‘Got it, boss,’ he said.
‘That’s not all. I want you keeping up to date with developments on Rubik.’
He nodded his understanding.
She turned to the constable.
‘Stace, I want you to work on finding the next of kin for Bill and Helen Phelps. Then I want you double-checking we haven’t missed anyone that might want revenge against—’
‘But, boss, I know we joked last night but how do I narrow it—’
‘It’s the level of hatred,’ Alison cut in smoothly. ‘For this depth of revenge, to kill innocent people, to go to the trouble of planning copycat events, we’re talking life-altering incidents. This is major stuff.’
‘Understood.’
‘And anyone you identify, I want to know where they are and what they’re doing now. And pass the name to Alison, who will start to build a psychological profile, just as soon as she’s managed to find what she’s looking for in that bloody briefcase.’
‘Got it,’ she said, holding up a battered KitKat.
Kim allowed the rest of the team to stare at her in disbelief while she continued.
‘And Penn, when you’ve got a spare minute check on the junkyard to see if Dobbie has found his piece of paper detailing the car seller. Bryant and I will be attending the post-mortem of Bill and Helen Phelps later today.’
She shook away the images from the night before and the horrific manner of their death. ‘Heavy workload, I know, but we need to crack on before this bastard strikes again.’
‘Guv?’ Bryant asked. ‘You’ve given out all the work to these guys, we taking the day off?’
‘You wish,’ she said, taking a last swig of coffee.
‘So, what we doing?’
‘I’d have thought that was obvious, my good fellow,’ she said, with a wry smile. ‘We’re gonna focus on the people that hate me the most.’
Fifty
Symes did his final bench press of the weight bar at 300 lbs. He prided himself at being able to lift almost 1.5 times his own body weight.
Dale Preece took one end, Kai Lord took the other and placed it into the rest.
Breakfast workout complete, Symes sat up, turned on the bench and wiped the sweat from his brow. It had been a tough workout but it was what he’d needed. His body ached from the exertion but it had clarified the situation in his mind. There was only one thing for it.
‘I’ve gotta get the fuck outta here.’
‘Huh?’ they replied, together, as Screwball, a weedy kid in his late teens, started edging across the gym towards them.
Symes narrowed his eyes. ‘Fuck off you piece of piss.’
Screwball backed off. Kid would do anything to try and listen in. Rumour had it he got extra smokes for telling old Gennard shit that was going around.
Symes felt safe speaking honestly to Lord and Preece. The hate club currently had seven members but few of them had as much reason to hate the bitch as these two.
Lord because he wouldn’t see the light of day until he was drawing a pension and Preece cos the bitch had robbed him of his family.
‘Can’t hack it. Can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t wank because of that fucking cow. All I can see is her goddamn face and it’s driving me insane.’
‘Come on, Symes,’ Preece said, shaking his head. ‘We talked about this. Stick with the—’
‘Fuck that,’ he snarled. ‘I know you like all your I’s crossed and T’s dotted, pal. You want all your fucking ducks in a row. Sensible and deliberate. Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey and all that shit but I’m fed up of waiting. I just want the whore dead. I want to put my hands around that cocky neck and squeeze…’
‘Yeah, but you don’t wanna be caught,’ Preece insisted, tapping his head. ‘You’ve got to use this.’
Symes wondered for a second if the man was being disrespectful, but only someone who felt the same rage as he did could take that kind of fucking liberty.
‘Damn it, Symes, I hate that bitch as much as you do and if you want to do a poll let’s pit losing two family members against robbing you of a good time. I win,’ he spat as his eyes blazed.
Every instinct inside him wanted to knock this prick out for letting his mouth run, but the only thing that stopped him was the naked hatred he saw in the man’s eyes every time he heard the slag’s name.
My enemy’s enemy is my friend, he said to calm himself down. Both Duggar and Preece had remained loyal to him. Sometimes he’d caught the two of them talking privately. He’d wondered if they were staging some kind of coup but his paranoia had been groundless and Duggar had been released.
Now Lord he wasn’t so sure about. Too much standing back and watching for his liking. Happy to let folks fight it out and enjoy the entertainment. That’s not how you treated comrades. You didn’t have to like them but you needed to have their back.
‘Look, Preece, don’t get wound up cos I might get to the bitch before you do. You can have the carcass,’ he said, with a smirk to lighten the air.
Screwball headed their way once more.
‘Kid, you looking to get your fucking head?…’
‘I know shit,’ he whispered, wringing his hands.
‘Not when to stay away,’ Symes said, pushing himself to his feet. The rage at Preece had been stifled meaning he needed to punch something and this piece of shit looked good for it.
‘He’s coming back,’ the kid said, looking around. ‘Birdy’s coming back.’
Looked like the kid’s talent for listening worked both ways, which was the only thing that was gonna save him from a severe beating.
‘Okay, now piss off,’ he said as Screwball shuffled back towards the door.
Birdy was Paul Bird, a former member of the hate club who had not done what he was supposed to after being set free back into the wild.
‘So, Birdy’s coming back, is he? Well, I’m gonna punch every one of his teeth down his throat the second…’
His words trailed away as a light bulb illuminated in his head.
Preece and Lord waited expectantly.
‘I think I just got myself a plan.’
Fifty-One
‘So, this is The Civic?’ Kim asked, remembering their conversation the previous day. From the front, the white, painted building looked small.
‘Bigger than it looks,’ he said, turning left in front of a single row of houses that looked like council dwellings.
‘And I thought these were posh when they were first thrown up,’ he said, driving slowly along the row.
‘Really?’ she asked, glancing at the identical, flat-faced properties as they passed by.
‘New, shiny bricks,’ he explained. ‘Anything new was posh.’
‘Well, I’m not sure they’re so posh now,’ she said, as a braless woman threw a black bag onto a pile that was building up beneath her front window.
‘Is that?…’
‘Next door,’ Bryant clarified. ‘His mother’s old house. Died while he was inside.’
Kim stepped over the two piles of dog shit on the path and reached the door as a dog started barking at the rear of the property.
‘Shut the fuck up, Mofo,’ she heard, as she knocked the door.
‘Who the hell is this guy?’ she said to her colleague.
She had searched the database for any links between them and had found nothing. She’d studied his photo and no recollection at all had made itself known. But he’d been recruited by Symes, so they had to have some connection.
‘Well, guv, we’re about to find out.’
The shape that loomed up behind the door was not distorted by the patterned glass panel that opened to reveal a man-mountain with a bald head and a long ginger beard. ZZ Top reject immediately sprang to mind.
She knew he was about seven foot two and she’d guess him to be approximately twenty-five stone.
And she knew she had never seen him before in her life.
He was viewing her with the same level of confusion, which made no sense i
f he was in the hate club.
‘If you’re here about Mofo, he’s just barking cos—’
‘We’re not here about the dog,’ Bryant said, presenting his identification.
He took a good look.
He stepped back. ‘Hey, you can fuck right off. I ain’t done nothing since I got out. I’m keeping my nose—’
Kim silenced him by thrusting her own identification in his face.
He stopped speaking as his face broke into a wide and genuine grin.
‘Hey, you is the bitch that killed my sister.’
Fifty-Two
Alison knew with absolute certainty that she shouldn’t be doing what she was about to do but she pushed open the door anyway.
She wasn’t sure Stacey had believed her about an urgent errand but the detective constable had remained silent as she’d left the squad room. It had taken her no more than ten minutes to get to the small, unassuming dry cleaners in Romsley.
Her senses were immediately assaulted with the scent of fabric conditioner. Low rumbling sounded from the area behind the woman that greeted her with a functional but less than enthusiastic smile.
Alison guessed this was a woman who had accepted the fact that life had to go on; that no matter how much crying, pleading and praying she did, she couldn’t undo the murder of her daughter.
‘Mrs Townes?’ Alison checked, not having met the woman during her time on the murder investigation.
She nodded warily and although her eyes narrowed the rest of her face relaxed as though she didn’t have to keep up any pretence of trying to be normal.
The woman appraised her quickly. ‘Are you a reporter?’
Alison shook her head and said what she’d been practising in her head.
‘I was a consultant on the police case.’
‘You’re police?’ she asked frowning.
‘I work with the police,’ she said and moved on quickly. ‘It’s just a follow-up call. Just to see if you were satisfied with the way the police handled…’
‘You want me to review the police?’
Alison realised the pitfalls of starting out on a lie but there was no way she could tell this woman the truth. She’d been through enough.
She could either fess up or go deeper.
‘It’s not something we do all the time and it’s confidential but we’re always looking to improve the way we handle the family members of crime victims,’ Alison explained, stepping deeper into the lie.
‘Oh, okay,’ she said, as the bell of the door sounded.
Alison stepped aside as a woman hurriedly produced a ticket, paid and took her dry-cleaned item without a word of thanks.
Something in Alison wanted to go after her, drag her back and make her apologise for her rudeness. She wanted to explain what this woman had suffered over the last four months and would continue to endure for the rest of her life. But ultimately to the oblivious customer she was the dry-cleaning lady without a life beyond that role.
‘It’s okay, I don’t mind,’ she said as though reading her thoughts.
‘So, Mrs Townes, can—’
‘Trisha, please,’ she said. ‘Have you noticed that you get called by your full name a lot when something very good or very bad is happening? Normally I’m just Trisha and I’d like to be Trisha again some day.’
‘Okay, Trisha, how did you find the communication from the police officers during the case?’
She thought for a second. ‘DCI Merton updated us a lot at the beginning. He made contact almost every day. I suppose it grew less as the weeks went on but Jamie helped us a lot in the early days. Helped us come to terms with it all… the horror… the…’
‘It’s okay, Trisha,’ Alison said, reaching across to touch her hand.
The rape and murder of their daughter had been one of the most brutal acts Alison had ever seen. Jennifer’s injuries had been so severe that Mr Townes had stumbled from the identification room and thrown up. That image would always play alongside any other memory of his daughter.
‘And DCI Merton did come and let us know personally about Curtis’s arrest.’
‘Were you surprised at that result, Mrs… Trisha?’
A multitude of emotions passed over her face. ‘Of course. I don’t think either of us could believe it. The man had been in our home hundreds of times, cooked us meals, taken Lenny to hospital when he broke his arm, even filled in here when my husband couldn’t work.’
‘So, he and Jennifer had been happy?’
‘For the most part. Jen would sometimes get frustrated with his lack of focus. Now and again she’d break up with him because he wouldn’t find a proper job, but she’d always go back to him because she loved him and she loved his passion for what he did.’
‘And were they broken up at the time of the murder?’
Trisha nodded and then regarded her seriously. ‘Listen, I don’t know why you’re really here. You’re not a good liar, but if it’s got anything to do with any doubt then thank you. I know the police are convinced it was Curtis and I trust them, but I struggle to accept that someone we welcomed into our home, that was part of our family, did this to our daughter. I don’t get to choose and I want justice, in the hope it will ease some of the rage and hopelessness I feel inside but I want the right justice. Do you understand?’
Alison understood perfectly. In her heart of hearts Trisha didn’t feel Curtis was guilty.
‘Thank you for your time, Trisha, and I’m so sorry for your loss.’
Trisha nodded, and Alison headed for the door.
‘You know, just in case you’re interested, there was one question that I asked DCI Merton that I never got an answer to.’
‘Go on,’ Alison urged.
‘He never told me whether or not they found Jen’s silver earring.’
Fifty-Three
Penn removed the bandana and smoothed back the unruly curls. He closed every window that had been lowered to the max to get some air into the car for the fifteen-minute journey. He had no air con and the sunroof had been jammed for years. One of those jobs that he thought about a lot in the summer but not at all in the winter. He resolved to get it sorted as soon as this case was over, because the forecasters all agreed this heat was going nowhere soon.
He shrugged into the suit jacket that hung permanently in his car and instantly felt the discomfort of the extra layer. Unlike his colleague, Bryant, he could not truss himself up in a tie every day. If he had his way he’d turn up for work in Bermuda shorts, tee shirt and bare feet, mirroring the way he dressed at home, but he suspected his boss wouldn’t like that very much.
After the revelations of the night before he’d been amused, but not surprised, that both he and Stacey had gone home to google. Once Jasper had gone to bed he’d pored over news reports about his boss. He’d been shocked, saddened and for some reason a bit angry and it had helped him understand her a little more. He didn’t have the same history with her as the other two but he felt like he’d taken a crash course last night and had woken wanting to catch the bastard responsible with a passion.
He entered Stourbridge Community Centre and had two immediate emotional reactions.
The first was to the place. Tidy, efficient, well-equipped and nicely furnished. And completely unwelcoming to your average homeless person or someone down on their luck. In a weird way, it was how one would expect a community centre to look, but in reality, they were normally made up of mismatched, battle-scarred furniture, scuffed woodwork, stained carpet and old equipment. This place reminded him of a place ready to open. The before photo. Ready for a magazine article showing tax money at work. Not somewhere disadvantaged folks could come for help, advice and an occasional meal.
The second emotional response was to the man sitting behind the desk to the left. The right one was empty.
The snapshot that immediately clicked into his mind was of self-importance. The left desk was bigger. It had two chairs on the other side instead of one, the computer was newer, the
re was a small collection of metal toys, the chair was executive leather. This was a man who enjoyed his position.
‘Mr Jenks?’ Penn said, offering his hand.
The man nodded, stood and returned the greeting with a cool, firm grip.
DS Penn from West Mids Police, do you have a minute?’
‘Of course,’ he said, sitting. ‘Is this about Mark and Amy?’
‘It is. We just need to clear up something that’s come to our attention,’ he said, smiling.
Penn had learned long ago that he had a knack for putting people at ease. He knew that his long, unruly curls and inability to be at peace in a suit made him appear more casual, more open. Some people trusted the smart reassurance of a well-worn suit and some people did not. He had also learned how to hide his feelings well.
The man fussed with the tie knot at his throat.
‘It’s just a little misunderstanding I should think, Mr Jenks, but we’ve been informed there was some kind of altercation between yourself and Mark.’
The colour in his cheeks deepened.
‘Did he hit you, Mr Jenks?’ he pushed.
Hesitation. Headshake no. Head nod yes.
‘Well. I suppose not really… I mean…’
‘Sorry, Mr Jenks, you’ll have to be a bit clearer,’ he offered with a reassuring smile.
‘We were just having words.’
‘About what?’ he asked, remembering what the boss had told him about this man’s reputation.
‘Disrespect, I would imagine,’ he said, fiddling with his tie knot.
Penn didn’t need Alison the behaviourist beside him to understand what that meant. Subconsciously, by messing with the tie Jenks was trying to reinforce that he was a stand up respectable kind of guy.
‘Disrespect?’
Jenks nodded. ‘That’s what most trouble is about here. People disrespecting the services we provide.’
Dead Memories: An addictive and gripping crime thriller Page 12