by Rob Ashman
Kray was losing patience. She was fast reaching the conclusion that picking up clothes off the floor and putting them back onto hangers for a living must make you oblivious to everything else around you. Not a single member of staff had seen Madeline while she was in the shop.
Kray systematically took members of staff off the floor and interviewed them in a side office. She was on her sixth person and was losing the will to live.
‘This woman entered the shop at around 11.40am,’ Kray said pointing to the head-and-shoulders shot of Madeline Eve laying on the desk. ‘Did you see her?’
‘No,’ replied the assistant.
‘Take a good look. Did you see this woman in the store?’
‘No. Did someone really get murdered in the changing rooms?’
Kray decided this was not a job for her and called Tavener.
‘You take over before I burst a ventricle.’
Kray turned her attention to Ania who was still sitting outside with a PC.
‘Tell me again, Ania, what happened in the store?’
‘She walked around checking out the clothes. I was trying to reach you but my phone signal had died. I lost her, there was so many people.’ She reached for her sodden tissue again.
Kray put her hand on Ania’s shoulder. ‘It’s okay, you did a fantastic job.’
‘But why would—’ Ania didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence as Kray’s phone rang.
‘Yes.’
‘Roz I think we got something.’ It was Tavener.
‘Good has someone seen Madeline?’
‘Not exactly.’
Fifteen minutes later Kray and Tavener pushed open the door to the control centre where Lucy Frost was fast getting square eyes from staring at the bank of screens covering the wall. The clock at the top said 12.14pm.
‘Hey,’ Frost said, leaning back in her chair and stretching her hands up to the ceiling. ‘We have her going into the store.’ She pointed to a freeze frame on the bottom right of the screen. ‘But so far we’ve not got her coming out and we are now thirty-two minutes past the time when she was seen entering the shop.’
A petite young woman with purple hair appeared from behind the large frame of Tavener.
‘Wow,’ she said in a voice that made her sound like she’d been inhaling helium.
‘This is Hayley. She works in Primark,’ said Kray.
‘This is incredible,’ Hayley said wide-eyed as she looked around.
‘Tell the people what you told my officer.’ Kray beckoned her further inside the office.
‘Well, you showed me a picture of a girl and asked if I’d seen her in the shop. And I hadn’t.’
‘Go on,’ Kray said.
‘Then you left and the man here,’ she pointed to Tavener, ‘asked if I had seen anything unusual during my shift, you know, anything out of the ordinary.’
‘And …’
‘We rotate around the store and it was my turn to look after the changing rooms. It’s a job that everyone hates because people leave the place in such a mess and people kick off when they have to wait for a cubicle.’
‘Tell them what you told my officer.’
‘When I was on the changing rooms I had a guy come out of a cubicle and hand me four items of clothing, tops I think they were.’
‘A guy?’ asked Frost. ‘Why is that unusual?’
‘He came out of one of the women’s changing rooms and I’m sure I didn’t see him go in. We are strict about that kind of thing, you know when boyfriends want to go in with their girlfriends – it’s a big no-no.’
Kray let the full impact of what Hayley was telling them sink in.
‘So Hayley, what I want you to do is sit with Lucy and see if you can identify the man you saw coming out of the changing room. Is that okay?’
‘Err yeah, I suppose so. I only saw him briefly.’
‘What was he wearing?’ asked Frost.
‘I don’t know, it all happened so fast. I was a bit shocked.’
‘Can you remember anything at all about him,’ Frost prompted. ‘Was he white, was he tall, dark hair, anything you can recall?’
‘He was a white guy, about my height, slim build and he was wearing a baseball cap. You know one of those with the stupid wide peaks. He had one of those.’
Kray pulled a chair up for Hayley to sit down.
‘Okay Lucy, start again, but this time we’re looking for a hat.’
25
I edge the car into a side street and kill the engine, still trying to come down from the thrill of the morning. What a rush.
I dig my thumbnail under the rim, lever the lid free from the tobacco tin and remove the white plastic key nestling snuggly in the padded foam. I hold it up against the sunshine flooding through my windscreen, a ball of nervous tension filling my chest.
I wonder …
My watch says it’s a quarter after one, I’ve got at least a couple of hours. The plods are going to be battling their way through the incoherent statements of a hundred pissed-off teenagers and ploughing through a mountain of CCTV footage.
All the while asking the same question: ‘Have you seen this woman?’ All the while looking for Madeline Eve. I also suspect that somewhere under the vaulted glass roof of the Trafford Centre a PC will be feeding cups of coffee to a traumatised Polish woman.
I pop open the boot, step out of the car and retrieve a wad of takeaway menus from a bag. After slamming the lid shut, I walk down Dunbar Street and turn right. I step from the pavement onto the brick pathway that cuts through the overgrown foliage in the front garden. I peel a menu away from the bundle and hold it in front of me as I approach the front door. Delivering takeaway menus is a great cover. The key slips into the Yale lock, I push it all the way until the plastic shoulder hits the brass face. I can feel the jagged contours engaging with the tumblers as the springs in the barrel compress. I turn the key – it won’t budge.
I jiggle the plastic back and forth maintaining a slight turning pressure. This is tricky. I don’t want to damage the delicate plastic edges. Then, with a soft click, the tumbler finally turns and the mechanism disengages. I hold my breath as I edge the door open, listening for the beep of a house alarm. The hallway is silent.
A furtive glance over my shoulder and I’m in, closing the door behind me. I replace the key into its foam cocoon and stand breathlessly still, tuning into my surroundings. Satisfied the house is empty, I make my way down the hall.
The place looks like a show home, with not a thing out of place. It’s immaculately clean. The long lounge has an array of scatter cushions arranged across a huge leather sofa and an eclectic mix of ornaments line the mantelpiece. The décor is modern with clean lines and neutral colours. At one time this room was probably intended to be a lounge diner, only now the requirement to dine has long since gone. The kitchen is the same with every surface wiped clean and uncluttered. I press the toe of my shoe on the peddle of the flip-top bin to reveal two bottles that used to contain white wine.
Tut, tut.
I make my way upstairs, nudging the first door I come to with my shoulder. It’s the bathroom, filled with soft towels and bath products. The next door along is a spare bedroom and the one opposite is an office containing a shabby desk and a chair, but little else. The door to the right opens up onto the main bedroom, a large space with an en suite off to the left. It is decorated in the same modern style with two double-fitted wardrobes and a matching dressing table in the bay window. A king-sized bed hogs the room with enough pillows stacked against the headboard to furnish a small guesthouse. In keeping with the rest of the house, everything is in pristine condition with not a make-up pad out of place.
Then I see it. My heart leaps in my chest.
Taking pride of place on the bedside table behind the digital clock is a framed photograph. It depicts a couple on a night out, leaning into each other at a dinner table, his arm around her shoulders pulling her close. Their faces beam out of the picture, but it is the happiness in their ey
es which makes me blush and turn away – it’s like I am intruding on a private moment.
Perfect.
I open the wardrobe and fan my hands through the clothes lined up in regimented order. Dresses, tops and trousers all ready to be picked out. The second wardrobe contains very little, just a gentleman’s shirt and a dark blue suit. I go back to the first wardrobe and ease apart each of the garments.
Then I see it. A black plastic suit cover hanging from the rail at one end. I unhook it and run the zip down and the shimmer of emerald green jumps out at me.
I lay it on the bed and remove the dress from the protective cover. It is beautiful, with its fitted bodice and pencil skirt. I hold it against my body and give a little twirl on the spot. No wonder the man in the photograph looked so happy. Any man would feel on top of the world with his arm around a woman who was wearing this dress.
I snap out of my daydream and replace the garment into its cover, hanging it back on the rail. It’s time to leave. But before I go, maybe a little mischief …
26
Kray stood in her kitchen, every muscle in her body confirming she’d had a long and tiresome day.
The time she’d spent at the Trafford Centre had been a frantic whirlwind of activity and stress. With Hayley’s help, Lucy Frost had found the CCTV clip showing the man with the baseball cap leaving the store. She copied the file and had it sent to the station to run through image enhancement. The high camera angle ensured they had a great shot of the top of his head, but nothing of his face. Still, it was worth further analysis to see if any distinguishing marks became visible.
They had also sat Hayley with a photo-fit guy but she came up with nothing. All she could recall was the damned hat. She could, however, tell them that he was about the same height as she was, slightly built with good teeth.
‘I got a thing about people’s teeth,’ she admitted.
Pity you didn’t have the same fixation about the rest of their face.
Ania had continued to struggle coming to terms with what had happened. She seemed unable to process what she had witnessed and eventually Kray sent her home. But to be on the safe side, she’d despatched the PC to drive Ania’s car as she was in no fit state to do much, let alone get herself home in one piece.
Kray pulled open the fridge door to retrieve a half-bottle of Sav Blanc. She lifted a glass from the cupboard and headed upstairs to the bathroom. Soon the scent of spun sugar candyfloss and juniper filled the top floor of the house, and steam fogged up the mirrors. Bridging across the rim of the bathtub was a slab of sanded wood with a carved indent to hold a glass and a raised section to hold a book. It had been a Christmas present from Joe. He had wrapped it in sparkling wrapping paper and left it under the tree along with ten best seller books. It was one of his many failed attempts to persuade his wife to take it easy. It had never worked. Nowadays it served the purpose of keeping her wine glass and bottle within easy reach of her mouth while the books gathered dust under the bed in the spare room.
Kray sank beneath the bubbles and let the hot water soothe her aching limbs. Her fingers traced the outline of the scar carved across her body, feeling every lump and bump of the puckered skin. She didn’t mind touching her scars, she just didn’t want to look at them. In fact, there was something morbidly therapeutic about running her fingers along their length to find out how the sensation of touch was gradually returning to the damaged nerve endings. Submerged below the steaming white carpet of foam, she tried to allow her mind to drift, but despite the soothing effects of the bath, Kray felt uneasy.
She had felt a nagging sense of apprehension as soon as she arrived home. In the car driving back she was tired and pissed off with the day, but she hadn’t felt apprehensive. However, she did now and it bothered her. The cold wine tasted good against the back of her throat as she tried to switch off, but there was something gnawing away. She gulped more wine trying to ignore it.
‘Fuck, that was close today,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Why would he do that? Why would he take the risk?’
The steam was clearing from the bathroom as the extractor fan sucked it away into the night air. The bubbles were up to her chin and the stem of the glass dipped into the water as she brought it to her lips.
Why would you do that? Why would you put yourself in harm’s way like that?
Then it struck her like a Blackpool tram.
‘Bumping into Ania was no coincidence, it was carefully engineered. You wanted to be seen,’ she said to herself.
As the hot water crinkled the skin on her hands, she felt a chill run through her body. She heaved herself from the tub, spilling waves of water onto the floor, and wound a towel around her body. She padded across the landing and down the stairs, her wet footprints flattening the pile of the carpet.
She entered the lounge and her eyes fixed on the cause of her anxiety. It had been there all along. After pulling her laptop from her work bag, she flicked open the screen and hit return. It came to life and she tapped in her password.
Kray looked at the screen and then to the mantelpiece and back again.
The gold carriage clock that had been a wedding present from Joe’s parents had its hands pointing to half past eight. The digital clock on the screen was flicking over to 9.31pm.
Kray woke to the sound of her radio alarm going off upstairs. She was still wrapped in the bath towel and was lying across the sofa with her head buried in a mound of cushions. The pips announced that the six o’clock news was about to start. She looked at the carriage clock, with its hands pointing to twelve and five.
She had stayed awake for most of the night tracking the time. Keeping one eye on the minute hand as it swept around the ornate dial and the other on the digital clock on her laptop. For hour after hour the minutes ticked by in perfect sync. Eventually, at some point, sleep overcame her. The same questions rattled around in her head as the newsreader started talking.
Why the hell had the clock lost an hour over the course of the day? And why the hell had it not lost a single minute more during the night?
The clock was exactly an hour out and that bothered her.
Kray jumped from the sofa and snatched the clock off the shelf, flipping off the back cover. The thumb wheel spun the hands forward. She snapped the cover back in place and returned it onto the shelf. This was going to bug her all fucking day.
27
Kray drove to work with her mind fixed on one thing. That fucking clock. Her intuition was running wild. Why had a clock that had never lost a single minute in two years, a clock that had a new battery installed only three weeks earlier, a clock which waved goodbye to her in the morning and welcomed her home at night, be precisely one hour slow?
The possibilities crashed around in her head as she came to an abrupt stop in the station car park. There was one explanation which kept shoving the others to one side. It was an explanation that elbowed its way to the front of the queue every time. An explanation she didn’t want to think about, but it was all she could think about.
Kray forced it from her mind and bound up the stairs to CID. Tavener was already at his desk, on the phone. Frost’s jacket was slung over the back of her chair but she was nowhere to be seen.
Kray waved ‘good morning’ to Tavener who, in turn, waved back. He cupped his hand over the phone and mouthed, ‘Lucy’s in the imaging suite.’ Kray nodded and headed off in search of coffee. Her mobile went off in her pocket. It was her mum. Kray ignored the call, she was not in the best place right now to accommodate her mother’s daily routine of worries. She had enough worries of her own to contend with.
After a few minutes Kray returned with a brew and perched herself on the edge of the desk.
‘Morning,’ she said, sipping warily at her coffee and regretting not getting a takeout on her way to work.
‘Morning, Roz,’ Tavener said, finishing off his scribbled notes, his muscular frame bulging through a shirt which had obviously shrunk in the wash. ‘The forensics came back
on Wilson’s clothes, looks like you were bang on.’
‘With what?’
He opened a file and read from the report. ‘Short red fibres were found on his shirt, consistent with material used in dress manufacturing.’
‘That’s a good start to the day.’
Frost breezed in.
‘Morning. I’ve done what I can with the screen dumps from the Trafford Centre.’ She had a clutch of grainy black and white images in her hand. ‘Not sure they tell us a hell of a lot though.’
‘Okay, let’s talk things through and see what we’ve got,’ said Kray, marshalling her crèche around her. ‘We have a white male aged anything between eighteen to thirty—’
‘Great name for a holiday company that, Roz,’ Tavener interrupted. The scowl shut him up, it was way too early for that kind of bollocks.
Kray continued, ‘that is according to Hayley. He is around five feet seven tall with a slim build. What do the pictures tell us?’
Frost fanned the screen shots across the table. ‘From what I can make out he has no tattoos on his hands and doesn’t wear rings. He was wearing a wrist watch and carrying a black rucksack. From the outline of the bag I’d say it was stuffed full. Probably his female gear. Other than that, his clothes are bog standard, they could be bought in a whole host of shops. There is, however, one detail which is a little out of the ordinary, there is a motif on the back of the baseball cap. I’ve enhanced it as much as I can but it’s still unclear.’ She lifted out one of the photographs and laid it on top of the others. ‘This is the best I could do. It’s a round circle with what looks like a bird’s head in it. No idea what that means, but it is something worth following up to see if we get a match.’
‘That’s good work.’ Kray stared at the blurry image. ‘The other thing we have to unravel is our suspect being a bit of a shape shifter, able to pass himself off convincingly as a woman. So, we have to presume he has feminine features and is a dab hand with the No.7 and a make-up brush.’