‘Call your marvellous Mrs Moth and get her to come over. You shouldn’t be alone, but I have to get back to the station. I’ll be in touch when I know more. I’ve got live murderers to catch – baby murderers.’
The street patrols had been busy the night before but one episode really made its mark on those who took part in it. They had come out of an alleyway on the council estate and seen the shapes of three men at the end of it. Strolling, quite cautiously towards them, the men were only aware of their approach when a shaft of brightness from a street light illuminated their shapes.
Two of them were already known to the police as small-time sellers of cannabis and, knowing they had been seen, held up their hands confident that, as they had little on them at that time of night, the punishment would, as usual, be minimal as there was so little evidence.
The third man, however, threw up his hands in horror and began to run as if all the hounds of hell were after him. With a cry of, ‘Just stay there!’ both uniformed officers took off at a tearing run, but he was infused with fear, and it gave him wings. He shot across the recreation ground, down a dark alleyway and then across a main road before disappearing down an access road to the back of the properties in the street.
The two officers chased after him, but for a while he easily outran them and it was only when he crossed the main road, back into bright lighting once more, that they caught sight of him again. ‘Over there!’ puffed one of the policemen. ‘He’s going down the back alley.’
‘I’ll go down the road and cut him off on the other end.’
It was as good a plan as any, but the man did not emerge from behind the houses and the officer who had run in after him could see nothing as he looked down its length. He couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air. He had to be somewhere. He was just scratching his head in perplexity when he heard the frantic barking of a dog and a high-pitched scream.
His reaction was automatic, and he hared off down the back lane. As he ran the scream turned into a more masculine cry for help and, as he reached a garden halfway down the long terrace, he located it to over the six-foot fence that separated that house’s garden from its back access.
Without waiting, the officer pulled himself up on to the fencing and shone his torch over to the other side of it. There, cowering in a corner of the garden was the man they were after, the dog keeping him a prisoner. ‘Help me before this thing savages me,’ he cried in genuine alarm.
At that moment his colleague joined him, and was asked to go round the front and get the owner to call his dog into the house so that they could arrest their man. For a couple of minutes he watched the entertaining sight of the dog making a move every time his captive tried to get away. ‘Do something, mate, he’s going to fucking kill me,’ he yelled, again showing what was more of a phobia than a fear.
Eventually, the patio doors opened and a thickset man called, ‘Come in, Stanley, and leave the man alone.’ At the sound of his master’s voice, the spaniel trotted off, its tongue lolling out of its mouth and with almost a good-natured smile on its face. ‘He wouldn’t hurt a fly, Officer,’ the man said, grabbing the old dog by the collar and dragging him into the house. ‘He only wanted to be friends and lick his face.’
The tenant unlocked the back gate and let in the other constable, and he looked at the cowering man with disdain. ‘Whatever’s wrong with him?’
‘I can’t stand fucking dogs,’ replied the prisoner, now theirs.
‘Chose the wrong house then, didn’t you?’ replied the constable who had witnessed his terror from the back fence. ‘Come along with us. You’ve got some questions to answer, like why you legged it back there.’
He was detained, cuffed and searched and that’s where the puzzle began. He had no drugs on him whatsoever, or any large sums of money, so what had spooked him so much? He would say nothing other than ‘no comment’ – no change there from normal, though – but finally one of the uniforms realised that he looked a little familiar.
‘Aren’t you that guy the DCI is looking for? Do you recognise him?’ he asked his colleague.
‘No. Go on, give us your name, mate.’
‘No comment.’
As the man turned his head, the constable who thought he knew him suddenly got a glimpse of him in profile and exclaimed, ‘I know where I know you from, matey. You’re that bloke whose kiddie got killed, and you’re in deep shit.’
‘That’s not very professional,’ the man finally uttered, as his legs began to shake.
‘Baz Bailey’ – fortunately the man’s name had come back to him – ‘I am arresting you …’ He had finally managed to bring the words of the caution to mind, and the officers radioed for a van to come and pick him up and take him into the station for questioning.
‘Hey, well done, mate. Where did you remember him from?’
‘When he was being released from custody, I just caught sight of the side of his face. He doesn’t look much like his photograph from the front, does he?’
‘It’s the lighting. Everything looks different under this yellow glare.’
As he was shoved into the back of the police van, one of the PCs shouted up to the driver, ‘When you get back, give him a tour of the police kennels.’
There was a wail from the back of the van.
The office was a sea of activity when the inspector got to her desk, but someone had stuck a Post-it to her computer monitor informing her that Baz Bailey had been picked up the night before trying to buy cannabis during Operation Zee-Tee, and was waiting for her in a cell – now that was what she called a piece of good news.
Carole Shillington was also still in custody, an officer of the rank of inspector being able to grant an extra twenty-four hours detention, and it seemed like she was ready to make a fresh statement. After the death of her daughter, she had experienced shock, then grief, and had finally reached a state of extreme fury. ‘I want to talk to that inspector,’ she yelled at the custody sergeant, having summoned him. ‘I want to make a new statement about my Stacey.’
‘Calm down, madam,’ soothed Penny Sutcliffe in a quiet voice. ‘Which inspector do you want to talk to?’
‘That fat woman,’ she stated without any embarrassment.
‘Her name?’
‘I don’t know. How many fat women inspectors have you got working at this station?’
Penny strived to smile, and suggested, ‘Do you mean Detective Inspector Hardy?’
‘That’s the one. And I want to talk to her now.’
‘If you’d care to take a seat, I’ll call her down to see you. I’m calling her now,’ Penny informed them, and lifted the handset of the phone.
Olivia was there in a couple of minutes, amazed at her good fortune at getting such an early opportunity to speak to the witness, and guided the young woman into an interview room. Before she had even had the opportunity to sit down, Carole started again.
‘I want to tell you exactly what happened to my baby girl,’ she said in a very loud voice.
‘If you’ll just calm down, Carole, I’ll get a recording rolling and then you can make your statement.’ Olivia wasn’t exactly sure what the young woman wanted to tell her, but it sounded important.
When all the formalities had been observed, Carole twisting and fidgeting in her seat, making little whimpering noises in her impatience, Olivia informed her, ‘We know that when you made that trip to Mr Shah’s shop that Stacey wasn’t in the car.’
‘That’s just what I’m here to tell you about. It was that bastard Baz.’
‘What about him, Carole?’
‘She was crying, like she always does at night. Baz was so cross; said he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since she was born. I tried to quieten her down – tried her with a bottle, changed her nappy, cuddled her and walked round with her, but eventually I had to put her back into her Moses basket, and she just started to yell again. I wouldn’t have believed something so small could make so much noise.
‘A
nyway, he just flipped. He got out of bed and took her under the armpits and just started to shake her, yelling, “Shut up, you little fuck.” …’ She broke off her statement as a solitary tear rolled down one cheek. ‘And he just shook her harder and harder until suddenly she went quiet. I wanted to go to her, but I was too scared. Then, he just put her back into her basket and got back into bed.’
‘And what did you do then?’ Olivia encouraged her, as she looked to be running out of steam.
‘I waited until I could hear him snoring again, and then I got out of bed to see how she was, and … she wasn’t moving or breathing, and I just knew that she was dead. That’s when I started yelling, and Baz got up and slapped me round the face and told me to shut up about it or he’d go to prison and I’d have nobody to pay the rent or feed me. Then he said we could always have another baby, and I was to go back to bed and do what he said in the morning.
‘I got back under the covers, but I couldn’t sleep. It all seemed such a nightmare and I couldn’t believe it had really happened.’
‘And what did Mr Bailey tell you to do in the morning?’ Olivia knew that they already had enough to charge him with, but she wanted the full story.
‘I must have dozed off and he said I woke him by making whimpering noises. It was quite early, but he said I had to go to the little mini-mart in Beach Road and get some fags and some biscuits. Then I was to get the bits of shopping and go back to the car and … and pretend she’d been abducted.’
‘I just stood there looking at her little body in her basket, so he grabbed me by the hair and told me I had to do it, or he’d make sure that something awful happened to me. Then he said he knew where to get some acid, and did I want a faceful of it? He’d make sure that nobody ever looked at me again if he was going to prison.’
‘And then what did you do?’
‘I just felt numb. How could he do that to our little girl? He’d complained every night since I’d brought her home from hospital, and he had a really short fuse, but I never thought he’d do anything like that.’
‘And you just went along with his plans?’ Olivia was really moved by this horrifying tale of everyday life in Littleton-on-Sea.
‘What else could I do?’
‘And did he tell you what he was going to do with Stacey’s body?’
‘I never even thought about it. By the time I’d raised the alarm in Jubilee Road, I think I’d even begun to believe the story, because it was easier than believing what had really happened. I just couldn’t believe that he’d done something so heartless and cruel as to bury her in Mum’s flowerbed.’
‘And did you believe him when he threatened you with acid?’
‘Absolutely. It was only since the end of my pregnancy that I began to see his dark side, and now he’s killed my little girl …’
Olivia ended the interview and went off to the canteen to grab a strong coffee and get herself mentally prepared for interviewing Baz Bailey, self-proclaimed hard man, bully and baby-killer. She’d get herself together sitting at her desk among the everyday things.
And if she could sweet-talk the higher-ups, maybe she could get Carole off the hook completely. After all, what she’d done she’d done out of fear and under severe duress, which would be taken into consideration. Baz Bailey was the villain here, and not his long-suffering, ill-treated young partner.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
At the nearest airport at about the same time, Alice and Brian Gregg were getting off their flight from France and picking up a hire car. Coming back to England like this had been a great inconvenience, but at least it had focussed their thoughts on the unoccupied, or so they’d thought, house in Gooding Avenue. If they just sold it, the capital would be a useful injection to their bank balance. They’d talked about renovating it or dividing it up, and neither seemed to be a useful solution as they would have been time-consuming.
The easiest solution seemed to be to just go back and look over the old place, stay in an hotel, and instruct an estate agent. That way, they’d get the benefit of it without the chance of squatters or vandals. The house may have been used for criminal purposes, but at least nobody had broken in and set fire to it, as happened with so many empty properties, their fate in the hands of the unwanted attention of arsonists.
Once they’d booked into their hotel on the ring road, they drove straight to Gooding Avenue to inspect the condition of Brian’s inheritance.
DS Mike Jenner had been kept very busy with cataloguing the scene of the crimes, keeping the incident room board up to date, and making sure that the actions book was used, but it was he who was free to answer the phone when it rang mid-morning, as DCI Buller was taking a call on his mobile.
The control room had just had an hysterical call about number three Gooding Avenue, but the caller had been too upset to make themselves very clear. The only details had been that there was somebody there nailed to a table. Could that possibly be correct?
Alice and Brian Gregg let themselves in at the front door and Brian headed straight for the kitchen to see if there were the makings for a cup of tea. As he entered the room, he stopped dead at what lay before him. There was somebody, apparently slumped at the kitchen table. He made an involuntary cry, and went towards the figure intent on asking what the hell the man thought he was doing in his house, but the man didn’t move a muscle.
His instinct was now one of indignation, and he stomped round to the other side of the piece of furniture, tired after his early flight, and not willing to engage in any sort of argument the man felt moved to instigate. Still, the figure didn’t move.
As he got to the other side of it he could see large expanses of blood on the table’s surface and the floor and, to his utter horror, two large nails sticking out of the backs of the man’s hands. ‘Alice!’ he squawked, to attract the attention of his wife, still in the hall looking through doors into the desolately empty rooms.
Alice trudged into the kitchen, heading straight for her husband, then caught sight of the dead man at the table and started to scream.
DS Jenner made frantic hand-signals at Buller to get his attention and, in doing so, caught the attention of Olivia, who was sitting at her desk sipping scalding hot coffee and reflecting on the evils in society and the cheapness of life.
Buller ended his call and faced his sergeant. ‘What is it now, Jenner?’ he barked, in his usual foul mood.
‘There’s just been a call about a man nailed to a table in 3 Gooding Avenue, guv. I thought you might like to take a look.’
‘Any other details?’
‘The caller was too distressed to say any more. Do you fancy taking a look?’
From behind him a higher-pitched voice answered in the affirmative. ‘I’d like to. I was in at the beginning of this thing, and I’d like to see what’s turned up now.’
‘DI Hardy, you have other matters to attend to, if I’m not mistaken.’ Buller wasn’t giving in that easily.
‘Sod that for a game of soldiers. It’s a baby-killer who’s already in custody, and I’m quite happy to leave him to stew in his own juices for a while longer. I want him to have plenty of time to contemplate how he’s going to be treated in prison, by the other inmates as well as the guards.’
‘Why should I let you come?’
‘Because if you don’t I’ll piss on your shoes, and I mean that most sincerely. And I’ll crap on the bonnet of your car and generally make your life a complete misery – and, believe me, I can.’
Buller was suddenly impressed by the sheer balls of the woman, and gave her permission to accompany them.
It took quite a while for Buller and Jenner to get the information about the couple in the house, and Olivia had slipped through the four of them and gone straight into the kitchen, where she sensed the action was about to go on. She was right. There, with six-inch nails through the back of his hands, was their red-haired, freckled man, the table in front of him and the floor at his feet pooled with congealing blood.
&nb
sp; The cuts to the wrists weren’t obvious to the casual observer but, having seen how much blood there was, she bent down, eager to have a look, as his hands were so near the edge of the table. Two sets of open scarlet lips leered at her, and they had probably, she conjectured, been made with the ubiquitous and readily-available craft knife. Small to carry and easy to obtain, these had been used as weapons for many years.
‘Guv,’ she called, ‘we’ve got our red-haired man with the freckles in here. At least now we can get fingerprints, even if we don’t have our day in court.’
‘You sneaky bitch,’ he retorted, coming into the kitchen. ‘How dare you get in here ahead of me.’
‘I was on the case ahead of you, if you remember, so I was just reclaiming my position.’
‘Well, don’t let it go to your head, and just you remember who’s SIO,’ was his reply, with the hint of a grin. Maybe she was winning him over at last.
‘At least we can find out who he is now, but who the bloody hell did this to him?’ he remarked. ‘It looks like a hit to me. I reckon he’d trodden on some very big toes to have had this done to him.’
‘You reckon it’s gang-related?’
‘I do, indeed, Hardy. This whole house reeks of it. If this guy was setting up on his own, he’s obviously got on somebody’s tits big time. This killing is a message to other aspiring operators – don’t infringe on my patch or you’re dead. Get back to the station and, when I’ve got the prints, see what you can find out about him. If we’ve got nothing on the national record, I’ll check with Europol instead. He can’t be new to crime; he’s just not very far up the food chain and seems to have wanted to branch out on his own.’
‘Do you think he’s responsible for the original two attacks here?’
‘Probably,’ replied Buller, just this minute thinking it over. ‘Although he’d have needed help, and we’ve no idea who else might have been involved, although we do have a statement that saw two hooded figures making good their escape over the back fence. I think he’s just been dished out his just desserts for infringing on someone else’s territory, although that’s another story altogether. All we can do is deal with crimes as they happen, and I think we’ve got our man for the contraband and cannabis farming in this place – or at least one of them.’ Buller was nothing if not honest.
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