Blind Fury (2 page)

Chapter One

D
etective Inspector Anna Travis held up her ID to a uniformed officer who directed her along the narrow muddy lane. Parking up on a gritty area alongside numerous other police vehicles, she stepped out of her Mini and swore as her foot was immediately submerged in a deep puddle. Opening the trunk, she took out a pair of Wellingtons and, balancing with one hand resting on the roof, she removed her shoes and put on the boots.

“Talk about off the beaten track,” she muttered.

Despite the heavy traffic thundering by on the M1, the field had been hard to reach, even though it was not far from London Gateway Services. Anna could see the group of men at the far side of the field, and she recognized Detective Chief Inspector Mike Lewis; standing beside him was the rotund figure of Detective Sergeant Paul Barolli. Both men turned to watch her plodding toward them.

“What’s the shout?” she asked as her feet squelched beneath her.

Mike gave her a brief rundown: the victim was a white female, discovered by a van driver called Brian Colling-wood who had parked on the hard shoulder to relieve himself up against the hedge. Collingwood told the police that he was just turning to go back to his vehicle when he spotted the body lying in the adjacent field. At first he thought there had been an accident, so he climbed through the hedge and crossed over the ditch. It quickly became obvious that the girl was dead, so he did not approach but immediately rang the police on his mobile phone, then went back to wait beside his van until the traffic police reported the discovery.

“Is that him?” Anna nodded toward the man being questioned. He was making a lot of gestures, pointing back at the motorway.

“Yeah. By the time we got here, he was pretty agitated. He knew he was illegally parked on the hard shoulder but continued to explain that he had been busting for a piss. He’s been unable to give any further details, having seen no other vehicle or witnessed anything suspicious. He also said repeatedly that he had not gone right up to the body but had remained about four feet away from her. When he’s finished giving all the details, I’m going to let him finish his journey to Birmingham.”

“You think this is one for us, then?”

Mike nodded. “We’re waiting for the forensic team to arrive. We’ve made only a cursory check of the victim, as I think the less contamination of the area, the better.”

Barolli rubbed his hands together. It was icy cold out here. “You are going to freeze,” he said to Anna. “Didn’t you bring a coat with you?”

“If I’d known we’d be in the back of beyond, I would have. Luckily, my wellies were in the boot.”

“Here you go.” Barolli took off his fleece-lined jacket and hung it round her shoulders. Anna was wearing a black suit and white collared shirt. Her wardrobe was full of similar suits, almost like her own uniform.

“Oh, thanks.” She hugged it around herself as Barolli turned to the lane.

“We’ve had Traffic cordon off one motorway lane to allow the police vehicles access . . . Here come the lads now.”

A forensic van drew up, followed by an ambulance.

“So what are you not telling me?” Anna wanted to know, and smiled as she said it. Having worked together on previous cases, the three of them were very relaxed with one another, and she knew there had to be an agenda.

Mike said the reason they had answered the shout was because on two of his previous, unsolved cases, it appeared to be virtually the same MO. The two earlier victims, discovered a year apart, had both been dumped beside the motorway. Their first victim had been hard to identify due to decomposition, but they had checked her prints and found she had a police record as a prostitute; the second girl remained unidentified.

“Is she on the game?” Anna asked, looking over at the corpse.

“No idea. She’s young, though—I’d say late teens.”

Anna watched the forensic team suit up and bring out their equipment. “Can I take a closer look?” she asked.

“Yeah, go ahead. We’ve put some stepping plates out, so keep to them. It’s a flipping mud bath.”

Anna headed toward the victim, carefully moving from plate to plate as if using stepping stones. There were two flags positioned where the van driver had stood, a few feet from the body, and the closer Anna got, she could see that from his position on the motorway’s hard shoulder, he would not have been able to see the body.

The dead girl lay on her right side, half in and half out of the ditch, one arm outstretched as if she were trying to claw her way free. Her left leg was crooked over her right, again appearing as if she had tried to climb out of the ditch. She was, as Mike had suggested, very young; her long red hair, worn in a braid, was similar in color to Anna’s. The girl was wearing a pink T-shirt, a denim miniskirt, and a denim bomber jacket with a bright pink lining and an unusual embroidered motif of silver flowers on the front pocket. She wore one white sandal. There was no handbag and, from their initial search, nothing that could identify her.

Anna returned to Mike, who by now had a cup of coffee in his hand.

“You say you’ve had two previous cases?” she asked quietly.

“Not me personally. I had the most recent, but the first was a couple of years ago. So then we also took on the first discovery as a possible linked double murder. If this has the same MO, that’ll make three.”

“Were the first two girls killed in the same way?”

“Yes. They were strangled, raped, no DNA, no weapon, no witness—and like I said, my girl remains unidentified.”

“Both found beside motorways?”

“Yep.”

“And the first victim was a prostitute?”

“Yes. She worked the service stations, picking up lorry drivers, doing the business in their cabs, and then often getting dropped off at the next service station along the M1 to find new clients before heading back to the first.”

Anna stood watching while photographs were being taken of the victim and the area, before a tent was erected around the dead girl.

It was two hours later before they arrived at the incident room. This had been set up at the police station closest to the crime scene, in a new building in Hendon, North London, with an entire floor given over to the murder team. Already a group of technicians were setting up the desks and computers. Anna was pleased to see she’d be joined by DCs Barbara Maddox and Joan Falkland. Mike Lewis and Paul Barolli had also worked with the women on previous cases, and it promised to be a friendly atmosphere.

“Nice to see you again,” Barbara said to Anna as she prepared the incident-room board.

“Long time. I’ve been on three other cases,” Anna told her.

“Joan and I have sort of stuck with Mike and Paul.” Barbara nodded over to Joan.

“Were you on the other murders Mike told me about?” Anna asked.

“Yes, both of us were. I’m going to get the board set up with all the previous case details, as apparently, this one looks like it’s got the same MO.”

Anna shrugged, since until they had the postmortem report, they wouldn’t know for sure.

“Mike said she was very young,” Barbara commented.

Anna nodded. She was taking her time arranging her own desk, relieved to have such new equipment at hand.

“They’ve got a terrific canteen,” Joan informed her as she wheeled in a trolley stacked with the old case files.

Anna had time to sample the canteen at lunch, and it was not until early afternoon that she began to select files to catch up on the two earlier cases. By now the board was filling up with photographs and details. Anna still felt they might be presuming too much without confirmation. Although the victim had been removed to the local mortuary for a postmortem, Anna was told they would have to wait twenty-four hours before they would get any further details.

Meanwhile, Mike Lewis had set up his office, and Barolli had installed himself at the desk opposite Anna. “How’s life been treating you?” Barolli asked affably.

“Okay—I’ve worked a few other cases. How about you?”

“Well, we’ve been on the other two for about a year, and then I went on to something else over at Lambeth.”

“So to all intents and purposes, the cases were shelved?”

“Yeah. Without getting one of the victims identified, it was tough. The first one”—Barolli turned to gesture to a photograph—“was Margaret—or Maggie—Potts, aged thirty-nine, string of previous arrests for prostitution, drug addict, and known to work the service stations. We had no handbag, no witness, but got her ID’d from fingerprints. She was raped and strangled.”

Anna looked at the mug shot posted up. Maggie Potts had been a dark-eyed, sullen-faced woman, her bleached-blond hair with an inch of black regrowth.

When she sifted through the crime-scene photographs, she could see the similar pattern. Potts’s body had been dumped in a field not far from the M1 motorway. She had been wearing fishnet stockings, which were torn, and her shoes were found beside her body. She had on a short red jacket and a black skirt that was drawn up to her waist, and her knickers had been ripped apart. The satin blouse was stained with mud and wrenched open to reveal a black brassiere.

Anna glanced at the thick files representing the hundreds of interviews with people questioned about the last sightings of Maggie Potts. The team had interviewed call girls, service-station employees—from the catering staff to the petrol-station attendants—lorry drivers, and others in an endless round of inquiries and statements.

“This is the one we never identified,” Barolli said, tapping the second victim’s photograph. “We tried, but whatever we put out came back with fuck-all. We had her picture on the TV crime programs, in missing-persons magazines—you name it, we tried it to find out who she was—but with no luck. She was a pretty little thing, too.”

Anna turned her gaze on the Jane Doe, and as Barolli had said, she was exceedingly pretty, with long dark hair down to her shoulders, bangs, a pale face with wide-apart blue eyes, and full lips. She didn’t look jaded or hard; on the contrary, she looked innocent.

“How old was she?”

Barolli said they couldn’t be certain but had her aged between twenty to thirty.

“Looks younger, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, that’s what made it so tough to deal with, that no one came forward, no one recalled seeing her at any of the service stations. According to the postmortem, her body was very bruised, and there were signs of sexual activity suggesting she was raped. She was also strangled. She had nothing on her—no bag, no papers, nothing. If you think we made extensive inquiries on that old slag Potts, with this girl we tried every which way to find out who she was—Interpol, colleges, universities, but after six months we flatlined.”

Anna looked over the details of the young woman’s clothes. They were good labels, stylish but not new, and she had been wearing black ballet-type shoes; she had tiny feet, a size three.

“I hope to Christ we get this new girl identified,” Barolli said quietly.

“You reckon the same killer did both previous cases?”

He shrugged. “Same MO, but who knows without any DNA? Only thing we got was a few carpet fibers, but where she came from, who she was, how she came to be murdered are still unknown.”

“Did you check out the Jane Doe’s clothes?”

“What do
you
think?” Barolli glared. “Of course we did, but it didn’t help. We actually traced where the shoes came from, but they sold thousands.”

“Yeah, they were quite fashionable a year or so ago; now it’s all stacked heels.”

Anna continued to read the files all afternoon, but when it got to five-thirty and there still had been no word from the mortuary, she went home. It was quite a drive from the station to her flat over at Tower Bridge, and although it had not been a particularly tough day’s work, she felt tired. She meant to read up on more details about the previous cases but instead watched some TV before going to bed. There was nothing on the news about their victim. Anna sincerely hoped she would not turn out to be another murdered girl who would remain unidentified.

The following morning the postmortem details still had not come through. Anna did not get asked to join Mike Lewis and Barolli when they went over to the mortuary, so she spent the entire morning examining the extensive files, reading the thousands of statements culminating in no arrests. She constantly looked up at the incident board, where the two dead women’s faces had been joined by their new victim’s crime-scene pictures.

It was after lunch when Mike Lewis called a briefing. Their victim had died from strangulation, he announced. She had been raped and had extensive bruising to her vagina and abdomen. There were no signs of drug use. Her last meal had been a hamburger and chips and Coca-Cola. She was in good health. A fingerprint search had proved negative, but it was hoped that dental work would bring a result, as she had very good teeth, with two caps that appeared to have been done recently. These were her two front teeth, so she could have been in an accident; that again might narrow the field. Her hair was in good condition, and she had no broken nails or defense wounds.

The dead female’s T-shirt was from Miss Selfridge, and her skirt from Asda. Her white sandals, the second of which had been found under the body, were hardly worn and still had the price tag on the left sole. Again, this would mean they might get a clue to her identity. Mike Lewis said that her age was between sixteen to twenty-five, and they would be going to the press to try and get a result.

By late afternoon the press office had sent out cleaned-up photographs of the victim and requests for anyone with information to come forward. The details were also passed on to the television news, while officers armed with the victim’s photograph were still questioning everyone at the nearest service station. They had given out a direct line for anyone with any information to call. Usually, after such press coverage, they would be inundated with callers, but though they had a small number, none gave a clue as to who the young woman was. Many were time-wasters, but the team nevertheless had to take the personal details and information of every single one.