by M. C. Dutton
Jazz had many anti-press stories but it was when the body of Laura was found that his full hatred of the press exploded. The press camped outside her parents’ house for weeks. Laura’s mother Amanda, whose nerves were very near collapse, was only just saved from an overdose. All the noise and the prying and the flash of cameras had whipped her up into a frenzy and one day she was munching tablets like they’d gone out of fashion when her mother found her. She made her sick them up and she got over it but the press had made a bad situation worse. When the ambulance arrived to take Amanda to hospital the frenzy outside was like a pack of wolves trying to get at the carcass. They fought and pushed to get ‘the picture’. Jazz knew they would have been happier if Amanda had died: better story line. He grimaced in disgust at the memory.
He knocked on DCI Radley’s door and entered. Nothing much had changed in the office except for the huge pictures of Radley taken by the press association. The six smiling pictures showed Radley shaking hands with the Commissioner, with the Mayor of London, with members of some community group, and with various others. Jazz’s eyes were drawn to a commemorative plaque for DC Tony Sepple, placed near the town hall in Ilford. His mother was shaking hands with DCI Radley in what looked like a very formal way. Jazz still felt responsible for Tony’s death. He knew it wasn’t his fault but – and he beat himself up every time when he thought about it – he should have made Tony report more to him that day and he would never have been in that position. The thought he could be alive if things had been different was gut-wrenchingly choking.
DCI Radley watched Jazz look at the pictures and, after a suitable minute, told him to take a seat. Of course there had been a debrief after Jazz was rescued, but as DCI Radley had put it he had been ‘a babbling wreck at the time’. It had taken a lot of work to keep him going until the trial, which took a year to get to the Central Criminal Courts at the Old Bailey. When justice was done and all had been found guilty and put away for a very long time, Jazz was allowed to go away and get his treatment. He’d been away at the Metropolitan Treatment Centre in Sussex where they helped him get fitter in mind and body and now he was ready for work. It had taken six months of intensive therapy but it seemed to have worked. Jazz hadn’t had a drink for six months – but now he was back, the itchy thirst at the back of his throat had appeared again.
DCI Radley wanted him back. He was a good officer with a lightning mind. His contacts in the area were phenomenal. When cleaned up, he was an officer that could be trusted. DCI Radley needed to read him the riot act and get him to understand that from now on he did things by the book. He wanted no more undercover work without permission. Radley warned him that not many officers wanted to work with him. They all thought he was jinxed, which made Jazz smile. ‘Pricks,’ he muttered ‘Officers have no gut feelings these days, sir. Life is tough out there and you have to know what you are dealing with.’ DCI Radley didn’t want to hear any of that. He wanted Jazz to know that his new team obviously knew what had happened before and it was up to him to instil confidence in them. Jazz waited expectantly to hear who was in his new team. He was told clearly and firmly that he had one officer in his team, a new Detective Constable with no actual experience who had previously been a beat officer and had risen through the ranks. Jazz looked at DCI Radley incredulously. ‘One officer? How the fuuu–‘ He stopped short and started again. ‘How is that a team Sir? No one else has such a small team! Where did the term “team” come into this?’ DCI Radley shrugged. Rebelliously Jazz added, ‘I did it before! I can run a small team and still get the results.’ Leaning towards his DCI, he said provocatively, ‘The Holy Trinity was mine, remember Sir?’ He stared darkly at DCI Radley. The silence was ominous.
DCI Radley was going to settle this. He broke the silence briskly. ‘I know it was your work that got the Holy Trinity jailed. Everyone in the station knows it’s down to your excellent work. I was the one who called you back from Manchester, you knew that. I saw something in you I needed here. I’d read your record, I knew how you worked. You were the only officer I could trust. I knew something was rotten in Ilford nick, and I needed a ferret like you to go in and bring him out. You did, you uncovered Bob. Bam Bam was a bonus and we are rid of him on our patch. You will, in time, receive a medal for your work but at the moment it’s too soon. The shock of what’s happened in this town is still reverberating and we don’t want any trouble from the gangs, who have been very unsettled by the killings and the jailing of their respected leaders.’
Jazz opened his mouth to reply but actually didn’t know what to say. He sure as hell didn’t expect to hear such kind words.
DCI Radley took the silence as his cue to proceed. ‘I’m a good guy, Jazz. I want us to have the best policed sector in the Met. I need your help to do it and I don’t want your face plastered over the newspapers; I want you as anonymous as possible.’ He looked at Jazz and added unnecessarily, ‘Just try not to get your man killed this time, okay?’
Jazz was dismissed with a wave of the hand and he left not quite knowing what to make of it all, smarting at the comment. Two men were killed working on his team. He still asked himself every day if he could have done something differently to have stopped it happening, and every time he came to the conclusion that yes, he could have done something. It weighed heavily on his shoulders. He was learning through counselling to stop beating himself up, accept what had happened and move on. Disgusted at being slighted in this way and knowing he would be the laughing stock of the police station, he went off to find his team.
He had been here before but this time he was truly nervous. ‘Bloody hell,’ he thought. ‘The little newbie is going to be shit scared I’m going to get him killed. Not a good way to gain his trust.’ He walked the length of the corridor thinking of DC Tony Sepple and fervently telling himself that this time his Detective would work closely with him. What he didn’t admit to himself was that he was going to give his new DC all the baby jobs, like stolen bicycles, shed burglaries and showing old ladies how to protect their homes with locks on doors and windows. No one would die on his watch!
CHAPTER THREE
Here we go again
Striding into the main CID office, he found an officer sitting nervously waiting for him. He was glad Sharon had moved to another region. It would have been difficult to work with her. He remembered the drunken night of lovemaking. It wasn’t passion; neither of them had the energy for that. But he had broken a vow he’d always made: never to mix business with pleasure. Sharon had been good at her job and he would miss her for that.
The young man looked up as Jazz walked over to him. It was obvious in his face: he was young, eager and obviously intimidated by all the gossip about Jazz that had been wildly exaggerated by many in the CID office. Jazz felt old, looking at the officer’s barely shaved face. Smiling, trying to look friendly, he gave the usual routine about how he had come back from Manchester into a viper’s den and how he’d cleared the Holy Trinity from the East End. He added that his best friend had turned out to be a grass for Bam Bam, and that he was now banged up. He hoped the officer would work hard for and with him.
The young man seemed quiet; he reminded Jazz of DC Tony Sepple, and this made him feel uneasy. He wore the same type of smart suit and tie and he was wearing cufflinks, for Christ’s sake! His handshake was firm and confident. He introduced himself as DC Ashiv Kumar. ‘But most people call me Ash.’ He’d worked at Plaistow Police Station for the past four years, had studied hard to be a Detective Constable and had passed the first time just over a month ago.
Jazz thought this one had a fair bit of confidence; if he was as good as he was confident, then Jazz might be able to work with him. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that, although Ashiv Kumar might be useful, he would never trust him.
Again, here he was with no decent jobs to look at. Jazz felt a disquieting sense of déjà vu. This was how his last team had started and he didn’t want it finishing the same way. No one had a desk anymore in Ilford Polic
e Station. It was all now ‘hot desking’, which Jazz thought was a pile of pants. He liked his own space and he took over a desk in a corner of the open planned office, making sure Ash took the one beside him. The desk cabinet had a key in it and Jazz made sure the drawers were locked before putting the key in his pocket. This was his place now. Every officer had a small locker in which to keep case papers, in a bank of lockers at the end of the office. It wasn’t the way Jazz would work, and he would argue their case as and when. For now, he suggested Ash went to the canteen for some lunch and return ready for work. He himself was going off to the IBO room to find some work. He would find a safe job for Ash of looking for pedal bikes stolen from some eleven-year-olds, whilst he tried to get something more meaty for himself. It was at this time that the call came through that Laura Kent was missing. She was found dead and the search began for her killer.
It wasn’t hard work; John Carpenter was the murderer. It took a year for the case to go to trial. It was a done deal as far as Jazz was concerned, even though Carpenter protested his innocence. Jazz spent a year helping Laura’s family get ready for the trial. It felt personal and he had got involved.
CHAPTER FOUR
Madness: it’s all in the mind
Hugging herself, she repeated the same statement she had made for the past year. Everyone around her cringed at having to hear it again. They loved her and cared about her, but they could do nothing. The statement couldn’t be rationalised or chewed over. It was swallowed whole and everyone choked on it. It was just one of those things that could only be listened to, not commented on.
Everyone wanted to make things better, to say something positive, to make her feel good about herself, but there was nothing they could say. The statement fell on deaf ears; it was too horrible to see her like this and they would rather be somewhere else than hear it again. How many times in a lifetime can you hear the same statement over and over again? The frustration of not being able to put it right, to make the person feel better, was too much. Only close family were still around. Friends and acquaintances had made excuses, preferring to avoid her rather than hear it again.
‘She left the house thinking I hated her. She called me jealous. She died not knowing I loved every hair on her head. Why did I tell her to get out and never to come back. Why did I do that?’ It was a question no one could answer. Some had foolishly tried to sooth her with platitudes of ‘She knew you loved her’ and similar comments but they were furiously shouted down. With eyes sparking she would turn on the unfortunate person and tell them they knew nothing. The words she spat were so harsh, they cowered back to their seats. The insane and pervading hatred boiling inside her was contained, for the most part, within a quiet demeanour that was tightly held in place; but they knew she was on the edge and could explode hatred over anyone at any time. The tension in the room was so thick it could be tasted. Everyone tiptoed around her and she felt like an island, remote and alone in a sea of faces.
The trial had finished last month and today was the anniversary of her death. He had got away with it. They found him not guilty. Those filthy, evil words could not be said in her hearing. Again, she asked those sitting in her front room: ‘why did I tell her to get out and never come back? Why did I do it?’ Imploringly, she searched the sea of anguished faces in front of her for an answer. No one gave her one. They just looked at her and hoped she would sit down. Her mother, a seventy-five-year-old who felt worn down by the grief and worry of the past year, got stiffly out of one of the dining chairs lined along the wall and walked over to comfort her.
The room had been arranged for visitors. All the chairs were placed in a line. She had room to seat eleven people. Only a few managed to arrive. Her mother, Grace, Auntie Edith who was Grace’s sister, Tom’s Auntie Janice, and Isabella, her niece, who brought little Kyle – just one year old, and a pleasant distraction for those seated in the room.
The grieving Amanda was the mother of Laura, a beautiful girl who would have been twenty-three years old this year. James was Amanda’s husband and Laura’s father. Laura had been a strong-willed girl who flounced a lot. She would flounce into the house and if things didn’t go her way she would flick her hair and flounce out again. It was just a phase she was going through. It had caused Amanda a lot of arguments with Laura. Amanda never liked flouncing.
The argument on that fateful day was about Laura seeing John Carpenter again. Amanda knew John Carpenter from the college where she worked as an office administrator. He was a lecturer who had an eye for young women. John was fifty-one, and he looked an ageing mess: a weedy little creep with jeans so tight they looked painted onto his skinny legs. His wavy hair, worn to his shoulders, was going grey and he had a perma-tan that would have suited an aging rock star. What Laura saw in him, Amanda never knew. Of course she knew that students fall easily for their tutors but her Laura wasn’t a stupid little girl; Amanda had told her what lecturers could be like often enough. She’d told Laura many times that John Carpenter was only after her for one thing, that she could find a nice young man to go out with who was more her age. Laura would dismiss such comments and flounce out of the house. She was so young, so beautiful, so intelligent – and her mother knew she was wasted on Carpenter.
It was just one of those arguments where you say things you don’t mean. She had told Laura to get out and never come back. Laura had goaded her mother and told her how John was just the kind of man she needed. She’d shouted and stormed around, saying that her mother knew nothing about love, and nothing about her and how she felt. The final straw had been her look of contempt and the words she spat at her mother: ‘You’re just jealous of me.’ That was the last sentence Amanda would ever hear from Laura. She asked herself time and time again over the year, ‘Was she jealous of Laura?’ She wasn’t; she loved her and wanted her to live a full and wonderful life. Now she would never see her again, nor see her happily married, nor see her beautiful grandchildren. Amanda couldn’t bear to think ahead; it was all too much.
It was a couple of days later when frantic Amanda and James had pestered the police umpteen times. Their daughter was missing and she would never go away without telling them. They told the police about John Carpenter, and James went round to see him in the halls of residence. John Carpenter had reassured James that Laura had been to see him and left at 10 p.m. to go home. He had said he was really worried and asked to be kept informed.
Her body was found in Hainault Country Park in a glade, lying on the ground as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Her hair was arranged, her arms folded, and she looked peaceful. She was naked with her modesty covered in leaves. The pathologist said she’d been hit over the head with a blunt instrument. The violent redness at the back of her head was hidden until she was moved. Her skull was shattered. At the time it was said that someone would have to be very strong to do so much damage. The pathologist said skulls are stronger than most people think. Amanda identified the body. She wouldn’t let anyone else do it. She had to know for certain it was Laura. She sat still on a seat provided for her just looking at Laura until she was quietly moved because it was getting late. Her quiet despair had started then, and grew with each day.
Cuddling Amanda, her mother Grace looked around for James. She didn’t want to be unfair, because he must be grieving too, but where the hell was that man? He was never here to support Amanda. He had sodded off to his shed again, she surmised. The bloody shed should be burned to the ground and then perhaps he would do something for his wife. Grace could feel herself tense up and she knew that was no good for Amanda. Grace was worn down by the grief. It had been her gorgeous, beautiful granddaughter who had been murdered, but no one recognised that. Everyone was too busy comforting Amanda and trying to keep her from going totally mad. They all sat quietly waiting for DS Singh to arrive. He promised to tell them what had happened to John Carpenter when he was released.
James looked up from his silence at the sound of someone knocking on his shed door. Distractedly, he o
pened the door.
Jazz knew that was where he would find James. He hadn’t seen James since the end of the trial and in that time he seemed to have aged considerably. James was fifty-five: a man in his prime, some would say, but today he looked like an old man. His hair looked greyer and thinner and he seemed to have developed a stoop. He looked as if he had given up on life. The laughter lines around his eyes and mouth, from better times, were now etched so deep, all you could see was pain. He’d been a proud man. At six feet tall he had carried himself with a confidence that now seemed unbelievable. He almost shuffled when he moved back to his chair in the shed.
Jazz and James had come to know each other well over the past year, and they greeted each other with easy nods of the head. Everything had been said after the trial: the anger, the recriminations that the police could have done more. The bloody jury made up of stupid halfwits that had ruined their lives by saying Carpenter wasn’t guilty, and the judge who should be shot for allowing him to go free. James had expended all his hatred in Jazz’s direction; now he felt cold. He knew he couldn’t get justice, but he wanted revenge.
Jazz had worked with the family for a year. It was his team that had investigated Laura’s murder. John Carpenter was the murderer. They knew this. His semen had been found inside Laura. She was bruised between the legs and on her arms. The sex had been forced and from the bruising inside her vagina it all pointed to rape. Jazz remembered interviewing John Carpenter. He found him a sanctimonious little prick who had a great opinion of himself. He’d said that the girls he tutored were always chasing him; he called Laura a silly little girl like many others who pestered him. He had smiled during the interview and said it was all part of the problems of being a charismatic lecturer. Jazz wanted to smash his perma-tan face up into the wall and give him a good kicking. He knew he was the murderer.