DEAD SILENT a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by Helen H. Durrant

  “Sorry to interrupt, but Julian says you want this urgently, sir.” She was already sending the document to the printer.

  It was the diagram Calladine had requested, and as he’d thought, Stone’s vehicle was the last one in the pile-up. He pinned it to the board. It was an important piece in the jigsaw.

  He turned back and looked at the team. Where was Ruth? He glanced up at the office clock — nine thirty. Way past her usual time. Well, he couldn’t wait for her.

  “This young woman was found dead in a car on the bypass this morning. She definitely wasn’t killed in the smash. She’d been murdered somewhere else — garrotted. There is more, and you’ll all get a copy of the PM report once Doc Hoyle has written it. It won’t make pleasant reading. Our man did a thorough job. Stone was stuck in his car, unable to move, and no doubt screaming for help. No-one could see anything because of the fog. Even though she was found in his car, it’s my theory that it went like this: another vehicle comes up behind him and stops. This vehicle has the dead girl in it. Stone probably thinks he’ll get some help, but that’s not what happens. The bastard ignores him and dumps the girl’s body on his rear seat. Next, he tries to cover it up by setting the car alight.”

  He stood back, staring at the board. If he was right, then their man must have had no idea what to do with the body. He’d simply seized an opportunity when it had presented itself. That could mean she was his first.

  “Like I said, that last bit is only a theory at present. But if I’m wrong then we have to ask ourselves why Stone didn’t hide her? I’ve got Julian’s lot checking to see if his car was set alight deliberately. If it was, then our man was hoping to cover his tracks. Stone’s car was the obvious choice — an incapacitated driver and the first car he came across in the heavy fog.” He tapped at the diagram. “I’m not going to pretend; this isn’t going to be easy. We’re short-staffed, and what with this and the Cassie Rigby case, we’re overstretched. Rocco: you and Imogen take the kid for now. Ruth and I will look into the murdered girl.”

  As he uttered her name, Ruth Bayliss entered the incident room. She was flustered and looked pale and tired. Putting her coat over a chair back, she nodded at Calladine and sank wearily onto a seat.

  “If the Cassie Rigby case turns into something big, then the investigation will escalate and we’ll get more bodies on the job. But we’ll finish all the preliminary checks first. We have to treat this as a simple case of a missing child — if there is such a thing — until we know different. I want all the different agencies kept up to speed with what we find.”

  * * *

  Ruth hadn’t had the best of starts this morning; yet another row with Jake. The man could be so unreasonable. What he wanted was a woman who kept regular hours, who worked nine to five, then went home and fixed tea. But what he’d got was Ruth and her job. He even had the nerve to turn his nose up at her hobby — birdwatching. It took her away with a bunch of people he didn’t know, and some of them were men. How stupid was that?

  Jake didn’t understand her passion for ornithology, or, given her job, how little time she had to devote to it. Now she’d have Calladine on her back for being late, and she could hardly blame him.

  But it wouldn’t take her long to get her brain into gear. She wasn’t sure if the boss was right. How could a missing child ever be a simple case? Something had happened to Cassie Rigby, and if they didn’t find her soon, then Calladine could have a lot to answer for. She swept her dark hair away from her face in irritation, and resolved to get it cut at the first opportunity. She’d only grown it because Jake had said it suited her. Stupid vain female that she’d become all of a sudden — all because of a man. Not like her at all.

  Imogen Goode, however, seemed only too pleased to be handed more responsibility, whether the boss was right or not. She smiled at Rocco and nodded. She had already made some headway, having looked over Ruth’s research from the previous day.

  “There’s something odd going on. For a start, there is no record of Cassie Rigby’s birth,” she told Ruth. “In fact, there’s no record of Mr and Mrs Rigby ever having had any children at all — weird don’t you think?”

  Yes, it was, but why didn’t it surprise her? Right from the off, Ruth and Calladine had suspected that there was more to this than met the eye.

  “Check to see if Cassie was born before they got married — look under Mrs Rigby’s maiden name. If that draws a blank, then you’ll have to go and ask them — and don’t let them spin you any tales. The boss and I got the impression they had something to hide, so push them. Check with the garden centre too — ask if any of the staff saw the child leaving. If she didn’t want to go with whoever took her, then she would have kicked up a fuss and someone would have heard.”

  “Do we know who she was, sir?” Ruth turned her attention to the murdered girl. The description Calladine was busy writing on the board looked awful. If he was right, the murder needed sorting every bit as much as the Cassie Rigby case.

  “Not a clue. All we have is something written on a livestock tag attached to her ear — the word Vida.” He wrote the word on the board. “Is it a name, a place, or what? I’ve no idea.”

  A livestock tag. Ruth shuddered, her eyes widening.

  “I’ll check the HOLMES database and see if anything comes up.” Imogen sat on the edge of Rocco’s desk. “We’ll visit the nursery first. We can take a look at the garden centre while we’re there as well. Robert Rigby had a row with the nursery owner about the council wanting to buy his land,” Imogen explained to Ruth. “Robert Rigby works in planning so there could be something in it — we’ll see.”

  “Ruth!” Calladine beckoned his sergeant into his office.

  He’d be wanting to talk, she guessed, about her arriving late. It wasn’t her style.

  “Come in and close the door behind you. Are you okay? You don’t look right — I’m worried about you. What’s going on?” Calladine asked.

  “I’ve been a bloody fool, Tom.” She sank into a chair facing him. “Jake. I got in too deep, and now . . . I’m floundering. I just don’t know what to do.”

  This wasn’t an overstatement. Ruth had been awake most of the night, tossing the alternatives about in her head. She liked Jake, but was that enough? Was it ‘like,’ or was it something more, and if it was, how would she know?

  “Believe me, Ruth, where romantic cock-ups are concerned I’m a walking nightmare. You only have to look at the mess I’m in with Monika . . . But I don’t understand what your problem is. He likes you, you like him. Why not just go for it?”

  “Because so much would change, that’s why. I suppose I’m frightened. I’ve lived alone for so many years — with no one to please but myself, and, despite what he says, he’d never understand the job. Let’s face it, teaching is a cushy number compared to what we do. Most of the time I’d be here and he’d be at home. That’d only last so long. Look what happened to you and Rachel.”

  “It takes a special sort of person to put up with the life a detective leads, and Rachel didn’t cope — not at all.”

  “I don’t know if Jake would either, so I’m not sure I want the aggro of even trying.” She pulled a face. “Late nights, stuff going on in my head — I’d be a nightmare to live with. He’d only go along with it for so long then it’d all be over anyway.”

  “Well, you have to make a decision because it’s interfering with your work. This isn’t me coming down hard — you’re a friend as well as a colleague — but there is only so far I can let this go. I need my sergeant firing on all cylinders — particularly just now. So make up your mind. Go for it; he’s a good man. And try and get that break — take Jake with you.”

  “Birdwatching! He wouldn’t know a puffin from a parakeet.”

  Ruth smiled at him. She was getting the Calladine pep talk. It’d been a while, and it was more usual these days for her to be the one giving him guidance on how to live his life. Given the mess he made of his love life there was an irony there so
mewhere.

  “I’ll see. I’ll have to think about it a bit longer.” She took the diagram he held out to her. Back to work.

  “Do you see what I mean about the car? If Stone had killed her, he’d have hidden her body; he wouldn’t have left her naked like that on the back seat.”

  “Perhaps he panicked, didn’t know what to do, and simply wanted rid.”

  “She’d been dead a while, so no, he didn’t panic. She’d been kept somewhere, bound or chained. The bastard took his time with her. He damaged her teeth — I can only suppose it was meant to hinder identification. And look what he did to her mouth. Goodness knows how long he kept her like that. There’s strong evidence of repeated sexual assault too. It’s a bad one, Ruth. On the reverse of the thing in her ear lobe is the number five. It could mean anything, but we should hope she isn’t part of some disturbing sequence and that there aren’t more like her out there.”

  “I’ll check missing persons, sir.” She began making notes, taking down the preliminary description of the girl. “She’s young too. I wonder if she’s local, although I don’t know the name — if that’s what it is. We have a reasonable photo? Something we can show around? I suppose eventually there’ll be a press conference, and then we can release it.”

  Calladine scowled at this. He didn’t like the press. He didn’t like the way they operated — how they transformed everything into something lurid and scandalous. “Only when we need to — not before. We could be wasting our time with the local newspaper anyway. She could be from anywhere. Whoever left her in the back of that car could have travelled. We just don’t know.”

  Chapter 5

  This was DC Simon ‘Rocco’ Rockliffe’s first proper investigation since the Handy Man case, and he was nervous. What had happened to him that night in the tower block hadn’t only left a dent in his skull, it had left a dent in his confidence too. Still, Imogen knew what she was doing. She was a natural, and Rocco knew he could trust her to mind his back.

  He drove them both along the bypass and on towards the garden centre. He didn’t say much.

  The place was busy, all done up for Christmas.

  “I must get a tree,” Imogen declared, as they passed a row of Nordmann firs on the way in. “They make such a good show here, don’t you think? The trees and all the sparkly lights — I think they’ve even got a Santa’s Grotto this year too.”

  “Where was the girl sitting?” Rocco’s expression was anxious. He didn’t want to make small talk; he was on edge. He needed to achieve something positive, get back in the saddle.

  Imogen had a quick word with Sandra Dobson, the manageress, and ordered two coffees. She took Rocco’s arm.

  “Relax. Don’t stress so much, we’ll do this, and then go back and report in.”

  Rocco gave her a weak smile. She’d want him to be more like the Rocco of old, to relax and joke. Trouble was, he still felt nothing like his old self, and he was beginning to wonder if he ever would.

  “They were sitting over here. The girl was left on this very seat while Anna Bajek went to the counter over there. As you can see — she would have been quite visible. Now, according to Anna’s statement, a group of school kids came in — half a dozen or more and they stood against that rail over there, in front of the counter. So for a short while Anna couldn’t see Cassie at all.”

  “A very short while, according to her statement — literally seconds.”

  “Yes — so you know what that means?”

  “It means they were being watched.”

  “My thoughts exactly. Someone was waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Perhaps they were followed here after they finished shopping on the High Street. When we get back to the nick we should check the CCTV.”

  Sandra Dobson brought the coffees over. “Have you got anything yet?”

  “No — afraid not. But it’s only been a few hours. We’d like to speak to your staff — see if anyone recalls seeing the child being taken away,” Imogen replied.

  “I’ve already asked, love. We were just too busy, so I’m afraid no one noticed anything out of the ordinary. But I’m sure that if a child had been taken out of here screaming and shouting, then someone would have come forward by now.”

  “Do you see much of your neighbour at the nursery?” Rocco asked.

  “Not really; not unless he’s bringing stock across or looking for Jonathan. James Alton isn’t a particularly sociable animal.”

  “Jonathan?”

  “My son. He works here and at the nursery. He fills in where he’s needed.” She pointed towards a young man serving at the counter. If I remember rightly, he was actually serving at lunchtime today. That’s right, isn’t it, Jonathan? You saw the woman and the kid?”

  The young man nodded. “Can’t say I remember much though. We were far too busy.”

  “Was James Alton in here earlier, when the girl went missing?”

  “I didn’t see him, but there’s been no delivery from him today, so no, probably not, but I’ll ask the rest of the staff.”

  “That’s okay, we’ll go and see him shortly.”

  Sandra Dobson left them to it.

  “You okay, Rocco? You look a little tense,” Imogen asked Rocco.

  “I just need to get back into it, that’s all, get stuff sorted in my head. I used to be so sure of myself, fearless almost, but now . . .” he shrugged, sipping on the hot coffee. “I’m in danger of being scared of my own shadow.”

  Imogen rubbed his arm. “You’re going to be fine. We do a job — mostly it’s okay but we’re all aware that it can get hairy at times. You were unlucky. That woman lashed out and you got it. It could have been any one of you that night.”

  She was right — wrong place, wrong time.

  “Have you missed me? I’ve been bored stiff. I might have become a bit of a wimp, but I’m still glad to be back.”

  “We’ve all missed you, Rocco. We’ve missed your cheeky face and banter about the office.” She smiled, and gave him a wink. “And we’ve missed your input. It’s no fun being short-handed.”

  “But you coped — the team always does.” He smiled. “And there’ve been changes. What’s with the inspector getting a daughter suddenly?”

  “I know, and she’s okay too. He found out about her the night you got injured. He had no idea. She simply turned up out of the blue and announced who she was — took him completely by surprise.”

  “Something’s changed with you, too. You look a little different.” He grinned. “But I can’t work out what it is.”

  “Oh it’s simple enough — I ditched the specs in favour of contact lenses.” She smiled back at him. “Nothing major, but you’d be surprised what it does for a girl’s confidence.”

  They laughed. Rocco would never have thought that the gorgeous blonde detective constable would have been short on confidence, specs or no specs.

  “Is it for Julian’s benefit?”

  “No — and you stop that now.” She slapped his chest playfully with the back of her hand. “Julian’s just a friend. He’s clever and I admire his work, nothing more. There was a time when I fancied forensic science myself.”

  He gave her a doubtful look — forensic science or the forensic scientist? There was no way Julian considered himself just another one of Imogen’s friends. She was kidding herself if she thought that’s how it was with him.

  * * *

  But they had a job to do, and so a short while later the two detectives were walking along the narrow grassy path that formed a short cut between the garden centre and the nursery. As it came into view, Imogen could understand why a house builder would want the land. It was a very large, flat area and convenient for both Leesdon and the bypass. The fact that James Alton wouldn’t sell must have really pissed the council off.

  There was a tall wooden gate at the end of the path, and it was unlocked — nothing to stop them then. The land had been divided up into six areas of similar size. It looked pretty desolate at this time of year. The
sign by the gate said the nursery specialised in roses and fruit trees. But now, in the harsh December weather, they were nothing but twigs in the frozen soil.

  Each sectioned-off area had its own long, modern greenhouse, in sharp contrast to a block of old stone outbuildings that stood on the far perimeter of the land. Alton had obviously invested both time and money into his business.

  The place looked empty. There was no one around and the first greenhouse they came too was padlocked shut.

  Imogen called out, “Anyone here?”

  There was no reply.

  “There’s a carport round the side but no vehicle, and the main gates back there are shut,” Rocco said, he’d had a quick look round. “Perhaps he’s out delivering — it’s a busy time of year.”

  “It’s quite a lonely spot, don’t you think? You can’t even see the garden centre from here, not with those conifers in the way. In fact, a lot of stuff could go on here, and no one would ever know.”

  “Imagination, DC Goode.” Rocco grinned. “Don’t get carried away.”

  “Do you think we dare check out the other buildings while we’re here? It’s not as if we have a search warrant or anything.”

  “We can always say we’re looking for Alton.” Rocco made off down a gravel path running along the side of one of the tracts of land. “Come on, then — I’ll take these greenhouses, and you take the ones over there.”

  The two detectives got nowhere. All the buildings were locked up tight and there was no sign of any work going on.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” A voice bellowed out from behind them. “How did you get in here? This is private land. Can’t you read?” While they’d been busy looking around, the nursery van had pulled into the carport, and now a man was hurrying towards them. James Alton, Imogen presumed.

  He was a tall, slightly overweight middle-aged man with a weather-beaten face that was set in a hard expression. Not a happy individual from the look of him.

  “If you’re from the damn council then you’re wasting your time. The best I’ll do for now is think about it. I won’t be rushed, so stop hassling me!” He strode towards them.