A Quiet Death

by Cari Hunter

  Meg tweaked Sanne’s big toe, reminding her to take a breath. Sanne’s chest rose and fell rapidly as she tried to compensate.

  “Did you actually zap the little shit?” Meg asked.

  “No, I didn’t need to, but I did go a bit Dirty Harry on him.” Sanne rubbed her reddened face, a slight smile beginning to form. “I’ve not climbed out of a window in years.”

  “It’s Eleanor’s fault for telling you to grow a pair and then giving you a sodding Taser,” Meg said, though she wasn’t as exasperated as she made out. In the last few weeks she had become rather fond of this new, more assertive Sanne.

  The water rippled from end to end as Sanne shifted to lie with her head on Meg’s chest. “I won’t do anything daft.” She kissed the soft swell of Meg’s breast. “I promised I’d be careful.”

  “Yes, you did.” Meg smoothed Sanne’s hair from her face. “I’ve put enough stitches in you to last me a lifetime.”

  “No more stitches.” Sanne kissed Meg’s breast again, her tongue flicking out to tease the nipple. “I’ll be good and behave myself.”

  Meg opened her legs as she felt Sanne’s hand glide lower. “I’m not entirely sure that I believe you,” she said, pretty damn sure that she no longer cared.

  Sanne blew bubbles across Meg’s chest. “For you, I’ll make an exception.”

  *

  Lying snug beneath the quilt, with lassitude making her bones feel like jelly, Meg watched Sanne thump her pillow and wriggle around until she found exactly the right spot. It was a ritual reminiscent of a cat bedding down for the night, the resemblance helped by her habit of kneading the air with her toes as soon as she got comfortable. She switched out the light, cueing Meg to sidle closer until they were spooning.

  “Remind me again why we waited so long to do this,” Sanne said. She’d snagged Meg’s T-shirt in her fists and was holding on tightly.

  “Idiocy, denial, and a healthy dose of cowardice,” Meg offered, and felt the gentle puff of Sanne’s answering laugh. “But I think we’re doing okay, aren’t we?” She chewed on her lip, waiting for a response. If something wasn’t working for Sanne she would rather know now before she fell any deeper.

  The verdict came in a flurry of kisses to the back of her neck.

  “I’m taking that as a yes,” she said, as the butterflies stopped dancing in her belly and Sanne nibbled her earlobe. “Whoa. That makes my knees feel weird.”

  Sanne released her ear with a wet pop. “We absolutely cannot have any more sex,” she said. “I have to get up in five hours.”

  Her decisive tone made Meg smile. “That’s fine. Just note it for next time.”

  “Will do.”

  The grip on Meg’s shirt slackened as Sanne began to doze. Meg closed her eyes, allowing herself a few more minutes before she returned to her side of the bed. She was about to make a move when Sanne jerked and the rhythmic movement of her toes ceased.

  “Shit, I forgot to tell you about my dad,” she said, with her usual uncanny ability to snap back to wakefulness.

  “What about him?” The last time Meg had seen John Jensen he’d called her a “faggot” and launched a can of cider at her head. His attempt had fallen well short, but the exchange epitomised their relationship, and whenever she called at Windermere Avenue she avoided the front room.

  “My mum says he’s had bellyache and there’s been blood in the loo. He won’t go to his doctor.”

  Meg mentally ticked off the most probable causes—peptic ulcer, Mallory-Weiss tear, cancer—and wondered which would be the easiest on Sanne’s mum. Something sudden and unfixable, she supposed. He’d had several life-threatening bleeds from oesophageal varices in the past, but he’d always bounced back, against the odds.

  It was too dark to see anything, so she turned over and cupped Sanne’s face in both hands. “Do you want me to pay a house visit? Take some bloods and try to put the frighteners on him?”

  “Could you? For my mum’s sake?”

  “I’ll go tomorrow before I start work. I think I have an old biking helmet stashed in the shed, so I should be safe enough.”

  Sanne covered Meg’s hands with her own. “Thank you.”

  “Not a problem. Go to sleep, love.”

  Meg went back to her cold half of the sheets and settled onto her pillow. She was almost asleep when Sanne’s voice cut through the darkness.

  “Maybe this time he’ll do us a favour and fucking die.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Interview One, EDSOP’s main interrogation room, might have boasted top-notch recording equipment and a one-way mirror, but it hadn’t been designed for comfort. Its austere colour scheme and hard-backed chairs were intended to focus the attention, encouraging perps to keep their time within its walls as brief as possible.

  Slouched in his chair with his arms folded, Jordan “Gobber” Beswick didn’t seem to have grasped this. He’d yawned in the middle of confirming his name for the tape, giving Sanne a good idea of how the interview would play out. Bearing that in mind, she decided to kick off the proceedings with an easy one. She slid the hate mail across the table until it sat beneath his nose.

  “Jordan, can you take a look at this letter and tell me whether that’s your handwriting?”

  He glanced down and shrugged. “No comment.”

  Sanne gave no outward reaction. The interview would continue as planned, and all of their questions would be asked, regardless of whether he answered in full or stonewalled.

  “When we searched your bedroom, we found several more of these letters, stamped and ready to post. Can you explain that for me?”

  “No comment.”

  She took a grubby, tattered book from her file and opened it at random. “This is one of your school exercise books. Would you say that this handwriting, your handwriting, is a match for the handwriting on the letters?”

  Another shrug. “No comment.”

  She withdrew the book. Her question had been moot anyway; the remedial scrawl of what little schoolwork Gobber had ever completed was an unmistakeable match for that used to threaten the mosques, right down to the football-sized blotches with which he dotted every “i.” The only unexplained aspect was that he’d chosen to keep an essay about pig farming.

  She sensed Nelson lean forward and saw the tension in the set of his shoulders and the stiffness of his posture. EDSOP had been at this for hours now, first with Sid Beswick, whose own “no comment” interview had been prolonged by multiple requests for toilet and cigarette breaks, and then with Mrs. Beswick, who’d spent fifty minutes complaining about the chair aggravating her bad back before she’d finally succumbed to a dramatic bout of vertigo.

  “You do understand,” Nelson said, “that regardless of your solicitor’s advice, refusing to answer these questions removes your opportunity to offer an explanation for your actions and may actually harm your defence when your case comes to court?”

  Merely by moving, he had managed to catch and hold Gobber’s attention, possibly due to the sheer novelty of being in the same room as a black person. Gobber opened his mouth to respond, and for the briefest moment Sanne thought they might be getting somewhere.

  “No comment,” he said and picked the head off one of his spots.

  “Can you drive, Jordan?” she asked. The PNC had confirmed that he did drive, mainly cars that he’d pinched. “Come on, where’s the harm in telling us that? It’s a simple enough question, with a simple answer.”

  “No comment.”

  “Because I was wondering whether you ever took a car out for a spin up over the moors?” she continued in the same pleasant, conversational tone. “Maybe tried your hand at the corners on the Snake or the Woodhead Pass? Old Road?”

  If he recognised the significance of the questions, he hid it well, showing no signs of stress or subterfuge as he gave his standard response.

  “No comment.”

  “Ever been up here?” She shoved a photo of Greave Stones toward him, before slapping a secon
d, wider shot alongside.

  “No comment.”

  She waited a beat, letting him wonder what might be coming next. Then she set down their most graphic image of the dead girl’s face, the one with the mottled purple side uppermost and the clouded eye half-open.

  “Because we found her right under those rocks,” she said. “Someone had raped her repeatedly and left her to die, and the letters you’ve been sending out have made you our prime suspect.”

  Gobber reacted then, even if he didn’t intend to. He swallowed so violently that his Adam’s apple bobbed like a cork on choppy water. He looked at his solicitor, who shook her head once.

  “No comment.” He choked on the words, his mouth still flapping afterward.

  “You remember what Detective Turay said, don’t you?” she asked. “That we can’t help you unless you start to help us?”

  “Yes…I mean no,” he stammered. “No comment.” He shook his head, his face suddenly pale and clammy. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

  *

  With three and a half years as a patrol officer under her belt, and almost two years working on EDSOP, Sanne had seen enough death and destruction to inure her to most things, so she was mildly perturbed to realise that the gout of curdled milk and cornflakes Gobber had regurgitated all over Interview One had been enough to put her off her tuna butty.

  “I can still smell it,” she said, giving her sleeve a surreptitious sniff. “Are you sure he didn’t get me?”

  Nelson stopped typing. “I’m sure. I think his legal fees will have to include the cost of a new outfit, though.”

  That made Sanne smile. Most of Gobber’s vomit had landed in his solicitor’s lap. She nibbled the corner of her sandwich, sure she’d be hungry later if she threw it away. The office was mostly empty, as everyone not involved in the morning’s interviews had headed back onto the streets to continue door-to-door or chase up the meagre leads from the hotline. While Gobber recovered in his cell, and Interview One underwent a deep clean, Sanne and Nelson were planning to visit the Beswicks’ neighbours to try to glean an idea of the family’s recent movements.

  “Almost set?” Nelson asked.

  She logged off from her computer and smoothed the tinfoil over the remnants of her lunch. “Ready when you are.”

  Restored to her usual co-pilot position in the pool car, she stuck her feet on the dash.

  “I e-mailed the boss and updated her,” she said as Nelson paused at the car park barrier. “I’m sure the CPS will authorise an extension on Gobber’s custody, but I think we’re barking up the wrong tree with the Beswicks.”

  Nelson pulled away from HQ, joining the rest of the midday traffic, a volatile combination of pensioners heading for the supermarket and tradesmen speeding to their next call. He tapped the steering wheel, mulling over her statement. In the rush to complete their paperwork and arrange for medical assistance, they hadn’t had a chance to discuss the interview.

  “I suppose Gobber’s response can be read one of two ways,” he said at length. “One: he’s guilty as sin but suffered a genuine gut reaction to being confronted by his handiwork, or two: he likes to carry a knife and run his mouth off but is too squeamish to follow through on his threats. There’s no record of violence in his priors.”

  “Difficult to know which option to go for, isn’t it?” Sanne realised she was using her toes to accompany Nelson’s beat on the wheel and forced herself to stop. “Our vic was abused over a period of days, though, and possibly longer. It might not take much nous to snatch a child off the streets, but keeping her concealed for any length of time points to a level of planning and premeditation that I don’t see Gobber being capable of.”

  Nelson glanced at her, his expression bleak. “Maybe the whole family were in on it. That’s not without precedent, San.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said. Although none of the Beswicks owned a car, it wasn’t inconceivable that they’d abducted and molested the child as a team. The possibility made the small amount she’d eaten churn in her stomach. Gobber had only just turned eighteen, Spud was still at school, and their little sister wasn’t much younger than the victim. Sanne grasped the one straw that threw doubt on the theory.

  “That doesn’t explain why no one’s reported our vic missing,” she said. “If this is a typical stranger abduction, where are her parents? Why hasn’t anyone called it in? There’s been nothing that fits her description in the local or nationwide missing persons.” She took refuge in her frustration, letting it blot out every other emotion. “It’d be easier if the Beswicks would fucking speak to us. They’ve probably got alibis we could confirm, but instead they fall back on the ‘no comment’ routine and leave us all pissing about.”

  Nelson smiled at her rant. “Feel better now?”

  She cocked her head to one side, taking stock. “I do, actually. Give me five minutes and I might be able to finish my sarnie.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  It took longer than her estimation, but she was just screwing up her tinfoil as Nelson parked on Phelot Walk, and the fresh air fortified her even further. She stepped around a shattered bottle sparkling in the winter sunshine and contemplated the afternoon’s task.

  “Pick a side, any side,” she said, but then reconsidered. “Actually, I might start opposite. There was a fair bit of curtain-twitching going on last night.”

  He locked the car and rattled the handle just to be sure. “I’ll try the immediate neighbours. The walls on this estate are so thin, I bet people can hear every word that’s said.”

  “Right-o.”

  She readied her ID as she crossed the road. A flutter in the grey nets at the window suggested her presence had already been noted, and sure enough the front door opened before she’d raised her hand to knock. A woman who must have been eighty if she was a day peered through the narrow gap permitted by her security chain and added an extra defence by thrusting her walking stick toward Sanne’s knee.

  “Police, ma’am,” Sanne said, holding her ID closer. “I wondered if I could ask you a few questions about the family at number forty-three.”

  “That bunch of layabouts? What do you want to know? They’re dirty, noisy, lazy, flea-bitten ragamuffins, and I’ve complained to the council about ’em till I’m blue in the face.” The woman sniffed and slid the chain from its latch. “I suppose you’d best come in before one of them throws dog shit at my window again.”

  Sanne followed her into a living room apparently decorated by a myopic lover of flock wallpaper. Every wall clashed with the next, each patterned like a psychedelic Rorschach test.

  “What did you say your name was?” the woman asked. She flopped into a tilted chair and used a remote control to lower its position.

  “I didn’t. It’s Sanne, Detective Sanne Jensen.”

  “Swedish?” The woman frowned, scrutinising her from top to toe. Sanne almost expected her to reach for the binoculars on the window sill, but she refrained. “You’re too short to be Swedish.”

  “I’m not Swedish.”

  “Danish?”

  “No, ma’am. I was born just down the road.”

  “Huh. Bloody silly name, if you ask me.”

  Sanne declined to comment. Her mum had chosen the name, and Sanne rarely divulged the reasoning behind it. Although it caused endless mispronunciations and misspellings, she wouldn’t have swapped it for anything.

  She sat on the edge of the sofa opposite the woman. “And you might be?”

  “Mrs. Mary O’Donnell.” Mary nudged a sepia-tinged wedding photo with her walking stick. “Widowed for nigh on twenty years now, the good Lord rest his soul.”

  Sanne picked up the photo, genuinely interested in the man who had been brave enough to wed Mary. He looked ordinary, neither especially handsome nor likely to stand out in a crowd, but then people might say similar about Meg, and Sanne thought the world of her.

  “He were worth a damn sight more than that shower of shit over there,” Mary spat. “Ou
t at all hours, screaming and shouting, that mutt and those kids of theirs running riot. Did you arrest the lot of ’em? I hope you throw away the bleedin’ key.”

  Sanne had opened her mouth to respond at several points in Mary’s diatribe, shutting it again when she missed her chance. She let Mary run out of steam and carefully replaced the photograph as Mary sucked on an inhaler.

  “Be a love and make me a brew,” Mary said. “There’s some bourbon biccies in the tin.”

  As the interview was clearly going to proceed at Mary’s pace, refreshments sounded like a good idea, and the kitchen, though decorated in the same dubious taste as the living room, was clean enough that Sanne treated herself to a mug of tea. Having waited until Mary had given her seal of approval by dunking her first bourbon, Sanne uncapped her pen.

  “We’re investigating the death of a young girl, Mrs. O’Donnell. Perhaps you’ve seen something about it on the news.”

  “The Pakistani lass under the rocks?” Mary slurped overspill from her saucer. “What’s she to do with the Beswicks? They hate all the coloureds.”

  “Yes, well, we’re wondering whether that might have been a motivating factor.” Sanne found a clean page in her notepad. “You said the family were ‘out at all hours.’ Have you noticed anything unusual about their comings and goings? Particularly between last Saturday and Wednesday?”

  Mary sucked her biscuit through what few of her teeth remained. “Can’t say as I have. The one with the ears had a scrap with the stupid one in the middle of the road a couple of nights back, but that’s par for the course. They get up late, the young lass toddles to school on her own, they have chippy three times a week, the dad and the eldest go to the Dog and Duck every other night, and they all go to bed past midnight. I never see the mum, but that’s hardly surprising given her size.”

  Sanne took dutiful notes of the Beswicks’s routine, running out of room and flipping over to a new page. Although Mary hadn’t intended to, she’d started to establish an alibi for Sid and Gobber, should the staff at the pub confirm their presence over the last week.