Bleed Like Me

by Staincliffe, Cath

  She called Rachel into her office. ‘If I task you with attending the search at Kittle Lake can I trust you not to turn it into some extreme sports event? You won’t try and join in? No misguided heroic stupidity?’

  Rachel had the grace to flush. ‘You can trust me, boss.’

  ‘Have you completed your written report on the Porlow incident?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  She chewed at her lip, stared at the floor.

  ‘Sometimes you act like you’re bullet-proof, Rachel. You’re not; none of us are. You saw what happened to Janet. I thought that might have taught you a lesson. Stab us and we bleed. In this job we need three hundred and sixty degrees thinking. A situation like that, there is you,’ Gill demonstrated with her hands, ‘and there is the suspect. You,’ Gill pointed at her, ‘you think in a straight line, like a dog after a rabbit. But if that dog is running through a minefield then it’s boom! Pedigree Chum. Three hundred and sixty degrees; not just your target but what’s either side. Who’s behind you. Who has your back. You have to think of other people. Impact assessment. Risk assessment. Not there for fun or because some wanker with a set of shiny pencils wants to make life harder. There for a reason. How do I drum it into you?’

  ‘I know, boss, I’m sorry. Have you decided what—’

  ‘No. When I have you’ll be informed.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  The lake was reached by a narrow track from the car park, where a sign told visitors that the fishing rights belonged to the Lundfell Angling Association and gave a phone number to ring.

  Rachel met the man coordinating the search, Mark Tovey, who took her to see the tread mark which a simple cast had proved to be a match to the front nearside tyre on the Mondeo.

  The extent of the lake was visible from the shore where she stood, larger than she’d expected and oval in shape. At the far end the land rose up and was covered in trees and the right bank above the car park was wooded too. But the left-hand side was bare scrubland. A path circled the water and small wooden platforms here and there marked fishing spots. A large flock of Canada geese, maybe twenty, seemed unruffled by the activity and continued to peck at the fringes of the lake and the grassland around and leave curds of greeny-brown shit everywhere. There were some sort of seagulls too, squawking away. The sky felt low. Fat grey clouds moved overhead, pushed by the wind that sent waves rippling across the surface of the water, breaking up the reflections there.

  Rachel watched from the lakeside as the dive team went about their work. There were no buildings in sight, which was an added attraction if you were looking for somewhere to dispose of a body, or two. Rachel kept coming back to the bin liners. If the children had already drowned, why buy bin bags? Unless he’d drowned them in very shallow water and now had two corpses to dispose of. It only took a couple of inches, didn’t it? Toddlers drowned in the garden pond, in the bath. As a beat copper, way back, Rachel had once been sent to exactly such a scene. A grandmother it was, babysitting, and the granddaughter playing in the bath. ‘Two minutes,’ the woman kept saying over and over, ‘I was only out of the room two minutes, to answer the phone.’ The phone call had been the child’s mother, calling to check if everything was all right, to say night night. Away with friends at a hen party. Two minutes. And the child was dead.

  Mark Tovey told Rachel it would be a slow, methodical operation, and after watching for a while longer she decided to wait in her car, out of the cold. There she’d be out of sight of the lake itself, so she asked him to come and get her if anything turned up. She spent some time working through her notebook, then phoned the funeral home. When the man answered she said, ‘I spoke to you yesterday. Bailey. You quoted two thousand pounds for a basic cremation, fees and the coffin and everything. We’d like to go ahead, next Friday if you can.’

  ‘We can do ten thirty,’ he said. ‘Would you want extra cars?’

  ‘No, just one, to the crematorium.’ She gave Alison’s address.

  She rang Alison at home, expecting to get the answerphone with it being office hours, but instead got Alison herself.

  ‘Oh, hi, it’s me,’ Rachel said. ‘You skiving?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Alison retorted. ‘Little one’s been throwing up all night. Playing nurse.’

  ‘Right, it’s all sorted, set for ten thirty a week tomorrow. Car will come to yours about quarter past. Buffet after.’

  ‘Okay,’ Alison said. ‘I’ve been trying to think if there’s anyone else we need to tell.’

  ‘Such as?’ Rachel said.

  ‘His mate Henry. Do you remember Henry?’ Alison said.

  ‘No.’ The name meant nothing to Rachel.

  ‘I don’t know if he’s still around.’

  ‘What’s his surname?’ Rachel said.

  ‘Don’t know, he was always known as Big Henry. Look, maybe Dad had an address book in his room. Is his stuff still at the B&B?’

  ‘Not sure,’ Rachel said. She’d a hazy memory of Tintwhistle saying that the B&B wanted the room clearing.

  ‘We should find out, see what there is,’ Alison said.

  We again. Trying to rope Rachel in. ‘I don’t think there’ll be anything there,’ Rachel said. ‘You can always tell them just to get rid.’

  ‘Without even going through it?’ Alison said.

  Rachel thought of the cuttings. Her stomach twisted at the idea of Alison poring over those, where that might lead, lectures about how much he cared really and loneliness and favouritism and whatever else.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ Rachel said. ‘If I find Big Henry or anyone else, I’ll let you know. I just wanted to tell you about the funeral. And it’s all paid for.’

  ‘Thanks. What do I owe you?’ Alison said.

  Rachel told her.

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘There’s no rush,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Right, okay.’

  ‘Got to go,’ Rachel said. ‘See you later.’

  Her phone rang immediately. Godzilla. ‘Boss?’

  ‘Rachel. No news, I assume?’

  ‘Nothing. They’ve not been in long, though,’ Rachel said.

  ‘We’ve soil analysis from Cottam’s footwear, different make-up from that found in the Mondeo tyres.’

  ‘Well, he had been driving around in the Hyundai, hadn’t he, different places, to the retail park and that,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Swan-shit,’ Godzilla barked.

  ‘Say again.’ Rachel thought she’d misheard.

  ‘Swan-shit, shit from swans. Big white birds,’ irritable still and making Rachel feel thick. ‘There are still some traces of the geese waste, but there are also seeds from different plants which our forensic scientists tell us is likely to mean he spent time at another waterside location after he was at Kittle Lake. Can’t be any more specific than that. Can you tell Mark? See what his take is on it.’

  ‘Yes, boss. Has Janet got anywhere?’

  ‘Not yet,’ the boss said.

  Rachel got out of the car and walked up to the lakeside. She was passing on Godzilla’s message when a signal came from one of the team, a diver with his arm raised in the air. Rachel’s pulse gave a jump and she hurried around the shore. The diver pulled off his mask and spat, then said, ‘Bulky object wrapped in plastic.’

  They had special equipment for retrieving anything, a hoist which they set up in the shallow water. The sling was lowered and manoeuvred around the discovery. It seemed to take for ever with the men in the water stopping every few minutes to make adjustments. Rachel wanted to scream at them to get their bloody fingers out.

  ‘We have to take it slowly. Could be very fragile after being in the water,’ Mark Tovey explained, probably sensing Rachel’s impatience. ‘We puncture or rip the outer layer and we could corrupt everything and destroy potential evidence.’

  The bundle when it finally emerged in the dying light, trailing weeds and ropes of water, was about four foot long, roughly rotund. The covering, dull black sheeting dappled with
green slime. Not a bin bag; perhaps some sort of building material?

  The hoist swung the thing slowly round, still streaming water, and over the shore, where it was lowered on to a large plastic sheet designed to contain any evidence and prevent anything from leaking away into the ground. The sling was carefully removed.

  Mark used a camera to document the find from all angles before taking a pair of large scissors to one end of it. Pond liner, Rachel thought; the covering was like pond liner. Mark cut along the shorter edge. Then knelt, angling the scissors, and sliced along the length of the plastic. She braced herself, trying to prepare for whatever she might see. Without looking up at any of them, in silence, Mark pulled at the plastic sheeting and peeled it back.

  ‘Oh, fuck!’ said Rachel, taking in the long, yellow teeth, the sodden, matted fur, the glimpse of bones.

  Mark sat back on his heels. ‘Dead dog,’ he said unnecessarily.

  ‘Alsatian, be my guess,’ a diver said.

  ‘Barking up the wrong tree there,’ said the one who’d first alerted them to it. And the tension was released in an explosion of laughter.

  Mark looked up at the sky. ‘That’s us for today, lads.’

  Turning to leave, after agreeing that Mark Tovey would liaise directly with DCI Murray, Rachel realized that it was nearly full dark. Her torch was in her car so she used her phone to light the way back, almost stumbling on the uneven ground.

  She wondered if there was more in the lake, if tomorrow’s find would be grimmer, or if tomorrow would be as much of a dead loss as today had been.

  20

  ‘Boss.’ Kevin stood at Gill’s office door.

  ‘Kevin?’

  ‘The fishing thing.’

  ‘No joy at the lake. Tomorrow’s another day,’ Gill said. Wondering if it would be a day too late – or if they were too late already.

  ‘Yes, I got that, but the techs – they’ve come up with some pictures on the computer.’

  ‘Pictures?’ Gill thinking for a moment of pornography, which she got to see far too much of in her line of work.

  ‘Snapshots, a couple from a fishing trip.’ Kevin waved printed copies her way. Gill beckoned for them. Kevin passed them over. The first was an out-of-focus snap of Owen Cottam, a box of fishing tackle at his side, stooping to pick something up and looking back at the camera. A straight edge to the bank near his feet, a corner of dark water beyond.

  ‘The date fits,’ Kevin said. ‘Last year, summer, fishing season.’ His face bright with satisfaction.

  Gill swapped the photos over. The second showed Michael Milne standing, his fishing rod upright in one hand at his side, like a picture of some warrior with his spear, or a safari hunter with his blunderbuss. Behind him at some distance a road bridge.

  ‘I think this is a canal,’ Gill said quickly. ‘Look, the bridge, and here, the edge is completely straight. It’s not the lake.’ She thought of the latest from forensics, the combination of material found on Cottam’s shoes. An indication that Cottam had been at a different waterside location. This one?

  ‘There’s some numbers or something here.’ She pointed to a rectangle on the brickwork of the bridge, a metal plate. ‘Get this magnified, enhanced if necessary, and sent through to our contact at the waterways. We want to know where that bridge is. My money’s somewhere on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Is Rachel back?’

  ‘No, boss,’ Kevin said.

  ‘Okay.’ Gill called Pete through and showed him the pictures. ‘Cottam and Michael fishing last year, a canal. Find out if the Lundfell Angling Association have any rights on any canal and whereabouts they are.’ Should she rethink the search? Hang fire on the lake and concentrate on the canal? Based on what? Two photographs and the rather generalized biological profile from Cottam’s footwear? She decided to ask Mark Tovey. She needed his advice.

  ‘Nice one, Kevin,’ she said, and watched him preen with pleasure. ‘There’s hope for you yet.’

  ‘I know you’re up to your eyes,’ Janet said, ‘and now’s probably the worst possible time . . .’

  ‘What?’ Gill took her glasses off. She looked as tired as Janet felt, her eyes narrow, frown lines on her forehead.

  ‘Quick drink?’

  Gill hesitated. ‘Oh, go on then,’ she said. ‘Have to be over the road?’

  ‘Yes, fine.’ Janet wasn’t going to put it off any longer. She owed it to Gill to tell her that she might need more time off, that her health was iffy. Seeing her mum had brought it home to her big time, like a shovel in the face. And there were wider repercussions. Gill might need to bring someone new into the syndicate, find someone else to interview Geoff Hastings. Janet was the most experienced interviewer on the team and Gill would want to find someone of a similar calibre to replace her, or choose one of her existing staff members to develop. Lee would be good, and Rachel was improving. But if Rachel got her sergeant’s ranking she would be tangled up in all the managerial stuff that came with it.

  In the pub, Janet bought a glass of white wine, turning down the offer of a bottle. She’d be driving home later. Gill stuck to cola.

  ‘How’s your mum?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Janet said. ‘She’s going to be okay. They want to run some more tests, but she was lucky. Another half an hour . . .’ Janet shook her head. ‘Out of the blue. And how’re things with Sammy?’

  Gill rolled her eyes. ‘Spent the night with his girlfriend after telling Dave he was going to mine.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I kid you not. Apparently they had a barney, Dave and Sammy, so Sammy slung his hook, then lied about it,’ Gill said.

  ‘Not everything in the garden’s rosy then?’ Janet knew how much Gill had resented Dave’s pretending to play at happy families, in the wake of breaking up his marriage.

  ‘I met the whore of Pendlebury.’ Gill clapped her hands lightly together.

  ‘Gill! And?’ Janet said.

  ‘Wish I hadn’t.’

  Janet jumped in before she could get cold feet. ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

  ‘Okay,’ Gill said slowly.

  Janet had the glass in her hand, something to hold on to. She took a swallow of wine. ‘I’m not well.’ Her throat tightened on hearing it aloud. ‘I’m sorry. They said there was a risk, after the surgery, that I’d get adhesions. Which means operating again.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Gill said.

  ‘And I might have to go on the sick, long term. Or even retire.’

  Gill looked shocked. ‘Janet. Does it hurt? When did you find out?’

  ‘I’ve not seen the GP yet but I will as soon as I can. But I looked it up; it’s all there. I can’t control my temperature, I get fever, headaches and nausea, bloating – that’s a main symptom. My digestion’s gone to pot, which is making me irritable . . . oh, I don’t know. I’ve been such a bitch at home. I’m so pissed off.’

  Gill didn’t say anything for a moment but there was an odd look in her eyes, as though she was weighing something up. She had a drink, then said, ‘The fever – it comes on suddenly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You sweat at night?’

  ‘Buckets,’ Janet said.

  ‘What about your periods?’

  ‘Irregular. Well, non-existent at the moment,’ Janet said.

  ‘You daft cow,’ Gill said.

  ‘What?’ Gill was laughing at her when she was potentially facing the end of her life as a detective, about to be pensioned off, sick. ‘It’s not funny,’ she said angrily, feeling the heat bloom through her again and the irritation prick like thorns. ‘Christ, Gill, I expected a bit of bloody sympathy.’

  ‘It’s the menopause, you daft bat,’ Gill said.

  ‘What?’

  Gill held up a hand. ‘Hot flushes, night sweats,’ ticking off a finger with each symptom, ‘bloating, headaches, mood swings.’

  Janet was stunned.

  ‘Classic,’ Gill said. ‘You’re going through the change. It’s a bloody nig
htmare but a few years and you should be fine.’

  ‘Years!’

  ‘It varies,’ Gill allowed. She lifted her glass. ‘I’d still check with your GP to be on the safe side, but if I’m wrong you can sue me.’

  Not adhesions? No surgery? No enforced retirement? Janet covered her eyes, embarrassed and hugely relieved, close to tears.

  ‘You’ll have to do better than that to pull a long-term sickie on me,’ Gill said.

  ‘So . . . you?’

  ‘Got off lightly so far. Can see the light. Now . . . I hear the flooding is probably the worst. You might want to invest in rubber sheets. And then there’s the depression, of course.’

  ‘Spare me,’ Janet said, feeling giddy now. A reprieve. A big, fat, bloody wonderful reprieve.

  The vacuum cleaner wasn’t picking up properly. Rachel did her best but there were still feathers stuck fast to the carpet when she was done. She half expected the people from the other flat to complain, but when else was she going to get a chance to hoover? Six a.m. wouldn’t be any better. It was going on for eleven and she couldn’t settle. She tried channel-hopping then switched the TV off and got a book she’d been reading, an American true crime tome about the development of forensics, but she couldn’t concentrate on that either.

  ‘Fuck it!’ she said aloud, and decided she had to get out. It took exactly twenty minutes for her to shower, throw on some slap, get dressed. The taxi took another five minutes and she was at the bar before midnight, ordering a vodka tonic. It was busier than she had expected and the people who’d been there longer were partying now, some of them rowdy. It was a club that the police knew and used, so it was unlikely that anything much would kick off bar a fist fight between two coppers shagging the same woman. Or man. There was always a lot of shagging around in the police service, whether because of being thrown together in sometimes dangerous situations, or being in one big gang, or something to do with the effect of wearing uniforms, Rachel had no idea. She wasn’t here looking for an affair, not even a one-night stand, but a bit of attention, a bit of company, a bit of a laugh would hit the spot.