The Initial Blow

by Paul Vincent Lee

  ***

  I was trying to keep my wits about me but I knew Joe would be demented over Kate’s antics. I had become tied up with some issues over an up-and-coming case; and hadn’t put as much effort into Joe’s worries as I’d have liked, but the following day I had more time to concentrate on Kate’s possible whereabouts. One thing did bother me. Though. ‘What was Kate thinking about, not even calling anyone, not even her mother?’

  I picked up the number Joe had given me for Martha Reid.

  ‘Hello, Martha. It’s Ray Ford here, Joe and Kate’s friend.’

  ‘Oh hello, Ray. How are you?’ replied Martha.

  ‘Fine, fine. Listen, Martha. I had a phone call from Joe yesterday. It seems Kate hasn’t arrived home after visiting you this week-end and he’s a bit worried. You know anything? They had a fall out and she’s teaching him a lesson, maybe?’

  ‘Oh no, Ray, nothing like that. I’m very worried myself but the police said they were sure everything would be all right and to leave it twenty four hours.’

  ‘The police? You called the police, then? Joe said you hadn’t.’

  ‘Well, Joe’s Joe and I’m me and I know my daughter. Something’s not right.’

  I smiled. Martha Reid may well be what some would refer to as a genteel older lady; but she had spirit and all her wits about her and would do what she thought was correct, despite anything Joe said. I also felt she was right.

  ‘Joe said Kate was staying with Julie. Did you tell the police that?’

  ‘Yes, but when I didn’t know exactly where that was, they lost interest I think.’

  ‘Do you have a number for Julie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know what hotel group she worked for?’

  ‘Oh yes, The Marriott, but not which one.’

  ‘Did you tell the police that?’

  ‘No. Do you think I should phone them back and say?’

  ‘No, I’ll get the numbers from Yell and phone around. I’m sure I’ll find Julie, and Kate will probably be with her. Even if she’s not, Julie might find it easier to speak to me if Kate is just trying to put Joe in his place or something.’

  ‘That’s very good of you, Ray. Please let me know. Bye now.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I will. Bye, Martha.’

  I hoped and prayed Kate had actually stayed with Julie and that wasn’t just a cover for something else, something that would rock Joe even more. I didn’t know for certain but I was pretty sure that Joe may well have given Kate the odd slap from time to time. Violence against women was something I never understood and absolutely abhorred, especially the domestic variety, but it wasn’t my place to interfere. Knowing Joe, he probably wouldn’t want to know anyway.

  There are three Marriott’s in Glasgow but I struck lucky at the first attempt. I was put through by the hotel’s well-spoken receptionist practically straight away.

  ‘Julie? My name is Ray Ford. I’m a friend of Kate and Joe Turner’s.’

  ‘Hi. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Just wondered if you’d seen Kate Turner recently?’

  ‘Kate? God no, I haven’t seen Kate for over a year. Why?’

  ‘Or spoken to her?’

  ‘No. What is this about?’

  ‘Sorry. It’s just that Kate was apparently in Glasgow for the weekend and hasn’t arrived back in Spain.’

  ‘Shit’.

  ‘I know. Joe phoned me and I’ve spoken to Martha, Kate’s mum, but no joy. Martha seemed to think she was staying at one of your hotels, presumably with you.’

  ‘No, as I said, I haven’t seen or spoken to Kate in over a year.’

  ‘Right. It’s obviously just crossed wires. I’ll track her down eventually, I’m sure. Sorry to bother you.’

  ‘No. It’s fine. Listen get Kate to call me when you speak to her.’

  ‘Will do. Bye, Julie.’

  I had to think, take stock. Hearing Julie’s voice reminded me a bit of Kate’s voice but didn’t bring me any comfort. I knew something was very wrong. I’d have to get back to Joe and Martha eventually, but I wanted time to think of what to do next, what to say even.

  Chapter 4

  As expected, the Post Mortem results showed that the woman on the river bank had died of multiple stab wounds caused by the same knife; one straight edge, one serrated, in what could only be described as a frenzied attack. She had injuries to the eyes, mouth, neck and body which Healy knew from previous cases normally indicated murder driven by anger which, in turn, meant the victim knew the killer.

  ‘Knew it, Susan.’ Healy said to Dornan as they sat in her office trying to absorb the report.

  ‘There were no definite defensive marks either, which again indicates that the victim hadn’t immediately sensed danger in the seconds before the attack’ said Healy……‘I think your theory’s going to stand up, Matt’ Dornan added a few moments later

  Two issues did arise, though, that were difficult to fathom initially. Firstly, the wounds were such that death would have been instant, yet the corpse had some water in her lungs. She hadn’t drowned but there was water and, secondly, there were traces of two separate semen types on the body. Dornan got DC Brown to phone the pathologist for confirmation that, due to the sustained nature of the attack, then the perpetrator had been sexually motivated.

  ‘That would be the first thing you would think on seeing these injuries” the pathologist agreed, but could offer no light as to the two separate semen samples being present.

  ‘You’re the detectives,’ his pointed response.

  He did add, though, that the human body contains five and a half litres of blood and that this was practically all gone. Some would have seeped away in the river but the attacker’s clothes would most definitely be covered in blood and he also felt that, although there were no real signs of a struggle taking place, the attacker would have some defensive marks on them as the attack took some time and the victim was bound to have resisted to some extent. The exact time of death was also a problem. In most cases, the time can be narrowed down using the internal body temperature to within about five and a half hours but this “window” increases as time passes. He added that he was considering calling in an entomologist for his input, after seeing the fly and maggot activity on the body, but warned Healy that even this method wouldn’t get them much closer as the body had probably been submerged in the river at various times. Dornan and Healy had moved out of her office and were standing in front of the incident board. The rest of the team gathered close in a rough semicircle.

  ‘Two different semen samples. You have got to be kidding me. She didn’t look like a hooker or anything’, Healy mumbled, more to himself than anything.

  ‘What do hookers look like sir?’ asked Paul Allan. Healy’s return stare its own reply. Frame was trying desperately to suppress a laugh, Jill French suddenly found something of overwhelming interest around her feet, Rab Brown looked either to be concentrating on the board or was asleep with his eyes open and Jack T’Baht suggested the victim may “have been a bit of a girl”.

  ‘Right! That is enough of that. I mean it. Enough.’ Susan Dornan was determined she would have no trouble establishing the pecking order and up to now that had been easy as there hadn’t been any pressure situations to deal with, but now was the real thing and she was going to solve this case and get the squad on its way to re-establishing its reputation.

  ‘Right; one of the samples was post death,’ Susan Dornan added.

  ‘Jesus H Christ, post death? What the fuck are we dealing with here?’ asked T’Baht

  ‘I don’t think she was a prossie, ma’am,’ said Brown.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘As it happens, I agree with you. Our corpse was no prossie and, even if she was, she deserved a better end than that.’

  Dornan issued a raft of orders and instructions to her squad, which boiled down to one thing: find out who the victim was. It was now three or four d
ays since the killing as the pathologist reckoned she had been killed sometime on Saturday, possibly Sunday, and she knew that the possibilities of solving the crime diminished with each passing hour.

  ‘Why has no-one reported her missing?’ asked Brown.

  ‘Why you think that is?’ Dornan replied.

  ‘Lived alone, tourist, who knows?’

  ‘OK, you and Allan check all the city centre hotels. See if they’ve any guests who haven’t shown up or failed to check out. You know the drill.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Any other leads?’

  ‘We’ve traced the phone box the call was made from. Out Lanark way, forensics are there now.’

  ‘Right. Good. Anything else, anything at all.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am. Nothing.’

  Healy surveyed the Incident Board. At this point there was very little on it but he knew, hoped, that would soon change and, once the various connections were made, they would have their man.

  The husband, Matt , check the husband.

  ***

  Martha Reid was exasperated. She was standing at the public counter in the Police Scotland Headquarters in Glasgow’s Pitt St, whilst a young policewoman was looking through some paperwork on the other side of a frosted screen. The constable returned to the desk with a puzzled look on her face.

  ‘Sorry, madam, can I just confirm your name again?’

  ‘Mrs Martha Reid. I called your Maryhill station yesterday.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Reid, we have no record of your call,’ the police woman on the desk explained.

  Martha had decided to travel into Pitt Street from her flat in Glasgow’s salubrious West End rather than Maryhill station and she was now glad she had.

  ‘What was your call concerning?’

  ‘I wished to report my daughter missing. Do you people speak to each other?’

  WPC Yvonne Miller switched up a gear, aware that a woman’s body had been found.

  ‘What age was your daughter, Mrs Reid?’ for once hoping the reply would be eighteen.

  ‘Forty six.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘I met her for lunch in Byres Road on Saturday. That’s handy for my flat, you see. I don’t need to take a bus; not like coming here. She’s forty six, but doesn’t really look it,’ a mother’s pride kicking in.

  ‘And her address?’

  ‘Well, she lives in Spain you see. She was only over here for a couple of days to visit me.’

  ‘Oh lovely, lots of sunshine, good for the tan.’

  ‘Yes, but you have to watch, you know. I sometimes think Kate can be too brown,’ quickly adding, ‘if you know what I mean, dear.’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Reid, I should have asked already, what was, is, your daughter’s name?’

  ‘Mrs Kate Turner.’

  ‘Can you take a seat over there, Mrs Reid, and I’ll get someone out to speak to you, take some more details.’

  Martha Reid sat surrounded by warning posters about knives, drink driving, illegal dogs and missing persons. She prayed Kate Turner’s face wouldn’t be joining them.

  It wouldn’t. It would be joining a much darker and sadder list.

  ***

  Whilst Martha Reid was sitting on a plastic chair in a police station foyer surrounded by images of the human condition that she had always been cosseted from, Colin Boom Boom Banks was swimming. Not in the sea or a river but between the past and the present, consciousness and oblivion. He yearned for the latter but long gone were the days he controlled his thoughts. Unless obliterated, his thoughts haunted him; tormented his present, annihilated his future.

  Why was it his mother and his mentors wore the same clothes; black flowing robes? Why were they always angry with him? He wanted to be a good boy, tried his best every day, but he always failed, always had to be punished; always in his room alone. Why did God make women if they were so terrible? Wasn’t the Virgin Mary a woman? What was a virgin? If he was so bad why was he Father Tobin’s “special boy”? What had he done that was so bad that his mother and Father Morgan had to sit in her room right through the night deciding “what to do with him?”

  Colin Banks floated into the present. Boom Boom didn’t know what to do. He wanted to carry on as normal, as normal as he could manage anyway, but knew it would only be a Matter of time before the police caught up with him. He was sure he hadn’t killed the lassie, didn’t remember doing it anyway, but the toilet cleaner and after shave mix he had graduated on to drinking these days did funny things to the mind. He had done the right thing afterwards. He did know that.

  He had also managed to get well away from the Clyde Valley; pity really, I liked it there.

  He had always been happy in that place and it had been good to him. He was holding an example of his good fortune in his hand at that very moment. Just as his old knife had finally given up the ghost, the handle was in that many pieces he couldn’t tie it to the blade any longer, he had found this one. Not new by any means but solid, the kind fishermen use. One of them must have left it behind after a day’s trout fishing.

  Too bad, finders keepers.

  His new abode wasn’t bad at all. Still by a river, he wasn’t really sure which one, Kelvin maybe, didn’t really matter. It was quiet but within an hour’s walk of some restaurants that he couldn’t have afforded to frequent even in his former life but, like most others, they discarded perfectly good food out the back and so now he ate there almost daily. Most importantly, there was also an offie for when he had cadged money from some deluded do-gooder.

  Boom Boom went over everything in what was left of his mind.

  Was the lass definitely dead when he found her? Yes, she had been for a while, days perhaps, his training told him so. He had never seen her before, though that was hard to tell given how she looked. But how did he know when he found her? So many blanks. He hadn’t killed her, he hadn’t. So what if he took some money? No-way anyone would know. She had no use for it did she?

  His head started to spin. Things become blurred. He muttered about DNA and urges. He saw the blackness, and swam towards it. It was dark when he awoke. He wondered what time it was, what day it was, whether there would still be a shop, garage, anywhere still open that sold household cleaning fluid; for people who didn’t have a household.

  ***

  ‘Mrs Reid? I’m Detective Inspector Susan Dornan and this is Detective Sergeant Matt Healy. Would you like to come through?’

  Martha Reid was unsure of the ranking system in the police force but both of these people appeared to be senior officers and she quietly congratulated herself for making the journey, for being persistent. She wasn’t sure what Kate would make of all the fuss but Martha didn’t care: That girl’s in for a good talking to anyway.

  Martha Reid didn’t watch television so was slightly taken aback by the bleakness of the interview room, not at all like the rooms she was used to.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea or anything?’ asked the nice female officer.

  Martha had seen one of those “dreadful” tea and coffee making machines in the hallway outside the room they now sat in, and had also surmised that the tea would not be served in proper cups, so had already prepared her answer if offered refreshment.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘I understand you’re concerned about your daughter’s whereabouts, Mrs Reid?’

  ‘Yes. She was just visiting for a couple of days. She lives in Spain you know, but no-one has heard from her since Saturday and she never got on her flight home apparently.’

  ‘Lives in Spain, eh? Nice. Good tan?’ asked Dornan.

  ‘Oh I’m always telling her to watch that but she seems to be used to it by now.’

  Healy and Dornan exchanged a quick, knowing glance.

  ‘How do you know she didn’t catch her flight or get a later one?’

  ‘Well, Joe, that’s her husband, checked with the airline, Ryanair, very reasonable I understand, and she wasn’t on the flight sh
e booked and, well, she’s not home yet so I don’t think she caught another flight.’

  ‘And I’ve been told your daughter’s name is Kate. Is that right? Is she known by any other name? Nickname perhaps?’

  ‘No, not that I know of. Why?’

  ‘No, nothing. Just routine.’

  ‘Do you have a recent photo of your daughter, Mrs Reid?’

  ‘Nothing recent, I’m afraid. Joe might have one, though.’

  ‘Do you have a contact number for Joe? He’s in Spain at the moment, right? He didn’t come over with Kate?’

  ‘No. Too busy with the pubs. Busy time with British tourists apparently. I think they like to visit that area for the Gaudi buildings.’

  Another glance between Healy and Dornan; suppressed smiles.

  ‘Yes, more than likely’ Susan Dornan said.

  ‘Were her and her husband, having any problems do you know?’

  ‘Not that I know of. No doubt they had their moments, what couples don’t, but she won’t just have run off if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Mrs Reid, it’s useful to us in this kind of investigation to have a sample of the missing person’s DNA. Can we visit your house and see if we can get anything? Hair from a hairbrush, an old toothbrush, her clothes, anything.’

  ‘Well, she wasn’t actually staying with me. She was staying at a hotel in the City Centre. I don’t know which one. Sorry. Joe didn’t know about that. He was quite angry when he found out I think, although, he tried not to show it.’

  Healy and Dornan glanced at each other for a third time; this time there was no need to suppress smiles.

  ‘Did you say hair just then?’ said Martha.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hair. Did you say you’d like some of Kate’s hair. It’s just that I’ve got a lock of her hair, you know these things parents do, sticking locks of hair into books every ten minutes after a child is born. Would you like it?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll get an officer to drive you home and collect it, if that’s all right.’