From past investigations, Erika knew how much fate played its part in murder cases. If the victim had left the bar ten minutes later, or remembered to lock the car door, or taken a slightly different route, they would still be alive.
She pulled herself away from the window and took a shower, standing under the hot water for a long time. She wondered how many times her twenty-two-year-old self had narrowly avoided death. How many times might she have passed a predator waiting in the shadows, who reached out to grab her, but only just missed.
When she left her flat at six it was still dark. The ground was undisturbed; hers were the first footprints in the snow, which glowed orange under the streetlights. She had emptied the small bin in her kitchen before she left, and she crossed the car park to the dumpsters, the snow creaking underfoot, seeming loud in the morning silence. She stopped at the black dumpster with the curved blue lid. There was no noise from the main road behind her building; the snow seemed to close in around her ears, muffling the world. She stood for a long few minutes, between two parked cars, and became convinced that there was a body inside the black dumpster. When she closed her eyes, she saw Lacey Greene, filthy with dirt and crusted blood, her face misshapen, a thin layer of snow covering her body with a ghostly sheen.
‘’S’cuse me,’ came a voice behind her, and she nearly cried out in shock.
One of her neighbours, a middle-aged man, leaned across, pushed back the snow-covered lid of the dumpster, and dropped in a bulging black sack. It hit the bottom with a hollow clunk.
‘Morning,’ she replied, her heart thumping.
He frowned and trudged off to his car.
Erika turned back to the dumpster and peered into the gloom. She could just make out that it was empty; his was the first bag nestling on the bottom. She placed hers inside gently, and pulled the lid closed. She moved along, sliding back the lids of the other two dumpsters: the paper and plastic, and the one for glass. They were all empty.
Erika turned and trudged over to her car. The neighbour had almost finished scraping the snow off a small van, but he was looking at her strangely.
* * *
When she arrived at Bromley Police Station, it was quiet. She made tea and took it up to her office. Breakfast was half a packet of biscuits found at the bottom of her drawer. Dipped in the hot tea they cheered her a little, and as she munched she fired up her computer. She found Lacey Greene’s Facebook profile, but it was set to be limited unless they were friends. She hovered the cursor over the friend icon, and felt an overwhelming sadness that Lacey wouldn’t be accepting any new requests. She looked up and saw it was getting light, the empty high street below taking on an eerie shade of blue. A deep freeze, that’s what the weather reports on the radio had called it.
It was frustrating that she was locked out of the Lacey Greene murder case; she was unable to access the case details on Holmes, the police database. Yesterday she had been able to access Steven Pearson’s criminal record on CRIS, the Crime Record Information System. She opened it again on her screen. Pearson’s record went back to 1980, and included twenty-five arrests for theft, credit card fraud, rape, actual bodily harm, and attempted murder. He’d served three stretches in prison, most recently, from 2003, spending ten years in HMP Blundeston for rape and attempted murder.
Erika jumped when she heard a whistle. She turned from the screen. John was behind her with a stack of paperwork.
‘He looks like a right charmer,’ he said.
They looked at the photo on the screen. Steven Pearson had a sharp little face with bad skin and was almost bald. Wisps of brown hair clung onto the sides of his head. There were large bags under his beady eyes, and he looked older than his fifty or so years.
‘He’s just been arrested for the Lacey Greene murder in New Cross,’ said Erika.
‘That was lucky; they caught him fast.’
Erika’s initial thought came back to her: would a homeless drug addict have the brains or the resources to plan out a kidnap and murder?
‘What can I do for you, John?’
‘Superintendent Yale’s been through the next draft of your report, and he’s made notes,’ he said, handing her a stack of printouts. The first page was covered in Yale’s red scrawl. ‘He’d also like to see you, after lunch.’
Erika put them on her desk and turned back to her screen. ‘John. Do you have separate bins for recycling at home?’
‘Oh lordy,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘My girlfriend is the biggest recycling freak: paper, metal, plastic; if it’s not in the right bin, I’m in trouble… If I was going to dump a body, my girlfriend would be more concerned that I put it in the right bin.’
Erika shot him a look.
‘Sorry, boss, bad taste.’
‘There were three dumpsters at the scene. Lacey Greene was found in a dumpster for general waste. Why that one?’
‘General waste ends up in landfill, so it would have taken much longer to find and identify her, if at all. The landfill is huge, over at Rainham. All the recycling waste ends up in a high-tech sorting facility in East London. My girlfriend made a point of finding this all out.’
‘Something doesn’t add up for me. Some of the cuts on Lacey’s body had started to heal, which means she could have been held and tortured for four days before being killed. Every crime Steven Pearson has committed was the result of a violent outburst, or drink and drugs. He could have killed Lacey, but looking at his history, wouldn’t he just have done it there and then?’
‘Even if he didn’t do it, it would be good to have someone like him off the streets.’
‘That’s a sloppy way of thinking, John.’
‘You also say that we shouldn’t underestimate people. Just because he hasn’t done it before doesn’t mean he isn’t capable.’
Erika nodded and looked back at his record. ‘I dunno. It’s not even my bloody case.’
‘Boss, I don’t mean to hassle you, but did you get the chance to look at my application?’
‘Sorry, John. It’s on my list for today. I promise.’
John nodded, looking doubtful, and left her office.
Erika looked through her bag and pulled out the notes she’d made after her visit with Doug Kernon at the morgue. She brought up the police crime database and did a general search on victims with a femoral artery incision, including details of the crime scene and the victim’s age and sex.
The results which came up stopped Erika in her tracks.
Chapter Ten
Forensic Pathologist Isaac Strong lived in a smart terraced house on a quiet street in Blackheath, South London. It was dark, and snow was falling softly when Erika knocked on the door. She stood tapping her feet impatiently, and a moment later heard a creak of floorboards before it opened. Isaac was a tall, handsome man with close-cropped dark hair and a high forehead. His eyebrows were thin and arched, and he was looking tanned and relaxed.
‘I’ve got the file here,’ said Erika, bustling past him and into the warmth of the elegant hallway. ‘I ended up having to drive over to the nick in Croydon where they kept the original records. And you know what the one-way system is like and the traffic from that bloody IKEA…’ She shrugged off her coat and hung it over the end of the polished bannister. Isaac was staring at her with wry amusement. ‘What?’
‘Hello, Isaac. That would be a nice start, and then you could ask if I had a good Christmas?’
‘Sorry,’ she said, catching her breath and shrugging off her shoes. ‘Hello. Did you have a nice Christmas?’ She leaned over and gave him a hug. His body was thin and she could feel his ribs.
‘Not really. Remind me never again to book a holiday in such a… remote place.’
They went through to the kitchen, and Erika sat down at a small dining table. Isaac moved to a dark blue Aga and, using a tea towel, crouched down and opened one of the doors.
‘Where was it you went again? Thailand?’
He stood back as steam rushed out from the door. ‘No. T
he Maldives. Six little huts perched on a finger of sand surrounded by miles of endless ocean. I ran out of books.’
‘Was there anyone interesting to talk to, or…?’
He shook his head. ‘All couples. Five Russian businessmen with their wives. The wives had had so much plastic surgery that when they went sunbathing, I thought they’d have to prick themselves with a fork.’
Erika laughed. He closed the Aga and went to a cupboard, taking out a couple of wine glasses.
‘Red or white wine?’
‘Red, please,’ said Erika, placing the file on the kitchen table.
‘How was your Christmas?’ he asked.
‘Fine. It was great to see my sister and the kids. Her husband is still mixed up in all kinds of dodgy dealings, and she feels trapped… But I don’t think Lenka will ever leave him.’
‘What does he think of having a police officer for a sister-in-law?’
‘We actually get on quite well. I’m just an ordinary citizen back home, and he told me I make the best kapustnica.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A meat and cabbage soup we have at Christmas. Soup is a big deal in Slovakia.’
‘You should make it for me some time.’ He grinned, placing a glass of red wine in front of her. She took a sip, feeling it warm through to her cold bones. ‘What about James?’
She shook her head. ‘I think that should remain a fling. It’s too complicated to try and have a relationship with him…’ She placed her hand on the grey file next to her wine glass. ‘Anyway, as I said on the phone…’
‘Erika. When did you last eat?’
‘Breakfast.’
‘Which was?’
‘Biscuits…’
He tutted and shook his head. ‘An army marches on its stomach. You seem to think you’re a one-woman army, so you should at least eat properly. We’ll have dinner, and then we’ll talk about this case.’
‘But Isaac, this case…’
‘Can wait. I’m bloody starving, and by the looks of it, so are you. We eat, and then you have my attention.’
He held his hand out for the file, and in turn handed her a warm plate.
‘Okay, but you know I’m a quick eater,’ she smiled.
* * *
After a delicious meal of cottage pie and steamed greens, Isaac cleared the plates and Erika regained custody of the file. They settled down at the table and she brought him up to speed on the case.
‘I ran the details of Lacey Greene’s murder through the system, looking for similarities,’ she said. ‘And this came back: twenty-ninth of August last year, the body of twenty-year-old Janelle Robinson was found in Chichester Road in Croydon.’ Erika took out a crime scene photo and slid it across the table to Isaac. The girl in the photo lay on her side in a dumpster. Like Lacey, she had long brown hair, she was naked from the waist down, and her face was battered so badly that her eyes were swollen shut.
‘Hang on, I recognise this case,’ said Isaac.
‘You should. You did the post-mortem.’
He stared at her then pulled the file across the table and started to sift through the papers. ‘Yes. I remember. Blunt force trauma to the back of the head, cheek and orbital bone, her vagina had been mutilated, and the femoral artery had been sliced through,’ he said. ‘Although, butchered is more the term I’d use. Where the artery meets the groin it looked as if it had been hacked at crudely…’
‘But the police report questions if this was a sex game gone wrong,’ said Erika.
‘I didn’t write that. Did I?’
‘No, the SIO at the time did. A DCI Benton; he retired three weeks later.’
Isaac looked up at her again with his thin eyebrows raised. He held up a school photo of Janelle Robinson, taken when she was around sixteen. She was a rosy-faced young girl with small piercing blue eyes and long brown hair. She smiled into the camera and wore the uniform of a blue blouse with the embroidered crest of her school, the Salt Academy. The stitching was surrounded by a circle of thistles.
‘Didn’t Janelle’s case come up when the Lacey Greene case was created on the system?’ he asked.
Erika shook her head. ‘No. Janelle Robinson was never reported missing.’
‘Why?’
‘No one missed her. She had no family. Was brought up in a children’s home near Birmingham, and moved to London when she left school. For the past year, she’d been living and working in a youth hostel in central London. The manager was tracked down and interviewed a week after her body was found. She said it wasn’t unusual for Janelle to go AWOL for a few days. It’s also wrongly stated in the police report that Janelle’s body was found in a car park, but the crime scene photos show that she was found, like Lacey, inside a dumpster in the car park.’
Isaac shook his head as they stared at the photos spread out over the table.
Erika went on: ‘The remaining clothes Janelle was wearing, a low-cut top and a see- through black lace bra are described as “provocative” in Benton’s report, so he leans on the theory that she may have been a prostitute who met a nasty end…’
‘As opposed to Lacey Greene who was a nice middle-class university graduate who went missing,’ finished Isaac.
They looked back through the crime scene photos of Janelle. The black lace bra, and a flimsy top with spaghetti straps she wore were both filthy and soaked with blood, and she was naked below the waist. Like Lacey, her legs were criss-crossed with cuts, and streaked with blood.
‘Were there any witnesses in Chichester Road?’ asked Isaac.
‘No. But there are striking similarities to the Lacey Greene crime scene. This time the dumpster was in the car park of an old print-works at the end of a residential street. The car park is shielded by trees. A neighbour found her body when she went to put a bag of household rubbish in the dumpster.’
‘Erika. Is the SIO on the case aware of this?’
‘I hope so. I’ve left Melanie Hudson three messages: two this morning, one this afternoon… I also called the nick and told them I left messages. She hasn’t got back to me.’
‘You know how crazy things can get…’
‘Isaac, if this was my investigation I’d leap on this. It would go to the top of the queue,’ she said, jabbing her finger at the crime scene photos.
Isaac flicked back through the report. ‘The flies had got to her, I remember. There were larvae in her wounds.’
‘There’s another thing. Your report on the post-mortem is incomplete.’
‘Incomplete?’
‘You can see the file is a mess. I’ve tried to get in contact with DCI Benton, but he’s now on an extended holiday in the Australian outback.’
Isaac studied the printed pages. ‘Yes, there seems to be a page missing. Do you think something is being covered up?’
‘No. I’ve had a look at Benton. He’s had a long distinguished career. It looks like in this instance he was sloppy.’
‘Presumably concentrating more on his imminent retirement,’ said Isaac.
‘I just need to know what the missing section of your report contains. Specifically, if Janelle’s wounds had started to heal, and if you found bruising to her wrists and neck consistent with her being chained up?’
‘Hang on. I can check. I backup all of my reports,’ said Isaac, getting up. He went upstairs and returned a few moments later with a printout. ‘Yes, the wounds had started to heal, and I identified bruising consistent with her wrists and neck being bound with a small-link chain.’
Erika took the printout from him and read it. ‘How long can you work on this from the sidelines?’
‘Not much longer,’ she said.
‘You’re going to have to pass all of this on, and let it go, Erika.’
‘I can’t.’
‘But Sparks is running the Murder Investigation Team, and DCI Hudson reports to him. What makes you think he’d hand it over to you?’
Erika hesitated. ‘Isaac, I’ve been thinking. Perhaps I should apolog
ise to Sparks.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘No. What if I went to see him and laid it all on the table? I apologise and I ask if we can wipe the slate clean. I’ll say I’m prepared to eat humble pie and work with him.’
Isaac’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Humble pie isn’t a dish I’ve ever seen you order, and after all that’s happened, you’re going to apologise to him? That’s not the kind of thing you do, Erika.’
She sighed. ‘Maybe it should be. I’m so stubborn and blunt with so many people. Maybe it’s time to change. This case has got under my skin. I need to work on it. My pride and my stubborn attitude has resulted in me pushing paperwork, stuck in a desk job.’
‘You really think you can wipe the slate clean with Sparks? You had him thrown off the Andrea Douglas-Brown murder case. And you didn’t pull any punches.’
‘I have to at least try. What matters to me is finding who did this to these two young women. These murders were sadistic and well planned… And I don’t think it was Steven Pearson. Which means not only do they have the wrong man, but the bastard who did this is still out there, waiting until the dust settles so he can do it again.’
Chapter Eleven
It was early evening when Darryl Bradley left the train. He was often the only person to alight at the small station on the outskirts of London, the last stop on the daily commute. He walked out of the station and went to his car, parked in its usual spot by a wire fence, backing onto snow-covered trees and fields.
It was cold inside the car as he set off home, keeping to the speed limit as he drove through a small village, the shops and houses shuttered up for the night. At the end of the village was a set of crossroads and the traffic lights were red. He came to a stop and glanced over at the Golden Lion pub, which sat on a grassy bank to his right. The windows were steamed up, and glowing softly. A minicab pulled into the car park, and two attractive young girls got out. One had dark hair and the other was blonde. They were dressed for a night out, in tight jeans and smart little jackets.
Last Breath Page 4