‘No thanks.’ Gerry’s luxuriant red tresses were securely fastened back in a ponytail, which showed off her high forehead with its intricate blue tracery of veins just below the surface, the delicate bone structure of her pale, lightly freckled face, the green eyes.
‘So how are you really?’
‘I’m fine. Really.’ Gerry took a sip of the drink and coughed. A hint of colour came to her cheeks.
‘Not exactly VSOP, I know,’ said Annie. ‘But it’ll do the trick.’
‘Really, I’m all right. I don’t need mothering.’ She put the glass on the table.
‘Mothering?’ Annie spluttered. ‘Christ, Gerry, all I’m trying to do is show a little concern, and you accuse me of mothering.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘How else am I supposed to take it? I’m just about old enough to be your bloody mother if I’d had a teenage pregnancy, which I didn’t.’
Gerry smiled. ‘I didn’t mean that at all. It didn’t bother me, really. The post-mortem. True, I felt a bit faint when Dr Glendenning made the first incision, but it’s fascinating, really, once you get a really good look at someone’s insides. I wanted to be a doctor when I was younger. I used to love ER and Casualty and Holby City.’
‘Christ,’ said Annie. ‘I’m practically old enough to remember Emergency Ward 10. I’ll guarantee you that Alan does. They turn my stomach, medical dramas.’
Gerry laughed.
‘And more to the point,’ Annie went on, ‘I’m used to things like gallbladders and lungs being in the right places.’
Gerry wrinkled her nose. ‘Yes. It was a bit of a mess, wasn’t it?’
‘A bit of a mess? There’s an understatement if ever there was one. Her spleen was where her liver was supposed to be.’
Gerry picked up her glass again and took a swallow. ‘Don’t,’ she said.
‘I thought it didn’t bother you.’
‘Not at the time, but thinking about it . . . There’s no need to keep reliving it. I won’t forget in a hurry. At least we can be thankful she wasn’t pregnant.’
‘I don’t know. It might have pointed us towards a motive. Someone did a real job on that poor girl. Can you imagine it? Kicking her head and stomach like that? Stamping on her. We’ve got to find whoever did this. And fast.’
‘What did you think of the scars on her wrist?’
‘Sad to say,’ said Annie, ‘it’s not all that unusual in young girls.’
‘Suicide, or just . . . you know . . . a cry, like the doctor said?’
‘Can’t tell. Maybe someone even did it to her. Some sort of torture. But I’d go with the doc for now. It’s not like Doc Glendenning to make wild guesses, so I’d say, given his experience, that he’s seen that kind of thing before, and he knows a hawk from a handsaw. Off the cuff, I can only add that I don’t think it was a really serious attempt to kill herself, or she’d probably have tried again and succeeded.’
‘So how much closer are we?’
‘Well,’ said Annie, after a long draught of beer, ‘we might not know who she is yet, or where she’s from, but we’ve got the artist’s impression, along with her stomach contents – kebab and pizza – tattoos and a birthmark. And the doc reckons she ate about two or three hours before she was killed, which means sometime between eleven and midnight. It’s not the sort of meal you’d have in a sit-down cafe, I reckon, so it’s most likely takeaway.’
‘The stomach contents don’t help us much more than the tattoos,’ said Gerry. ‘It seems like every takeaway sells just about any junk food you can possibly think of in the same place these days. I know places where you can get fish and chips, tandoori, burgers, pizza, kebabs, falafels, chop suey and currywurst. All from the same fryer and oven.’
‘Maybe so,’ Annie said, ‘but there is one thing worth considering. Places like that are far more common in urban areas than around here, say.’
‘But we’ve got one here, in Eastvale, near where I live. Why couldn’t she have started out from here?’
‘She could have, I suppose,’ said Annie. ‘I know the place you mean. The student area, right? We’ll check it out. But the spot where the body was found is only, what, fifteen minutes’ drive from Eastvale. If she ate her last meal two or three hours before her death, what she was doing in Eastvale the rest of the time?’
‘Partying?’
‘Maybe. She didn’t need to have set off immediately after the meal.’
‘So she could have started here.’
‘Yes. But no one local has been reported missing as yet. We need to extend our area. I know I’m making wild generalisations, Gerry, but I’m also trying to be logical about it. I still think kebab and pizza places are more prevalent in urban areas, so I’m thinking that if she didn’t start out here, maybe she started out in the north-east, maybe Tyneside or Teesside.’
‘That’s a huge area,’ Gerry said. ‘And most of it’s off our patch. Besides, if she had her last meal between eleven and midnight and was killed between two and two-thirty, it doesn’t take two or three hours to drive from Teesside or Tyneside to where her body was found.’
‘They could have stopped somewhere for a while or partied before they left, as you suggested earlier. And it’s a smaller area to consider than the whole country. I’m just saying it’s somewhere to start, Gerry. It’s a massive job, but if we can get CCTV footage from the major roads in the area for before and after two a.m., we’re in with a chance. We can work out the most likely routes and check all vehicles within our time period. But we also need to know who she is. Get a list of the tattoo parlours and kebab and pizza outlets in the north-east.’
‘Fair enough. But maybe they started even further north and stopped somewhere en route for the food? Ate in the van.’
‘Maybe,’ said Annie. ‘But I don’t think there are a lot of kebab and pizza takeaways between Teesside and where she was found. Certainly few enough to check out quickly. Have you got a better idea?’
‘No,’ said Gerry. ‘Sorry. I just don’t know . . . it’s all so sketchy.’
‘You don’t need to be sorry for playing devil’s advocate. It sharpens the thinking. And I agree it’s sketchy, speculative. But we need a plan. We’ve got to do something. Let’s not forget that the poor girl was abused, and that took more than fifteen minutes.’
‘But it didn’t have to happen in the van, is what I’m saying.’
‘True,’ said Annie. ‘But if not, why was she naked?’
‘Maybe the van was just to dump her after whatever had happened.’
‘So what do you suggest we do first?’
‘Schools, colleges, tattoo parlours and kebab and pizza takeaways in Eastvale and points north-east, like you said, boss.’
‘Right. You’ve got it.’
‘What do you make of the tattoos? Any chance there?’
‘Tats like hers are ten a penny these days,’ said Annie. ‘Nothing artistic or distinctive, just off the peg. But we’ll get some photos run off. Someone might recognise the combination, locations. And the patrol officers and PCSOs can start asking around the parlours – Teesside, Tyneside.’
‘There’s a tattooist right here in Eastvale, too.’
‘How do you know that?’
Gerry said nothing, just looked away and blushed.
‘You didn’t!’
‘Just a little one.’ She held her thumb and forefinger in a close pincer shape.
‘Show me.’
‘No way! Not here.’
‘Where is it?’
‘I’m not telling you.’
‘Christ, you’re the quiet one, aren’t you? Did your boyfriend put you up to it?’
Gerry sipped more of her brandy. ‘Boyfriend? Chance would be a fine thing. I don’t have time, what with the exams, computer studies and the job and all. No, it was my treat to me on getting the posting to Eastvale.’
‘To each her own. So first we’ll ask around about the tats and the takeaway, start
ing here. They were professionally done, even if they are common designs, so we might get lucky with some artist recognising his or her handiwork, or remembering the birthmark.’
‘I still can’t get over how young she was,’ said Geraldine. ‘Just lying there on the table like that, so vulnerable.’
‘Obviously old enough to get involved with some nasty people.’
‘Come again?’
‘Well, you don’t think all this just happened to her by accident, do you?’
‘You’re not trying to say she was on the game or something, are you?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Annie, ‘but I don’t think we’re dealing with a complete innocent here. The doc found semen in her vagina, anus and oesophagus.’
‘You don’t have to remind me,’ said Gerry, sipping more brandy. ‘She was raped.’
‘He said the odds are that it didn’t all come from the same person, but there’s no telling how many as yet. We’ll know after Jazz has done the DNA testing.’
‘She was gang-raped?’
‘It’s likely. But the rapists didn’t kill her,’ Annie went on quickly. ‘That was someone else, later, in a different vehicle, after she’d walked a quarter mile back up the road. It was the broken rib piercing her heart that most likely killed her, the doc said, though she’d probably have died from her other injuries eventually. Remember, the doc also said from his examination of the footmarks that it looked very much as if she was kicked to death by just one person. She may have been raped by the men in the van, but she was still alive when they threw her out into the ditch. So what does she do?’
‘She starts walking home.’
‘Right. Makes sense, doesn’t it? The poor lass is stark naked, and in pain from the sexual assault and the tumble into the ditch, so she wants to get help, even get to hospital, perhaps. Or home, as you say. Maybe she sees a light on in the Ketteridge house, but she can’t climb over a wall and a barbed-wire fence in the state she’s in. Maybe she’s hoping for a gate or something, some means of entry. Whatever. She’s lost. She starts walking back in the direction they came from – the van came from – and they’ve gone on ahead. Where are they going? Don’t forget, if you turn right at the bridge at the bottom of Bradham Lane, you’ll soon get to a roundabout that’ll get you to Leeds, Bradford and points south in no time.’
‘You know,’ Gerry mused. ‘We’re only assuming she was naked when they kicked her out of the van, but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe it was the other person who took her clothes, the killer.’
‘Good point,’ Annie conceded. ‘But I reckon if those blokes in the van were having sex with her, she probably had her clothes off, or most of them. And I doubt they’d have given her time to put them on again before they chucked her out.’
‘Makes sense. Could they have come back and finished her off?’
‘Apparently not,’ said Annie. ‘At least that’s not what Mandy Ketteridge heard. And I keep going back to the unlikelihood of some whacko happening along and killing her.’
‘You still think it was someone she knew?’
‘Yes. Don’t forget, Mandy Ketteridge said she thought the second vehicle turned around and went back the way it came.’
‘Maybe the victim didn’t see who it was, or if she did, she didn’t think she had anything to fear from him. Maybe she thought it was a friend. She was disoriented, remember. Hurt. Naked. On drugs as far as we know. She heard a car. She thought she’d be rescued. It must have been the first thing that came into her mind. Joy. Relief. I mean, how do you think you’d feel if you’d just been through what she’d been through?’
Annie swallowed and turned away. Gerry had no idea, of course. As far as Annie was aware, Banks was the only one in Eastvale who knew she had been raped several years ago, before her transfer there, by fellow detectives after a promotion party. She remembered exactly what she had felt like, and she had fought tooth and nail. She would also know how long it took several men to rape a woman if she hadn’t managed to fight her way out after the first attacker.
Annie took a long slug of Black Sheep. ‘Right. She’s hurt, heading away from where her attackers went. Another car comes. She’s hoping for help, wherever he’s going. It stops a few yards beyond her. As you said, she must have thought she’d found help. A Good Samaritan.’
‘Hmmm, maybe,’ Gerry said. ‘But it turned out to be some psycho killer who decided to beat her to death? We’re back to that again.’
‘No,’ said Annie. ‘There was nothing psycho about it. That’s my point. And why would a psycho bother to turn around and go back the way he came? Wouldn’t he be more likely to just carry on down Bradham Lane?’
‘Depends where he was going.’ Gerry frowned. ‘What are you getting at? I don’t understand. Someone followed her right from the start of the journey, from before she was raped?’
‘Or someone knew where she was going and followed at a distance. That would explain how the second vehicle could be ten or fifteen minutes behind the first, as Mandy Ketteridge said it was. It makes sense if the killer knew they were heading down Bradham Lane. Had to take Bradham Lane to get where they were going from the road they were already on. If he knew all that, I’m thinking he may have held back a little while before following them down the lane so they wouldn’t see his lights behind them.’
‘So you have them going from the north-east to West Yorkshire?’
‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it?’
‘But how could whoever’s in the second vehicle know they’re going to throw her out of the van?’
‘He doesn’t. But when it happens, and he sees her walking towards him, he seizes his opportunity. Maybe he can’t believe his luck. We don’t know what was in his mind, what he was hoping for, or expecting to happen. The thing is, Gerry, I’m saying that it was most likely someone she knew who killed her. Someone who wanted her dead for a reason. It wasn’t a random sex killer attack.’
‘We don’t know that whoever was in the second vehicle didn’t rape her, too.’
‘According to Mandy Ketteridge, it didn’t stop that long, but she heard raised voices, more like an argument than a sex attack.’
‘Is she in any danger?’
‘Who?’
‘Mandy Ketteridge. Remember, she asked about it, seemed worried?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Annie. ‘Nobody but us knows what she saw and heard.’
‘But if they did know, or suspected? They might have seen her light on. It’s a loose end. We don’t know who or what we’re dealing with, how far they’d go.’
‘Now you’re making me paranoid. We’ll have the patrols pay extra attention. I still don’t think she’s in any danger, but it wouldn’t do any harm to keep a close eye on the place.’
Gerry thought for a moment, swirling the brandy in her glass. ‘Let’s say you’re right about the killer knowing the victim,’ she said. ‘How does that help us?’
‘If it was someone she knew, then perhaps there was a motive. If there was a motive, once we know who she was, it gives us a better chance of finding out who had it.’
‘What motive? So she couldn’t report the rape?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe she knew too much about something?’
‘Or she was in thrall to someone, a pimp, whatever, and disobeyed orders, was made an example of,’ said Gerry. ‘Or it was family, an honour killing, something like that?’
‘As far as I can tell, she wasn’t Middle Eastern.’
‘There’s other kinds of honour killings,’ said Gerry. ‘Funny term, really. There’s no honour in it at all, is there?’
‘Come on,’ said Annie. ‘Enough of this. We’d better get back to the station and see if there are any developments.’
Gerry knocked back the remainder of her brandy and pulled a face. She teetered a little when she stood up to leave. ‘You’d better not be drunk,’ said Annie. ‘Not on one double brandy. Or you might pass your exams, young lady, but you’ll never make i
t as a DS.’
At the same time as Annie was soothing Gerry with brandy, Banks had been as good as his word and bought Winsome a small whisky and soda in Whitby, sticking to Diet Coke himself. After that he had driven them across the moors to York while Winsome dozed for an hour in the passenger seat. Even the Alabama Shakes didn’t keep her awake. Nor did she hear the Rolling Stones doing ‘Stray Cat Blues’ from their 1971 show at the University of Leeds. Banks hadn’t realised it was on the playlist, and he felt uncomfortable when Jagger started singing about a thirteen-year-old girl. It reminded him that those days had, indeed, been different, though Jerry Lee Lewis had been hounded out of the country for marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin.
When they finally arrived at the ex Mrs Caxton’s flat in a converted convent not far from York city centre, they found that her day had hardly been anywhere near as abstemious as theirs.
The woman who answered the doorbell was short and plump, with a fuzz of pinkish-white hair over chipmunk cheeks and a small, pinched mouth. The tight T-shirt and tartan slacks she wore didn’t do her any favours. But she probably didn’t care about that. She had a glass in her hand, and Banks could smell the gin from where he stood.
‘Mrs Caxton?’ he asked, identifying himself.
‘As was,’ she said. ‘Then Mrs Braithwaite, but the second one was no better than the first, so I’ve gone back to my maiden name – Canning. But you can call me Carol. Don’t stand out there in the hall, or you’ll have the neighbours talking. Nosey lot, they are. Come in, make yourselves at home. Is this about Danny?’
‘Why do you ask?’ said Banks, as he and Winsome followed Carol Canning into her living room. The large picture window framed a view of the main road, where traffic slowed for a large roundabout. The flat was cleaner and neater than Banks would have expected from the state of Carol Canning so early in the day. Maybe she had someone to come in and ‘do’ for her, or perhaps she was just a fastidious, house-proud drunk. Maybe the drink was her way of celebrating a day’s housework. Whatever the reason, the mantelpiece was dust free, and the wood surfaces shone with recent polish.
‘Well, nobody’s interested in little old me any more, my second husband wouldn’t say boo to a goose, but Danny always was a bit of a lad, to say the least. He sailed a bit close to the wind, if you catch my drift. Besides, you called me Mrs Caxton. It’s been a long time since anyone called me that. What is it? Tax evasion? Not that I care. I don’t get a penny from him. Not any more.’
When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery Page 11