by Bo Brennan
“You are indeed, Sir. Follow me.” Colt was surprised at the agile pace he set as they followed him through an intricate maze of narrow corridors, long overdue a paint job. Vicky bashed her clumsy luggage along the walls behind him, adding to the scuffs. She should’ve just left it in the car like he’d suggested.
“DCI Colt and SOCO Maplin,” the Sergeant announced, showing them into a meeting room.
DI Mark Watson stepped forward with a smile to greet them. “Colt, good to see you again, mate. How’s the family?”
“Good,” Colt said. “Yours?”
“Yeah, yeah, all good, mate.”
“Have you met Vicky Maplin?” Colt said
“No, I’d definitely remember that,” Mark said, giving her the once over with a glint in his eye.
“We’ll want to visit both the site and the mortuary today,” Colt said. “Can you arrange a driver?”
A small cough from behind Mark interrupted his brief flirtation with Vicky.
“DC Lucy Levington,” the heavily made up platinum blonde announced, confidently shaking his hand. “It will be my pleasure to drive you, Sir.”
“Thank you, Lucy.”
“I’ve made fresh coffee, Detective Chief Inspector,” she said, completely ignoring Vicky. “How do you take it?”
“White, two sugars, please. Vicky?”
“White with none thanks.”
Lucy gave a mock smile, looked Vicky up and down and pointed to the plate in the centre of the table overflowing with a variety of biscuits and sweet treats. “Dig in,” she said.
Vicky smiled back, unzipped her wet weather jacket and hung the unflattering garment on the back of her chair. She and her fine double D cleavage in a tight fitting top took the seat next to Colt. Colt frowned as Mark lecherously gawped at her across the table and offered her the plate, before digging in to the custard creams himself. Colt wasn’t surprised when she declined; he had five women in his London team. As soon as December and the impending Christmas party arrived they were all eating grapes.
As Lucy poured the coffee, Mark slid the evidence bag containing a smashed DVD case across the table towards them. Colt and Vicky exchanged knowing glances.
“It’s consistent with our guy.” Colt reached for a fig roll. “Has anyone viewed this yet?”
“No, Sir,” Lucy said, taking her seat. Colt thought of Tom Dwyer and withdrew his empty hand from the plate. Two viewings in one day? Biscuits might be pushing it.
“When control flagged” – Lucy took a deep breath and read aloud from her notes – “CD/ DVD/disc/media/recording/camera/tape/video/film, to you – we thought it best to wait.”
Good old Mags, she’d probably given the HOLMES Compliance Officer a slap for entering CD instead of DVD onto the database. No wonder it hadn’t flagged in Southampton last month. It sounded like half the cases in the bloody country would now though.
Colt sighed and pushed the plate of biscuits away. “We’d better find a DVD player then.”
The twenty minute journey from the mortuary to the site had been travelled in increasingly uncomfortable silence.
Vicky utilised the time to analyse the crime scene photos she'd taken just days ago at the unremarkable semi, and the subsequent mess of pulverised skin and organs spread across two steel examination tables that she'd just snapped.
DC Lucy Levington utilised the journey to irritate him.
AJ Colt was a big guy and a Ford Focus was a small car. He'd had to push the passenger seat as far back as it would go to get in the bloody thing, almost crushing poor Vicky squashed in the back. Lucy’s ridiculously long red nails had clawed his thigh on every solitary gear change, snagging a thread in his trousers and turning his mood as miserable as the weather.
“This is it,” Lucy said, pulling up next to the police tape and making no effort to get out of the car. Vicky pulled her jacket hood up and stepped from the cramped backseat onto the slick of wet tarmac crossing the bridge.
“Come on then,” Colt said.
“But it's raining, Sir,” Lucy Levington protested, pet lip and everything.
“So what?” Colt said, stepping from the car. “Get out.”
Vicky was already snapping away her own photos to complement the ones their Havant colleagues had taken that morning, when Colt and Lucy joined her at the railings over the dual carriageway. He observed as Vicky had DC Levington run through the events, her camera clicking and flashing every few seconds. Vicky's thoroughness impressed him.
He took a deep breath allowing the light and clean oxygen rich air to fill his lungs, savouring its forgotten purity. It was a far cry from the heavy pollutants of central London he'd grown accustomed to. Even on a wet dismal day like today, the view from the bridge was amazing. To the South he had a clear unobstructed view of the ocean, and to the North the road snaked through green rolling hills towards home. Somewhere in the middle lay all his mistakes, misdemeanours and shattered dreams. He raised his face to the heavens, felt the cold rain against his skin, and in that moment he’d never felt so alone in his life.
Colt knew she'd looked at the vista when she’d stood here, and reached a similar conclusion, only she didn’t have the sanctity of home anymore. Everything was shattered. Leaning on the railings he looked down at the fast-moving specks of traffic and sighed. This was no cry for help, she'd meant it all right. The locals didn't call it ‘Suicide Bridge’ for nothing.
A shiver ran up his spine, the fucker was dancing across his grave again. Colt pulled his coat around himself attempting to fend off the chill that clung to his bones. The fucker won’t be able to dance with two broken legs, he thought.
Chapter 8
Colt couldn't watch her struggling any longer. “Please,” he said, extending his arm as they waited for the lift, “let me take some of that.”
“No offence,” Vicky said, “but I don't let anyone touch my kit in case it gets compromised.”
“You're probably right,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “The amount of damage I could do between this lift and the incident room doesn't bear thinking about.”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “You can carry the camera equipment. But be careful.”
“Great, should fetch a few quid on eBay.” He grinned, weighing the case in his hands. “After you,” he said as the doors slid open, making a mock run with her gear towards the main door before joining her in the lift.
Vicky laughed and shook her head. “Do you boys ever grow up, or do you just get taller?”
“Taller and wider.” He smiled. “Talking of wider, have you met Mark Watson before?”
“No. I haven't,” she said coyly. “What's he like?”
“Married with three kids,” Colt said.
“Oh,” she said quietly, “wide indeed.”
When the bell sounded for their floor, they both took a deep breath and stepped silently from the lift. They'd purposely kept the conversation light-hearted and buoyant on the way back, discussing everything mundane from the weather to holidays. But now the time for frivolous conversation was over. Colt had a meeting to run, and bad news to deliver.
India watched them come into the incident room, and hoped they’d had a more productive day out than the arse numbing one she’d suffered welded to her desk.
“Right then, what we got?” Colt said, frowning distastefully at his trouser leg before taking his seat.
“The DVDs are Japanese high end, first class media. Expensive, well in terms of blank DVDs anyway,” Dwyer said. “He's using DVD-R which has the highest available compatibility among burned formats, suits ninety to ninety-five percent of all players that exist.”
“He's not taking any chances on viewability,” Lacey said.
“He's using a 4.7GB capacity which has audio and video play time of one hour,” Dwyer continued.
“Interesting.” Lacey frowned and scribbled a note on her pad. “He's self-limiting his time with his victims.”
India rolled her eyes; the bloke probably jus
t popped into PC World and grabbed a few packs off the shelf without giving any thought whatsoever to any of that shite.
“An even dye spread points to a slow burn speed, probably at times four, which will maximise the quality. No hidden signatures or data found. In terms of where they come from . . .” Dwyer raised his palms skywards and blew a breath up his forehead. “It's a multibillion pound global market with internet sales to wholesalers and Jo public alike. Anyone can get their hands on these. I'm sorry I can't give you more.”
“You've given me plenty. Good work, Tom,” Colt said. “Lee?”
“The black latex gloves are not as rare as first thought, and they might not even be latex. It’s a pretty common allergy so they also come in Nitrile.”
“Same as we use,” Vicky murmured.
“They’re generally used by hair colourists, mechanics, tattooists, body piercers and artists . . .” Sangrin paused and looked at Vicky. “And coppers,” he added. “There aren't many manufacturers but there are hundreds of suppliers and stockists. I'll have a complete breakdown of orders into the South by midday tomorrow.”
Milking his moment for all its worth, Sangrin slowly spread out a pile of blown up stills on the table, each one showing a different angle of the black gloved hands. “They come in different lengths. I've been looking for signs to try and work out how long the ones he’s using are, but even close up they don't give much away. When he takes them off, you never quite get a complete shot of them.” He frowned and stared at the photos, muttering to himself, “It's like he knows.”
“Knows what?” Colt said.
“What we'll be looking for.” Oh god he's gone all Hollywood, India thought, half expecting him to pull out his shades and gaze forlornly into the distance. “I don't think we can rule out him being one of us, guys.”
The room filled with exasperated mutterings. Foxy and the hulk exchanged a glance which meant, to India at least, that they'd tried. Looked seriously at the possibility it was one of their own.
Colt lifted his hand to silence them. “Until we've got something solid to work from, we can't rule anybody out,” he said.
“It's come up though, hasn't it?” India said. “You’ve discussed the possibility of it being a copper or someone in a related field.”
Sangrin huffed an exaggerated breath on his nails, sat back and gleefully polished them on his lapel. Prick. If they were looking for a copper, he’d be the first one on India’s suspect list.
“Like I said, we can't rule anybody out,” Colt said. “And equally we can't narrow the investigation to one area either. Anything else, Lee, anything constructive?”
“The longer ones are pretty specialised, if I can establish the length it will massively reduce the purchase point. But so far the best I can give you is that they aren't as common as the white ones.”
India stifled a laugh. Bloody hell, that was a shit load of breath he’d just wasted to say he’d found nothing at all.
“Good work, Lee,” Colt said. “India?”
India had no intention of giving him the complete run down of how she'd come up with jack shit. She'd cut out most of the crap, leave in just enough to impress, and get straight to the point – she was going out tonight.
“The envelope is a Jiffy Airkraft Bubble Bag. Size 1, Gold in colour. Anyone can get them anywhere, singly or in bulk, twenty quid for a hundred.”
“Where is he posting them?” Colt said.
“Dropping them straight in a post box.”
“That narrows it down,” Sangrin sneered.
“Yeah, by twelve thousand counter locations,” she said. “It's a nonstarter.”
“Is that it?” Colt shrugged and stared at her. “A nonstarter.”
She stared right back at him. This was bullshit. They'd spent all day wasting time on basic crap that must've been covered before. And here he was giving her the beady bloody eye for the second time today. She didn’t need to read from her notes – she’d consigned how she’d reached her conclusion to memory.
“We can rule out twelve thousand Post Offices on the basis of the ‘killer’ – that's the technical term for the way the stamps are struck through – ours are done by a machine, i.e. in a mail centre, so they've been put directly in an on-street box. There are one hundred and fifteen thousand on-street post boxes emptied of seventy million items of mail every day. Those seventy million items of mail get shifted through sixty mail centres, then eight regional distribution centres and one of fourteen hundred delivery offices before plopping onto the addressee’s door mat within twenty-four hours. The best we can do is narrow it down to the mail centre. That's the postmark. Pinpointing the post box? Impossible. But feel free to have a go if you’ve got plenty of time to waste, Sir.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth and looked away. “Vicky and I have some news of our own,” he said.
No ‘good work, India.’ No ‘please, thank you, kiss my arse or nothing’ before moving straight on to his far more important news. Tosser.
“Sharon Cutler, Victim 38,” Colt said, pointing to her picture on the wall. He glanced at India, had intended to tell her straight, but when met with her cold blue stare he allowed his eyes to randomly sweep the assembled faces, telling everyone and no one.
“Early this morning she drove to a notorious bridge across the A3, climbed over the railings and jumped. Eye witnesses reported she clutched something to her chest as she went over. The DVD of her rape was found intact fifty yards from her body. Sharon Cutler sustained multiple injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene at 0737 this morning. Vicky and I have been with Havant colleagues today and have formally identified Sharon Cutler as the second attack in this county.”
Silence descended on the room like a thick heavy blanket of suffocation. Colt felt India Kane’s eyes boring into him, and turned to face her, waiting for the inevitable. He observed the briefest tremble of her bottom lip, before she dropped her eyes and pencilled a hard note on her pad. That sort of lip tremble usually resulted in tears. He could live with that sort of frustration being vented, would welcome it as a healthy display of emotion. His eyes narrowed when the split second that followed broke all the rules. Instead of tears her dead eyes returned to meet his, steely and hard with no flicker of emotion in sight. She squared her shoulders and sat perfectly composed and calm while everyone around her slumped. Affected.
“Any good news, Vicky?” Firman asked, breaking the stifling silence.
“I wish I had something positive to add, Guv,” she said, shaking her head. “By all accounts Sharon had a lot of friends. We lifted several sets of latent prints from her house, they'll be difficult to sort without any input from the victim, but we’ll continue to cross reference against the prints India collected from the hospital.”
Tom threw India a look of pure horror, like she’d just grabbed his balls under the table. She seemed oblivious to him, continued in that weird passive state.
“What about you, Lacey, anything to share?” Firman was desperately seeking good news somewhere.
“I'll have a first stage profile for tomorrow’s morning meeting,” she said.
“At least that's something to look forward to. Anybody got anything to add?”
“Can't we have him for murder now?” Lee said, looking to the CPS.
“No,” Veronica said blandly. “Under usual circumstances without a victim you wouldn't even get him on the rape charge.” Disgruntled mutterings raised their previously slumped shoulders. All except India’s.
Sangrin set his jaw. “You what?”
“He didn't kill her, Detective, it's a point of fact she took her own life.”
“But you just said we couldn't get him for her rape.”
“What I said was that under usual circumstances you wouldn't. We can't prosecute a rape if we have no victim testimony.”
“I should imagine most women would want to kill themselves after what we saw this morning,” Tom mumbled.
“Rape victims are statistica
lly thirteen times more likely to commit suicide,” Lacey said.
Tom sighed and ran a hand through his floppy hair. “So she’s just handed him a get out of jail free card.”
“We have to get them into jail first,” Veronica said wearily. “It's estimated that only fifteen percent of rapes are reported, and of those less than six percent result in a conviction. The latest UK figures state that twenty-three percent of women over the age of sixteen have been the victim of a serious sexual assault. That’s almost a quarter.”
Colt watched their faces alternate between anger and disbelief. Four women sat around the table – the statistics dictated one of them would fall prey at some point in their adult lives. His eyes kept coming back to India's still expressionless face, the only one showing no sign of emotion and no participation in the heated discussion. This was a woman he didn't ever want to play poker with. He was intrigued to know what was going on inside her head, and when her eyes met his he realised he was about to find out.
“This is your fault,” she said. Tom patted her arm – willing her not to go there, she elbowed him away, clearly far from finished. “If you had allowed me to take her statement yesterday as planned, we wouldn't be in this position now.”
Colt loosened his tie, could feel the heat spreading up through his collar. They'd all seen what had happened to Sharon Cutler. But Colt had stood on that bridge too. Seen what she'd seen, felt her despair. Sharon Cutler was a woman who wanted to die, needed it to be over. There was no coming back from that place; nothing could've changed the outcome.
“It wouldn't have made any difference, India,” he said, scrubbing a hand down his face.
“Is that right?” she said, splaying her hands on the table as though she were about to pounce on him. “Her statement would have given her a voice! Fannying around with poxy fucking envelopes won't get her justice, will it?”
He glared at her, clenched his jaw. He understood her frustration, felt sick to his stomach too. But Sharon Cutler had made her choice, she chose to die. And that was the fault of nobody in this room. India Kane was making her choice too, choosing to seriously overstep the mark, pushing all the right buttons for a very public bollocking.