Frozen

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

  Charlotte turned slowly round to look at Megan, dabbing eyes that were now puffy and red. ‘No I – I –’ she stammered – ‘I don’t think so.’

  Megan spoke slowly and softly, trying to keep the urgency out of her voice. ‘What about the soup run? Are you sure there was no one? One of the other volunteers, maybe?’

  ‘No. I’m sure she would have told me.’ She reached for another tissue. ‘We’re – we were – very close.’

  Megan pursed her lips, trying another tack. ‘How would you describe Tina? Physically, I mean?’

  ‘She was beautiful,’ she replied, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘I mean, she was 40 but she didn’t look it. I’m three years younger than her but people always think I’m the eldest. She could easily pass for early thirties.’

  ‘This is an awful question to have to ask you, but do you think Tina could have been mistaken for a prostitute? The reason I ask is because we think her death might be linked to the murder of a young girl who worked in the red light district.’

  Megan braced herself for what might follow, but the woman merely shook her head. ‘Oh no. She always wore what she called her scruffs when she did the soup run. Old jeans and hoodies – that sort of thing. It was partly because of Dudley being so suspicious, I think. She made herself look as plain as possible.’

  ‘Even after they’d split up?’

  ‘Yes.’ Charlotte sniffed. ‘I spoke to her on the phone just before she went out. She was joking about how she’d have to do a quick change and put on a bit of slap to look decent for later.’

  ‘Did she say anything else? Mention who she was doing the run with?’

  ‘No. All she said was that she was worried about Dudley getting into the house, it being her birthday and everything. He knew Tina was planning a night out. She was scared he might try breaking in and she’d come home and find him waiting for her.’

  The policewoman came in with a tray of tea, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Leverton left his post at the window and sat down, judging this a suitable moment to ask a few questions of his own.

  ‘This voluntary organisation your sister worked for – what was it called?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I think she found out about it through a friend at work.’ Charlotte reached for a mug of tea and cradled it in her hands, as if seeking comfort from its warmth.

  ‘Would that friend have been a man or a woman?’ Leverton persisted.

  ‘A woman. Her name’s Gail something. Sorry, I don’t know her last name.’

  ‘We can soon check that. Do you know how many people she did the soup run with?’

  ‘It would have been her and one other person,’ Charlotte said, staring at the steam curling from the mug. ‘They always went in pairs. For safety reasons, she said.’ Her chin wobbled and a tear splashed into the tea.

  Leverton looked at Megan before getting to his feet.

  Back in his car, he punched out numbers on his mobile. ‘Sweet Fanny Adams,’ he grunted, slamming it down on the seat.

  ‘No one there?’ Megan glanced at her watch.

  ‘Bloody answerphone. Probably off on a Christmas piss-up.’

  ‘Well, unless this Gail woman saw Tina home, it’s unlikely she’ll be much help.’

  Leverton frowned. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘That whoever did this saw Tina in the red light district and followed the soup van. Waited for her to finish and followed her home.’

  ‘And then what? How did he get in?’

  ‘Conned her with some ruse,’ Megan said. ‘Like Ted Bundy with his fake broken arm. Maybe he knocked at the door and pretended to be someone needing help. Sounds like Tina would be a sucker for that sort of thing.’

  ‘So we’re looking for a smooth-talking kerb-crawler who knocks about with a pimp and fancies scruffy dark-haired forty-year-olds?’ There was more than a hint of sarcasm in Leverton’s voice.

  ‘Not exactly what I would have put in the profile.’ Megan arched her eyebrows. ‘But yes, a charming, persuasive man who is familiar with the red light district. As for Tina being scruffy, from the way her sister described her it sounds as if she’d have stood out from the crowd whatever she wore.’

  Leverton gave her a sidelong glance that made her feel uncomfortable. As he drove on through the dark streets, Megan thought about Tina. She’d gone out that night, looking forward to celebrating later and no doubt happy to be free of her vicious husband. And what had happened? She’d been stalked by someone even worse.

  And Natalie. It was bad enough that she went, like Donna Fieldhouse, from a children’s home to the streets; bad enough what her usual punters asked of her, without being used by some monster to stand in for all his hatred of the world.

  Stand in. Something flickered in her mind. He used them as a standin for the real object of his hatred. Who? A wife? Girlfriend? Mother? Boss?

  And he used the pimp – the O man – to hide behind too. O got Natalie for him. Perhaps O dumped her body as part of the deal. A murderer hiding behind another killer. She shivered. And they had no idea who either of them were.

  Chapter 6

  Megan stood on a duckboard in Tina Jackson’s bedroom. For the past two days scenes-of-crime officers had been carrying out a painstaking search of the entire house. Anyone who entered was required to put on protective clothing and getting from one room to another meant walking on the raised wooden boards that criss-crossed the floors like stepping stones in a stream.

  The room now bore little resemblance to the crime scene photograph Megan held in her hand. The bed had been stripped, its duvet, sheets, pillows and mattress taken away for forensic examination. All that was left was the brass and cast iron frame. Megan could see how easy it would have been for the killer to handcuff Tina to its rails.

  The clothes and the shoe in the photograph had been removed, and there was a large dark stain on the carpet where Dudley Jackson’s body had been lying.

  With some difficulty Megan stepped onto another duckboard, the bulky overalls limiting her movement. She drew level with a dressing table and carefully opened the top drawer. Inside was an assortment of neatly folded underwear. Something hard and shiny stuck out from beneath the pile and Megan pulled back the clothes to see what it was.

  The smiling faces of Dudley and Tina Jackson looked up at her. It was a wedding photograph, hidden from view in the same way that Megan had hidden hers.

  Charlotte McGahy had been right about her sister. She was beautiful. She reminded Megan of Penelope Cruz. She had that same slightly vulnerable look about her.

  ‘What have you found? Anything interesting?’ Leverton appeared round the doorway, stepping across the boards with apparent ease.

  ‘No – just a wedding photo. Any news on the friend?’

  ‘She was with her on the soup run. Says Tina drove herself home from the place they cook it.’

  ‘Nothing suspicious?’

  ‘Not that she remembers. Says it was a quiet night.’

  ‘Where are they based?’

  ‘It’s a house in Cheddar Road. Owned by the woman who set up the charity. It’s a women-only thing.’

  ‘And this Gail didn’t have any other ideas? No boyfriend we don’t know about?’

  ‘No.’ Leverton frowned. ‘We’re going to have to hold a press conference soon: someone’s leaked the pathologist’s report to the papers. Any chance of you coming up with something by, say, lunchtime tomorrow?’

  Megan paused before answering. A press conference? Was this Leverton’s idea? It couldn’t be. There was no way he would go public on his suspicions if there was any suggestion of police corruption. Either he was playing some game Megan couldn’t fathom or someone else had been responsible for the leak.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ She moved on. ‘Let’s go over what happened here step by step; once I’ve got all the crime scene evidence I can build up a more detailed description of this killer before I start working on a profile of the guy who murdered Donna.’
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br />   ‘Okay, this is what the SOCOs have come up with so far: No signs of a breakin – windows all closed and intact and both doors locked; a partial footprint in blood on the landing which doesn’t match any footwear belonging to either Dudley or Tina Jackson; a clear footprint of the same shoe in earth next to the path leading from the back door. The toe section was facing away from the house.’

  ‘So it sounds like he let himself out the back way?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay,’ Megan said. ‘This is what I think might have happened. She gets back from the soup run and goes upstairs to get changed – hence the new outfit we found on the bedroom floor. He’s followed her home and is watching the house. Perhaps he catches a glimpse of her through the bedroom curtains and gets even more turned on. He rings the bell and comes up with some hard luck story. Maybe he tells her his car’s broken down and asks to use her phone. Anyway he gets into the house.’ She peered round the door. ‘Is there a downstairs loo?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Because he had to have some way of getting her upstairs. If he’d dragged her up kicking and screaming there’d be evidence. Scratches or scuff marks on the wallpaper, even traces of blood.’

  Megan stepped out on to the landing. ‘He uses the phone and then asks if he can use the loo. She shows him where it is.’ Megan waved her arm towards the blue bathroom door. ‘Instead of going in, he grabs her and shoves her into the bedroom, throws her down on the bed. He flips her over and grabs both her wrists. He’s got the handcuffs or wire or whatever in his pocket and he restrains her by looping it round the bedrails and then round her wrists. He penetrates her anally and strangles her. When he’s finished he undoes her wrists and he’s about to leave when the nutty husband arrives.’

  Leverton rubbed his chin. ‘How would Dudley have got in? Tina had had the locks changed and it was all locked up when my lads turned up because they had to break the front door down to get in.’

  ‘She might have left the door on the latch when she let AB in. She wouldn’t have been expecting him to stay more than a couple of minutes.’

  Leverton nodded.

  ‘Let’s assume Dudley drops the latch behind him because he doesn’t want Tina running out of the door. He prowls round the house trying to find out which room she’s in. AB hears someone coming. Whoever it is, he’s got to get rid of them. He hides behind the door and waits.’

  Megan stepped back into the bedroom. ‘There’s a mirror on the opposite wall so he can see Dudley before he gets into the room. He grabs him from behind and knocks the gun out of his hand. Then he gets him on the floor and shoots him in the mouth. He blasts Tina in the back to make it look like Dudley did it.

  ‘He gets out as quickly as he can because he realises people will have heard the shots. He goes out the back door, which locks automatically unless it’s been left on the latch. He goes through the back yard into the alley behind the houses and he’s away without any of the neighbours seeing him.’

  ‘Why did he bother to shoot Tina?’ said Leverton.

  ‘It’s all part of the game,’ Megan said, her voice even.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Oh come on, Martin, she thought, you’re taking this independent, unbiased viewpoint thing a bit far, aren’t you? If you think I’m going to come straight out and say it’s a copper, you can think again.

  ‘What I mean,’ she said, ‘is that he’s deliberately led you all up the garden path because he enjoys it. When the media reported it as a domestic murder followed by a suicide he’d have been revelling in the fact that he’d misled the press, the police – everyone.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Well, as I said before, the way Natalie and Tina were killed suggests a man who wants revenge for some traumatic event in his life. Often killers like this feel that the world in general has let them down. Any women they attack are vehicles for the rage they feel inside, but fooling the police and the public would give this kind of killer even greater satisfaction.’

  ‘Like sticking two fingers up at society, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly. Oh, and there’s something else you should ask Tina’s sister.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Trophies – you know how some serial killers like to take mementoes of their victims?’

  ‘Like clothing or body parts, you mean?’

  ‘Yes; we know Tina’s body wasn’t mutilated in any way but do we know if the killer took anything she was wearing?’

  ‘We found pants, tights, underskirt, dress and shoes on the floor, so I’m pretty sure he didn’t take any of her clothes.’

  ‘What about jewellery?’

  Leverton fished a piece of paper out of the file in his hand. ‘According to the SOCOs she was wearing two rings on her right hand and a pair of gold stud earrings.’

  ‘So no necklace or bracelets?’

  ‘No – nothing else.’

  ‘I think that if she was dressed up for a special night out there’s a good chance she’d be wearing more jewellery than that.’

  ‘You’re right. And I suppose Charlotte would know if anything was missing from Tina’s jewellery box – they seemed pretty close.’

  Megan nodded. Like everything else it was a long shot, but if the killer had taken something distinctive and it was described at the press conference there was a chance someone who recognised it might come forward.

  It wasn’t unknown for serial murderers to give trinkets taken from their victims to their wives or children as presents. It gave them the same sort of kick as revisiting the scene of the crime or seeing the murder reported on TV.

  She wondered what Leverton would do with this piece of information. She realised now that he was unsure about the identity of Tina Jackson’s killer. Yesterday in his office Megan had got the impression that he suspected someone in his own force – someone in particular – of being involved in the prostitute murders. But the Jackson case seemed to have shaken his confidence. What was going on in his mind? Had it suddenly occurred to him that he might have got it all wrong?

  She opened her bag, looking for her car keys, and caught sight of the bundle of pastel envelopes she had taken from Delva.

  ‘Martin,’ she began, ‘it’s my turn to ask you a favour.’ As soon as the words were out she regretted them. She hated the thought of being beholden to him.

  Leverton raised his eyebrows.

  ‘It’s about Delva Lobelo – the newsreader at BTV. She’s been getting some very unpleasant mail.’ Her teeth clenched, she handed him one of the letters.

  He took it out of the envelope, looked at the picture of the squatting woman and grunted. Megan saw the hint of a smile on his face.

  ‘This is serious. She’s had dozens of these.’

  He shrugged. ‘There’s a lot of strange people out there and a lot of them watch television.’

  Megan felt heat rising from her neck to her face.

  ‘From what’s in the letters I think it’s probably someone she works with.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘I’ve come across too many cases like this before, Martin. You might think it’s harmless, but I know what it can lead to.’

  He gave a heavy sigh. ‘All right, all right. I’ll send a uniform round there tomorrow.’

  ‘She’s already been to your lot and they weren’t interested.’

  ‘Well, the sight of a boy in blue in the building might do the trick if it’s a work colleague.’

  She frowned. He was being condescending.

  ‘Happy now?’

  She bit her tongue, realising there wasn’t much else she could do.

  *

  When Megan got home she flicked on the hall light and hung up her coat. As she did so something caught her eye. On the shelf above the hall radiator was a display of shells brought back from Borth. She had arranged them in three groups, each with a piece of driftwood behind it. But someone had re-arranged them: the shells were all together at one end of the shelf and the three pieces of
driftwood at the other.

  Had Emily done it? Megan frowned. It was more than a week since her niece’s last visit. Surely she would have noticed before now? She hastily re-arranged the shells and the wood, feeling slightly uneasy. Tony was the only other person with a key. Had he been sneaking around while she was at work? She couldn’t imagine why. He’d cleared out his stuff months ago. Perhaps it was time to get the locks changed. The image of Tina Jackson on the mortuary slab leapt into her mind and she shuddered.

  *

  Delva Lobelo hadn’t enjoyed her supper very much. Whenever she was on a late shift she had to decide between venturing into the city centre to eat in a restaurant or going to the BTV canteen.

  Either way she usually ended up eating alone, so it was a straight choice between good food eaten in public or lousy food eaten in private. She usually went to the canteen because it was less hassle. Being stared at by curious members of the public made her feel like an animal in a zoo.

  Tonight the canteen menu had plumbed new depths. The top layer of the vegetable lasagna would not have looked out of place wrapped around the wheel of a mountain bike and the cheesecake tasted like toothpaste.

  Delva took the lift back up to the newsroom. Her stomach felt heavy and her waistband was uncomfortably tight. It had been a nightmare of a day and she found herself wishing away the next three hours, longing for home and bed.

  Before she reached her desk she saw something on it that made her feel sick. It was another pastel-coloured envelope. Someone must have put it there while she was in the canteen. She spun round, her eyes scanning the rows of empty desks. The only other person in the room was the night sub. Delva strode across to the other woman’s desk.

  ‘Jane – did you put this on my desk?’

  ‘No – what is it? Not another pervy letter?’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Delva’s eyes were blazing as she ripped it open. ‘Oh my God … look at this!’

  ‘Bloody hell, Delva, that’s appalling. I mean, this is something else, isn’t it? That’s a Polaroid photograph – not something he’s cut out of a magazine.’