by Nick Oldham
At the foot of the steps the front door was almost hidden from view from anyone who happened to be passing. It opened into a tiny vestibule and from there into a bed-sitting room. This was meagrely furnished with a three-quarter-width camp bed, adequate in size for the business of prostitution, some cheap chipboard units and an old, but comfortable-looking settee. There was a portable TV in one corner of the room which looked quite new. The room was lit by a single bulb swinging on a bare wire from the damp ceiling and a lamp on a unit next to the bed. Curtains, worn and frayed, were drawn across dirt-streaked windows, giving the room, at best, a very grainy-grey light.
Also on the bedside unit were an empty wrap of heroin, a blunt, blood-filled needle and a packet of condoms.
The kitchen, reached through this room though an archway, was fitted with a two-ring electric hob and nothing else. No fridge, no kettle, no toaster. Just a brown-stained, germ-filled sink. A cupboard on the wall housed food supplies. Pot Noodles and a selection of instant soups, a bottle of curdled milk, little else. The boiling water required to make these delicacies had to be heated in a pan on the hob.
The cupboard under the sink was the route by which the rats had been able to infiltrate from the foundations. They had obviously been trying to break through for some time, having gnawed their way through the laminated chipboard from which the cupboard was made. Had the girl been alive, the rats would have come through anyway. As it was, they had found her dead and feasted on her.
Henry shivered involuntarily at the thought. It was ghastly enough to have been murdered so horrifically, but then to have been lunched on did not bear thinking about. In his time as a cop, he had been to several deaths, usually from natural causes, where the deceased had lain undiscovered for some time and their pets, driven crazy by hunger, had started to nibble them away.
Cats were the worst.
Henry’s mind, distracted momentarily by these thoughts, flicked back to the crime scene.
Whether she had actually had four customers on the day of her death was difficult to determine for sure. It seemed to be a likely scenario, according to the scientists, and very likely that her last customer had been her killer.
She had had sexual intercourse with a man who had then pummelled and battered her until she died.
The assault had started in the bed-sitting room. She had been beaten while still on or near the bed. Blood splashes were all over the bed clothes, together with semen stains from another three men. Her assailant had smashed her head against the wall next to the bed, strands of blood-matted hair and indentations in the plasterboard confirmed this.
The grim fight had continued around the room.
She had either banged her head, or had it banged for her, against the sharp corner of one of the home-assembled units. The pathologist and forensic scientists had matched up the triangular point with the indent on the back of her skull.
At some point during the struggle, killer and victim crashed through to the kitchen and boiling water from a pan on the hob had been tipped up. A scald mark was found on the dead woman’s back: more excruciating pain to add to the suffering she was already enduring at the hands of the person destined to take her life. From there the crime-scene analyst reckoned she had managed to escape, but only as far as the bathroom. She had locked the door, which had been booted down off its fragile hinges.
Henry’s thought processes paused at that point. His mind’s eye saw the moment when the door had been whacked down, splintering. He wondered if the woman had thought she had found some sort of sanctuary in the bathroom, a place of safety. But all she had found was that she had backed herself into a corner from which there was no escape.
Was she screaming as her assailant threw himself against the door? Or was she cowering, huddled down on the floor, whimpering, terrified as the door burst open? What was she thinking as the killer, breathless, red-faced and raging, stood in the bathroom doorway?
He had probably launched himself across at her in a flash of violence. Maybe she had already been on her knees by the toilet bowl, begging for mercy, and all he had done was grab her and started pound-pound-pounding her face against the porcelain.
Or had she fought him at that point? Did he have to wrestle her down, overpower her again, drag her to her knees and then murder her?
Henry finished his tea and walked back to the lounge. The sky was much brighter now, the sun not far away, spring in the air. He went to the TV and switched the video on again. He sat on the settee, hunched forwards, and watched intently as the tape continued from where he had left it. The camera drew back from the woman’s spine then circled within the confined space of the bathroom, picking out the blood splashes on the wall, in the washbasin, in the bath, and the mass of coagulation in the toilet. The screen faded to black, then faded in a few seconds later. Now the body of the woman was laid out on a mortuary slab just prior to post-mortem taking place.
Henry’s face was emotionless as the camera inspected the wounds on her head and face and the scald mark on her stomach. A commentary from the Home Office pathologist, Professor Baines, accompanied this footage. His latex-gloved hands came into shot, pointing out the various injuries, his voice describing and commenting on them with relish.
Henry stuck with it up to the point where the PM was about to take place, then switched off. He felt no need to watch her being hacked to pieces.
A sigh escaped from his lips. His toes tapped agitatedly in his slippers as he pondered and summarized in his mind what he had learned in the last hour about a crime that had been committed over eleven months before.
There were no particularly good witnesses. No one had been seen entering or leaving the flat, despite the investigation team having interviewed dozens of people in the area. Nor were there any fingerprints which matched anyone on record, and no forensic evidence other than the DNA profiles on the semen. Low copy DNA – DNA left by a person merely touching objects – had been tested too, but this very expensive process had been inconclusive.
The DNA profiles from the semen were crucial, of course. But only when they could be matched to a particular individual. As with the fingerprints, no match could be made to anything currently held on record. That did not mean that the men who had left their semen did not have criminal records. It might just be that they had not been arrested recently enough to have provided a DNA sample for the database.
Henry knew that new DNA samples were continually being checked against the database of outstanding crimes, but it was a slow process which might or might not bear fruit. He felt he could not sit back and wait and hope that something of that sort happened.
Still cogitating, Henry mused that he was looking for a man who was quite powerful and very handy with his fists, which, together with the rim of the toilet bowl, had done a lot of damage to the prostitute’s face. It could be someone who had convictions for assaulting women, particularly hookers. It was an avenue that had been pursued in the original investigation. A lot of likely suspects had been pulled in and questioned without success. That was a line Henry intended to re-open and maybe fling the net more widely across the whole north-west region.
He bent down to the VCR and ejected the cassette. He would not have liked Kate or his daughters to see it by accident.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle faced by the murder squad had been that they had been unable to identify the victim. She was faceless and nameless. Either no one knew who she was, or they were not telling. No identification papers had been found in the flat and the landlord knew her only as Miss Smith. A media campaign, including an item on Crimewatch UK, produced no leads whatever. Her DNA, dental records and fingerprints were also dead ends. No one on the national missing persons register fitted her description.
Which was bloody amazing, Henry thought, because her age had been estimated at just fourteen.
No one had missed a fourteen-year-old girl. Fourteen. A prostitute. Now murdered. And nobody knew who the hell she was?
But Henry was not
surprised. He had long since stopped being surprised at anything. He knew how ruthless and uncaring the world was.
‘Thanks very much, Mr Fleming,’ Henry said to himself under his breath, ‘for giving me a no-hoper of a case.’
It was 5.45 a.m and Henry had to be at Blackburn Magistrates Court at ten to see how his murderer fared during the remand hearing. He stifled a wide yawn and crept upstairs, knowing the household did not stir until seven thirty. He checked his daughters again to see if they were sleeping soundly, his fiercely protective parental instinct roused by the thought of a fourteen-year-old girl missing and murdered. If either of his two went, he knew he would never rest until he found them. The thought made him judder.
He slid back in bed, ensuring he did not rouse Kate. She murmured something and turned over, taking the duvet with her.
With a wry smile, Henry closed his eyes, then thought about his cold case. If only for the sake of some parent out there, he would give this one his best shot in the time he had available . . . then within seconds he fell into the sleep that had been eluding him for the last couple of hours.
Two
Ray Cragg surfaced from sleep with a storming headache, but did not have any time to brood about it. He had some serious work to do, a busy day ahead. He groaned as he rolled out of the same bed he’d been sleeping in since the age of ten: single, narrow, with a deep indentation down the centre of the mattress into which his thin, wiry body fitted perfectly. It was the only bed he could ever sleep comfortably in.
Once on his feet he staggered a little to keep his balance until the blood made it up to his brain. He kicked some discarded clothing out of the way and lurched out on to the landing dressed only in the ragged, loose underpants he slept in. On the way to the main bathroom he passed his mother’s bedroom. The door was slightly ajar.
Cragg paused outside, listening. Then, unable to resist, he peeped in.
Deep asleep, his mother lay splayed on the king-sized bed, naked, the duvet only half-covering her. There were numerous roach ends in the ashtray on the bedside cabinet and the sickly-sweet smell of stale cannabis hung in the air. Cragg shut his eyes momentarily as the sight of his mother’s pubes made him shudder. Next to her was the bulk of some sleeping guy, breathing deeply but not quite snoring. On his bedside cabinet were two used condoms half-wrapped in tissue. Cragg had no idea who the man was. Didn’t particularly want to know. Didn’t actually care either, because he loved his mum. So far as he was concerned she could do anything, or shag anyone, so long as it made her happy.
The only thing Cragg would not tolerate was any bastard who dared slap her round. Two guys had suffered for doing that in the past. One had even thought he could do the same to Ray Cragg.
A knife plunged into the guy’s left buttock had made him squeal and think differently.
Cragg closed the bedroom door quietly. He padded barefoot along to the bathroom, had a piss, a power shower, then shaved, although there wasn’t very much to shave off, even at the age of thirty. His almost pure-white blond hair, cropped right back to his skull, frustrated the life out of him. Sometimes he thought he would never get any facial hair other than odd tufts here and there which reminded him of Shaggy in Scooby Doo.
He left the bathroom annoyed by this thought and also because he had razored the head clean off a big yellow pimple on his chin which refused to stop bleeding. Holding a tiny triangle of pink toilet tissue to his face he stomped angrily back to his bedroom to get dressed.
Transformation time. He tossed his less than clean underpants across the bed and opened the wardrobe. Inside was an array of designer everything. His pulled on a pair of boxer shorts, CK T-shirt, jeans, trainers, and set them off against an Omega wristwatch, a line of single diamond studs in his pierced ears and a state of the art mobile phone (pay as you go, so therefore no records of calls made) slotted on his black leather Gucci belt.
‘I am the fucking biz,’ Ray Cragg said to his reflection in the mirror while hunching his shoulders in a threatening way. ‘The effin’ biz,’ he said again. ‘I think I might just shoot some bastard today.’
He was ready to operate.
His half-brother Marty was in the kitchen waiting for him. He had let himself into the house earlier, was munching toast and listening to Oasis on a portable hi-fi placed on top of the fridge, while perusing the racing pages of the Sun. He was dressed similarly to Ray but was more sturdily built.
Ray turned the music off immediately. ‘Stuff that for a game of soldiers,’ he said, complaining at the noise. ‘Got a shaggin’ headache.’
‘I was listenin’ to that,’ Marty whined half-heartedly, turning to appraise his half-brother for the first time.
Ray batted his eyelids blandly, daring Marty to challenge him. Though Marty was bigger and physically more powerful than Ray, no aggression from the younger man, he knew his place in the hierarchy.
Marty sneered secretly and looked back down at his racing tips for the day, hiding a smirk at the little pink dab of toilet tissue with the red dot of blood in its centre stuck on Ray’s chin. Marty took a huge, rude-sounding slurp of tea from his mug.
Ray rubbed his head, feeling slightly faint again. He dropped a couple of Nurofen Meltlets into his mouth and washed them down with ice-cold orange juice from a carton in the fridge.
‘Heavy night?’
Ray shrugged. ‘So-so.’
‘You wanna keep off that Pils. Fuckin’ kills you.’
‘Thanks for the crap advice.’ Ray slotted a couple of slices of thick white bread into the toaster and re-boiled the kettle. He trimmed the crust off the toast and spread it thickly with butter and seedless raspberry jam (he hated food with bits in it and bread with the crust on, had done since childhood). He sat next to Marty and snatched the Sun away from him. Marty let it go without a murmur of protest. Ray ate in silence while leafing through the tabloid.
‘What time’s Crazy coming?’ Ray asked. He turned to the back page. Now that he had some sustenance inside him he was coming to life.
‘Should be here by now,’ muttered Marty, checking his watch.
‘Tosser’s always late,’ Ray commented. His thin-lipped mouth twisted distastefully. With a ‘tut’ of annoyance he unhitched his mobile from his belt and punched in a number. With the phone to his ear he crossed to the sink, dropping his cup and plate into the washing-up bowl, already brimful of dirty crockery, water, scum and food particles.
‘Crazy?’ Ray demanded. ‘It’s me, yeah, now where the fuck are you? . . . Yeah, right,’ he said, sneering at whatever the response was. ‘Not fuckin’ good enough . . . we’ve got things to do, a bloody busy day ahead, so put your foot down, will you?’ Ray folded the mouthpiece of his mobile back into place and shook his head.
‘If that twat’s on his way like he says, I’m a fuckin’ Dutchman,’ Marty said. ‘Marty van-fuckin’-Cragg’s my name. I’ll swing for the unreliable tosspot.’
‘He’ll be here,’ Ray said.
‘Still up t’maker’s name in that slag of his,’ Marty surmised.
‘He’ll be here.’
They migrated into the living room and watched the best bits of a slasher-type movie while waiting impatiently for Crazy’s arrival. He was the driver for the day, Ray’s number-two man after Marty. Hopefully he would turn up in a fairly nondescript, clean and reliable motor which would not draw any undue attention to them.
Half an hour later he pulled up outside, honking his horn as though he was the one who had been kept waiting.
‘Fuckin’-hoo-ray,’ Ray said, jumping up. He pulled a baseball cap on, peak twisted backwards, a denim jacket, and fitted a pair of Full Metal Jacket sunglasses on. He was ready to roll. ‘C’mon.’ He brushed past Marty who, also clad in sunglasses, was at the front door, opening it for his brother. They trotted down the driveway, past the Mercedes and the BMW, and jumped into the waiting Astra GTE. Ray went in the front passenger seat next to Crazy. Marty hunched in the back.
Ray twisted side-on t
o Crazy, made the shape of a gun with his first finger and stuck it against Crazy’s temple. ‘Bein’ late pisses me off.’
‘Hey, hey,’ Crazy’s voice creaked nervously. ‘I been working, sorting stuff out for you.’
‘Yeah? More like screwing that bint of yours,’ Marty interjected, his mouth curling.
Ray removed the pretend gun from Crazy’s head and sat properly on his seat, allowing Crazy to look disdainfully over his shoulder at Marty. ‘No – actually, no.’ He turned back to Ray. ‘Sorting out today for you, that’s what I’ve been doing, and checking this area real careful, like, for cop surveillance, just in case.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Good.’
‘So what’s first on your agenda?’ Crazy asked, gripping the wheel tightly and revving the engine.
‘JJ needs a visit first. Needsa bit of geeing up, doesn’t he, Mart?’
‘Sure does, skimming bastard,’ Marty agreed, a wicked smile expanding across his mean face.
‘Then after we’ve had some fun with him, let’s really get down to business.’ Ray clasped his hands behind his head. ‘Because today is the day when Ray Cragg puts his foot down and steps on some shite.’ He glanced at his driver. ‘Let’s go, Crazy.’
Joe Sherridan’s court appearance was over almost before it began. It took two, maybe three minutes at most. The clerk of the court read out his name and Sherridan nodded when asked if the details were correct. He made no response to the charge against him. He then sat down in the dock, a morose expression on his face, his eyes staring unfocused at the floor.
Henry Christie watched his prisoner thoughtfully, wondering what was going through the man’s mind. Turmoil, despair, Henry guessed. Remorse about what he had done – perhaps. Uncertainty about the future? His head must be spinning like a washing machine.
The defence made no application for bail. Seconds later the magistrates remanded Sherridan in custody and without a backwards glance he was led down to the holding cells below by his Group 4 jailers.