Baby's Got Blue Eyes: Introducing DI Ted Darling

by L M Krier

  'Yes, club would be good,' Ted said, giving him a quick hug. 'And no out of control rough stuff tonight, promise. Interesting read?'

  'I don't mind a bit of rough stuff,' Trev looked up with a wink. 'Fascinating manual this, the advances in technology are so rapid they're changing daily. You've got to keep running to stand still.'

  Ted loved the way his blue eyes sparkled with enthusiasm whenever he talked about any of his passions. Trev noticed how tired Ted was looking and asked, 'Another rough day? No progress?'

  'Only backwards,' Ted sighed, sitting down. 'Had to let the suspect go. I never did think it was him and we couldn't come up with anything at all to hang it on him. Just another poor guy paying hookers because his marriage is shit. We're all right though, aren't we?'

  Trev immediately shut his manual, looked at Ted and took hold of one of his hands across the table. 'Of course we're all right,' he said. 'What's brought this on? What's worrying you?'

  'Apart from two murders on my patch and I can't solve either of them?' Ted said ironically. 'I don't know, just humanity, I think. I see people all around us, suffering so much, sham marriages, loneliness, using drink and goodness knows what else to get through life. And here's us, just jogging along, still together.'

  Trev looked shocked and a bit hurt. 'You say that as if it's not a good thing,' he said.

  'Of course it is,' Ted hastened to reassure him. 'It's just I can't understand how I got so lucky. Look at Jim. We all know what his wife is like, and we know he spends most of his time waiting for a phone call which is likely to kill him when he gets the news we're all dreading. I asked him to join us for Christmas but he said he'd be with his wife. But he knows he won't, and he knows I know he won't.

  'And then there's you. With me. You're so young, and brilliant, you could be with anyone, doing anything you choose. Yet you're here, with me, and I don't understand it and sometimes it just scares the hell out of me.'

  'Whoa, this is all getting a bit intense,' Trev said, taking Ted's other hand as well. 'Where's it all coming from? I'm with you because I love you. Can't you just accept that, instead of over-analysing?'

  Ted pulled his hands back and rubbed them over his face in a gesture of fatigue. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Sorry, you're right, I know. Just a crisis of self-confidence. Middle-aged angst. Some bloody thing. I don't know, just ignore me.'

  'Can I help in some way?' Trev asked. 'Bounce some ideas around? Something? Anything? We've got half an hour before we need to leave for the club. Talk to me.'

  They had a tacit agreement that they hardly ever talked about Ted's work, except superficially. Ted knew he could trust Trev implicitly and that anything they did discuss would go no further, but he always preferred to leave work stuff behind once he came home.

  'I know,' Trev laughed, trying to lighten the mood, 'let's do some psychological profiling,' knowing how much Ted hated the concept.

  Ted threw him a mock glare, then said, 'I hate bringing work home, you know that. But maybe you might spot something we've missed, because we're too close to it.'

  'Try me,' Trev said. 'You know I'm quite good at mind games. What links your victims?'

  'Not a lot, it seems,' Ted said. 'One was a respectable young woman, good family background, in work, not struggling financially, from what we've seen of her accounts. Sharing a flat, parents helping her out with the rent. Second one was a sad runaway, selling sex to buy the next fix.'

  'Physical similarities?' Trev asked.

  'Both had blue eyes. We're wondering if that's significant. Otherwise, the second victim was much shorter in height than the first, and had mousey hair, whereas the first was a blonde,' Ted said. 'Death by having their throats cut by a sharp implement, probably a surgical scalpel, a stroke made with the left hand. Mutilation of both bodies, done by someone who seemed to know what they were doing. We've been going on the basis of someone who didn't like women very much.'

  'Or, of course, someone who wanted you to think that,' Trev said.

  'It worries me a lot that the second body was dumped so close to here,' Ted confided. 'I can't help wondering if that was a personal message to me.'

  'I wouldn't read too much into that too soon, it could just be a coincidence,' Trev said. 'So, scalpel skills – I imagine that gives us doctor, surgeon, vet, nurse, midwife,' then he laughed and added, 'pathologist, of course, and most of them seem to be as barking mad as Hard G.'

  'The bodies were also kept somewhere cold before being dumped, though not in a domestic freezer or anything like that,' Ted added.

  'Butcher? Butcher's cold store? What about a mortuary assistant? Would they have the necessary skills?' Trev asked. 'I'm assuming the killer is a man?

  'In all probability,' Ted said, 'although Hard G did say something about strap-on dildos and a woman killer, but I think he was just being his usual provocatively crass self.'

  Trev laughed, in spite of himself and in spite of the serious subject. 'He really is a piece of work, isn't he? And he does so love to wind you up.'

  'I'm constantly amazed at the dubious stuff he knows about,' Ted told him. 'Although I'm a copper, he sometimes makes me feel I've led a very sheltered life. All this stuff about dogging and sex toys – it's a bit beyond me.'

  'I don't like to add to your paranoia but if, and it's a whopping big if, your killer is sending a personal message to you,' Trev said, 'then is it possible he knows you have a thing about blue eyes? And that your biggest fear is of getting a phone call about dead missing runaways?'

  Ted gave him a long look. 'Someone who knows me, you mean? Really knows me, rather than knows of me?'

  'Knows you well enough to know where you live, perhaps,' Trev said. 'How many scalpel-wielding woman-hating maniacs do you know? The woman-hating angle would surely rule out Hard G? What about Tim Elliott? Could he ever stop sneezing long enough to kill anyone? How about a disgruntled ex-policeman you scared once too often with the kick-trick? Someone who'd watched enough autopsies to know how to handle a scalpel?'

  He saw that Ted was at least grinning broadly by now and laughed, 'I'm not much use, am I?'

  'You'll never know how much,' Ted said with feeling. 'You've cheered me up at least, even if you haven't solved the case for me, Miss Marple. Come on, let's go and make the next generation of kids into nicer people, lighten the workload for the coppers of the future.'

  'Give me two minutes to brush my teeth and grab my kit-bag. Yours is in the hall,' and Trev went up the stairs two at a time, singing Barcelona at the top of his voice.

  Trev had many incredible talents. Sadly, singing was not one of them. He was completely unable to carry a tune, despite a lot of enthusiasm. Ted chuckled to himself at the thought of Freddie Mercury turning in his grave as Trev systematically slaughtered every note, not just the top ones.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  'I had this perfect dream.'

  This time it was the unmistakable voice of Freddie Mercury himself which woke Ted from what had been a surprisingly pleasant dream. He reached for his mobile phone and checked the time as he took the call. Just before six-thirty, when his alarm would have woken him anyway, so hopefully this time it was some good news. Maybe someone other than Honest John had come into the station with a confession.

  The gravity of the duty sergeant's voice as he began to speak immediately let him know that that was misguided optimism.

  'Sorry, Ted,' he said, 'yet another one for you. Just inside Woodbank Park. Doctor and SOCO on their way, so are Virgil and Sal. Want me to ring round the rest of your team while you head off to the scene?'

  'Thanks, Bill, that would be a big help,' Ted said. 'I'll be there very shortly. This is turning into a bloody recurring nightmare.'

  Trev rolled over and opened his eyes. 'Another one?' he asked. 'Not Rosalie though?'

  Ted shook his head. 'No, Bill would have said if it was. Goodness knows what time I'll be back tonight. I'll text you.'

  'It's fine,' Trev said. 'We really are all right, you know. G
o catch a killer.'

  It was with a sense of déjà-vu that Ted parked the Renault close to the gates of Woodbank Park, just near its boundary with Vernon Park. The scene was already taped off and there were signs of activity everywhere.

  Virgil and Sal saw him arrive and joined him as he followed the sound of sneezing and headed towards the tent. Ted was already opening a new packet of Fisherman's Friend.

  'You're not going to like this one, sir,' Sal told him.

  'I don't like any of them, Sal,' Ted said dryly. 'What's different about this one?

  'A personal message to you, boss,' Sal told him.

  The three of them ducked into the tent. The doctor was just preparing to leave.

  'Death certified,' he told Ted. 'Same MO, throat slit, but not here. I phoned the senior coroner, he's sending Professor Gillingham here directly. I thought he might prefer to do his first examination on site, given the circumstances.'

  Ted glanced beyond him to the victim's body. Lights had already been rigged up and he could see that it was once again a young woman, naked and with no signs of any personal possessions nearby. At first glance Ted thought there was no mutilation this time. Then he saw that a sharp implement had been used to carve out letters on the victim's abdomen.

  'To save you going any closer,' Dr Elliott told him, 'I can tell you that what has been carved on her says, “She's dead Ted”. I think that makes it abundantly clear that this is personal.'

  'Shit,' Ted said emphatically, and Sal and Virgil looked shocked. They weren't used to hearing the boss use any strong language outside the office, except between him and his team.

  He turned to them. 'Right, any CCTV around? Probably not just here but anything nearer the museum? Find out, get it checked out, if there is. Too early to knock doors yet, probably, but keep an eye out for anyone leaving for work, see if you can find anyone who saw anything at all. I'll have this sick joker, if it's the last thing I do.'

  Ted didn't have long to wait for Hard G to appear. The Professor had to duck into the tent. He stood back and surveyed the scene with a practised eye before approaching. He was already wearing protective coveralls from top to toe, to avoid any contamination of the crime scene.

  'I'm just going to do the preliminaries here, Ted,' he told him, 'then I'll get her taken in and I'll crack on with the post-mortem for you straight away. I know you're up against it with this one, so I'll do all I can to help, to get you some information as soon as possible.'

  He pointed to the lettering on the victim's body. 'This is interesting, not just because it mentions you by name. It was also done before death, evident because of the amount of bleeding around the incisions. I'll know better when I get her back, and I stress that I am no handwriting expert, but I would hazard a guess that this writing was done with the right hand, whilst the wound to the throat again looks like a left-handed cut.'

  'Christ,' Ted said, 'I hope to heaven the poor girl was at least unconscious when someone did that to her. Any signs of any restraints?'

  Hard G carefully examined wrists and ankles. 'Nothing obvious at all,' he replied. 'If there was restraint, I would say it was of the chemical kind, but as the body appears to have been dead for perhaps forty-eight hours, once again I would say there is very little chance of finding anything on a blood test.

  'Which brings us to something else rather interesting. If this young woman has been dead that long, that means she was already dead whilst you had your latest suspect in custody, doesn't it? So if you had any lingering doubts at all of his guilt, I would say this effectively destroys them.'

  'Anything else? Ted asked him.

  'Well, as you can see, a young woman, early twenties, long fair hair, blue eyes like the first victim, I believe – is that significant or coincidence, I wonder? Underweight for her height, I would say – voluntarily, or not able to afford to eat well? There's a small but noticeable septal perforation, so our young lady was no stranger to cocaine,' Hard G mused aloud.

  'Pubic hair missing again, recently removed, but that's quite fashionable amongst women these days, it may not be related. It can make my job harder, we often get lucky in finding a killer's hair when two sets of pubic hair meet in intimate circumstances.'

  He manoeuvred the body skilfully and continued, 'Again, signs of recent sexual activity, quite rough once again; I'll know more when I've had the time to examine her fully. Overall the body looks scrupulously clean, so once again it's possible that our man cleaned her up when he had finished, which means that yet again we're unlikely to find any of his DNA. The most we're likely to find is some of Elliott's if he has been careless enough to sneeze all over her before he put his mask on.

  'She's been brought here and dumped, there would have been considerable blood loss when her throat was cut. Killed elsewhere, cleaned up, stored for some strange reason then brought here and dumped. First thoughts on storing her would be to allow time for any drugs in her system to become undetectable and to allow rigor mortis to pass, so that the body would be much easier to manoeuvre.'

  'I still struggle to see how anyone can park a car next to a busy road then carry a dead body any distance at all to dump it,' Ted said. 'It's like something from a very bad crime series on television.'

  'Oh my dear boy,' Hard G laughed, 'what a very sheltered life you have led! If I had a fiver for every extremely inebriated young lady I've half carried back to halls, or to her parents' house or elsewhere, without anyone noticing, I would be even more well off than I already am.

  'This isn't a known dogging site, so far as I am aware, but I suspect many a young man has dragged his girlfriend in here for a bit of fun in the bushes, away from watching eyes, when she'd had enough drink to make her more amenable. In fact, it would be rather fun, I might be tempted to try it,' and he gave Ted a lewd wink.

  'Right, I'll arrange to get her taken in and I'll make a start as soon as I can. I'll phone you before I do and you can join me as soon as you are free,' he said. 'I imagine you'll be going into the station first to bring your big chief up to date?'

  'Yes, and he's not going to be best pleased,' Ted admitted. 'He knew the suspect we had in so it was delicate enough when we thought he might be our man.'

  'Well, I'll see you later and I promise to try to find something for you this time, dear boy.'

  Ted was right about the DCI. He hadn't often seen him in such a bad mood, not since Rosalie first went missing, in fact.

  'You wouldn't believe the crap I am getting from the top, Ted,' he growled, banging two mugs of his version of coffee on the desk in front of them. 'The Chief Super is going ballistic, he's in the same Lodge as Jones. He's really furious about the whole thing, ranting about waste of manpower and resources. I need something to give him to get him off my back, then I don't need to jump on yours.'

  'We're doing everything we can, boss,' Ted told him. He almost never called him 'sir'. 'Boss' was as formal as he got when the occasion warranted it. The two men went back too far together. It was on Ted's shoulder that the DCI had cried, literally, on many a long evening as he tried to come to terms with the loss of his daughter and the behaviour of his wife.

  'Hard G is going to give me a call when he starts the post-mortem and I'll go along. I'm getting the team to widen the search for anyone with previous form involving blades, pull a few in, check their movements.

  'So far the killer's been lucky and we haven't. But he is going to slip up, before too long. There'll be something, some trace, that he's overlooked, and we will find it. We need to keep believing that.'

  Chapter Thirty

  On his way from the nick to the hospital for the post-mortem, Ted pulled over and stopped to get his mobile phone out. He felt a sudden irresistible urge to talk to Trev, to touch base with a bit of normality.

  He hardly ever phoned Trev at his workplace. Not that Trev's boss would have minded. He thought Trev was so much the dog's bollocks, he would let him get away with anything. He simply could not believe that he had landed someone as
skilled and brilliant as Trev, someone with more than twice as many A Levels as he had CSEs, who was blissfully happy to work for him at a fraction of what he was capable of earning.

  'It's me,' he told him when Trev answered, although clearly Trev would know that. Ted's name would display on the screen and, unlike his technologically-challenged partner, Trev knew his way round a mobile phone, so he had different ring tones for different people.

  It was Trev who had sorted out hi-tech bike helmets with intercoms and Bluetooth, so Ted could use his mobile phone hands free from the bike when he needed to. Ted wouldn't have known where to begin.

  'Are you all right?' Trev asked anxiously. It was so rare for Ted to phone him at work.

  'Yes,' Ted said, then, 'No, not really. I just needed to make contact with the clean world. I'm just on my way to another PM with Hard G.'

  'It will get better,' Trev told him. 'I'll see you later.'

  Ted had left the team yet again checking records for missing persons who might correspond to their latest victim. Hard G had given him her height and his best approximation of her weight. Ted had also put Maurice and Steve onto double-checking the records of anyone in their area with previous convictions for knife-related crime, although he wasn't holding out much hope on that score.

  They were more likely to turn up gang members with scores to settle or drunken pub brawlers with short fuses. This killer was obviously coldly calculating. Ted's gut feeling was that he did not yet have any convictions.

  Ted slipped into coveralls before joining the Professor as he started the first incisions for the post-mortem. He crunched furiously on his menthol sweets and looked anywhere but at the victim's body. He should be used to it by now, but that first cut always seemed so intrusive, so impersonal, that he had difficulty watching.

  Hard G kept up a running commentary as he worked, for his tape, noting any significant details, but interspersing his professional observations with social chit-chat to Ted.