by Mike Craven
Ackley’s concept of time caused them problems. He told them what he saw: a car had woken him, he’d watched as a man walked onto the site with a torch before returning to get something from the boot. But he had no idea what time it had been, only that it was still dark. Towler pressed him for more details but it was clear that fear was the only thing he was remembering.
‘How’d you know it was a body he got out the boot?’ Fluke asked. ‘We know you didn’t go down and check.’
‘I just knew. What else could it have been, man? Middle o’ the fuckin’ night, he turns up with a shovel and torch. What did you think he was fuckin’ doing, planting a tree? Nah, man, it was a body. Anyway, it sounded like one when he grabbed it from the car and it hit the deck.’
‘Then what,’ said Towler, ignoring the tree remark.
‘The fucker picked it up, didn’t he? Carried it t’ hole, threw it in, shovelled shite on top for ten minutes then got back in his car and fucked off.’
‘Where were you?’
Ackley looked at Towler like he was an idiot. ‘I was in the office, like. Haven’t you been fucking listening?’
Fluke hid a smile.
‘I meant, were you hiding the whole time or did you get a proper look, dickhead? In other words, are you guessing what he did or did you see it?’ Towler growled. ‘And if you speak to me like that again in front of my boss, I’ll snap your fucking thumbs.’
Ackley looked at Towler and then to Fluke for some help. He didn’t get it. ‘No, I seen it all. I stuck me head back up after a while and when I did, he was carrying the bag in a fireman’s lift. Still had the torch on, that’s how come I could see. Fucking shitting mesel’ the whole time, mind.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Big fucker. Maybe not tall as you, but not far off. Had a suit on, I think. It was pitchers, like, so I cud only see an outline.’
‘Car?’
‘Dunno. Not mad for cars, never ’ad one. Me mate Macca’s the one for cars. He’d tell ya what it was from the outline, nee bother like.’
‘Macca?’
‘Me mate. Davey McNab. I went t’ him to get a loan like. Was gonna fuck off to Newcastle for a bit till it calmed down. He could only spot us a fiver, like. Not enough for a bus and not enough for a bag o’ smack. Fucking cuntstruck he is. Scared shitless of that woman he’s with. She said no t’ lending us the cash, like. I could hear ’er.’
‘So you went to Tesco?’
‘Aye, it was the only thing I could think of. Knew I could get mesel’ locked up if I took summat big enough. Had to wait by the door or the fat cunt of a guard wouldn’t ’ave caught us.’
‘Why’d you not come to us? Or to your probation officer, for that matter?’
‘Them cunts. What the point? They do nowt for ya. “Piss into this, Ackley, do this, Ackley, stop having unprotected sex, Ackley, stop taking drugs, Ackley.” Fucking knobs the lot of them. I tell you, probation can go fu—’
‘The car?’ Towler said, cutting him off.
‘I dunno. It was a fuckin’ car. Had a boot rather than a hatchback, I suppose. Biggish. Looked like a dark colour.’
Towler realised that all was he was going to get. ‘Why’d you leave the note?’
His demeanour changed. Fluke could have sworn there was colour rising onto his pale cheeks. He doubled up again. He seemed to be shaking again. Fluke thought that the stomach cramps might cause him to vomit. But he was wrong, he wasn’t cramping up. He was crying again.
Ackley looked up. His eyes were red and wet. There were tears on his cheeks. ‘I’m a piece of shit,’ he said, sobbing. ‘I mean look at the clip of us. Nee family, nee friends apart from Macca, and he’s a cock most o’ the time. Been on the streets over ten years. When I was larle, I was getting two hundred quid a go. Now I’m lucky to get a fiver. Who’s gonna give a shit when I die? Fucking no one, that’s who. Who’s gonna call the police when someone puts me in a hole in the ground?’
‘It just seemed like the right thing to do?’ Towler said, far gentler.
Ackley nodded.
After that, there didn’t seem to be anything else left to discuss. As they left the interview room, Fluke turned and looked at Ackley, waiting there for a prison officer to collect him. Shivering in his own private hell.
Fluke didn’t think he’d seen anything so sad in his life.
***
Chapter 17
When Fluke got back to their car and retrieved his phone, there were missed calls and a text. Both from Skelton.
He called back and she answered on the first ring. ‘Jo, what’s up?’
‘We’ve got a hit on the E-fit, boss.’
Fluke could hear excitement in her voice. ‘Christ, that was quick. I’ve only been gone four hours,’ he said.
‘I sent it off to Whitehaven and Carlisle first thing. Carlisle CID got it just in time to get it onto the territorial policing team shift change briefing. I thought, if we got it out early enough and followed up with detectives later, we would cover a lot more ground. See if there was anything immediate.’
‘And there was.’
‘Yes, sir. John Watt & Son. She was there a week ago.’
‘You’re joking? In Carlisle?’ His pulse quickened.
‘You know it, sir?’
Fluke couldn’t believe it. Other than Bruccianis, where he bought his Cuban cigars, Watts – as it known locally – was probably his favourite shop in Carlisle. He bought coffee from there if he was ever passing and knew the owners well. Although they would have to confirm it with a proper photograph of the victim, it was a stunning breakthrough. ‘Know it, I used to shop there.’
He felt a buzz of excitement, the first he’d felt since finding the body. It tingled in his veins and kick-started his brain. Skelton was from Ulverston and Fluke knew something she probably didn’t. ‘Watts is on Bank Street,’ he told her. ‘That place is crawling with CCTV. If it’s her, we have a place to start. Get Longy back in. I’ll need him to work the cameras. We may even be able to track her to her house.’
Poor Jiao-long. Only back twelve hours and he’s stuck with another major task. Couldn’t be helped, though. He was their best chance of finding her among the city’s cameras.
They arrived back at the incident room to find it full. Everyone was waiting for Fluke, waiting to be tasked. They knew the investigation had taken a turn and would speed up. Before they’d been casting their net wide, now there was some focus. If they could find her house, they could start piecing her life together.
Find out how the victim lived and you’ll find out how they died.
A mantra drummed into him by an instructor on his SIO course.
Fluke went straight into tasking. ‘Longy, if we confirm she was at Watts, I want you on the CCTV. Go and base yourself wherever you need to be; probably at the council’s control room, initially. How many people will you need?’
He’d obviously been thinking about that as he answered immediately. ‘Just me to start with, boss. If I find her and she disappears, I may need help tracking down other sources of film.’
‘Okay. Hopefully we’ll get a description of what she was wearing last time she was there as well,’ Fluke said.
Jiao-long left to make the arrangements. Fluke knew he’d go straight to the council and, despite their objections, take over their suite. He knew his way round their machines better than they did.
Fluke remembered something. ‘Longy,’ he shouted to get him back. ‘She may live in a flat.’
He briefly explained to everyone the theory on why she was shot at point-blank range. There was no dissent, which Fluke took as a good sign.
With Jiao-long gone, he continued with the rest of the tasks. As he did, Skelton handed something out to everyone. When he got his, Fluke saw it was a business card printed with the numbers found with the body. The logo on the back told him they were from a local printer. She must have paid for them herself. He was impressed. Carrying it about in your wallet or purse
meant it was always to hand.
‘Right, Matt and I will go to Watts. See what we can get from them.’
He stood, ready to leave. Everyone did the same, eager to get going. A break in the case was better than a double shot of espresso for getting the energy levels up. ‘Jo’s also just handed out some cards with those numbers on. Longy came back with zilch which means the answer’s not on the Internet. I want you thinking about this every spare minute you get. Spread them around. They must mean something to someone,’ he told them all.
He made a show of putting his in his wallet and noticed most of them did the same. He had a sudden thought and called Alan Vaughn back. ‘Go to the university. See if there’s a cryptographer in the maths department who might be able to help with them.’
‘Does Cumbria University even have a maths department?’ Vaughn asked.
‘Alan, go to the university and find out if they have a maths department,’ Fluke said, to laughter. ‘If they don’t, go across to Newcastle University. I know they do.’
‘Will do, boss.’
With Jiao-long coming up blank, he knew that Vaughn was his best bet. He was as dogged as they came and would keep going until he had something. As strange as he was, Fluke liked Vaughn. By rights, he should have been a detective sergeant but refused promotions so he could stay with FMIT. That alone made him a star as far as he was concerned, but Vaughn was also a superb detective. He was a fiercely private individual, unmarried and still lived with his parents, retired vets, in a big house outside Kendal. For reasons Fluke had never been able to get to the bottom of Vaughn seemed to dislike all forms of physical contact; handshakes, hugs, even pats on the back were avoided. He always wore long sleeves, even in the height of summer, just in case someone else’s bare arm brushed his.
As well as a being a solid detective, he was also an excellent profiler with an uncanny knack for looking at crime scenes and knowing whether motivations were driven by anger, revenge or sex. He was rarely wrong. Alan Vaughn just thought about things a little differently to everyone else.
Just another oddbod in a team of oddbods. Fluke admired them all.
‘What about the cosmetic surgery lead, boss?’ Skelton asked. ‘Do you want me to follow that up?’
‘No, I’ll do it straight after I’ve been to Watts,’ he said. ‘No point everyone going into Carlisle. You stay here, keep HOLMES up to date and coordinate the intel as it comes in. I want to know everything in real time.’
With the major tasks allocated, Fluke walked back to his office to check his emails.
There was nothing on his system that needed his urgent attention. He leaned back in his chair and stared out of the window. The weather was changing. The light was poorer than it had been that morning. Rain was on its way. Fluke didn’t mind. His office view encompassed fields and sheep. He liked the rain. It gave the landscape a mystical quality.
Without realising he had, he’d removed the card from his wallet the card Skelton had given him. He’d been shuffling it between his fingers like a Vegas dealer. He stopped and studied it.
2.3 – 8.7 – 92
It wasn’t on the Internet. Fluke knew if it had been, Jiao-long would have found it. Or if it was on and he hadn’t found it, then it wasn’t meant to be found. He was good, but there were some closed systems he couldn’t access.
Instinctively, Fluke thought it would be something normal rather than something exotic. Something obvious. Something that made you cry out, ‘of course’.
2.3 – 8.7 – 92
The key to it all? Or just random numbers that were going to cost the taxpayer thousands of pounds in police hours as they tried to track them down?
Fluke stared at them again. Were they familiar? He thought they might be, but had no idea why. He thought the most likely result was a password to something online and if it was, they may never find out. He took one last look, but they stubbornly refused to reveal their secrets. A noise outside, getting louder, told him that Towler was on his way.
Time to go and get some coffee.
John Watt & Son had been selling coffee in one form or other in Carlisle for over one hundred and fifty years. Starting off as general grocers in 1865, they traded for nearly 130 years until the challenge of out-of-town supermarkets forced them to change to tea and coffee specialists. They were more recently known for stocking coffees and teas that were simply not available anywhere else in the county. They had a small café in the shop and Fluke often stayed for a piece of cake and a chat with the owner if he had time.
The journey from HQ took less than half an hour. Towler double-parked on Bank Street, walked over to a traffic warden, who was just starting the street, and explained who they were. The man didn’t seem to want to get into an argument and Towler was soon back.
‘Sorted,’ he said.
It was a strange street. There were half a dozen high street banks, half a dozen charity shops and a pet shop. In Fluke’s experience charity shops and banks never normally rubbed shoulders together. It was a contradiction. The poor and the organisations that made them poor.
And right in the middle was Watts.
Fluke and Towler entered.
The smell hit Fluke immediately. The scent of exotic coffee beans, acrid espressos and cinnamon lattes mingling to create a heady bouquet that made his mouth water.
The bank of jarred beans behind the counter told you everything you needed to know about Watts. Over a hundred varieties, enough to tempt the fussiest connoisseur. Beans from Brazil, Vietnam, Peru and Ethiopia. A United Nations of coffee growers. The day’s special offer was from Costa Rica. The big glass jar sat on the top of the rich mahogany counter next to the till and a selection of fresh cakes under a glass cloche.
The huge grinder whirred as another customer had their beans freshly prepared, ready to be taken home and enjoyed later. Fluke hadn’t bought a bag of Watts coffee since he’d moved and he vowed to stock up before he left.
Fluke didn’t recognize the woman serving behind the counter.
‘Hello, Avison. We were wondering if it’d be you who’d turn up,’ said a cheerful voice from his left.
Fluke turned to see where the voice came from. A middle-aged woman was in the café section, serving a group of office workers. They were all wearing the same name badge; civil servants by the look of things. They looked glad to be out of their office. He knew she’d worked here for years but wasn’t the owner. She seemed to know every customer by name and was never so busy she couldn’t stop and chat.
‘Hello, Barbara. How are you? Was it uniform you spoke to earlier?’ Fluke asked.
‘I’ll come over,’ she said. ‘We can go in the back.’
After they’d settled in the small office, she answered. ‘Yes, it was me initially. I’ve seen the poor girl a few times but it was Kath who saw her last.’
‘I’ll need to speak to Kath as well,’ Fluke said.
‘She’s gone home, Avison,’ she said. ‘She was a bit upset.’
‘I’m sorry, Barbara, I really am. But we’ll need to speak to her today, it’s very important.’
‘I made sure she wrote everything down, though,’ Barbara added triumphantly, pointing at a piece of paper.
Fluke felt a surge of excitement. Excellent.
She’d need to be interviewed later but all he wanted was something to get Jiao-long started.
‘Right, we’ll get onto that in a minute.’ From his conference folder, Fluke produced a photo of the victim’s face taken at the post-mortem, and put it upside down on the table. ‘Barbara, I want to show you a picture and it’s quite upsetting. But I’d like you to look at it nonetheless.’
She smiled. ‘I was a nurse for twenty years, Avison. If you need to show me a picture of a dead body, go right ahead.’
A sense of relief flooded through him. Getting someone to actually look at the photo had never been a given. He turned over the picture. A glossy photo of the victim’s face, ghostly white under the post-mortem lights, stared u
p at them both. ‘This woman shops here?’ he said.
Barbara took a pair of reading glasses from her cardigan pocket and picked up the photo. She didn’t appear fazed as she stared at it. ‘Well, not anymore she doesn’t judging by this, but yes, she did. Nice girl, quiet,’ she replied.
Fluke was prepared to accept that as a positive sighting. He had a place for Jiao-long to start. ‘We don’t yet know who she is. Is there anything you can help us with? How long as she shopped with you?’
‘Not long, a couple of months, maybe. But she was in every week.’
‘Can you remember anything about her?’
‘Not really, she didn’t stick out. Always paid cash. Always bought a three-bean blend. One hundred fifty grams of South American Mountain for flavour, One-fifty of Sumatran for strength and two hundred grams of Costa Rican for depth. Always the same, even when we had specials on. Always the same amount, a five-hundred-gram bag. Never had the beans ground in-store. I assume she had her own grinder. Most of our regulars do.’
Score one for Lucy, Fluke thought. She hadn’t got a thing wrong yet. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know when she was here last, would you?’
‘Last Thursday, ten past twelve.’
Fluke looked at her open-mouthed, wondering if she was winding him up.
She laughed at his expression. ‘We checked the till roll. Kath served her. The reason we know is because she only served two people that morning. The rest of the time she was doing the tables. More fun you see, you get to talk with the locals. She hates the till. But if we’re jammed, she’ll help out. She remembers her because she’s never made her blend before. It’s all written down here.’
Fluke read Kath’s statement. It was written on Watts’s stationery. Attached was a photocopy of the receipt as well as a description of what the victim had been wearing. ‘This is excellent, Barbara,’ Fluke said. ‘She seems to have a real eye for detail.’