Payback

by R. C. Bridgestock

  Winnie’s expression turned guarded as she ran her cloth along the top of the filing cabinet with its piles of files stacked in precarious-looking towers. ‘I don’t get paid enough to think…’ she said, busying herself. Charley’s coat was strewn carelessly over the floor on top of her handbag. With a tut, Winnie hung it on the back of the door. She turned to face Charley with a look of renewed interest on her face. ‘Maybe because it was the nearest and dearest who did it?’

  ‘Hmm … Maybe,’ said Charley cautiously. She drummed her fingers on her desk.

  Winnie stood by her side and nudged her affectionately. Charley raised an eyebrow at the old lady.

  ‘Can’t you go and make yourself a brew or summat while I finish off in ’ere,’ Winnie said, running her finger over the top of her computer to show Charley the dust on it. ‘Instead of getting under my feet?’

  Taking her empty cup from the desktop, Charley dragged herself from her chair and walked through the CID office. She switched on the kettle in the kitchenette and, waiting for it to boil, stared out of the window that overlooked the car park. Immediately she was distracted by the giant security gates closing. Two prisoners were led from the rear of a police van, their hands cuffed behind their backs, heads down. The kettle boiled and automatically clicked off, breaking her reverie. Turning back to the job in hand, she ladled several spoonfuls of coffee into the cup and, pouring the boiling water over, watched as the clear liquid turned dark brown. The infusion kicked up an intense aroma and she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. To Charley that smell was possibly the best in the world. Her thoughts were instantly transported to another time, another place: her granny’s farmhouse kitchen had been the sanctuary she sought when her life had spiralled into a deep, dark pit of depression. Changes that were beyond her control had threatened the world as she knew it. At work, she’d grown tired of fighting the hierarchy, the nepotism and the secret groups who influenced decisions. For why else, she’d asked her gran, having challenged Roper’s actions, would she have been promoted at the next boards only to be seconded hundreds of miles away to help solve ‘problems’ in another force? They’d obviously sent her away to teach her a lesson and, as a result, she’d decided that, in the future, she would keep her thoughts to herself. In her private life she’d been sick of struggling to be the person her father wanted her to be – that hadn’t helped when it came to committing to any kind of relationship: she was fucked up, and she knew it.

  Granny had always been a woman of few words, and although life had been far less complicated then, in some ways, bringing up a family in a house with no electricity, no gas, no running water and a dug-out for a toilet had been just as hard. Instead of lecturing Charley, she’d filled three pans with water and placed them on the stove to warm. Charley was intrigued. In the first she placed a carrot; in the second she lowered an egg on a spoon; the third pan of water was left to boil. After a while she turned the gas out under the pans and carefully took out the carrot and egg, placing them on a side plate. From the third pan she poured boiling water into her percolator pot in which, it became obvious from the aroma, there were already coffee grains.

  Granny placed a cup of black coffee and the plate in front of Charley and slid onto a chair opposite at the old, worn kitchen table. ‘Which one are you?’ she asked, rubbing her hands on her apron.

  ‘Me?’ replied Charley, bemused.

  Grandma smiled. ‘Go on.’ She nodded in the direction of the carrot. ‘Touch it.’ Unquestioningly Charley did so and noted it was soft. ‘Now, try to break the egg.’

  Charley frowned. ‘It’s hard boiled?’

  Granny’s eyes glistened. Her mouth tugged at its corners. ‘Peel it.’

  After removing the shell Charley observed the egg. Finally, the old lady asked her to smell the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to Charley’s face.

  ‘But what’s that to do with anything?’ Charley asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Granny. ‘The carrot, the egg and the coffee beans have all faced the same adversity – boiling water. However, each one reacted differently. The carrot went in hard, strong and unrelenting, but in the boiling water it became soft and weak. The egg was fragile, with a thin outer shell protecting the liquid inside until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard. However, the ground coffee beans are unique. After being exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new. So, again, I’m asking you, when adversity knocks at your door, how will you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?’

  When Charley returned to her office, Winnie was gone. She sat down and sipped her coffee thoughtfully. Before her lay street maps and aerial photographs of Marsden Moor and the surrounding Force area. She gripped the picture of the deceased between her finger and thumb. Who are you? The question repeated itself over and over in her mind, shouting louder and louder to the rhythm of the ticking of the clock from somewhere miles away and yet in the core of her being, like the voices one hears when going under anaesthetic. Who the hell are you?

  The morning briefing was scheduled for eight a.m. and its duration was expected to be approximately forty minutes, to allow her time to focus on the press conference. Although the plan of action was formed in Charley’s mind, the officers drafted in and new to the investigation needed to be familiarised with the scene location and what the original team members already knew. In Charley’s experience, photographs and video footage couldn’t substitute for standing at a crime scene and soaking up what it had to offer. Therefore, they would all visit the scene as soon as it was physically possible. Aware that there was a lot of information to get through at this initial meeting, Charley would also fire the warning shot across their bows: ‘If anyone brings the investigation into disrepute, or takes the media attention away from catching the murderer, they will be removed from the enquiry, the CID and possibly the police service with immediate effect. Do you understand?’ A murder investigation was no place for slackers. Workloads were constantly monitored and it was the SIO’s job to ensure that everyone pulled their weight. Charley would not carry passengers and, with that thought in mind, she started the briefing in full, to a silent room of personnel, outlining what had been discovered about the scene and the victim so far.

  She was momentarily distracted by DC Wilkie Connor, slumped in his front-row seat. His smirk and the way he was leaning towards Annie Glover, whispering out of the corner of his mouth, infuriated her.

  Annie choking back her shock sharpened Charley’s wits.

  ‘Something you’d like to share, DC Connor?’

  Wilkie mumbled something under his breath.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,’ said Charley loudly.

  The tension turned the atmosphere uneasy. Holding his gaze, Charley let the pressure build, wanting Wilkie to be painfully uncomfortable. It worked. He sat up straight and looked down at the floor space between his splayed legs.

  ‘It was nothing; just a joke,’ he said, shaking his head and refusing to look up for a moment or two.

  Charley’s voice cracked. ‘But if you found something I said amusing, we could all do with a laugh, couldn’t we?’ Charley’s eyes passed over the sea of solemn faces before her.

  Wilkie shifted uncomfortably in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘No, no it’s OK.’

  Charley said nothing, waiting for him to carry on. When he didn’t, she turned her attention to Annie. ‘Maybe you’d like to tell us what DC Connor said, DC Glover?’

  Sensing his young colleague’s embarrassment, Wilkie eventually found his voice. ‘I just said we should concentrate on those who knew … slept with him.’ He waited, expecting a wave of nods and mumbled agreement from those surrounding him. When that didn’t come, he swallowed hard. ‘Look,’ he said chummily, giving a little laugh and turning to search his colleagues’ faces for reassurance and support. When it wasn’t forthcoming, he slapped his thigh. His voice rose. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake come on! Be
honest. If you were about to sleep with someone and found out they weren’t the sex you’d thought, you’d want to murder ’em. Am I wrong?’

  Annie turned to him, her eyes narrowing. ‘That’s such a ridiculous thing to say.’ She looked from Wilkie to Charley. ‘He really, really doesn’t mean it, of course; he’s just showing off.’

  It was the worst possible thing that Annie could have said. Wilkie was obviously furious with her for taking up the cudgel for him. He spoke up.

  ‘I most certainly do mean it. I couldn’t deal with it.’ He grew visibly agitated. ‘In my mind, I’d be gay then!’

  The room felt electrically charged.

  ‘So, you truly believe a person who doesn’t disclose to their partner that they were born the opposite sex should warrant an immediate, final payback?’ said Annie. She allowed her words to hang before adding. ‘Really?’

  ‘There should be some kind of repercussion,’ Wilkie continued to dig himself deeper, ‘and until there is I’ll be taking matters into my own hands … if that ever happens to me, which it won’t, because I’m not that stupid.’

  Charley tried to wipe the look of hatred off her face, but her jaw jutted out furiously, despite her efforts. She made a desperate effort to gain control and speak in impassive tones as she addressed the team. ‘Our deceased may have chosen to live as a woman, or simply dress as a woman. We may find out once we have identified them: I say “them” purely because he was born a man. We will not judge our victim for his gender identity. He was brutally murdered by a sadistic killer and I expect you to remain professional at all times. Do I make myself clear?’

  Wilkie’s eyes shied away from Charley’s icy stare which threatened him with unfinished business: this was not the time or place. At that moment, Connie Seabourne the press officer entered the room in her usual cheerful way. Charley instinctively checked her watch, saw it was almost time for the press conference and promptly ended the meeting. Red mist still swirled around her thoughts. Was Wilkie Connor homophobic and transphobic? Not if he wanted to be on her team, he wasn’t! Following Connie into her office she could see him talking to Annie, in what looked like a heated exchange.

  ‘Everything OK?’ asked Connie, the moment they stepped through the door. Involuntarily, she shivered as she sat down and faced Charley who walked round to ensconce herself behind her desk. ‘I mean, it was decidedly chilly out there.’

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ Charley replied curtly. ‘Just a narrow-minded detective who speaks before he engages his brain.’

  Connie put her hand in her overlarge handbag which rested on her knee and removed a notepad and pen. ‘Well, the media are out in force. So take a deep breath and try forgetting everything except the press conference,’ she said with a calm, reassuring smile. What Charley couldn’t see was her own ashen face which appeared stone-like to her colleague. Connie gave Charley a questioning look.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’ll sort it!’ said Charley, tucking a stray tendril of hair behind her ear.

  Connie rolled her eyes, ‘I don’t doubt that.’

  The look on Charley’s face silenced her for a moment and the women held each other’s stare. Connie was the first to look away and raise her hands to show Charley her palms.

  ‘OK, OK, if you’re not going to spill…’ She put her handbag down on the floor at her feet and pulled up her chair. ‘Like I said, there’s a lot of media interest.’ Connie bit her lip, looked to the ceiling and scowled. ‘I hope we can get them all in the conference room…’ She pulled a comical face when her eyes found Charley’s again. ‘I’m anticipating a bit of a squeeze.’

  Charley’s face softened and she smiled. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine.’

  There were ten minutes to go. The noise from within the conference room drifted down the corridor. Charley had her back to the open door of her office. She was rummaging through her filing cabinet when a call came up to the incident room. A man by the name of Scott Tyler had walked into the front desk at Holmfirth Police Station and reported a missing person. With her head cocked to one side and an ear to the CID office she listened to what was being said by those within earshot.

  ‘Two days ago, Mr Tyler’s partner went out to meet friends, apparently, and never returned,’ said Annie, half-reading, half-memorising the words she’d written to relay to the SIO. ‘The officer taking the initial verbal report has a description of the clothing she was wearing and it appears to match the dead person.’ Her face was grave.

  Mike Blake came to stand behind Annie.

  ‘I can’t get out of this press conference,’ Charley said, as she moved from her office doorway to join them. She looked from Annie’s face to Mike’s. ‘You and Annie go. See what the state of play is with this guy will you?’

  ‘You might like to know that Scott Tyler has a police caution for drugs and a couple of previous convictions for Public Order. He’s known to us. A bit of a gobshite if truth be known,’ said Mike.

  ‘But that doesn’t make him a murderer, does it?’ said Charley, putting a hand to her head to smooth her hair. She went back into her office and plucked her jacket from the back of her chair. She put her hand into one sleeve and shuffled into the garment saying, ‘Keep me posted, and if it’s sounding like the missing person is our victim, bring Tyler in. We’re going to need a detailed statement and to arrange for a going-over by CSI of the home address and any vehicles they own. Let’s not forget we haven’t found the crime scene yet, just the dump site.’

  Annie left and Charley turned to check her hair in the mirror. In the mirror she saw Mike turn and hesitate.

  ‘Yes?’ said Charley, feeling his stare upon her back.

  ‘Talking of gobshites…’

  She looked over her shoulder at her DS. ‘I didn’t know we were, but go on…’

  ‘Wilkie isn’t a bad ’un, you know. He’s all talk. He just can’t help himself sometimes. We all know he doesn’t mean it.’

  ‘Has he ever knowingly met a transgender person?’ asked Charley.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ The question appeared to shock him. ‘Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, you don’t need to fret. I’ve had a word,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose reassuringly, as a father to a child. ‘He won’t do it again.’

  Charley’s eyes widened. ‘Since when? Because, earlier, I overheard him telling someone on the phone that he’s on the faggot murder,’ she said. ‘He wants to think himself lucky the press are waiting for me.’ Her eyes narrowed under a furrowed brow. ‘I’ll be having more than a word with him, DS Blake.’

  Sensing her mood, Mike grimaced, turned and left.

  A packed room full of journalists awaited the SIO. Charley sat on a lone chair behind the solid oak conference table where microphones appeared to have taken on snake-like lives of their own, wiggling and writhing in front of her, each begging for supremacy. When the camera’s flashing lights ebbed, she found herself furiously blinking to rid her eyeballs of their legacy. Fast and furious images of the dead person flashed at her and took her breath away: the purple tongue protruding from the mouth; the bulging eyes pleading with her to find the killer; the body laid out on the grass in the body bag, then naked on the mortuary table; the mutilated body being sewn up like a mailbag. Her heart raced. All eyes were upon her. Then the room dropped suddenly into silence.

  Charley was nervous, but she knew that was a good thing. The SIO was confident in her knowledge of the incident. After all, she was the only person who knew the full circumstances of the discovery of the body and the findings of the post-mortem. Slowly and concisely, she imparted the information that she thought may help to identify the deceased. She appealed for witnesses who might have been in the area at the time, or who might know of a person who had gone missing. She focused on an appeal to employers. ‘Have any of your employees not turned up for work?’

  Excusing herself from the one-to-one interviews afterwards, the ladies’ toilets were her haven. She threw cold water on her face and
meeting her own eyes in the mirror, made a solemn vow.

  ‘I will put this killer behind bars.’

  Chapter 7

  It had been five days since the macabre discovery of the body hanging from the tree in the church graveyard. The cogs of the incident room had kept turning, both proactively and reactively. Charley had been grateful for the early identification of the victim which in itself had opened up new leads, but so far four teams had turned up nothing further.

  It was eight thirty a.m. and Charley had been at her desk in the incident room for two hours. It was true that she had gone to bed and closed her eyes, but her brain had remained on autopilot. As the days passed with no signs of a breakthrough, sleep was becoming increasingly hard to come by.

  The office set-up of the incident room meant team members worked opposite each other in pairs. Charley sat at the head, which enabled them all to keep her in their line of sight throughout the morning briefing. She had a team specifically looking at background information.

  ‘The victimology study will help us ascertain Kylie Rogers’ lifestyle and daily routine. This, in turn, will hopefully give us some idea as to the killer’s motivational process, leading to the victimisation and the decisive role of the process of selection. Basically, we’re looking at those close to her first, putting them in or out of the enquiry, and we will continue to work outwards until we ultimately catch our killer; it’s what I like to call the ripple effect. Kylie’s lifestyle may well have played a crucial role in why she became a victim, but then again, it may not. I appreciate it would be very easy to wear blinkers on this investigation, but I want you to remain at all times open to any information that comes your way and consider every possibility to gain intelligence. It must have taken a great deal of courage for Carl Rogers, a manual worker by trade, to take the necessary steps to change his life forever by coming out. We know by his actions that he didn’t take his decision lightly. He planned, he saved, he waited. He travelled and he paid to have plastic surgery at a private clinic in London to feminise his appearance, including work on his eyes, nose, brows, chin, hairline and Adam’s apple reduction. He also had laser treatment for hair removal and undertook voice coaching lessons. That, according to his diary, was only the start of the surgical procedures and techniques in his long-term plan for gender reassignment from male to female.’