She was about to argue, but his voice had grown stronger and louder, and hers meeker, quieter. She was shrivelling up again, she was losing again.
Where’s your superpower now, Jess? Where are those options now?
He leaned forward, elbows on his desk, fat fingers playing with each other. “I shall conduct another home visit the day after tomorrow.”
Her eyes closed, and she felt her bottom lip quiver.
“And I’ll be leaving the paperwork here. I’ll sign it once I’m satisfied, and once I’ve returned from your bedsit. Is that okay?” He smiled at her again, greasy pink lips shining. “Jessica?”
* * *
Jess cried most of the way home.
She tried not to, of course, but she couldn’t help it. This was what the phrase ‘over a barrel’ was designed for. This was what hell felt like. She wanted to be thinking of Michael now, coming up with a way to help him, maybe with Marilyn’s input, not to be worrying about having to blow off some fat bastard who could turn nasty at any time. He was the kind of man who saw a little power over someone and exploited it to the max. There really was no telling where the end might be, but she couldn’t imagine him ever saying, ‘You done good, Jessy. Everything’s back to normal now, and we’ll never see each other again’. He would make sure she went back inside, if for no other reason than to exercise his power.
She was on licence for another eighteen months; it would be a long time to suffer.
She resolved not to.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Eddie entered the main CID office, glancing at Melanie, who sat alone at a semicircular desk in a sea of other desks. Detectives and other researchers like her engaged in a low hum, speaking on phones, sharing a joke. It could be any medium-sized office anywhere in the country. They could be a sales team; it could be an architects’ office, a solicitors’ office.
But these people were all engaged in catching evil.
He stared at them and realised the truth of that last thought. They were engaged in catching evil. These people were the last stop in determining whether murderers and rapists, current or historic, got to go free, or got to live in a cell for the next fifteen years.
These were the people on whom the victims’ families depended to make sure their dead ones or their damaged ones were given the justice they deserved, and they were the ones charged with keeping those villains away from the law-abiding citizen. They were charged with keeping people’s faith in the police and the justice system.
Didn’t it all sound like a cliché? Didn’t it all sound like a game? Didn’t it all sound like bullshit?
But it was true, and it didn’t hurt to be reminded of that every now and then; how important their work was. Eddie felt a little guilty at taking the piss out of them – out of the victims. But it was how he coped. Without it he’d split in two and some little nut-job would jump out, start killing people, and end up in a straitjacket in Juniper Hill with the arsonist.
Melanie was smiling at him.
He hadn’t noticed at first, was too busy staring at the office while lost in thought. But then he became aware. He squinted at her, looked behind him, but it was him she was grinning at. And then she winked. Eddie was confused. He began walking towards her, meaning to ask why she smiled at him. “Is my fly down?”
“Eddie?”
Eddie stopped and turned. Crawford.
“Are you lost?”
Eddie looked to Melanie, but she was staring at her monitor as though he’d dreamed the smile and the wink. “No,” he said, unsure what was going on. “I’m coming.”
He closed the door of Crawford’s office, and chose to stand in the corner. This used to be Cooper’s office, and it had always looked too big for him, like an ill-fitting suit, like a personality smaller than the laugh that carried it. He had been a fake, but Crawford suited this place, he filled it well, and those sitting in the chairs and standing by the window thought so too – they were calm, respectful. Crawford was the kind of leader this place had needed for years.
That calming effect even seemed to work on Eddie. At first he tried to resist it, but then he gave in as though tired of the constant battles.
Crawford was smiling at him. “Okay?”
Eddie nodded. See, he thought, this is so unnatural. He felt his hackles rise, the ones that warned him of things like this – unnatural things, things not in the right place, not in the right order – and he tried to pat them down again as though he were stroking a dog. It looked at him, shook its head, and bit his hand off. Eddie snapped awake, blinking eyes that settled on Benson.
Benson screwed up an empty Mars bar wrapper and stuffed it in his pocket, his jaw working the chocolate so noisily that Eddie had to either look away or throw up on the carpet right there and then. Nicki was here too, and her presence confused Eddie. He mouthed, ‘What are you here for?’ She shrugged, pretending not to understand him. So he said, “Why are you here?”
Crawford took up his seat, and said, “I invited her. She worked the scene with you last night; she might have valid points to raise.”
“Yep.” Eddie considered it, eyebrows arched. “She might, but I want her at a PM at ten.” Crawford looked like a model from a glossy men’s magazine, red braces over a cream shirt latching onto tailor-made tan slacks that probably cost more than Eddie’s house. Eddie’s nausea at seeing Benson macerating a Mars bar intensified a little at the sight of how good Crawford looked. Was that a little intimidation, Eddie? he asked himself. He almost laughed aloud.
There were a couple of new faces, and one old face missing. Jeffery usually attended these briefings; he was the one responsible for formulating forensic strategies, for liaising with the SIO, for developing a coherent way forward through an investigation, and for scheduling evidence for laboratory analysis in a specific and cost-efficient way. He was needed here.
In a way totally unlike that of his predecessor, Crawford opened the meeting by welcoming them all to his office and saying, “For those who don’t know me, I’m Lloyd Crawford, and I’ve come from Nottinghamshire Constabulary to fill the void in MCU left by Mr Cooper. I’ve been in policing for thirty-two years, but I’m not an old-school copper. I believe in leading by example, and I believe in treating people fairly and with respect. We move forward as a team, and we all bring something valid to the table. It’s why you’re all here. I look forward to getting to know each of you a little more over the coming days, but for now we have some pressing business to attend to.”
Eddie was impressed. At last, a gaffer who was decent, and wasn’t a coffin-dodger.
Crawford cleared his throat. “His name was Doctor Stanford Bolton. He was a Home Office pathologist working the Yorkshire and Humber region for almost twenty-five years before retirement eleven years ago.” Crawford didn’t even look at the notes on his desk. “He dealt with roughly thirteen hundred suspicious and sudden deaths over that time; about ninety in his last two years before retirement.
“He was seventy-six. He lived alone; his wife, Mildred, died eight years ago. He has a housekeeper, Mrs Watkins, who comes in twice a week for a few hours.” Crawford nodded at Eddie. “Mrs Watkins confirms that to the best of her knowledge nothing has been removed from the house, or appears out of place, except for a knife missing from the block by the microwave. Suppose it could be in the dishwasher, we should check—”
“Dishwasher’s empty,” Eddie said.
“So the murderer took it with him.” Crawford gave this some thought before resuming. “He banked with Barclays, who report no suspicious activity on his accounts.” He stared at the room. “It’s a stranger murder.”
Eddie’s brow folded up over his face and he snorted. “Bollocks.”
Everyone turned to stare at Eddie, and Crawford said, “Remember my opening speech where I outlined that we all work with respect, Eddie?”
Eddie bowed his head slightly, “Bollocks, Boss.”
Crawford let it go. “What makes you think it’s not a stranger
murder?”
Eddie sipped his coffee. “Just because you don’t know who killed him, doesn’t make it a stranger murder. A stranger murder is random—”
“I know what a stranger murder is. And since we have no motive for the killing—”
“We only don’t have a motive because we don’t know who killed him yet. When we find her, we’ll see that there is a motive and that they knew each other. Therefore, it’s not a stranger murder.”
Crawford turned a slight shade of crimson. “In Nottingham, three years ago, a man was stabbed in his own bedroom by a stranger. Nothing was taken, nothing was disturbed. In. Stab. Out. Left the door open and walked away whistling some happy tune. We found the killer twenty minutes later, covered in blood, on a bus heading out of town. It was a stranger murder. Same kind of murder this is.”
Eddie shook his head. “This victim of yours, was he a prominent pathologist as well?”
“He worked in a Post Office, actually. What’s your point?”
“Your murderer was suffering mental health problems. Our murderer, Doc’s murderer, is perfectly sane. And they knew each other. Yours was a stranger murder, this… isn’t.”
Crawford smiled. He laced his perfect fingers with their perfect nails together across his flat stomach and took a deep breath. But it was easy to see that he’d love to smash the desk with a frustrated fist. He did well to keep calm. “Okay, I’ll humour you: how do you know Bolton’s murderer was sane? How do you know they knew each other?”
“Don’t humour me. You don’t owe me any favours.”
“Eddie,” Benson warned.
Eddie looked back to Crawford. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
Graciously, Crawford waved a hand.
“Your murderer was seen by people on the bus, and was heard whistling as he walked away. He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. It was just another day to him, just another event. He did it in the daytime and made no effort to conceal either himself or what he’d left behind.
“Doc’s murder was at night; she talked her way in, and she took away the murder weapon and nothing else, so it shows premeditation, it shows purpose. It took some effort to conceal. It was done by a female – statistically less inclined to kill a disabled old man than a male is – and she kept it quiet. I bet she didn’t walk away whistling.”
“I’m not getting into a pissing competition with you, Eddie—”
“Good; I have a really short willy.”
“So how did you know he lived alone?” Everyone looked across at Nicki. “You told me last night that he lived alone. How did you know?”
Eddie sighed and wished there was somewhere he could sit down – this was getting tedious. “There was moss on the windows and in the gutters of his Jaguar on the driveway. Seeing as he was so fastidiously tidy in his house, that pride didn’t extend to his car, which I suppose means he didn’t care for it very much, he didn’t use it much; no one used it much. And his tarmac drive, wide enough for at least two cars, had more moss on it. If there’d been another car parked there regularly, no moss would have grown. So it stands to reason that no one else lived there.”
“And how did you know he was disabled?”
Eddie shrugged. “Blue badge in his car window. Pair of walking sticks by his chair in the lounge. Another walking stick propped against the pantry door in the kitchen. It’s not fucking rocket science, Nicki. You mostly just need to use your eyes and look.”
“Proper Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you, Eddie?” Crawford’s grip on the high ground was slackening, and it was easy to see that he’d been rattled.
“Just bringing my little bit to the table, Boss.” He winked. “Moving us forward as a team.”
One of the new faces morphed into life as if Eddie had seen him for the first time – in the same way as he’d suddenly become aware of Melanie smiling at him out in the main CID office. This guy wasn’t smiling at him, though. He was just staring. He stood to the right of Crawford, arms folded, still as a statue, and stared. At Eddie.
He reminded Eddie of Agent Smith from The Matrix. All he needed was a pair of shades and he could be his double.
Crawford straightened his already straight tie and tried to regain some of his composure. “Tom,” he said, “anything?”
“Bolton was found by a pizza delivery woman, Rasine Wozniacki. She checks out, I’ve crossed her off the list.”
Crawford nodded, tapping a pen against his chin.
“Leeds Watch have CCTV of a woman walking alone about eight o’clock last night up Stonegate Road. She disappears into that stretch of woodland between Stonegate Road and Carr Manor Road. Not seen her since. They’re sending me the recording but have already said she appears relaxed, not in a hurry.”
“Are you sure about the pizza delivery woman?” Nicki looked around the room, and then aimed her comments at Benson. “I mean, she’s female, we found possibly female footwear marks at the scene. She wouldn’t have brought her own knife, so would have had to use one from his kitchen. I’m just thinking aloud…” She looked at Crawford.
“Go on,” he said.
“Maybe he invited her in, or she asked to use the toilet or whatever, and they argued, or she tried to extort more money from him… she sees the knife and kills him.”
“Keep it in mind,” Crawford said.
“If my life depended on it, I’d have handed her the envelope with the fifty quid inside,” said Eddie.
Nicki looked away.
“But it’s possible they argued,” he said.
Detective Sergeant Khan spoke up. “I find it hard to believe that someone would go into someone’s house with the intention of killing them, but without a weapon. So it’s not pre-meditated.”
Nicki smiled back at Eddie. Eddie drank more coffee.
“Pizza woman checks out,” Benson said again. “Khan did that last night; her route checks out, and when you check her previous customers along a timeline against the time she called it in, it fits. She’s off the list. We have her clothing and her footwear if you need them.” Benson looked at Agent Smith.
“I’ll bear it in mind.”
“Won’t Jeffery need to bear it in mind?” Eddie asked. “Where is he, anyway?”
“Tom, will you organise background into Bolton’s past, please? I want to know who he worked with at the labs, who he came into contact with at the mortuaries, who had any contact with him since he retired. And get all the information you can on his remaining family, and any children. Okay?”
Benson nodded. “Boss.”
Eddie coughed. “Where’s Jeffery?”
“We’ll come to that, Eddie, don’t worry.”
“When someone says ‘don’t worry’, I tend to worry.”
“Anyone have any final words before we close?” Crawford stood, ran his thumbs around his waistband and looked at the shaking heads. “Okay, great. Let’s meet back here at sixteen-hundred for an update.”
Everyone began to stand.
“Has anyone thought to check if it could be linked to Thomas Marchant’s death?”
Crawford’s face was that of a father proud of his son’s theory, even though it was ill-conceived. “I think we’re on safe ground there, Eddie.”
Eddie shrugged. “Thought I’d just throw it out there. It’s not often we get two professionals murdered within days of each other.”
“Thanks, Eddie,” Crawford smiled. “Have a catch-up with Tom. He’ll fill you in about Marchant.”
Eddie’s embryonic fondness for Crawford keeled over and died. All that bullshit in his maiden speech was just designed to make everyone here, himself included, think he was the new and invaluable saviour of MCU. But like everything else in this life that seems too good to be true – like dating a woman and it going according to fucking plan! – it was a plastic façade covering a mass of lies and uncertainty. It was the smile on the lips of a liar. Eddie wanted to punch him for smiling at him like that. Patronising fucker.
People sh
uffled past him, and Eddie was vaguely aware of a strange, almost apologetic, sorrow in Benson’s eyes as he walked out.
Eddie looked at Agent Smith. He didn’t move. He really was cast out of bronze.
The room was empty now; just Crawford, Agent Smith, and Eddie were left, staring at each other.
“It’s unfortunate timing, Eddie,” Crawford began. “I’d wanted the changes brought in when we all had the chance to absorb them, rather than when we’re busy trying to solve two murders.” He smiled again, apologising with his mouth while his eyes said, ‘I don’t give a shit, let’s just get this one last lie out of the way’.
Eddie sipped the dregs of his coffee. Waited.
“I had to let Jeffery go, I’m afraid.”
Eddie gasped. He let the thought sink in for a moment before saying, “Had to let him go. Why? Did he steal the petty cash?”
“No, he—”
“He stole your lollipops, didn’t he? The bastard!”
Agent Smith moved a tiny amount, and Eddie wondered if he was still plugged into the wall.
“He’s back at Division. Went last night.”
“Why? He was very good at his job.”
“I’m sure he was—”
“Then why—”
“If you’ll let Mr Crawford speak, maybe you’ll find out.” Agent Smith had changed colour slightly, and his eyes had narrowed.
“And you are? Wait, let me guess. You are his replacement?”
“This is Detective Sergeant Victor Weismann. I brought him with me from Nottingham. He’s an excellent forensic manager with many years under his belt, and will be a big asset to MCU.”
“Really. How did the Personnel department feel about it?”
“They were very accommodating,” Crawford said. “Everything’s gone through. It’s all above board.”
Eddie glared at Agent Smith. “Got friends in Personnel, have we?”
“I didn’t feel that Mr Walker was quite… up to the task. Mr Weismann is your new boss, Eddie. I’m sure you two will get along like a—”
The Death of Jessica Ripley Page 12