by Rob Ashman
He re-appeared, ten minutes later. ‘Nothing up here.’
‘Nothing here either,’ Kray said, coming out of the bathroom.
They made their way downstairs to join the others. The lounge floor was covered in cushions, and the settee and armchairs were upended. The older guy was on his hands and knees, examining the hessian backing. He looked up when Kray appeared in the doorway and shook his head.
Kray wandered through into the dining room with a set of French doors that opened up onto the patio. She pushed down the handle and the door inched outwards.
‘How did you know about that?’ Bagley asked her.
‘Something Palmer said in his statement when he supposedly broke into the home and attacked Sadie. He said–’
‘Ma’am I found something.’ The younger chap was on his hands and knees in the hallway.
‘What is it?’ Bagley asked.
‘It’s a key.’
Kray marched across to where he was and knelt beside him. ‘What sort of key?’
‘I don’t know. Take a look.’ He gestured for her to look beneath the occasional table sitting against the wall.
Kray ducked her head down and looked up. There, taped to the underside of the table, was a small chrome-plated key. She reached up and unstuck it, holding it between her fingers. A key-ring hung down with a plastic tag attached. There was writing scribbled on it. Kray handed it to Bagley.
‘What the hell does 17 P O R mean?’
41
The incident room was buzzing. The news about Sadie Raynor and the hair found at the crime scene had galvanised them into a frenzy of activity. They beavered away, delving into every corner of her life – social media, financial information and phone records all contributed to building up a picture of her whereabouts.
Kray and Bagley walked in with the key found at her house wrapped up in an evidence bag.
‘Okay, listen up, people,’ Kray announced. ‘We have a new lead. This key was taped to the underside of a table in Raynor’s house. It has a tag with 17 P O R written on it. The key has the letters HEN stamped on it, along with a ten-digit number. We need to find out what it opens?’
Bagley pinned two blown up photographs of the key and the tag onto the board.
‘17 POR sounds like a location but there’s no postcode that I know of that starts with POR,’ said one of the team.
‘It looks like the type of key used in a filing cabinet, or a locker or a desk drawer,’ said another.
‘It’s none of those,’ Tavener said, standing by the board. ‘This is a garage door key. HEN stands for Henderson. They make garage door locks and the ten-digit number is the series identifier for the key. We are looking for a garage.’
The place went quiet.
‘Bloody brilliant!’ Bagley exclaimed. ‘Raynor’s house doesn’t have a garage. The tag could be short-hand for an address. Get trawling the internet to find garages for rent and see if we get a hit.’
The whole room seized upon the new information. Kray walked over to Tavener who was still looking at the board.
‘How the hell did you know that?’ she asked.
‘My uncle worked for the council replacing locks, I used to help him when I was young. Never thought doing an apprenticeship in garage door mending would come in handy.’
‘That’s amazing.’
‘Isn’t it just?’ Tavener walked off and sat behind a desktop computer.
Kray returned to her office. The mail tray was spilling over, setting her teeth on edge. She switched on her laptop and her email inbox looked the same.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said as the unread email count hit nine hundred and fifty. She clicked on the first one with a red high importance flag next to it. There was a rap on the door. It was Bagley.
‘Hey, have you got a minute?’
‘No,’ Kray said, not lifting her head from the screen. He came in anyway.
‘It’s about DI Brownlow.’
‘What about him?’
‘I’ve noticed him skulking about, pretending to do stuff, when actually he’s doing jack shit.’
‘Yup, that’s Colin Brownlow for you.’
‘So, I told him he should pick up the slack in other areas of the department. I’m sure there are lots of things he could be doing while we manage this case. I told him to–’
‘You said what?’ Kray had her head up now, giving Bagley the laser treatment.
‘He wasn’t adding value to the investigation. I figured he still has his nose out of joint.’
‘Who the fuck are you to tell him anything?’
‘I told him to–’
‘I run this department, which means I get to decide who does what. Not some fucking tourist from GMP.’
‘I’m sorry if I’ve over stepped the mark, Roz, I was only thinking–’
‘Thinking what exactly? Thinking this woman doesn’t know what she’s doing, so I better do it for her? Is that what you were thinking?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘Well, it fucking looks that way to me. We have a chain of command here and your name appears nowhere on it. Keep your nose out of running my department, is that clear?’
‘Yes, it is, but–’
‘Is that clear?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. I thought that–’
‘Well, don’t.’
‘Do we have a problem here?’ It was ACC Quade. ‘I thought I was coming down here to hear good news.’
Kray shut up and stared at the desk.
‘We do,’ Bagley jumped in, ‘have good news that is. We found a garage door key hidden at the home of Sadie Raynor and we’re in the process of tracking down where it might have come from.’
‘And what was all this about?’ Quade waved her hand between Kray and Bagley.
‘It was nothing, ma’am, a misunderstanding, that’s all,’ Kray replied, glaring at Bagley.
‘Do I need to help you two work together?’
‘Not from me, ma’am,’ Kray said, shaking her head.
‘No, everything is fine,’ Bagley followed suit.
The room was filled with a stony silence.
Tavener appeared at the door. ‘I think we got something.’
Kray seized the opportunity. ‘I’m right behind you.’ She got up from her desk but had to allow Quade to shuffle out of the way before she could get out of her office.
‘What is it?’ Kray said when she entered the incident room.
‘Lockup-Rentals is the name of a firm with a ton of locations all across Blackpool and the surrounding area.’ Tavener spun the computer screen around to face Kray. ‘They got one in Great Marton about twenty-minute drive from here. I brought it up on Google maps – it’s located on Preston Old Road.’
The same stony silence that had invaded Kray’s office was now permeating the inside of Kray’s car. Or it would have done, if it weren’t for Bagley giving the owner of Lockup-Rentals a hard time on the phone.
‘Mr Andrews, you don’t seem to grasp the importance of the situation. We are on route to your premises, and when we get there I want to see you waiting for us, otherwise, I’m going to drive to your offices and take you there myself.’ The voice on the other end protested. ‘I don’t care if you have the Queen coming round, you need to meet us at your garages or…’ The line went dead. ‘Fuck it, he’s gone.’
‘We need him to unlock the garage for us or we’ll have to wait to serve a warrant.’
Bagley stared out front, saying nothing.
Quade had made a point of wagging her finger at Kray as they left the station, as if to say, “I got my eye on you”. So, she was on her best behaviour – for now, at least. Before they had left for Marton, Kray had gone over to congratulate Tavener on his quick thinking only to have him grunt at her. He hadn’t bothered to ask if he could join her with the garage search. He presumed that her new Mancunian playmate would be riding shotgun.
Kray and Bagley were travelling south, out of town. Preston Old Road was flanked
on either side by shops and houses of every description – three bed semis, terraced houses, minimart shops, chippies, the full spectrum of Blackpool life could be found on this street.
After Bagley had finished his tirade, they travelled the rest of the way in silence.
All of a sudden, Bagley yelled, ‘Stop! I think it was back there. We missed it. Andrews said it was next to a Tesco Express.’
Kray tutted under her breath and spun the car around in a junction. Fifty yards ahead, a man in his forties sporting a beany hat and dressed in a grey tracksuit and off-white trainers was standing on the side of the road outside the supermarket.
‘Mr Andrews has come to welcome us?’ Kray said as she drew up to the kerb.
‘Are you the policeman I spoke to just now?’ said the man in grey.
‘Mr Andrews?’ asked Bagley, leaning out of the passenger window. He flashed his warrant card.
‘The garages are down here.’ Andrews pointed to a lane passing between two houses, he gestured for them to follow him. Kray turned left and drove through a narrow entrance. The lane opened up onto a courtyard and stretched off to one side were two lines of white garage doors that faced each other. A swanky car was parked over to one side.
‘Thank you for coming out,’ Bagley said, without conveying an ounce of gratitude in his tone.
‘You said you had a key from one of my lock-ups,’ Andrews said.
‘We do.’ Kray offered up the evidence bag.
Andrews took it from her hand and examined it. ‘Yup, this is one of mine. P O R – Preston Old Road.’
‘Do you remember who rented it?’
‘Hang on.’ Andrews walked over to his car and came back clutching a sheaf of paper. ‘This is the agreement. It was a woman. She paid in cash for three months.’
Bagley took the papers from his hand and flipped through them. ‘Do you remember what she looked like?’
‘I see a lot of people, I have a lot of garages. But I do recall this one, because most people pay by card. I remember checking the notes were genuine. You can’t be too careful these days. She paid one hundred and eighty pounds for twelve weeks.’
‘What did she look like?’ he asked again.
‘I don’t know. She was average height with blonde hair. That’s all I can remember.’
‘How old was she?’
Andrews shook his head and shrugged. ‘I couldn’t tell. Oh, I’ve also brought this.’ Andrews held up a key. ‘I give my customers one key and keep the other for security reasons. You would be surprised every time the lease runs out and I don’t hear from them again. I keep a spare key to clear out the garage when that happens.’
Kray took the key and compared it to the other. They were identical. She gave it back.
Andrews walked towards the one with the number seventeen stencilled on the front. The spare key slid into the lock and he turned the handle. The up and over door arched up.
To Andrews, the contents of his premises seemed innocent enough. It was neat and tidy with everything in order.
Bagley reached for his phone. ‘I’ll seal off the area,’ he said over his shoulder, walking back to the entrance of the narrow lane. The person on the other end picked up. ‘Yes, hi,’ he said. ‘Get a CSI team and a couple of uniforms down to the garages on Preston Old Road ASAP.’
Kray stared into the garage with her stomach in her mouth. She tore her gaze away from the items stacked in regimented order against the walls and scanned the paperwork. The taste of bile filled the back of her throat. The name scribbled at the bottom of the agreement read S. Raynor.
42
I ghost through my shift at the factory. Burke continues to give me the evil eye whenever he can. I hate that man. His only saving grace is his monumental stupidity. Laughing at him behind his back is my only comfort.
I don’t have as many customers today, for which I’m grateful. I’m back on “sticking” duties which is less physically challenging. Not sure I could cope with a heavy day.
I’m getting clumsy and I’m finding that judging distances is difficult. It took me four attempts to insert my key into my locker, the damned thing kept blurring and moving around. I went to the canteen for a coffee before starting work in an effort to give me a well needed boost and almost knocked it over when paying for it. The mug wobbled off balance before I caught it. The woman on the till gave me a sideways glance as if to say, Heavy night, was it?
I banged into furniture while getting ready this morning and hit my head on the bedside table when I bent down to get my slippers. And then, there are the fucking headaches. The searing pain that washes against the back of my eyes.
I screwed up my meds and I’m paying for it.
‘It’s a strict regime,’ I remember she had said as she handed them over. ‘The best thing to do is build them into your daily routine. That way you don’t have to think so much and if you’re not at your best, you have a better chance of keeping to the schedule.’
Fat chance of that when the police are breathing down my neck. But I shouldn’t complain. After all, I am the architect of my own pain.
I shove the bloodless carcass through the rubber curtain separating my workstation from the one next door and my next customer arrives behind me, her back-leg circling in the air. I turn her away from me to stop her swinging. As I bend over, the whole room begins to spin. The sound of rushing water courses through my head. I steady myself by holding onto the pig as it traverses along the overhead track. I see my target and plunge the knife towards her neck, only I miss and the blade digs into the back of my hand. The chain mail glove does its job, and the point blunts against the stainless-steel mesh.
I stagger back trying to find my feet but I’m swimming in a sea of confusion. My back hits the wall and I lash out with both hands to arrest my fall. Every second that passes, the pig is travelling further along the conveyor. The clock is ticking. I reach over and strike the emergency stop button. An angry synthetic alarm screams that something is wrong, a yellow flashing beacon lights above me.
My legs give way and I slide down the wall onto my haunches. My head feels like it is going to crack wide open. All the while, the pig is hanging by its back leg, the sudden stop makes her swing to and fro, turning slowly.
I try to stand but my legs refuse to work. I drop the knife and press my hands to my head in an attempt to ease the searing pain behind my eyes.
Burke bursts through the door. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’
‘I…I…I felt faint.’ I’m look up into his snarling face.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ He snatches the knife from the floor. The pig is convulsing on the end of the chain. Burke plunges the blade into its neck and a torrent of blood gushes into the drain. ‘I am not taking this write-off on my shift.’
He storms out and into the room next door, still holding the knife. I can hear raised voices.
‘I don’t give a shit about that,’ Burke yells. ‘Do you have any idea how much one of these costs? Get out of the way,’ the other voice protests, but Burke brushes it aside. ‘Thanks for the advice. I’m fucking doing it.’
Moments later, he yanks open the door and is towering over me. ‘Are you pissed again?’
‘No, no, I felt faint. Sorry I had to stop the line.’
‘You realise I will have to report this, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry.’
‘If anyone asks, you stuck the pig and then felt faint. You got that?’
‘Yes, I got it.’ I haul myself up onto my feet, the pain subsiding. He hands me my knife.
‘How do you feel now?’
‘Okay, I think.’
‘Good. You may as well take an early break while we reset the process.’
‘I’m sorry about that. Don’t know what happened.’
‘I know what happened. You fucked up again, Palmer, that’s what happened.’ He pulls on the red stop button and initiates the reset sequence. I stare at the pig dangling from the rail. ‘Well, what are you wai
ting for? We are short-handed again today, so I want you back in fifteen minutes. Is that clear?’
I shuffle out of the room. I’m already popping pills like Smarties. It’s time to take some more and try not to knock my coffee over.
43
With a handful of mediocre exam results and a university education that only lasted three weeks, Sadie Raynor was never going to win a Nobel prize. But if there was an equivalent accolade for reading people, she would have a trophy cabinet stacked full of them. And what she could see in Tavener’s face scared the shit out of her.
The more the clock ticked away, the more her blasé facade was crumbling around her well-turned ankles.
Her head was racing with the unknown. She knew about the murder of John Graham and the police had been clear that they wanted to know where she was on that date. But they had also asked her about other dates – had there been other killings?
When Tavener had asked her to provide a sample of her precious hair, she’d freaked out, demanding legal representation. Forty minutes later, she was joined by Hector Cunningham, a duty solicitor, who advised her that it would not look good if she refused to provide the required ten strands of hair.
‘Fucking ten?’ She had exploded. Cunningham shrugged his shoulders. Tavener left with the hair strands in an evidence pouch.
She had been at the station now for four hours. A neighbour was going to pick up the kids from school if she wasn’t back in time, and the way this was going, that seemed highly likely. Tavener appeared in the interview room with another coffee.
‘Here,’ he said, placing the corrugated paper cup in front of her. She looked up, the glamour was fading fast.
‘How much longer?’ she asked, picking up the drink, her hand trembling.
‘I can’t say.’
‘Detective, you can see this is causing Ms Raynor considerable distress. Do you know how long you are going to detain my client?’ Cunningham had a deep gruff voice out of keeping with his slight frame.
‘I don’t know, as soon as I do–’