Bad to the Bone

by Tony J. Forder

  Still not in the least bit tired, Bliss’s last port of call was to drive past the lake. No roads led directly to it, though fishermen and dog walkers like himself knew where to park in order to get close enough to make the lake a worthwhile choice for a little relaxation.

  But at a price.

  The city had once reeked of sugar beet being processed in a huge factory along Oundle Road, but when the production side closed down, the local population realised that it had merely been disguising the awful stench pouring out of the Pedigree Pet Foods factory. On a warm day, the combination of that in addition to the landfill upon which the Hampton township had been built brought tears to the eyes.

  From up on the parkway, the still water of the lake looked black and forbidding, visible now thanks only to a cloudless sky and low moon. Also visible, Peterborough’s own version of Spaghetti Junction, a bizarre new series of intersections that looked like the web of a drunken spider. Bliss continued westbound past the lake, slipped off the parkway and headed back the way he had come towards the city centre once more. It was as he drove past a large sign and his eyes followed a new road leading to a huge, low building, that the reason behind the removal of Jane Doe’s remains came to him in a single clear thought.

  Chapter 12

  It was just after eight on Friday morning. Bliss caught up with Chandler at her desk as the DC was finger pecking the keyboard of her computer. He set a cup of coffee down on a spiral-bound notepad, then placed an iced doughnut alongside her drink. Bliss waited for her to look up. She made him wait just long enough to make a point, but after a brief glance at the peace offering, Penny eventually turned her attention to him. She said nothing, but Bliss saw understanding in her eyes.

  ‘No, the breakfast is not my way of apologising,’ he said. ‘I can do that for myself. I’m really very sorry, Pen. I was totally out of order yesterday, my rant was a complete overreaction, and I hope you accept my apology.’

  Chandler took a pull from her cup and a bite out of the doughnut before responding with a tentative smile. ‘You’re forgiven,’ she told him. ‘And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for doubting you.’

  ‘Good. That’s that done with then.’

  ‘Not quite.’ Her eyes widened expectantly. Clearly she wanted to know what was causing his apparent imbalance if booze was not the culprit.

  ‘Now is not the right time,’ he told her. ‘We’ll have a chat over lunch or a drink after work.’

  ‘How d’you know I don’t have a date?’

  ‘Since when do you date?’

  ‘Remember the priest?’

  Bliss grinned. ‘Oh, him. I thought he was imaginary.’

  She pulled a face and blew a raspberry. A familiar reaction. She stood and they started walking together towards the incident room.

  ‘I’m keen to know what the team has to tell us this morning,’ she said. ‘It sounded as if these triple-nine calls could be a valuable lead.’

  ‘They’re our only lead,’ Bliss remarked, shaking his head. Then, injecting a little more nonchalance than he felt, he went on, ‘By the way, how was your meeting with Emily? I was wondering if she came up with anything from the Bretton site.’

  ‘I did manage to find a half hour with her. Unfortunately she had nothing to add to what she’d already given us. She did some tests on the soil, but doesn’t believe it’ll throw up any surprises. She volunteered to study the remains in more detail and take a look at the results of the tests she carried out that were sent for analysis. I told her I thought the official forensic people would probably become involved at this point, but that her insight into local conditions might still prove useful.’

  Nodding, Bliss said, ‘Good. For the benefit of Sykes we will have to run things by the book, but there’s no harm in having Emily in our pockets as well. See if you can hook her up with forensics and get them in the same room when analysis is complete. Also, it’d be good to have a written report confirming everything she’s told us so far.’

  ‘I’ll do my best. We should really offer some payment.’

  ‘That’s fine. I’ll authorise it.’

  ‘You think those bones still have something to tell us?’

  ‘I hope we don’t have to rely on that, but I’m not ruling out the possibility.’

  ‘She asked about you. Wondered how you were. We chatted for a while. I think you should call her.’

  ‘Who? Jane Doe?’

  ‘You know who I mean.’

  Bliss felt himself flush, feeling ridiculously pleased with himself. ‘Oh, give it a rest, Pen. Anyway, she’s probably got a partner.’

  ‘Partner, eh? So you noticed the lack of a wedding ring?’

  ‘I’m a detective. And if she’s as interested in me as you seem to think she is, DC Chandler, she will have noticed that I do wear a ring.’

  ‘True. But you’re no longer married.’

  He shook his head. ‘Yes, but she doesn’t know that.’

  ‘Maybe she does.’

  ‘You told her?’ Bliss didn’t know whether to be annoyed or pleased. He decided it wasn’t worth making a fuss over.

  ‘I might’ve said something along those lines,’ Chandler admitted. Her expression became serious. ‘But only the basics. No details. I wouldn’t ever go that far.’

  For that, at least, he was grateful. Penny was one of only three people who knew all the squalid details surrounding his wife’s murder, but those secrets were locked away in a dark place he had no desire to revisit right now.

  ‘It really doesn’t matter, anyway. I’m too busy for a relationship,’ Bliss said, ending the conversation as the doors to the Major Inquiry Room loomed up on their left.

  The room was full of suits and uniforms mingling together, and the hubbub of chatter died away as Bliss and Chandler entered. Smoke coiled loosely up towards the ceiling, creating a dense fug. Some of the team were munching on their breakfast or sipping hot drinks. Bliss saw tired faces that were nonetheless eager and expectant. It was what he’d hoped to see.

  He began the briefing by informing the team of his early morning insight. ‘We’ve been looking for a good enough reason for someone to dig up human remains and relocate them. The best reason of all is that their original location might have become compromised. Ruling out chance discovery, we had to consider something more organised. I happened to drive by the lake over at Fletton last night, and something obvious leapt right out at me. I think news that the area was being redeveloped in order to site the IKEA storage and distribution warehouse might just have be reason enough.’

  ‘Of course,’ one of the female uniforms said, snapping her fingers. ‘I knew there was something about that area. That IKEA warehouse being built was the bane of my life with all the traffic jams it caused. The timing is spot on as well, I would think.’

  Bliss nodded. ‘It is. We can figure some time between the announcement at which the redevelopment of the land was made public, which was late in two thousand and one, to the time when work first began the following year. Still a considerable window of opportunity, but narrowed down all the same from where we began. Now, I understand someone has information for us about a reported accident in Fletton.’

  It was DC Mia Strong who got to her feet. Called into the team late yesterday, it was she who had first latched on to the details. Small, thin, blonde and busty, Strong was known around the squad as ‘Cuffs and Baton Barbie’. Few fellow officers had the courage to call her that to her face, and those who dared were usually ridiculed unmercifully in return. Like Penny Chandler she was slight of build, but unlike her colleague, Mia was a ticking time bomb in a Marks & Spencer suit. A good, intelligent officer, Mia was pushing Chandler all the way in their personal duel for promotion. Today her hair was tied up and clipped neatly in place, causing her, Bliss thought, to look like some porn-seeker’s ultimate librarian or schoolteacher fantasy. Not that he knew anything about that sort of thing, of course.

  ‘We have everything related to the incident now
, boss,’ Strong said, offering her usual warm smile. She waved a handful of A4 sheets in the air.

  Standing to one side, Bliss said, ‘Well, come up here and reveal all, DC Strong. Broad strokes only at first, please.’

  She did so, accompanied by a few muted whistles and cheers. Mia turned and faced the squad, her confidence impressing Bliss. ‘At nine thirty-seven p.m. on Tuesday twenty-sixth of June, nineteen ninety, the first call was logged. A Mr Malcolm Twist reported hearing an accident close to his home in Garrick Walk. He gave few other details. A minute later, Mr Gordon McAndrew called in a similar report, only he described hearing a fast-moving vehicle brake hard and then strike something, followed by a cry or a scream. He was living in hostel accommodation along the High Street on the corner of Fleet Way, and when he looked out of the window he saw a car slewed across the street, and the body of what he thought was a woman lying in the gutter.

  ‘Officers arriving at the scene found no sign of an accident, but Mr McAndrew was waiting for them. In his statement he says that having made the triple-nine call, he went immediately downstairs and out to the road. He found no car and no victim. The officers inspected the scene, but found no obvious indicators. A report in the case file suggests that Mr McAndrew had been drinking, and that either he didn’t actually see what he reported, or that the accident wasn’t as bad as it had appeared to the witness. The officers did spend a little bit of time door-to-door canvassing, but there were no further witnesses. The log and crime file were left open for a week or so, and then closed due to lack of information.’

  Strong lowered the sheets of printed paper she had been reading from. Bliss blew out some air and nodded. It seemed to him that the case had been closed a little too quickly, but he wasn’t about to second-guess the investigating officers at this stage. He made a mental note to come back to it.

  ‘Thanks for that, DC Strong.’ Bliss switched his attention back to the teams. ‘Only two witnesses to an accident at shortly after nine thirty on a summer’s night. Why so few?’

  ‘That was covered in an accompanying note from an attending officer,’ one of the suits replied. ‘England were playing Belgium that night in the football World Cup. The game went into extra time, so the streets would have been deserted. That’s probably also why other residents didn’t hear it. Mr McAndrew, a Scot, had no interest in the game and had been lying in his room reading a newspaper and putting away a few cans of Special Brew.’

  Bliss ran a hand across his chin. His shave that morning had been cursory. There had been no spins upon waking, but he had felt a little unsteady for several minutes. ‘All right. Does anyone here think this report is coincidental? That the attending officers were correct in their assumption?’

  No hands were raised, nothing was said. Bliss ran his gaze over the squad.

  ‘We know the victim wasn’t killed by her injuries, and Jane Doe’s condition suggests the blow from being struck by a vehicle wasn’t about to become life threatening. However, it may have been more than enough to temporarily disable her. If we follow this theory through, we can assume that in the time it took Mr McAndrew to place his call and then get outside, whoever ran our victim down managed to scoop her up and force her into the car before driving off. It wouldn’t have taken long.’

  ‘Sounds about right, boss,’ Strong said, smoothing down the pleats of her skirt. Dunne and Chandler, flanking Bliss, nodded their agreement.

  Bliss took a moment. His gaze flitted across to the room’s largest window, beads of rain drumming gently against the tinted glass. He shivered once, chilled by the sight. Yet warmth touched the pit of his stomach, because for the first time he felt as if the squad was getting a grip on the inquiry.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, nodding and managing to find a thin smile. ‘So, I can see four clear lines of investigation to pursue: one, assuming our victim was taken directly to where she was killed and buried, where is the closest access point from the original scene? Two, let’s wind in those MisPer reports to cover two weeks either side of June twenty-sixth. Let’s not assume Jane Doe only went missing the night she was killed. Widen the search by a week either side if you need to and keep on going until you get something positive. Three, let’s try and contact both Mr Twist and Mr McAndrew, our two witnesses. Finally, a word with the attending officers wouldn’t go amiss. I know it was a long time ago, but who knows what they might recall?’

  ‘McAndrew was living in a hostel at the time,’ one of the team reminded him.

  ‘Correct. So there’s every chance he got a council or housing association place sometime afterwards. Check with the hostel first, and then the council.’

  ‘I’ll get the actions written up as soon as I can,’ Chandler chipped in. She looked across at him. ‘Do you want to put all our efforts into this, or do you still want a team working on the Bretton backwards angle?’

  He gave that some thought. It would be too easy to have everyone chasing down the same line that might yet lead them nowhere. Against that, having everyone working on the fresh actions would cut down on time. But after so many years, would a few hours or a few days matter?

  ‘Trim the other team back to four officers,’ he said eventually. ‘Everyone else works on new items. Is that everything, Mia?’

  DC Strong nodded. ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Then let’s get cracking, everybody. Mia, let me have your notes before you go.’

  She handed them to him and rejoined the team. As everyone in the room broke into a cacophony of renewed enthusiasm, Bliss ran his eye over the sheets of paper. Mia hadn’t missed anything salient. When he came to the final entry, a list of further details relating to the incident report, his breath caught in his throat and he felt as if his legs might buckle.

  ‘Jesus,’ he whispered.

  Penny Chandler, still standing close by as she wrote on one of the boards, peered hard at him. ‘Boss?’

  In a quiet voice he said, ‘We’ll discuss it in my office.’

  ‘Discuss what?’

  ‘Bide your time.’

  She grinned and said, ‘Ooh, a surprise. I like surprises.’

  Bliss shook his head. ‘Not this one you won’t.’

  Chapter 13

  They sat facing each other across his desk, office door closed, blinds pulled on the windows. The Pissed-Ometer was set to ‘Grumpy’. Whoever the joker was, they’d guessed wrong today. Bliss’s mood was up a notch or two from that.

  ‘Come on, boss,’ Chandler implored him. ‘You’ve kept me in suspense long enough. Tell me what’s wrong.’

  Bliss tapped a finger on the report DC Strong had given him. ‘Two officers attended the scene of the reported accident that night in June nineteen ninety.’

  ‘I know. That much Mia told us.’

  ‘One of those officers was Bernard Weller.’

  Chandler’s eyes grew wide. She said nothing, simply sucked in some air through clenched teeth.

  ‘Yeah. That was my first reaction.’ Bliss shook his head. ‘But you don’t know the half of it.’

  He spent the next ten minutes filling Chandler in on everything he and Dunne had discovered during their visit to Lincoln and Spalding. Even as he related the events piece by piece, so Bliss was growing increasingly uncomfortable with how it was panning out. All at once he felt old and weary.

  ‘So Bernard Weller sees the item on the news, and shortly afterwards calls you to set up a meeting,’ Chandler said. She shrugged expansively. ‘He obviously knew something relevant relating to Jane Doe.’

  ‘Not obviously,’ Bliss cautioned. ‘But extremely likely, that’s for sure. And then the next day his car is found overturned in a field, Weller dead inside it. What does that suggest to you?’

  ‘That someone didn’t want him to make that meeting. That someone silenced him.’ Chandler gave a worried shake of the head. ‘But the RTA crew say it was an accident, yes?’

  ‘They do, but the first officer on the scene, Glazier, he did think it was odd that there had been no witnesse
s on such a busy road. With me and Bobby there posing difficult questions, he began to ponder whether Weller had been helped off the road at the most opportune moment. He’s going to arrange a second inspection of the wreckage and the scene, see if there’s anything they might have missed.’

  ‘You say it’s not obvious that Weller knew something about Jane Doe, and I can understand why you thought that initially. But now?’ she leaned forward and spread the fingers of her left hand over the report sheets. ‘Now that you know Weller was one of the officers who attended the scene of the accident in Fletton, surely you no longer have any doubts?’

  ‘Alleged accident,’ Bliss reminded her, waggling a raised finger. ‘You’re forgetting everything I’ve taught you. Remember, we don’t just look at this from our angle, we have to see it with regard to obtaining a prosecution. For a moment, forget what we suspect, and concentrate on hard evidence.’

  ‘That’s easy enough,’ Chandler scoffed. ‘There is none.’

  ‘Precisely. Everything is circumstantial at the moment. That’s something we have to address.’ Bliss looked hard at her, hoping she would see in his eyes where he was headed.

  It took only a moment before Penny put back her head and groaned. ‘You’re not going to make this official, are you?’

  ‘No. Not at the moment.’

  ‘But you know you have to. With the greatest respect, boss, your suspicions should be reported right now.’