Dead To Me

by Staincliffe, Cath

  ‘What are you saying?’ Was Gill implying she’d grown stale?

  At that point, Rachel strode back into the outer room, distracted but altering her demeanour, straightening her spine, as she caught sight of Gill through the glass.

  ‘Welcome,’ Gill shouted, waved a hand but didn’t get to her feet. ‘Team meeting in ten. Pack drill then.’

  Rachel nodded. ‘Great.’ She sat back at her desk.

  Janet waited for a second longer, but Gill, already devouring the information on the screen, pointed a finger towards the door. Dismissed.

  As Janet sat down, Rachel leaned forward and whispered, ‘What’s she like? Bit of a dragon?’ signalling with an upward flick of her eyes that she meant Gill in the office behind her.

  ‘Gill?’ Janet moved closer, eyes narrowing, sneaky and confidential. ‘She’s fucking brilliant!’

  3

  GILL DROVE OVER to Collyhurst, the furthest southern corner of their patch. The neighbourhood was spitting distance from Manchester city centre, nudging up to the Northern Quarter, where redevelopment had seen the decaying rag-trade warehouses converted into flats and most of the old porn shops transformed into bijou cafés and boutiques. Collyhurst was still a poor place, even with the splurge for the Commonwealth Games back in 2002 and the building of the new stadium nearby and the Velodrome. Whatever all the ‘new jobs’ were, it didn’t seem as though many of the long-term un employed in Collyhurst had got a look in. Pick a side road, any side road, and you’d soon spot the poverty. And Gill, like any copper with half a brain knew that poverty and crime were dancing partners. Plenty of families round here where thieving or domestic violence was passed on in the genes, imbibed with the baby formula and the rusks. Handy for prison visiting, though: if your nearest and dearest were doing time in Strangeways you could see the prison from the rise on Rochdale Road across the railway lines.

  By the time Gill was a beat bobby, drugs had arrived, and the mad mobsters had moved in. Hard men from Salford and Eccles who saw an opportunity to make a shitload of money. The burglary and brawling of the earlier years were replaced by turf wars and outbreaks of astonishing violence by the gangsters, accompanied by a spate of muggings and petty thefts by junkies needing a fix. When Gill moved into MIT in the 1990s everyone had come to the party: gangs in Cheetham, Longsight, Moss Side, links to Birmingham and Liverpool. The bloodbath peaked in 1999, over two hundred and forty shots fired, forty-three injured, seven dead and not a witness on the face of the earth. Gill had worked a few of those. Even got a conviction or two, against all the odds. Then they set up the special squad to tackle the scourge. Developed inter-agency strategies. Things had changed since then. Quieter now, a combination of prevention programmes and good detection, a rigorous support service for vulnerable and intimidated witnesses, weapons amnesties. As recently as 2008 they’d taken a whole load of drug scumbags off the streets, seriously weakening the gangs. The drugs were still out there, the dealers still busy and the related crimes went on, but it didn’t feel quite the same lawless frontier country, Gunchester, of the 1990s.

  Gill checked the address, Fairland Avenue, and took a left into the estate.

  I’ve already got one teenager, Janet had complained. She wasn’t far wrong; there was something bratty about Rachel Bailey. Gill knew next to nothing about her background, but she could tell it wasn’t silver spoon and skiing holidays. Local girl, she’d a wild edge to her, something simmering beneath the cover girl looks and the shrewd expression. And she was hungry for a chance. Gill could sense that. Drinking everything in at the morning’s induction yet impatient to get on with the real work, the dirty work. Like me, Gill thought, the raw ambition.

  Gill parked in the last remaining place on the pavement. The short street was cluttered with vans and cars. She got out and stood, took a moment first, considering the location. Only one route into the cul-de-sac, which forked off Gargrave Street, the main thoroughfare of the estate. Twenty houses in all, a turning circle at the far end. A gaggle of neighbours had gathered there, uniforms keeping them behind the tape. Victim’s house, second on the right from the junction, number 3A. The houses opposite would have a clear view of anyone coming and going if they were peering out of their windows. It would be getting dark soon, the CSIs were making the most of the fading light, photographing and scouring the area immediately outside the house.

  She put on her protective clothes and drew up her hood. Andy Pandy, ready to go and introduce herself to the CSM.

  The houses were divided into flats, separate entrances, maisonettes really. ‘It’s the downstairs flat,’ the uniform on the cordon told her as he logged her in.

  Gill raised her hands, almost a surrender pose, though her palms faced her ears not forward. Looked daft. Some people chose to stuff their hands in their pockets, or laced their fingers together, got a bit sweaty in the gloves like that. All tricks to safeguard against mucking everything up by smearing fingerprints or other trace evidence: spittle, dandruff, cosmetics, snot, blood, that lurked waiting for detection and recovery. Door frames, handles – all would be examined. Gill’s very first dead body on MIT, she’d leaned against a door-jamb and got a four-star bollocking from her boss. Since then she’d used the hands-up technique; she didn’t want her hands in her pockets because she needed her hands to think, to analyse, to communicate.

  ‘You’re like a bloody windmill,’ Janet once told her, ‘or someone on the tote, at the races.’

  One Christmas the team bought her a pair of white cotton gloves, the kind a magician wore. Gill had got very pissed at the works party and waxed lyrical about how what they did was magic of a sort. Dark magic, maybe, solving the sordid little details of the crime, turning a tragedy into an achievement.

  ‘For who?’ Andy had objected, winking at Janet. ‘We’ve still got a dead body. Someone’s still lost a family member.’

  ‘But they know how, why. And that’s all we can do for them,’ she had said, taking another swig of vodka. ‘Give them the story, the facts, the name, the face … At least we can do that.’ She had sliced at one hand with the other for emphasis, and Janet had laughed and shaken her head. ‘Without that they are in bloody limbo for ever,’ Gill said. They all knew that. Lee and Mitch had nodded, muttering in agreement.

  She had drunk way too much that night; it wasn’t long after Dave had gone walkabout, and she’d ended up curled over a bog in the Ladies, with Janet holding her hair out of the way and saying, ‘Time for bed, Houdini. Got you a cab.’

  Gill walked through the tiny porch on the stepping plates that had been laid down and turned ninety degrees into the narrow hallway, noting the bathroom immediately to the right. Straight ahead, a bedroom. The door ajar. Gill took in the mattress on the floor, the carpet littered with clothes and scraps of paper, cigarette papers, DVD cases, burn marks on the carpet. Someone had once attempted to redecorate the far wall either side of the window. It was painted a muddy ginger shade, reminding Gill of parkin, the cake they ate round Bonfire Night. But they’d obviously lost heart and the edge near the ceiling still showed the cream woodchip paper underneath. Gill could smell damp in the room mixing with the rank stench of stale fag ends and, peering carefully round the door, saw an area in the corner there mottled with mildew. She didn’t go in, it had yet to be examined. The next ninety-degree turn took her past a storage cupboard on the right and into the living room at the end. The smell was different here, unpleasantly metallic.

  ‘Hello,’ Gill greeted them all.

  The girl was under a duvet, face partly visible, wedged between a sofa and a squat, dark-coloured coffee table. The table was slightly askew and tilted, one leg broken. The technicians would already have filmed and photographed the room before anyone else was allowed in, creating a record of the scene as close as possible to how it had been found. Phil Sweet, the CSM, was logging details and supervising everyone. Gill had worked with him maybe half-a-dozen times. He raised a gloved hand in acknowledgement. ‘Go round that way.’
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  Gill did as Phil said; using the stepping plates she skirted around the easy chair that stood near the kitchen door, close to where two markers indicated drops of blood, and past the coffee table to get closer to the victim.

  She stared at the body, at the girl’s head angled slightly back and to the right, touching the base of the sofa. There was a slick of blood on the carpet beneath her, some dark stains on the edge of the duvet. Gill didn’t need a second opinion, this was a homicide. She straightened up and got out her phone to ring the coroner. The body legally belonged to the coroner and their authorization would be needed to order a post-mortem.

  ‘Who called us?’ she asked Phil as she selected the contact number.

  ‘Boyfriend; came in and found her like this.’

  Gill nodded. Because he had been at the scene, the boyfriend would have to submit his clothes for examination as potential evidence and give a witness statement to assist the police.

  ‘Hello, Mr Minchin, Gill Murray here from MIT,’ she identified herself to the coroner. ‘I’m out at a job in Collyhurst: young, white, adult female. I’m thinking we’ve got ID, not formal as yet, looking like a stab wound. I’m after doing a forensic post-mortem?’

  ‘Be my guest. I’ll take the details.’

  Gill told him the rudiments: the address and the apparent name of the victim: Lisa Finn. Her next call was to the pathologist, Ranjeet Lateesh. No one would touch the body or disturb anything at the scene until he’d arrived and been able to examine the body in situ.

  She watched one of the CSIs start work with his fingerprint kit on the doorway and door handles into the room. The silver sooty powder he was smothering over the surfaces would be a bugger to clean off again afterwards.

  ‘Shoulder bag in the kitchen, bus ticket in there shows her on the bus at half-ten this morning. But we didn’t find her phone,’ Phil Sweet told them.

  Gill groaned. The phone was a rich mine of information in any inquiry; traffic to and from helped them build not only a timeline but a network of contacts, and the content of texts would sometimes flag up animosity or threats. They’d have to approach the provider, who would be able to give them a log of incoming and outgoing calls and texts, but not the content of any texts, and not the pictures or music or videos or address book on the handset. With a little more time, the provider would also be able to give them the cell site location data and pinpoint where the phone was when calls were received and made. In effect, a tracking device.

  ‘They covered her up,’ Gill said. Wondering about that, whether it was a question of a perverted sense of respect or plain fear. It’s an instinctive response to hide a body, hide and run. There hadn’t been a duvet on the bed. Did the killer stop to fetch it? Wasting precious moments? No cover on the duvet. Gill could see patches of blood where it had soaked into the fabric along the top edge; there were older stains too, and the polycotton material was bobbled with use. Didn’t look as though the thing had ever been washed. She could see the pieces of foil under the coffee table, the small plastic tube, the lighter. Knew laundry wasn’t high on the priority list for a druggie.

  When Ranjeet arrived he began by making an assessment of the scene as he found it. And agreed with Phil Sweet and Gill that the duvet should be tape-lifted for any potential forensic evidence before it was removed. Once that had been done and everybody was satisfied that they had thoroughly documented the scene as it was found, it was time to lift the bedding. A CSI took each end, aiming to remove the article as carefully as possible and cause minimum disruption. A CSI provided a large evidence sack for the duvet, sealed it and allocated a reference number.

  Gill got her first good look at their victim. She wore an open, kimono-type housecoat, which was rucked up beneath her. A bloody incision marked her left breast close to her sternum and ribbons of blood had flowed from there down her side on to the floor. Blood on her right hand too, which lay on her belly. Nails bitten down. The housecoat was a floral design: white background with blowsy vivid pink-and-green flowers on. No knickers. She didn’t have much pubic hair. Not shaved, Gill thought, just immature – a teenager. Her hair was two-tone, partly covering the left side of her face, a bad bleach job growing out. Her mouth and nose were peppered with pimples. A row of silver-coloured earrings edged each of her ears; they made Gill think of the clasps they put on paint tins to keep the lids on. Her left arm was twisted at a peculiar angle, the hand forced under the forearm and pressed up against the strut at the base of the coffee table. Gill thought she’d probably hit the table as she’d fallen.

  Ranjeet made notes in his smart phone and the CSIs got busy with the cameras.

  ‘Penetrating wound between the ribs,’ Ranjeet said, ‘massive blood loss. I suggest we tape-lift the body and swab in situ, then undress the body; rest post-mortem. We can move the table now.’

  Gill stepped away, went to the window, looking out at the back, a tiny yard walled by broad, horizontal planks for fencing. Perfect climbing territory for a house burglar, but this girl had nothing worth taking. Unless somebody came to steal drugs. The telly in the corner by the window wasn’t a flat screen but an old monster, impossible to move without transport.

  As they moved the table, the victim’s left arm slumped, gravity pulling it down, unfolding. ‘No sign of rigor,’ Gill said. If the body was still pliable and there were no obvious signs of decomposition, it meant the time of death was recent. Rigor came on a few hours after death and lasted for between one and three days, depending on the external conditions.

  Ranjeet continued his examination. ‘Wound to the left arm,’ he pointed out, ‘probably defensive.’

  Gill squatted down, careful not to get her feet in the puddle of blood congealing around the girl’s torso. The cut was a couple of inches below her wrist, along the edge of the bone. ‘The weapon?’ Gill asked.

  ‘No sign,’ said one of the CSI guys. Gill looked at the cut and at the tattoo that braceleted the girl’s wrist in gothic script. ‘Who’s Sean?’ she said.

  ‘Boyfriend,’ Phil supplied.

  Ranjeet took the body temperature. He nodded at the result. ‘Thirty-five point nine, still warm.’ A CSI began the process of placing and removing tape on the girl’s body and then taking swabs from the mouth, nose and vagina.

  Gill and Phil discussed what further actions should be taken to retrieve crime-scene evidence, among them recovering the remaining bed linen from the bedroom.

  ‘Undress her now.’ A large plastic sheet was placed to the side of the dead girl and then the body was lifted as carefully as possible and laid on it. The CSIs removed the housecoat, the back of it drenched in blood, and put it in an evidence bag.

  ‘We’ll be ready to lift her soon,’ Ranjeet said. The stretcher and the body bag were prepared. Any further examination of the body would be done at the mortuary as part of the post-mortem; they wouldn’t turn her over here and risk destroying evidence.

  So, Lisa Finn, thought Gill as she prepared to leave, what the hell happened to you?

  4

  THERE WAS ALWAYS that buzz when they picked up a job. A spurt of something in the gut, a kick-start to the heart. ‘You’re a ghoul, Janet,’ Ade had said to her one time.

  ‘I’m a detective,’ Janet said, ‘this is what I do, this is what I’m good at. We find the bastards, we get them sent down.’

  The DCI had asked Janet to do the death message and to take Rachel with her. The worst thing about delivering the bad news was the sheer unpredictability of the reaction you got. One woman laughed, another threw up. Some people simply refused to believe you, arguing the toss, insisting that so-and-so was fine, they had seen them last night, they’d spoken to them on the phone. You had to sit them down and spell it out in big fat letters: D.E.A.D. Repeat it until they stopped blethering on: she was going on holiday, he’s only twenty-two, she’s got an operation next week, she’s got children. As if these facts – mundane, domestic, particular – could gainsay the truth. As if death could be reversed because
he’d got an interview for Morrisons tomorrow.

  Other people went numb, they listened and they nodded and didn’t utter a peep. They were polite and cooperative, but when you looked in their eyes there was no one home. They were absent, hiding. Then there were the ones that shot the messenger, tried to shut the door on them, and if they couldn’t do that in time, told them to fuck off, even lashed out, pinching, slapping, shoving.

  Janet once had a cup of tea flung at her. A woman whose son had been killed in a homophobic attack. Five of them kicked him to death. When Janet broke the news, the woman had flinched, twisting her head to and fro as if trying to escape the facts she’d just heard, then reached for her mug and hurled the contents at Janet. The tea was hot but not boiling. Though she reared back, Janet had not cried out. She had simply wiped at her face and repeated her condolences, then assured the woman that they would find the people who had done it and put them in prison for life. And the woman had sat, shaking uncontrollably, the sound of her teeth chattering clear and loud in the stuffy room.

  Where the victim was embroiled in violent crime already, the next of kin often knew before you said a word. He’s dead, isn’t he? The stupid fucking bastard. And behind the ruptured words all the years of effort and loving and arguing and fighting and the bitter knowledge that this was how it would end and now it had. I told him. Never listened – silly sod wouldn’t have it.

  Most were shocked, bewildered, sometimes tearful. It was important to keep things simple, straightforward, to give the minimum amount of information possible, because at that point in time dead, murdered, was all they needed to know. That in itself was overload. The torrent of whys and hows and whens and who and why, why, why came later.

  ‘I’ll do it, if you like,’ Rachel said, in the car. ‘I’ve done a couple.’ It was pitch-dark now, the temperature dropping; there’d be freezing fog on the hills.