by Bill Rogers
Jo had a shower and fled back home. She went straight into the bedroom, dropped her kit bag on the floor and threw herself down on the bed. She was still mad with herself. Grant had been right. She should not have agreed to combat-train in her current state of mind.
Perhaps it was time she went back to see the force counsellor. After all, as a secondee, she was theoretically still on GMP’s books. And the counsellor had told Jo when she signed her off that she would put her down as having an open appointment. That meant that she could ring up to see her, should the need ever arise, without having to go through the rigmarole of applying through the Human Resources team. It was a conundrum that continued to plague her through supper, and into the night.
It was still on her mind the next morning when she woke to discover that she had slept through the alarm. Jo swung her legs off the bed and sat up. If she did ring up, what was she going to say? Her partner had walked out on her? She was beginning to personalise the hunt for the perpetrator she was investigating? She was concerned that she might be developing anger issues? How would that be received? And would the counsellor have to let the NCA know? Would Simon Levi find out? What would Harry think? She shook her head. Was it really that bad?
The phone rang. It was Gerry Sarsfield’s deputy.
‘I’m sorry, Ma’am,’ he said, ‘but we have a body.’
Chapter 30
One mile west of Bury on the A58. Twelve and a half miles by major road and motorway. It should have been a breeze, but dawdling Sunday drivers who never looked in their rear-view mirror and were oblivious to her strobing lights above the bumper made it achingly slow. In the end, she had to call for a blues and twos to escort her for the final four miles with their blue lights and irritating siren.
Two police vans, a traffic car and a motorcycle blocked the road eighty yards from the scene. Up ahead, she could see a paramedic bike, an ambulance and a GMP fast response car. Beyond that, more vehicles. Closer still, a black Mercedes was front end on into a crushed steel and glass bus shelter, bonnet crumpled, windscreen shattered.
Jo parked up, showed her ID to the uniformed officer turning traffic around, and walked the rest of the way. This was not what she had been expecting. Had they caught the unsub in the act of moving the body, she wondered?
Facing away from her, a woman wearing walking boots, lightweight khaki hiking trousers, and a light grey waterproof jacket was talking to a uniformed officer. The officer spotted Jo, and spoke to the woman who turned and stared at her.
‘SI Stuart, National Crime Agency,’ Jo said, holding up her ID as she advanced.
The woman waited for her and then held out her hand.
‘DS Hatton, Ma’am.’ She looked down at her boots and grimaced. ‘I was just about to set off for a Sunday morning walk up to the Peel Tower with the family, then lunch at the Hearth of the Ram.’
‘We’re not the only ones whose Sunday was spoiled,’ Jo replied. She nodded towards the ambulance. ‘Is she in there?’
DS Hatton half-turned. ‘Oh, no, Ma’am, she died on the way to hospital. You see, we had no idea this might be linked with your investigation, Ma’am. As soon as we did, I had her moved to Oldham, to the regional pathology forensics facility. She should be there by now.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Jo told her. ‘That’s as it should be. Just tell me what happened here.’
Twenty yards away, two road traffic officers were measuring skid marks.
‘It’s a classic RTA pedestrian fatality,’ said DS Hatton. She nodded over Jo’s shoulder. ‘Driver of that Merc was doing thirty-eight in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone. According to him and several witnesses, she came out of there.’
She pointed to a wide tarmacked lane on the left that sloped away downhill, accompanied by a footpath sign. ‘Stumbled straight into his path. Poor sod didn’t have a chance.’
‘Neither did she,’ Jo reminded her. ‘If he’d been doing thirty, she might still be alive.’
The detective sergeant nodded sagely.
‘Do you want to talk to him?’
‘No,’ said Jo. ‘I’ll read his statement.’
DS Hatton smiled.
‘Happens you won’t need to, Ma’am. He’s got a dashcam fitted. We found it dangling in the passenger footwell – that’s how we know what speed he was doing. He thought it might help reduce his insurance, only now it’s gone and provided incriminating evidence.’
Jo took a BSU card from her ID wallet and a biro from her pocket. She underlined Ram’s email address and handed the card to DS Hatton. ‘Can you get them to copy the recording ASAP and send it to my colleague?’
‘Of course, Ma’am,’ DS Hatton replied.
Jo had decided not to discourage the DS’s insistence on calling her Ma’am. Their paths were unlikely to cross again, and given names seemed inappropriate in the circumstances.
‘Tell me about the girl,’ she said.
‘Student who’d been abducted. They know because her student card was in her anorak pocket. Susanne Hadrix. Nineteen years of age. Student at Accrington and Rossendale College.’
She dug in her pocket, produced a transparent evidence bag and handed it to Jo.
‘College?’ Jo said. ‘Not university then?’
‘Sixteen- to nineteen-year-olds and adult courses, including degrees,’ said DS Hatton.
Jo nodded. If this was him, he was widening his net. Making it even more difficult for them to track him down. She studied the photo. Young. Smiling eyes. The world her oyster. It wasn’t a lot to go on.
‘Describe her,’ she said.
‘Four foot eleven, slim, long blonde hair, blue eyes.’
Jo took out her phone, took a photograph of the card, including the girl’s image, and handed it back.
‘I’ll need a copy of this too.’
‘No problem.’
‘How did you know this was connected with our investigation?’
‘As soon as we entered her name into the Police National Computer it showed her as having just been reported as a MisPer. It also referred us to HOLMES2. When we checked that it told us that she fitted the victim profile for Operation Juniper and directed us to contact the relevant force major incident team.’
‘Who reported her as missing?’
‘Her mother. Nine thirty this morning. She didn’t come home from a night out with her mates. Mother assumed she’d stayed over and hadn’t bothered to tell her – it wasn’t unknown apparently. When she’d heard nothing by nine o’clock, she rang round all her daughter’s contacts. Finally she rang Burnley nick.’
‘Burnley, that’s where she lived?’
‘Yes, Ma’am.’
Jo pointed to the lane from which the victim had stumbled into the road.
‘Where does that lead?’
‘Mile Lane? Takes you past the back of those two houses, then between fields past a farm, and turning right to reach another. If you follow the footpaths straight ahead where the lane bends, you end up at Elton Reservoir.’
‘How far?’
‘Just under eight hundred yards to the reservoir. Half that to where the lane turns.’
‘Anyone driving down there in the middle of the night unlikely to be spotted then?’
‘Providing they don’t leave it too late. You know what farmers are like. Early to bed, early to rise. Mind you,’ she added, ‘there’s no saying that’s where she was dumped, if that’s what you’re saying?’
Jo nodded.
‘In which case, you need to know that there are seven different ways you could drive a car or a van close to the reservoir. She could have been taken down one and come back up another.’
It paid to have someone with local knowledge at the scene, Jo reflected. Unfortunately, it looked as though the unsub shared that knowledge. Either that or his planning was meticulous.
‘How many of the roads that lead to those access points for the reservoir have cameras fitted?’ she asked.
‘Just this one. There’s a speed camera
facing the Tesco garage just before you get to St Stephen’s church. You must have passed it on your way here.’
‘What about fixed ANPR cameras?’
DS Hatton shook her head.
‘Nothing this side of the motorway. Division relies on mobile units. We had a blitz last month. Five arrested and thirty-five uninsured vehicles taken off the road. But I doubt you’ll get lucky today, with it being a Sunday. I bet we’ll only have had one car and maybe the odd bike actively using automatic number plate recognition, and they’ll have been checking on unsafe drivers, unsafe vehicles or known criminals. If your guy is clean and driving safely, the odds of him having been stopped won’t be far off winning the lottery.’
‘No, but the number plate will still have been recorded. If he passed or was in front of a mobile unit, he’ll be in there somewhere.’
DS Hatton shrugged. Jo knew what she was thinking. Even if he had, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. There were raised voices from behind her. Someone was calling her name. She turned to see who it was.
Anthony Ginley, the investigative reporter, was attempting to wave to her over the shoulder of the burly officer holding him back. Jo swore.
‘How the hell did he get here so fast?’
‘Someone you know, Ma’am?’ said DS Hatton, an amused smile on her face.
‘Which hospital was she taken to?’ Jo asked.
‘She was being taken to Bury General, Ma’am, but as soon as we realised it might be a suspicious death, I diverted them to the Royal Oldham. On account of the regional forensic unit.’
Ginley’s voice forestalled Jo’s response. ‘SI Stuart!’ he shouted. ‘Can you confirm that this incident is linked to Operation Juniper?’
Jo turned her back on him.
‘Don’t tell him anything,’ she said, ‘and make sure everyone else working at the scene understands that if they so much as smile at him, there will be consequences.’
‘Right, Ma’am,’ said the DS.
‘Get that lane sealed off. And all of the other access routes to the reservoir. I want to know where she was left. There may be tyre tracks or other evidence. I’ll make sure there’s a Tactical Aid team out here as soon as possible. They’ll conduct the search and relieve your people. And make sure we get that dashcam footage and the copy of her student ID within the hour.’
‘I will, Ma’am.’ DS Hatton hesitated. ‘Look, I need to know, Ma’am, for the paperwork if nothing else, is this one yours or ours?’
‘I won’t know for sure until I’ve seen the body,’ Jo told her. ‘Maybe not even then. In the meantime, can you deal with it as a fatal RTA, but accommodate the Tactical Aid Unit when they arrive? Once we know for sure, we can talk again. GMP will confirm everything with your divisional commander. Can you get him or her to contact the coroner, and request that he direct that a post-mortem be carried out?’
‘Yes, Ma’am.’ She didn’t look happy. That Sunday lunch was fading into the sunset.
Jo nodded. ‘I’ll follow that up with a specific request to the coroner for the Home Office pathologist to collect specific samples for analysis. In the meantime, I’m off to the mortuary.’
She began to move away and then stopped.
‘Thank you, DS Hatton,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I was so abrupt. But if I’m right, and don’t repeat any of this, she was his sixth victim and the first one to die. It doesn’t make for idle chit-chat.’
DS Hatton smiled. It took years off her. ‘I understand,’ she said.
‘You mentioned family,’ said Jo. ‘You have children?’
‘Two girls.’
Jo nodded.
‘Look after them,’ she said.
DS Hatton nodded back. ‘Don’t worry, I will.’
If only it was that simple, Jo reflected as she walked back to her car.
The Manchester Evening News crime reporter had arrived, together with a photographer. She could also see a BBC outside broadcast van slowly approaching the police cordon. It was pointless trying to hide her face. That always backfired. It made you look furtive or embarrassed – either way, it implied you had something to hide.
‘Is it him?’ demanded Ginley. ‘The Falcon?’
Jo clenched and then unclenched her fists. It was the first time anyone had called the unsub that. Now it would be the headline in tomorrow’s papers. Even sooner on the media websites and Twitter feeds. It was exactly what the unsub sought, what he fed off: the mystique, the notoriety, the fear that media frenzy generated.
‘Who is this Falcon?’ asked the MEN reporter. ‘Is he referring to the serial rapist, SI Stuart? The one who tattoos his victims?’
She brushed them aside, and then paused as she reached her car.
‘As far as I’m aware,’ she said, ‘this is a tragic road traffic accident involving a motorist and a pedestrian. If you wish to know any more, I suggest you speak with the officer dealing with the incident.’
She climbed in and slammed the door shut. ‘Good luck with that,’ she muttered, as she started the engine.
Chapter 31
DI Sarsfield was waiting for Jo at the morgue.
‘I didn’t see any point in going to the scene of the accident,’ he said. ‘Didn’t want both of us hassling the SIO. I’ve arranged for a Tactical Aid search team to go up there, plus Jack Benson and his scene of crime officers.’
‘I’m not holding my breath,’ Jo told him. ‘If we’re lucky, we might get tyre prints. He’s never used the principal crime scene as his dumpsite, and I doubt he’s going to start now.’
‘Me neither.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is it him?’
‘I don’t know, Gerry,’ she said, ‘but we’ll soon find out. From what the SIO told me, I’d say this one is number six. If so, he made a massive miscalculation.’
He shook his head. ‘You said it was an accident waiting to happen, Jo. He’s been playing Russian roulette with their lives. This morning the chamber had a bullet in it.’
The assistant practice manager slid back the glass screen, and waved them over. She pointed to a square grey pad on the wall beside a pair of fire doors.
‘If you press the pad, the door will open. Go straight down the corridor in front of you, and you’ll find Alex Brough, one of our anatomical pathology technicians, is waiting to take you down to the mortuary.’
Both Jo and Gerry knew Alex Brough of old. While Home Office pathologists came and went, the mortuary technician was one of the few constants in regional forensic pathology units. She stood waiting for them in her white scrubs, blue gloves and matching boots. They matched not only each other, but also her electric-blue hair. It was an eccentric look. Jo thought it suited Alex. It also served to brighten up the otherwise depressingly bland surroundings.
‘DI Stuart, DI Sarsfield, good to see you again,’ said the technician with a broad grin on her face.
‘It’s SI Stuart now,’ Sarsfield told her. ‘With the National Crime Agency, no less.’
The technician responded with a curtsy. ‘Congratulations, Ma’am,’ she said. ‘It’s an honour to welcome you to our humble abode.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Jo. ‘You have the body?’
Alex straightened up.
‘Very good,’ she said. ‘Habeas corpus. I’ve never heard that one before.’
‘We need a quick look,’ said Jo, ‘that’s all. Time is of the essence.’
‘We have reason to believe that this is connected with a series of attacks on young women,’ Gerry Sarsfield added. ‘If so, her death will be categorised as involuntary manslaughter.’
Alex’s brow wrinkled.
‘Recklessness or criminal negligence?’
‘Both.’
‘I understood she walked into the path of a car?’
‘Stumbled. We suspect that she’d been drugged,’ Sarsfield said.
The technician nodded. ‘As good as murdered,’ she said. ‘And initial indications are that someone had sex with her shortly before she died.�
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‘Initial indications?’ said Jo.
‘You can’t quote me, but bruising on the inside of the thighs and what looks like traces of seminal fluid. I bagged her undies separately. You’ll know more after the PM and the forensic tests.’
The two detectives glanced at each other. This was a first. More importantly, it held out the possibility that they might finally have some DNA.
Alex Brough turned and led the way down another corridor to an anteroom where she handed them a set of scrubs, including a mask and booties. This was after all not any old morgue, but a forensic unit. Then she led them into the storage facility.
Gleaming stainless steel cabinets lined one wall. Alex wheeled a hydraulic trolley over to one of the cabinets, and opened the door. Jo shivered as the temperature fell dramatically. There were two vertical stacks of trays, side by side, with only one of the trays occupied.
‘We keep those awaiting a post-mortem separate from those pending the decision of the Coroner’s Court,’ said Alex as she slid the tray containing the body out and on to the hydraulic trolley. She smiled cheerfully. ‘Works fine, so long as we don’t have a multiple pile-up, or a Sarin gas attack. Not that we’ve had one of those lately.’
The two detectives stared in silence at the shape beneath the sterile modesty sheet. They were both thinking the same thing. Twelve hours ago, she hadn’t a care in the world and a lifetime ahead of her. A career, boyfriends, a husband, children, grandchildren. Now she had been reduced to this: a piece of meat on a slab. A puzzle to be probed, dissected and pored over. And for what?
‘The paramedics cut away most of her clothing,’ said Alex. ‘I removed the rest, and bagged it up for forensics. Don’t worry; I took photographs first. Professor Flatman will want to have a look at her clothes before they’re sent off.’ She paused and took hold of the sheet. ‘Ready?’
They nodded. She lifted it back to reveal the head and upper torso.
Jo inhaled and breathed out slowly, her breath damp against the inside of the mask. It was far worse than she had expected. The top of the young woman’s skull had been crushed, presumably by direct impact with the road surface. Her hair was completely matted with dried blood so that it was difficult to be sure if her hair was blonde or auburn. Jo put her hand through the false pocket of her scrubs and took out her phone.