by Nick Oldham
Baines eyed him like a naughty child. ‘As I was saying,’ he blinked, ‘all my observations will be superficial until, (a), I’m allowed to move the body – which can only happen once your CSIs and forensic bods have done their bit – and, (b), I get the poor lass on to a mortuary slab.’ He pulled his tongue out at the detective. ‘However, multiple stab wounds, many deep, probably one to the heart or neck could be the one that killed her. So, female, sixteen to eighteen years old …’
‘That the best you can do?’
‘Standing in a fucking alleyway – yes!’ he said haughtily and ducked under the tape. ‘Except to add that she looks to be from Eastern Europe, maybe of Balkan origin … once I get to inspect her teeth properly, I might even be able to pinpoint a town.’ Henry raised his eyebrows, impressed. He knew Baines was compiling a dental database for forensic use. The professor went on, ‘And she’s a drug addict … I can see track lines on her inner right arm, which is flung over her head … I’d even hazard a guess that she’s a sex worker, probably in this country illegally … but that’s for you to find out.’
‘Time of death?’
‘Recent – two hours ago,’ Baines speculated.
Henry’s mind ticked over. He glanced up and down Friargate, then fished his personal radio out of his pocket. He was about to call the Preston comms room when the radio blared out his name. ‘DCI Christie receiving?’
‘Receiving.’
‘Can you make to the CCTV room, boss? Urgently?’
‘On my way.’ Henry turned to Baines. ‘I’ll maybe see you over a dead body,’ he said quickly before spinning on his heels and hurrying away.
His jaw rotated angrily and a huge surge of annoyance pulsed through him. His breathing became shallow as he attempted to suppress his emotions and remain calm and rational. Even so, he could not prevent a burst of air breaking out from his lungs as he regarded the young woman in the wheelchair with contempt. Her eyes could not meet his and she looked sharply away from Henry’s steel-sharp, accusatory glare.
‘I’m sorry I missed it,’ she mewed meekly.
‘I’m sorry you missed it, too.’ Henry’s ironic tone stung and she blushed up. ‘You missed someone being chased through the streets? A victim pursued by her attacker?’ His voice rose incredulously.
‘Boss …?’ Henry’s eyed flickered to the night-duty detective constable, who gestured with the flat of his hands for Henry to calm it.
Nostrils flaring, head shaking, Henry said, ‘We’ve lost a lot of valuable time because of this and trails can go cold very quickly on murder enquiries … so, what’ve we got?’
They were in the CCTV room situated in the high-rise monstrosity of a building that was once Preston’s main police station, just off the city centre. Now the operational side of the job, cells included, had been moved to a modern operating centre further away from the centre. This building on Lawson Street, a child of the sixties, remained police property and still housed the admin function for the division as well as the comms and CCTV rooms. A cell complex, now unused and mothballed, could still be found in the basement, but it was off-limits to all now.
The CCTV suite was jointly funded by the local council and other agencies and staffed by non-police personnel. Because of the nature of the work it could provide employment for disabled people, such as this wheelchair-bound lady who, Henry had discovered, had been on an extended toilet break, leaving the room unstaffed at a crucial time. Just how crucial had been unearthed by a quick review of the tapes.
She gave Henry a worried look, then manoeuvred her electric wheelchair to the bank of CCTV monitors trained via a small army of cameras on various key points in the city.
‘This camera is situated on Friargate at its junction with Ring Way.’ She pointed to one of the screens which relayed a scene which Henry recognized. Ring Way is the dual carriageway curving around the perimeter of the city; Friargate crossed Ring Way at a set of traffic lights, effectively dividing the shopping street in half. One part of it remained mainly pedestrianized and the other northerly section was still a traffic thoroughfare. The girl’s body had been discovered in an alley at the top of the pedestrianized section which also backed on to the main shopping arcade, St George’s. The wheelchair-bound lady pressed a couple of buttons and the screen jumped.
Then Henry’s insides tightened as he saw a young woman fleeing for her life.
And behind her was a man. But he was not running, just loping with a purpose like wild dogs do in Africa when hunting down prey. He was only metres behind the girl.
Henry’s breathing stopped momentarily – then the two figures were gone off screen because the camera did not follow them, merely captured them moving across the width of its lens. The recording lasted maybe three seconds – from the girl appearing on the left edge of the screen, then the man behind her, then they were both out of shot and because the CCTV operator was having a well-earned piss, that was it.
Henry growled inwardly.
The time on the screen read 01.56.
‘Is that it?’ Henry asked, voice brittle.
‘Not quite,’ the lady said. She pressed a few more buttons and the screen went dead, then flickered back to life, showing the time, 02.08, the exact same scene. ‘This is him coming back.’
Henry watched transfixed.
The man who had chased the girl trotted unhurriedly back into shot, keeping his head low. Then he was gone.
Henry exhaled long and hard. ‘Anything on any of the other cameras?’
She shook her head.
‘I take it there are other cameras up Friargate?’
She nodded.
‘So remind me, how come there’s only you here tonight?’
‘My colleague went sick at short notice.’
Henry could not prevent a ‘tut’ from escaping.
‘I needed the loo,’ she said defensively. ‘Otherwise I don’t leave the room. I eat and drink in here, but sometimes I need to pee. How did I know someone would be murdered?’
‘Sod’s law,’ Henry said. He looked away disdainfully, then back at the monitors. ‘Run that first one back, will you?’ he instructed, reflecting how glad he was he hadn’t taken that mouthful of sour-mash whiskey because you just never can tell when someone’s going to get whacked.
‘OK, they’ve come down the north part of Friargate – we assume – from the direction of Moor Lane, crossed over Ring Way then continued up Friargate, the traffic-free bit, in the direction of Cheapside and the victim has been cornered and murdered in Anchor Place. The offender has then returned in the direction he came from.’
Henry’s eyes roved across the four uniformed cops crammed into the CCTV room, the most he could pull together at short notice. His mind was working quickly. It was 4.15 a.m., over an hour and a half since the body was discovered, over two hours since the crime was committed and twenty minutes since he’d viewed the CCTV footage. He was desperate to do as much as he could with the time and resources available to him, so that when he handed the investigation over, as he knew he would have to, he would have ensured that the package would be much more than a well-cared-for crime scene and nothing else. It was a matter of professional pride for him to do as much as possible in the little time available.
‘From what we can see, the guy is in his mid-twenties, wearing a brown zip-up jacket, maybe a motorcycle jacket or flying jacket, and blue jeans. These will be bloodstained. He has dark-brown, maybe black hair, he’s well-built, around the six-foot mark and he’s a white man.’ Henry glanced at the paused image on the TV screen. It would be enhanced at some stage, but he didn’t hold out much hope of it turning out much better than it already was. The make-believe technology on TV cop dramas that portrayed super-sharp enhancement simply did not exist. In real life it was just a series of fuzzy images, as anyone who has watched Crimewatch will know. ‘Does he ring any bells with anyone?’ he asked hopefully. They all shook their heads and muttered negatively. ‘Right, OK, two pairs. It’s a bit of a
mooching job, this,’ he said rubbing his hands. ‘One pair start at the crime scene and work your way down Friargate towards and then across Ring Way; the other pair start at Moor Lane and work your way slowly up towards Ring Way in the opposite direction. Look in bins, peer down grids, in flowerbeds et cetera, to see if we can locate a murder weapon, a knife or blade of some sort, obviously. Don’t disturb too much, though, because there’ll be a search team on this later this morning – but for now I want a cursory search of the immediate area.’
The four PCs exchanged glances and hesitated until Henry said, ‘Go,’ and gestured with his hands as though he was pushing them out.
Henry looked at the night-duty DC. ‘I’m going for a stroll, too.’
The DC nodded.
‘You check the footage for fifteen minutes before and after what we’ve already seen. Might turn up possible witnesses.’
‘OK.’
Henry gave the CCTV operator a curt nod and when his back was turned, she shoved her tongue down between her bottom set of teeth and bottom lip and pulled a monkey face at him. He, in turn, not seeing this, left the room rolling his eyes at her inefficiency.
Back on the streets it had turned predawn chilly, even though the night had been warm. A kind of light mist had formed and hung wispily like a ghost. Henry walked back up Friargate where he’d left his car, pulled a three-quarter-length zip-up jacket from the boot and slid it on. Then he went back to the point where the CCTV camera was affixed to a lamp post above the Ring Way/ Friargate junction. He looked up at the camera that angled back down at him guiltily.
Hands thrust deep in his pockets, Henry stood on the exact spot that victim and pursuer had crossed at four minutes to two, then twelve minutes later had been re-crossed by the pursuer, now murderer – alone, having committed his brutal deed.
His eyes searched the pavements for a trail of blood. No such luck.
Twelve minutes, he thought.
Henry ran the footage through his mind again, brief though it was. The girl had been fleeing, desperate for her life. As she’d run across the screen with her ripped clothing and shoeless feet, her head had whipped round to look at the man behind her. And even though the image was fuzzy, unclear, it was plain to see it had been a look of terror.
And then the man came into shot, unhurried, with that sure gait, knowing he would catch and destroy her. No knife in hand, though, not even on the return journey.
So he followed her, killed her, then came back.
And she had no shoes on her feet … and she was a drug addict according to the observation from the pathologist.
Henry’s eyes moved around, over to the Grey Friar pub on the opposite side of the road, one of the Wetherspoon chain, and the smaller pub on the opposite corner, the Old Black Bull. They were positioned like sentinels to that section of Friargate, one of Preston’s oldest thoroughfares, which, if Henry was honest, had seen much better days. Now, despite the best intentions of the city council, parts of it were quite run-down and almost derelict. It was a mixture of Indian restaurants, iffy pubs and a smattering of half-decent shops … and, Henry thought again, the girl had nothing on her feet. Just how far could someone run barefoot, he speculated. Not far, not even when running for your life. He crossed the deserted road at the traffic lights, stood outside the Grey Friar, his brow creased as he mulled it through.
Raising his eyes skywards, he squinted at the approaching dawn for a few moments, watching the sky change hue. A few cars came down Ring Way. In the distance he heard the glass-rattle of an electric milk cart. The city was easing itself reluctantly out of bed. He walked a few more metres north along Friargate to the minor junction with Union Street on his right, feeling unsettled.
Nothing on her feet. To Henry that meant two things: she’d either been chased from a nearby premises, or she’d jumped from a car. It was the former hypothesis that captured his imagination there and then so with that in mind, he began to stroll. Hands clasped behind his back, the regulation two miles an hour – cop pace.
He worked his way up Union Street, then across Great Shaw Street until he dropped back on to Friargate where he bumped into the pair of constables making their way from Moor Lane to Ring Way.
There was a short conversation – nothing to report – before parting. Henry crossed the road on to Edward Street, not really knowing what he might be looking for, and basically finding absolutely nothing, nor anyone, as he worked his way back to the traffic lights, his starting point, slightly annoyed at himself.
He rubbed his eyes. They squelched obscenely. He knew that later in the morning this section of town would be torn asunder by the murder enquiry and house-to-house teams. He was already frustrated it would not be him deploying officers on their tasks, which is why he felt driven to find something out here and now, something tangible for the murder team to get their teeth into.
‘Once more,’ he told himself.
This time he walked three-quarters the length of the north side of Friargate, then looped right into Great Shaw Street and back again.
‘DCI Christie?’ his PR called.
He stopped outside the Preston Playhouse Theatre and fished the PR out of his pocket. It was the comms room contacting him. ‘Message from the CSI – can you attend the crime scene re movement of the body?’
‘Roger … I’ll make my way back up. ETA two minutes.’ As he spoke he rotated on his heels and found himself looking down a narrow, high-walled alley. At first glance it appeared to be a dead end. He had peered down it on his first walk-through, but hadn’t seen anything which drew his attention, other than a battered-looking Fiat Panda at the far end of it. Henry slid his radio back into his jacket and walked down the centre of the alley towards the car, feeling broken glass crunch like cockroaches under his feet. It was becoming easier to see as dawn broke.
Suddenly he froze, mid-stride, patting down his pockets for his mini-Maglite torch, which he found in his outer jacket pocket. He twisted the lens cap to turn it on and flashed the tiny but intense beam on the object that had caught his eye. It was on the ground by the front nearside wheel of the car.
Initially he had thought it to be just litter, a discarded chip paper or burger wrapper, scrunched up then thrown down.
He swallowed drily with excitement as his eyes focused on a woman’s slip-on shoe, white, rather like a ballet shoe. He squatted, hearing and feeling his knees crack, to inspect the find. Definitely a shoe.
Standing back up stiffly he glanced further down the alley to see if he could spot its partner.
The alley narrowed considerably into nothing wider than a ginnel and then came out on Friargate between two shops. Just to Henry’s right, beyond the car, a tight junction in the alley turned ninety degrees and ran parallel behind the shopping street. Henry’s whole being tensed as he heard the sound of footsteps in this section of the alley, then a door gently closing and the sound of a latch dropping. His second surge of adrenaline of the night gushed into him, purging his mouth of saliva.
The footsteps came closer.
Henry stepped back and pushed himself against the wall, waiting for whoever this was to emerge. His breathing was put on hold. He covered the torch beam with the palm of his hand.
As he waited, he spotted a motorbike propped up in the shadows against the wall on the opposite side of the alley, the first time he’d seen it. It was a trials bike of some description.
Suddenly a man appeared from the alley within feet of him, fitting a full-face motorcycle helmet over his head and walking over to the bike. He hadn’t noticed Henry – and he was wearing the same sort of jacket as the killer in the CCTV footage.
Henry took one step so he was standing behind the man. He’d already fished out his warrant card which was in his fingers, ready to be displayed.
‘Excuse me,’ he coughed.
The words seemed to send a charge of electricity into the man. Henry saw him jump, then spin quickly and aggressively. Henry extended his arm and flashed the warrant ca
rd, flashing the torch beam to it so the man could see the ID and make no mistake.
‘I’m a police officer,’ Henry said, waving the ID. He quickly took stock of the man. He could not see his face in the helmet, but could see he was strongly built, maybe a little shorter than himself.
The man lifted the visor of his helmet. ‘Don’t know,’ he shrugged, the voice deep, guttural.
‘Don’t know what?’ Henry said, taking a further stride towards him, that feeling inside him which said, ‘Don’t let this guy go.’
‘I’d just like a word, please.’
‘For what? Why?’
‘Remove your helmet, please.’
‘For what?’
‘Helmet – off.’ Henry mimicked its removal. ‘Let me see your face.’
The man shrugged again as if he did not understand Henry’s words. ‘No, no.’ He wagged a finger as though he had no time for this nonsense.
‘Yes, yes,’ Henry said, stepping even closer, but getting a bad vibe. Was this the murderer? His gut said yes. ‘I need to talk. I’m a policeman,’ he insisted, still displaying his warrant card clearly.
The man edged away, getting closer to the motorbike.
‘No – must go.’
‘No,’ Henry said firmly. ‘You stop now.’ Inside he was regretting not being correctly tooled up. He didn’t have his handcuffs or his extendable baton on him.
The man turned his back on Henry and made to the bike. Henry reached out intending to grab his arm and spin him round. No one had ever successfully ignored Henry in almost thirty years of coppering and this guy was not going to be the exception. But somehow, sensing this was about to happen, the man pivoted without warning. It didn’t take Henry by surprise. His cop instinct was already sounding clanging bells, but the man did move very quickly, faster than Henry had anticipated, and as he span, he flung out his left hand and caught Henry a glancing blow across the chin. Henry reared away, staggering back a step or two, not really losing his balance, just dropping into a defensive stance like a wrestler.