by T S O'Rourke
‘Have you been on to forensics this morning?’
‘Not yet sir,’ Grant replied, ‘but I think they should have something for us by now – it has been a few days after all....’
‘Don’t waste any more of my time, gentlemen, get out there and start working this case!’
Carroll and Grant left the DCI’s office in a less than ecstatic mood. It was bad enough having to work with Grant, Carroll thought, without having the DCI on your back too. Jones, like Grant, was a by-the-book man, and this irritated the hell out of Carroll.
Carroll had been working on the case of a missing young woman a few months previous to this and believed that her parents had something to do with the girl’s disappearance. Jones didn’t agree and had sent Carroll off on a wild goose chase in search of a non-existent boyfriend with whom she might have left the area. As it turned out, Jones was wrong, and the girl’s father had been responsible for the rape and murder of his little girl. She was only fourteen, and the sight of her naked body lying dead in undergrowth made Carroll sick. The father had gone down for fifteen years and the mother had been sectioned and sent off to a mental home, following several attempts to take her own life. He wasn’t always right, Carroll thought, looking over his shoulder at Jones, who was now drinking a cup of coffee and flicking through case files. It had been over five years since the DCI had actually worked the streets himself and, as a result, he had lost his touch, Carroll thought, upon reaching his desk.
Grant sat across from his partner. His face told the story that his mouth wanted to. He was unhappy. To be precise, which Grant always appeared to be, he was unhappy with his new partner and the way he worked. If there was one thing that Grant hated, it was Carroll’s desire to ‘go it alone’ and work away from his partner. He didn’t feel like wasting his breath or starting another argument with Carroll, so he adopted the sort of civilised tone that implied all beneath the surface was bubbling like old oil.
‘So, you’re expecting a call from one of your sources today?’ Grant asked, unsuccessfully trying to hide the sarcastic tone in his voice.
‘Correct. She said she’d try to get me before lunch, so I’d better stay by the phone for a while....’
‘So, this source of yours is gonna find out where Jo Mac was working from?’
‘That’s the plan....’
‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just ring the agencies and ask for her by name?’
‘Well,’ Carroll stuttered, ‘you could do it that way, but in my experience, people working in escort agencies don’t use their real names, and if they do, they don’t tend to broadcast them over the phone to people who claim to be detectives, you know?’
‘So, I take it you haven’t tried?’
‘Not directly, no....’
‘Right, I’ll give it a whirl, shall I?’
‘Be my guest, pal, be my guest....’
Grant started to get all enthusiastic about his idea and went off in search of local magazines and phone books, where the agencies would be listed. As he was flicking through the pages and making a note of the telephone numbers, Dan received a call. It was Jenny, one of the women to whom he had spoken the night before.
She sounded a little unsure at what she was doing. After all, Carroll thought, prostitutes are not known for ringing the police with information. In fact, it was probably the last thing that a hooker would want to do. Yet, strangely, the woman on the other end of the line seemed almost relieved that she had made the call.
‘Jo Mac used to work for the Dream Date Escort Agency. The number’s in the book, okay?’
‘Right, Jenny, thanks for helping me out on this, I’ll do you a favour sometime....’
‘Yeah, sure....’ came the reply, before she hung up. The silence was deafening. It was also very, very pleasing.
Grant was just beginning to make his first phone call when Carroll placed his fingers on the cradle, cutting him off.
‘I’ve got it, smart-ass. I’ve got the name of the agency....’
‘Right,’ Grant said. It looked like it hurt him to speak. ‘Well, I suppose we’d best pay the place a visit then, eh?’
The Dream Date Escort Agency was located on the first floor of a retail unit on Essex Road. The floor was split up into two offices, one for a taxi-cab company, and the other for the escort agency. Handy, Carroll thought as he knocked on the door of the agency.
A panel slid back and a young and rather tired looking woman peered out at Carroll.
‘Can I help you?’ came the weary voice.
‘Yes, is this Dream Date?’
‘Yes, what can I do for you?’
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Carroll, and this is Detective Constable Grant, we’d like to talk to you for a minute, please....’
‘About?’
‘About one of your girls. She’s been found dead.’
‘You’d better come in,’ said the young woman, unsure at how she was feeling on hearing the news.
Carroll stepped inside, followed by a suspicious looking Grant. His eyes wandering all over the room, Grant turned to the woman who had just let them in.
‘Jo Mac, or Joanne McCrae, was found murdered in a house two days ago. We’d like you to help us piece together her last known movements....’
‘Well, you’d best speak to Lynn, she’s in charge,’ the young woman said, going through into the next room.
Carroll and Grant looked around them. The room was what could be described as a reception area, with a couch and some awful Japanese sex prints on the walls. A coffee table was filled to overflowing with porn magazines. The whole room had a sort of sad, oppressive feel to it. It was as though whatever happened in the room happened only because it could, and not because it should. It smelled of expectation and stale semen.
A woman, presumably Lynn, beckoned the two detectives through into the next room, asking them to take a seat by her desk. Three other women sat lazily on a sofa by the window.
Lynn was around forty, maybe forty five, with a face that had conceded in the fight against gravity. She had strong features and mistrusting eyes that scoured every inch of the two men in front of her. The last thing in the world she needed was a couple of cops on her doorstep. That was, of course, unless they were interested in doing business. Just one look at them, however, suggested otherwise. This was official.
‘You told one of my girls that Jo Mac was found murdered?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Carroll replied, ‘she was found strangled two days ago in Horseferry Road. We need your help in piecing together her last known movements....’
One of the girls on the sofa had begun to cry. Grant turned to her and spoke softly.
‘Did you know Jo well?’
‘She took my place on Monday, because I had to leave early. She filled in for me, and now she’s dead....’
Carroll looked at Lynn and made an effort to coax more information from her.
‘So Jo stayed on for a little longer to cover for a friend?’
‘Yeah,’ Lynn replied. ‘Maggie had to go out for a few hours and asked Jo to cover for her. We got a call at about ten on Monday morning looking for a girl, and Jo was the only one on duty....’
‘So you sent Jo out? What was the last address she called on?’
‘I’ll just check,’ she said, fingering through a large diary on her desk. ‘14 Horseferry Road, in the name of Gibson. We did the usual call back check to establish whether the call was genuine. You see we get a lot of hoax calls in this business – from schoolboys and the like, you understand?’
‘And the name used at the address was Gibson?’
‘Yeah, we looked it up in the phone book, just to check it out. It pays to check these things, you know....’
‘It didn’t help Jo much,’ Maggie sobbed.
‘So what time did she leave for Horseferry Road?’ Grant asked.
‘Around ten-fifteen.’
‘Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill Jo?’ Carroll asked.
‘No, I don’t,’ Grant said.
‘Do you have her home address, Maggie?’ Carroll asked.
‘Yeah, she was living on the estate down by Old Street, you know, the high-rise, eh, Thatcher Towers, number thirty three, I think....’
‘Did she live alone?’
‘I don’t know.’
Carroll and Grant left the Dream Date Escort Agency just before lunch time and headed down towards Old Street and Jo McCrae’s flat, in the hope of turning up a little more information. After that, it would be back to see William Gibson and his wife Samantha, to double check their alibis. There was still a lot of work to be done, and a lot of pieces yet to fit into the jigsaw.
Chapter 6
Thatcher Towers stood like a monument to the under-achievement of every architect that was ever taught how to hold a pencil. Apart from its grey concrete edifice, the complex had little to offer the outside world, or for that matter, its own insular inhabitants.
Twenty stories high, five flats abreast, Thatcher Towers was everything that shouldn’t exist when it comes to housing. Some bright spark had come up with the design in the 1960s, proclaiming it to be a God-send for homeless families and councils with small budgets, small hearts. Originally called Colonial Towers, the scheme was re-named in 1979 when Thatcher came into power. It bore testimony to the political thinking of the time and remained a good reason to vote any way but Tory.
The lift wasn’t working, so Carroll and Grant walked up the stairs. Six floors later, the two detectives reached the door of number thirty three. All of the front doors along the walkway looked the same, with red glass-panelled doors that bore the scars of family rows and replaced panes of glass. The unprotected balconies offered a violent escape to those who had had enough of tower-block living. It was a long, long way down, Grant thought, peering over the edge, as Carroll knocked on the flat door. There was no reply.
The sound of children playing on the grass verge below, mixed with the din of domestic arguments, drifted upwards like cries for help. Carroll forced the door. Inside, Grant heard what he presumed to be a child.
The living room held a playpen, occupied by a very smelly and upset child of about two or three. It was obvious that the kid had been there since its mother had failed to come home. It looked a mess.
‘Dan!’ Grant called. ‘Get in here.’
Carroll came in from the kitchen area and spotted the child. It was red-faced and filthy.
‘We’d best get Social Services over here,’ Carroll said, shaking his head in disbelief and reaching for his mobile phone. ‘How the hell could she even think of leaving a kid on its own in this dump? Jesus, some people don’t deserve to have kids, do they?’ Carroll concluded, looking over at Grant.
‘No,’ Grant replied. ‘They don’t.’
Grant picked the child up to comfort her and realised that her nappy was, to say the least, soiled. Carroll went looking for the telephone in order to get a hold of Social Services. The flat stank. Dirty dishes in the sink, rubbish practically growing out of a black bin bag and the smell of soured milk combined to present a nauseating cocktail that assaulted the senses.
‘What’s your name, eh?’ Grant spoke in a soft, child-like voice whilst holding the child at arm’s length. The child seemed terrified and was, no doubt, extremely hungry. Grant moved towards the kitchen and went in search of a clean bottle, that he may give the child a drink of water. Being stuck in a playpen for over two days without either food or drink was enough to kill a child in the wrong circumstances, he thought, and these weren’t the best.
The kid latched onto the bottle and teat like a falling climber hanging from a cliff-face. Grant decided that the child must also be hungry, and went in search of some baby food. There was none. By the time Social Services had arrived, the kid had nearly finished the bottle and was looking up at Grant, as he and his partner searched through Joanne McCrae’s belongings.
There wasn’t much to be found by way of personal items in the flat, apart from some cheap make-up and a few photos, stuck to the wall of the bedroom with thumb tacks. They appeared to be of a family in happy times – times that Jo Mac wouldn’t be seeing again.
The social worker picked up Jo’s child and began wiping its face with a damp cloth. The child began crying immediately, only calming down when Carroll made a funny face. Carroll adjourned to the bathroom for a look around.
‘Do you have an address for the mother’s parents?’ the social worker asked.
‘No, not at the moment,’ Grant replied, ‘but I’ll see what we can do for you later on, okay?’
The social worker, a tight-faced woman of around thirty-five, simply nodded and left, carrying the child under her arm like a bundle of dirty washing. The flat was suddenly quiet.
Carroll could find nothing in the flat that could be regarded as important other than the photos, which he took from the wall, and a set of works, stashed neatly under the bathroom sink unit. Jo Mac, it appeared, had been a heroin user. Now there was something that Dr. Henry Young had failed to notice, Carroll thought, happy to have gleaned more information from his search than Young had in his examination.
With no address or contact book it would prove difficult to locate Joanne’s parents. The only chance Social Services had was with the National Identification Bureau, courtesy of the police, who would have to inform Jo’s parents of her death. From there, hopefully, if her parents were still alive, a home might be found for the kid she had left behind. The child she had abandoned to go out working for Dream Date.
Carroll went to the next flat, number thirty-four, and knocked on the door. The sound of a large dog hitting the wire-strengthened glass panelling sent Carroll stepping back in fright. A man came to the door and opened it. He smelled like he hadn’t washed for a week.
‘What do you want?’ he said, running his fingers through his greasy hair.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Carroll. I’m investigating the death of your next door neighbour, Joanne McCrae. I’ll need to ask you a few questions....’
‘I didn’t know the woman,’ he said blankly.
‘You don’t know anything about her?’
‘I’ve heard people say she was a hooker, but that’s all, now is that enough? I’m half way through a video, pal, all right?’
‘Did you know she had a child?’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, have you heard the child crying over the last few days?’
‘That child is always crying....’
‘It’s been on its own in the flat for the last two days – I don’t suppose you’d have thought of ringing the police or a social worker....’
‘Listen, I didn’t know the woman, I don’t know the kid. Now, do you mind?’ The man closed the door, leaving Carroll standing on the doorstep. People don’t care anymore, he thought, making his way to the flat on the other side. There was no reply, and the windows were boarded-up.
Back at the station, Grant found a note on his desk from the Forensic Science Laboratory, detailing some of their findings. For a more thorough report, the note said, he should contact them. He did just that.
Joanne McCrae’s body had turned up samples of semen from one man and pubic hair from two. Whoever she had been with on her last ‘tour of duty’ with Dream Date, could hold the key to establishing the approximate age, race and hair colour of her killer.
The guy at the laboratory spoke brightly on the phone. ‘Yeah, mate, we’ve isolated two different individuals who would’ve been in intimate contact with the victim on the day she died. One, from our tests, appears to be a white male, with fair to blonde hair, around the age of thirty. The other, also a white male, seems to be around the same age, with black hair. The semen sample was from the blonde guy,’ said the laboratory technician.
‘So we’ve got two white males, one bl
onde, one black-haired, and the semen is from the blonde guy?’ Grant repeated.
‘Correct. There were only one set of prints on the body. They would’ve been one of the two men’s prints, I’d say. We couldn’t find a match for them on computer. We turned up nothing on the fingernail swabs, other than normal debris and some lubrication jelly.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Fibres. We found several types of fibres that wouldn’t correspond to items in the immediate vicinity of the murder. One was a synthetic material, the kind you’d most likely find used in sportswear, the other was denim. Probably old jeans, with traces of oil on them.’