by Conrad Jones
“Good afternoon. I’m sorry if you have been called in from your leave, but as you can see from the crime scene photos, we have a nasty one to deal with.” There were murmured responses from the gathering, and then a hush descended over them as they listened to their superintendent. Some of them had been at home less than twelve hours before Alec had summoned them back to work. “At eight o’clock this morning a letting agent working for a company called Ashfords opened up this factory unit on Jamaica Street.”
The screens showed pictures of the building and the surrounding streets. Most of the officers were familiar with the waterside area as a notorious red light district. It bordered both the river and the city centre and to its north was the Toxteth area.
“He made an emergency call at one minute past eight when he discovered the body of a woman hanging from the rafters.” Alec turned toward the screen as pictures of the tortured female flashed across them. The brutality of the scene they were looking at reflected on the faces of the detectives. It didn’t matter how many times they had seen death, this scene hit them hard.
“We have a list of missing persons going back six months who fit the profile of the victim. She is female, long auburn hair, mid twenties to thirties and as you can see, the killer strung her up and tortured her to death. We don’t know if she was a working girl or not, and for now it doesn’t matter because we have evidence that there was a child at the scene. We may be looking for a mother and child whose family has not reported them as missing, or they may not be related. We need to know who she was.”
Will handed out lists of the missing persons. “The list is compiled of women who match the age of the victim, but we don’t know if any of them have children.” Alec spoke to the team as the lists were distributed. The detectives scanned the names and images as they listened.
“Some of the women are known prostitutes and others are not. It doesn’t matter at this stage, they are all someone’s daughter, mother or sister, and they will be treated with the same respect. Are we clear?”
“Guv,”
“Vice have spoken with many of the girls who they know work in that area,” Alec continued. “None of them are aware of any friends missing. We are waiting for preliminary results to come in. I want to be in the position to match them to our missing persons list as soon as we have them. Smithy your team has the top half of the list to work on. Work down to M, please.”
“Yes, Guv.” Smithy was a well-built detective with thinning red hair and a beer-belly that hung over his belt. He looked slovenly but he was a key member of the Major Investigation Team. His commitment to the job had cost him three marriages and left him with limited access to his kids and grandkids. He played prop forward for the police rugby team and drank heavily after every game, which had compounded the tensions at home. Life as a bachelor suited him for now. “What about rounding up the usual suspects, Guv?”
“Uniform are picking up all known sex offenders on our patch,” Alec pointed to Chief Carlton. His uniformed officers usually did the groundwork and sifting on major cases. They flagged up anyone without a concrete alibi and brought them in for further questioning. “We can get on with identifying our victim for now and find out whose footprints they are.”
The picture changed to the small bloody footprints from the unit. “Will, your team takes the bottom half of the list.”
“Yes, Guv.” Will snapped his fingers and his team began sorting through their part of the list of names. The teams moved and studied their lists. They chatted quietly as they studied the information. Some of the women on the list were similar in appearance, but photographs could be misleading and people often changed their hairstyle. They couldn’t make assumptions at this point.
“We need as much detail as we can get our hands on before the initial forensics are completed. I want dental records, bank details, credit card transactions and, where possible, samples we can match to the DNA results. Find out the names of friends and relatives and the places they frequented. Tread carefully. I don’t want their families rattled by our investigation. I want to know who the child is without alerting the killer that we’ve found the body. We don’t want to spook him yet, in case the child is still alive.” Alec was worried that clumsy police work might upset the families of the missing and alert the press. He had never had children, but he could empathise with the parents of missing children and he had witnessed the mistakes made by fellow detectives who had worked on some of the high profile child abductions and murders in Liverpool over the last few decades. He needed to avoid a press circus at all costs.
“Guv. I have another question.” Smithy put his hand up.
“What is it, Smithy?” Alec smiled. He told his team repeatedly that the only stupid questions were the ones you wished that you had asked earlier.
“Will mentioned that we may be dealing with more than one victim, Guv.” The detectives in the room nodded. “Apart from the child, I mean.”
“We may be.” Alec paused. Speculating at this point could hamper the already complicated investigation. “There are several blood pools at the scene and we don’t believe they could possibly be from the same victim, but until we get forensics back, we should concentrate our efforts on her.” Alec nodded to the screens. The woman’s distorted features stared out of the screens for all to see.
“We need to work through these lists thoroughly because if we do have multiple victims, then they will be on those lists, no mistake. I do not want the press to know anything about the missing persons list or the child until we’re ready to tell them. Are we all clear about this?” There had been leaks in the past, usually spreading from careless conversation at home or at the pub. The job of a murder detective was a tough one; they often played hard during a case to unwind and take their minds off their work for a few hours. When alcohol numbed their senses, it also numbed their brains. Sometimes people overheard details of investigations and leaked them to the press. “I do not want this case discussed over the pool table down at the pub, clear?”
“Guv.”
This investigation possibly involved more than one victim, and the press would go to town when it became public knowledge. High profile cases attracted society’s nutcases and just dealing with the number of crank calls that a newspaper feature could generate became a fulltime job for at least one detective. They needed every detective employed in the investigation.
“Crack on, find that kid.”
“Yes, Guv.” They replied in unison.
“Kisha,” Alec turned to a slim black detective who was sitting in Will Naylor’s team.
“Guv?” She replied as she looked up from her list. She was marking some notes in the margin of her list. Kisha was keen and her superiors had already noticed her potential.
“I want you to gather the names of everyone who has rented that unit for the last ten years, and everyone who has worked at Ashfords and had access to their keys,” Alec said. He knew that Kisha would find it a mundane task, but he needed a detective with focus to sift through the pages of irrelevant information and come up with the leads the investigation would require if they were to find the killer. She was a good detective and that was why he had picked her for the task. He knew that she wouldn’t see it that way now, but one day she would.
“Guv,” Kisha sighed and looked disappointed. A task like that could throw up dozens of names and an equal number of dead ends. Anyone could have had a set of keys cut. She felt as if she was being sidetracked from the main team and her heart sank. It was like being left on the subs bench during the cup final.
“I also want a list of employees who worked in that factory unit and a list of service companies that have completed works on the building since it has been empty. Stevie, you take that, please. Work with Kisha and cross-check the information.” Alec didn’t rate Stevie. He was a probationary officer and his detective review date was close, but Alec couldn’t see him cutting it. He knew that Kisha would keep him on track and double-check his side of the in
vestigation. He had paired them up for a good reason.
“Yes, Guv,” Stevie smiled and looked across at Kisha. She was gorgeous and Stevie had a thing for her, despite the fact she knocked him back at the Christmas party. Kisha didn’t return his gaze and she certainly didn’t share his enthusiasm for the task they were to work on together. She had no interest in Stevie, or any other men, for that matter. Kisha hid her sexuality from her colleagues. She was female and black. Prejudice was frowned on in the modern police force, but it was still there, lurking in every department, and she knew it. Kisha was ambitious and she wanted to progress as far as she could on the merits of her abilities as a detective. In a meritocratic world that might have been possible, but she lived in the real world and knew that being a black lesbian would stifle her progression. Working on a list of names going back years was bad enough, but working with Stevie compounded the issue. She despised him and had no respect for his abilities as a member of MIT.
“Get moving, everyone. I want this information collated as soon as we can, please.” Alec clapped his hands together and the detectives began organising their investigations. Within minutes, they had assigned a list of names and the telephones lines were buzzing. Alec watched them delegate tasks and begin their search with a sense of pride, but there was a nagging doubt in his mind. There was more to this crime than one murder. The other blood pools were a mystery. The child’s footprints were of huge concern, but they had to start with the woman who had been tortured to death before they could piece together what had happened in that unit. The evidence didn’t add up at the moment and waiting for the forensic results to be processed was time wasted, but that was all he could do. Wait.
He pulled out his Blackberry and scrolled through his contacts for his wife’s number. She was annoyed that her mother was visiting and Alec couldn’t take his days off. They had planned to go to Chester to shop and to have some lunch on the banks of the river, but now she would have to suffer her mother alone. Their twenty years together had been happy enough and they got on well, but their marriage was plagued with Alec’s absence. They had become brother and sister rather than man and wife. She mothered him, constantly feeding him Quorn instead of meat in an attempt to give him a healthy diet. He thought of the last lamb chop that he had tasted and he craved meat as he dialled her number.
“Hello,” Gail sounded stressed.
“Hi, it’s me.” Alec always said that and it irritated his wife immensely, which he couldn’t understand.
“I know it’s you, Alec. I have your number programmed into my phone and your name comes up on the screen when you call. Your phone does the same thing, too.” She sounded angry.
“Yes, sorry. Are you okay?” Alec stuttered. His mind went blank when he had to call home to make excuses. He could never find the words to tell her how he felt. When he said sorry, it didn’t sound like it was enough.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“Is there a reason for the call, Alec?”
“I was just saying hello.”
“Hello, Alec.”
“You sound pissed off.”
“Don’t swear, Alec. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Sorry.”
“When are you taking a day off?”
“I’m not sure. This is a nasty one, darling. We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet, but there is a child involved.” The line stayed silent but he could hear her breathing. He felt sick with guilt whenever this happened. “I’ll try and get half a day when we have the forensic results back.”
The phone clicked and she hung up.
“That went well, Alec. Well done.” He said aloud as he walked into his office. He had at least one murder to investigate and then he had promised that he would take some holidays and take Gail away. They needed some time alone together. He couldn’t remember the last holiday abroad they had had. Then he did, and it made him cringe. They had gone to Gambia for a fortnight and Gail had hated the place as soon as she had landed there. The poverty was overpowering and they hadn’t been able to walk up the street in their resort without being accosted by a mob of limbless beggars. Alec had gotten a call from headquarters two days into the holiday when the bodies of two men had been discovered in an abandoned car near the city centre. They had cut the holiday short since Alec had had to fly home and Gail had refused to stay in Gambia alone. She hadn’t spoken to him for a week afterwards. Maybe they could go somewhere nearer to home this time, he thought.
Chapter Eight
Leon Tanner
Leon pushed open the front door of a shop called, ‘Crazy Computers’. Situated next to a Chinese chippy and a sunbed salon, it stood on a bend in the road opposite a carwash. The road led to the docklands at the mouth of the Mersey. Most of the small butchers, bakers and post offices were long gone. The supermarket chains had slowly strangled their profit margins until it was impossible to continue trading. There were a few new businesses trying to establish themselves; Polish food stores and Turkish barbers were dotted about every half a mile or so.
Leon looked at the frontage from inside. The glass was thick with grease and there was a display of keyboards in the window covered in a thick layer of dust. The shop had never sold a single computer in the five years it had been there. It was a front for the brothel above it. A staircase led up to the first floor. The hundreds of punters who trudged up them every week in search of sex had left the beige carpet soiled with their footprints. Leon had a soft spot for the building. Although it was a rundown dilapidated whorehouse, it was the first one that he had opened and it represented the start of his business enterprises. The first woman he had pimped out was his younger sister. She was slow and had had a string of boyfriends before she was sixteen. Leon had thought that if she was going to be a slut, then she might as well make him some money at the same time.
He had pimped her out to his friends and their associates. Heroin had been her best friend and as long as he had kept her stoned, she had gone along with it. She was a looker and word had soon spread that she was on sale. It hadn’t been long before he had taken on another local girl who had been struggling against a heroin addiction and needed the money urgently. Leon had decided that he could supply her with both, and so his empire had started to grow. Within twelve months, he had paid cash for five lockups across the city and he had peddled sex and heroin from both. He had been making a lot of money when his ambitions had focused on the growing crack cocaine market. His customers had been moving away from the brown and using crack instead. It hadn’t mattered to Leon what they took, he had decided to supply it.
He had found it difficult to find a regular reliable supplier of the drug. It had been hitting the streets in dribs and drabs and the price had yo-yoed. Two of the city’s notorious crime families had been at war over the supply of crack and their armed struggle had been driving their dealers underground, which had disrupted supply to the users on the streets. Leon had seen a gap in the market and decided to exploit it. He had gotten wind of a large shipment coming into the city and hijacked it, taking the drugs and the money and eliminated some of the key enforcers in the process. Four wanted criminals had been executed gangland style with a bullet through the back of the head, and a tip off to the press had allowed the photographers the chance to get to the scene before the police had had a chance to cover the bodies. The murders had been splashed all over the newspapers and television, but no one had been claiming responsibility. The warring families had blamed each other for the hit and escalated their battle with a string of murders that had virtually wiped out the top layer of both cartels. The importers had refused to do business with either family anymore, which had deepened the rift further. Leon had watched from the sidelines as they had annihilated each other and used the proceeds of the hit to establish himself as the number one importer and supplier of the drug. The rest was history.
It had all begun here, at the Crazy Computer shop, and he grinned as he stepped in the door. At
the top of the stairs, a middle-aged blonde-haired woman who looked like she had applied her foundation with a trowel greeted him. Mascara caked her false eyelashes and her pencilled eyebrows gave her a surprised appearance. The days when men had paid her for sex were long gone. Now she took the money from the punters and organised washing the sheets and towels. She was one of Leon’s first working girls and he trusted her to a degree.
“Hi, Leon.”
“How much have you got?” Leon pushed her aside and walked into a small waiting room area. Two nervous punters avoided making eye contact with him or each other. Leon scowled at them. He loathed the men that used his brothels. They were weak and so were the girls he employed to service them. He used their weakness to make money. It was the right of the strong to exploit the weak.
“Just over five thousand.” She followed him like a shadow but kept at an arm’s length from him. Leon was volatile and she had often felt the weight of his hand across her face. “It’s been a quiet week, Leon.”
She went to a cupboard under a bookshelf that was crammed with porn magazines and removed a carrier bag full of cash. Leon snatched it from her and stuffed the money into his inside pocket. Five thousand wasn’t a bad week’s takings, considering he had another thirty premises like this one. He grunted and walked down the stairs before unlocking the adjoining door to the mock computer shop. It smelled of must and damp. The wallpaper was peeling off one wall and black mould climbed the others. At the back of the shop was a door fitted with a metal grill. The top and bottom were fitted with padlocks. Leon took a bunch of keys from his black leather overcoat and unlocked them. The grill squealed as he swung it open and he pushed against the wooden door behind it.
“Alright, Leon.” A voice came from behind him.