Dead Wrong

by Helen H. Durrant

  Calladine parked his small saloon car and nodded back as she greeted him with a wave. She’d worked as his sergeant for a number of years, and they got on well. Ruth could be highly critical of both his ideas and methods at times, but he knew that she considered him good at what he did. She could hardly think anything else — his team had the best clear-up rate in the nick.

  And he was easy on the eye, even if he thought so himself. Not that he was vain but according to his mother, who was his greatest fan, he had lean angular good looks which suited his dark hair. In his younger days she’d likened him to some film star or other, which had caused far too much hilarity among his friends for comfort. He smiled to himself. Did she still think that, he wondered, now that his once mid-length dark hair was close cropped and fast turning to grey? She didn’t say much that made any sense these days.

  The regard was mutual. Calladine enjoyed working with Ruth, who, in her turn was easy to get on with and good at her job. He trusted her. She was a very practical woman, and a real asset to his team. Apart from working together they also had friends in common. She’d been married briefly to the brother of his on-off girlfriend Monika. Combined with her plain speaking, this gave Ruth an edge with the inspector that the others didn’t have. She often advised him, and pulled no punches. Calladine was hopeless where the women in his life were concerned, a failing he was well aware of, and he often turned to Ruth for help.

  Despite this, Calladine knew precious little about Ruth’s private life. If she were anything like him, he thought, she’d be damn lucky if she had one. But that didn’t stop him wondering how she’d managed to get to her mid-thirties with no ties. She was attractive, in a comfortable sort of way, looked after herself, and was intelligent. Perhaps she was too intelligent for most men — she saw straight through people, right to their flaws.

  “Julian says he’s got something for us already,” she told him with a smile as he approached. “Says he can give us something really useful on the plastic bag when we get back.”

  Calladine nodded, thrusting his hands deep into his coat pockets against the icy wind. Once summer was done with, the cold seemed to set in hard around here. He shivered, and felt his cheek twinge. He had questions, plenty of them, but his mouth was still numb and he couldn’t trust his lips or tongue to work quite properly yet.

  “You haven’t forgotten, have you?” Ruth asked. “Monika’s birthday; you said to remind you.”

  Calladine swore under his breath. He hadn’t exactly forgotten, but he hadn’t come up with any ideas either.

  “Flowers?” he mumbled.

  “You should try to do a little better than that, sir. You are trying to make this work — again.” She raised her eyebrows. “Think of something she likes, something she’s into.”

  Calladine knew that there were times when Ruth despaired of him. She thought Monika was a great idea, and she didn’t ask for much either, so the least he could do was give her something she’d appreciate for her birthday.

  Calladine shrugged. “What d’you mean? As far as I can tell Monika’s into her work — just like me.” Monika was the manageress of the care home his mother lived in. When she was off-duty, she usually lay exhausted on the sofa in her flat. On the rare occasions when they were both free at the same time they went out for a meal or film. This was probably the reason their relationship was so shaky.

  “Look, Tom, it’s about time you made a decision. Are you serious about making this work? What you’re doing is playing around with Monika’s feelings and it isn’t fair. It’s a simple enough question — do you want her or don’t you?”

  The truth was, he didn’t know. Ruth seemed to think Monika was right for him, so why the doubt? And having to decide on a present would bug him all day; he was no good at this sort of thing. Why did it have to be so damned difficult? She was a woman, wasn’t she? So what the hell was wrong with flowers — surely a big bunch of them couldn’t be wrong?

  “Don’t get flowers; get her something a little more personal, jewellery perhaps.” They were by this time pacing along a hospital corridor. “What does she like?”

  “She likes that blue stuff.”

  “Sapphires?” Ruth asked hopefully

  “No, that bluey-green stuff — chunky little rock things.”

  “Jade?”

  “No — turquoise, yes that’s it, turquoise.” He was pleased with himself for remembering. “I’ll pop in to the jewellers, that little one in town, on my way home.”

  “You might be better off in the Antique Centre; you know the one, off the bypass. I’ve seen some nice vintage jewellery in there.”

  That wasn’t a bad idea; it was on his way home, provided he left early enough to catch it open.

  “And sort your head out will you? All this indecision isn’t good. Monika and you — you’re good together.” This was accompanied by a jab in the ribs.

  But was good together enough? Shouldn’t there be something more — a spark of excitement at least?

  “Get your tooth sorted, did you?” She smiled, looking at his swollen lip. “I’ve got some pain-killers back at the nick if you need them.”

  They had reached the mortuary, and the conversation moved on to more professional matters.

  “What’s this all about, Ruth? Is it punishment, revenge, or our worst nightmare?” He rubbed at his cheek, trying to get rid of the numbness.

  “It’s different, that’s for sure. We’ve seen plenty of beatings, loads of broken bodies lying black and blue in hospital, but nothing like this.”

  So, something new then — or someone. The nightmare prospect of an escalating turf war on the Hobfield lurked constantly, like a phantom, at the back of his mind. It troubled him whenever something happened that he couldn’t explain — like now. If one of the hooligans decided to give it a real go, then guns were easy enough to get hold of, as the shooting had proved. They were only a few miles away from Manchester.

  The drugs on the Hobfield were mostly supplied to the dealers by one man, Ray Fallon. Fallon. The mere thought of that name made Calladine cringe. The team from Manchester Central was keeping an eye on him, but had something gone wrong? Was Fallon slipping? Had the field somehow been left open?

  “I have a bad feeling.” He shivered. “Most of what happens between the gangs is a sudden flare-up, the result of an argument or a stand-off about territory. The gangs fight, and they react. They don’t chop off fingers. This doesn’t feel like an internal war or an exasperated Fallon teaching some cocky bastard a lesson in manners either. Fallon would just have one of his minions use a baseball bat on the culprit. And if he had someone killed, we’d never find the body.”

  Ruth shot him a look. He could be right; this was more likely to be drugs-related than anything else. That was the nature of the Hobfield.

  “Knowing who the fingers belong to will be a start.”

  Calladine nodded. “Or belonged to, Ruth.” They stood at the mortuary door. “But we’ll check with the ED while we’re here. See if anyone’s come in. I hope I’m wrong, but the owner, whoever the poor bastard is or was, is probably dead.”

  Silently, Calladine recited an endless list of names. But his gut instinct told him that it wouldn’t end with the fingers. Once word got out, the dealers would want retribution — from each other. And from Fallon.

  “Ah, Tom and Sergeant Bayliss.” Hoyle was ready, and greeted them as they entered the mortuary. He gestured towards the digits lined up on the table in front of them.

  The scene was as odd as it was macabre. Calladine was more used to seeing an entire corpse laid out. The sight of these detached fingers, as well as thoughts about how they got that way, made him shudder.

  “I was actually beginning to miss your company these last weeks.” He nodded. “Yes, a quiet summer. Wondered where it would end . . . Spent most of mine working on a research paper. I’ll let you read it sometime; it should interest you, Tom. It’s all about getting an accurate time of death from studying foreign ba
cteria on the body. You know — whatever’s left by flies, bugs, and the like.”

  “You should take up golf or something, Doc. Or come and have a few pints with the lads. You know — lighten up a bit.”

  Hoyle laughed and shook his balding head at the irony of that advice coming from the workaholic detective.

  “Julian took the bag. That should provide some good evidence,” Hoyle told him. “It was a plastic carrier from a supermarket, and there was a receipt inside it. Julian will liaise with your lot back at the station. You should have no trouble tracing it. He’ll also see if he can lift prints from the bag.”

  It was a reasonable start, careless on the part of the perpetrator, which was good for them.

  “Male. Quite decayed.” They were looking at the fingers. “But not overly so. They haven’t been hanging about too long. See,” he pointed to the finger tips with a pencil, “they’ve just started to blacken. But I’ll know more once I’ve done the tests. If there’s anything in the database then DNA will tell you who we’ve got.”

  “Prints?”

  “Bit ambitious that, Tom, but I might manage a partial.”

  “I could do with that particular result asap, Doc, if I’m to find out who this is. That and the DNA is about all I’ve got to go on.”

  “Oh I think you’ve got a little more than that, Tom. Look.” He pointed to faint marks just above the knuckle on some of the fingers. “Tattoos I think.”

  “Can you decipher them?”

  “You know me; I’ll do my best.” The doctor smiled.

  “Anything you can get, Doc. I need to find out who this poor sod is — or was — as quickly as I can.”

  “Poor sods, Tom,” Hoyle corrected him. “The digits are not all from the same individual.”

  “Are you sure?” Surprised, Calladine bent to take a closer look at the grisly remnants.

  “Count them,” Hoyle nodded. “There are three thumbs and nine fingers.” The pathologist shrugged. “In my book that means you’re looking for at least two victims.”

  Chapter 3

  “I want the team in the main office for a meeting in five minutes.”

  Calladine took off his overcoat and threw it over the back of the chair in his office. He rummaged in his desk drawer for a few moments, and pulled out a file labelled Shooting.

  There wasn’t much: the victim’s name, Richard Pope, and some family details. He’d been the only child of older parents and had kept his nose clean. There was no police record, not even a caution. Not the type, then, to go get himself shot. He’d been just a face in the crowd — so why?

  Calladine rubbed his sore cheek. All these months later, and they still didn’t even know who his friends were, who he talked to — if anyone. They’d asked, but no one had come forward. Calladine didn’t think he’d belonged to one of the gangs, but perhaps he’d been wrong to assume that.

  For as long as he could remember Calladine had dreaded waking up one morning to find that there was a turf war raging on the Estate. Was this fingers incident the start of such a nightmare? If it was, then where did the shooting fit in — if it fitted at all?

  Whatever the answer, there was a definite frisson of excitement among his colleagues as he strode into the main office. Ruth had already prepared the incident board. Images of those damned fingers, pictures of the receipt, scanned and emailed through from Julian, and the bag they’d been found in, were already posted up. All of it a gruesome and sobering reminder of what they were up against.

  He stood before his assembled team.

  “I know what you’re all thinking,” began Calladine, “but I want to say straight off that we don’t have anything to link this to the shooting — or anything else.” They were all watching him from their desks, their eyes glued to the scant evidence pinned to the board. Besides Ruth Bayliss, there were a detective sergeant, three detective constables — Simon Rockliffe (Rocco to his mates), Michael Dodgson (now known by all as ‘Dodgy’), Imogen Goode, and Joyce, the admin assistant.

  “As things stand, this could be anything.” He pointed to the images on the board. “And that includes the start of a turf war.”

  He paused, stuffing his hands in his trouser pockets.

  He had their complete attention. The entire nick had taken the lack of progress on the shooting as a personal failing. It wasn’t true, of course. You couldn’t build a case out of nothing.

  “This morning, a number of human fingers were found in a plastic carrier bag in the play area of the common. Subject to DNA testing to confirm, we have two victims, but we don’t have all the fingers.” He cleared his throat. “It goes without saying that we need to know who the victims were — and fast. I say ‘were’ because I’m presuming, until we know different, that this is murder.

  Given that they were found on the Hobfield, you probably think that the motive for this is drugs-related, but that’s just an assumption, and could be entirely wrong. You all know how the gangs operate — except perhaps Dodgy.” Calladine nodded at the new man. “They fight, with fists, bats, even knives, but up until this point we’ve had nothing like this.”

  The team was silent, almost visibly wondering, trying to calculate. What had they got? What were they looking at?

  “Once we have the forensic results, we should have a couple of names. What we want for now is eyes and ears on the streets. Someone on the Hobfield will know something, at the very least be suspicious. Go through everything: CCTV . . .” Calladine turned to Rocco. “Have you brought in all the tapes?”

  Rocco nodded his dark head. “The ones I could get. The off license and the newsagents do the surveillance properly. The others . . .” He shrugged. “The cameras are just a sham, only there to act as a deterrent.”

  “It all needs sifting through,” Calladine told them. “I want to know who passed that way. We can only guess at the time scale. That play area is used at night by the older kids; you can tell by the broken beer bottles on the ground.”

  Rocco gave another nod. “We’ll give it a thorough looking at, sir, don’t worry.”

  He’d do a decent job. Rocco was a good detective and had a promising future ahead of him. He was tall and pleasant looking, with the kind of ‘modern’ looks that young women seemed to go for.

  Calladine addressed the newest member of his team. “Dodgy, you’ve been knocking on doors. Anyone see anything?”

  The young detective shook his head and bit nervously at his bottom lip. This was his first big case, and he wanted to please. He had a lot to live up to. He’d watched Rocco, and couldn’t help but be impressed. The team liked Rocco, but more than that they trusted him to get the job done, get results. Dodgy wanted that.

  “It’s alright, son.” Calladine saw the worried look, and was sympathetic. The lad was still green — still trying to fit in. “Folk on that estate aren’t keen to speak to the police; they know it’s a dangerous pastime to be seen squealing. But we’re always hopeful, so it’s worth a try.”

  “No one turned up at the emergency department,” Ruth told them. “Despite what we’ve got, we can’t presume the victims are dead, but with injuries like this they’ll be in a pretty bad way if they’re not. It’s worth checking on the chemists in Leesdon, and then the ones in the wider area. See if anyone has asked for advice or bought a lot of first aid stuff in the last few days.”

  Calladine looked at the board and scratched his head. “Where’s Julian? I thought he had something on the bag—”

  “I do.” The man who walked into the room was tall, and walked with a slight swagger. He’d come straight from the lab at the hospital, and was still wearing a white coat, clutching a clipboard with a bundle of notes stuck to it.

  “There’s good news and bad, I’m afraid,” he began. “We’re lucky, Inspector. The receipt was issued by a supermarket that operates one of those loyalty schemes, so it has a membership number on it.” This pronouncement was accompanied by a wave of his hand.

  He paused — he was obviously e
njoying the drama — then he coughed, taking up his position in front of the board. He was as tall as Calladine but Julian Batho was slight and wiry, whereas Calladine was broad-chested and well-built.

  “It was issued to a Mrs Masheda. The shop gave me her address and, as I’m sure you know,” he addressed the team, “she lives on the Hobfield.”

  Calladine’s mouth pulled into a thin line. “Our call, I think, Julian.” He removed the report from the forensic scientist.

  “It was nothing of a job, Inspector. It took all of two minutes to establish the name.”

  Calladine didn’t like it when Julian did this sort of thing. He was a forensic scientist, not a detective, and he could have missed something.

  “You know the name, Tom?” Julian pushed.

  Indeed he did. Masheda was a name he knew only too well. He nodded at Ruth. “Anything else we should know, Julian?”

  Julian Batho stood for a few moments basking in the admiration of Imogen Goode, and then he winked at her. The detective constable wriggled on her seat, smiled, and then adjusted her dark-framed glasses nervously.

  She was flirting with him, Calladine realised, watching the pair of them. He knew Ruth had been observing these two over the past few weeks. Perhaps she was right, and despite Imogen’s protestations to the contrary, something was going on between them. He could understand it in a way. Julian was a serious, nerdy sort, and Imogen was a complete computer geek, but that was as far as it went, because physically they were ill matched. Poor Julian was tall and gangly with large facial features, whereas Imogen was quite a stunner. Ruth had told him, that in her opinion, this situation was bound to end badly. And she could be right, because as far as Calladine could remember, romances within the team had never worked out well.