‘Perfect little nails . . .’ The camera pulled back to Jasmine’s face. Her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I’m never gonna let nothing bad happen to her,’ she said. ‘Never.’
The screen went blank.
‘We should send a copy of this to her mother,’ Hart said.
‘She was unhelpful?’ Rickman asked.
‘She couldn’t wait to get rid of us.’ He saw an uncharacteristic anger in her face, carefully suppressed but deeply felt.
‘I think we interrupted her happy hour,’ Foster said, his outrage undisguised. ‘Did you see the way she sucked the dregs out that bottle of cider?’
‘She never once used Jasmine’s name.’
‘Well, somebody cared.’ Rickman lifted his chin towards the TV screen. ‘This video was on Jasmine’s mobile phone.’
‘So who shot it?’ Foster asked.
‘There’s a faint reflection on the window. Mebbe tech support can try and enhance it.’ Tunstall rewound the clip to the instant a figure ghosted onto the window next to Jasmine, so he missed the surprised expressions on his colleagues’ faces: a year ago, he had trouble with basic computer skills — even sending emails was something he would fret over.
‘All them rings and tattoos,’ he said with a shudder.
‘Talismans against the bad men of the world,’ Rickman said.
‘Her talismans failed her, that day,’ Hart said.
‘The system failed her.’ Rickman looked around at the team. ‘We can’t put that right, but we can help Jasmine make good on her promise to her little girl.’
The four officers glanced one to the other, and it seemed at that moment a silent pact was made: to find Bryony safe, to bring Jasmine’s killer to justice. Of all the men and women Rickman had worked with over the years, he felt sure that these three could deliver.
To an outside observer, the group would have made an odd match. Rickman, tall and ascetic-looking in his good suit and polished shoes. Tunstall, as tall as Rickman, but bulky and clumsy, the extra weight he carried stretching the seams of his casual jacket. Foster, by contrast, was just above average height, though well-muscled and with the easy agility of an athlete. And beside them, Hart, slender and elegant. Even lightly tanned, her pale Icelandic features gave the impression of self-possessed aloofness.
‘First off, welcome to the team, Chris,’ Rickman said, and Tunstall nodded, his neck growing red at the rim of his shirt collar. ‘Who wants to go first?’
Foster took the photographs from his inside pocket and handed Rickman the shot of Jasmine and her boyfriend. ‘Mark Davis. Boyfriend, the mother said. Druggie. Said Jasmine was into crack and heroin, as well.’
‘Her school confirms that,’ Rickman said, noticing the thorns tattooed on Jasmine’s arms, and flashing involuntarily to Jasmine, dead, with pearls of blood congealed at the tips of each spur. ‘We need to show this photo to the witness at the scene — find out if this is the man he saw driving away.’
‘I can do that,’ Tunstall said.
‘Have we got the negs?’ Rickman asked.
Foster checked the wallet. ‘All here. There’s stills of Jasmine and the baby and all.’
‘Get them down to technical support. We’ll need multiples for press, house-to-house. Could the mother tell us anything about Davis?’
Foster and Hart exchanged a look — Hart’s was unusually solicitous, Foster’s uncharacteristically awkward.
‘Lee?’ Rickman said.
‘I identified him, boss.’ Foster explained his connection with Mark Davis, Black Wood’s mentoring scheme. Rickman knew the last part — Foster’s involvement in the scheme, though his friend hadn't mentioned individual names. This was for Hart and Tunstall’s benefit.
‘So this Davis lad was one of the inmates?’ Tunstall asked, always slow at processing information.
Foster stared at him. ‘Inmates? It wasn’t a prison, Tunstall.’ Tunstall looked uncertain. ‘We weren’t offenders,’ Foster continued. ‘We were kids with nowhere else to go.’
Tunstall frowned, registering the use of ‘we’. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You were—’
‘An “inmate”, yeah.’
The rim of red around Tunstall’s collar became a sudden florid flush. Rickman looked at Tunstall, making it plain he expected a response.
The big man shifted uncomfortably in his chair and it cracked alarmingly. ‘Sorry, Sarge,’ he mumbled. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Well, now you do.’ Foster kept his gaze on Tunstall, who looked ready to bolt for the door.
‘You might want to keep that in mind when you talk to any former residents,’ Rickman said. Although the irony in his tone was way beyond him, he knew that Chris Tunstall would not forget this lesson in tact.
Tunstall nodded, still blushing, and Rickman saw him write the word ‘resident’ in his notebook. He underlined it three times.
‘Ed and Hilary Shepherd still run the place, so far as I know.’ Foster was slow to take his eyes off Tunstall. ‘Mark was close to them, as I remember. Might be worth having a word.’
‘Okay,’ Rickman said. ‘Lee, you’ll come with me to Black Wood. Naomi, photographs and a few copies of the video, in case local TV can use it. I’ll ask about that reflection, too. Chris—’
‘The witness at the scene,’ Tunstall supplied smartly, in an effort to make up for his gaff with Foster.
‘Right,’ Rickman said. ‘If we get a positive ID, I can use it at the press conference. When that’s done, check with house-to-house, see if there’s anything needs following up. And remember, at least half of these officers have come in on their off-duty to help.’
He watched Tunstall absorb this piece of information before going on. ‘And I have another name: Jasmine’s . . . peers’ — he couldn’t bring himself to call them school friends — ‘say she was friendly with an older woman, used to pick her up outside school. Kim or Kimberley. Make sure house-to-house have the name. When they’ve finished canvassing the neighbourhood, I’ll ask them to talk to working girls around the city centre — it’s likely Jasmine funded her habit through prostitution. Our job will be to start tackling former residents — anyone who might’ve kept in touch with Mark Davis.’
‘Sir?’ A civilian clerk stood at the door. Rickman waved her in and she handed him a slip of paper.
He read it. ‘Are police at the scene?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Probable sighting of Davis. Queens Drive,’ Rickman explained to the others.
As the clerk disappeared through the door, Rickman turned to a whiteboard to the left of it. He had already noted that Jasmine Elliott’s body was discovered at eleven fifty a.m. Rickman drew a line across the board, then added an entry to the timeline. ‘Sighting — Queens Drive, Wavertree, one p.m.’
Foster shook his head in disgust. ‘He could be heading anywhere.’ Queens Drive was Liverpool’s outer ring road: six and a half miles, with exits to any one of thousands of major and minor roads, avenues, boulevards and streets — and that was assuming Davis decided to stay in the city.
‘I’ll check it out, soon as I’ve sorted technical support,’ Hart said.
Rickman handed her the slip. ‘Thanks, Naomi. The super has confirmed — no extra support until tomorrow. Make use of whatever goodwill you’ve built up with the admin staff to help smooth the way, use your time wisely — and prioritise.’
* * *
Rickman almost collided with a DC from the drugs team as he and Foster left the CID Room. ‘Where’s the fire?’ he demanded.
‘Sorry, sir. Machete attack at a crack house. It’s all hands to the pump.’ The officer hurried on, clattering down the back stairs.
‘It’s paramedics they’ll be wanting,’ Foster said, ‘not police.’ They trotted down the stairs, listening to cars reversing and revving out of the car park at the back of the building. ‘You’d think that lot would’ve had enough excitement last night.’
As a marine, Foster had seen excitement of the most dangerous kind, a
nd knew better than most the aftermath of exciting moments. He would flash his Royal Marine credentials at an attractive woman in the same way he would flash his brilliant white smile, but he was no yarn-spinner. Rickman was the only man or woman on the force who had heard about the sweat and the dirt and the fear of battle, the friends Foster had lost to enemy fire and landmines. Foster knew how to handle himself, and he was a good man to have on your side in a fight, but Rickman knew that he didn’t feel the need to chase danger.
‘DI Dwight’s team have a lot to make up for, after last night’s op,’ Rickman said.
‘I heard it was a bit of dog’s breakfast.’
‘I doubt they’ll be able to hold Maitland, and without Maitland, all Snowplough achieved was putting a hole in his profit margins. He’ll be dealing again in a matter of days.’
Rickman pushed the release bar on the fire escape door and they were out into bright sunshine. A yellow surveillance van swung into the car park and twelve waiting officers in uniform piled in.
Rickman noticed Foster’s expression. ‘The chief wants a visible presence on the streets,’ he said.
‘Seems cockeyed to me.’ Foster ducked into the passenger seat of the Vectra as Rickman slid behind the wheel.
‘Having a visible presence?’
‘Custard-yellow vans doing surveillance. I mean — do they really expect your local scals to do anything with a gang of hairy-arsed woodentops looking on?’
‘The reality TV factor,’ Rickman said. ‘They forget the cameras are rolling. Or maybe they just want their fifteen minutes of fame.’
They followed the convoy out of the rear courtyard, onto the side street, avoiding the camera crews. The others headed into the city, but Rickman turned southwards to the leafy suburb of Woolton. As they drove up Brownlow Hill towards the main university campus, they hit solid traffic.
Rickman cursed mildly, and Foster said, ‘That’s progress for you.’
Road improvements and building demolitions to make way for university buildings and the new teaching hospital had turned the city centre into a chicane for the past two years. Delays, mismanagement and the collapse of its building contractor, Carillion, had already set the hospital construction back several months. Then the new contractor had discovered potentially catastrophic structural defects. Now it looked like the new hospital would open some five years after its planned completion. Meanwhile, the main arterial roads past the university were in almost total gridlock at peak times, and even short trips were a logistical nightmare. Normally, at this time of day, traffic eased off, but the virtual blocking of Wavertree Road by TV crews and journalists meant drivers were finding alternative routes through the city.
Rickman nosed forward, siphoning into a single lane of traffic, past orange and white barriers. The buzz of road drills in the distance told him they were still some way from the roadworks. Foster shook his head, staring resentfully at the press of traffic. ‘New-wave Liverpool,’ he muttered. ‘“Come and visit, you’ll never want to leave.” We’ll never let you out, more like.’
‘We haven’t got time for this.’ Rickman drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, working out the quickest way around the jam.
Foster glanced at him. ‘You didn’t have to be here. Let’s face it, you could be filling in questionnaires, or talking to the speaking clock, or whatever it is you do back at the office.’
‘When I could be digging into your past?’
‘And there was me, thinking you didn’t trust me with them two.’
Foster looked straight ahead, but Rickman could feel his friend watching from the corner of his eye. Foster wasn’t one to share his feelings, but he was quick to read others’. ‘I need to know if you’re okay with this,’ Rickman said.
‘I knew the lad four years ago, Jeff.’
‘But it’s bound to stir up some ghosts.’
Foster lifted his chin, indicating a sudden movement of the traffic, so Rickman didn’t catch his expression. ‘I’ll handle it,’ he said, after a few moments. ‘What about you? You’re coming up to a bit of a milestone yourself.’
If anyone else had said this, Rickman would have cut them off at the knees, but Foster knew more than most what Rickman had been through the previous autumn, and Foster, more than anyone, had helped him survive it. ‘I used to love this season,’ he said. ‘Now, I just hope to get through it.’
Foster nodded. ‘Me mum hated it. She was always worse as the nights drew in.’
Rickman knew that Lee’s mother had been a sadness that lingered in his life like a dull ache. But when she died, Foster lost all purpose and direction for a while. Rickman showed up on his doorstep after he’d failed to turn up for work two days running. His friend had handed Rickman his mother’s address book and said, ‘They need to know she’s dead.’ They being the scant few who had once been a part of her existence.
‘Jeff’ — Lee Foster’s gaze had held such searing pain that Rickman had to force himself to keep eye contact — ‘They need to know how she died.’
Rickman understood. His friend couldn’t bear to hear the short silence, the intake of breath, the tentative question that Rickman heard again and again in the hours that followed. ‘Did she . . . ?’ They needed to know that it wasn’t suicide. So Rickman performed this duty, turning the brittle pages of her address book, dialling the numbers from Appleton to Williams, repeating the same words, until they became almost automatic.
And just as Jeff Rickman had arranged the funeral and flowers, had kept Lee Foster company while he got drunk, covered for him on the days he couldn’t get out of bed, so Foster had taken care of Rickman when his partner’s murder had torn his world apart. More than this, Foster had seen that justice was served.
Rickman edged the car forward, looking for the first turn-off that would allow him to double back. ‘Did you ever wonder what your life would be like, if your mother’s depression had been more effectively treated?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, sometimes. Not much.’ Foster slumped back in his seat, resigning himself to the wait. ‘I just wish she could’ve been happier.’
Rickman saw his chance — a side street that wasn’t cordoned off. It meant back-tracking, but anything was better than sitting in a queue going nowhere. He cut left, looping back, then scooted south along the grey backstreets of Edge Hill, before turning east towards Woolton’s tree-lined avenues.
‘So,’ Foster said, after a good ten minutes’ silence. ‘Is that it? We all square?’
Rickman thought about it. ‘Yeah. For now, anyway.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ Sarcasm was almost a reflex with Foster. They saw the sign for Black Wood Children’s Home a hundred yards up the road. ‘Don’t embarrass me, right?’ Foster added. ‘Ed and Hilary, they think I’m a good Catholic lad.’
‘D’you ever go to church?’ Rickman asked, thinking again of the full requiem mass he had arranged for Foster’s mother: incense, altar boys, choir, the works.
‘I go there,’ Foster said. ‘Sometimes. When it’s empty.’
Rickman shot him a quizzical look.
‘Somewhere quiet to think,’ Foster explained. ‘What about you?’
Rickman turned into the drive. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been inside a synagogue. My mother had no belief. My father worshipped in the house of Higson’s Ale.’
‘Do you believe in anything?’ Foster asked.
Rickman thought a moment. ‘Evil. I believe in evil.’
* * *
Four hours. The baby has screamed and bawled and grizzled and whimpered non-stop for four solid hours. Mark Davis hunches over the steering wheel, his hands covering his ears.
‘I don’t know what to do!’
Bryony hiccups and quietens for a moment. He angles his head to look at her in the rear-view mirror, hardly daring to hope. Then she takes another breath and the screams begin again, pounding his eardrums. He stares at the twitching, screaming bundle of fury and all he can feel is pressure behind his e
yes and nothing, nothing, nothing in his head.
‘Fuck it!’ He shoulders the door open and slams it after him, taking a few steps, tempted to keep walking. But the bags are in the car: the money, the drugs, the promise of a good life — a life he was never meant to have and now he wants it. The baby’s screams follow him and he blames Bryony for slowing him down and Jasmine for getting knocked up in the first place.
He thinks how much easier it will be to disappear without Bryony holding him back.
A woman turns the corner, dragged along by a big dog — all hair and slaver. His heart skips a beat — he’s covered in blood! He turns and sidles back to the car, pressing himself against the glass, as though he’s making way for her.
She smiles her thanks, passing him at a trot, panting almost as loud as the dog, leaning back at a slant like a water-skier, one hand on the dog’s leash. ‘Someone wants a feed,’ she says, like he’s asked her opinion. She’s gone as suddenly as she appeared, and Mark comes to a decision.
He’ll go to the chemist, get some baby stuff — a bottle and nappies and that. But not the way he looks now — not with blood all over his trousers. He’s parked along a blank stretch of sandstone wall — part of the boundary to Calderstones Park. He checks nobody is looking and locks the car door. She’ll be all right, he tells himself. I’ll be five minutes — what can happen in five minutes?
* * *
The hot water isn’t working in the toilets, and all the plugs have been removed from the sinks after one too many floods. He grabs a few paper towels and stuffs them in the plughole. The shirt isn’t too bad, but there’s a large browning patch of blood on the left leg of the trousers, and further streaks on both thighs, where he’s wiped his hands.
He strips off and plunges the trousers into the freezing water. He works the soap dispenser till it rattles, rubbing an oily gloop of soap into the stain, dunking and scrubbing at the fabric until the water is dark pink, but the stains, though fainter, remain.
Cursing, he pulls the wad of paper towels out of the plug hole and runs fresh water onto the stains. He’s weeping and cursing now, muttering to himself, squeezing and wringing and plunging the cloth until his hands are raw.
DON'T SCREAM an absolutely gripping killer thriller with a huge twist (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 3) Page 6