‘Jesus, slow down. So, what exactly am I looking for?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘Boss didn’t specify.’
Stacey sighed. She’d guess the priority was Angelo Mancini as he had issued the threat. She needed to get cracking on some work for the boss so she could investigate Jessie’s friends in more detail.
There was bad blood between Emma Weston and Dale Jones and she wanted to find out what it was.
Forty-Three
‘But I’ve got staff that are finishing their shifts,’ Maura Birch said, wringing her hands. As the manager of Cedars she had let them into the CCTV room as Kim had repeated her instruction that no one was to leave.
‘We can’t physically restrain them,’ Kim said as the word ‘unfortunately’ flew through her head. ‘But we will want to speak to every member of staff, so they can either wait or come down to the station.’
‘Okay, I’ll pass that on,’ she said, scurrying away.
‘New building, old system,’ Bryant moaned as he pressed the button to rewind the VHS tape; meaning at best they were only going to get snatched time-lapse images. She hadn’t seen such an antiquated system in years. Most CCTV systems recorded straight to hard drive and could be copied to disc within seconds.
Maura Birch had already confirmed that Phyllis Mansell had gone into the garden at 12 p.m. and had been found at 1.15 when she hadn’t come back in for lunch.
She had also confirmed that the CCTV coverage outside was limited.
‘Is that it?’ Kim asked.
‘Yep, just the one fixed camera pointing at the patio area closest to the back door.’
‘Our Maura wasn’t joking when she said it was limited,’ Kim observed. ‘But at least we get to see who came out the door,’ she said.
Bryant nodded as he tweaked the timing.
‘There she is,’ he said, hitting the pause button.
There was something eerie about watching the figure on the screen and knowing that right this minute that same body was being placed into Keats’s van.
Bryant pressed play. They got three further snatches of her before she went out of view.
‘Looked perfectly healthy, guv,’ Bryant observed.
‘Oh yeah,’ Kim said, concentrating on the screen. Why would anyone want to hurt the woman? Apparently, she was friendly, helpful, popular and good with the staff.
And why would any staff member do such a thing knowing full well there was a camera right there? More importantly, what the hell did this have to do with the murder of Gordon Cordell?
‘We’re not going to find anything,’ she said.
‘Jesus, guv, we’re only ten minutes in.’
‘There are no cameras in the bedrooms, bathrooms, and shower room, so why would someone do it out here where they have to pass a fixed camera?’
‘People forget about cameras, guv. They see through them. And what if it wasn’t staff? What if it was a visitor? They wouldn’t know there was a camera right there.’
‘But why, Bryant?’ she asked in frustration ‘Why would anyone want to kill her?’
‘Well, we gotta watch the tape until—’
‘You watch,’ she said, standing up. ‘I want to look at something else.’
Kim headed out of the CCTV room. She saw the collection of staff congregating around the reception with cardigans and handbags. She narrowly avoided the daggers being thrown in her direction as she stepped back out into the garden and a stream of hazard tape.
‘Hey, Mitch,’ she said as the techie came towards her.
‘This connected to the doctor?’ he asked, doubtfully.
She shrugged. ‘Keats found blue fibres on her lips and called me to take a look. Not seeing any connection yet but I wanna check something.’
‘Need any help?’ he asked.
‘No, but I’ll shout if I do.’
He nodded and headed back to the crime scene.
She strode to the west side of the garden. A gate was padlocked with a fire escape on the other side. The gate was seven feet high and not easy to climb. Kim ruled it out as an access point.
Adjoining the gate was a stump wall which was less than a foot away from the next property, an equipment hire shop specialising in garden tools. Kim had noted that their customer parking area was directly on the other side of that wall. Also ruled out as someone standing on a car roof to scale a wall wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.
She walked the length of the brick boundary looking for any weakness or irregularities.
The hire shop stretched beyond the end of the garden wall, so there was definitely no access point on the west side.
She knew that the east side of the garden was flanked by road, so anyone climbing a wall would have been noticed within seconds. That left only the back wall.
Conifers and shrubs lined the wall that stretched about seventy metres, and there was nothing available to stand on.
‘Hey, Mitch, got a sec?’ she called.
‘Yep, wassup?’ he asked, pushing his face mask on to his head.
She looked to the wall. ‘I kinda need to get up there.’
His eyes widened. ‘You want me to lift?…’
‘Do I look like a bloody ballerina?’ she asked, shaking her head. ‘Cup your hands.’
He looked relieved as he followed her instruction.
She put her left foot into his hand and pushed up with her right while grabbing hold of a tree branch for support.
A sharp pain shot through her left leg as she used her other hand to grab the top of the wall.
‘Hold me steady,’ she called down.
‘Got you,’ he replied. ‘It’s like tossing a caber,’ he said as she put both hands on to the wall and heaved herself forward so her stomach was over the top of the wall, her upper half hanging forward and her behind sticking up in the air.
‘Jeez, the things you see when you haven’t got your gun,’ Bryant said from behind her.
‘Hold me steady,’ she barked to her colleague. His hands closed around her ankles so she shuffled further forward to get a better look.
The entire rear of the property was a patch of waste land. An area of concrete slab was surrounded by clutches of tall grass. Around the outside was a bike race track with a couple of cones marking out the route. A single bench looked on, telling Kim she was looking at an old park area.
‘Shit,’ she said, realising someone could very easily have remained unnoticed back here.
‘Hold tight,’ Kim said as she moved forward a little further to look along the base of the wall. Her gaze passed over weeds and tall grass until it reached an upside-down milk crate that had flattened the grass around it. Recently.
‘Ah, damn it,’ she called. ‘Mitch, are you still here?’
She couldn’t ask Bryant to loosen her ankles and go take a look.
‘Oh yeah, I ain’t missing this floor show,’ he said.
‘About halfway along the wall, right by the yellow conifer, see it?’ she asked.
‘Hang on, just heading towards,’ he called.
‘Take your bloody time’ she called as the brick dug deeper into her stomach and her leg throbbed with pain.
‘Okay, marking it now,’ he said.
Logic told her the killer had used the milk crate and the conifer to get over the wall and back again. Who knew what he’d left behind. If it was there, Mitch would find it.
‘Okay, Bryant, now you gotta help me down.’
‘Err… guv, that’s a request too far, I’m afraid. There’s no way I’m touching your…’
‘Fine, I’ll just stay up here until my arse drops off and you can help me, shall I?’ she asked, shimmying herself backwards.
‘It’s just… well…’
Over the course of their working relationship she had seen him touch dead bodies riddled with maggots and bacteria. She’d seen him assist Keats with moving a young man covered in his own vomit and yet he sounded positively traumatised at the prospect of touching her behind.
> ‘Get out of the way and I’ll jump down,’ she snapped, trying to brace her left leg for impact.
‘No, no, it’s okay. I can do this,’ he said as though he was trying to psyche himself up to jump the space between two skyscrapers.
‘Today would be good,’ she growled.
‘Okay, okay,’ he said, putting his hands on her upper buttocks and easing her down.
‘Thanks, buddy,’ she said, sarcastically as she brushed the brick dust and gravel from her hands.
‘You were right about the tape,’ he said.
‘So, we know how he got in but we don’t know why,’ she said, heading back towards the building.
She stopped walking and turned to her colleague.
‘You know what’s weird?’
‘Many things today,’ he said, looking back to the wall. ‘But what in particular?’
‘It wasn’t robbery; she was still wearing her jewellery. It wasn’t even violent but it was personal. She was the target. He came in, killed her and left. Even though she was in her twilight years she was fit, healthy, outgoing and popular, yet he came into the garden, quietly snuffed out her life and left again. What kind of person would do that and—’
‘And you want to know why,’ Bryant interrupted.
‘Yeah but more than that. How did he know exactly where she’d be at exactly what time?’
Bryant shrugged and continued walking.
She followed him into the building and approached a nervous-looking Maura Birch.
‘Okay, let ’em go,’ she said, nodding towards the staff members eager to be on their way, dead resident or not.
Kim pulled Maura away from the other staff members.
‘Miss Birch, forensics will need the area kept clear. Another team will be arriving to take statements and continue with the investigation. They’ll need access to your staff, possibly the residents and it might be worth you starting to think of any reason, anything at all, to explain why someone would want to hurt Phyllis Mansell.’
Her skittering eyes widened. ‘There’s no one that disliked the woman, officer, at worst she got told to shut up now and again. She was a bit of a bragger, you see,’ the woman whispered.
‘About herself?’ Kim asked.
‘Oh no, that wouldn’t have been so bad. It was always about her daughter and sometimes she’d go on about it a bit.’
‘And her daughter is?’
‘Her name is Nat Mansell. She’s a nurse, a surgical nurse, at Russells Hall Hospital.’
Forty-Four
‘So, what’s your gut doing?’ Bryant asked, as they got back into the car.
‘Bloody cartwheels at the minute,’ she admitted.
‘You know I’m going to disagree,’ Bryant said, reversing the car. ‘Just because the victim’s daughter works at the hospital doesn’t mean it’s the same killer as Cordell. Vanessa said they have thousands of employees. Most folks know someone who works at the hospital. I just don’t think it means as much as you think.’
‘Good job you don’t mind being wrong, then,’ she said. ‘And even if you’re right, we have to at least give the theory some air time. Two deaths linked to the hospital in two days is not something we can afford to ignore.’
‘But it’s not really linked to the hospital, is it?’ he said. ‘Phyllis Mansell is the mother of a nurse at Russells Hall Hospital.’
‘Who was murdered earlier today for no good reason we can see.’
He shook his head, stubbornly.
She took out her phone and scrolled down. ‘I’ll get Dawson to…’
Her words trailed away as his name came into view on her screen.
She breathed in and looked out of the window. How many times over the years had she so absently scrolled to his number and called, never imagining there would come a time when he was no longer there to take her call.
She knew full well that his phone had been handed in, well what was left of it after his fall, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to delete his contact information from her contact list. Because then it would be gone.
‘Yeah, I think he’s still out there too,’ Bryant said, quietly.
She swallowed. ‘I’ll get Inspector Plant over to Cedars to get some statements. I suspect everyone was busy tending to lunch and that anyone who saw anything would already have come forward, but it won’t hurt to check,’ she said, changing the subject.
‘Get Penn to deal with Plant,’ Bryant said.
She shook her head. Giving Penn tasks she would normally have given Dawson did not sit well with her.
‘No, thanks, I’m happy to do it myself.’
Forty-Five
‘Hmm… not a lot to shout about for Mancini senior,’ Stacey said, looking at her notes.
‘You speaking to me?’ Penn asked, looking around his screen.
‘Not really but feel free to listen.’
He shrugged and returned to his screen.
‘A conviction for petty theft almost twenty years ago and a complaint about a brick through his kitchen window.’
Penn’s head appeared again. ‘It really sounds like you’re speaking to me.’
‘I mean, does that sound like the murdering kind?’
‘Now that was an actual question?’ Penn remarked.
‘Okay, just forget it,’ Stacey snapped.
Penn regarded her for a second. ‘But what exactly is the murdering type?’ he asked. ‘If all killers stuck to a formula, we’d have much easier jobs. Not all killers evolve through a training programme of broken homes, childhood abuse or a traumatic event. Some people snap and kill in the heat of the moment through passion, jealousy, rejection.’
‘But is it enough?’ Stacey asked. ‘Being accused of theft and facing humiliation, is it enough to inspire such a brutal act?’
The boss often talked of proportionate response and this didn’t strike her as proportionate.
‘In 2012 Billy Clay Payne and Billie Jean Haysworth were shot for unfriending Jennelle Potter on social media. Roger Wilkes, a homeless guy in St Louis, was stabbed for not sharing his bag of Cheetos. Shaakira Dorsey was beaten to death for making fun of a girl for farting, and a guy in South Africa was beaten and stabbed by his own family for changing the TV station.’
‘You have to be joking,’ Stacey said, narrowing her eyes.
He shook his head. ‘Look ’em up. Not what you’d call proportionate, except the remote control one. That one I get,’ he joked. ‘But see beyond the theft itself,’ Penn continued. ‘If the hospital found him guilty, it would be pinned to every reference request, and for a guy in his fifties that pretty much seals the deal. He’s been through this before when he was younger and there were more jobs around. So, no job, no wage, humiliation, possible loss of his home. It’s no longer about just an accusation. It’s more about what he has to lose.’
‘But if the disciplinary never went ahead they’d have no legal reason not to let him back to work and he keeps everything?’ she mused, still wondering where those random murder facts had come from.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Want me to take junior?’ he asked.
‘No, thanks,’ she said, curtly. ‘And FYI, it’s not cool to sound like you’re quoting a page from Wikipedia to prove your point. You just look like a know-it-all.’
‘Okey dokey,’ he said, breezily. ‘Sure you don’t want me to look at junior? I need a break from shoe prints but if there’s nothing else you’d rather…’
‘Okay, take him,’ she said. If he was so keen to do it, she could start looking at something else.
‘And it’s full by the way, seeing as you cared to ask.’
‘Huh?’ she said, frowning.
‘Full Coke,’ he explained. ‘That’s what I like to drink. No diet, no zero just good old-fashioned Coke.’
‘Ah good to know,’ she said, typing a name into the computer.
But he was wrong in what he’d said, because she really hadn’t cared at all.
Forty-Six
&nb
sp; ‘How the hell can it be closed?’ Kim asked the hospital security guard who was ushering them away from the administration block. For once Bryant had actually put his foot down while driving them from the Cedars to Russells Hall so they could catch the OMD before she left.
This time she’d found the office without the help of Terry but couldn’t get past the key coded door that had been open the previous day.
She guessed her constant banging on it had caught the attention of whoever was monitoring the camera in the corner.
‘It’s the admin block. They normally leave around five.’
She turned to face the tall, lean security guard with smooth, dark skin and peered at his name badge.
‘Look, Tyrone, I reckon Vanessa Wilson is still back there working, so if you could just let us through.’
They had established yesterday that she wasn’t the clock-watching type.
‘She’s not. Problem with a poorly kid or something,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Left a couple of hours ago.’
‘There must be someone we can talk to?’ she raged. Who finished work at this time of day?
He shrugged again. ‘Sorry, you’ll have to come back tomorrow.’
‘And I’m sorry but that’s not…’ her words trailed away as a movement to her left caught her attention. ‘Okay, thanks,’ Kim said.
Bryant glanced at her questioningly. He had leaned against the wall, settled in for the long haul. She didn’t normally give in so easily.
‘We’ll find our way back from here,’ she assured the guard.
He shrugged and looked around before moving away.
‘Jesus, guv, you accepting no for an answer?’ Bryant said as she walked slowly behind the guard back to the main corridor. ‘And his name wasn’t Tyrone,’ Bryant observed.
‘Yeah it was. His name badge said—’
‘And the SIA licence on his arm said otherwise.’
Kim narrowed her eyes at her colleague. Trust him to notice the detail of the man’s security industry identification.
Fatal Promise: A totally gripping and heart-stopping serial-killer thriller Page 13