by L M Krier
'Inspector, that was incredible to see,' she said. 'I think I misjudged you on our recent meeting. What you've done for those children is just amazing. Flip thinks the world of you, and I can now see why. Thank you. My husband and I want to get him a judo outfit to encourage his interest, so we'd be really pleased if you could help and advise us.'
CHAPTER Twenty-two
Rob O'Connell looked much more like his old self when he arrived, ahead of time, the following morning. He was cleanly shaven, correctly turned out and clearly raring to go. Ted had decided to send Rob and Virgil to check out the records of the taxi firm where the murdered driver had worked. He wanted them to see if there was any discernible pattern in their visits to the Sorrento, especially on the night Aiden died.
Since the shooting of the taxi driver, Ted had been wary of pushing any harder to find out information from that direction. He and Kevin Turner had now agreed between them, their decision having been sanctioned by the Ice Queen, to put a high-profile uniform presence near the taxi ranks in their area. If they couldn't yet find Aiden's killers, at least they could perhaps prevent other children falling victim to the same abuse.
Ted and Mike Hallam were still wading through the interviews, waiting for all the DNA test results to come in so they could at least eliminate some of the suspects on the Offenders' list. Once they had spoken to everyone on the list, they would get together to discuss which of them to question further.
The phone on Ted's desk rang. When he picked it up, a cheery voice greeted him.
'Hello, Ted, me old mucker. It's Brian Donohue, at Manchester City. How's life under the reign of the Ice Queen?'
Ted groaned. 'About how you'd imagine,' he said. 'She has me wearing a suit and tie, can you believe? What can I do for you?'
'Well, for starters, you can stop littering my patch with your stray bodies, we're busy enough.'
'Meaning?' Ted asked.
'You know the old railway station near here? A body's been found there, shot in the head. Would normally be one for us except this body is clutching your card in his hand, so he clearly knows you,' Donohue told him. 'Have you time to come over and see if you know him, or can shed any light on the matter?'
Ted was not due to start interviews until the afternoon, leaving him time to go and visit the crime scene near central Manchester's Piccadilly. 'Setting off now, Brian, I'll be there as soon as traffic allows. See you at the scene?'
Traffic was not too dense so he was there in good time. He parked near several police vehicles, showing his warrant card to a young uniform constable who tried to move him on, and asked where to find Inspector Donohue.
Brian Donohue and Ted knew one another of old. They had been on various courses together and had always kept in touch intermittently. When Brian saw him walking down the old deserted platform towards him, resplendent in light grey suit, striped shirt and tie, he let out a whistle of admiration.
'Wow, Ted, loving the new image,' he laughed.
'Which martial art would you like me to use to inflict extreme pain on you, Brian?' Ted asked pleasantly in reply. 'This is the Ice Queen's doing, not mine. Now, where's this body that you say is one for me?'
Still laughing, Donohue nodded further up the platform. 'Just along there, where the action is, down in the rails. Mind you don't crease your nice new suit.' He tossed Ted gloves and shoe covers and they both headed in that direction. The two men jumped down carefully on to the old track-way.
Ted could see the body of a man lying there, face down. One arm was thrown out to the side and Ted saw immediately that the body had a the disabled hand.
'I know him,' he said. 'At least, I don't know his name, but I know who he is. He's Romanian, a waiter, from a hotel we're investigating as part of a child sex abuse enquiry we're running. It's called the Hotel Sorrento, on my patch.
'Trev and I ate there the other night. This man served us and dropped Trev's starter in his lap. He seemed much more afraid than I would expect him to be just for something like that. I wondered if he was an illegal, or if he knew anything about the goings-on at the hotel we're looking into. What else can you tell me for now?'
'I would say an execution rather than just a straight-forward shooting,' Donohue told him. 'Single gunshot to the back of the head, very precise. He'd also been thoroughly frisked and all personal possessions and any ID removed. They only missed your card because it was inside the closed hand, not easily visible. The pathologist just spotted it by chance.'
'You've probably heard,' said Ted. 'We've got a little lad raped and strangled, we think maybe at this hotel, but we've got nothing to tie him to it at the moment. We're assuming we're looking at a paedophile ring, sex parties with kids, that sort of thing. Can we get DNA from this body cross-checked against our boy? It's looking as if this chap may have been killed in connection with our case, either because he was involved or he knew too much about who was.
'We've also had a taxi driver shot on our patch, a possible suspect in our case. Weapon was a Glock 17. I'd put money on this one being shot by the same weapon. We need to work together on this if we possibly can.'
'Always a pleasure to work with you, Ted,' Donohue said, and sounded as if he meant it. 'Have you got time for a coffee before you head back? Strictly business, of course. We need to get our heads together on this one from the start.'
They walked the short distance to the nearby mainline railway station for a drink at a coffee bar there. It was good to catch up but Ted still felt as if he was playing truant from school, even though they talked shop a lot of the time. He wouldn't have given it a second thought had DCI Jim Baker still been his boss.
'So, what's the Ice Queen like to work for?' Donohue wanted to know. 'Must come as a real shock to the system after Jim Baker and his relaxed ways.'
'Very efficient, even colder than I imagined, extremely intelligent,' Ted summed up. 'I turn into a complete idiot every time I open my mouth in her presence.'
'She's seen your record, though, she knows you're a good cop,' Donohue told him, then asked, 'So where do you see this stiff fitting in with your enquiry? Is he one of your paedos, do you think?'
'I don't think so, based on nothing more than the wages he'd be likely to be getting as a hotel waiter, possibly an illegal immigrant to boot. I don't see how he could afford to be moving in those circles, on that money,' Ted replied. 'I also doubt if he could have identified anyone, or would have. I don't know how long he worked there but he didn't seem to speak any English and hardly any Italian, and it's an Italian hotel. I'm guessing that perhaps, for some reason, if this young boy was killed at the hotel, this waiter may have been given the job of dumping the body.
'Whoever did dump it wasn't very bright. They left it in a skip not all that far from the hotel, where it was easily discovered. So, if someone higher up was not best pleased about that, this might be another housekeeping job. The same as taking out the taxi driver who may have delivered the boy and who could have been on the point of talking about it.'
When Ted was back at his own station, he briefly informed the Ice Queen of the latest body and its possible connection to their own case. Then he steeled himself for another afternoon of the distasteful task of talking to known paedophiles.
He called the team together quickly at the end of the day, so they were all kept in the loop about the body, and the new line of enquiry it would involve.
'I got a call from Manchester City this morning about a gunshot victim. It turned out to be the waiter from the Hotel Sorrento He dropped Trev's hot starter in his lap when we ate there. He was shot once in the back of the head, execution style.'
'Bloody hell, boss,' Maurice blurted out. 'Remind me not to drop hot food on your Trevor. Are you sure you don't still have your service weapon?'
Ted tried to look stern and disapproving but failed and had to chuckle along with the rest of the team. 'It wasn't me, Maurice,' he smiled. 'But it begs the question why he was killed, and why in this way.
'Rob,
tomorrow, you and I will go back to the hotel, get a full ID on this man and start finding out a bit more about his background. I want to know if he had a car and if so, where it is. My current thinking is that he may have been the one to dispose of Aiden's body. So if we find a vehicle, we need to get forensics on to it, looking for any trace at all of Aiden's presence in it.
'We're working with City on this one because of the strong possibility of a tie-in. I think we're getting nearer. We just need to keep working away until we crack it.'
CHAPTER Twenty-three
After the briefing at the start of the day, Ted told Rob O'Connell they would go to the Sorrento some time later that morning. He had something to do first, something he had been putting off and dreaded tackling.
Back in his own office, he took off his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair. He pulled off the hated tie and stuck it in the jacket pocket, opening the top two buttons of his shirt, crisply ironed for him by Trev. He made a mug of green tea, stronger than usual, and doubled the amount of organic honey he normally added. Then he fished an old box of tissues out of a drawer. He wanted to be prepared.
Only then did he unlock the top drawer of his desk. He took out a large envelope containing the still photos taken from the videos seized in the raid on Rory the Raver's house. Ted tried to prepare himself mentally for what he would see, but just the sight of the first photo alone nearly caused him to lose his breakfast.
It was of Rory the Raver, in close-up, with a young boy, barely into his teens by the look of it. The shot left nothing at all to the imagination. Ted didn't recognise either the boy or the surroundings. He steeled himself to continue.
A lot of the stills were in close-up, not much of the background was visible in many of them. Where it was, Ted separated out the photographs, desperately trying to concentrate on the surroundings rather than what was happening in the centre of the shot.
Ted was not one for therapy or counselling. He had been offered it on occasion when cases had been tougher than usual, especially in firearms when he had shot people. He instinctively felt it was not for him, but he knew the principles. Find a safe place in his mind and go there when things got too hard to manage.
He leaned back in his chair and turned his face up to an imaginary sky, eyes closed against the sunlight. He could feel the soft, springy heather under his back, hear the sound of water in Kinder Downfall, splashing over rocks. Larks were singing, buzzards, wheeling high above, gave their pitiful mewing cries.
There was nobody for miles around. Only a hesitant sheep nibbled experimentally at the laces of his boots. Yet he knew that Trev was lying in the heather close to him, their hands not far apart. All he had to do was to reach out his fingers and he could make contact.
It would take him many virtual visits to Kinder to get through the pile of photos. He had just about sorted them all, collecting together those that showed any sort of background which might help him identify the location, when there was a hesitant knock and his door started to open.
'Wait!' Ted barked, his voice much sharper than his normal calm tone. He scooped up the worst of the pictures, slid them back into the envelope and locked it back in his drawer. He turned the remaining pile face down on his desk and only then said more quietly, 'Come in.'
Rob O'Connell came cautiously into the small office and looked shocked at the sight of his dishevelled boss. Ted's shirt was wet through with sweat which trickled down his back and left damp rings around his armpits. His hands were visibly shaking, although he tried to disguise the fact. Seeing Rob's look, Ted grabbed some tissues and mopped his face.
'Are you all right, sir?' Rob asked in evident concern. 'Is it still the virus thing? You look shocking.'
Ted shook his head dismissively. 'Just had to do something rather distasteful, Rob. I've been looking at some of the stills from the child porn videos seized in the raid on Rory the Raver's place. Some of them show background of the rooms they were shot in, which might be identifiable. There are some shots of what could be part of a four-poster bed.
'I don't want you to look at the content of these photos. It's not necessary and it's asking too much. Just wait outside a couple of minutes, will you, and I'll mask out the worst of the shot with blank paper, see if any of the backgrounds look familiar to you.'
'Boss, I'll look at it all if it will help catch these bastards …' Rob began.
Ted shook his head. 'No, Rob, you won't. Just please do as I say.'
When Ted called him back in, he reminded him not to move the paper, just to focus on what he could see of the backgrounds of the shots he had laid out on his desk.
'I can't be one hundred per cent certain but it is possible that some of these are in one of the rooms at the Sorrento that I looked at,' Rob said hesitantly.
'Right, wait for me in the main office, I'll collect these shots up and we'll head off down there now. Oh, and Rob, I might just show our phony Mr Rossi one of the full photos, just to see his reaction, so make sure you don't look at it when I do.'
Ted used a few more tissues to try to dry off the worst of the sweat on his face. He put on his jacket but left the tie stuffed in the pocket, hoping he wouldn't cross the Ice Queen's path, looking as bad as he did.
Steve was at his desk in the main office when he went out. 'Steve, Parish's Pies. I think we both know now what that actually stands for. Find them, please, whatever it takes.'
'Ahead of you. Already on it,' the TDC said, without raising his head from his computer. He was too involved even to add a 'sir', his fingers flashing over the keys like the flying feet of Irish dancers.
As they drove to the hotel, Ted outlined to Rob how he wanted the visit to go. First he needed an ID on the waiter, but he also wanted to get a look at some of the bedrooms, to see if they could identify any from the photos he had with him.
'We also need to find out if the waiter had a car, and where it might be. If he did have anything to do with Aiden's death, perhaps in disposing of his body, we'll need to get it thoroughly tested for traces. I've already asked Professor Nelson to cross-reference his DNA when she gets it from City against traces found on Aiden's body and clothing.' Ted told him. 'We're getting close to a breakthrough, Rob, I'm sure we are.'
Ross, the manager of the Sorrento, didn't look pleased to see the two police officers walk through his doors again, but he went into smiling professional mode. Ted noticed that he no longer bothered with the phony accent.
'Gentlemen,' Ross beamed, 'what can I do for you?'
'Your Romanian waiter,' Ted said, 'the one who dropped the starter all over my partner. Is he working today?'
Ross spread his hands. He still kept the flamboyant gestures. 'We haven't seen him for a couple of days. Sometimes these immigrants are not very reliable'
'What's his name?' Ted asked.
Ross shrugged. 'I'm not sure, Josef, Iosif, something like that. I don't remember and as I already explained, and your young officer verified, all our computer records have been lost in a crash.'
'Is he legally employed here? With the correct papers?'
'Well, sometimes we don't ask too many questions,' Ross said evasively. 'If we can help someone out with a bit of work, we try to.'
'Very public spirited of you,' Ted said dryly. 'Does he have a car?And do you have an address for him?'
Ross was starting to look uncomfortable. 'I think he drives an old Ford. I'm not sure where he lives. What's this about, Inspector?'
'I have to tell you, Mr Ross, that the body of a man has been found, a man who appears to resemble your waiter. No formal identification has yet been made. If we are unable to trace any next of kin, I may have to ask you to identify the body,' Ted told him.
Ross was looking visibly shaken. Ted pressed on relentlessly. 'Next, Mr Ross, I want to take a look at some of your bedrooms, in particular any rooms which have four-poster beds. I have reason to believe that your hotel may have been used to host so-called sex parties, those involving serious sexual abuse of
under-age children.'
Now Ross looked pale and seriously worried. He started to bluster but Ted cut him short. 'I'd like you to accompany me and Detective Constable O'Connell now, and show us some of the rooms.'
Again the manager tried to prevaricate. 'Some of the rooms are currently occupied, I can't show them to you … '
'We can either do this now, informally, without a warrant, or I'll go and get one and come back with a lot of officers in uniform so all of your guests can see what's going on,' Ted told him pleasantly. 'The choice is yours.'
Reluctantly, Ross got his pass key and led the way up the stairs to the first of the bedrooms. Ted told him he was at this stage only interested in those with four-poster beds, of which the hotel had several. When they entered the third such room, Ted walked across to the bed and looked at the posts, the brocade curtain and a picture hanging on the wall behind them.
'Mr Ross, I would like to show you photographic evidence to support my belief that your hotel has been used for child abuse,' Ted took one photo of several he had brought with him out of the envelope. He gave Rob a meaningful glance warning him not to look at it, then turned the photo over so Ross could see.
'In light of this evidence, Mr Ross, I am going to have to ask you to come to the station with me now to answer a number of questions in connection with serious offences.'
The manager only just made it into the en suite bathroom in time, where they could hear him heaving up his stomach contents.
CHAPTER Twenty-four
As Ted and Rob escorted Ross through his own reception area to the front door, he called across to the young woman at the desk to contact his boss as a matter of urgency, to let him know what was happening. All the way to the car and for most of the short journey to the station, he kept demanding to call his solicitor. Ted assured him he would be able to do so as soon as they arrived there.
When they got to the station, Ted asked Rob to book the manager in and see that he got his phone call, while he went off in search of the Ice Queen. He wanted to ask her to put the wheels in motion to obtain a warrant for a thorough search of the Sorrento Hotel.