The Falcon Tattoo (The National Crime Agency Series Book 2)

by Bill Rogers

  ‘No pictures!’ said Alex abruptly.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Jo told her. ‘I have a copy of her student ID card. I just want to check if this is she. It wouldn’t be the first time someone was found carrying another person’s ID.’

  She expanded the image. Gerry Sarsfield peered over her shoulder.

  ‘It’s her,’ he said.

  ‘I agree,’ said Jo. ‘But I’m afraid her parents are going to have to get a damn sight closer than the viewing gallery to be certain.’

  ‘That’s the beauty of the trolley,’ said Alex. ‘I can wheel it close to the window.’ She reached for the sheet. ‘Are you done?’

  ‘One more thing,’ said Jo. ‘Does she have a tattoo?’

  ‘She has several. Why, what are you looking for?’

  ‘Something that looks like a bird? A bird of prey?’

  The mortuary technician’s eyes widened in recognition.

  ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘The bastard that’s going round kidnapping women and raping them?’

  ‘Abducting,’ said Sarsfield.

  ‘We can’t confirm or otherwise,’ said Jo. ‘You know that, Alex.’

  The technician was already folding back the sheet. There were livid bruises all over the young woman’s body. The right shoulder and right forearm had grazes that had peeled off the skin. The left arm was covered with a tattoo. It looked like an elfin woman holding a spear and a dagger, encircled by the bodies of two wild dogs.

  ‘That’s Princess Mononoke, heroine of the epic Japanese film,’ the technician informed them. ‘Brilliant animation.’

  On the left side of her stomach, there was also a delicate swallowtail butterfly that straddled the panty line where her tan ran out.

  ‘I don’t see a falcon?’ said Sarsfield.

  Alex circled the trolley. She placed one hand under the left shoulder, and the other under the right buttock. Ever so gently, she rolled the body towards them.

  ‘Here you go,’ she said.

  The two detectives joined her on the opposite side of the table. There were bruises across the whole of the left side, and a dark purple discolouration across the lower back where the blood from post-mortem lividity had pooled.

  ‘Where are we looking?’ Jo asked.

  Alex nodded with her head.

  ‘Bottom right,’ she said. ‘Across the gluteus medius and the start of the gluteus maximus.’

  They leaned closer.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Alex urged. ‘This is harder than it looks.’

  ‘There it is,’ said Sarsfield pointing.

  High up on the buttocks, it was barely distinguishable against the bruising.

  ‘It’s him,’ Jo muttered.

  ‘Can I put her down, please?’ said Alex. ‘You’d be surprised how heavy she is.’

  ‘Do you know when the post-mortem is scheduled for?’ asked Jo, as they scrubbed and dried their hands, and applied the sanitiser.

  Alex shook her head.

  ‘Our resident Home Office pathologist is on leave. In the Bahamas, lucky devil. The locum called in sick on Friday and won’t be back till Wednesday. We’re waiting for one to arrive tomorrow.’

  ‘Who is it, do you know?’

  ‘Sir James Flatman.’

  ‘God,’ said Jo. ‘I thought he’d retired.’

  The technician grinned.

  ‘No such luck. He was up here twice last month. Arson with intent to kill, in which they succeeded, and a nasty case of poisoning. The routine post-mortem said emphysema. The coroner asked for a second post-mortem when suspicious circumstances were raised. Professor Flatman found otherwise. It turned out the wife got tired of caring for her husband, and laced his ibuprofen with potassium cyanide.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Sarsfield.

  Alex stopped. ‘Now you’ve told me what the urgency is, I’ll make sure she’s moved to the top of his list. He insists on having a full English breakfast first, so I’m thinking it’ll be around eleven am. If you ring first thing, the practice manager will know.’

  It was raining stair rods. The two detectives stood under the shelter of the entrance canopy while Jo phoned DS Hatton.

  ‘It’s our man,’ Jo told her. ‘Can you handle the RTA investigation and arrange for the parents to identify the body? If you email me their address and the name of the family liaison officer, we’ll have someone go over and break it to them that their daughter was not only run over and killed, but also abducted and raped.’

  The detective sergeant sighed. ‘Rather you than me, Ma’am.’

  ‘I suggest we both cover the post-mortem, but I’d like to send my own exhibits officer. Apart from the tox results, which we’ll share with you, I doubt the other exhibits will add anything to your investigation, but may prove vital to ours. Especially any foreign DNA. As long as we both state the reasons in our policy book, that should be fine with your boss and with mine.’

  ‘I agree, Ma’am,’ said DS Hatton, even though Jo sensed that she was far from happy.

  ‘I also need to find out who the victim was with last night and interview them too,’ said Jo. ‘Given that Mrs Hadrix rang round her friends, she should be able to point us in the right direction.’

  Gerry Sarsfield touched her lightly on the elbow. ‘If she’s up to it,’ he said, pointing to the other side of the car park where a short plump woman was being helped from the back of a patrol car. She was clearly distraught, barely able to stand.

  ‘Got to go,’ Jo told DS Hatton. ‘I think this is her now.’

  A tall, gaunt man, presumably the woman’s husband, had a hand beneath her armpit and the other arm around her waist. He was struggling to keep her upright. A woman police officer emerged from the driver’s side and came round the car to assist him. To add insult to injury, they were getting drenched.

  ‘I may as well stay and see if I can get those names from her,’ said Jo. ‘Just one will do for starters. Why don’t you get back to the incident room, Gerry? I’ll have Ram copy everything over to you. Then when I’ve established who she was with, I’ll need all of them interviewed, and all of the bars they went to last night visited. Always assuming the pattern was the same. Staff interviewed, CCTV footage obtained . . .’

  He held up his hand.

  ‘I know the routine, Jo,’ he said. ‘It’s becoming all too familiar.’

  ‘Sorry, Gerry,’ she said. ‘Force of habit.’

  They watched as the woman was gently manhandled through the doors to the morgue. Two more victims to add to the scores of people whose lives had already been damaged by the senseless and sickening obsession of this aberration of a human being.

  After Sarsfield had left, Jo followed Susanne Hadrix’s parents into the viewing room. She stayed well back, not wanting to intrude on their private grief.

  It was every bit as harrowing as she had expected. If anything, she felt that the father had been most affected. The mother collapsed on to a chair, wailing and bucketing tears. He stood erect, his hands on the rail, staring with abject incomprehension. Gradually, as reality dawned, he seemed to shrink before her eyes, his shoulders slumping, his entire body appearing to collapse in on itself. Tears began to stream down his cheeks as he gazed in silence at the broken body of his only child.

  Jo had to brush away a tear of her own with the back of her hand. It was often this way. Not at the sight of the victim, but of the grief of those left behind. DCI Caton, her mentor, had once compared it to coping with the shock of an earthquake, and then being consumed by the tsunami that followed it.

  Forty minutes later, she emerged from the relatives’ room with the names she had been waiting for. Fortunately, the mother had her mobile phone with her and it was a simple matter of copying down the contact details from the last four calls she had made before she rang the police.

  The downside was that Jo had been the one to tell them how it was that their daughter had ended up miles away from Burnley town centre, where she’d been on a night out with her friends. It had
not been necessary to fill in the gaps. Media coverage given to the disappearance of the other five students had made sure of that. In Jo’s experience, the imagination was a much more destructive medium than her dry procedural account could ever have been. And so it proved. She was relieved when the family liaison officer arrived, and she was able to make her apologies and leave.

  Before she left the morgue, she went to find Alex Brough.

  ‘Those body fluids you mentioned,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have DI Sarsfield send over the mortuary exhibits officer first thing in the morning. I’m also going to have the forensic submission ready to go. Do you have a DNA identification facility on-site?’

  The mortuary technician’s eyes lit up.

  ‘We’ve just taken delivery of the latest-generation portable unit. You’re looking at as little as ninety minutes and no more than two hours to process a sample and get a hit, if there’s a match in the system.’

  The rain had ceased temporarily, but the temperature had dropped close to freezing. Despite this, there was a spring in Jo’s steps as she crossed the car park. Was this the break they had been waiting for?

  Chapter 32

  On the way to the Quays, Jo decided to call Ram and Max on the hands-free. She was not going to tear Andy away from his family, but the other two were both single, although Ram had his mother to contend with. Ram answered on the first ring.

  ‘Jo,’ he said, ‘what’s up?’

  She told him.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry to tear you away from your mother, Ram.’

  ‘No problem,’ he replied, although it sounded anything but.

  The call to Max went to answerphone; she left a message.

  To dispel the mental image of Susanne Hadrix’s broken body, she switched on the radio. Mike Sweeney’s rasping Salford accent told her that it was his Eighties Classics slot. Was it that time already?

  ‘Phil Everly and Cliff Richard singing “She Means Nothing To Me” – what an amazing combination!’ the DJ said.

  His voice dropped a register and adopted a sombre tone. ‘And now we’re going to depart from the normal format. I doubt there’s anyone out there unaware of the recent spate of attacks on female students across the North West. We’ve been inundated by calls from listeners who want to know why we haven’t given the issue serious coverage. In response, my producer has invited an expert on to the show for a short interview with yours truly to find out how our female listeners can make themselves less vulnerable to attack. So, here with me this afternoon from the Say No And Stay Safe charity is Mr Sam Malacott. Welcome, Sam.’

  Jo’s listened intently and with increasing unease. It was not so much what Malacott was saying, which was more or less the advice he had given at the Chancellors’ conference, as the impression she had that he was enjoying the whole experience. It reminded her that she had not yet received the information about his relatives that she had asked for.

  It started to rain again. She switched to Smooth Radio, flicked the windscreen wipers to rapid, and put her foot down.

  Ram was already there when she arrived. He pointed to his screen.

  ‘I assume you asked them to send this over?’

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘The footage from the driver’s dashcam. The definition’s brilliant.’

  She pulled a chair up alongside him.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  She nodded. He pressed play.

  ‘It’s quite busy for a Sunday morning,’ Ram observed. ‘Must’ve been plenty of witnesses.’

  ‘People returning from church,’ she said. ‘Picking up their papers and croissants, or off to visit relatives.’

  They watched as the Mercedes approached a sign indicating a cycle lane ahead, and then a bold SLOW sign painted in white on the surface of the left-hand lane.

  ‘He’s over the limit,’ said Ram pointing to the 30mph circle in the top left, and then the analogue read-out of the vehicle’s speed. ‘Close to forty mph.’

  Jo nodded.

  ‘Enough to turn a serious injury into a fatality.’

  The car was passing a row of trees in the verge on its nearside.

  ‘She comes out of a side road just up ahead,’ she told him.

  ‘Can’t see it yet,’ Ram responded.

  Jo wondered if the trees had obscured his view until the last few seconds. It certainly looked like it.

  ‘There she is,’ he said.

  Jo craned forward. Susanne Hadrix was just coming into view up the slope of the lane. Four ponderous steps, and she was at the kerb, standing immediately between the bus stop and the oncoming car. A white transit van was turning out of a side road immediately opposite the lane. Suddenly she appeared to sway and stumble into the cycle lane. The driver of the Mercedes steered to the left, heading directly for the girl. Then the car decelerated rapidly, but not before striking the student. They watched in horror as she was swept off her feet, and across the bonnet, struck the windscreen, and was hurled into the air. They lost sight of her as the car careered forward into the bus shelter, and the screen went black, then a fuzzy grey.

  ‘The dashcam was dislodged,’ Jo told him. ‘We’re looking at the carpet in the passenger footwell.’

  Ram pressed pause and sat back.

  ‘She never had a chance,’ he said.

  Jo nodded. ‘Can you take it back to just before she steps into the road, and pause it there?’ Jo said.

  She had him zoom in on Susanne Hadrix’s face. There was no doubt about it, she appeared dazed and confused. Her focus was straight ahead, on the van turning out of Mile End Road. She seemed oblivious to the oncoming Mercedes.

  ‘Can you zoom out a bit, and run it on in slow motion?’ she said.

  ‘Look,’ said Ram. ‘Her foot is right on the edge of the kerb.’

  He was right. Her left foot was teetering on the kerb in a three-inch strapless mid-court shoe. Her other foot was in mid-air. She seemed to be trying to maintain her balance but failed, toppling directly into the path of the car as it swerved towards her.

  ‘The driver was too busy watching the van,’ Ram concluded. ‘He overcorrected and didn’t see her until it was too late.’

  Jo nodded.

  ‘It looks that way.’

  She sat back.

  ‘Had he been doing thirty,’ she said, ‘he’d have had time to start braking, and the impact would have been that less severe. She’d probably still be alive.’

  It was the second time that day she had said that. It changed nothing. Ram closed the video down. In its place was a magnified image of Susanne Hadrix’s student card. She looked so young and hopeful, full of promise and expectation – neither of which would ever be realised.

  ‘The bastard,’ Jo said softly.

  Ram looked up and followed her gaze.

  ‘Do you think that’s why he’s going after students?’ he said. ‘Because in some sick way it intensifies his sense of achievement, of power? You know, shattering all that confidence and optimism and opportunity?’

  ‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘You’d be better asking Andy.’ She gritted her teeth. ‘Better still, you can ask the unsub, when I bring him in.’

  She tore her eyes away from the screen.

  ‘Speaking of which, have you got anything for me on Anthony Ginley?’ she said. ‘The investigative reporter? He turned up at the scene today, suspiciously early.’

  ‘Did he now?’

  Ram immediately began routing through his out tray.

  ‘It was the last thing I did before I left yesterday afternoon. I’d gone before you came back in. I had to pick up . . .’

  ‘Your mother,’ she said. ‘I know. Just tell me what you’ve got.’

  He slid out two A4 stapled pages, and handed them to her.

  ‘See for yourself. He worked for a red top and then for a broadsheet. Highly regarded in the industry as an investigative reporter. He’s covered financial malfeasance in the
City, political corruption involving the rigging of local election postal ballots, and the illegal trafficking of young women to work as au pairs for Arabs in the West End. He’s best known for his covert work investigating cash-for-crash firms. It was made into a Panorama documentary that narrowly missed out on a BAFTA four years ago.’

  ‘All that tells us is that he’s a slippery character who’s good at his job. What I now need to know is what he was doing last night, and in the early hours of this morning.’

  ‘Right, Boss.’

  ‘And while you’re about it, do the same with Malacott. Incidentally, Ram, I’m still waiting on information about his female relatives.’

  ‘In hand, Boss,’ he said. ‘I have found a sister. Waiting on her details.’

  Her phone rang. It was Max.

  ‘Jo, I just picked up your message. I’m in Birmingham, catching up with some former colleagues from the Met. But don’t worry, I’ll be back bright and early in the morning. What was it you wanted?’

  ‘It’ll keep till the morning, Max,’ she said.

  There was a long pause.

  ‘There’s been another one, hasn’t there?’ he said. ‘I can hear it in your voice.’

  She shook her head, despite the fact that he couldn’t see her.

  ‘Like I said, it’ll keep.’

  ‘You may as well tell me, Jo,’ he insisted. ‘I promise not to drop everything and dash back, but you can’t leave me wondering.’

  She sighed.

  ‘Very well. It looks as though he followed his usual MO, but this time he was either careless or unlucky. He dumped his victim near a reservoir, but she stumbled out on to a main road and was hit by a motorist. She landed on the top of her skull. Massive brain bleed. Her body’s in the regional forensic morgue in Oldham.’

  ‘It was only a matter of time,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Jo.’