Deceit is in the Heart (P&R15)

by Tim Ellis

  Before he hired a car, he needed to find out where Hartside Gardens was in relation to the airport. ‘Do you know how far Jesmond is from the airport, Edders?’

  ‘Way aye man. I’m not far away in High Heaton, just over the Ouse Burn. It’ll take you fifteen minutes by taxi.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He could certainly get a taxi to a hotel near Jesmond, but then what would he do in the morning? If he went everywhere by taxi, he was sure it would cost him twice what a hire car would. If he hired a car though, he’d have to know the postcode for all the locations he needed to visit, otherwise he’d soon get lost. He decided on a hire car. He’d have time to make a list of those places and find out the postcodes at the hotel.

  At the airport, because it was an internal flight, and he only had hand luggage, he moved quickly through the checks and was soon standing at the Herz car hire desk.

  ‘Good evening, Sir,’ a twenty-something man said. He had short dyed blond hair, and was wearing a white shirt with a yellow and black Hertz tie knotted round his neck like a hangman’s noose. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘I’d like to hire a car, please.’

  ‘You’ve come to the right place, Sir.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  It took twenty-five minutes before he was heading towards the vehicle pick-up point with a Ford Fiesta key in his hand, and the postcode for the Holiday Inn Newcastle on Jesmond Road. His only criteria for a hotel – besides a bed and shower, of course – was that he had access to the internet, so that he could plot his journey around the city. He didn’t have a lot of time, so getting lost in the backstreets of Newcastle wasn’t on his itinerary.

  He really wanted to visit the crime scene first – although calling it a crime scene was a bit of a stretch after four and a half years, but he knew he had to tip his hat to the investigating officer before he began creating havoc in Newcastle. That was, of course, always pre-supposing that DI Stuart McIntyre was still at Clifford Street Police Station. If this had been a sanctioned visit, then it would all have been organised, but it wasn’t sanctioned – not sanctioned at all.

  The hotel room was basic, but it was all he needed. After finding out the list of postcodes, he took a shower, climbed into bed and phoned Angie to check that she and the kids were all right.

  ‘We’re all fine here. I’ve just put the children to bed, and Digby is waiting at the door for you to come home.’

  ‘Tell him I won’t be back tonight.’

  ‘I’ve told him, but he doesn’t believe me.’

  ‘It won’t do him any harm to sleep on the hall carpet for one night – that dog gets far too much pampering.’

  ‘And who should we blame for that?’

  ‘Richards.’

  ‘Of course. I was going to call her.’

  ‘I spoke to her earlier.’

  ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘Solving cases already.’

  ‘I don’t know how I ended up with such a crazy daughter.’

  ‘Her father would have been proud.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure he would have been.’

  ‘Right, early night and early start for me, and I’ll see you tomorrow evening.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘That goes without saying, but seeing as we’re being all gushy – I love you too, Mrs Parish.’

  ***

  ‘So, we have nothing,’ Xena said.

  ‘That’s not strictly true,’ Stick corrected her. ‘We have a woman’s body . . .’

  ‘Without a head.’

  ‘We have a pink lace-edged Primark nightdress . . .’

  ‘Thousands, maybe millions, of which have been sold.’

  ‘We have a brown plastic sheet . . .’

  ‘That may have nothing to do with the disposal of the corpse.’

  ‘We have Di Heffernan and her team of professionals on the ground searching for forensic clues . . .’

  Xena blew a raspberry by putting her tongue between her lips and exhaling.

  ‘Lovely. We also have Doc Paine performing a post mortem on the corpse.’

  ‘A four-month old rotting corpse. As I said: We have nothing.’

  Stick screwed up his face. ‘We always have nothing before we have something.’

  ‘One day in the future,’ Xena said, shaking her head. ‘Oh, I’m not saying tomorrow, or even in a million years, but one day, you’ll be hailed as one of the great – if not the greatest – philosopher of our time. “We always have nothing before we have something” – that’s brilliant, numpty.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Now, go and make the coffees and bring them to the incident room.’

  ‘Have you been to see the Chief yet?’

  She sighed. ‘I may as well go now. If I’m not in the incident room when you get there, start filling up the board without me.‘

  ‘What do you want me to fill it up with?’

  She walked along the corridor like a prisoner on her way to the hanging tree, half-smiled at Lydia O’Brien – the Chief’s temporary secretary – and knocked on the Chief’s door.

  ‘Come.’

  Opening the door, she shuffled in. The painkillers were keeping the agony at bay. If she was being honest, she should have still been at home with her feet up munching Bailey’s truffles and watching mind-numbingly boring daytime television, but two weeks of it had been enough to last her two lifetimes.

  ‘Sit down, Blake. You still look a bit pale.’

  ‘I’m just glad to be back at work, Sir.’

  ‘You should be glad to still have a job after your stupidity.’

  ‘I know, Sir.’

  ‘What possessed you?’

  ‘A man.’

  ‘So, you thought you’d go out and get paralytic in the middle of a murder investigation all because of a man?’

  ‘I don’t think there was any conscious thought involved.’

  ‘And what about the events afterwards?’

  ‘I’d rather not talk about that, Sir.’

  ‘Well, it’s because of what happened afterwards that you still have a job, Blake.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’ She decided that saying as little as possible was probably the best course of action under the circumstances.

  ‘But let me tell you, that although Professional Standards haven’t dragged you away and thrown you out of the station as a charlatan, and as far as anyone else is concerned there’s nothing in your records to indicate that you’ve been a compete fucking idiot . . .’ he tapped his right temple with his index finger . . . ‘you and I both know what happened, Blake. So, don’t go getting any crazy ideas that you’re free and clear. Up to this point, I’d had no complaints about you. I agree with the general consensus that you’re a bit rough round the edges, but as far as I was concerned you were a damned fine detective – and then you blot your copybook. You fuck up again, and I’ll make sure you spend the rest of your career pounding the beat in the Outer Hebrides.’

  ‘I understand, Chief.’ She didn’t think it was worth pointing out that the Outer Hebrides was actually part of Scotland, and they had their own police force.

  ‘Get out.’

  She stood up and made her way towards the door. ‘Thank you, Sir.’

  Yes, she’d fucked up. And yes, she was lucky to still be alive. She thought the Chief was going to suspend her until Professional Standards threw her out without her pension, so yes – she was lucky to still have a job.

  ‘How did it go?’ Stick said when she reached the incident room.

  She took a long swallow of her coffee. ‘How do you think it went?’

  ‘Not very well?’

  ‘That about sums it up.’ She sat down. ‘Now, let’s get organised. We’ve wasted a whole day on Mr Herbert Flack already. By Friday, nobody will even remember or be particularly interested in the fact that we were led down the garden path on Monday by a madman. They’ll want to know why we’re dragging our heels instead of solving the murder, so you’d better pull your finge
r out of the hole you’ve stuck it in and start coming up with some intelligent answers, Stickynuts.’

  ‘Me?’

  She swivelled her head left and right. ‘Do you see anyone else in the room?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s that drivel you’ve scribbled on the board?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Wipe it off – let’s start from the beginning.’

  ‘But you . . .’

  ‘Come on. I’d like to get home sometime tonight. Do you know how long I’ve been here?’

  Stick wiped the board clean. ‘The same amount of time as me?’

  Xena took another swallow of her coffee. ‘You need to go on a coffee-making course – this is the worst coffee anybody ever made anybody. Right, we have a headless woman . . . Has Hefferbitch found the corpse’s head yet?’

  ‘I don’t know, and . . .’

  ‘You don’t know? What the fuck have you been doing all afternoon? Give her a call and find out . . . and put the phone on loudspeaker.’

  Stick phoned Di Heffernan. ‘Hi Di. Any luck with the head?’

  ‘Nothing yet, but we’re being systematic in our search. My feeling is that the head is probably somewhere else though.’

  ‘Okay . . .’

  Xena chipped in. ‘We’re not interested in unscientific concepts such as feelings. Find the fucking head, stop whining and don’t come back until you have found it.’

  The line went dead.

  ‘It wouldn’t hurt you to be pleasant to people.’

  ‘Are you trying to blow my cover? Okay, we have a headless body. Let’s not pin our hopes on acquiring any forensic evidence from Hefferbitch – we’d have more luck getting hit by a fiery meteor from the planet Mongo. So, how are we going to find out who the corpse is?’

  ‘Ask missing persons?’

  ‘Good idea. You can go down there first thing in the morning and tell them to make a list of . . .’

  ‘Ask them – you mean?’

  ‘You’re a DS – tell them.’

  ‘I can still ask them.’

  ‘Look, I don’t give a flying fuck whether you ask them or tell them, just so long as you come back with the list.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Good. I’ll also ask the public . . .’

  ‘Not tell them?’

  ‘You’re determined to put me in a bad mood, aren’t you?’

  ‘Are you not already in a bad mood?’

  ‘I’ve been the nicest person I know all day, but you’re winding me up like a clockwork orange . . .’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘So you should be.’

  Stick wrote on the board:

  Ask Missing Persons.

  Ask the public for help.

  ‘I’ll pre-empt the effigy-burning by holding a press conference at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, and ask those nice press people to please help us by making a request for the public to assist us in identifying the woman – someone must know who she is.’

  ‘You’ll need to give the press details, and without the head we don’t have a lot.’

  ‘We know that she’s aged between twenty and thirty years old. What else do we have?’

  Stick spoke as he wrote on the board. ‘She’s been missing for around four months . . .’

  Xena began a list in her notebook ready for the briefing in the morning. ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Are you going to tell them about the head?’

  ‘I don’t think the public need to know the gory details.’

  ‘You then won’t be able to tell them about an axe being the murder weapon, or the probable cause of death.’

  ‘True.’ Xena pulled a face as she thought about the missing head. ‘There’s not a lot I can do about that. All I’ll tell them is that she was murdered.’

  ‘They’ll want to know how she was murdered.’

  She shrugged. ‘They’ll just have to want, won’t they?’

  ‘Why do you think the killer separated the head from the body? I don’t mean with the axe, but why he hid it somewhere else?’

  ‘We don’t know that he did. Because the head was separate from the body to start with, an animal might very well have moved it from A to B. We already know that animals have been munching away at her flesh. They don’t care that it’s a human being. As far as they’re concerned it’s simply food. It might be useful to find out what type of animals they were. Maybe there’s a badger sett, or something similar, in the vicinity with the remains of the woman’s head sitting in it. Hefferbitch is coordinating the search, tell her to liaise with Doc Paine.’

  ‘I’ll ask her.’

  ‘You do that. Also, it might be useful to get a person who knows about animals to examine the crime scene and track the animals back to their lairs.’

  Arrange for animal expert to examine crime scene.

  Di to liaise with Doc Paine re: type of animals.

  ‘I’ll speak to Di. And don’t forget we also have the pink lace-edged nightdress.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why was she wearing a nightdress?’

  Stick ran his hand around the back of his neck. ‘She was killed in bed?’

  ‘Women don’t just wear a nightdress in bed.’

  ‘I know nothing about women.’

  ‘You’ve made that patently obvious. They also walk around the house in a nightdress.’

  ‘Yeah, Jen does that as well. They don’t go out in a nightdress though, do they?’

  ‘Maybe they do.’

  Stick’s brow furrowed.

  ‘Fancy dress party? Charity event?’

  ‘That’s why you’re a DI and I’m a DS, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think it’s a bit more than that. Anyway, I make the point because the fact that she’s wearing a nightdress could tell us something about where she came from and what happened to her. So, as well as the usual chemical analysis, I’d also like a pattern analysis carried out.’

  ‘Of course. The stains and marks on the nightdress could provide us with a picture of what happened.’

  ‘Didn’t I just say that?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Ask Doc Paine to carry out a pattern analysis of the nightdress.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘The brown plastic sheet?’

  ‘We don’t know whether that’s relevant to the case at the moment, so I won’t mention it.’

  Ask Doc Paine about brown plastic sheet.

  ‘Then that’s all we have.’

  ‘Okay. I’m going home. You give Hefferbitch another call and tell her what I want.’

  ‘I’ll certainly ask her.’

  ‘And call Doc Paine. Make sure she’s in the loop as well.’

  ‘Are you doing anything nice tonight?’

  ‘You mean like going down to The Ming Inn and getting pissed?’

  ‘No. I . . .’

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Stickleback.’

  ‘Goodnight, Xena.’

  She made her way down to the car park. An evening meal consisting of either a doner kebab or fish and chips – she’d decide which takeaway to call into on the way home after some careful consideration of the health benefits of both. Then, she’d have a long soak in a red-hot scented bath, and crawl into bed alone. That was the very best she could hope for. Was that the extent of her life now? Work for twenty hours; sleep for four hours; repeat. What was she getting up in the mornings and dragging herself round Essex for? What was the point of it all? What was the point of her existence? Surely there must be more to life than sloshing about in the excrement of humanity?

  Chapter Eight

  Bronwyn found a heavy-duty screwdriver in an old Clarks blue and white cardboard shoebox with punctures in the lid as if it had been used in the distant past to keep an animal alive inside.

  ‘Now we’ll see what’s behind the green door,’ she said, flex
ing her arm muscles.

  She wedged the tapered end of the screwdriver between the steel door and frame, and tried to prise the door open. At first, she used one hand, then two hands, and finally planted her foot on the wall as extra leverage, but the door didn’t even squeak at the inconvenience.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ Jerry said. ‘Are we giving up now?’

  ‘When you say: “giving up”, you mean that we’re giving up for today, but tomorrow we’ll be back with explosives . . . ?’

  ‘Or, we could simply go and ask Mrs Birmingham if she has the combination to the safe and the key to the green door?’

  ‘I suppose we could drive round there now.’

  Jerry smiled. ‘Tomorrow morning. I have a family to get home to.’

  ‘Aren’t you curious?’

  ‘Curiosity killed the cat. I know that to my cost.’

  ‘What if she doesn’t have either the combination or the key?’

  ‘We’ll have to call the police, which we should have done when we first realised what’s in here.’

  ‘I knew you were going to say that. And then we’ll never find out what’s in the safe, or behind the green door.’

  ‘What’s important is that the parents of those children know that their loved ones have been found.’

  ‘All we’ve found are photographs and locations on a map.’

  ‘But I’m sure there’s enough information in here to find the children.’

  Bronwyn sighed, stared at the door for a handful of minutes and then kicked it. ‘Okay, let’s go. I hate it when I can’t get into places.’ She put the screwdriver back into the shoebox and slid the box onto the shelf where she’d got it from.

  ‘As you said,’ Jerry reminded her. ‘A couple more hours won’t make any difference.’

  ‘I don’t remember saying anything even vaguely similar to that.’

  ‘Come on, I’ll drive you back to the station.’

  Bronwyn switched the light off.

  They left the lock-up as they’d found it, and Jerry made sure the door was securely locked.