by Linda Mather
No reply.
“Detective Roberts have you any plans to hold a press conference?”
He reached the door, keyed in his security code and shut the door on their ravenous faces, with a sigh of relief.
Just as his heart had stopped pounding the door opened again and Derek dashed in.
“Bloody hell sir, the scavengers are here, who tipped them off?”
“No idea” said Stephen “but I intend to find out!”
He walked though the main office to his office and everyone was in, the place was bustling and everyone was either talking about the murder or on their computers searching for information that may lead them to their man. Well he hoped they were and not surfing on face book, or some other social network site.
What a day, he thought, lounging back in his office chair. He’d phoned Tanya from his mobile after leaving the house. Cancelling another Saturday night, she’d be going off him at this rate and he had phoned the florist to have some flowers delivered.
He attended the briefing at six o’clock and after looking at the basic details, his team shared what they had got.
Paul and Vera had been to see Brenda, she was devastated at the news of her friend’s death, sobbed for England, it had taken them a lot of skill and patience to get anything out of her.
They’d had a great night however the evening had ended with Brenda going home alone in a taxi cab and Lizzie in another with a bloke she had been seeing down there and dancing with for the last four weeks. She couldn’t remember his name. Ian she thought but couldn’t be sure.
Her description of him wasn’t much to go on either. About five foot eight, white, brown hair, and medium build aged between thirty and forty.
Lizzie had not said anything about him to her, just that she might be seeing him down there this week.
Nothing at all on what he was wearing; she’d jumped from a blue shirt to a brown shirt, then jeans to trousers.
Bloody hell, Stephen thought that could fit the description of half the men in Leicester.
Vera had looked at all the people they had on computer file that had been arrested in the last ten years with the first name Ian, there had been forty five Ian’s. She was happy to follow that up, but didn’t hold out much hope, and besides they didn’t even know for sure that his name was Ian.
Stephen had spoken to the neighbour, who had maintained to have seen or heard nothing. Derek and John had spoken to the other neighbours in close vicinity and there was Zilch information there too. They had tracked down the nightclub owner. He was going to speak with his staff and he would get back to them if anyone had any information that might help them.
And that was it. Nothing. The rest of his team had nothing solid either.
“Okay” he said aware that his voice sounded exasperated. Lets brainstorm ideas, see what we can come up with.
“Mind shower, sir” Paul said.
“Mind shower?” Stephen asked trying to see what relevance this had to the case.
“Brainstorm is politically incorrect now sir, so we have to use mind shower”
“Okay” Stephen replied as calmly as he could, incensed at the audacity of this man. They were investigating a fucking murder case for Christ’s sake, who the fuck gave a shit.
“Mind storm it is then.” He said.
The briefing ended around eight o’clock, nothing of any consequence came out of it, other than the pillow, the pillows in both cases came from the women’s bedroom. The murderer would have had to go upstairs to fetch that, how might that have happened.
Lots of ideas were thrown into the pot so to speak, but the consensus was that he could have dosed her with the date rape drug first, then when she was out of it, he could have fetched the pillow then. Not that this led them any closer to the murderer, but it was part of the process, part of the picture building or part of the jigsaw puzzle as Stephen like to call it.
Then it was raised that if she was given a date rape drug and they could only surmise as they hadn’t had a toxicology report back yet, however most have them would put money on it, then she wouldn’t necessarily take that willingly so he would possibly have spiked her drink.
As it was quick acting, then that would more than likely be done at home rather than the club.
Brenda had said that she was fine when she had left her. So where were the cups or glasses? There was nothing at the scene, that hadn’t been checked, so what had they missed? He could have washed it up and put it away.
Ironically it was Paul that had contributed most of these points to the table and they were good points. Very good points Stephen had thought we’ll make a good copper out of him yet. He was beginning to use his gut instinct rather than his text books.
Stephen had asked two members of his team to get back to the scene, collect every cup, glass, anything that could be used as a vessel and get them to the lab for the forensic guys. They could have a fingerprint or two on them as well.
They had then looked at the message on the ‘calling card.’ This had put a smug smirk on Pauls face, Stephen had noticed.
“Another one bites the dust”
One of his team stated that it was a line from a song, sung by the group Queen. He volunteered to download the song and the words to see if there was any hidden message or significance.
Stephen detected that his whole team was motivated to catch this killer and he had left the meeting feeling proud and confident that they would.
Hopefully before he struck again!
Chapter Fifteen
Having spent most of the weekend at the station, Stephen arrived in at around eleven o’clock on Monday morning. The place was quiet, most of his staff was out and about, he guessed.
First thing he needed to do was speak with his chief to update him on the weekends events and how far they had got in the investigation, which needless to say wasn’t very far, they were all holding out for the DNA results now, nothing had come from the crockery that the forensic team had spent all weekend on. There had been no traces of any drug, nor were there any fingerprints. Either the perpetrator had worn gloves or had wiped any vessel used.
This killer knew what he was doing; he knew how to avoid detection, but then there was allsorts on the internet now to help people commit the perfect murder, even these criminology courses would describe how to get rid of DNA and what the scenes of crime officers looked for when investigating a crime.
His stomach took a lurch and he repeated back in his mind what he had just thought ……even these criminology courses would describe how to get rid of DNA etc.
Interesting thought, but he couldn’t just jump in because of a belief, he had to have evidence and that was in short supply right now.
It didn’t stop him thinking about the knowledge Paul had, he had the knowledge of covering up a crime scene and he had the inside knowledge of the investigation and he seemed to know there would be another murder. He could be secretly taunting them, he could be a psychopath and contrary to people’s beliefs, there were psychopaths in good jobs, high powered jobs in fact.
He was just contemplating whether to wait until they had the pathology report through before he rang his boss when his telephone on his desk rang.
“Hi Stephen” his boss said raucously but quite jolly, which put Stephen’s mind at rest, “hear you’ve had another busy weekend?”
“Yes Michael” Stephen responded “I was going to call you but I was waiting for the pathologist to ring first, so I could hopefully have some more information for you”
“That’s why I’m ringing Stephen.” Michael said.
“Owen called less than an hour ago, he’d worked all weekend too, and as you weren’t around he spoke to me. So here goes, have you got a pen, if not don’t worry he’ll fax it over later anyway”
“Fire away Sir, I have a pen” Stephen answered, pen poised attentively listening.
“Death was by suffocation again. Toxicology report reads that she had Rohypnol in her system. And we
have some DNA”
He could hear Stephen’s sigh of relief. “That’s brilliant news sir, was it from the bite”
“No” he replied “she’d had sex, doesn’t appear to have been forced sex, so she either did it willingly or he did it to her when she was out for a count, nevertheless, sloppy bastard didn’t use a condom!”
“When do we hope to get the DNA results sir?” he asked, hoping this bastard had been arrested in the past.
“Seven to ten days, though they know to rush it through.”
Stephen put the phone down both elated and frustrated.
He was happy they had some DNA but frustrated that it would take so long to get the results. He knew that someone would have to sit and go through the database to find a match, but surely there was a simpler system than this.
Maybe they could break the system down into areas, and then they could start by looking in this particular area to find a DNA match, searching further afield if there was not one. It wasn’t rocket science for goodness sake!
Neverthe-less, in terms of his case at last they might be on to something.
For several years now they had been swabbing anyone that was arrested, even if it was a driving offence, they were building up quite a large DNA data base. He had to accept that it would take time.
He just hoped that this bastard had been arrested for something.
His gut told him that he had, so it was just a waiting game now.
He had been surprised at his boss’s joviality they had two murders now and no suspect he would have expected him to be ranting, maybe he was getting calmer in his old age.
He liked Michael, he was sixty and considering retirement, often police officers retired earlier than this, but Michael loved his job too much for that, however he was getting a little slower now and his aches and pains were starting to get to him, he had, had this discussion with Stephen already and he had said that his wife was nagging him to retire and to spend more time with their family.
He and his wife had five children between them and something like eight grandchildren, so he was finding it difficult to keep on working and fulfil his family commitments.
Stephen was secretly pleased as this would mean that he could apply for his job, fill his boots so to speak, and naturally leading the team into action to solve these murders wouldn’t do his reputation any harm.
That would be the pinnacle of his career; he didn’t need to go any further, he had only ever had his sights on that goal.
And getting a result for these murders would be a bonus.
Chapter Sixteen
Friday 28 March
There was nothing else to do on a Friday night Stephen thought as he washed and shaved.
Tanya was having her usual ‘buddy night,’ although he had never met any of her friends, as she had never introduced them.
This annoyed him a little, was she ashamed of him, or was she ashamed of them he’d wondered. He’d even thought that she might be seeing a married man that could only get out on a Friday or Sunday night. But quickly squashed that idea out of his head, he couldn’t go down that road, it would do his head in.
There again she had never met any of his friends either, maybe she had the same thoughts. Not that he had any friends, but he did have his work colleagues, and it was Bill’s fiftieth birthday do, next Saturday. He could take her there, maybe then she would be more open to him meeting her friends sometime.
Bill was the head of the drug squad, they’d known each other since their beat days, and even now with some cases their paths crossed. Drugs and murder were like fish and chips these days.
‘Yes’ he was pleased with himself; Tanya was a fine looking woman, he would be proud to have her on his arm. He would ask her tomorrow.
He was getting ready to go to Jason’s. He might as well have a sniff around, he’d nothing better to do.
They were all still waiting for the DNA results to come through, he had considered getting a few of his team down there tonight, but one they deserved a weekend off and secondly, he didn’t want a large police presence at this point as it may drive the murderer underground.
Both girls had been to ‘Jason’s on the night of their murder his gut instinct told him there was a connection, but even if he learned nothing it filled in some of his time, lonely time, which was time when his thoughts could work overtime about Tanya and what she was doing, those thoughts becoming darker and darker as the evening wore on. He must be getting quite keen on her he contemplated.
He mulled over the last week’s events. They’d all listened to the Queen Song over and over again on the stations hi-fi equipment and scrutinised the words of the song, but nothing significant had jumped out at them.
Derek and John had interviewed all of the staff at Jason’s and had sat through hours of CCTV, they had followed up a couple of possible leads but had come to a dead end.
Vera had paid visits to most of the ‘Ian’s’ on their data base and they had all had an alibi for one or both of the nights of the murders.
They all felt like they were swimming in mud and getting nowhere. All their eggs were in one basket now the DNA.
He took one more look in the mirror and was pleased with himself, “Handsome chap” he said to himself out loud, “you never know, you may pull tonight, nothing like mixing business with pleasure”.
Jason’s was a nightclub that was well known for the more mature patrons and for being full of divorcees and single parents, a ‘pick up’ joint where you were almost certain of getting laid by a single mum ‘gagging for it.’
Single mums were quickly getting labelled as easy targets for men, which seemed unfair that a few that gave it up quite easily, should tar the name for many decent single mums but that was how the world worked.
It hadn’t helped when the prime minister had recently targeted single parent families as ‘dysfunctional families.’ He knew as many two parent families that he would deem ‘dysfunctional’. Besides his mum had been a single mum to him and his sister and there was nothing dysfunctional about him or his sister.
He found himself a tight spot in the car park, it was full, how many people would be driving home drunk tonight he wondered, then brushed it aside, it wasn’t his department and was therefore none of his business.
Jason’s was not in the town as most of the clubs in Leicester were it was set back in between field’s on the main road between Leicester Forest East and Peckleton.
It was an attractive looking building, and if the Manager had been a little bit more refined it would have made a very nice upmarket restaurant, a successful restaurant as people did not really want to travel into town on a weekend night for a meal, too much trouble in the town centre these days.
It would have brought in a more sophisticated clientele that’s for sure.
The queue to get in had only about six people in it, so he stood at the back and waited. He could have shown his warrant card and got straight in, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself, give a possible suspect a head start.
Having paid five pounds to get in he headed for the bar and ordered a coke, he needed to keep his wits about him tonight, he could always have a stiff drink later when he got home.
Coke, lemon and ice in his hand he looked about, bloody hell they were rough in here he thought, covered in tattoos most of them and that were the women.
He noticed a group of rowdy men to his right as he propped up the bar, laughing and joking about something or another.
He eavesdropped for awhile not having much more to do other than observe.
“I came here looking for a lass that’s just started her period not someone half way through the fucking menopause” said one laughing out loud, joined boisterously by his companions.
“Not a good looking one in sight” said another
“That women I was dancing with I said to her ‘let me make you pregnant, and then you’ll be able to get your teeth done on the national health free” this was then followed by
more side splitting laughter.
Stephen had, had enough, one reason why he didn’t wish to make friends for unruly lad’s nights out, he couldn’t stand the banter. He easily got offended by the derogatory remarks about women.
Yes he’d be the first to say this place was rough and the women not his type but there was no need to be that offensive. They weren’t oil paintings themselves.
He wondered around looking the men up and down rather than the women, he needed to be careful else they’ll think I’m a puff, he thought.
It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Murderers didn’t come in a flasher Mac he pondered like most people think, they weren’t ugly men with a axe hidden inside their trench coat. They looked like normal people, and not that this place was full of what he would call ‘normal’; it could be anyone of these guys in here.
He didn’t know what he was looking for, perhaps someone like him, stood around observing; only Stephen was looking for a prospective suspect and the killer a potential victim.
“Fancy a boogie love” some woman dressed in skin tight leopard pants and a top that barely covered her breasts was looking up at him.
“No thanks, I’m no Fred Astaire” he replied, hoping that would get rid of her. No such luck.
“Well a drink then, mines a vodka and tonic” she purred, trying but not succeeding to look sexy.
“Maybe another time” he said and hastily made a quick retreat.
“Prick” he heard her say as he walked away.
Very appealing, he reflected, wonder what charm school she went to!
Chapter Seventeen
Thankfully no-one else bothered him for the rest of the evening, and he was just about to leave when he saw a face he recognised. He dodged behind a pillar and studied the man stood at the edge of the dance floor.
What the fuck was he doing down here, he questioned. He never said he was coming and I certainly didn’t ask him to. He was not down here on police business, so why was he down here?
Stephen stood back, so he couldn’t be seen and watched.