Dead Like Her

by Linda Regan

  “What?”

  “Buying you a coffee machine instead of a plant for your new office.”

  “I probably shouldn’t have spoken to him like that. He is our boss after all.”

  “And you feel guilty because you slept with him.”

  As usual Crowther knew exactly what was running through her head.

  “Right. I shouldn’t have done that either.” She let out a deep sigh. “I seem to have made a lot of mistakes in my first few days as a DI.”

  “He’s using that to make you feel guilty,” Crowther told her, wrapping her hand around the coffee cup and patting it affectionately. “The truth is you were right and he was wrong. He’ll realise that eventually, and respect you for it.”

  “I’m not so sure.” She sipped the coffee.

  “I am,” he said. “If you hadn’t sent him home he would have blown the CO19 operation. What you did took guts.”

  “Perhaps.” She took another sip and set the cup down on the desk. “Otis Gladman can’t have gone far.” She combed her fingers through her tangled ponytail. “I reckon he’s still on the estate. He’s only a kid. Where else would he go?”

  “The place is swarming with uniform. They’ll pick him up sooner or later.” He pulled a chair up beside her. “Isabelle brought the note in last night after she finished at the club. Millie found it in the dressing room. You were asleep. It’s gone to the handwriting expert now. If it matches the note Bobby got, chances are high Otis is our killer.”

  “He’s only fifteen, Colin. Just a kid. What’s the world coming to?”

  Crowther scratched his neck. “We had to let Johnny go. The solicitor was giving us grief. We only had obstructing a murder enquiry to charge him with, and it wasn’t worth the hassle.”

  “If we have him followed, he’ll probably lead us to Otis.”

  Crowther picked up a felt tip pen and started writing Os on the whiteboard. Alison noticed he was using his left hand.

  “You know what I think?” he said, standing back to study his work. “I think whoever wrote those notes is likely right-handed. They wrote with their left hand to disguise their writing.” He scrubbed out the row of Os. “Isabelle said Terry King did her make-up tonight. He’s right-handed.”

  Crowther’s phone rang. “Brilliant!” he exclaimed after a brief conversation.” Otis Gladman has turned his phone off again, but they managed to trace it. He is in the vicinity of the Bay Estate.”

  Alison frowned. “Why turn it off again? Someone must have warned him there was a trace on it.”

  “Ray Adams lives on that estate,” Crowther said thoughtfully.

  “What? Ring him, find out where he is.”

  “I’ve been trying,” Crowther said. “He hasn’t answered his phone since I saw him yesterday.”

  By six-thirty the incident room was packed. Crowther as he put his head around the office door to tell Alison they were waiting for her.

  “Isabelle is like your worst nightmare this morning,” he grinned. “Her feet are blistered and her legs scratched from the spandex, and she’s got a sore arse from being pinched. She’s ready to kill someone and says she’s putting in for danger money.”

  “I won’t mention my shoulder, then,” Alison said. Crowther raised his eyebrows, and she remembered she hadn’t mentioned it to him. “The bloody Bay Estate. Flying bricks and a coffee table in the back of the neck. All in a day’s work, isn’t it?”

  His grin grew wider, and he swung out of the office leaving the door open. He always cheered her up. He’d slept even less than she had, in a corner of the office on the grubby floor, but he looked no different from usual this morning. His jeans hung low, revealing his Simpsons boxers, and the elbow of his brown jumper was darned with something that strongly resembled the yarn used in post-mortems to sew corpses back together. Alison smiled. His girlfriend was a forensic officer; maybe it was one of the perks of the job.

  Two more pictures were pinned to the board: the savagely beaten faces of Amy Bailey and Joshua Timpkin. The perfect couple, according to friends and neighbours, just starting a life together.

  “The killer walked around the side of the house and took a garden shovel to his head in broad daylight,” Alison told the squad. “Someone must have seen or heard something. This killer is either a professional or a headcase.”

  “It looks like the killer was after Amy, and Joshua was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Crowther suggested. “Which implies we’re looking for someone who panicked. Probably not a professional in that case.”

  Alison stood by the whiteboard studying the pictures of all three women. In life they looked so similar. “We have a serial killer,” she said solemnly. “That was the third. The key factor is Doubles. They all worked, or wanted to work, as Marilyn Monroe look-alikes. But why these particular girls? Were they targeted, or unlucky?”

  “Could the Marilyn Monroe thing be a coincidence?” one of the detectives asked. “Maybe they all found out what Chang was up to and he had them killed.”

  “Amy Bailey had only auditioned half an hour earlier,” Alison told him. “It’s unlikely she found out anything Chang didn’t want her to know just standing in a queue.”

  Millie Payne and Andrew Fisher were sitting just inside the door.

  “Maybe the killer followed her from the club,” Andrew suggested.

  Alison was still looking at the pictures. It wasn’t much more than forty-eight hours since they’d pulled Sadie Morgan out of the pond. She gazed at Sadie’s water-sodden face, and the sense of failure almost overwhelmed her. It wasn’t just the three murdered women; just when she thought she was getting close to Paul Banham, he had gone off on a quest of his own. She felt as if she was drowning too.

  Crowther must have noticed. He took over.

  “Two of the women had notes left with their bodies, saying Your Turn Now.” He held up clear plastic evidence bags containing the notes. “There’s another one which says Your Turn, which came from Doubles. Good work, Millie.”

  There was a spatter of applause. Alison turned to face the squad and saw that Millie Payne had the grace to look embarrassed.

  “Did you get a note when you auditioned at the club?” she asked the young support officer.

  Millie was dressed in jeans and yeti boots, with a brown leather jacket zipped up to her neck. She looked from Crowther to Andrew Fisher and back again, then shook her head. “I didn’t audition. Lily introduced me to Eddie Chang. He seemed to like me –asked me to do an impersonation of Marilyn on the stage. I’m a trained actress, so I didn’t find it difficult. He seemed to like it, and offered to train me as an impersonator, so I could take over from Lily when she went on tour.”

  Alison nodded at Millie and moved on. “We had to release Johnny Gladman and bail him. According to our informant he is doing the pick-up for Chang, and we don’t want to throw any more spanners in the works.”

  “I don’t know why we brought him in,” muttered Eric, in his usual place at the back of the room.

  Alison ignored him. “We’re having him followed, and hopefully he’ll lead us to his brother. The blood on the knife Crowther found in Sadie Morgan’s the flat is a match for Felix Greene’s, and Otis’s fingerprints are on it. The gun as well. Finding him is our priority at the moment.”

  “Any chance you might be able to get into the cottage tonight and have a nose around?” Crowther asked Isabelle.

  “I’ll try.”

  Millie suddenly put in her two penn’orth. “It’s a big risk. There’s CCTV in the courtyard.”

  “I’ll make that decision,” Isabelle told her sharply.

  Alison sighed. “Are you all back in the club tonight?”

  “If I don’t get sacked for kicking some arse-pincher’s balls,” Isabelle answered.

  Alison smiled. “Rather you than me.”

  “If you do manage a recce on the cottage,” Crowther said, “I’ll need to keep in touch with you.”

  “Phone,” Alison said.
“Absolutely no wires; far too dangerous with costume changes.”

  “DCI Banham suggested I might wear a wire,” Andrew Fisher said. “I don’t wear a costume.”

  “No way,” Alison said. “You’re not halfway experienced enough. Isabelle, did you put Crowther’s number in your phone under Mother?” Isabelle nodded. “Good. You can ring each other as often as you like without arousing suspicion.”

  The phone on Crowther’s desk started to ring. He picked it up and listened for a few moments. “We’ve got a DNA match on Lily Palmer and Amy Bailey,” he said. He listened again, paling visibly. He put the phone down and took several breaths before speaking.

  “It’s Ray Adams,” he said. “His DNA is all over the second, third and fourth victims.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ray Adams lived on the sixteenth floor of the high rise block. Crowther had decided to leave the back-up cars around the corner and try to get to Ray’s door before he called them in. That way he reckoned there was less chance of Adams legging it.

  Besides, the relationship between police and residents was delicate. A mere sighting of a uniform would start the chants of Feds or Filth, and that would give Adams a head’s start. If he got out of his flat, they were talking needle-in-haystack chances of pulling him in.

  Crowther was taking no chances. He was furious with Adams, and with himself as well; it was he who had put the informant into Doubles, and though he knew a junkie like Ray would sell his own mother for a fix, he certainly hadn’t had him down as a cold-blooded killer.

  “Watch yourself here,” he said to Isabelle as they turned into the estate. “Some bastard hurled a table at Alison yesterday. We don’t want bruises on that perfect body of yours.” Just in case she read anything into the compliment, he added, “You need to flaunt it at the club tonight. I’m relying on you to find out if Ray Adams has put a spanner in the CO19 operation.”

  He pulled the car into a space and turned the engine off. “Quick and quiet,” he told her. “And no shouting ‘Police’ outside his door. If he doesn’t answer, we call for back-up then kick the door down.”

  He’d obviously been spending too much time with in- experienced PCSOs, she thought, banging his car door shut.

  “Hey, don’t abuse my car. That door doesn’t need slamming.”

  “I wish your dick was in it.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Then his mouth curved into that little boy grin and he said, “No, you don’t. You wish it was in you.”

  He was right, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. He looked at her speculatively for another moment, then shook his head and turned away. “Let’s go and get this bastard,” he said.

  Two black youths on bicycles rode up to them as they walked towards the flats.

  “Want us to look after your car, mister?”

  Crowther knew this breed. He had been one himself. His own father had been a renowned villain; when he was killed, young Colin had fended for himself. At nine years old he had wheeled and dealed, washed cars, begged pennies for the guy, bought and resold, staying just on the right side of the law. His mother had breakdown after breakdown and couldn’t cope with anything much at all. He had been a tiny kid, and it had been hard; but he got by, and managed to stay out of care, all the time waiting for the day when he could take his school exams and get out and join the police. When the time came, his childhood on the streets made him wise and astute. He understood these kids.

  But he didn’t like being cornered.

  He shook his head.

  The kid nearest to him leaned over his handlebars. He was no more than thirteen. “I could make your life very difficult, mister. “My mate’s got a gun, see.”

  Crowther looked the boy in the eye and put his hand in his pocket. He slowly pulled out a five pound note. “I’d better be nice to you, then,” he said.

  Isabelle wondered if the kid could hear the note of menace in his voice.

  “OK,” Crowther went on. “You can look after my car. If it’s well looked after there’ll be another of these when I get back.” He dropped the fiver on the ground in front of the bike. “If it’s not...”

  He left the vague threat hanging in the air. The boy slipped off his bike and stopped to pick up the note. Crowther put his foot on the edge of it and grabbed the boy by the collar. “What kind of gun has your mate got?” he asked quietly.

  “Little pop-gun. Astra something. Like the car. But he’s getting a Mac 10.”

  Crowther moved his foot and the boy snatched up the five pound note. Crowther stepped back. “My car’s in good hands then.”

  Both boys cycled away at speed. Crowther watched them, arms folded. “That’s Otis Gladman,” he said.

  Isabelle’s head spun round and she put a hand on her radio.

  “Don’t.”

  “But...”

  “Just... don’t.”

  She dropped her hand. Whatever her personal feelings about Crowther, this was his territory. “OK. But why didn’t you pull him? It won’t take him long to work out who we are, and he won’t hang around.”

  “Oh, he’ll hang around. I’ve told him he’ll get more money when we get back. If we arrest him now, we’ll alert the whole estate and lose Ray Adams.”

  “Banham won’t be happy if we lose him.”

  “He won’t be happy if we lose Adams either,” Crowther said. “Trust me.”

  Crowther lifted his radio and quietly gave the back-up team a description of Otis Gladman’s clothes. “Let’s make it snappy,” he said to Isabelle. “It’s sixteen floors. We’ll take the stairs.”

  They made their way up the filthy stairway, carefully avoiding the bin liners of rubbish which lay rotting at every corner. Isabelle covered her nose with her hand as the stench of urine, shit and putrid food threatened to overpower her.

  “The dustmen refuse to come here,” Crowther told her. “They’re afraid of getting stabbed.”

  “Wasn’t one was thrown over a balcony because he thought some woman had left a manky old chair out for collection? She said he tried to steal it – she liked to sit on it to watch the world go by.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember that. Got off, didn’t she? Pleaded insanity.”

  As they approached Ray Adams’s flat, a small crowd of youths blocked their way. Isabelle recognised the two black youths.

  “I thought you were looking after my car,” Crowther said to them.

  “For a fiver? You’re kidding me. We’d rather have the car.”

  Crowther showed no sign of fear, but he jerked his head towards a passageway just behind them. Isabelle quietly backed into it and whispered into her radio.

  Crowther opened his wallet and took out a twenty pound note. He handed it to the boy. “Will that do?”

  “Take his wallet,” the youth said to the boy Crowther had spotted as Otis. “And his phone. Gladdy, take his fuckin’ phone.”

  Otis stretched out his hand. “You heard, mister.”

  At that moment more than a dozen police cars sped into the estate, sirens shrieking. One of the older youths pulled a knife from his boot. “He’s Fed,” he said.

  Crowther stood his ground. Behind him twenty or thirty uniformed police were heading for the stairs. Crowther looked straight at the boy holding the knife. He almost felt sorry for him; it was plain that he would rather run than fight, but he couldn’t lose face in front of his mates.

  A white van followed the cars into the estate and another team of uniformed police jumped out and headed for the stairs.

  The boy lunged with the knife but Crowther was quick. He grabbed the boy’s wrist and twisted the knife to the ground. The others hesitated as he stepped on the knife and forced the boy’s arm up his back, but then they all jumped in aiming kicks and yelling at Crowther. Isabelle ran to his aid just as the first uniforms arrived.

  It was all over in a few minutes. Truncheons and knives flashed through the air, some youths legged it and others were rounded up. Crowthe
r emerged with one hand dripping blood and the other gripped around Otis Gladman’s ankle. Isabelle jumped in and handcuffed the boy.

  “Otis Gladman?”

  “Yes.” He wasn’t as cocky now. She read him his rights and handed him over to two burly uniforms.

  Crowther ignored the small audience on the balcony above and ordered two of the remaining uniforms to break down Ray Adams’s door.

  The flat was empty.

  Isabelle stepped over used needles, dirty laundry and old fast food containers to get to the kitchen. Two bottles of soured milk stood in the fridge, and a wilting cannabis plant stood in the corner.

  “He’s not been around for a few days,” she said, pulling on forensic gloves and flicking through the debris on the floor. “Looks like he rents it out as a drug den, to make money to feed his habit.”

  “That and snitching lies to us.”

  “And killing innocent people.”

  They walked back down the sixteen flights guarded by a pair of uniforms. “Not been a good morning,” she said.

  Remarkably, Crowther’s car was still intact. “How’s your hand?” she asked. The handkerchief he had tied round his fingers was stained red. “Will it need stitches?”

  “Doubt it. Bit of TLC wouldn’t go amiss though,” he said, with one of his little-boy-lost looks.

  She took his hand and kissed it gently.

  “There, it’s better already,” he said with a grin.

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  “OK.” He pulled his keys from his pocket with his good hand.

  “I was worried back there,” she said. “For your safety.”

  Crowther slid into the passenger seat. “Don’t know why. You’re next in line for sergeant.”

  A flying brick landed on the ground next to the car.

  “Leave it,” she told the angry uniformed officer. “We still need to find Ray Adams. Try to avoid confrontations.”

  She fired up the car and looked at Crowther. “I promise not to tell it was a kid who stabbed you,” she said.

  “What happened to your hand?” Alison asked Crowther.

  He took Banham’s china mug off the shelf and helped himself to her coffee. “It’s nothing. A run-in with Otis’s mate.”