by Tim Ellis
‘It’s okay, you can come all the way in. I promise I won’t pierce your nipples without a court order.’
The corner of his mouth creased up. ‘I should arrest you . . .’
‘I’m sure you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Can we focus on the question?’ he said. ‘Tell us about the three-link chain tattoo.’
Kat smiled. ‘The links sometimes have FLT tattooed in them – Friendship, Love and Trust. Also, you often see the symbol on the gravestones of members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.’
‘Have you any idea why the symbol would be tattooed on a child without the knowledge of his mother?’
‘None at all. From what I was told, the IOOF are good people. They promote personal and social development, help people in need and do a lot of work for charity.’
Richards glanced at Parish. ‘Maybe the tattoo has nothing to do with the murder.’
Kat’s eyes opened wide. ‘The boy was murdered?’
‘Yes,’ Richards said.
Parish’s brow furrowed. ‘Everything we’ve told you is confidential, by the way.’
‘Or you’ll handcuff me and lock me up?’
‘You can guarantee it.’
‘Maybe that’s something I’d like.’
Richards pulled a face. ‘Can you tell us anything else about the symbol?’
Kat held out her hand for the phone and enlarged the photograph. ‘Mmmm!’
‘What?’ Richards said.
‘The three-link chain can also indicate a slave. It’s specifically used on gravestones in America for that.’
‘That sounds more like it?’ Parish said.
Kat looked at him. ‘Why?’
‘It just does. You don’t need to know why.’
‘The murderer did things to the boy, didn’t he?’
‘As I said, you don’t need to know. So, is that it – the symbol indicates either membership of the Odd Fellows or that you’re a slave?’
‘Yes, but as a tattoo it can also come with the words: A Man Chooses, A Slave Obeys. It’s from a computer game called Bioshock and symbolises that, like the central character, we’re all just genetic slaves.’
Parish’s face creased up. ‘I don’t think we need to wander into the realms of fantasy.’
‘You probably won’t be interested in this then . . .’ She held the phone up, so that they could both see that she’d enlarged the picture to its maximum.
‘What am I looking at?’ Richards said.
Parish took his phone back. ‘Vertical lines on the horizontal links of the chain.’
‘Lines! I don’t understand?’
‘It’s a barcode,’ Kat said. ‘Whether it’s a valid barcode that actually means something and can be read by a barcode reader I have no idea, but it definitely looks like a barcode. I tattoo a lot of barcodes on customers. It’s not my place to pass judgement, but some people like to be seen as products. It’s meant to be ironic, a warning in this mass-production world, that if we’re not careful we’re all in danger of becoming products.’
‘But isn’t the tattoo too small?’ Richards said.
Kat raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m certainly no expert on barcodes, but I read an article recently that said researchers had put tiny barcodes on individual bees to track their mating habits. Also, I’ve heard that barcodes can be put on molecules. Now, that’s fantasy, Parish.’
‘Detective Inspector . . .’
‘Oh, so it’s all right to call Mary by her last name, but you want to be called by your rank?’
‘Arrest her, Richards.’
Richards grinned. ‘On what charge?’
‘Being a smart-ass.’
‘I don’t think that’s a crime.’
‘Well, it should be. Come on, I think we’re done here.’
‘What, no thank you?’ Kat enquired.
‘Yes, Sir. The least you could do is say thank you to Kat for helping us.’
He opened the door. ‘Thank you. Very kind, I’m sure.’
‘And be sure to come back and see me, Mary. I have a design of a butterfly breaking free of the chains that bind them that I keep for special people.’
‘I will, Kat.’
‘She won’t,’ Parish said, as he pushed Richards out through the open door.
Richards laughed. ‘She was flirting with you, you know?’
They began walking back to the station.
He screwed up his face. ‘Don’t talk rubbish. And I don’t know if you remember, but I’m married to your mother.’
‘I remember all right. And it’s a good job you didn’t flirt back.’
‘She put her telephone number in my phonebook.’
‘She didn’t?’
He showed her.
‘The two-faced bitch.’
***
The Humpty Dumpty software wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She thought that all she’d have to do would be to input the scanned strips of newspaper, press START and it would beep when it was finished. As it was – it didn’t do anything. Once the strips of newspaper were in the software, she had to do all the work. It would have been easier and quicker matching the strips up by hand. The conning bastards were selling it under false pretences. If she didn’t have other things to do, she would have planted something nasty in the bowels of their server.
As a result, what should have taken a piece of software maybe an hour to complete, took her three hours to conclude that none of the strips matched. That in itself was unusual. She would have expected at least two or more strips to match, but not a single strip matched another one.
She decided that she’d wasted enough time on the shredded newspaper strips. She’d have another go later, but in the meantime she had a list of other things to do. Such as the photographs of two men, the Mercedes number plate, the Glock-19 serial number and the GPS tracker with the IMEI serial number. As if she didn’t have enough work of her own, that bastard Kowalski must think she was his general dogsbody. Well, he could fucking well wait his turn. She’d get to those things when she was good and ready, and not before.
Maybe she’d made an error of judgement in agreeing to be his partner. She was doing fine on her own. Now, she seemed to be dancing to his tune like a puppet on a string. He was pulling the strings, and her arms and legs began jerking without any conscious effort on her part. No, the jury was out on whether she liked working with somebody else – especially Kowalski. He was used to being in charge and to telling people what to do. She, on the other hand, was used to being in charge of herself. When this case was over, they’d have to sit down and have a serious discussion about who exactly was the senior partner.
She hacked into AutoMove’s computer network and began tiptoeing around. Kowalski was only partially right – there were records for Linus Frost, but they were clearly false. Individually, each record was fine, but when she looked at them together they were too orderly instead of disorderly, too regular instead of irregular, too organised instead of disorganised. Records in the real world were variable, dissimilar and all over the place.
Something was going on there, and whatever it was would not be found on AutoMove’s server. The company was obviously a front for something else. She decided that – seeing as they were a local business – a visit to their premises was called for. She’d go and take a look tonight.
There was a knock on her bedroom door.
‘Fuck off.’
‘Lovely,’ Poo said through the closed door. ‘You don’t want this package that’s come for you then?’
She walked across the wooden floor and opened the door.
Poo was in her mid-twenties, but she looked like a hedgehog. She had brown spiky hair, small pointed ears, heavy black eye shadow and wore baggy clothes that gave no indication of the woman underneath. Bronwyn hadn’t worked out who Poo had come to the party as yet.
She held out her hand for the delivery, but Poo didn’t offer it.
‘What you doin’?’
‘Stan
ding here waiting for you to hand over my package.’
‘You ordered something?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Got any weed?’
‘No.’
‘Got anything else?’
‘I’ve got a short temper.’
‘Can I come in and watch you open your package?’
‘No.’
‘Do you like women?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘What about now?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You wanna make out?’
Bronwyn shrugged and dragged Poo in.
A girl had to have some fun in her life.
Chapter Six
There was nothing he liked better than a ploughman’s lunch. That said, it wasn’t on his list of healthy food options for people with heart disease, and what was on the list was either inedible or indecipherable. But then, reading a list of food do’s and don’ts was as exciting as watching trees grow.
Being a firm believer in the Campaign for Real Ale, he ordered a pint of Ossett Treacle Stout and then sat down at a table near the wall facing the door to await delivery of his food. The last thing he wanted was to be surprised from behind while he was concentrating on his lunch.
He shrugged out of his coat, folded it over and put it on the chair next to him. Then, he slid out the journal from the inside pocket and removed the elastic bands and plastic wrapping covering it.
A pretty young waitress with a head of brown hair that looked as though it had been used as a brush to sweep up leaves appeared carrying his ploughman’s.
‘Thank you,’ he said with a smile.
‘You’re welcome, Sir. Can I get you any condiments?’
‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’
‘Enjoy your lunch, Sir.’
Once she’d left him to it, and he was chomping his way through a mishmash of fresh bread, Stilton and chutney, he opened up the journal.
He was exceedingly disappointed to discover that the pages were full of numbers – random numbers from what he could make out. He flicked through the whole journal, but all the pages were the same. Even the insides of the front and back covers had lines of numbers on them.
Either Linus Frost liked filling journals with random numbers, or they were a code for something else.
One thing was for sure – he wasn’t going to crack the code any time soon. Codes weren’t his forte. That was Toady’s area of . . . In fact, Toady didn’t work for him anymore. A Freudian slip. Not that it made any difference. If he hadn’t resigned, the Chief Constable would have sacked him anyway. He was lucky to have left with his pension still intact after misappropriating publicly-sourced men, women and equipment to save Jerry, and watching a three million pound helicopter disappear into the North Sea.
And anyway, he was out and about doing what he loved again – investigating crimes. Looking back, he should never have accepted the promotion to DCI. As far as he was aware, he hadn’t been a bad DCI, but he hadn’t enjoyed it. Many times he’d felt like a round peg in a square hole. It was a truism that the higher you move up the promotional ladder, the further you travel away from what you were good at and what you originally wanted to do.
So, now he was master of his own fate again. He wasn’t driving a desk anymore, he was driving himself. Living on the edge, using his wits and good looks to solve crimes and prevail in an ever-increasing dark and dangerous world.
He randomly opened the journal and took another look at the numbers on the page. There were twelve numbers on each line, but they meant nothing to him. Bronwyn was just as good as Toady and his people at cracking codes. He couldn’t email her the complete journal though – even if he went back to the office and scanned every page.
After sliding the journal back into the plastic bag, wrapping it up and slipping the two elastic bands around it, he put it back into the inside pocket of his coat.
Bronwyn had made it quite clear that she wasn’t coming into the office whenever he called, so he guessed that his only course of action was to travel up to Highgate and hand the journal to her personally. It would also give him a chance to see where she lived and maybe iron out a few communication problems they were having.
He tried calling her, but it diverted to voicemail. He decided not to leave a message.
Once he’d eaten his lunch he’d park the car at Woodford station and travel to Highgate on the tube. He didn’t think he’d ever been to Highgate before. In fact, the only thing he knew about where Bronwyn lived was that it was a Victorian house on Oakeshott Avenue overlooking the cemetery. He had no number, but surely it wouldn’t be that hard to spot a squat.
***
‘Yes, Sir?’ the young black woman inside the West Cornwall Pasty Company store said.
‘One large and one small pasty, and two coffees, please.’
‘You’re getting yourself a pasty?’
‘Only a small one, and I’ll only take tiny bites in-between phone calls.’
‘And a coffee?’
‘A couple of sips now and again. I’m a bit thirsty.’
‘Agreed. I don’t want you dying on my watch.’
‘Very kind.’
They sat on the wall behind the store.
While Xena tried to eat her piping hot pasty, Stick began making the phone calls.
‘Put your phone on loudspeaker, so I can listen. I won’t talk, I’ll be too busy eating.’
Stick mumbled something she didn’t quite catch.
‘Pardon?’
‘I said, of course.’
‘Of course what?’
‘Of course I’ll put the phone on loudspeaker.’
‘Are you sure you said that?’
‘Absolutely.’
He called the Duty Sergeant first.
‘Sergeant Merry, Hoddesdon . . .?’
‘Dan, it’s Rowley Gilbert.’
‘Hi, Rowley. Is that . . . ?’
‘You’re on loudspeaker and DI Blake is listening in.’
‘So watch what you say, Merry,’ Xena said, spraying flakes of pasty pastry over Stick’s phone.
‘Good afternoon, Ma’am. Your voice sounds like the tinkling of a wind chime on a summer breeze.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Anyway, Dan,’ Stick continued. ‘We were wondering if there’s any feedback from the house-to-house search along Hamlet Hill?’
‘It didn’t take them long to be honest. As you know, there’s only houses on one side of the road along that stretch, and with the long front gardens the occupants can’t see much of the road from their houses. However, we found one woman who said that she walked her dog twice that day and swears there was no vehicle that she didn’t recognise as belonging to people living on the road.’
‘Thanks, Dan,’ Stick said.
‘Any traffic cameras along Roydon Hill?’ Xena butted in.
Stick took a bite from his pasty and a swig of coffee.
Xena scowled at him.
‘No, Ma’am.’
‘What about parked motorbikes or scooters?’
‘No.’
‘Okay. Which train stations serve Roydon Hamlet?’
‘Just a moment, Ma’am.’
Xena’s eyes opened wide. ‘You’ve nearly finished your pasty.’
‘Mmmm! And very nice it was as well. I should have bought a giant one just like you.’
‘You said you’d take tiny bites in-between calls.’
‘And you said you wouldn’t talk because you’d be too busy eating.’
‘It’s like that, is it?’
‘It’s exactly like that.’
‘Hello?’ Sergeant Merry’s voice seeped out of Stick’s phone.
‘Yes, Dan?’ Stick said.
‘There are four train stations all within fifteen minutes of Roydon Hamlet – Rye House, Harlow, Roydon and Broxbourne.’
Xena spoke again. ‘I’d like their CCTV coverage for Sunday, Sergeant Merry.’
‘I’ll see what I can do, Ma’am.’
‘Good. Also, I want a copy of the anonymous 999 call notifying us that there was a body in that house.’
‘I’ll arrange to have it placed on your desk.’
‘This afternoon.’
‘Of course.’
‘Thanks, Dan,’ Stick said, ending the call.
Next, he found the number that he’d saved for Mrs Tyndall in Worcester and called her.
‘Hello?’
‘Mrs Tyndall?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Detective Sergeant Gilbert from . . .’
‘Oh yes! I’ve not been murdered again, have I?’
Stick laughed. ‘No . . .’
‘Mrs Tyndall – I’m Detective Inspector Blake, Sergeant Gilbert’s boss.’
‘Hello.’
‘Hi. Listen, we have some questions we need to ask you . . .’
Stick got up and went to the pasty store again.
Her eyes followed him.
‘. . . Hello – are you still there?’
‘Oh yes! An annoying bug distracted me for a moment. As I was saying, we have a number of questions that we need answers to, and we were wondering if you could travel up to Essex to meet with us?’
‘When?’
‘Well, the sooner the better. Although you’re not dead, we do have a woman who is.’
‘Of course. What about tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow would be excellent.’
‘Where?’
‘Which station do you normally travel to when you return to your house?’
‘Royden.’
‘We could pick you up from there?’
‘I’ll be bringing my mother with me.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘The train reaches Royden at approximately two-fifteen.’
‘We’ll meet you there?’
‘What are the questions you want to ask me – so I can think about the answers between now and then?’
Stick returned to his seat on the wall munching a giant pasty. He also had a tub of chocolate ice cream and another cup of steaming coffee.
She glared at him.
He ignored her.
‘Hello?’
‘Sorry again, Mrs Tyndall. That annoying little bug came back. Anyway, the questions we have are: How did the killer obtain a key to your house . . . ?’