainly didn’t go peacefully.
“There’s something curious about the way some of them were found, as well. They don’t all match up. One lot look as though they were practically thrown down. Tossed on top of one another like sacks of rubbish. Like a couple of men had got their arms and legs and just swung them out to behind the stones. But there were three other girls who were laid out almost reverently.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. Honestly, Bill, it’s like someone was genuinely bothered about what they’d been made to do, and my guess is that that someone was Harbottle. Three of the girls were laid flat, and their arms crossed over their chests almost like they were properly laid out. Very dignified and off to one side. They show no sign of violence, and if we’re lucky, toxicology might even show that they died of an overdose, because I can’t think of any other way they’d have died so peacefully in that dreadful place.”
Bill found himself nodding, even though Carol couldn’t see him. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? Bose was going into a very dark place that an old-fashioned villain like Harbottle wasn’t happy about. He probably protested once too often about what Bose was asking him to do, and that was what got him killed. ...But come on, then, what about these new bodies? I presume they’re all women?”
“Oh yes. I got called in because there was a real panic that they might be more of Bose’s victims, you see. Understandable when you’ve suddenly unearthed what amounts to a mass grave, even if they weren’t actually buried. But these new women were of a totally different sort. All of them were definitely English, going by my preliminary glance at the dental work, and my initial assessment is that they look far better nourished. We’re in with a good chance of getting proper identification of these three.
“Of course I can’t say to the investigating team that they’re Damien’s victims as yet, though I have high hopes of getting something from the samples we’ve taken from under their fingernails – or at least the most recent one. And with the way they’ve all been placed in the same spot up at the hotel, I think it’s fair to assume that if we can nail him for one, then it will be accepted that he’d been the murderer of all of them. God, I hope we can put all three at his door! I’d love to see th
at obnoxious father of his deflated once and for all.”
Even so, Bill was now worried. “It bothers me, though, that I was shown only one of those women. Do you think they are all of the same timescale? The same generation? It’s just that I would have thought that my mysterious guides would have shown me all three if they’d known about them. That dream was so vivid, Carol. Why show me one when showing me three would have been even more convincing?”
“I can’t answer that one. You’ll just have to ask them. ...You are going to speak to them again, aren’t you?”
“I think I’m going to drive over to the Mulligrew’s farm on the full moon, which is Sunday. It’s not ideal, because I’m back at work on Monday, but I don’t want to wait until the new moon, because I’ll be fully back at work by then, and I might be so tied up that I can’t get away. But you’re right, I do want to have that conversation with them. This can’t go on. I have to make them see that what they effectively stumbled upon is an aberration. Because I really don’t want them to see something like a normal domestic row, and completely misinterpret it.”
“Lord, no! That could be disastrous, couldn’t it!”
“Absolutely.”
Yet before he got the chance to drive over on the Sunday evening, he got another call from Carol.
“You’re not going to believe this!” she told Bill excitedly. “It looks as though the other two victims are Damien’s father’s!”
“How on earth have you established that?”
“Aah! The first thing is that the dental records came up trumps. The most recent body is that of Melissa Troughton, who went missing from Solihull in October last year. When I got her file through, it was a very sad story. She’d had a miserable marriage to a man with mental health problems, who’d then committed suicide. On the file it said that Melissa’s friends at work had said, to the officers who investigated her going missing, that she’d been all of a jitter over having met what she described as a ‘strong man.’”