Jack's Back

by Mark Romain

  When he got home, Tyler threw his clothes on the floor and staggered into bed, where he immediately fell into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER 32

  Tuesday 9th November 1999

  When the alarm went off, seemingly only seconds after he had fallen asleep, Tyler stared at his clock in bleary-eyed confusion. Surely it couldn’t be six-thirty a.m. already?

  Unfortunately, it was.

  Jack felt physically sick as he stood up. His head was throbbing like he had a hangover and his body ached like he’d had a kicking. He wondered if he was coming down with something or just dehydrated. He greedily gulped down the pint of water that he’d taken up to bed but had been too tired to drink, and then dragged himself through to the en-suite bathroom, where he showered and shaved. He dressed in a trance-like state and then trudged downstairs to make coffee. He wasn’t remotely hungry, but he forced down a bowl of Sugar Puffs and two slices of peanut buttered toast.

  Thankfully, for once, Dillon had the good grace not to be his usual annoying self during the long drive into work, and they had made the journey in companionable silence.

  “Why can’t every morning be like that?” Jack made the mistake of asking as they ascended the stairs into Arbour Square.

  Dillon stopped in his tracks. “Charming!” he said. “I make the effort to get up extra early so I can drive all the way to yours and chauffer you into work because I know how delicate you are in the morning, and what do I get as thanks? Insults, that’s what. I can’t help it if I like mornings and you don’t. It’s the best time of the –”

  Tyler turned on him and made a stop sign with his hand. “Don’t say it!” he warned. “Just don’t say it.”

  “– day,” Dillon said, defiantly.

  “I told you not to say it,” Tyler growled, and the bickering started.

  ◆◆◆

  The mood in the office was flat, and everyone seemed subdued as they waited for the eight o’clock meeting to commence. Almost everyone looked tired enough to drop, and one or two of the detectives were starting to look ill. When Boyden had been propped up as a suspect the day before, a wave of euphoria had swept through the team, giving everyone a much-needed boost of morale. They had finally caught a break.

  That all changed when the fingerprint results came in, dashing their hopes that charges were imminent, and life could finally start getting back to normal.

  Jack opened the meeting by repeating the depressing results of the fingerprint comparisons, and then promptly handed over to Steve and Susie to run the team through what Boyden had said during interview.

  Once that was done, Jack nodded to Kelly Flowers, who he noted was looking very pale. “Kelly, can you tell us what Mrs Boyden said in her statement, please.”

  “Well,” Flowers said, letting out a very long sigh, “for starters, she was severely pissed off that I wouldn’t tell her exactly why her husband had been arrested. I eventually calmed her down by explaining that I wasn’t being obstructive; I simply couldn’t divulge the details without her husband’s explicit consent. Anyway, when I asked her if she could account for his movements on the nights of the four murders, she immediately sussed why I was asking and went ballistic. When she did finally calm down, she confirmed that hubby had been at home in bed with her every night last week. If she’s telling the truth, and I think she is, then he’s definitely not our man.”

  “So, what now?” Charlie White asked. “Surely, if the fingerprints don’t match and his wifey is giving him an alibi, then he’s not our man. We might as well let him go now, and save ourselves some time.”

  “We wait until the DNA results come in,” Jack said, firmly. “Detention wasn’t authorised until four-thirty yesterday afternoon, so we’ve got plenty of time left on the custody clock. I’m not convinced he’s our boy either, Whitey, but we can’t take any chances.”

  “The boss is right,” Dillon said. “There’s no way on earth that the foreign DNA we found on our victim’s heart could have landed there by accident. If Boyden’s DNA is a match for that, we know he’s guilty, it’s that simple. It just means the wife is lying to protect him and the unidentified fingerprints on the notes got there innocently. If that’s the case, we’ll have to work out how later on.”

  “George, I know it normally takes thirty-six hours but can you get straight onto the FSS and see if you can pull any strings,” Jack said. He didn’t like the idea of keeping Boyden in custody for a moment longer than absolutely necessary, but there was no way he could risk releasing him until he was eliminated as a suspect.

  “I’ll do it straight after the meeting,” George assured him.

  “Do it now,” Jack said. “You can phone from my office if you want some privacy.” Copeland nodded obediently, gathered his notes and disappeared into the DCI’s office.

  “Are we going to charge him in relation to any of the prostitutes he’s been roughing up?” Nick Bartholomew asked, wondering why he seemed to be the only person thinking along these lines.

  Jack shook his head. “What are we going to charge him with, Nick?” he asked. “Sonia’s dead so we can’t get a statement from her. Cassandra what’s-her-face has refused to make a statement, and we haven’t even been able to identify the redhead called Trudy.”

  Bartholomew thought about this. What Tyler had said seemed to fly in the face of justice. “So, he just walks free?” Surely, that couldn’t be right?

  “We don’t like it any more than you do, mate,” Dillon said, “but without some actual evidence there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “At the very least what he’s been doing must be a discipline offence,” Bartholomew protested. The idea that he might end up having to work alongside a man who treated women that way was repugnant.

  “Don’t worry, Nick,” Tyler assured him. “Everything we’ve got, including his admissions to using local prostitutes to indulge his sexual fantasies, will be passed to the rubber heelers. He will be suspended pending a full disciplinary investigation.”

  “I reckon he’ll end up getting the tin-tack,” Dillon said, “but, ultimately, that’s for Complaints to worry about. We have much bigger fish to fry, remember?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bartholomew said, hoping Dillon was right about Boyden being fired. It would be a travesty if he walked away from this without at least losing his job.

  Jack checked his watch and stood up. “Right, I’ve got to shoot off as I’m due at Poplar Coroner’s Court this morning for the inquests on victims two and three. Poor old Mr Dillon needs to get a wiggle on, too, as he’s attending victim four’s post-mortem. Chris Deakin’s in charge until we return. Chris, I’ll leave you to finish the briefing and allocate the day’s taskings and actions.” Tyler headed for the door with Dillon in tow. “Good luck,” he shouted over his shoulder, “and let’s all try and keep upbeat. We will get him in the end.”

  ◆◆◆

  Jack walked out of the Coroner’s Court shortly before midday. The sky was clear and the sun was shining. The two inquests had been a formality, as he’d known they would be. At least this time there had been no grieving relatives or film crews to contend with. He wondered how Dillon was getting on, and for a heartbeat he considered popping into the mortuary to find out, but there was really no point in both of them going back to the office smelling of death so he decided against it, opting instead to hunt for a Costa or a Starbucks and grab a large coffee.

  Once he was sitting comfortably with his steaming hot latte and a slice of millionaire’s shortbread, he turned on his mobile phone and called the office, wondering if there had been any interesting developments.

  As it turned out, there had.

  ◆◆◆

  Dillon removed his coveralls as soon as they reached the mortuary’s ante-chamber. Although he hadn’t been standing near enough to get any of the victim’s blood or other bodily fluids over him, the smell of death had still seeped into their very fabric, and so he held the greens at arm’s length and wrinkled his nose as he dro
pped them into the basket for used garments. Then he tossed the plastic overshoes into the bin and washed his hands twice, just to be on the safe side. After a quick chat with Ben Claxton, to make sure he hadn’t omitted anything of relevance from his notes, he accompanied George Copeland and Emma Drew into the latter’s office for a quick cup of coffee. Nerdy Ned the photographer declined Emma’s offer to join them, explaining that he had another assignment to go to. Privately, and with some relish, Dillon suspected that poor old Ned had lost interest in socialising with her now that he thought Emma batted for the other side.

  George drank his coffee quickly and went off to start loading the exhibits van, leaving Dillon alone with Emma. “So,” he said, feeling the need to fill the silence, “what time have they got you working till today?”

  “Why?” Emma asked, eyeing him mischievously. “Surely you weren’t thinking of asking me out, what with me being gay?”

  Dillon blushed, gulped down a mouthful of coffee in order to buy himself a few seconds grace, and then stammered something in gibberish.

  Emma laughed at his discomfort. “You do think I’m gay, don’t you?” she asked, moving closer. “Only, a little birdie whispered in my ear that you told Ned I wasn’t interested in men. Is that true?”

  Bloody hell! Dillon thought, angrily. George big-mouth Copeland has grassed me up! No wonder the tubby git had shot off sharpish, he must have known Emma was going to bring this up.

  Dillon cleared his throat and ran a finger around his collar, which suddenly felt very tight. He couldn’t deny it, not when her source was Copeland. “It’s not like it sounds,” he said, hastily raising his hands to placate her.

  Emma folded her arms across her chest. “Oh? And how exactly does it sound?” she asked, sweetly.

  Dillon’s mouth opened and then closed, and he felt himself wilting under her gaze. His mind went into overdrive as he tried to concoct an answer that wouldn’t drop him further in the shit. And then, out of nowhere, inspiration struck. “I was only repeating what Kevin Murray told me,” he said.

  The look of amusement was gone in an instant, and Emma’s face clouded with anger. “That nasty little turd,” she fumed. “I should have known.”

  Dillon breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a bit of gamble, blaming Murray, but the man had a reputation for letting his hands wander when he was around the girls, and he wasn’t averse to calling any woman who complained about him a lesbian. As an advance exhibits officer, he was someone that Emma would already know; and in Dillon’s experience, to know Murray was to dislike him.

  “Why do you say that?” Dillon asked, and then answered his own question. “Don’t tell me, he tried it on with you and you said no?”

  Emma nodded, shuddering at the recollection of creep features brushing against her on the dance floor at a recent leaving do; gyrating his skinny hips as he pointed at his crotch and invited her to play with his extendable baton. “I most certainly did. I wouldn’t go out with that slimy little toad if he was the last man alive. Plus, I don’t generally date coppers – no offence, but I know what most of you lot are like.”

  “None taken,” Dillon said. He knew what most coppers were like, too.

  “I made the mistake of going out with one once,” Emma said. “Bloody heathen had the cheek to sniff me when he thought I wasn’t looking, to see if I still smelled of death.”

  “That’s terrible,” Dillon said, shaking his head like it was the worst thing he had ever heard. “I would never do a thing like that.”

  “Anyway, I knew Kevin’s nose was out of joint when I turned him down, but I didn’t think he’d stoop to spreading rumours about me.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Dillon confided. “I’ve never trusted him.”

  “To be honest,” Emma said coyly, “I thought you’d told Ned that I was gay because he was going to ask me out and you were jealous. I thought it was rather sweet, and I was going to tease you about it. I didn’t bloody well realise that you really thought I was gay.”

  Shit, Dillon thought. She thought it was sweet that I was lying to put Ned off asking her out. I could have got away with it, but now I’ve made the situation worse by blaming twat features!

  “Just you wait until I see that little cretin,” Emma said, vindictively. “I’m going to cut his tiny shrivelled bollocks off with a rusty knife.”

  Dillon held up his hands to calm her. “Perhaps the best thing is to say nothing,” he advised. “You don’t want to give that petty little knob-head the pleasure of seeing he’s rattled you.”

  Emma’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t strike me as the kind of man to forgive and forget. I would have thought you’d be all for me cutting his gonads off.”

  “Oh, I would be, normally,” Dillon admitted, but even he drew the line at turning a man into a eunuch for something he hadn’t done – even a man like Murray. “I suspect he was only saying it out of insecurity, to stop people taking the piss out of him over you giving him the cold shoulder.”

  Emma wasn’t buying that. “Yeah, right! That man’s got the skin of a rhino; he wouldn’t care what anyone else thought about him.”

  “Tell you what,” Dillon said, “why don’t you let me have a quiet word with him on your behalf. There’s no love lost between us, and I’ll put the fear of God into him.”

  Emma thought about this for a few moments. “I had heard you two didn’t get on,” she said. “Very well, I’ll let you sort him out,” she agreed, “but only on one condition.”

  “Name it,” Dillon said, feeling inwardly relieved.

  “You buy me dinner.”

  Dillon smiled. “Deal,” he said offering her his paw-like hand to shake. Maybe dating a mortuary technician wouldn’t be so bad after all. And, knowing that she didn’t normally date coppers, made him feel privileged.

  “I can’t think of any better way to piss that weasel off than by dating his least favourite boss,” she said. “Can you?”

  That wiped the smile from Dillon’s face. “No, I suppose not,” he agreed.

  ◆◆◆

  Jack was feeling quite chuffed as he hung up fifteen minutes later. Having been briefed by Deakin, he’d given detailed instructions on how he wanted this latest development progressed. He made a quick call to update Holland, and then he took a leisurely stroll back to the mortuary, arriving just in time to see Tony Dillon emerge from the building with a strikingly pretty girl at his side. The two of them seemed very cosy together, and Tyler couldn’t help but marvel at his randy partner’s ability to pull just about anything that moved.

  When Dillon caught sight of him, he whispered something in the girl’s ear and squeezed her arm affectionately, and then he ambled over to meet Jack.

  “I see you smell of death again,” Tyler said, fanning his nose with his hand.

  Dillon sniffed the air around him several times, and then he sniffed his sleeve. “You know what, Jack, I hate to say this but I think I’m getting used to it.”

  “She seems nice,” Tyler said, nodding towards the girl, who was now chatting to Copeland as he finished loading his van. “Although, I doubt Karen would be overly keen on her.”

  “Don’t even go there,” Dillon warned.

  “Is that the mortuary attendant everyone raves about?”

  Dillon nodded. “It is.”

  “Does she smell as manky as you?” Tyler asked, grinning.

  “Probably,” Dillon admitted, “but I bet she scrubs up very nicely when she’s in her own time.”

  “You know it’ll all end in tears, don’t you?” Tyler told his friend.

  “What will?” Dillon asked, guardedly

  “When Karen and mortuary girl both find out that you’ve been dating the other one,” Jack explained. “Ouch! It doesn’t even bear thinking about.”

  “I haven’t been out with either of them yet, and you’ve already got me pegged as a two-timer! Thanks, mate.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Jack said, although his sarcastic tone made it clear he was
n’t. “I’ve obviously misjudged your intentions.”

  “I’m telling you, you’ve got me all wrong,” Dillon insisted, piously.

  Tyler rolled his eyes. “When you come out with crap like that, I half expect your nose to grow a couple of foot longer,” Jack told him.