Just as she was about to leave the bathroom, she noticed a damp towel flung on the blue linoleum floor just behind the door. Above it, an identical dry towel was folded neatly over a towel rail.
Exiting the bathroom, she noted the two damp coats hanging up on the coat rack on the wall. Moving on, she entered the kitchen, where on the floor next to the door were two cheap, blue plastic carrier bags of shopping. Glancing in one of the bags, she spotted a pack of Lambert and Butler, confirming her theory Tanya was a smoker.
The small kitchen was as neat and organised as the bathroom, with a place for everything and everything in its place, as her mother used to say. Except everything was not in its place, she noticed. A knife was absent from the wooden butchers block, which sat at perfect right angles to the spotless breadboard.
Back in the hallway, she eyed a shelf on which Tanya kept a framed photo of her daughter alongside a glass dish containing loose change and her house keys. Neither item appeared to have been disturbed.
She shunned the two closed doors leading to the living room and Tanya‘s bedroom, for already she had a good idea of the order of the events that had preceded Tanya’s murder. For in death, as in life, we always look to the past so we can learn about the future.
Sometime around nine this morning, Tanya and Keisha had walked to the small parade of shops down the road. They’d been caught in the rain, which had come down just after nine when she had just awoken and was already looking forward to the lazy day with Ray. On the girls’ return home, Tanya had either run into a friend and invited them in, or had let a friend in via the intercom system before she’d had a chance to unpack her shopping and dry off.
Whilst Tanya was in the bathroom drying her hair with the towel, Keisha had gone straight to her room to change out of her wet clothes. This was when the supposed friend had taken the knife from the butchers block and gone to Keisha’s room. The young girl called for her mum, who’d dropped the damp towel and ran to her daughter’s room.
Jessop hovered in the doorway to Keisha’s bedroom, a tidy pink haven of innocence and childhood imagination. From this moment on, though, this was to be the hellish dungeon from which poor Keisha would never escape. For what happened after Tanya had run to her daughter’s screams lay curled up in a foetal position on the crimson stained blue carpet at Jessop’s feet.
With slim hips, long legs, silky black hair and flawless cappuccino skin, Tanya Adams was undeniably beautiful, even in death. Jessop crouched down besides the young mother, whose beige turtle neck sweater and faded blue jeans were streaked with the blood she lay in. She considered Tanya's tear and blood streaked cheeks, and how such violence could spawn such a look of serenity.
A look she'd seen too many times.
She took a measured breath, heard the front door open and close softly and footsteps enter the room. She did not have to turn around to know Mason was hovering behind her.
The thirty-five-year-old detective had been her first choice for promotion when her previous DI had transferred to forensics under a dark cloud. Not only did his sharp instincts, cool head, and seemingly perpetual patience under pressure command respect from his peers, he understood and accepted her somewhat unorthodox work ethic, which his predecessor had once described as “unhealthily obsessive”.
Along with his impressive arrest record and eagerness to learn, it was this understanding that had secured him not only the job but her trust, and the right to be the only person she allowed to interrupt her initial assessment of a crime scene.
‘She bled to death,’ she said.
Mason crouched down beside her, examining the slices along Tanya’s forearms from elbows to wrists. ‘Vertical cuts. Next to impossible to stitch up.’
‘And deep, too. Hit a bunch of veins.’
Mason agreed, scrutinising the many rivers of blood snaking down Tanya’s slender arms. ‘She would have been petrified, causing her heart rate to accelerate throughout the ordeal and increasing the blood flow.’ Mason sighed. ‘Whoever did this was making sure she didn’t live to tell.’
‘I think Tanya knew who did this,’ Jessop said. ‘No sign of forced entry, and no disturbances throughout the flat. I figure the killer was a friend she invited in.’ She stood, stepped toward Keisha’s bed, on which the missing bloodied kitchen knife appeared to be bleeding onto the crumpled pink duvet.
‘Keisha’s talking.’ Mason said.
‘Already?’
‘The kid’s tough.’
‘She’s in denial. What did she say?’
‘She said the killer was already in her room with the knife when they returned from the shops.’
The flesh on the nape of Jessop’s neck prickled. She hadn’t considered the possibility the killer may have been such a close friend they’d had their own key.
Why?
‘Could be good news for us,’ she said. ‘What else did she say?’
‘According to Brooke, Keisha said the killer cut her mum’s arms and made her watch as Tanya bled out.’
Jessop bit down hard on her gums.
‘There’s something else…’ Mason hesitated, looking as troubled as she had ever seen him. ‘She said the pain she is feeling is the breaking of the shell of her understanding, and she should embrace it.’
‘Come again.’
‘The killer told her to memorise it.’
Chapter Three
He punched mum in the face. She fell down and he cut her arms. Then he grabbed me and put the knife to my neck and told me to be quiet and watch. But I couldn’t watch because mum was crying and her arms were bleeding. Then he told mum to stop crying and stand up or else he would cut me with the knife.’
Jessop looked up from the statement DS Brooke Fuller had taken from Keisha. The petite twenty-eight-year-old detective was her secret weapon when interviewing witnesses. The soft brown hair, impish face, welcoming smile, and empathic doe eyes could unlock the most frozen of recollects and loosen the tightest tongues. Having just completed the first stage in the kinesics course she was taking didn’t hurt either.
Through the crack in the bedroom door, she winked at Brooke perched next to Keisha on the single bed draped with an Arsenal duvet. Dressed in baggy jeans and a pink Adidas tracksuit top, Keisha was thumbing her Nintendo DS with impressive agility, seemingly oblivious now to her new friend.
Jessop shivered as she was reminded of a girl the same age as Keisha, who also resembled her mother. But instead of sitting quietly on a bed, this girl was cowering in the back of a squad car. And instead of playing a computer game, this girl was working on a word search puzzle in the vein hope that when she'd completed it, she’d awake from the nightmare and her family would be alive and everything would be back to normal.
Mum did what he said, but she was wobbly and kept telling me everything was going to be alright. But I knew she was lying because she was crying and kept asking the man what he wanted. But the man said nothing, just squeezed me harder and put the knife near my eye. Then he said I needed to watch closely, because the pain I was feeling was the breaking of the shell of my understanding, and I should embrace it. He told me to repeat it over and over till I memorised it, so I did until mum fell over and it looked like she’d gone to sleep. Then the man left and I ran over here.’
Keisha’s little legs swung faster off the side of the bed, her feet kicking together and making the heels of her white trainers flash with red light. Jessop watched a single tear run down the little girl’s smooth cheek, on which there was a slim red flesh wound. Such flesh wounds healed with time, and were eventually forgotten. Unfortunately, the memories of the man who had cut her mother, dressed in a black jacket, hoody, jeans, gloves, and with a scarf over his face would not dissipate so easily.
From the living room down the hall, Jessop heard a child’s laugh rise above the cartoons playing on the TV. She wondered how long it would be before Carly Samuels requested rehousing for her and her two boys: five-year-old Daley and two-year-old Robby. Keisha may ha
ve witnessed her mother’s murder, but Carly was the first to find her best friend curled up in the pool of blood. From that moment on, the place she called home would hold only one memory for her. Not only did evil leave a stain on the soul, it infected the ground it touched.
Jessop turned at the sound of Mason stepping through the front door and hanging up on the call he had made.
‘Davies is working the quote Keisha was made to memorise. How’s she doing?’
She glanced back into the room, where Keisha finally looked away from her game and acknowledged the attentive brunette next to her. ‘Is my mum gonna be alright?’
Brooke snaked an arm around the young girl’s tiny shoulder, pulled her close and tight and whispered something into Keisha’s chestnut hair.
‘She’s in good hands. CSI here yet?’
‘On route.’
‘Knowles?’
‘Yep.’
She breathed a sigh of relief. Stepped across the hall and into the kitchen where Carly was leaning against a rumbling washing machine sucking hard on a cigarette between trembling knuckles.
Dressed in a sloppy blue sweatshirt, black leggings and Ugg boots, the blonde mother of two was not as house proud as her friend and neighbour. The kitchen walls were painted a garish bright yellow, while the stained, cream linoleum was cracked and curling up around the feet of all the appliances. Plates, cutlery and pans were jammed into a plastic sink drainer, whilst this morning’s breakfast dishes sat in the sink. Jessop doubted if the distraught girl with the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes was in the process of cleaning up when the fated thump on the door had come earlier.
Stepping over a basket of washing, she asked, ‘How you holding up?’
Carly stubbed out the cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, reached for a pack of Silk Cut and sparked up another smoke with a throwaway lighter. ‘Still think it’s all a nightmare, you know?’
Jessop nodded. She knew. ‘In her statement, Keisha said you keep a spare key to her flat.’
Carly reached into a cupboard beneath the sink. A cluttering of pans later, and amongst an assortment of high street carrier bags she pulled out a square Tupperware container Jessop suspected had come with a Chinese takeaway. Inside was an assortment of keys, key-rings, screws, nails, and batteries. Carly fished out a set of 3 keys, handed them to Jessop. ‘Good thing, too, because Tanya lost hers a fortnight ago.’
‘Yeah?’ Mason said. ‘Where?’
‘Down Revels. I had to let her in.’
Mason flipped open his notebook, scribbled. ‘What night was that?’
‘Saturday. She went with Sophia Cox as she always does.’
‘You know Sophia’s address?’
Carly cocked her head toward the kitchen window. ‘Number forty-two.’
‘You ever go with them?’ Jessop enquired.
‘Revels aint my scene. Drinks’re too pricey.’
Jessop’s eyes wondered to a scribbled shopping list stuck to the fridge with a red, yellow and green fridge magnet in the shape of Jamaica. Chips, chicken nuggets, beans, bread, coffee, crisps, milk, biscuits, bubble bath, 400 B&H.
‘How long you known Tanya?’ Mason asked.
Crossing her arms over her shallow chest, Carly replied, ‘Since school. Dumb luck we got flats next to each other.’
‘Tanya have any enemies you know of?’
‘Uh-uh. Everyone liked Tanya.’
‘What about Keisha’s father. Where’s he at?’
Carly drew hard on the cigarette. ‘Junior went down for a five stretch last September for kicking one of his crack-head dealers half to death for scratching his Mercedes.’
‘Junior’s surname?’
‘Dennis. You heard of him?’
Mason shook his head, jotted down the name.
Jessop asked, ‘They together when he went down?'
'Nah.'
'But he kept in contact with Tanya from prison.'
Carly shrugged. ‘He sent letters occasionally.’
‘Anything threatening?’
‘Uh-uh. Just shit about how he's found God and is seeing the error of his ways. A right convert.’
'So no animosity between them?’
Carly shook her head. ‘No. Junior respected Tanya. Couldn’t wish for a better mum for his little angel.’
Jessop asked, ‘So no reason you can think of why Junior would have someone on the outside do this to Tanya?’
‘None I know of.’ Carly's mobile rang. Jessop recognised the ringtone as being One Love by Bob Marley. Carly retrieved the phone, an old Nokia Jessop used to own and thought was obsolete, switched it off and apologised.
‘No problem,’ Jessop said. ‘Why did Tanya and Junior split up?’
Carly shrugged, drew on the cigarette. ‘Same reason all of us here are single, I guess. Too much too young.’
‘Any boyfriends since? Someone down Revels, maybe?’
Carly flicked her cigarette at the ashtray, but missed. She didn’t notice. ‘Uh-uh. Tanya didn’t want Keisha waking up to any strange men in her flat.’
The twisted irony of that statement did not escape Jessop as she blinked away a wisp of smoke and eyed the contents of the ashtray.
‘What about family?’ Mason asked.
‘None local. Dad fled back to Trinidad when she was eight. Mum died of a heroin OD when she was six. No brothers or sisters.’
Just then a small red headed boy with fair skin and dressed in Arsenal’s football strip appeared at the kitchen door. Daley announced that he and Robbie were hungry, and could they have a sandwich? Jessop saw an adorable little boy with curly black hair and beautiful mocha skin toddle into the kitchen wearing just a nappy.
Carly turned to Jessop. ‘You mind if I...’
Forgetting she’d had a rare lay in this morning, and that it was approaching lunchtime, she said, ‘Of course not.’
Mason’s phone rang. Excusing himself, Jessop was left watching the young mother prepare two cheese sandwiches. She informed Carly that the whole block was a crime scene, and to expect some commotion and inconvenience for the next forty-eight hours. Carly understood, her bottom lip quivering as she handed the plate of sandwiches to Daley.
‘You got a fella, Carly?’ Jessop asked.
Carly fingered another cigarette from her pack, offered a weak smile as she sparked up and glanced around the messy kitchen. ‘Why would any bloke want me?’
Bringing her daughter Chloe up alone, Jessop knew all too well the repelling power a kid can have on a potential boyfriend. She offered Carly her most empathic smile, which was lost in a plume of cigarette smoke and grief as the young mother's puffy eyes once again welled with tears.
She thanked Carly for her time, left the flat, and stepped back out onto the landing, where Mason acknowledged her and switched the phone call he was on to loud speaker. ‘It's Tom.’
‘What you got, Tom?’
‘Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding,’ said DC Tom Davies, the newest and youngest member of her team. ‘It’s the beginning of a quote by Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese/American poet, artist, and philosopher. The rest of the quote being: It is the bitter potion which the physician within you heals your sick self, so therefore trust your physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity.’
‘What’s Gibran’s story?’
‘Died in 1931, but left a pretty impressive legacy with his book of poetry The Prophet. To date, it’s sold over a hundred million copies worldwide, and after Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu, Gibran is considered the third most read poet in history.’
‘Any extreme religious or political beliefs?’
‘Nothing I can see to evoke any violent tendencies in a fan. Gibran was a good Christian who championed peace and love for all. Hell, John Lennon even pinched one of his lines.’
'Great.' She thanked Davies, instructed him to keep digging into Gibran’s works, and nodded to Mason to hang up.
‘Never had Junior Dennis down as a Beat
les fan,’ she mused aloud. ‘More a reggae man.’
Mason’s eyes widened. ‘You know Junior?’
‘I busted him for dealing blow a couple of times when I worked vice. Him and his scumbag cousin Lennox Tyler.’
Mason’s eyes narrowed back into their familiar dark slits. ‘Lennox Tyler... Manager of Revels nightclub, right?’
‘Yep. Tanya’s regular Saturday night haunt.’
Chapter Four
Neil Harris had not liked Lurch from the moment he’d invited himself into their pitiful lives yesterday. All were welcome beneath the bridge, and many like Lurch, loners looking for companionship and shelter for a few days, had come and gone without fuss. But this lanky six and a half footer with his shaggy hair, sunken cheeks, and glazed red eyes had trouble written all over him.
Neil had learned a long time ago anyone that quiet had issues best kept to themselves. If not for the bottles of cider he’d brought to share with his new so-called friends, he would have asked the silent stranger to move on. If he’d refused, then Neil would have insisted the he leave.
Lurch may have a good half a foot on him, but when it came to surviving on the streets, Neil had a good ten years on the freak.
Neil took a swig from the Tennants can and passed it to George, who hadn’t spotted the imminent arrival of the newcomer he'd named after the butler from The Addam's Family. George was still preaching to Ricky about the city’s 1974 football squad being able to whip this year’s bunch of fairies. Ricky, who’d just arrived after oversleeping and being kicked out of his favourite doorway, was not yet fully awake and was humouring George with weary nods.
Knowing George was on one of his legendary rants, and that he wouldn’t concede his point until he’d pass out for his noon nap, Neil hadn’t offered an opinion. Just sat on the cold concrete beneath the bridge and watched the dark river tumble and swell from the rain his precious daughter Emily used to love to splash around in so much.
He wondered if Emily still remembered her love for the rain after all these years, or if the memory had been lost in time like the name of her loser father, whose failings in life had found him residing in shelters and drinking high strength lager under bridges.
Hurt (The Hurt Series) Page 2