Persecution

by R. C. Bridgestock

  Evidence of Cordelia’s way of life suggested that she had a perfectly good roof over her head, as did twenty-six others questioned in a survey of fifty beggars throughout the country, whilst only five were known to be sleeping rough, and sixteen were living with family or friends, sofa-surfing. In Cordelia’s case she had an abundance of home comforts, and food in her cupboards, which puzzled the SIO as to why she would put her health and wellbeing at risk on the streets, in all kinds of weather, unless it was so lucrative that she didn’t need to work for a living.

  In university towns the latest research intimated that, owing to a lack of jobs that suited the student lifestyle, there was a worrying rise in the young people begging on the streets for financial support, as well as to fund alcohol, drug and substance abuse.

  Huddersfield wasn’t a big city, or even a particularly lucrative large market town, although to Charley it was a great town.

  Charley stood, and paused for a moment at her office window, thoughtfully watching sleet pitter-patter against the windowpane and the two police officers in the yard below. Braving the inhospitable elements, with their heads bowed, being buffeted across the yard with their shoulders hunched, they got into the marked vehicle. She took a mouthful of cold coffee from her mug, winced at its bitterness, smoothed the material of her navy trousers, and headed out of her office directly towards the kitchen to make another.

  The mood in the Incident Room was as grey as the heavy clouds heaped low in the sky, shrouding Huddersfield in a dense grey mist. The officers that had not purposefully headed for the door after the briefing to begin their separate enquiries, sat at their desks working quietly and diligently. She saw Mike heading towards her. He deliberately tugged at the cuffs of his shirt, and was straightening his tie when they met outside her door. Usually, Mike was more restrained, but it appeared the article in the newspaper he was holding had temporarily rendered him quite opinionated. ‘She must have been making bloody good money, otherwise she wouldn’t ’ave been begging,’ he said, the moment he saw Charley. He waved a copy of the national, with the headline, ‘Street beggar makes £500 a day despite having his own home,’ under Charley’s nose. ‘Look ’ere.’

  Annie’s was the nearest desk and Charley leaned over to put her mug down, before taking the newspaper from him. The young detective stopped what she was doing to look at the pair, and Charley’s eyes focused on the article.

  ‘I don’t mind admitting that beggars asking for money intimidate me,’ said Annie, sitting back in her chair, and crossing her long legs.

  ‘They’re a bloody nuisance,’ piped up DC Wilkie Connor who, dressed in casual clothes, cord trousers, an open-necked shirt and jumper, gave a big, long, wide yawn. His eyes, watery and tinged with red in the corners, gave Charley the telltale sign of the previous night’s lack of sleep. She wondered how his wheelchair-bound, ailing wife Fran was, and made a mental note to ask him.

  ‘It’s hard to tell who is genuine and who isn’t,’ said DC Ricky-Lee, who was sitting at the desk next to the old-timer. In contrast the younger man was smartly dressed in a suit and a white shirt that showed off his all-year-round tan.

  Charley raised her eyes to look at the stony-faced detectives looking back at her. ‘The plight of those in desperate need is being overshadowed by those out to try to make some additional cash by conning the public. Driven by greed rather than necessity,’ said Charley.

  Annie frowned. ‘Like Cordelia,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Charley. ‘Or perhaps she didn’t have any other income, lost her job, was between jobs, and begging, selling her body for sex, and shoplifting was a last resort, conceived by her as being a more acceptable option to provide her needs, rather than resorting to criminal activities such as drug dealing. However, the main question for me is did Cordelia’s begging play a significant part in her murder, or was she the victim of an opportunist. If we knew that, then we would have a better indication of how to tackle this enquiry.’

  ‘You mean was she targeted, or was she in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ said Annie.

  Charley nodded. ‘Yes. Exactly.’

  It had been less than an hour since its circulation when Charley received a phone call from the control room, to inform her that Cordelia’s car had been discovered parked on West Street, less than half a mile from where her body had been discovered, and not only did the SIO get the confirmation of the location of the vehicle, but she was also told that the vehicle was secure. What she didn’t expect was that a set of keys was said to have been found secreted on top of the driver’s side front wheel.

  ‘Do you think that was her routine?’ said Mike when she told him. ‘To leave her keys with the vehicle?’

  ‘Well, I guess if she was purporting to be a beggar, she would be aware that she could be arrested and searched by the police, or robbed, and by hiding her keys no one would suspect she had a vehicle, or a home.’

  ‘Could it be possible that someone else knew her secret and planted the keys, after they attacked her?’ he said.

  Charley shrugged her shoulders. ‘What would they gain?’

  ‘If the guilty person was arrested then they would not be found with her keys in their possession.’

  Charley sat quietly at her desk pondering the latest information. It appeared that Mr Marsh was correct about what he told his staff he had seen. Mindful that CCTV had been unavailable to them at the murder scene, Charley added to her list: CCTV availability in the immediate vicinity of car? She rolled her pen through her fingers. This could confirm for them if Cordelia had parked the car, and left the keys at the location.

  Whilst there were a lot of questions to be answered, and things to find out about Ms Cordelia Le Beau, there was one undeniable fact, and that was that the woman had been brutally murdered.

  Thoughts to record popped into her head and Charley wrote them down. Could the fact that Cordelia had been deceiving people be a motive for her murder? Charley didn’t think so. Although she had to concede that people were killed for a lot less.

  Charley walked out of her office and over to Mike’s desk. ‘I want Cordelia’s car taken away for examination,’ she said. ‘We can’t assume it was her who parked it where it was found.’

  Mike spoke matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve been doing some research. We have had a spate of vehicle thefts in the area. Thieves known to be stealing cars and parking them up to soak for a few days, to see if the stolen car is being tracked, if not, they return to pick it up and move it on.’

  Wilkie was listening in to the conversation. ‘If someone had nicked it, they’d hardly leave the keys for someone to find and take it,’ he added cynically, fully anticipating the response.

  ‘I agree,’ Charley interrupted, but recognising Mike’s thought pattern the SIO looked around the room to ask. ‘Any response from our appeal, a relative or a friend?’

  Blank faces stared back at her.

  ‘It appears Cordelia really was a loner, and bearing in mind that ninety per cent of victims know their attacker, I wonder if Cordelia knew hers?’

  ‘We really need a hit on the CCTV. This is now our top priority. Overtime has been approved.’ The team nodded and got to work.

  ‘Do you think it’s going to be money well spent?’ asked Tattie, the middle-aged office manager whose hair appeared more frizzy than usual, sandy-coloured and wild.

  ‘I hope so. I want these killers caught before they can hurt anyone else.’ Because despite what she had said to the press, Charley was not convinced this was an isolated incident.

  * * *

  It was dark, and the team had been working eleven hours, when an anonymous telephone call was received in the Incident Room. The caller was a female, and she sounded as if she had been drinking. Shouting down the phone she called Cordelia a bitch, and told Detective Constable Wilkie Connor, who had taken the call, that Cordelia deserved to die. No other words were spoken, and instead of calling it a day, the fatigued and hungry team set about trying to trace t
he phone call’s origin as a matter of urgency.

  Most knew from experience that all sorts of cranks rang an incident room, but someone obviously had something against Cordelia Le Beau to waste their time ringing in.

  Drawing parallels between her past, and this present case triggered a trip down memory lane. Charley was contemplating the eighteen months since she came home from a four-year secondment in London to her home town of Huddersfield, on promotion as the head of crime, when suddenly she noticed Winnie, handing out sandwiches to the team from her basket on wheels. She smiled, it seemed like she had never been away from her Yorkshire police family. This was not how she had envisaged it would be. It wasn’t how it had been for her predecessor.

  The bodies had been relentless since her return.

  On a positive note, although work continued on the previous murders at Crownest, it was too soon for the related court case to be upon them just yet.

  God bless the old lady, Charley thought as she saw the look on the grateful faces for the most welcome, delicious and homemade sustenance. With no canteens in police stations the only way to get food was to bring it in, or go out to a takeaway, and when a murder broke and the officers were working flat out, morale soon tanked with no food in bellies, and Winnie knew that.

  Charley watched Winnie making the rounds and thought briefly of her father. The two had been childhood sweethearts, but Winnie had moved away as a teenager and on her return discovered Jack Mann married and his wife pregnant. What Charley would give to be able to talk to her dad about the things she had discovered since his death. Had he found it hard to love two women? Or had he the same skill at compartmentalising as Charley?

  She wondered if her mother ever knew about his love for Winnie? Maybe she did, maybe that was why she was able to teach Charley patience, gratitude, unconditional love, and, most importantly, that nobody was perfect.

  Her father had been a worker, fighter, a believer in old Yorkshire legends; latterly in Karma. He showed Charley how to respect others, taught her discipline, to stand up for the principle of right, no matter what the consequences, and that true strength came from compromising when necessary, and compassion. He preferred the boxing ring to working on the land, and taught Charley all he knew about packing a punch. Charley, on the other hand, loved spending time at the farm with the animals, listening to her granny’s folktales, and of course then there was Danny Ray, the son of the neighbouring farmer, a little older than she, who became someone she grew to hero-worship.

  Her face suddenly turned sour. How did she overlook the elements of Danny’s character that overrode her instinct about him even at that early age?

  As Winnie worked towards Charley’s office, Charley looked up at her certificates hanging on her wall. Her meteoritic rise through the Force to become head of CID in her home town at the age of twenty-nine, was her greatest achievement yet, albeit tinged with sadness that her first murder enquiry resulted in her arresting Danny Ray for the ultimate crime.

  The fact that she had not guessed that someone so close could be a killer still weighed heavily on her mind.

  Now she was surrounded by more experienced colleagues for whom she had the greatest respect, and as the size of her team grew dramatically when a job like a murder broke, it did not faze her. She was more than qualified to do the job. The fact that she had brought about the breakthrough in the capture of one of Britain’s most wanted murderers, Titus Deaver, the cannibal killer, could not be denied by her most ardent adversary, who had no option but to support her obtaining her present role.

  She had missed that her boyfriend was a murderer, but that did not undermine everything else she had achieved. She took a deep breath. She could do this job. She would catch this killer.

  A woman had called into the Incident Room. Even if the lead went nowhere, it meant that people were reacting to the crime following the media coverage, and that was always a good thing.

  When Winnie knocked at her door Charley smiled widely. People now had murder on their lips, and she had food.

  Chapter 11

  An investigation is about searching for the truth, a murder investigation is no different, eliminating people from the enquiry at every step and therefore paving the way to the culprits.

  Murder is the greatest test for the detective.

  Despite the lateness of the hour, the police station was buzzing. There was anticipation in the air as the 2 to 10 pm shift was coming to an end and the night shift were getting ready to take up the baton. No one could ever say that a police officer’s work was predictable. In fact, each call requiring attention was varied and able to be adapted as required.

  Charley popped into the mailroom as she was passing, and picked up the few papers that had been deposited in her pigeon-hole during the afternoon. One of the positive effects or outcomes of such a large enquiry, according to the stats from HQ, was the reduction in the local crime rate, mainly owing to the influx of officers brought into the division, but however grateful Charley was for that, she was also aware that the attack on a lone female would require an increased visual level of uniformed officers on the streets. She knew, from experience, that women wouldn’t feel safe until Cordelia’s killers were caught.

  Enquiries remained ongoing into tracing the anonymous caller to the Incident Room. Acknowledging that there was nothing more that she could do today, Charley switched off her office light, closed her door and bid the others goodnight. Her parting instruction was that if there was any news she should be contacted immediately. Tucked under her arm was the intelligence file on Cordelia Le Beau – her bedtime reading. She knew sleep would evade her for some time yet, but the hours before sleep would be spent wisely, as she intended to read all about the woman’s past, to gain a better understanding of what type of person Cordelia had been, prior to visiting her house with Annie tomorrow.

  The town hall clock struck ten o’clock when she drove her car through the big gates of the station yard. She felt jittery, no doubt the after-effects of the adrenaline in her body after the recent rush.

  Heading towards home, the Detective Inspector’s tyres squealed on the tarmac, as she drove round the ring road of the wet, well-lit and relatively quiet market town. However the tranquility was brief. Blaring sirens shattered the usually serene, rural silence Charley was accustomed to at that hour whilst driving on Valley Road. A traffic patrol car, lights flashing and siren wailing, rocketed towards the A62. This was closely followed minutes later by an ambulance similarly announcing its presence. Her first thoughts, as she pulled into the kerb to allow them to pass, was that someone was going to have a busy night, and selfishly she said a silent prayer that her mobile phone would remain silent.

  With no sudden call coming in requesting her presence, whatever the incident maybe, Charley continued to drive steadily home. Dark and gloomy fields spread around her, hemming her in on every side. It unnerved her to think what emergency she might come across ahead, so much so that when she parked up on her street she exhaled, the tension visibly easing from her shoulders. Looking along the street, she could see just one house in darkness. She told herself that she ought to know better than to leave all her lights off and let would-be criminals know there was no one at home, when she had timer switches for her lamps. She made a mental note to activate them.

  Exiting the car to face a blustery northwesterly, Charley pulled up her hood, put her head down and sucked in the wind as she walked the well-trodden path to her front door where, with trembling cold fingers, she fumbled around in her pocket for her keys. In her mind’s eye her home was beckoning with memories of her formative years, the promise of a cheery hello, a roaring fire, a warm meal, and a mug of hot chocolate, but instead of these niceties when she flung open the door, the hallway was pitch-black, eerily quiet, freezing cold, and rather than the wholesome smell of cooking pervading the air, it smelt of mildew and old footwear. The reality made her heart sink, leadened her limbs and slowed her spirit. Immediately she clicked on the switch
that illuminated the staircase, the light revealing her pasty-face in the hallway mirror, and the red-rimmed eyes of exhaustion. Kicking off her shoes Charley dragged her heavy feet up the stairs. She was close to tears with a sudden sadness brought on by the grief she had not dealt with on her mother’s and father’s deaths. Too exhausted to close her curtains, she threw her bag on the floor behind the door, the file on the bed, removed a few of her clothes and crawled between the cool, cotton sheets. Cordelia’s file lay within arm’s reach, but it was a while before she began to read it, to try to shift the despondency she was feeling.

  First impressions suggested Ms Le Beau, aka Cora Jones, was someone who did what she wanted, when she wanted, how she wanted, and took from others without conscience.

  Charley was still far from sleep when she finished reading its contents, but she did feel the orderly process of a murder enquiry gradually reforming peace in her mind. She closed the file.

  As she lay in the dark, she concentrated on the regular sound of her ticking clock, by her ear on her bedside table, and the swaying of the ghost-like image of the tree outside upon her wall, both of which, she recalled, soothed her as a child, creating a symphony of droning monotony. Before long she felt drowsy. The drowsiness soon descended into sleep and dreams, but in her dreams all she could see was herself flying blind through a midnight sky.

  * * *

  At five-fifteen, Charley rose, got dressed and went down into the kitchen looking for something to eat.

  When she opened the fridge, a sour smell greeted her. Her first thought when she identified the milk as the culprit, was that she wouldn’t tell Annie, not after enlightening her about Granny’s Yorkshire folklore, and the Hobgoblin. The small, hairy, mischievous little man who, in return for a jug of milk or food would typically do small tasks around the house, like dusting and ironing, so it was said, but, as the folklore went, the Hobgoblin could be easily annoyed, and when he was, he was known to mix the wheat and chaff, extinguish the fire, and turn the milk sour. Smiling to herself, she flushed the rest of the milk down the sink, picked up a half-eaten bar of chocolate, and headed for the door, in work mode.