JM04 - Deadly Justice

by DS Butler

  After the impact, Laura sat there, dazed and panting for breath.

  Her head had hit the steering wheel. The bloody airbag hadn’t inflated. For God’s sake. As she tried to reach across to unclip her seatbelt, a searing pain radiated out from her shoulder. She gasped and tried to keep as still as possible. Remaining motionless was the only thing that stopped her screaming out in pain.

  Sobbing with effort, she reached out for her mobile phone with her uninjured arm and dialled 999.

  25

  PC ANDY GREEN STEERED the road policing unit’s BMW estate into Finch Lane, keeping his lights on full beam so he could see the road ahead. PC Mark Cameron sat in the passenger seat, his eyes scanning the road on the lookout for the accident.

  Control had reported an incident involving two vehicles on this narrow, winding lane. PC Green felt a twisting in his stomach. It was impossible to predict how serious these kinds of accidents were going to be. They never knew what state people would be in when they got there.

  He just hoped they’d had their seat belts on.

  As they reached a turn in the road, Green slowed the car, and they both caught sight of the red Vauxhall Astra with its crumpled bonnet and the silver VW Golf with a huge dent in its side.

  The Astra was an old model, but the Golf was only a year old. The Golf sat on the wrong side of the road. Cracks resembling a spider’s web, radiated out from the centre of the Astra’s windscreen.

  Worryingly, there was no immediate sign of the car’s occupants.

  Green brought the police car to a stop a few feet away from the traffic collision, and Cameron radioed control to let them know they were at the scene.

  At first glance, the collision didn’t look too bad. They’d seen a hell of a lot worse.

  Both men climbed out of the BMW and surveyed the scene. Their first priority in a case like this was the hazards from other cars. This was a quiet lane, which helped. But they would still need to temporarily close the road.

  They approached the red Vauxhall first, and Cameron’s stomach clenched when he saw the baby on board sticker. Please, God, no kids tonight.

  A woman sat in the driver’s seat of the Vauxhall. Her hands still gripped the steering wheel, and she barely seemed to notice their presence. A trickle of blood ran down from a cut on the bridge of her nose. She would have a hell of a bruise tomorrow.

  There was a baby-seat in the back, but no sign of a child. Thank God.

  PC Green knocked softly on the glass, and the woman blinked at him then tried to wind down the window. It wouldn’t open.

  Green opened the door.

  “That car was in the middle of the road,” the woman said in a shaky voice. “I didn’t have time to stop. I didn’t have a chance. I just turned the corner, and it was sitting there in the middle of the road.”

  Cameron could see the panic in her eyes. She was in shock.

  “Are you hurt?” Green asked.

  “Is the other driver okay?” she asked. “I haven’t been able to get out of my car. I’ve hurt my shoulder. I couldn’t open the door. I can’t even take my seatbelt off.”

  “We’ll soon get you out,” Green said.

  “It wasn’t my fault. I mean, why would they stop in the middle of the road like that?” she asked, her eyes wide and fixed on PC Green’s face.

  Green moved a little closer, and Cameron knew he was getting close to see if she’d been drinking.

  Green looked back at Cameron and gave a barely detectable shake of his head. They had worked together long enough for Cameron to know what he meant. There was no trace of alcohol on her breath.

  Cameron nodded and stepped back. Her injuries didn’t seem as serious as they might have been. Green could handle it. He moved on to check the occupant of the VW Golf.

  After Cameron had checked out the VW Golf, he hurried back to his colleague. In the background he could hear the distant wail of sirens.

  PC Green frowned as he saw his colleague marching towards him.

  “What is it?” Green asked. “Fatality?”

  Cameron nodded. “But it’s worse than that. We’re going to need some more units.”

  26

  WITHIN HALF AN HOUR, the road was closed in both directions. Police cars, two ambulances and two fire engines were parked up behind the accident site. A group of officers, some wearing high-visibility jackets, gathered a safe distance from the cars.

  PC Mark Cameron swallowed nervously and leaned back against the smooth cool metal of his BMW estate. PC Andy Green approached him and asked again if he was all right. Cameron just nodded. He didn’t really want to talk about it. He didn’t want to think about what could have happened if he hadn’t spotted the sign.

  He’d put his hand on the driver’s door and had reached for the handle when, just in time, he’d seen the note on the window, warning about the gas inside.

  All his training had taught him not to try and get the victim out himself. But it hadn’t taught him how hard it was not to help.

  The pale-faced young girl had been sprawled across both front seats. In all likelihood, she had been dead within seconds of breathing the gas. During training they’d been told that death occurs very quickly. But that didn’t make him feel any better.

  They’d asked the controller to call more units, and advised the fire brigade of the situation. The fire and rescue service were now here, dressed in protective suits and wearing special breathing apparatus. They had monitoring equipment which could detect the levels of toxic gas. One of the problems in these types of situations was that they couldn’t rely on homemade notices to identify the gas. They had to wait for substance identification by the specially trained fire crew.

  They’d attempted to establish the downwind hazard area by attaching a strip of crime scene tape to the edge of a fencepost to determine the wind direction. Evacuation of any nearby residents would be down to the fire commander, but luckily this area was only sparsely populated. When the safety officer arrived, he set up a cordon around the site and made everyone move back from the scene.

  Cameron’s role was to maintain the scene logs and make sure that no members of the public could stumble into danger. No doubt there would be some reporters down here soon, and then his job would be to keep them away as well.

  SOCOs were already in attendance, photographing the scene. All the first responders had to wear gas-tight decontamination suits, so everything was taking much longer than usual. The girl’s body would have to be stored in a special body bag and taken back to the morgue.

  Cameron shivered. The poor kid. She’d looked so young. What made someone like her want to end it all?

  Cameron raised his head to the heavens as a light rain began to fall. This was his first toxic suicide. He hoped it would be his last.

  27

  POLICE INDEXER, EMMIE FOXALL, had endured a really bad start to the day. First, she’d overslept, somehow managing to sleep through the alarm on her mobile phone. A fast shower, without washing her hair, followed by a cereal bar gobbled down instead of breakfast and she was almost back on schedule.

  Until she got in her car, and the bloody thing wouldn’t start.

  She’d had to beg her boyfriend to use his Jeep. Shiny and red, it was his pride and joy. As she backed out of the drive, he chewed on his nails. The fear on his face was almost comical. Emmie knew his concern wasn’t for her but his fancy Jeep.

  She deliberately ignored his frantic expression as she crunched the gears before driving off. She managed to crunch the gears three more times on the way to work. She’d passed her test with a manual, but that had been a long time ago.

  When she finally got to work, she found someone had been using her coffee mug and hadn’t washed it up. Squirting it with fairy liquid, Emmie gave it a good scrub.

  Nothing was safe in this place. She’d expected staff working in a police station would respect other people’s property, but she’d had a whole bag of Maltesers go missing from the fridge last Friday, and now som
e cheeky bugger was using her mug. She didn’t really mind it being used, but they could have at least washed it up!

  Emmie made her tea just how she liked it – really strong with a dash of milk. Evie, the crime analyst she’d been working with, called it builder’s tea.

  Evie was working a later shift today, so for now, Emmie had the area to herself. She fumbled around in her desk drawer and fished out a packet of paracetamol. She popped a couple of the small white tablets from the foil packet and swallowed them, chasing them down with a sip of hot tea. Then she took a deep breath and looked down at the amount of work she had to get through today.

  Emmie loved her job. It suited her perfectly. She loved putting everything into place and making order out of chaos. She had an extra-wide computer monitor, so she could look at whole spreadsheets at a glance, taking in all the information at once.

  Before she got started on her actual indexing work, Emmie decided to take a quick look at the overnight stuff first.

  She scrolled through the list of events and singled out items of interest. Her fingers gripped the computer mouse more tightly when she read the account of the incident in Finch Lane.

  Another suicide. Another case involving hydrogen sulphide.

  Emmie copied the details to her screen and chewed her bottom lip as she read the report.

  Another hydrogen sulphide suicide – could it really be a coincidence?

  If it was, it was a bloody big one. Emmie reached for the phone on her desk.

  28

  “THERE’S BEEN AN IMPORTANT development,” DI Tyler said, then paused to get everyone’s attention.

  Collins put down the document he’d been reading.

  “There’s been another suicide, involving hydrogen sulphide.” Tyler waited until the murmurs around the room died away. “This one’s a very different set up – a car in a country lane.” Tyler pointed to a map of the county taped to the whiteboard behind him.

  “Finch Lane, Essex,” Tyler said. “An eighteen-year-old girl called Joanne James. DS Webb, I want you to speak to the family.”

  Webb pulled a face. No one enjoyed dealing with bereaved parents, but Webb was particularly prone to putting his foot in it.

  “We need to find out if she had any association with Craig Foster or Syed Hammad… Maybe she got the information the same way they did… A website… A forum… And we need access to her computer.”

  “Right,” DC Webb said, writing furiously in his notebook.

  “The circumstances are very different.” Tyler loosened his tie and looked down at the floor. Even from across the room, Collins could see the furrows crease Tyler’s forehead. “But all of these suicides have one thing in common…”

  He had everyone’s attention. Tyler set down a sheet of A4 paper on the desk in front of him and took a deep breath. “It’s the same suicide note.”

  Collins could almost hear the cogs turning in the room as Tyler shook his head. “We can’t jump to conclusions.”

  “Did Joanne James sign her suicide note?” Mackinnon asked.

  “What?” Tyler shook his head, distracted. “No. It wasn’t signed.”

  “Just like the others…” Charlotte said, turning to Mackinnon.

  “I already said that,” Tyler snapped.

  “That’s got to mean something,” Mackinnon said. “None of them signed the note. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything.” Tyler leaned forward, resting his palms on the desk. “It’s probably because they printed it from the same website. People never bother to write anything anymore. They probably didn’t think about signing anything. DC Webb found sites with every last thing you could possibly want if you wanted to end it all… Step-by-step instructions, tips on how to tidy up your affairs to make it easier for the people you leave behind and…” Tyler paused for emphasis and poked the desk with his index finger before delivering his killer line, “And he found websites with suicide notes – all ready to print out.”

  Collins had seen the websites himself, but it still didn’t make sense. It was so impersonal.

  “Did anything look suspicious about the death?” Mackinnon asked.

  “It’s still early days,” Tyler said. “The car was found in the middle of the road, not parked at the verge like you might expect.” Tyler shrugged. “That’s unusual, but I’m still waiting on further details.”

  After DI Tyler wrapped up the impromptu briefing, Collins got on the phone. The technical team was still working on the CCTV footage from Syed Hammad’s shop. They still hadn’t managed to extract anything useful. Although they had promised to get in touch as soon as they had something to show the major investigation team, Collins thought it couldn’t hurt to give them a little nudge.

  As he waited to be put through to Troy Wilson, who hopefully would be able to help, Collins chewed on the end of his Biro. These multiple suicides made him uneasy – not just because of the death of three people who had their whole lives ahead of them, but because there was something about this case which didn’t feel right.

  Collins’ first experience of suicide came when he was at school. The father of a boy in his class jumped off the roof of a multi-storey car park. He could never understand how anyone could put their kids through something like that.

  It might be un-PC to think it, but the way Collins looked at it, it was selfishness.

  He still remembered the boy’s name – Frankie White. He’d been a happy enough kid beforehand, with a gap-toothed grin, and he’d been the best football player in the class.

  Frankie had been in the last year of primary school when it happened, and after his father’s death, he’d started to wet himself. At the age of ten, there weren’t many things more humiliating than wetting yourself in the classroom.

  Collins and Frankie had gone on to separate secondary schools, and Collins had no idea what had happened to the boy, but he still thought of him every now and then when suicide cases like this came up. He wondered what happened to Frankie. He could be married with kids by now… Or…

  Collins dropped his pen on the desk as Troy Wilson came on the line.

  “So, you want images. Reference number?” Troy Wilson asked in a bored tone.

  “Er…” Collins fumbled through the paperwork in front of him. “It’s images from the CCTV from the newsagent’s on East Street. DCI Brookbank’s the SIO.”

  Troy Wilson sighed heavily. “If you don’t have your reference number, I can’t help you.”

  “Hang on. Hang on,” Collins said. “It’s here somewhere.” Bloody numbers – everything was numbers these days. “Ah, here it is,” Collins said, extracting a slip of paper from the pile. “It’s reference 721 – XCG.”

  Collins held his breath.

  “We’ve not finished that one yet,” Troy Wilson said. “I’ll call you when it’s done.”

  “What? You’ve got to be joking. This is urgent.”

  “Not according to my file it isn’t,” Troy Wilson said.

  Collins had no idea what Troy Wilson looked like, but he imagined him sitting in a computer chair, wearing thick nerdy glasses and sporting sweat stains beneath his armpits, a smarmy, self-satisfied smile plastered on his face.

  “Now you listen to me,” Collins began.

  “No, I don’t have time for this. We have managed to get copies of a few stills from the footage, but we’re having to do the whole thing in batches as no one uses this kind of software anymore. None of our systems are compatible. If you only knew how long it has taken us…”

  “All right, all right. Can I at least look at the stills?” Collins asked. “They might give me something to go on.”

  On the other end of the line Troy Wilson hesitated. “The images are still a bit fuzzy, so don’t come down here expecting miracles.”

  “Just a little bit of cooperation would do,” Collins muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing. Be with you in five minutes.”

  A few min
utes later, downstairs in the computer labs, Collins saw Troy Wilson in person for the first time. He may not have had sweat stains under his armpits – he moved too slowly to ever build up a sweat – but he’d definitely pictured the self-satisfied smirk correctly.

  “I thought you said five minutes.” Troy Wilson said and folded his arms.

  Collins sighed. He’d been cornered by DCI Brookbank on the way down. Despite that, he’d only been ten minutes, tops. Rather than point that out, Collins swallowed his retaliation and sat down in a computer chair next to Troy.

  “Sorry,” Collins said and then focused on the computer screen. “Is this it?”

  Collins could sense Troy glaring at him as he looked at the screen.

  Troy narrowed his eyes. “It’s the best we have so far.”

  Collins leaned forward. It wasn’t bad, better than he’d been expecting anyway.

  It showed the inside of the shop floor. The edge of the till was just visible on the right-hand side as the camera was set up behind the counter.

  It was a black-and-white image. Newspapers and magazines lay scattered on the ground. There was an overturned chair, and chocolate bars lay around the body of a young boy.

  Collins pointed at the boy. “That’s Robbie Baxter. I’m sure of it. He’s still in hospital.”

  Troy grunted, showing just how interested he was.

  Collins searched the image for the other kid they had in hospital. He sat slumped against the wall. The image was slightly pixelated but Collins was sure it was Vinnie Pearson.

  There were three other figures in the shot.

  One was a girl with dark hair and a slim figure, wearing a tracksuit. Definitely a new lead. Next to her, a boy lay curled up and half hidden by the counter.

  Collins’ eyes focused on the final figure. This one was male, fat and down on his hands and knees. It wasn’t the best angle but …

  Collins frowned and leaned closer. “Christ…”