by Alex Clare
‘Pictures.’ A faint memory surfaced. Robyn’s inbox was full of hundreds of unread emails, all screaming their importance. She scanned through them, searching for anything from Ady. ‘Got it.’ The message had a link to a photo library and a login. She tried the link. ‘OK, why doesn’t the password work?’
‘Here, let me, Guv.’ Ravi leant over and tapped into the keyboard. The screen opened to a list of events. ‘Right, sort events by date. May: Gaddesford festival – here we are, Guv, seventy-one pictures.’
‘Thanks, Ravi. OK, check those. If Lorraine’s right and this was the first crime, then our man could be pictured here. Look for a cyclist in black Lycra.’
Robyn turned to Graham. ‘Have you got the full autopsy report?’
Graham held up a document. ‘I’ll say one thing for the new doc, he’s to the point. Not like Doc Drummond and his ‘venture to suggest’. This one tells you things you need to know in ten pages without too many long words.’
Robyn sat, knowing Graham would be more communicative with the audience on him. ‘Let’s have it then.’
Graham held the report at arm’s length. ‘First, the bad news. She’s not on the DNA register but definitely female so at least that’s fifty percent of the population eliminated.’ He glanced around.
No one said anything. The thought entering Robyn’s head would be what a similar test would say about her.
He turned a page. ‘OK, age eighteen to twenty-four, because something unpronounceable hasn’t fused and some other bone has done. The doc’s confident the murderer used a hammer because the holes in the skull had clean edges. Listen to this though. He found another wound to the side of the head, which he says must have been the first blow.’ Graham checked again to make sure they were all listening. ‘That means the killer didn’t need to be strong because the first blow would have stunned the victim and she’d probably have been lying on the floor when she was hit in the face.’
He turned the page. ‘Here’s something else new: the skeleton had reduced bone density and the most likely cause is the girl suffered from anorexia as a teenager.’ He put the report down. ‘Another nasty note. After the body was dumped in the maintenance pit, caustic soda was used to rot the flesh and clothes.’ There was a squeak as Chloe shifted in her chair.
The memory of the dust from the warehouse made Robyn swallow. ‘What about a date of death?’
Graham flicked to the last page. ‘He can’t be precise about it because of the chemicals. Between two and five years.’ He cracked one knuckle, then the next. ‘He say any one of the blows to the face was hard enough to kill. Someone wanted this girl wiped off the earth.’
Robyn tapped the photo on the board. ‘Thanks, Graham. I think you’re right, this isn’t a random attack because someone went to a lot of trouble to dispose of her. So our priority is to identify this woman and find out who hated her enough to do this.’
‘Yeah!’ Ravi banged the table.
Robyn permitted herself a sliver of hope. With a purpose, the team would keep going, so she needed to keep them occupied. If they blamed her for Janice, they were doing a good job of hiding their feelings. She glanced at her watch: it was already nearly half past six. Without thinking, she clapped her hands.
‘Listen up, everyone. We’ve all been working hard. I know this hasn’t been an easy time so let’s go and have a drink and welcome Chloe to the team. I’m buying.’
Smiling, Chloe got up. She was the only one. A phone rang and Ravi stretched out to answer it. The one-sided conversation seemed loud because no one else was speaking.
Her optimism draining, Robyn waited. ‘Well?’
Graham was unfolding a paper clip. ‘Nice idea. But it seems wrong to go out …’ He tailed off.
‘We can’t go out without Janice.’ Lorraine blinked. ‘What will happen to her?’
‘I don’t know. Fell wants everything done by the book which means DI Farnham is leading this investigation. It’s not my decision. I’m sorry.’
No one seemed keen to be the first to say anything until Lorraine checked her watch and screeched she was late for a band rehearsal.
Ravi got to his feet, muttering something about hockey training.
Graham grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Sorry, Guv.’
Robyn watched them go. That had been her first attempt at a team social and, with hindsight, she’d misjudged their mood. She began gathering her own things. An early night would be good. She could try and have a decent conversation with Becky, if it wasn’t too soon. On the way to the door, Robyn stopped beside Chloe, who had sat back down and was going through the missing persons’ list. ‘We’ll have a drink for you another day. You must have something to do this evening too?’
‘Not much, Guv.’ Chloe wasn’t as cheerful as usual. ‘I’m new around here and I still don’t know too many people.’ Her left hand clenched, then relaxed. ‘And my ambition has always been to become a detective …’
Robyn was relieved nothing was being taken personally. ‘Well, you’ve made a good start. Do you still want a drink? It’s been one of those weeks where I could really do with one.’
FRIDAY 22 JULY
30
Whether it had been the couple of pints, the fish and chips picked up on the way home or just the joy of talking to someone who hadn’t yet become cynical, Robyn slept better than she expected and started Friday early. A text from the garage said respraying the Mondeo would take a week, meaning she had more time to dispose of the things from Janice’s house before she handed the pool car back. She strolled down to the canteen with Graham for a cup of tea, chatting about the Dockers’ chances for the new season. She allowed herself a hint of optimism that things would somehow work out for the best.
Back in the incident room, Khalid manoeuvred through the door sideways, carrying a pile of newspapers which he dumped on Robyn’s desk. On top, the Daily Journal devoted their front page to a picture of Ben, taken outside the police station, under the headline: Safe. At the bottom of the page, an inset picture of her had the caption: Trans cop’s painted lips are sealed on snatcher’s identity.
Robyn gestured at the pile. ‘Is any of this worth reading?’
Khalid shrugged. ‘Most papers have understood why we can’t release a name yet so instead, we have lots of theories as to where Ben was. Now we need something bad to happen somewhere else to distract everyone.’
Robyn studied his face to see if he were joking: it was fifty-fifty.
‘There is one thing though.’ Shuffling through the sheets, Khalid pulled out the Gazette, turning to an inside page. ‘After all the usual bits about finding Ben, there’s a bit of a hatchet job on Ms Chivers’ church and some of their more extreme views. There’s some really nasty things they do to kids to convince them that hell is real and punishments that sound like exorcisms to me. I don’t think they would have dared run this if Ben were still missing.’
Their phones rang simultaneously. Khalid grimaced. ‘I’ve got to go.’ He turned and set off up the corridor, passing Lorraine walking in.
Robyn gritted her teeth as she pressed the button. ‘Morning, Tracey, how are you?’
‘Well, thanks. You?’ Her voice was brisk.
‘Arrived and had my first cup of tea.’
‘Lucky you. You might have got me one. Well, good thing you’re awake, because the superintendent wants everything with Professional Standards wrapped up today. He’s got a meeting with the chief this afternoon so he needs to know what charges will be brought.’
Robyn bit her lower lip. She had to stop doing that if she wanted the lipstick to last more than five minutes. ‘OK, Tracey, thanks for letting me know. Bye.’ She stared at the phone for a moment, wondering whether she should try to call Josh again.
The team seemed to be all putting on brave faces, until Lance arrived. Robyn showed him to Janice’s desk since it was the tidiest: paper filed into plastic wallets by subject and notebooks sorted by date. Lance raised the chair to it
s maximum, his feet now flat on the floor with two inches of white calf showing above grey socks. In response to the offer of tea, he accepted hot water then rummaged in his rucksack and produced teabags of some herbal variety with a humid, green scent. He’d acquired a lot of paper which seemed to hold his attention, the team quiet around him.
When Susan from Family Liaison’s name appeared on her phone, Robyn hesitated and let it go to voicemail.
You’ll never guess what the crazy bitch has done now. I refused to go back there so Laura got assigned. She said Gillian opened the door nearly in tears, then calls for Ms Chivers and the woman wouldn’t even let her in the house! Apparently, she’s moving to Switzerland in a week. Good riddance, I say. Bye.
She controlled her urge to kick something. Somehow, she would have to tell Janice. She fidgeted at her desk for a few minutes, keeping an eye on Lance, anticipating a request for an interview, then wondered whether this apparent indifference was a tactic. If she allowed his presence to get to her, then it would worry the team. She needed to keep them and herself busy. ‘Chloe, where are we with the missing persons list?’
Chloe jumped. ‘Nearly finished, Guv. I’ve been through the list for women reported missing between two and five years ago. There’s a lot of them, even if you take out anyone over twenty-five. But I think we can cut the list further.’ Chloe seemed pleased with herself. ‘When Graham said I should work on the murder, I popped into the shoe shop after we’d finished yesterday – just for the investigation, you understand.’ She grinned. ‘The undamaged shoe had a label with a code on it and I asked an assistant if they could find it on the system.’ She held up the evidence bag, pointing at a dirty white square on the shoe’s sole. ‘Well, they couldn’t in the store because they just have current stock so I got a number for Head Office. This design was shipped to stores in mid-November, three years ago.’ Chloe glanced at her notes. ‘So, I think our girl went missing between then and Christmas, because by Boxing Day, the shoes were in the sale and the labels marked with reduced prices. I’m just running a check now on how many women were reported missing in those six weeks.’
She looked to Graham, who gave her a quick nod. ‘Right, here we go. In those six weeks, there were just two women in the right age band reported missing. I’ll get their records up now.’
‘Good work, Chloe. How come no one else picked that up?’ Robyn looked around.
Chloe’s smile drained away leaving two bright red spots colouring her cheeks. Beside her, Graham put down his cup so hard, tea slopped onto the desk.
Robyn replayed what she’d just said: Roger had rarely spoken out or courted controversy. From the looks around the room, she risked losing the team with such tactless remarks. She was in danger of becoming Prentiss, praising favourites, needling and nit-picking the rest in front of everyone. Just to add to the humiliation, Lance was probably taking all of this down to use against her later.
She held up her hands – everyone needed to see how sorry she was. ‘And I’m counting myself – I know I’ve missed things – we’ve just got to keep focused now.’ Graham was folding a piece of paper over and over. Someone coughed.
Robyn swore under her breath. All she could do now was keep going. ‘So, Chloe, show us the two you’ve found.’
The team straggled over and gathered round Chloe’s screen which showed a picture of a red-headed girl, plump face nestled into the fur of a retriever.
‘Emma Caddy, fifteen, went missing from Upper Markham on Friday seventeenth of December, the last day of term. Her mother thought Emma had a sleepover after school.’ Chloe took a sip of water. ‘She helped Emma pack a rucksack and a sleeping bag then dropped her off at the school gates and that was the last time she was seen. On Saturday, the mother went to pick her up but the girl she was supposed to be staying with said Emma hadn’t been at school on the Friday and there hadn’t been a party. School friends said Emma was scared about failing her mock GCSEs. Conclusion, she had run away.’
‘She was fifteen.’ Robyn shook her head. ‘Whether she planned it or not, she was a child.’
‘Sorry, Guv. Just reading out the notes here.’ Chloe’s lips pulled together for a second and Robyn wondered whether she should try to explain there were a lot of cases like this on the system, where Kenny Prentiss, or one of his crew, decided a case was too hard and just dropped it. Graham was staring into the screen, his face a blank, tension showing in the rigid set of his jaw.
‘I’m sorry, Chloe. Carry on.’
‘That’s all there is on this one, Guv.’
‘I didn’t work on this case.’ Graham spoke in a rush.
There was silence for a moment. Ravi leant forward, frowning. ‘Didn’t the doctor suggest the girl in the warehouse was anorexic? Doesn’t look likely with her.’
Robyn looked at the screen then at Graham, one second, two. She nodded. ‘Agreed.’ Graham’s face relaxed. Robyn turned back to Chloe. ‘OK, who’s the other one?’
On the screen, a slim woman with badly-dyed hair stood by a fountain, squinting in bright sunlight. The image must have been scanned from a larger photograph as there was a jagged edge as if someone else had been removed.
Chloe scanned her notes. ‘This is probably Turkey. This girl went on holiday just before she went missing.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Tania Shipford, twenty-two.’ She scrolled down the page. ‘A few more notes on this one. The last confirmed sighting was at Gatwick Airport when Tania was recorded re-entering the country through passport control on the twenty-fifth of November. She wasn’t reported missing until the fourth of December, though. When questioned, her boyfriend claimed they’d had a row on holiday, she’d moved out on the twenty-sixth and he said he didn’t even know she was missing.’
Robyn leant forward. ‘Sounds interesting. What else?’
Chloe skimmed the pages. ‘Boyfriend didn’t have an alibi for the weekend after they flew back. When we searched the flat, a lot of her things were still there.’ She turned to Graham. ‘It says you worked on this one – what happened?’
Graham scratched the back of his neck. ‘We couldn’t find Tania. We found some stolen stuff in the boyfriend’s flat and got him sent down for a few months but we couldn’t find anything to pin her disappearance on him.’ Chloe was pointing at the screen, mouth open.
Graham sighed. ‘Oh, I know it’s clear now when you’ve got everything in front of you. At the time, we were getting information through in tiny pieces.’
‘You think her boyfriend murdered her?’ Chloe winced as Graham cracked his knuckles.
‘I’m sure he did.’ Graham changed hands. ‘He’s a nasty piece of work, a cheap hire if you want someone beaten up. He’s not the brightest and his story didn’t stand up. There were lots of little things, like if Tania left of her own accord, why didn’t she take her asthma inhaler?’
Chloe asked the question Robyn had wanted to ask. ‘So why did the investigation stop?’
There was silence. Graham raised his head, saw everyone was staring at him and took a deep breath. ‘Tania had a bit of history. She’d started as an escort, ended up on the streets.’ He was talking to the wall. ‘Her drugs counsellor reported her missing when she missed a second appointment. She didn’t have any family to keep pushing it, another case came up and we were short of resources and this got dropped.’ He shrugged. ‘I wanted to pursue it but Kenny, DI Prentiss, gave me a direct order to leave it.’
Chloe squared her shoulders as if she was about to start a fight: the anger coming from Lorraine was colder. ‘So would your precious Kenny Prentiss have told you to leave it if Tania had been a “normal” girl?’
Graham’s shoulders hunched forward. ‘You only worked for him for six months when he was about to retire. You didn’t see what he could be like …’
Robyn waved to get everyone’s attention and nodded to where Lance sat. He seemed absorbed in papers but she didn’t want the team to forget he was there or what he was there to do. ‘Right, everyone.’ She raised
her voice, wanting to put an end to the bickering. ‘Stuff happened. What matters is what we do now and the priority is putting away a violent burglar and finding a name for a murdered girl.’
‘So Tania could be our …’ Chloe paused. ‘Body.’
Robyn nodded. ‘A good possibility. Do we have her DNA on file to confirm her identity?’ Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lance stand up.
‘I’ll look, Guv.’ Chloe turned to her screen then jumped as Lance loomed over her monitor. ‘Ah, hello. Would you like another cup of tea, sir?’
‘I’ll be interviewing you first. You don’t need to bring anything.’ Lance tucked a pen into the breast pocket of his shirt.
Robyn tried to catch Chloe’s eye, trying to convey without words there was nothing to worry about. Lance had done exactly what she would have done. If you start the investigation with the person with the least experience, there was the lowest chance of misplaced loyalties getting in the way of evidence.
‘A bit odd, isn’t it, Guv?’ Lorraine watched the door swing shut. ‘I mean, interviewing Chloe first, when she’s been here all of two days.’
‘We’ll all need to go through the process. DI Farnham will have his plan and if we want to avoid more of this …’ Robyn gestured at the pile of unread newspapers, ‘… everything must be reviewed. Meanwhile …’
‘Gotcha!’ Ravi punched the air, before spinning his chair round and round. ‘Guv, I’ve got the burglar.’ He dashed to the printer and held up a picture. ‘Look who’s here, mingling with the crowd.’ He pointed at a man, casual in cords and a polo shirt, snapped inspecting antiques on a stall. ‘There’s Roderick Dearman. He was at the Gaddesford festival.’
‘Uncle Roddy, well, well.’ Graham lumbered over and inspected the picture. ‘That’s him all right. Liked his antiques did Roddy – last time we questioned him, his house was full of them. Good spot.’ He punched Ravi on the shoulder.
Robyn moved to the screen, peering at the picture. ‘Does he really ride a bike?’