She’d been drinking steadily since he’d arrived at the pub, an anonymous chain establishment on the edge of Doncaster’s entertainment complex. Hollis wasn’t too worried that any of his colleagues would be frequenting the bowling alley or the multiplex cinema at this early hour, so he thought the pub was a safe bet for a couple of hours of anonymity. What he hadn’t anticipated was the influx of families eager to take advantage of the ‘kids eat free mega deal’. He’d managed to find a quietish booth as far away from the kiddies’ play area as possible but their hushed conversation was still punctuated with shrieks of delight and equally loud yells from irate parents.
Michelle had put down her drink, her third double since she’d arrived, and was watching him as he tried again to think of a way to get the information that he wanted from her. Kate had often told him that he was a sensitive interviewer with good instincts about people but, in the hour that they’d been here, he’d not managed to get much out of Michelle apart from the usual pleasantries and a lot of unwanted information about her children. He really wasn’t in the least bit interested in the exploits of his ‘cousins’ except to make sure he knew their names in case he ever had to arrest one of them. It seemed that ‘our Jamie’ was something high up in a used car dealership and ‘our Shane’ was between jobs after getting sacked from the biscuit factory. Michelle hadn’t said so but Dan got the impression that he’d been sacked for doing something dodgy involving boxes of broken biscuits and a back door.
‘You’ve spoken to your mam a fair bit then?’ Michelle asked.
Dan nodded. ‘It’s not like I want to talk to her but I can’t seem to get rid of her.’
Michelle wrinkled her nose at his belligerent tone. ‘Well, she is your mam and she did miss out on seeing you grow up. Only to be expected that she’d want to know you’re all right. She didn’t know them folk that you ended up with. Taking you away like that so she couldn’t see you. Where was it? Nottingham?’
‘Chesterfield,’ Dan said. ‘It’s not like it was Australia.’
‘Yes, but your mam had her troubles and by the time she’d sorted herself out that couple had adopted you. Not much she could do after that. I know she got in touch when you turned eighteen though.’
Dan thought about correcting her. It was him who’d made contact with Suzanne not the other way around. A choice he regretted more with each meeting. ‘We didn’t really get on,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be good to know where I come from but she didn’t really want to tell me much.’
Michelle took another gulp of her drink. ‘Well, it was a difficult time for her when you were born. Our parents had chucked us both out and she was practically on the streets. You can’t blame her for not wanting to go over all that again. Best forgot.’
She stared at the table top, lost in her thoughts, or struggling to make sense of her memories. Dan wasn’t sure which, but he knew she was stringing him along and he knew why. It was probably the first time Michelle had been offered free drinks with no strings attached and she seemed determined to take advantage of his generosity. He’d told her twice that the next drink was her last one but they both knew that he’d keep going back to the bar until he’d got the information he wanted. Or until Michelle passed out.
‘So, what did you want to talk to me about?’ Michelle said, raising bleary blue eyes to his, eyes that reminded him of his own, and Suzanne’s. He knew that he needed to play this carefully, his training kicking in as he tried to gauge the best way to get the information that he wanted. If he asked Michelle directly who his father was he was giving her the opportunity to deny any knowledge or, worse, to lie. He needed to tread carefully.
‘I just want to know what Suz… my mum was like when she was younger, when she had me. I remember her a bit but it’s all a bit hazy. I thought you could fill in some of the gaps and tell me what she was like as a kid, as a teenager.’
Michelle grinned at him as though his request was the most natural thing she’d ever heard. Her dark hair was coming loose from the elastic band that she’d used to hold it back and a few strands dropped across her eyes. She stuck out her lower lip and blew upwards to dislodge them before draining her drink. ‘Oh, the stories I could tell you, Danny Boy. She was a right one, your mam. Little bugger, she was.’
He waited for more but she remained silent, slowly spinning her glass round on the drip mat. Dan took the hint and went back to the bar. Orange juice for himself and just a single for Michelle this time. He needed her to be vaguely coherent.
‘So, Suzanne was a little bugger,’ he prompted, putting the fresh drinks on the table and sitting back down, ‘In what way?’
For a second, Dan thought he might have misjudged this woman. The glance that she gave him was shrewd, almost reptilian, until she raised her glass to her lips and smiled sadly. ‘Always after the lads. I blame my dad. All she ever wanted was his attention but he had no time for any of us. I think that’s why she acted up all the time. I hate to say this about my own flesh and blood but she was a bit of a tart. She’d go with anybody if they bought her a can of beer or offered her a packet of fags.’
This wasn’t what Dan had wanted to hear. If his mother had slept around, the chances of him narrowing down probable candidates for his paternity were slim.
‘Sounds like she was a bit of a sad case,’ Dan suggested.
‘You know, I think you’re right. She wasn’t a bad lass, she was just sad. And she went with the lads to try to make herself feel better.’ She nodded to herself as if this was a sudden revelation.
‘So there wasn’t anybody special?’
‘Oh they were all special.’ Michelle chuckled and slurped her drink. ‘You been watering this down? It doesn’t taste as strong as the last one.’
‘Nope. Still double Bacardi and Coke. You must be getting used to it. You’ll be asking for triples next.’
‘Not a bad idea, lad,’ Michelle said, winking at him lewdly. ‘If you weren’t family I might think you were trying to get me drunk and take advantage of me.’
Dan tried to supress a shudder at the thought of touching this crone. ‘There must have been steady boyfriends though? Lads she saw regularly.’
‘One or two,’ Michelle agreed. ‘One or two. There was one lad broke her heart. Got what he wanted and told all his mates that she was a slag. Nearly killed her that did. Little bastard.’
‘What was his name?’ Dan asked. ‘I might be able to use my contacts, get him done over.’ He heard the words, in his own voice, but he felt oddly disassociated from them. He wasn’t the sort of person who could or would have somebody ‘done over’ but he sensed this might be the way to impress Michelle and get her to share more information with him.
‘John somebody. Roberts? Robertson? Ibbotson? Oh, I dunno. It was a long time ago and besides he’s dead now. Car crash while he was drunk. Nearly killed a woman and two kids as well. Good riddance, I say.’
It wasn’t much but Dan made a mental note of the possible names. If this John had kids, a DNA match might be possible.
‘What about when she had me? Was she still seeing this John bloke?’
Michelle tilted her head and looked at him as though this was the first time she’d seen him. ‘Oh, no. John dumped her when she was about fourteen. She’d moved on to older men by the time she got pregnant with you.’
‘Older men?’
‘She liked authority. One was a soldier. A sergeant. His mam lived on our estate and he moved his wife and little lass in with her. He used to be around a fair bit when he wasn’t away with the army. Nearly thirty he was when he got involved with our Suzanne. Dirty bastard.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Alan? Or Ian? I dunno. It’s all a long time ago. York. His last name was York, like the city.’
This sounded more promising.
‘And then there was that copper.’
Dan suddenly felt like somebody had thrown a bucket of ice-cold water over him. ‘Copper?’
‘Aye. A
young policeman. Nice looking he was. I met him once. Only a bairn himself. He was quite taken with our Suzanne. Until he found out what she was doing for money, I suppose. Not many men would put up with that. Still, she had to live and jobs were scarce.’
‘What was his name? Can you remember?’ Dan asked, trying to conceal the tremble in his voice.
Michelle shook her head.
‘Benny? Bobby? Billy? Summat like that. I don’t think she liked him that much but he made her feel safe when she was on the streets.’
Dan could barely hear her, his mind ablaze with this new information. He could picture the name plate on the DCI’s office door. ‘W. Raymond’. He knew that the W was William. Billy Raymond? Could it be true?
She was surprisingly light when I picked her up as though, her spirit having left, her corpse was an empty shell. I don’t believe in an afterlife, or a god, or any of that stuff but I was acutely aware of a difference in the body. Whatever had made Melissa ‘Melissa’ had gone. This slack jawed, bug-eyed thing bore very little resemblance to the woman that I’d known. I was disappointed in a way. I wanted it to be her; it was important to my message, but what I was left with would have to do.
I considered taking all her clothes off but I soon realised how impractical that was. Her limbs had stiffened quite quickly and I thought I’d probably have to cut the remaining clothes off her, which didn’t hold much appeal. Instead I’d decided to leave her naked from the waist down so that it was obvious what had been done to her. I took her handbag and her phone and hid them in my wardrobe. I also checked her pockets for any means of identification – I didn’t want to make the job of the police too easy – then I wrapped her in bin liners and carried her out to my car.
My original plan had been to bury the bodies in my garden. There was much less likelihood of being caught that way, but then there was no likelihood of anybody seeing what I’d done – or understanding it. So I’d decided that I wanted Melissa to be found. I wanted somebody to read the clues and to work out why I’d felt compelled to get rid of her.
I drove down a small road that ran along the quietest side of the huge open area of Town Fields and parked next to the railings which separated the field from the street. The chances of being seen were slim as all the buildings had been converted to commercial premises: a school, a dentist, various offices. It was always a bit of a ghost town after dark. A quick look around and it had been a simple matter to lift the body over the fence. Then I walked round to a gate, slipped through it and posed the body exactly how I’d wanted it to be found, complete with her trousers and knickers neatly folded by her side. I’d hoped that the message was clear; that people would finally begin to understand that some things in life were a privilege. And if I didn’t have that privilege I was going to do something about those whiners and moaners who thought they could have anything they wanted.
After I’d arranged the body, I drove home and slept like a baby until my alarm at eight o’clock when I got up, dressed and set off for a jog. Then the real fun had started. It was such a buzz blending into the crowd and listening to their theories and suppositions. Some thought it was a child’s body that had been found – as if I’d do that – and others assumed it was a prostitute. But nobody even got close to the truth. That it was an ordinary woman – just like some of them, or their wives or sisters – and she’d got exactly what she deserved.
Chapter 11
Kate looked down at the list of jobs that she had to assign. Most of them involved interviews with staff at the fertility clinic and with Melissa Buckley’s friends and colleagues but none of them looked even close to a lead. Barratt hadn’t made much progress at the DRI. It looked like Beresford was telling the truth, that the Buckleys would have seen a lot of technicians but none for any length of time.
The case was about to enter its second week and she didn’t feel any further forward than she had when the body had been discovered. Kailisa’s lab report was back and it confirmed that Melissa had drunk coffee prior to her death and that she hadn’t had a recent injection of any of the fertility hormones she’d been using. It seemed that she’d given up on trying for a baby, at least for a while. The report also confirmed the rape and the absence of semen or lubricant. It was this fact that she decided to throw at her team to get them thinking.
Raymond had finally allocated them a proper incident room for the case and Kate had asked for a meeting there first thing. She’d bagged a chair at the head of the table, plugged in her laptop and waited. She was surprised when O’Connor appeared first, looking relatively fresh. It wasn’t like him to be early for anything.
He gave her a sheepish smile and pulled out a chair. ‘I know, I know. I must have wet the bed if I’m in this early.’
Kate smiled back. It was a standing joke on her team that the first one in was always accused of having wet the bed – except Kate of course. None of them would have had the audacity to suggest such a thing about their DI. ‘You had coffee?’ she pointed to a drip machine that had been set up on a desk near the door. ‘It’s not great but it’s hot and wet.’
O’Connor smirked and seemed about to make a smutty joke when Barratt burst through the door. He looked from Kate to O’Connor and grinned. ‘What’s up with you, Steve? Wet the bed?’
O’Connor gave him a two-fingered salute and loped over to the coffee machine as Hollis came in followed by Cooper.
‘Black one sugar for me,’ Cooper said and was rewarded with another of O’Connor’s hand gestures – only one finger this time. Despite his pretended irritation, O’Connor followed Sam’s instructions and plonked a steaming mug onto the table in front of her.
‘Dan?’
Hollis looked up at him, his expression blank. ‘What?’
‘Coffee?’
Hollis shook his head and slumped further down in his chair. Kate could see that he’d probably had another rough night. His eyes were bloodshot and underlined by dark patches and his skin looked slightly grey and dehydrated. He’d managed to shave but there were two dots of tissue paper on his neck where he’d cut himself and there was a tiny drop of blood on the collar of his shirt.
Team assembled, Kate took a breath and ran a finger over the trackpad of her laptop, bringing it to life. She turned on the projector, allowing the others to see the image that was displayed on her screen. It was a close-up of the wound in Melissa Buckley’s abdomen.
‘Right. Here’s what we know so far.’ She gave them an account of Kailisa’s findings, the interviews that had already been conducted and her suggestions for moving the investigation forwards. As she was concluding her introductory comments she looked up to see Raymond hovering in the doorway, obviously following her every word. She paused but he gestured for her to continue.
‘The obvious anomaly is the rape,’ she said. There was evidence of brutal penetration but no semen or any indication that a condom was used. Thoughts?’
‘He used an object? Or a sex toy?’ Barratt suggested.
It was what Kate had been thinking.
‘Problems with that hypothesis?’
‘It could mean that we’re not looking for a man. A reasonably strong woman could have overpowered Melissa, strangled her and then sexually assaulted her as she was dying and unable to fight back.’ O’Connor’s face was grim as he presented his theory and Kate knew that it wasn’t just because of the brutal attack. He’d doubled their pool of suspects. Until now she’d assumed that the attacker was male but the new findings meant that she couldn’t rule anybody out purely based on their gender.
‘Right. Open minds needed. We don’t seem to be getting very far in terms of finding a viable suspect so let’s think about motive.’ She flicked back to the photograph of Melissa’s abdomen. ‘Why would somebody do this? Specifically this wound. It must mean something to the attacker that isn’t obvious to us so what is it?’
Silence. She hadn’t expected a flood of suggestions but just one to get them started would have been helpful.
&
nbsp; Finally Cooper said, ‘Jealousy?’
‘Explain.’
‘Could be somebody who can’t have kids for whatever reason so they’re sending a message that other people shouldn’t have them either.’
‘So why Melissa? She was struggling to conceive. Might her attacker have known that? If it was purely jealousy surely he or she would have gone after somebody who was already pregnant.’
Cooper shook her head. ‘Not necessarily. Obviously we need to think about opportunity. This person might not have had access to a pregnant woman. There’s something personal about the way he… or she… has cut Melissa. I don’t think that she was snatched off the street, and the timing isn’t right for that. Very few people are taken in broad daylight.’
The others nodded in agreement.
‘She knew him,’ Barratt said. ‘Or her. Whoever did this got close enough to strangle her without disabling her first by hitting her over the head or something. Whoever this was, I think Melissa knew them and maybe even trusted them.’
It made sense. Kate made a note on the pad next to her laptop. Trust? ‘So it could have been somebody who was jealous that Melissa was able to get help with her fertility issues? Somebody who knew what she was going through?’ It felt possible but not quite right. What they were suggesting seemed to point to a friend of Melissa rather than a stranger but surely she would have mentioned to Ryan that she was meeting up with a friend. Why the secrecy? Still, it was all they had at the moment.
The Kate Fletcher Series Page 58