The Autumn Tree (DI Bliss Book 8)

by Tony J. Forder

  ‘Good,’ Bliss replied with a nod. ‘You do that. Might as well get the ball rolling while we’re waiting.’

  Sara was already finished. She gave Bliss a dubious look. ‘We wait now, yes?’

  ‘Do they usually respond quickly?’

  ‘If they are not busy. Some work over weekend, others not. We get some answers soon, I think.’

  Bliss regarded her more closely. What he had first taken to be a smooth complexion, he now noticed owed much to heavy makeup. Her cheeks and chin were pitted with acne scars, possibly due to having started wearing cheap makeup from an early age and sharing it with others. She looked to be around nineteen or twenty, but her eyes were much older.

  ‘Sara,’ he said gently. ‘You know how Yeva and I met. I understand why some girls feel as if they have no way out of what they are doing. That they must allow themselves to be used or they may find themselves on the street, or worse. Is that why you do it? Are you forced into it by those who brought you here?’

  Her big eyes blinked and she shifted uneasily in her seat. ‘I not talk about them. You tell Yeva I not have to talk about them.’

  ‘I did. And I meant it. You don’t have to. I’m simply trying to understand. You see, if I could, I would rescue you all. I’d make sure that the men who did this to you can never hurt you again, but I know that’s impossible. I’ve been fighting it one way or another for the past thirty years or more, and it’s as bad today as it ever was. All I can do is try to help the girls who cross my path. Please know this, Sara: if you’re ever in trouble with these people, if you don’t know who to turn to in a crisis, you can always call us. Penny and I work out of Thorpe Wood police station. Ask for either of us. Okay?’

  Sara’s face lit up and she became someone else altogether. ‘Thank you for this. Yeva trusts you. Now I do, too.’ Her phone pinged twice, and she glanced down at the screen. ‘Nothing to help so far.’

  ‘That’s fine. It perhaps only takes one girl to turn things around for us. Also, you mentioned how Abbi spoke of a client she liked – I assume he was fairly regular and she got to know him over time. How about you? Do you have any regulars who have perhaps tried to befriend you, not simply do what they need to do and leave? I ask because I wouldn’t be surprised to find that this man we’re after sees more than one girl at a time.’

  Again she seemed to stare far off into the distance as she took herself out of the moment to consider his question. Finally she shook her head. ‘I cannot think of such a man. I do have regular clients, and we get to know each other a little more. You see man only for one hour, you have no time to understand him. You see man for one hour a week for many weeks, you learn things.’

  ‘But you can’t think of anyone who claims to be looking for a longer-term relationship? Somebody who says they want more than whatever it is you do for them currently?’

  ‘No. I think not.’

  Chandler came back into the room. She remained standing. ‘Wheels are in motion. Anything back from the WhatsApp group yet?’

  Obligingly, Sara’s phone pinged to announce another incoming message. This time Bliss saw her eyes widen. She frowned and read the message again before turning her attention back to them.

  ‘A friend say she know Abbi. They talk. Abbi tell her about a man who became private client. They still do as he asks, but he pay her and not agency. Abbi mention him often and have fondness for him. She think he want to be her boyfriend. She think maybe she want that, too.’

  Bliss nodded eagerly, feeling his pulse rate increase. ‘That sounds like precisely the kind of man we’d be interested in. Did this friend mention the last time she spoke to or saw Abbi?’

  ‘Yes. She say Monday. She try calling her since but only get told to leave message. She is worried.’

  ‘Understandably so. I have to be honest and say that I am, too. Please ask your friend if she will speak to us.’

  Sara started pressing buttons immediately. Less than ten seconds passed before she got a reply. ‘She does not wish to. But if you ask me question, I ask her and she will answer if she can.’

  Bliss was a little frustrated, but he understood the other girl’s reluctance. He doubted if Sara would have spoken to them willingly had Yeva not vouched for them. It was a vetting process he was willing to go through again, but he worried about the time it would take. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Please ask her if Abbi ever mentioned this man’s name.’

  ‘We don’t use name. I told you this.’

  ‘I understand. But if this man was becoming more than a client to Abbi, she might have mentioned it to someone she considered to be a close friend.’

  Sara accepted this with a shrug and once again sent out a message. There was no immediate response. Sara typed something else and hit send. They waited a further twenty seconds before the next ping. This time the message was from another member of the group, telling Sara she did not know Abbi. The next message was the reply they’d been waiting for.

  ‘She says Abbi once spoke his first name only. She call him Des. That is all.’

  Bliss bit into his lip. It was something, but nowhere near enough; nothing that would help find either him or her, that was for sure. Knowing his name might help further down the road, however, so Bliss buttoned up his frustration and smiled at the young Croat. ‘Please thank her for us. Please ask her to think about it some more, and if anything else occurs to her, to contact you or the station. She needn’t give a name – just ask for DS Bliss or DS Chandler.’

  As her thumbs became a blur once again, Bliss rose. He smiled at Yeva, who had given up her time and her home to them. ‘We appreciate this,’ he said. ‘As I hope you have come to understand, you mustn’t ever be afraid to call us. Whatever the reason. That card counts as long as I still breathe.’

  Sara was done and on her feet. Chandler tenderly rubbed the young girl’s arm and told her not to worry, but also to take care and be cautious. ‘Please watch your back – be careful – at all times. This Des person might be a friendly punter and not our man at all, and you need to be wary of any clients coming to you for their choking fix.’

  ‘I will be careful. Thank you.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Bliss said. He shook her hand, smiling as he did so. ‘This has been extremely helpful. Take care of yourself, and please do pass on any relevant responses you get from your group.’

  Out on the street, they stood in the drizzle for a moment, Bliss’s face turned to a leaden sky that looked almost low enough to touch. ‘Why do we live in a world of such opposites, Pen?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

  ‘Well, on the one hand you have these lovely, sweet young girls who are pleasant and warm and considerate. On the other you have the sleazy reptiles who use and abuse them.’

  ‘That’s human beings for you, Jimmy. The best and the worst of us get to share the same space.’

  His face creased into an ugly snarl. ‘I’d like to crush the pricks who take advantage of these kids.’

  ‘Not to mention the bastards who force them into it in the first place,’ Chandler said, walking around to the passenger side of the car.

  ‘Which brings me back to Lewis Drake. What if Dark Desires is his, Pen? What if he’s ultimately responsible for putting Majidah Rassooli and the man who murdered her in the same space?’

  ‘If that’s the case, we’ll find evidence for it. We could try making a case for joint enterprise.’

  Bliss shook his head. ‘No, he’s too far removed from it, especially as things stand. But I want him to pay. He has to pay.’

  Even as he said the words, he knew his plea was little more than wasted breath, twisting away from him in a coiled exhalation that disappeared as quickly as all hope.

  Twenty-Nine

  Following a couple of after-work drinks with the team, Bliss spent Saturday night in limbo. His head ached with the weight of the investigation. The thought of another young girl – whether Abbi Turner or someone else – already being in the
clutches of such a vile monster churned his stomach. A case like this one offered so many opportunities for the investigation team to feel completely useless, and this was one of them.

  Earlier in the day he’d thought they had made a valuable breakthrough. DC Ansari had come up with a possible address for Turner, having plotted her profile by taking snippets of social media information and tying them in with their own personal data search facilities. They’d not found Turner at the home in question, but a neighbour had pointed them in the direction of her family. Unfortunately, this brought them to another dead end, with neither parent having seen or heard from Abbi in more than a year. Chandler had poked a card through Abbi’s letterbox, asking her to call as soon as she saw the note, insisting she was not in trouble.

  Bliss strongly believed otherwise. He had a terrible feeling that Abbi would soon become their next victim.

  Having the girl’s photo on the whiteboard added to his despair. Putting a face to the name meant he would see her whenever he closed his eyes, at which point he would dwell upon all she might be enduring. He knew she might have run away or taken herself off on holiday, choosing not to update any of her social media or contact those close to her in any other way. But he wasn’t feeling it. It didn’t sit right with him. This was not a girl who went five days without keeping in touch – not by choice.

  A rapid exchange of calls between Chandler, Yeva and Sara, plus more than a little gentle persuasion, eventually also gave the team Abbi’s personal mobile number. It could not be pinged, suggesting it was either switched off or had been made inoperative by removal of the battery, SIM card, or both. Ansari compiled yet another RIPA request, requiring access to not only text messages, voicemails and image galleries, but also the mapping provided by its GPS movements prior to going offline.

  The team were also frustrated by delays in obtaining permission to use an undercover legend. Their request was caught up in the bureaucracy of official channels, and they all knew that meant it was being wrapped in layers of red tape and undergoing all manner of checks requiring signatures of authority. Bishop had eventually called a halt for the day late in the afternoon, and subsequently bought the first round in the Woodman.

  Later on, Jimmy took advantage of a night alone by calling his mother in Ireland, conversations with whom latterly had led him to suspect her memory might be on the wane. He also enjoyed a long chat with Molly, a suspect and witness from a previous investigation who had somehow found herself able to pick the rusted locks on the solid steel gates guarding his heart.

  Around eight-thirty, Bliss tried taking his mind off the case by watching streamed repeats of Better Call Saul. He’d previously enjoyed the way the series interwove characters and events from its predecessor, Breaking Bad, into its storyline, but this time found his mind drifting after only ten minutes.

  This particular investigation was unusual. Cases most often split themselves into two categories: those that gave up their secrets rapidly, leading to early arrests, and those whose lethargic pace led the investigation team into labyrinths from which there was no escape. The difference this time lay in the fact that they were consistently obtaining leads, but none of them had so far prised open the operation enough to provide that single pearl of an answer they needed most. Whatever it was – a piece of CCTV, some DNA, a verbal slip, a witness statement, or a chance occurrence – it had not yet happened. Bliss’s irritation with that stasis only increased his inability to settle.

  He played some music, but nothing improved his mood. He went for a drive, but the cobwebs fluttering in his mind remained. On his return, a couple of hits from a new bottle of fourteen-year-old Tullamore Dew loosened him up, but had no effect on his overall outlook. He was in a funk. Shortly after midnight he took his acoustic guitar out of its case and began to strum softly. Bliss soon realised how soft and stiff his fingers had become through lack of practice; the strings hurt like hell, especially the thinner unwound top three. He played through the pain for an hour, remembering the chord sequences to a number of songs. By the time he was done, two of the fingertips on his left hand had been sliced open and he had to wipe blood from the fretboard. He was thrilled to do so.

  Sunday came and went at a crawl. Bliss nipped into HQ, but only DCs Gratton and Ansari were in the squad room. Neither had an update for him, so he took himself off to the city-centre community hall where PC Griffin taught boxing to kids deemed to be at risk of falling foul of the system. Keeping himself tucked out of the way, Bliss first went through an old familiar stretching routine. With heat still in his muscles, he worked a thirty-five-kilo punch bag, which provided good resistance. Afterwards he went through a series of strength exercises: sit-ups, push-ups, crunches and burpees. He eschewed the skipping rope, figuring he had no need to improve his footwork speed or agility in order to train others. Instead he warmed down on the speed bag, bobbing and weaving in between strokes. Sweat cooled on him quickly, and although he was leaving a shower for when he got home, he did towel himself down before getting changed.

  As he was leaving he met PC Griffin, on his way in. The two men smiled at each other, but instead of saying hello, Griffin pointed a finger and said, ‘Tore Down House.’

  Bliss shook his head. ‘Too easy. Scott Henderson.’

  ‘With…?’

  ‘Thelma Houston, of course.’

  ‘Damn! Thought I’d have you with that one.’

  Griffin had learned of Bliss’s musical tastes, in particular his love of blues and guitarists. The young constable fancied himself as something of a connoisseur, and the two often challenged each other’s knowledge.

  ‘I’ll make it easier on you, Barry,’ Bliss said. ‘Song title and album name.’

  Griffin steeled himself. ‘Hit me.’

  ‘“Waves”, from Erotic Cakes.’ The moment he finished speaking, Bliss knew he had his man. The deep frown and near panic in his opponent’s eyes told a story of their own.

  After a full twenty seconds, Griffin’s shoulders sagged. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head ruefully. ‘I don’t know it.’

  ‘Check it out. You’ll love it. Guthrie Govan.’

  ‘You know I’m going to go deeper next time, Jimmy? That’s four on the spin you’ve won.’

  Bliss shrugged. ‘Some of us have what it takes, pal. Others… they have to run to catch up with my casual dude stroll.’ He winked, waved and said his goodbyes. ‘See you Wednesday, Barry. Don’t be late.’

  ‘“Any Major Dude”!’ Griffin called out.

  ‘Don’t embarrass yourself, man. Steely Dan, off the Pretzel Logic album.’ His grin grew wider at the parting shot.

  The workout was more exercise than he had taken in a long time, so Bliss thought he had earned an early dinner at the Windmill. As usual he sat with his back to the wall, allowing him to survey the entire bar. By the time he was finished he could already feel his muscles growing tight, and knew he was going to ache like a bastard in the morning. In his youth he’d often take an ice bath after a particularly rigorous workout, but there was no way he could face one of those again. When he pulled up outside his house a short while later, he was both surprised and delighted to see the old labrador that had taken to loitering close by.

  He still had no idea who the dog belonged to. Having originally thought the animal was a stray, and assumed when it stopped coming around that it had possibly wandered off to die alone, Bliss had been thrilled to see it turn up again a few weeks ago. Since then it had been a regular visitor, and he left food and water out beneath the porch by his front door every evening.

  Throughout the afternoon and evening, his thoughts flitted between the separate strands of the investigation, to the point where he was unable to focus on any of them. Determined to clear his head, Bliss ploughed through several albums and CDs. He’d recently bought some remastered Badfinger music, although whenever he played their songs he became melancholy at the thought of their tragic history. Lynyrd Skynyrd had the same effect on him. When he started thinking
about it, and realised how many of his favourite musicians had been taken over the past few years, his melancholy slid downhill towards the full-blown blues. Bliss stirred himself out of the trough by putting his mind to the investigation once more. This time, he had a spark of inspiration.

  It took three phone calls in which he had to survive irritation and a certain amount of animosity at having disturbed people on their day off, but eventually Bliss got what he needed. Afterwards he sent a text to Bishop, explaining why neither he nor Chandler would be at HQ until the following afternoon, before calling Penny herself to give her the news.

  Thirty

  The vast Thamesmead site included both HMP Thameside and HMP YOI/Isis in addition to the infamous Belmarsh prison. The three-storey yellow-brick entrance to the latter presented a grim exterior, either side of which ran an equally austere perimeter wall. Behind its bland concrete facade stood several individual pods, each enclosed within its own concrete wall for added security. To access the main prison, most visitors had to negotiate fifteen gated doors after first having their fingerprints scanned. Bliss and Chandler enjoyed the benefit of being escorted via a different route, though they were eventually subjected to their own security checks, including meeting the biometric challenge.

  From the main building they entered the high-security unit. In its small reception area, beneath a bank of CCTV cameras, they each removed their shoes and put their belongings through an x-ray scanning machine. They stepped through a metal detector, after which both were thoroughly searched, right down to the linings of their clothes, the soles of their feet and inside their mouths.

  Chandler shunned the offer of a separate room in which to submit to her search, having been warned the process would require an extra member of staff and so slow them down. Instead she opted to undergo it in the main area, wearing only her underwear. Bliss could almost feel his partner’s eyes boring into him, daring him to take a peek. He resisted for as long as he could before finally turning to face her. He gave a wink of approval, accompanied by a low whistle. Chandler had turned forty but clearly took care of herself. Her long legs were shapely and firm, stomach taut, small breasts defiantly perky.