by Emmy Ellis
“Good.” He took his hand away. “Ah, before you toddle off. ID. She had some on her.”
Shit, I forgot to ask. “Good.”
“Although it doesn’t show her age…” He bent over to take a clear evidence bag containing a bank card out of a box a foot or so from the body. “A Miss J Locke.”
Could it still be Lisa with a new name?
She was wicked—hideous and wicked—for hoping it was.
“Won’t be hard to find her from that,” she said. “Nationwide Building Society might help us out if we can’t find her ourselves. Damon…” She twisted to see where he was. In the corner talking to a SOCO. “Can you get hold of Nada about this, please?”
Gilbert waved the evidence bag then strode over there, probably so Damon wouldn’t have to come near the body.
Tracy studied the victim a bit more to get her head on straight. She’d thought some nasty things in the space of about ten minutes and had to process how she felt about them. She always justified her actions and thoughts by blaming The Past—she’d said as much to Gilbert—but surely there had to come a time when she must blame herself. Not everything she said and did stemmed from there, did it? Could her attitude today—all of it—be attributed to what she’d been through?
That was a question for the shrink. One she may or may not ask. It would depend on her state of mind once she’d met the woman.
“Um, boss?” Damon.
“Yes?” She jumped and whipped her head around to look at him, the action telling her she felt guilty for her thoughts. Otherwise, why would she have started like that? “What’s up?” She was back in detective mode, leaving the unsure and mean Tracy behind—until the next time she was faced with something she didn’t like and acidic crap came spewing out of her mouth.
“Nada needs to have a word.” Damon held the phone out.
Tracy passed Gilbert returning to the body, and she took the phone. “Hi, Nada.”
“Got a hit on some fingerprints in Mrs Roberts’ bedroom at Blooming Age, boss.”
“Brilliant. Who do they belong to?”
“An unknown person.”
“Eh? How’s that?”
“Well, there are prints in the database for crimes where no one knows who those prints belong to.”
Tracy could have kicked herself. Of course there were unknown prints on file. She knew that. “Sorry. Lost the plot for a second there.” Because my mind is elsewhere. “What case do they relate to?”
“That’s just it, boss. Um… I did a search, and I see you’re the only Tracy Collier so…”
Oh fuck. No. Hell no. Not this…please don’t tell me it’s…
“As far as I’m aware, I am…” Would her legs even hold her up through this call? They shook, and it seemed her blood had frozen. Sweat prickled on the back of her neck.
“Just that they were found in a house that belonged to a Collier, and I looked him up, and your name… Well, you’re his daughter?”
Tracy swallowed. Willed herself not to go down on her knees in fear. “I know what case that is. Surprised you didn’t know about it already. It was all over the news. I was the lead on it.” I was the reason for it, for the murders.
“Yes, I know the case,” Nada said. “I just didn’t twig you were his daughter.”
“So, the fingerprints… They can’t be my father’s or mother’s—they’re dead—and my sister ran away after I was born, hasn’t been seen since.”
All those lies, back again.
Nada cleared her throat. “It says on file that these fingerprints belong to a woman suspected of living with…uh…your father at that time.” She sounded incredibly uncomfortable.
“Look, let’s acknowledge the white elephant, all right? My father killed people. If you’ve read the file, followed the case, you’ll know I left home as soon as I could and didn’t have anything to do with him from that day onwards. What he did is nothing to do with me.” It has everything to do with me. “I’d appreciate it, though, if you don’t allow the team to gossip about this when they also find out these details. Let me tell them this particular story.”
“Whatever you want, boss. I’m…shit, I’m so sorry.”
“No need to be. He was a bastard. I’m over it.” No, I’m not. “We treat this new finding like any other. A lead. So, the woman suspected of living with my father—who, by the way, ran off after she killed my old chief—has now resurfaced in this town.” Had to get that nugget in about Lisa killing John. “Good. Means we can question her when we find her and ask her about the Collier case, too—and the Spinks debacle.” Please, God, say we won’t find her.
“Okay. What do you need me to do about this…information?”
“Get on to the lab and chivvy them along to see if the hair on the pillow matches any hairs found at the Collier house. Tell them it’s high priority, that we need to know so we can stop a killer.”
“Okay. Are you…are you really all right, though, boss? I mean, this is a hell of a case, the one with your father, and I’m worried—”
“I appreciate your concern, Nada, I do, but let’s not even go there. It’s…”
“Too much?”
“Yes. Maybe one day…maybe one day I’ll tell you a few things. When we’re closer. That might take years for us to get to that point, as I don’t trust easily, so don’t hold your breath.” Why am I opening up all of a sudden? Twice she’d offered to tell colleagues her story now—a story she told herself she’d keep hidden. Maybe going to the therapist was why. She knew she’d have to open up to her, too. Shrugging, as though that would knock the ever-present chips off her shoulders as well as the weight of her actual lies, she said, “Gilbert thinks the same knife was used on this victim—the same as on Irene Roberts.”
“Bloody hell…”
“I know. So get the team on finding out who this lady is—Locke—and look into her life. The usual shit—friends, family, Facebook, bank accounts.” Tracy wanted to end the call, to be left alone for a moment. She wasn’t in the mood to do anything now except wonder: Why the fuck was Lisa in Irene Roberts’ room?
And: Should I tell Damon now or later?
“We’ll be back in a bit,” she told Nada, cutting the call and glancing at Damon to find him staring at her, his mouth slightly open, his brow scrunched. He’d been listening to her side of the convo, then.
Shit.
“We need to get back,” she said to him. “I gather from your expression you heard?”
“I did. So she’s back on the scene, that bitch who stabbed me.”
“Seems so.” Tracy wanted to sigh all her troubles away. They were here to stay, though—for now. She had to get a break at some point, didn’t she? Life was an overexcited monkey slinging crap through the bars that caged her in. Could it keep throwing it? How long before she crumbled?
“We’d better fucking catch her this time,” Damon said, voice hard, his face hardening, too.
We’d better fucking not… “Here’s hoping,” she said. “Come on. We’ve got to get back so I can explain this mess to the team. I didn’t think I’d have to talk to them about what we’ve been through, but…”
She waved goodbye to Gilbert and left the tent, sucking in air, which was thick with humidity and swirled heavily in her lungs. A cold drink was in order, so she jerked her head in the direction of the alley, and Damon walked down it beside her.
“We need to go and nose out here, at the road opposite,” she said. “That’s where the sex workers tout from. Bit of luck, there might be one out there now. Daylight doesn’t bother them these days.”
At the mouth of the alley, she paused. “We’ll go to Costa and watch from there.”
They walked to the shop, and inside, Tracy picked up a bottle of water for a price that could have bought a six-pack in Asda. Damon had a coffee. They sat at a table by the window so she could stare out—anything to avoid looking into Damon’s eyes at the moment.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
&nb
sp; She should have been asking him that question. After all, it was him her sister had stabbed. “So-so. You?”
“Angry. Excited that we might finally collar her. Hacked off that she might have killed Mrs Roberts—and, going by listening to Gilbert back at the scene, that poor woman in the car park. What the fuck is wrong with her? We never did work out a proper reason why she stabbed me, did we.”
“No—except for the fact it was to get at me for some reason.” She unscrewed the lid of her water and guzzled a few swallows, hating herself for once again bullshitting Damon. “My father probably told her a load of crap about me, and that’s why she went after you. Who knows why these people do stuff like that.” I can’t even ask him to leave it, to stop talking about it this time. She’s in our lives again—both of ours—to do with work.
“When we catch her, I’m going to ask her so many questions,” he said.
We won’t catch her, not if I have anything to do with it.
“And why is she even here, in this town?” he went on. “It was definitely her we saw that time. I wish I’d bloody caught her when I chased her.”
I don’t. I’m glad you didn’t.
“And as for her changing her MO,” he said. “What’s that all about? I mean, she gutted her last victim—the last we know about anyway—same as she tried to do with me, so why move to slitting throats?”
“I don’t know.”
Had Lisa got herself into some sort of network, like Tracy had suggested to Gilbert? Had she been sent to kill Irene Roberts? And the Locke woman—was she another sex worker, and if so, had Lisa had fallen out with her?
Tracy would find out sooner or later, but she didn’t want to.
Fuck, no.
Chapter Sixteen
There’s that knocking again. It’s annoying, because I don’t know where it’s coming from. Next door on the right are usually a quiet couple, rarely a peep out of them most of the time, and the left—well, he’s not there that often, although he is at the moment. He works away somewhere abroad for stretches at a time, then comes back for a week or two. Our houses aren’t joined anyway, so I can’t blame him.
It’s not the same here now. I think I’m the only resident left in the street from when I was a kid. There’s no one to have a chat with about the old days. They’re either dead or have moved away to better houses, better lives.
I don’t feel right since the Mrs Roberts business. Out of sorts, but I suppose I could put it down to the events that took place. I wish we hadn’t fallen asleep. Then we would have checked the rooms regularly, every half an hour like we’re meant to. And Zello is blaming me, I know she is. That dig about it being down to me because I was in charge that night…it hurt, but it was the truth.
It is my fault.
It was a stupid idea to give the nurses a bit of downtime. I shouldn’t have suggested it. The only reason I did was because of how Mrs Roberts had been behaving. No one enjoys going into work when there’s someone who makes those hours difficult.
I’m not sure why she went all funny either. She’s usually a decent sort, if a bit anxious, looking around her all the time at everyone, as though she’s trying to spot a face she recognises, maybe someone from her family. Then she started wanting to go outside, to get away from her room, from the building, because she said a man had come in and threatened her. And she stopped coming to the dining room to have her meals with everyone else. It seemed a sudden change in her, and I can’t work it out.
The other day, she’d said to me, “I don’t like him.” I didn’t know who she meant, so asked if it was Nurse Matthews she was on about, but she’d said, “No, not him. Him.” So I’d asked about the man in the van, Martin, and she said he was nice, although he reminded her of a fella she used to know years ago. She didn’t say anything more about that when I pressed her.
So a man had upset her, and that only leaves the two gardeners or the owner of the care home, and he doesn’t visit except once in the spring and then near Christmas, so it can’t be him.
When I’m next at work, I’m going to ask about the gardeners, see if anyone knows anything. I have no idea who they are, seeing as I work nights.
I can’t help but think I ought to know the man Mrs Roberts was on about.
That knocking is back.
I close my eyes to hear it better, to judge where it’s coming from. It’s faint, far away but not, and it seems to be coming from below. In the basement? I haven’t been down there for years. Maybe there’s a rat or something, brushing against stuff.
Yes. It’s a rat. That’s what it is.
Chapter Seventeen
“Do we have anything new?” Tracy asked, walking into the incident room, out of breath at those three flights of bloody stairs. They killed her calf muscles something chronic. She stood in front of the whiteboards and examined the job sheets. A second set had been tacked beside the first and contained information on the Locke woman. “Ah, I see we have progress with finding out who she was. Locke, I mean. Jasmine. Nice name.” She turned to face her crew.
Nada got out of her chair to sit on the edge of her desk. “Yes, Jasmine Locke, twenty-nine, sex worker by night, mother by day.”
“Shit.” Tracy scrunched her eyes shut. So Jasmine was one of the few who didn’t bear the stomach scars from being pregnant. “How many kids?” She sighed.
“Three.”
Eyes open, she widened them at Nada. “Father around?”
“Yes. Well, he’s got the same address as her anyway.”
“He didn’t report her missing?”
“Checked that, boss. No.”
“Either he was used to her not coming home, or he didn’t want to phone in because of her profession. Might not have wanted to get her in the shit.” Tracy pinched her bottom lip.
“And probably because she’s on the social,” Tim said. “It came up in the search. Only applied for it two weeks ago. If she’s earning extra money and not declaring it, which she can’t really if she’s selling sex, if he rang up and told us what she was actually doing last night…”
“Yes, that might have stopped him calling it in. What a shame.” Tracy held back another sigh. “If he had, we might have stood more chance of catching her killer. Any luck with CCTV in the warehouse area and roads leading up to it?”
“None outside the warehouses,” Lara said around the end of a pen in her mouth. “That whole area there is abandoned. CCTV cuts off a few streets away. All I’ve seen so far on the roads before the cut-off are cars I’ve been able to find the owners of—two women, three men—a cyclist, looked like a bloke, seventeen pedestrians, and four taxis. I still need to deal with the latter set.”
“Right, thanks, although good luck on finding the cyclist and pedestrians. No chance unless we put out an appeal. Anything else?” Tracy asked.
“She didn’t enter via the alley—she’s not on CCTV there,” Alastair said. “She wasn’t even on that sex-worker patch. Maybe she was on the other one.”
“That’s good,” Tracy said. “We can concentrate our efforts on the one in Jester Street then. Bloody good work, guys.” She felt as though they were getting somewhere—with Locke’s case anyway. “I have a little something to tell you before we move on.” She took a deep breath. “Nada discovered that fingerprints from Mrs Roberts’ room match those in another case, although the owner of those prints is an unknown.” She ploughed on, telling them the official story of the Collier case and leaving out the huge chunks of truth. Obviously. “So, you can see why this one is a little bit important to us. Not just for me, because of it being related to me in the ways I explained, but because that cow stabbed Damon. She needs catching, as soon as.” She doesn’t. She really doesn’t… “Let’s get cracking on this and see what turns up next. Damon, you and me—we’re off to see the father of Locke’s kids and find out if they were together or he’s just dossing there.”
“Might be her pimp,” Erica said. “Maybe that’s why he didn’t call her in as missing.”
“That’s not a bad assumption,” Tracy said. “I’ll bear that in mind when I question him. Any specs on him?” She knew there would be. Her team were shit-hot—she was proud to have them on her side.
“Yes,” Erica said, turning to her monitor. She clicked a few buttons. “Pete Hewson, thirty-one, lives at sixty-five Minton Gardens. Priors are being in possession of weed—not enough to get him banged up—a drunk and disorderly, an aggravated assault; charges were dropped on that one. Basically, he’s possibly a bit of trouble but not a major pest. He hasn’t done anything wrong since he was twenty, so eleven years as a good boy.”
“Right.” Tracy walked up to Erica’s desk to have a nose at Hewson’s picture. Caucasian, blond, and he liked the gym according to the size of his neck; several cords and veins stood out. Steroid user? She’d bet his body was beefy, wide, and heavy. “Okay… Nice tattoo peeking out of his T-shirt there. Looks like the top of a Celtic cross. Anyway, we must get going.” On her way to the door, she said over her shoulder, “On you go. Let’s get this sorted sooner rather than later in case the killer decides to do it again.” And if it’s Lisa, she will.
I don’t know what to do. I’m actually at a loss. Before, it seemed clear-cut—keep Lisa out of sight and eventually it would all go away. But now? Shit.
She left the room, stopped to chat for a moment with Vic on the front desk while waiting for Damon to catch up, then headed to her car. She scanned the area for any sign of Lisa lurking around, hoping her perusal appeared natural. Damon didn’t comment, so she guessed she’d been successful.
She was a master at covering up.
The drive to Minton Gardens didn’t take long, and Tracy didn’t speak on the way. She didn’t want to slip up and say something wrong—not until she’d had a chance to filter through today’s information then lock things away in her head properly. And he seemed pensive anyway, probably thinking of all the things he’d say to Lisa when he sat in front of her in an interview.
Of course, Winter could insist Tracy and Damon were too close, too involved, and he might take over, sitting in with Nada to question Lisa, leaving Damon and Tracy to watch in another room, Tracy crapping herself every time Lisa opened her spiteful little mouth.