by Mike Craven
He didn’t know how much Towler had told them, but he’d go through it all again from the start. He pinned up a selection of crime scene and post-mortem pictures. The mood changed instantly. That was the first time most of them had seen the victim.
‘We have a white female found in a hole at the crime scene most of you were at yesterday. Matt and I have just come back from the PM and we can confirm what you’ll no doubt have heard on the grapevine. She was killed by a single gunshot to the back of the head. It’s likely the gun was pressed against her skull then fired, execution style. No spray and pray here.’
He paused while they digested what he’d said.
‘We’re working on an interim theory that it was an easily concealed, small-calibre weapon based on the entrance wound, but we’ll know more tomorrow. So remember your firearms procedures when you’re closing in on suspects.’
‘The victim has had extensive cosmetic surgery and our working theory is that she was trying to drastically change her appearance for reasons unknown. Possibly she was hiding from someone. Our number one priority therefore is identifying her. Until we know who she is, everything else’ll be a nightmare.’
‘You want her picture released, boss?’ Jo Skelton asked.
Fluke thought about it before saying, ‘No, Jo, not until we understand who she was hiding from. We can’t predict the consequences of releasing it just yet.’
‘We’re looking at a pro,’ Towler added. ‘He seems to have been unlucky with a junkie tramp seeing him dump the body, but everything else seems to have been well executed, pardon my pun.’
‘Matt’s right, we think it was well planned. It’s possible it had been rehearsed. It’s also possible she wasn’t killed in Cumbria, had never been to Cumbria, that the killer doesn’t live in Cumbria and has already left the country.’
He took his time to look at the team, all faces pointed his way. A daunting task that was going to consume their lives over the next few days had been laid out before them. Some looked eager and some resigned to the long slog. Others looked apprehensive.
‘Now, before Matt does the tasking, I will say one thing, and if you ask me outside this room, I’ll deny it. Take my warning about personal safety seriously. I’m convinced we are looking for a professional killer.’
Fluke thought Chambers was a dick but he was technically in charge of FMIT and therefore had the right to be kept up to date. He made his way up the stairs to his office. It didn’t occur to him that Chambers wouldn’t be there; he wasn’t called the ‘Eternal Flame’ for nothing – he never went out. Fluke was just about to knock when his phone vibrated in his pocket, letting him know he’d a text message. He pulled it out, wondering if it was from Michelle. Although he was glad it was finally over, it had been a sad way to end it.
But the text wasn’t from Michelle, it was from Alan Vaughn.
Positive ID on the fingerprint on the coke can, boss.
Fluke turned round and left. This was important, Chambers could be briefed anytime.
When Fluke got back to the incident room, Alan Vaughn passed him the results of IDENT 1, the national automated fingerprint system that all police forces are connected to.
‘No doubt, it’s him. The prints SOCO lifted were excellent quality. They got another nine hits for him from inside the cabin as well.’
‘Darren Ackley. Who’s he?’
Vaughn handed him a thin file. Fluke knew it would be thicker by the end of the day as intel was added.
‘Some scrote over in Whitehaven. There’s a local DC who’ll meet you and Matt at the station,’ Vaughn said. ‘Seems she works with those involved in the sex trade.’
‘He’s a rent boy?’ Fluke was surprised. He’d been expecting an everyday junkie. A rent boy was exotic for Cumbria.
‘“Survival sex worker”, she calls him.’
Fluke grunted. Sex worker, gigolo, rent boy or survival sex worker. He was his only witness to a murder. ‘She know where to find him?’
‘You’d fucking think so, wouldn’t you. But they haven’t got a clue, useless bastards,’ said a voice from behind him.
‘You up for a drive, Matt?’ Fluke asked, without turning round.
Half an hour later they were on the road heading to Whitehaven. Normally Fluke would have asked the officer who knew Ackley to come to HQ, but as the day was probably going to be spent in West Cumbria anyway, they decided to drive out.
Towler drove so Fluke could read the Police National Computer and SLEUTH intelligence on Darren Ackley.
PNC showed a few convictions, mainly shop theft. He was twenty-five and all his convictions had come in the previous four years – when his addiction started, in all likelihood.
The other printout was more interesting. While PNC recorded arrests and convictions, SLEUTH recorded intelligence.
As someone who worked in the sex trade, the intelligence on Ackley was impressive. Any sighting of him, any time he was searched, who he was with, which cars he was in, where he living, it was all there.
Fluke stopped reading as they passed Bassenthwaite Lake. He looked to his left and saw the Bishop’s Stone, seven hundred feet up Barf Mountain. It was one of Fluke’s favourite stories and was typical of why he loved Cumbria so much. The tale of how the Bishop of Derry in 1783 drunkenly bet locals in the pub he could ride his donkey to the top of the mountain was legendary. The seven-feet-high whitewashed stone marked how far he’d climbed before he fell to his death. A smaller stone at the base of the mountain marked where he was buried.
Fluke turned back to the file as they passed Bishop’s Stone and headed towards Cockermouth, his old stomping ground. ‘You read this, Matt?’
‘Skimmed it. Why?’
‘There’s nothing for the last two weeks. Seems to have dropped off the grid. I reckon he’s been in that site office since then.’
Towler paused. ‘Yeah, I’ll buy that,’ he said. ‘He’ll be shitting himself now, though. He won’t be back tonight. He’s not gonna be easy to find.’
‘We’ll get some local help,’ Fluke said.
He grunted. ‘A day spent chasing a rent boy round West Cumbria,’ he replied. ‘It’s the fucking glamour I like in this job.’
They arrived at Whitehaven an hour after they’d left Carlisle. The police station was in the centre of town, only a few hundred yards from where Derek Bird started the public part of his killing spree. They drove into the courtyard and parked up. DC Helen Douglass was waiting to meet them. Neither of them knew her. They both got out and introduced themselves.
‘Is this related to that body you pulled from the hospital?’ she said immediately. ‘Because there’s no way he did it, sir.’
She was in her early thirties. Short dark hair and a face that was pleasant enough, if slightly too earnest. She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. She walked with a slight limp and Fluke wondered if she was recuperating from something.
Remembering her manners, she offered to take them into the station and make them a cup of tea. Fluke declined for both of them. He needed to crack on. He gestured for her to get into the back of the car then asked if she had any leads.
‘I rang his probation officer before you got here, sir. She says that he’s reported to her a couple of times with someone called McNab. He lives on Pinegrove. Thinks if anyone might know where he is, it’ll be him.’
Towler reversed out the yard. Fluke knew he’d worked this part of the west so would know the infamous Pinegrove Estate well.
Don Holland came to the door and smirked.
‘What’s that prick want?’ Towler said.
‘Ignore him. Come on, let’s get going,’ Fluke replied. Towler edged into the afternoon traffic and they headed towards Pinegrove.
Douglass started telling them about Ackley’s life and how he’d ended up selling his body.
‘I’m going to stop you there, Helen, if you don’t mind,’ Fluke said. ‘I don’t need his life history; I just need to find him. Where’s he going to run to if
he’s not with McNab?’
She looked a little put out but recovered well. Fluke didn’t care. Ackley was a witness in a murder case. The social workers and probation officers could have him back when he’d finished with him.
‘As you know, we’ve not seen him for a few days. He’d normally have been arrested at least once by now for shoplifting. He doesn’t even pretend to browse anymore. Just walks in and runs out. All the security guards and shopkeepers know him.’
‘What do you think’s happened?’
‘Honestly, sir? I think he’s found somewhere safe to spend the nights.’
‘We think we know where he was last night and we think he’ll be in hiding now. Any idea where he’d go if he were in trouble?’
‘There’s no way he can go without scoring. Not even for a day. Even if he was scared, he’d have to go out and get some heroin. And he can’t get it on tick so he’ll have to pay for it somehow.’
‘You think he’s worked for it?’
She paused while she thought. ‘Probably,’ she replied. ‘He’s shite at shoplifting, I know that much.’
Fluke’s phone rang. It was a Penrith number.
‘Boss, it’s Jo. I’m just ringing to let you know that the CCTV was a bust. Copeland Council turned all their cameras off months ago, part of their efficiency savings. We’ll keep going with the house-to-house but there’s been zilch so far. The entrance to the site doesn’t face anything so there’s no reason for people to take any notice.’
‘Okay. Thanks, Jo,’ Fluke said, disappointed but not surprised. ‘Any news on the bullet?’
‘Not yet. It got there no problems but it may take a while. They’re still trying to get something off the smashed mobile, so nothing on that yet either.’
‘Any good news?’
‘Not sure. The lab rang just before and said they had something from the note. There were prints on the cover but they all belonged to the vic. They said they can have a look for what they call ‘indented writing’, basically trying to see what’s been written on the page that had been ripped out. It’s expensive though. They use some sort of electrical bullshit to do it.’
‘What’s wrong with rubbing a pencil over it?’ Fluke asked. ‘Yeah, tell them to go ahead. It’ll probably just be a shopping list or something but even that would be more than we know now about her. How you getting on with the misper list?’
‘Nothing so far. I’ll get onto the lab and tell them to run their test. Oh, and can you ring the bug lady? She says she needs to speak to you.’
The bug lady? Sometimes his lot were so unimaginative. Fluke was intrigued though, he hadn’t expected to hear from Lucy again. One post-mortem looked like it was enough for her; the amount of notes she’d taken would surely be enough for her thesis.
‘Okay, text me her number, I’ll ring her when I get five minutes,’ he said.
‘Will do. Where are you and Matt?’
‘We’ve drawn the short straw, Jo. We’re just about to enter Pinegrove.’
Chapter 11
Fluke knew that Cumbria was a safe county. ‘A safe place to live, work and visit’ was the tagline used by the authorities. There were areas of outstanding natural beauty: the lakes, fells, mountains, Hadrian’s Wall, even parts of the Yorkshire Dales. Picture perfect villages, castles and stately homes. A county that took William Wordsworth’s breath away. A county that inspired Beatrix Potter.
But there was another side to it.
Parts of Cumbria had a lower GDP than the Czech Republic; an underclass carefully hidden from tourists, a culture of violence and fear. Estates with third-generation unemployment. Estates devastated by the decline of industry. Where dealers and loan sharks prospered. Recruiting grounds for the extreme right parties like the BNP and the EDL. Estates bereft of hope.
The notorious Pinegrove Estate was a small island, cast adrift from the town of Whitehaven. It had its own roads in and its own roads out. There was no reason to enter it unless you lived or had business there. It wasn’t a shortcut to anywhere.
Like most of West Cumbria, it had a two-tier social structure: those who enjoyed the inflated wages of the Sellafield nuclear site and those who didn’t. The main feature of the estate seemed to be barbed wire. The back of the pub, the roofs of shops, even some of the houses had it as protection. A broken ghetto, a bleak and miserable existence. The climate of fear was palpable.
Despite this, some of the streets still thrived. Functioning and legally taxed cars were parked outside houses, and gardens were well kept. People got up in the morning and went to work. They raised their families. They bought their council houses. Parts of Pinegrove had genuine community spirit. Residents on the estate tried to lead their lives, if not within the letter of the law, then at least within its spirit.
But there were a minority who had no interest in doing so.
If negativity and resentment could generate electricity then the isolated streets they lived in would have made Sellafield redundant. Those were the streets where every other house had boarded-up windows. Cars rusted. Front lawns went untended. Rubbish was piled on the street, giving the impression parts of Pinegrove had been abandoned. Efforts by Copeland Borough Council to regenerate the area were only partially successful; there were some families who had no interest in the status quo changing. Antisocial behaviour was rife, casual violence the norm. Drugs were openly sold and consumed. Feral children roamed the streets with no adult supervision. The type of estate where some left their doors open while others bolted themselves in at night in terror. Disagreements were settled with baseball bats rather than solicitors. Everyone knew everyone and strangers weren’t tolerated. The worst thing you could be was a ‘grass’, even paedophiles were safer. Police callouts were constant. The chief had long ago directed that no police officer would patrol Pinegrove alone.
‘Welcome to Pinegrove, ladies and gentlemen. The ASBO capital of Cumbria,’ Towler said, as he turned into the estate. ‘Drugs, violence and underage sex. We have it all.’ He paused. ‘Now, where the fuck am I going?’
Douglass didn’t know the estate, so Towler parked up beside an off-licence and got out. There were graffiti-covered steel shutters on the windows despite it being open. Fluke had seen less-fortified police stations in Northern Ireland. He’d never been in the shop before but knew that all the overpriced goods would be locked in cages, nothing being handed over until the owner had the cash in his till.
In less than a minute, Towler was back with directions to Seaview Terrace, the last known address of McNab, and they quickly found it.
The street was quiet. Everyone with a reason to get up had already done so. The rest were still in bed.
‘It’ll be one of these houses here, sir,’ Douglass said as they were near the middle of the wide road. ‘They take the numbers off the houses to make it difficult for us and bailiffs to find them. Even those with nothing to hide do it. They’d get called a grass if they didn’t.’
It was obvious that Seaview Terrace was one of the poorer streets on the estate. About a third of the houses had windows that were boarded up and were obviously derelict. A third had windows without curtains; the remaining third had curtains that were twitching. Fluke knew their presence hadn’t gone unnoticed. A group of young children walked up and started looking over the car. Towler lowered his window, flashed his warrant card and said, ‘Fuck off.’ They backed away but didn’t disappear.
‘Right,’ Towler said getting out. ‘Let’s knock on a few doors, then.’
‘We’ll need uniform backup before we can do anything, Sergeant. I’ll call the station, get a van out,’ Douglass said.
‘Don’t worry, Douglass,’ said Fluke, smiling, as he followed Towler out of the car. ‘He’s his own backup.’
For a minute, he thought she was going to stay in the car but eventually she joined them on the pavement, looking nervous.
‘Right, let’s try here,’ Towler said, walking up the first path and hammering on the door. There was no
answer. He kept banging, looking round to see if anything else was stirring.
The occupants of the next house along opened their door a fraction to see where the noise was coming from. Towler was there in an instant, jumping over the neglected fence without touching it.
‘You McNab?’ he shouted through the door, jamming his foot in the crack to stop it closing.
Fluke, having not moved from the pavement, watched on amused. Towler was in his element. While he had finesse when needed, this was what he liked doing. Getting down and dirty. Fluke didn’t hear what the person behind the door replied, but Towler didn’t like it.
‘Wrong answer, dickhead,’ he said, forcing the door wide open and walking in.
Thirty seconds later he was back out.
‘McNab’s at thirty-three, boss. Lives there with some local lass, has done for a couple of months,’ Towler said. ‘This house here is seven, so it should be twelve doors up if the evens are on the other side.’
‘Wanker,’ came the shout from the door behind him.
Towler ignored it.
They left the car where it was and walked up the street, counting the houses as they went. After a short discussion about whether they’d counted correctly, they arrived at a dilapidated semi-detached. The front lawn was overrun with weeds, dog faeces and empty cans. An old sofa sat on the grass underneath the window. There was a headless child’s doll on the path. Towler kicked it into the garden and they walked up to the front door together.
Towler knocked and they heard movement inside, and some whispered talking.