by John Mead
The
Fourth
Victim
John Mead
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by
The Book Guild Ltd
9 Priory Business Park
Wistow Road, Kibworth
Leicestershire, LE8 0RX
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Copyright © 2018 John Mead
The right of John Mead to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This work is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.
ISBN 978 1912881 222
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Dedicated to my colleagues, family and friends,
for all their support and advice.
‘victim: noun ’vik-təm 1. The moment you tell everyone you have a mental disorder, in order to excuse your behaviour.’
– Shannon L. Alder
Contents
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23
Acknowledgements
Note
1
The shopping trolley, filled with her week’s shopping, was heavy and Essey missed Solomon’s help. She missed his company, his laughter; life was lonelier and smaller since he had passed away a year ago. Returning from the shops through the park always brought back memories of her dead husband. It was not a warm day and Essey wore her old, navy-blue overcoat tightly buttoned, even so walking into the shadow of a stand of trees still caused her to shiver and brought her back to the present from the memories of happier days. Automatically she glanced around her, taking stock of where she was, surprised she had reached the crossroads of the paths that criss-crossed the small park.
Strange, she thought, someone was lying amongst the trees. Essey’s first instinct was to keep moving as occasionally there were drunks, rough sleepers she had learned they were called these days, who used the park as a toilet and resting place. However, this was a young woman wearing tight, clean looking running clothes, laid on her back and staring up at the sky, eyes un-blinking. The stillness of the supine figure drew Essey forward, dragging her trolley off the path to look more closely. ‘Are you alright, dear?’ she began, but she could see something was wrong, the unblinking eyes told her so.
Joanne Hensley sat on the sofa in her small front room, hunched over and intently peering down at her mobile phone which she held cupped in both hands. She desperately did not want to text her daughter, Lynsey, again. She had once already, without forethought, only half an hour ago. What would her daughter think? Lynsey was nearly eighteen and preparing to live away from home to go to university, what would she think of her mother not coping with her being barely an hour late back from her usual run.
The first text had been an involuntary reflex, she had noticed the time, realised her daughter was overdue and had text, ‘Hi, where are you? Dinner as normal?’ Then she had started preparing their meal, peeling and cutting vegetables to sit in plastic boxes waiting to be cooked when her daughter returned home. However the lack of any response, so unlike her daughter whose phone seemed an extension of her body, began to gnaw away at her.
A half hour passed. Perhaps her daughter had bumped into a friend and stopped for a chat and a coffee, just like the young woman she had become, independent and social, so unlike her earlier teenage years of misery and isolation. Eventually, increasingly worried at the uncharacteristic lack of response, Joanne had picked up her phone and sat down. Although she did not know what she could say without sounding the overly anxious parent, so for more than ten minutes she had sat rejecting each phrase she came up with. Now she just sat, telepathically willing her daughter to take the initiative and phone. Then the door bell rang.
She jumped, dropping the phone and swearing at her own stupidity, realising how life was going to torment her when Lynsey finally left home, and went to the door knowing her daughter would see through her hurriedly assumed composure. Only as she opened the door did she wonder why her daughter had rung the bell when she had a key, but it was two other young women on the doorstep and not Lynsey. It took Joanne a moment or two to register that the women wore police uniforms: the bulky blue vests, trousers, white shirts, hats and equipment belts. Her mind resisting the implications of what the uniforms might suggest.
‘Yes?’ was all she could think to say, her tone suggesting she resented their presence although she was acutely aware that she had no reason to feel this.
‘Mrs Joanne Hensley?’ the slightly older looking police officer, an asian woman, asked. Her companion was fiddling with her phone, exactly like Lynsey, she couldn’t even put it down while she was on duty. The phone even looked like the one Lynsey owned, even had the same case.
‘Yes,’ Joanne’s mind had lost the ability to communicate as she focused on the phone in the second officer’s hand. Why was the phone sealed in a clear plastic bag? Why did the young constable, a pretty blonde just like Lynsey, scan her face then nod to her companion?
‘You have a daughter, Lynsey Hensley?’ the first officer asked, barely waiting for Joanne to nod her head in acknowledgment before continuing, ‘I am Sergeant Mehta and this is Constable Porter. May we come in?’ The sergeant glanced behind her as she spoke causing Joanne to look in that direction and, for the first time, she noticed the tall, slightly overweight man in a suit and tie standing at the gate intently watching the scene play out.
‘Who are you?’ Joanne asked, annoyed at the man’s intrusion.
‘Detective Inspector Merry,’ the man informed her, his voice calm though authoritative. ‘We should go inside.’
The two female officers got her indoors and sat down, with well practised ease. Scanning the room as they entered, checking out the various photos of Lynsey that were dotted around: memories of school, holidays and selfies often taken with a friend or her mother. Any residual doubt in the inspector’s mind was banished by those captured memories. The sergeant took a seat beside Joanne on the small sofa while the constable stood at her side and the inspector remained standing, shifting uneasily, in front of the three of them.
‘What is it you want?’ Joanne demanded, she could understand two uniformed officers coming to tell her that Lynsey was injured in a fall or they had found her phone and were returning it but why send a detective inspector? Then it struck her she didn’t want to know what she had known from the moment she had seen the uniforms, the officers, blank faces and concerned eyes. All Joanne really wanted was for everything to go back, for the day to restart again so she didn’t have to face what was about to come.
‘I am sorry to
have to tell you,’ Inspector Merry began, noticing the mother’s face already starting to crumble and the tears forming in her eyes, ‘that a body of a young woman has been found in Swedenborg Gardens. From the details we have taken from her phone we believe this to be your daughter, Lynsey.’
‘No, she is out jogging,’ her words did not sound right, slurred and masked by her dry throat, her body trembling, her mind fixated on the phone in the police woman’s hands. The phone which looked exactly like her daughter’s.
‘She was wearing a grey top with a zipper front, with a white stripe down each arm, plain black jogging pants reaching to above the ankle and bright orange trainers?’ Joanne nodded unable to speak, tears starting to flow, as the sergeant reeled off the description of what her daughter had been wearing, ‘Jogger’s waist bag, with her keys, student oyster card and five pounds in change, her phone in an arm carrier with earphones.’ Joanne tried once again to speak but words would not form, though she nodded in confirmation.
It was then that it came out, the grief erupting from deep inside her. She slipped forward, collapsing onto her knees, tears pouring down her face, her body heaving from the racking sobs. The officers continued to assist her in their well-ordered and distant manner, their own emotions being kept at bay behind their wall of professionalism, but she was not aware of them. She could only focus on the well of swirling black misery that her world had become.
In many respects the day had started well for Inspector Matthew Merry, a promising day he thought as he was determined to remain optimistic, despite what logic seemed to dictate. He’d had a couple of days off, which he’d been able to spend with his wife, Kathy, and his two daughters, starting to make the tree house he had promised his eldest, Becky. The call for a meeting with Chief Superintendent Jackson was no surprise, Matthew hardly set the world alight in the Met’s Murder Investigation Team East and a recent bad showing in court, which had nearly undermined a case, hadn’t helped. The meeting had been arranged for after lunch and, as the chief superintendent took the concept of agile working to heart, they had met on the balcony of the South Bank Centre. The weather, cold for the time of year, kept the meeting brief which suited Jackson as she was on her way to a roundtable on knife crime at the mayor’s office.
Jackson had been cheery and upbeat, she had read the police manuals on people management and ensured she ticked all the boxes so that the inspector would not see her offer of reassignment as anything other than a positive move. He had readily accepted the offer, which threw Jackson off her planned course as she had expected more resistance or at least a counter suggestion. However, Matthew Merry was a realist and had come to terms with the fact that his career had stalled and he was probably more suited to a desk job; as he was, after all, really quite good at logistics and systems. It also had the added benefit of regular office hours and more time with his family. He had made up his mind on the spot but the chief superintendent had decided before the meeting he would need time to consider his options, so they parted and he had taken a stroll down to the Tate feeling like a schoolboy given an unexpected half-day off.
The call from his govenor, DCI Malcolm Swift, telling him to head for Whitechapel to deal with a suspicious death was not entirely welcome but he mentally shrugged and took the opportunity to tell his govenor he was taking the chief superintendent’s offer. The pause in the conversation as Swift tried to think of something positive to say pretty well said it all, he wasn’t that bothered about keeping Merry in the team but probably thought Matthew should have pushed for something more.
‘OK, we’ll talk,’ was all Swift could think to say, his Welsh accent still detectable despite his years in London, it always reminded Matthew of Tom Jones – he even thought Swift looked a bit like the singer; if the singer had been a six foot three inch black man of Jamaican descent. Merry sent a text to his wife saying he had good news but, despite his expectations, was likely to be home late and then he headed for Mansion House tube station.
Detective Sergeant Julie Lukula arrived at the crime scene within fifteen minutes of being informed by Swift; it was just her luck to have been at Bow Street nick making her the nearest officer in his team available. Seven years in the army, three as a red cap, had taught her that chaos was the normal state of affairs and bringing order to that chaos was the first priority of a professional soldier and was just the same for a police officer. The financial crisis and public sector budget cuts, however, were on the side of chaos and she was not happy to hear that local units had only just beaten her to the scene minutes beforehand.
‘The two that called it in, the old lady and the youth, are over there,’ the asian uniformed sergeant told her, nodding towards the pair standing with a female officer. ‘Constable Porter is taking their details. The paramedic who attended has gone but he and the lad did their best to divert people away from the scene.’ As they spoke Julie noticed that uniformed officers were sealing the park entrances and moving people on their way. ‘The police surgeon is on her way, the photographer and a forensics team have started work.’
‘How long before you arrived?’ Lukula wanted to know as she turned to watch two SOCOs erecting a small tent, to retain evidential integrity as much as to conceal the corpse, while another did an initial sweep to safeguard lines of access to the body and the photographer was digitally preserving every aspect of the scene.
‘The paramedic was here within five minutes, our first car was forty minutes later,’ Sergeant Mehta’s expression was resigned. ‘You were lucky, we had a suspicious death wait for four hours the other day as it wasn’t considered a priority. I take it you will be taking charge now?’
Swift had told Lukula that Merry was his only option at the moment but once an assessment had been made he would reallocate, unless it was a short and simple case. Lukula didn’t dislike Merry, he seemed OK, it was just that he gave off a lacklustre vibe and she much preferred the go-getting Swift. Although, to be fair, she and the DCI shared more in common. Swift had been born in the wrong part of Cardiff and, after completing his A levels, had been uninterested in what university could offer so he’d joined the army and done a brief stint with the paras, until being injured. He had subsequently joined the police, quickly rising through the ranks. Lukula, when first appointed to MIT East, had found herself with a slight case of hero worship, fortunately he was male otherwise she might have been starry-eyed with love.
‘We’ll need officers to canvass the area and someone to collate CCTV,’ Julie stated in response to Mehta’s question.
‘You’ll have to speak with my boss,’ Mehta informed her, still with the same resigned stare, used to if not liking the fact that her team had a dozen highly important and urgent things to do but with only the manpower to do one. ‘Once the scene is secure I really need to be off, we are way past our shift change.’
‘We won’t hold you up longer than needed, if you can see that forensics have all the support they need,’ Lukula saw no reason to berate the sergeant, budget cuts were not her fault, and knew that no one would would actually leave until the replacements had arrived. ‘I’ll speak to the pair that found her.’
‘You won’t be leaving her there any longer, will you?’ Essey demanded, her voice concerned and worried. ‘Someone is missing her, her phone ringing and all. The poor thing has been left there all this time, it isn’t decent.’
‘Mrs Rawlinson, Mr Kingsley,’ Lukula ignored the elderly woman’s indignation, ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Julie Lukula. I’ve been told you both found the young woman.’
‘I saw her lying in the trees as I was coming back from the shops,’ the elderly woman related, she ached from standing for so long and the chill from the breeze wasn’t helping her sciatica. ‘It was lucky I saw her, I was thinking of how I used to walk through here with my Solomon…’
‘I could see that Mrs Rawlinson was in distress,’ the young black man at her side gently interrupted. ‘She lives on
the same floor as my mum and dad in the flats,’ he nodded at one of the sixties’s high-rise buildings that towered over the small park. ‘When I came over I saw the girl. I know first aid and checked to see if she was alright as Mrs Rawlinson phoned for an ambulance.’
‘Did you touch or move the body?’
‘No, only to check for a pulse,’ an almost imperceptible shiver ran through his body at the thought of coming so close to the dead, ‘but there wasn’t one.’
‘You were coming from the flats?’ Mr Kingsley confirmed the sergeant’s supposition with a nod. ‘Did you see anyone else around, as you came in?’
‘Only a muslim woman, she was at the entrance, but I couldn’t tell if she was going in or coming out. I think she was lost, she seemed to dither then went in before me but turned left to follow the other path out, at least I think she did, I wasn’t taking much notice.’
‘What did she look like?’ Lukula asked making brief notes on her pad, she had learned long ago not to trust to memory.
‘Small, wearing a headscarf, one of those hijab things. I didn’t take much notice, I’m afraid. Being big and black I tend to find some muslim and white women turn away from me,’ he smiled and shrugged, giving Lukula that conspiratorial hey, we both know how being black works look but Julie being part French, part Congolese and part Mancunian made no response to show affinity.
‘Mrs Rawlinson, I believe you came in from the opposite end, did you see anyone?’
‘I wasn’t paying much attention, I’m sorry, but I don’t remember seeing anyone. It’s quiet this time of day, no kids, no drunks, just the odd mum with a pram,’ Essey stated, sorrowful that she could not be of more help.
‘Sorry to interrupt, but we have an ID,’ Sergeant Mehta, walking up, informed Lukula. ‘One of the SOCOs got the girl’s phone working.’ The police surgeon had arrived and, having confirmed life was extinct, was examining the dead girl and had assisted one of the forensic officers to access the girl’s phone. The witnesses were escorted home by two constables, where they would take their statements and Mrs Rawlinson, who looked increasingly frail and tired by her experience, could rest and have a cup of tea in the comfort of her own home.