Wild Thing: 'a chilling cold-blooded killer' (Ted Darling crime series Book 7)

by L M Krier

  'Is someone watching and listening?' he asked shrewdly.

  'It's that or nothing, I'm afraid, Max. It's my boss, and it's as much for my protection as yours. You could make allegations about me if we were alone.'

  'Is it a bloke?'

  'Yes, it is. He's called Baker. Detective Superintendent. Are you happy to go on? I could ask him to come into the room, if you would prefer that.'

  There was a long pause while Max appeared to consider his options.

  'Okay, I trust you. I don't mind if he listens. I just don't want him sitting there looking at me, while I'm talking. Not face to face, like. It's … it's not easy to talk about but I'll tell you. This lass, this Morgane. I do know her. I done 'er, but only the once. Well, twice, but on the same day.'

  'When you say you done her ..?' Ted asked for clarification.

  'You know. Slept with 'er. Had sex, like. But only one time.'

  'And when was this?'

  'Couple of weeks ago, about.'

  Ted sat back in his chair to give himself time to think. This was certainly an unexpected turn. He couldn't continue this any further as an informal conversation. He was going to have to make it official and record the interview. And for that he was going to have to find an appropriate adult Max would be happy to talk in front of.

  'Max, what you've just said has serious implications. I'm going to have to interview you formally, under caution, and you need to have an adult with you, one you're happy to talk in front of. What about your mother, if you don't want it to be your father?'

  'Bloody hell, no!' he snorted. 'I'm not talking about stuff like that in front of me mam.'

  'Fair enough. And there's no one else? It needs to be someone over eighteen.'

  When the boy shook his head, Ted continued, 'Then I'll see if I can arrange for someone from the Youth Justice Team to come and represent you. In the meantime, we can get you something else to eat and drink while you wait, if you'd like. Did you have any breakfast, before you were brought in.'

  Max shook his head. Ted wondered if he got enough food at home.

  'So, you were thinking he might be the one having a J. Arthur over Morgane's undies and he's admitting to sleeping with her instead?' Jim asked, as he and Ted sat in their shared office, waiting for YJT to send someone over.

  Jo was just winding up the morning briefing and team members were starting to leave to get on with their appointed tasks. Kate Jones had been in, as requested. Ted took a moment, before she left, to draw her aside and let her know what he'd learnt so far, promising to update her as soon as he had more details.

  'Again, don't mention Max's name to Morgane, please. Just see if you can get her to open up a bit to you about friends and particularly any boyfriends.'

  Jezza had sorted out taking fingerprints and DNA swabs then had seen Max and his father installed in a corner of the reception area with drinks and sandwiches, under the watchful eye of Bill, on the front desk. He would see to it that there was no intimidation of Max going on from his father, and no danger of either of them absconding before the formal interview could take place.

  'That's about the long and the short of it,' Ted told Jim. 'Certainly unexpected. Not at all what I was anticipating. I thought he might admit to a bit more petty theft at school, something like that, but this? This is something else.'

  'Does it put him in the frame for the killing, though? If the DNA matches, it puts him at the scene, but what about the rest of it? From what I saw of him briefly, just now, he didn't look like someone who was expecting a murder charge.'

  'You've seen him in the flesh now so you can see for yourself how accurate Morgane's drawing is, if it's meant to be him. I'll have to see what more we can get out of him, and, of course, wait for the DNA results. I'll call the lab and ask for those to be a priority, then I'd better get together with Jezza again to decide how we're going to question him from here.'

  'I'll make myself scarce so the two of you have a bit more room to talk. I'm surprised you didn't grab my old office when you had the chance. It was always a bit poky in here. I'll go and talk to Debs. Her coffee's better than that cheap instant stuff you serve.'

  He may have been right about the coffee. Jezza opted for green tea, like the boss, when they sat down to catch up. He told her everything Max had said to him and waited to see if Jezza, with her usual keen mind and intuition, would go straight to the part of the story which troubled him.

  'Hang on, boss, rewind. Morgane said the lad she saw in the house had gloves on and plastic bags on his feet, to leave no trace. But then he goes and ...' She was about to use coarse slang then, knowing that the boss was old-fashioned, thought better of it. 'He stops to masturbate on her smalls, conveniently leaving us with a sample of his DNA after all. That doesn't make any sense.'

  'Perhaps he just couldn't control his base urges? The Professor did suggest to me a sexual motive in all of this. It's not uncommon in cases of torture and killing.'

  He was interrupted by his desk phone ringing. It turned out to be someone from the Youth Justice Team, apologising, but saying they had no one free until the following morning. They explained that Max was a low priority since he had parents, even though he refused to speak in front of them. They were currently busy trying to protect the rights of other young people who had no family.

  Staying polite as ever, Ted thanked them and arranged a time for the following morning when someone could sit with Max while he was questioned. When he put the phone down, he muttered, 'Damn,' which was about as strong as it got in front of any of his team.

  'Problem, boss?'

  'Problem. YJT haven't got anyone spare until tomorrow morning, so we'll have to send Max and his delightful father home and get them back tomorrow. Maybe his dad might even manage a wash and a clean shirt before then.

  'Do something for me in the meantime, Jezza, please. Check out if Max is known to social services. I have a feeling the father may hit him and he looks as if he doesn't get enough to eat. If he is known, there's an outside chance we could get a social worker to be an appropriate adult, so we could question him sooner.

  'One more thing, please, when you've done that. Can you go round to the hospital, to A&E, and find out everything you can about Morgane's injury. All available details.'

  'You're thinking there may be more to it than she's said so far?'

  'I'm not thinking anything at this stage, just that I'm going to look a complete idiot if there is something not right about it and I haven't checked it out early on.'

  Ted knew there was little point pestering Bizzie Nelson for a shorter time-frame for the death of Stephanie Mason. She'd already narrowed it down as much as possible. But he was in the mood for leaving no stone unturned.

  'Up to my elbows in entrails, as usual,' she replied cheerfully, when he asked if she was busy, then, when he told her the reason for his call, 'You and I have had this conversation before, more than once, Edwin. I always narrow it down for you as much as I possibly can. Any more than that and we would be into the realms of guesswork and I know that it's no more use to you than it is to me. As I keep reminding you, real life is not like a television series, where everything has to be wrapped up in an hour, so there's always some way the pathologist can pinpoint the exact time of death. Like the conveniently broken watch the victim was wearing, which stopped at the exact time of death.

  'Of course, that sort of thing is old hat these days as those who do wear watches tend to have shockproof ones. When I get a moment, I'll try to have another look at my notes and see if I can help you any further. Is the time critical in some way?'

  Ted explained that with the prospect of looking through endless CCTV footage, it would help enormously if they could pin it down at all. He went on to ask her if he would be likely to get a DNA match from Max's saliva sample compared to the semen stains before the following day when he would be interviewing him again.

  'Unfortunately for you, Edwin, yours are not the only bodies occupying both me and the lab a
t present. You could try giving Doug a ring and seeing what he can do for you. I gather your bosses didn't altogether appreciate his gallows humour at your briefing. He's a cat fancier – did you know that? Goes to shows with his British shorthairs. Perhaps you could try some feline bonding before you ask for special treatment.'

  It was worth a try. Ted was prepared to do whatever it took to move the current case along. Max's words to him had rather turned the enquiry on its head. If what he had said was true, Ted wondered why Morgane was putting him in the frame for killing her mother, unless he had done so. But Jezza had put her finger on exactly what was troubling him. If the killer had gone to the trouble of wearing gloves and shoe covers, why leave semen stains which would inevitably confirm his presence at the murder scene?

  He spent some time chatting about cats with Doug at the forensic lab. Ordinarily, he would have enjoyed it, but he was itching to get on with the case. When he decently could, he steered the conversation round to the semen stains and said that they had sent off to the lab a sample from a potential suspect. He said he was interviewing him the following morning and would really appreciate knowing by then if his DNA was a match.

  'That's pushing it, especially with everything else we have on at the moment. But I'll do my best for you, seeing as you're another cat lover. One thing I can tell you from what we've found out so far from the scene. Almost all the traces we've found belong to the mother or the daughter. We've already checked out the daughter's DNA, even before we had your samples. She had her own en suite so we used samples from her toothbrush and hairbrush.

  'So far, the only trace from anyone other than those two appears to be the semen stains.'

  It was late once more when Ted got home. He'd warned Trev in a text that he intended to work on, in the hopes that he could get far enough ahead of himself to justify leaving in good time the following evening to eat with Siobhan and her friend. He'd told him to go ahead and eat whenever he was hungry; he'd grab something when he got in.

  Trev was talking on his mobile. French, so Ted assumed it must be Laurence again. The conversation sounded warm and cosy once more. Ted wished he knew enough to grasp a bit of what was being said.

  Trev had been watching a film and had clearly hit pause to make or receive the call. Ted glanced at the screen while Trev was winding up his call with lots of kissy noises. He recognised the film. Trev was someone who could happily watch a favourite film endless times without ever tiring of it.

  The frozen image showed a small figure in a red coat with the hood up, against a backdrop of stone steps and damp-looking walls, with a canal in the foreground.

  'Don't Look Now?' he asked his partner as Trev ended the call and leaned across to kiss him as Ted sat down. 'Do you want to watch the end? Shall I un-pause it?'

  'You know it always scares me. Even though I know by now who the killer is, I can only watch it from behind a cushion. Switch it off, if you like. I'll go and sort you some food out, if you're hungry?'

  As Trev went into the kitchen to prepare the food, Ted used the remote to restart the film. He'd seen it almost as many times as Trev had, but this time it was making him think. Especially when the figure was revealed to be someone other than the child the audience was expecting to see.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  'A film Trev was watching last night reminded me of something. We're focusing on young people, teenagers at the moment, but we mustn't overlook the possibility that our killer, or killers, are adults who are below average size and have particularly small feet.

  'While I think of it, Kate. Do we know yet what size shoes Morgane takes? We'll need to know that to eliminate her footprints from the scene.'

  'I've only seen her in those big fluffy slippers so far, boss, but I'll find out for you today and let you know. Is she a possible suspect?'

  'I'm like Poirot at the moment with this one – I suspect nobody and I suspect everybody. She was, after all, definitely at the scene where her mother was killed and she's made no attempt to conceal that fact.'

  'Speaking of Morgane, boss, something interesting from the hospital,' Jezza put in. 'On the face of it, nothing I wasn't expecting. I spoke to the registrar who'd seen to her who told me that she'd cleaned up the wound, applied butterfly stitches and arranged a precautionary scan.'

  'I sense a but?'

  'I pressed her a bit more on the cleaning up. She told me she removed something which could have been a bit of soil or grit from the wound. So where do you get soil or grit from a granite worktop?'

  'If someone's been preparing fresh veg or salad and not wiped the edges?' Megan suggested.

  'Perhaps she fell over, running up Marple Old Road,' Ted put in.

  'Oh, come on, boss, you and I both know about falls from martial arts. How do you fall over and land on your eyebrow, which is where the wound is? There were no defensive marks on her hands or arms; I asked the registrar. There was just the head wound. And if you tripped and fell, you'd automatically put your hands out to save yourself, especially if they were tied in front of you.'

  'Right, let's not get too carried away with Morgane as a suspect at this stage. I need to hear more detail from Max. He's admitted sleeping with her, a couple of weeks ago, so now we have to work out what possible motive Morgane would have for making him the prime suspect for her mother's killing.

  'Kate, over to you on that one. Again, don't mention him by name to her yet, until I know what he has to tell me. But please keep on trying to gain her trust, see what you can find out. Try and get her to show you any of her other portraits. It just occurs to me that she may, for some reason, have produced Max's face because it was familiar to her, but out of context. They are at the same school, after all, even if what Max has said isn't true.

  'Maurice, I'd like you and Steve to start checking previous offenders for anyone of particularly small stature. Anyone who's ever come to our attention for any reason. If there's nothing local, check nationally.

  'We'll have a get-together again at five, everyone, please. Kate, you too. By then I should know what Max has to say for himself and, with any luck, we'll have the DNA comparison to tell us whether it was him in Morgane's bedroom that night.'

  Ted hadn't realised how on edge he was, waiting for the DNA results. It was only when Jim threw a screwed up ball of paper at him from his end of the crowded desk that he realised he was tapping his pen constantly as he read through his notes.

  'Whatever it is that's bothering you, Ted, get it sorted, man. If you keep on tapping like that I might have to arrest you.'

  'Sorry, Jim, I'm just impatient for those results. It's going to make a lot of difference to how the interview goes with Max.'

  'You're sure it's just the case? There's no trouble in paradise between you and Trev?'

  'No!' Ted's tone was so emphatic that Jim gave him a shrewd look. They'd known each other a long time.

  'Are you trying to convince me? Or yourself?'

  'It's nothing like that. It's just the usual work versus personal life stuff. I just wish I could spend more time with him. Do the kind of things he likes doing a bit more than I manage to do. You know what it's like.'

  'Well, if you ever do want to talk to someone about anything, you know you can talk to me. I may not be much good at the relationship counselling stuff. But I can listen, and pat you on the shoulder, and say 'there, there' in all the right places, if it helps.'

  Ted was relieved when his mobile phone rang. Jim was a good friend, but he couldn't imagine that him wanting to talk about his personal life with Trev would ever be comfortable, for either of them.

  The caller was Doug, with the results he was waiting for.

  'We have a match. The semen samples match the DNA sample you supplied from your Max Newman. There were a couple of things of note, though ...'

  The desk phone rang and Jim answered it. He caught Ted's attention and gestured with one hand, pointing downwards. Ted understood the message. Max Newman had arrived, and hopefully his repres
entative from YJT.

  'Doug, thanks for that, I really appreciate you pushing it through. But I need to go now. Said suspect has just arrived and I want to crack on. I'll call you back as soon as I can.'

  Ted couldn't wait to get started with Max, now he had the results. He could place him at the scene of the latest murder and he was eager to hear his explanation of that. He strode into the main office to collect Jezza.

  'Anyone who's free, I want a full background check on Max Newman and everyone connected with him. Parents, any siblings. Any convictions anywhere, even fixed penalties, I want to know. Particularly dig deep into the father's background. I didn't much care for him, and not just because of his personal hygiene issues.'

  Max's father was sitting waiting in the reception area, his expression truculent. He stood up to accost Ted as soon as he saw him.

  'I want to know what's going on. Max won't tell me owt and he's gone off with some woman. I'm his father. I should know what's going on.'

  'Mr Newman,' Ted said quietly, not wanting their conversation to be overheard. 'Max has said he would prefer to speak in front of someone impartial and we have to respect his wishes. As soon as I know anything, I will tell you more. But I'd just ask you to wait patiently for now, please.'

  He and Jezza went through to the interview room where Max was sitting talking to a woman from YJT. It was not someone Ted had met before, so he introduced himself as he and Jezza sat down opposite the two of them.

  'Aditi Padmanabhan,' she told him. 'Please feel free to call me Aditi. I've had a brief opportunity to talk to Max. He's not at all keen to speak in front of a woman, but I've assured him that I'm impartial, here to support him, not to judge him.'

  'The same goes for DC Vine, Max. She's here to take notes of what you say. At this stage, I just want to talk to you about Morgane Edwards. You've already indicated that you want to tell me something about her. Are you happy now to go ahead and do that?'

  'I 'spose I'll have to be. It's gotta be better than talking in front of me dad.'