by Bill Rogers
The social worker lived on the estate and arrived within minutes. She brought a care worker with her. Jo was greatly impressed. She and Max were in the hallway preparing to leave. It had become clear that the victim’s mother was unable to shed any light on her death or why she might have been on Trows Lane. The care worker was attending to Gladys Crowden’s immediate needs.
‘A family liaison officer should be here within the hour,’ Jo told her. ‘Can you stay till then?’
‘Of course, although I will have a problem if it’s any longer.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Jo told her. ‘We’ll make sure they get a move on. Incidentally, did Genna have a partner?’
‘Yes, a lorry driver. One of those big articulated trucks. He’s somewhere in southern Spain at the moment picking up a load of fruit and vegetables from Murcia.’
‘Do you think he knew she was a sex worker?’
The social worker shook her head. ‘I got the impression he had no idea.’
‘So what did he think she was doing?’
‘Genna told me once that she worked in a call centre from midnight to 4am. Her mother tells the same story. Course, we all know the truth. There are few secrets on this estate.’
‘And he fell for that?’ said Max.
The social worker shrugged. ‘It helped that before she became a prostitute she was working in a call centre, except it was a telephone sex line that folded under competition from the Internet chatlines. That was when she decided to go on the game.’
Max opened the front door. ‘It’s not a game though, is it?’ he said. ‘Not when you end up dead in a skip.’
Chapter 41
‘Good to know she’ll be sorely missed,’ said Max.
‘That’s not fair,’ Jo responded. ‘The mother’s probably in shock. When it finally hits her, I think she’ll feel differently. Then there’s the partner. He’s bound to miss her.’
‘You’re too soft for this job, Jo. You do know that?’
She signalled right, and drove carefully through the media scrum by the entrance to the GMP headquarters’ car park.
‘The day I stop trying to see the good in people,’ she said, ‘is the day I’ll pack it in.’
Max laughed. ‘That’s any time now then.’
She parked up, took her bag from the back seat, and got out.
‘By the way,’ she said as they walked towards the reception entrance, ‘next time you call me soft I’ll expect you to join me for a Krav Maga session.’
‘Stupid I may be,’ he replied, ‘suicidal I am not.’
Gordon was crossing the atrium ahead of them. They rode the lift together up to the MIR.
‘How did you get on at the house?’ he asked.
Jo told him.
‘At least with all the others there was someone who cared,’ he reflected.
‘How about you, Gordon?’ she asked. ‘Have you anything at all to go on?’
‘Not a lot.’
The doors opened and they stepped out into the corridor.
‘The Neighbourhood Team tracked down some of her fellow sex workers. We know she started off up by the railway station around midnight. The heavy police presence put the punters off, so most of them either went home or tried their luck elsewhere.’
Andy had warned them, Jo reflected, that doing so could have the effect of pushing the girls away from the red-light areas and making them more vulnerable. It was hardly the moment to remind Gordon.
‘Presumably Genna did too?’ said Max. ‘Which would explain why she ended up not far from home.’
‘We’ll get a better idea when we’ve seen the CCTV,’ said Gordon.
He held his security tag against the panel, and pushed open the door to the MIR.
‘It’s bristling with cameras around the town centre, and the Metrolink station in particular. Duggie’s going through the footage right now with a forensic digital media analyst. Why don’t you go and see how they’re getting on while I update the policy book?’
‘Duggie?’ said Max as Jo led him to a carrel in the far corner of the suite, where a tall man in his forties was leaning over a younger man seated in front of a monitor.
‘Duggie Wallace. He’s the syndicate collator and senior intelligence analyst. We’ve worked together for years.’
‘Indeed we have,’ said Duggie, turning to greet them. ‘Good to see you, Jo. DCI Caton will be chuffed when he finds out you’re working with us.’
‘Caton’s back?’
She was surprised at how much that meant to her.
‘Next week.’ Duggie lowered his voice. ‘Not a moment too soon. DCI Holmes is doing a good job, but we need all the experience we can get right now.’
‘He asked us to check on how you’re getting on,’ said Max.
‘We’ve identified seven kerb-crawlers, most of whom left the area without picking up any of the girls. Probably scared off by our guys. However, there were two rather persistent characters that hung around a bit longer.’
Duggie clicked on a Google Earth folder on the desktop menu bar. A 3D map appeared in the top-right-hand corner of the screen.
‘This is the relevant target area,’ he said, tracing the route with his trackpad arrow. ‘The vehicle we are most interested in repeatedly cruised the two blocks to the east of the station bounded by Richard Street, High Level Street, Oldham Road, and the A640. We’re pretty sure he also wove in and out of the backstreets inside that perimeter, where there’s nothing but small workshops, warehouses, and industrial units. We won’t know for sure till the rest of the CCTV is brought in. I’ve linked together the footage from six cameras on the main roads so far. This is the result.’
He opened a video file on the desktop, and started the playback. They watched as a car came into a view. While the footage ran, the forensic analyst followed its progress on the Google Earth map.
‘The other reason we’ve chosen this one,’ Duggie told them, ‘is this same vehicle is among those picked up in the Fallowfield red-light district the night that Mandy Madden died.’
‘Someone with an interest in prostitutes and railways stations,’ Max observed dryly.
‘It’s a red Mazda 3 1.6 Venture,’ Duggie informed them. ‘The registered keeper and insurance holder is Jenson Hartley, forty-two years of age, from Tameside. He’s a sales representative for a paint manufacturer.’
‘One thing’s for certain,’ said Jo. ‘Whatever else he’s doing in that area, he isn’t working.’
‘He was there for over an hour,’ said Duggie. ‘Driving round and round. I’m amazed nobody stopped him and asked what he was doing. He left the area shortly after the victim, and in the same direction.’
‘You’ve actually identified her on CCTV?’ asked Jo.
‘Based on the description DS Carter sent us, plus a photo from the crime scene.’
‘This is her now,’ said Jack, starting a second video.
They watched as Genna emerged from a side road on to Rochdale Road, crossed over, and disappeared down a ginnel. The time on the screen said 1.55am. It was surreal and uncomfortable knowing that in less than an hour she would be dead.
Fifty seconds later she appeared again, turned right, and walked down beside the Metrolink tramlines before crossing over by an impressive church, and disappearing behind the raised platform of the station. Thirty seconds later she appeared again, walked to the end of the street, and turned left on to the A664.
‘That’s all we’ve got so far,’ said Duggie. ‘When the rest comes in, we should be able to track her most of the way down to wherever she turned off on her way back to the estate.’
‘Assuming that’s where she was going,’ said Max.
‘It’s the only thing that makes sense,’ said Jo. ‘And if she did, then she’s bound to have shown up on some of those cameras you pointed out around the precinct.’
‘I’ll get on to that straight away,’ said Duggie.
‘How did you manage to get this footage so quickly?’ Max as
ked.
‘Rochdale Council has sixty-four cameras operated from one central point on their behalf. Plus there are half a dozen on the Metrolink stop. It was just a matter of two phone calls quoting RIPA.’
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act; a curiously apt acronym, Jo reflected, given their unsub.
‘You mentioned a second vehicle,’ she said.
‘Yes indeed,’ said Duggie. ‘This guy. Only it’s not a car or any other motorised vehicle. He’s on a mountain bike.’
The final video showed a cyclist dressed in a black biker hoodie, black trousers, and a black ribbed helmet riding a mountain bike at a leisurely pace around the same district as the Mazda. There were hi-vis patches on his sleeves and the front and rear of his jacket.
‘Are you sure that’s not a GMP bike patrol officer?’ said Max, leaning closer to the screen.
‘Definitely not,’ said Duggie. ‘We did check to see if any had been deployed there last night. And when you zoom in . . .’
The forensic digital media analyst obliged.
‘. . . you can see this guy has no police markings on his helmet. It is also black, when ours are white. And that’s not a standard police marked hi-vis jacket. He has a tinted visor obscuring his face.’
‘Be an easy mistake to make though,’ Jo observed thoughtfully.
‘That was our thinking too,’ said Duggie. ‘He does two circuits, each an hour apart, which is what made us suspicious.’
‘Is there any possibility that he may have followed the victim when she left the area?’
‘We’ll only know that when we’ve got the footage from the cameras on the A664,’ Duggie told her.
‘The sooner the better then,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, let’s see what Mr Hartley has to say for himself.’
Chapter 42
It took Gordon Holmes a little over an hour and twenty minutes to rush through a search warrant for Jenson Hartley’s car, company office, and home. Ten minutes later his Mazda was spotted by an ANPR camera heading north on the M60.
‘A Traffic car pulled him over, and is waiting for instructions,’ he told them. ‘How about you and Nick go and pick him up, Jo?’
‘What about his car?’ Jo said. ‘For all we know, he may have used it to pick her up.’
‘I’ll send a vehicle recovery low-lifter to bring it back for forensic examination,’ Gordon said.
‘What about me?’ said Max.
‘It would help if you were to accompany the house search team,’ said Gordon. ‘You can find out what his wife thought he was doing in the early hours of this morning.’
‘He doesn’t look very happy,’ Nick said as he pulled over on to the hard shoulder of the motorway, and stopped in front of the Traffic car.
Jo unbuckled her seat belt. ‘That’s not a good sign,’ she said.
Nick frowned. ‘How so?’
‘If Hartley’s just a pathetic sex-starved kerb-crawler, I’d expect him to be nervous. A psychopath would be sitting there confident he’s got all the angles covered and in the belief he can talk himself out of anything.’
‘What’s that? The Gospel According To Dr Andrew Swift?’
‘I am capable of doing my own research,’ she said, getting out of the car.
‘What, and he’s never wrong?’ he called after her as he carefully checked the traffic before exiting the driver’s side.
‘No one is infallible,’ she replied, and then added sotto voce, ‘Not even me.’
‘Sorry, Ma’am? I didn’t catch that,’ said the Traffic officer through his open window.
‘Just talking to myself,’ Jo said, holding up her ID.
‘Occupational hazard,’ the officer replied. ‘I do it all the time.’
‘How did you know who I was?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Apart from being told to expect you? And this?’ He pointed to the screen in the centre of his console. It featured the number plate of Nick Carter’s car in bold letters, below it a live display of the rear of the vehicle, and a text confirmation that it belonged to GMP.
‘Very good,’ she said. ‘You might want to think about applying for CID.’
He chuckled. ‘Become a detective? And lose all that overtime? The wife would kill me.’
‘How’s he been?’ said Jo, nodding towards the car behind them.
‘Nervy. He assumed I’d pulled him over for a traffic offence. When he found out I hadn’t but I couldn’t tell him why and he’d have to wait till you got here, I thought he was going to have a panic attack. He’s not going anywhere though. I’ve got his car keys.’
‘Good,’ Jo replied. ‘That’s how we like them.’
‘What is it he’s wanted for, Ma’am?’
Nick Carter answered for her. ‘When you’ve swapped your candy bar for a detective badge, we’ll let you know.’
‘Sorry about him,’ said Jo. ‘He’s been up half the night.’
They approached the suspect’s car.
‘You’ve been spending too much time with Gordon,’ she said. ‘One of these days you may need that guy to come to your rescue.’
‘Not me,’ Nick replied. ‘I’m with the Automobile Association.’
Hartley spotted them coming in his wing mirror, and began to get out of the car. Jo placed her hand against the door panel.
‘Stay in the car please, sir,’ she said. ‘And wind down your window.’
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Hartley asked. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘That’s for us to establish,’ she told him.
Nick Carter walked around the bonnet, and stood by the passenger door.
‘Can you confirm your name for me please?’ Jo said to Hartley.
‘Jenson Hartley.’
‘And your address?’
He told her.
‘And can you confirm that this is your car?’
‘Yes, but what—?’
‘In which case I would like you to climb over to the passenger side, and get out of the car.’
‘But—’
‘Just do it!’
She watched as Hartley struggled to clamber over the gear stick with his long legs and plate-sized shoes. It did seem ridiculous, but there was no way she was going to risk him running straight out into vehicles speeding past in the inside lane. Nick opened the door and stood back to let him out. Jo walked around the rear of the car to join them. At well over six foot three, and thin as a rake, he struck her as far too conspicuous to be their unsub, whom Andy Swift had previously asserted would need to blend in to commit his crimes without being caught. Nor did he fit the profile of any description provided by sex workers they had interviewed.
‘We would like you to accompany us to GMP North Division headquarters, Mr Hartley,’ she said. ‘To help us with our inquiries.’
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I told the other policeman I’ve got an important meeting in Leeds in forty minutes. I’m already going to be late.’
‘Our meeting trumps yours, sir,’ said Nick Carter. ‘No pun intended.’
‘Jenson Hartley,’ said Jo, ‘I am arresting you under Section 51A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 on suspicion that you did solicit, in a street or public place, for the purpose of obtaining a sexual service from another person as a prostitute.’
‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘Kerb-crawling is not an arrestable offence.’
‘It may not have been when you started out,’ said Nick, ‘but it is now. You need to keep up. Where have you been for the past sixteen years? Timbuktu?’
‘You do not have to say anything,’ she continued, ‘but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Good.’
Jo unbuttoned her jacket, took a pair of handcuffs from her belt holster, clamped one around her own wrist and the other around his.
‘That’s not necessary,
’ he said.
‘Just a precaution, sir,’ she said, leading him towards Nick’s car. ‘We wouldn’t want you to end up as road kill, now would we?’
Chapter 43
‘Please,’ Jenson Hartley said. ‘Can we just get on with it?’
Hartley stared back at them across the interview table. His initial panic, worsened by the taking of a mugshot, fingerprints, and a DNA sample, had been replaced by a determination to get this over with as quickly and quietly as possible. It was a common reaction Jo had found among kerb-crawlers. It wasn’t so much about the conviction or the fine but rather the desperation to avoid public shaming. She and Nick had agreed to tread carefully. They had no evidence that Hartley had solicited any of the women. Only that he appeared to have been behaving suspiciously. If he came up with a plausible reason for cruising both of the red-light districts, they were going to have to let him go until they found one or more of the girls, who might be willing to confirm that he had at some time approached them for sex. And that was not something any of them would be keen to do. Outing your punters was a sure-fire way to lose custom. Even to invite revenge.
‘Very well,’ Jo said, ‘my colleague has some questions for you.’
‘Let’s start with last night,’ said Nick. ‘Where were you between midnight and 2am?’
Jo could see Hartley trying to decide the best course of action. Should he lie? Fabricate a story with elements of the truth? Or confess? It all depended on how much he thought they already knew. He stared at the two of them, clearly hoping for some clues.
‘Come on, Mr Hartley,’ said Nick. ‘We’re talking less than twelve hours ago. Surely you can remember.’
Hartley clearly decided to hedge his bets, and went for the middle option. ‘I was driving around.’
‘In the middle of the night? Do you do that often?’
‘As a matter of fact I do.’ He switched his attention to Jo, as though seeking an ally. ‘I suffer from insomnia. I find it helps if I have a drive before I get my head down.’
‘And this insomnia,’ said Nick. ‘Would your GP happen to know about it?’
There was a flicker of panic in his eyes.