Authors: Fiona McIntosh
‘What? Oh, sorry, yes, thank you for the coffee. I never seem to finish a cup. Drives my partner nuts.’
The mug was removed but Kate’s attention was on the small brown envelope she’d fished out of the lining. ‘Look at this,’ she said, pulling it clear. ‘What’s in here?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Diane replied, wiping her hands on a tea towel as she approached. ‘Look inside.’
Kate did, her heart hammering as she pulled out a single snapshot of four boys, all grinning this time. She saw Mike Sheriff immediately.
‘Oh yes, I remember that one,’ Diane said. ‘Mike hated it, so he put it out of sight. I can’t imagine this will interest you though. You wanted school photos, right?’
‘Why did Mike hate this shot?’ Kate said, her pulse surging as she stared at one of the figures, a huge teenager, unmistakeably Clive Farrow.
‘Out of sight, out of mind, probably. I think those are the lads he fell in with when he was about fifteen. They weren’t good for him, I gather, although they look harmless enough there.’
Kate had to swallow to ensure her voice came out evenly. How she wished for a sip of the ordinary coffee now to moisten her dry mouth. ‘Mrs Sheriff — Diane — can I keep this photo?’
Mike’s widow gave a soft shrug of acquiescence. ‘Yes, if you want to. Is that what you came for?’
The Yard’s training, years of reinforcement that their people must always proceed with caution, kicked in. As much as Kate wanted to scream ‘Bingo!’ to the rafters, she composed herself.
‘I think this might help us a lot, Diane. You see, Clive Farrow is this fellow here.’ She pointed to the photo, and her thoughts flew to Jack and how pleased he was going to be with her. She missed Diane Sheriff’s response. ‘Sorry?’
‘I said you can keep it. We don’t want it. We don’t even know who those boys are or what they meant to Mike. If it helps find his killer, be my guest.’ Her voice had taken on a hard, emotional edge.
Kate reached out a hand and placed it on the older woman’s arm. ‘You’ve done really well here, Diane, and everyone working on this is going to be most grateful
for your help. We’re going to find him for you, I promise.’
It was the wrong thing to say professionally, but Kate felt it was exactly the right thing to say to this widow, who needed to hear that the police were going to help her get justice.
12
Kate could hardly stop herself grinning as she hit the motorway for London, and she’d be back at the Yard in time for a late lunch, too. She wished she’d brought Dan’s car after all — it was so much nippier than the squad car. It could have used the run too; Dan so rarely drove it. He preferred public transport, or taxis, depending on where he had to be. He hated the boredom of sitting in traffic, unable to bury his head in one of the sci-fi books he seemed to consume. He shared his passion for speculative fiction with many others in the nerdy IT community, who did everything from dressing up as Trekkies and attending conventions around the world to taking part in mammoth gaming sessions at each other’s homes or even bigger events arranged at halls. Dan was a little more conservative, confining his gaming to sitting alone at his computer screen and plugging into an international community, or perhaps lying on the sofa playing on his gaming console. Nevertheless, he gave over great chunks of his weekend to lose himself in other worlds. In truth, it hadn’t really bothered Kate until recently, although she found it rather boyish. But
since he’d proposed and their relationship had taken on that new, more serious lustre, she’d begun to feel a nagging concern that this was all that was ahead for her. When would Dan grow up?
She knew another woman who’d married an IT consultant — a supremely intelligent man, like Dan, who also became childlike and a fraction obsessive when given the opportunity to stalk otherworldly people on some extraterrestrial plane. Kate had asked the woman how she’d coped with two years of marriage under those circumstances and the woman had laughed and said, ‘I play with him. It’s actually great fun and extremely cathartic to go on a killing rampage after a long day in the bank.’
Kate gave a rueful smile now as she considered this sage advice, which turned into a softer smile as she dialled Jack Hawksworth’s mobile and heard his voice telling her that he couldn’t take the call right now but to please leave a message. Somehow Jack managed to say even that well-worn phrase with charm.
‘Jack, it’s Kate. I know you don’t want me to say this, but bingo! Call me, I’m in the car hurtling back to London.’
It was no more than a few minutes before the phone began playing the opening to
Mission Impossible
, the tune she’d accorded to DCI Hawksworth for whenever he rang her mobile. She loved the tune — always had, long before Tom Cruise made it famous again — and it suited Jack. She grinned and hit the button that hung from her hands-free earphones. ‘DI Carter.’
‘What was the lucky number then?’ he asked and she could hear the catch in his voice. He too was excited.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You said bingo — what was the lucky number?’
‘Number four, sir. Four boys. I’ve got Michael Sheriff and Clive Farrow in the same photograph, their arms slung around a couple of other youngsters about the same age, although one looks small. They’re all smiling, they obviously feel pretty cosy together.’
‘The wrong gang he fell in with,’ Jack murmured, echoing Diane Sheriff’s earlier conversation. ‘Tell me more,’ he encouraged.
‘Mrs Sheriff recognised the picture but no one in it, other than her husband. She did say that Michael didn’t like that photo. I found it tucked away in an envelope inside the lining of a photo album. Her theory was that he hated throwing anything away — I’m gathering he was a bit of a hoarder — but by the same token didn’t want to see it. Ever.’
‘Didn’t want to be reminded, you think? Ashamed?’ ‘Well, that’s the inference I’m drawing,’ Kate said, surging past another slowcoach. ‘I should be there by one-thirty at the latest.’
‘Take it easy, Kate. Get back safely, and well done.’ It was so good to hear his praise that she felt suddenly reckless. ‘Er, Jack!’ She strained to listen, hoping he hadn’t put the phone down.
‘Yes?’
She felt a fluttering of fear in her throat. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’
‘Okay. It can’t wait?’
‘No. I need to speak with you alone and I know that will be impossible in the office today.’
‘Alright. Have you got your headset on?’
‘Yes, I can’t be booked by police, I promise,’ she said, desperately trying to lighten the tension she was feeling. Was she really going to do this? He’d probably think she’d really gone off the rails, perhaps regret trusting her.
‘I’m all ears. What’s up?’
Kate took a deep breath. ‘Last night —’
She heard him sigh. ‘Kate, look, I don’t want us —’
‘No, wait, Jack. I meant I wanted to mention this last night but you were in a hurry. I’m just a bit embarrassed actually. It feels crazy but I need to say it aloud.’
She didn’t need to see him to know he must be frowning at her dithering.
‘You’re usually pretty forthright. Just tell me. It’s obviously on your mind.’
‘Well, our murderer — the left-handed, late thirties/early forties bloke with his liking for lips and dicks . . .’ ‘Yes?’
‘Er . . .’ She gathered her thoughts, let the niggling notion that had been roaming her mind since Lincoln crystallise, and knew it felt right. She had to air this whether he laughed at her or not. ‘Jack, I’d like us to consider that our killer isn’t a man.’
She imagined that if they were in the same space right now, Jack would have turned and stared at her in that intense way of his, making her feel that no one else was in the ops room, even if all twenty-five of them were sitting in a circle. She cleared her throat.
‘Go on,’ he urged.
‘Why are we assuming this is a man? Something’s nagging at me that we could be dealing with a female killer.’
‘Why do you sense that?’
Her thoughts tumbled out. ‘It’s the mutilation. The lips and the genitalia — they’re both sexual. It’s been bothering me why a man would do this to another man. Neither of the victims are gay to our knowledge, right?’
‘Not that we know of.’
‘And if this was a homosexual man taking his revenge . . .’ She shook her head, not quite sure how to say what she felt. ‘Well, I think he’d have made them suffer. I could be wrong; I’m just throwing up an idea here,’ she added defensively, but when he didn’t dismiss it, she continued. ‘Straight men can be cold, cruel, brutal in a situation such as murder, but as we’re working on the proviso of retribution, then a straight man would probably have made the two victims suffer a whole lot more.’
‘Keep talking,’ he said and she felt his encouragement like a gentle touch. She managed to keep her voice steady and her thoughts moving forward. ‘A gay man, scorned in some way, would be pretty nasty as well, I’d imagine. Again, suffering would surely be inflicted if the opportunity was there.’
‘Why wouldn’t a scorned woman behave the same way?’
‘Well, she might, but I’m hazarding that a woman who’s pushed into a very dark place in her mind and prepared to mutilate seems more likely to want to get on with the job — get to the end result, you could say, rather than linger on the suffering.’
She let her notion hang between them momentarily, imagining his silence meant he was reluctant to accept it.
‘Well, hear me out,’ she went on. ‘Let’s go on the assumption that this could be a woman . . .’
‘Alright.’
‘And let’s say these two men have done something truly awful to her — essentially, pushed her over the edge — and she’s decided to take her revenge.’
‘Why do the lips and genitals mean more to a woman than to a man, though, Kate?’
‘Well, my theory, which I’ll admit I haven’t fully thought through, is working on the basis that the killer was raped by these men.’
‘Hence the lips and —’
‘Dicks, yes, exactly! And let’s face it, if you did a survey of women and asked how they would physically damage a man who’d raped them or their child even, the overwhelming response would be: cut off his knackers. That’s his manhood, his whole claim to fame, it’s what he boasts about in the pub with his mates and —’
‘Yes, I get the picture,’ he cut in. ‘It’s certainly possible.’
‘It’s plausible, Jack. Listen, Diane Sheriff clearly said her husband had fallen in with the wrong sort. We now know he was friends with Farrow. Maybe they, or even this foursome, got up to some mischief that got out of hand . . . like rape. Diane told me that Mike described the twelve months between 1974 and 1975 as the worst of his life. Eva Truro, Farrow’s and Fletcher’s teacher, said the boys were once friends but it soured. Perhaps it soured in that same year.’ She did a quick sum in her head. ‘Farrow left school in June 1976. Fletcher and Sheriff seemingly kept out of trouble after that.’
‘It might explain why Sheriff hid the photo,’ Jack mused. ‘It’s a solid theory, Kate, I’m impressed. May even fit with the woman in the sports car. Although, it actually makes things harder for us now — means we’ll need to cast our net wider.’
‘Yes, sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Be more sorry that, if you’re right, our killer hasn’t finished. There may be two more deaths to come.’
Kate felt sick at the thought. ‘We have to find Fletcher and whoever this fourth boy is.’
‘Okay, get back to the Yard. I’m calling a briefing for two-thirty.’
‘I’ll be there,’ she said grimly.
‘And Kate?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m proud of you. Good work.’
13
The operations room was buzzing — no longer did anyone lose time gawping at the panorama of London. The hunt for Farrow’s and Sheriff’s killer had taken on a fresh sense of urgency since Kate had presented the photo from Michael Sheriff’s album. It had caused the kind of stir that could only be upstaged by the cream buns Jack brought in for their late afternoon meeting. As he called the meeting to order, everyone was consuming buns and hot drinks, muttering gratitude to their chief for the afternoon tea.
Jack sat against a desk, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his arms folded loosely. Behind him were the whiteboards and pinboards that his minions had done their best to fill with facts and details pertaining to the case. The photos of the ruined men, stark and sobering amongst the scribblings.
‘Alright, if everyone’s ready, let’s begin,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow Kate will take this photo to Eva Truro, Farrow’s old teacher, and we’re hopeful she might identify at least one of the others as being Billy Fletcher, our stammerer. It doesn’t mean Billy is the murderer, nor does it mean he is the next victim.
Potentially, however, he could be either, as could the fourth boy in that picture. We must identify who these remaining boys are. Did you rearrange that appointment with Lisa Hale?’ He directed the question to Brodie.
Cam nodded. ‘You’re seeing her first thing.’
‘Alright, get back to her and ask her what photos she may have, if any. As Kate suggests, it’s a very long shot but it might lead us back to an original wrong — something that has provoked our killer to start taking revenge.’
‘Who thinks about revenge thirty years later?’ Cam asked incredulously.
Jack shrugged. ‘We’re working on a new hypothesis.’ He saw Cam throw a glance at his running mate, Bill Marsh, and Jack knew what they were both thinking. The Super had warned him often enough about his propensity for working on gut instinct.
‘I’m going to let Kate lay out that hypothesis from a hunch that has been niggling at her,’ Jack went on. ‘Her idea sounds wild to begin with but let her finish. It has real merit. I certainly consider it plausible, especially in light of Cam’s work. It’s a lead I want us to follow hard now. Go on, Kate.’
Kate smoothed down her skirt in a nervous gesture and shared her idea with her colleagues that the killer was a woman. Jack was impressed that she kept her brief precise, devoid of emotion and open to scrutiny. It prompted a wave of questions, most of which remained unanswered. Gradually, everyone fell silent.
Jack took the floor again. ‘It’s a notion I’m simply asking you to hold in your minds as we hunt this killer. But the woman in the car has to be found. Cam?’
‘I’m reluctant to go with this woman theory because she’d have to be fucking strong to move these bodies around — excuse my language,’ he added at his chief’s stern look. ‘But I’m thinking there may be more to it, considering that call to the hotel for Sheriff obviously came from a woman pretending to be a nurse from the Lincoln hospital.’
Jack nodded, a fresh spike of adrenaline coursing through him. Cam was right. ‘As I say, Kate’s idea has genuine merit, and whether we’re right about the why of it is irrelevant at this point. Our job is to find the killer. We’ll worry about what motivated the murders as we go.’
‘Perhaps we should call John Tandy back in light of this?’ Kate asked.
‘Yes, do it now,’ Jack replied. ‘See if he can come over straightaway.’ He turned back to Brodie. ‘Cam, get back to Ritchie Brown and try and get more on that car and its driver. Get on to Brighton and Hove car registrations —’
Brodie looked aghast. ‘Chief, do you know how many red sports cars there’ll be in the East Sussex region alone?’ He sounded exasperated to be given this plod work after his seemingly scintillating breakthrough that morning. ‘The car could be from anywhere anyway.’
‘I know what I’m suggesting is daunting but this is where the hard yards are done.’ Jack addressed the last to everyone, so Brodie didn’t feel singled out for censure. ‘This is where we hunt our killer — in the detail that he or she has overlooked.’
He turned back to Brodie. ‘If you can whittle it down to a make and-or model, Cam, it gives us a
platform. Do your best. I’m working on the notion that the killer could also originally hail from Brighton — may still live there. Print out some colour lasers of various cars and show them to Brown. It will be more meaningful.’
He watched Brodie’s eyelids lower and heard the sigh. He added, ‘And, Cam, I think it should be you who visits Farrow’s fiancee, Lisa. You’re more acquainted with Farrow’s history and his movements on the evening of his death. Find out about his mates at school, especially any photos from school, but don’t ask about another woman openly. His girlfriend’s going to be hurting enough without that kind of pain.’
Brodie’s expression instantly lightened at being given the senior task and Jack noticed he flicked a sharp look at Kate, back from her call to the profiler. Kate kept her own face impassive.
‘I want you lot to gather the facts so we can start working with something concrete,’ Jack went on. He turned to Bill, who still looked cynical that someone could maintain their rage for thirty years. ‘Swamp, set up interviews with each of the teachers who were present at the meal and also any of those close to Sheriff at work.’ Marsh nodded. ‘And I want you to grab a couple of people here and get on to the car rental firms. Let’s get a listing of all the cars rented in Lincoln two days prior and up to the day of the Sheriff murder.’
He didn’t miss Swamp’s glazed expression. None of his DIs were happy it seemed, but at least Swamp would know from years of experience that if the spadework was done well and the digging went deep
enough, then clues would be discovered. It might also remind him not to question his boss, however discreetly.
He turned to Kate. ‘Go back to Sheriff’s old teachers again, or try to find his peers from school.’
To an untrained eye, Kate’s expression did not appear to change, but Jack saw the flicker of annoyance in her eyes and the ever so slight tightening of the mouth with its carefully applied, almost not there lip gloss. Kate, like her peers, was not happy with this job, which she probably figured should be done by one of the many PCs they had on the team.
‘Find out everything you can about Sheriff as a teenager,’ he finished. ‘I realise his old schoolmates could be anywhere these days, but they may remember who the other two in the photo are.’
When John Tandy arrived, Jack briefed him quickly on Kate’s new theory, then asked Kate to take the floor.
‘Run us through what we know so far, would you?’
Kate flicked her head to clear the dark fringe from her eyes. ‘We now have a genuine link between the two victims,’ she began. ‘Michael Sheriff, who died first in Lincoln, and Clive Farrow, who died in London.’ She pointed to an enlarged photo of the four boys from Sheriff’s album. ‘This tells us they were friends. Farrow, the bigger lad, has his arm slung around Sheriff as they mug for the camera.’ She looked to Jack and his glance told her to continue. ‘We’ve since discovered from Sheriff’s wife that he once admitted to her that he didn’t enjoy his school days much — in fact, it’s why he took up teaching: he
wanted to make school life more enjoyable for the kids who came through his classes. She said he’d also admitted to falling in with the wrong crowd briefly during his teenage years. That sounded like a throwaway line initially, but it took on a more sinister significance after we discovered this photo. Diane also told us that her husband once said that 1975 was his worst year. He would have been fifteen in ’75, and this photo is dated 1975 on the back. Sheriff was, so we’re told, a neat and methodical man. There was nothing accidental about the fact that we found this photo carefully tucked away in the lining of an old photo album. He didn’t want to look at it — it reminded him too much of that year.’
‘Then why keep it?’ Brodie asked.
‘Yes, it’s a bit of a mystery, but from what Diane said we can surmise that Sheriff was a hoarder. It went against his nature to throw it out.’
Bill frowned. ‘So what are we saying here, Hawk? This gang committed some wrong and thirty years later someone’s taking revenge?’
Jack sipped his tea. ‘It’s a relevant question, Bill. We have no idea that these two other lads were involved in anything, and I agree that near enough thirty years is a long time to stew on an old injury, which is why John Tandy’s been invited back, to tackle that very question. Kate, thank you. Let’s hear John’s take on this now.’
Bill’s mobile rang. He excused himself to take the call. No one minded, because every call was a potential break in the case.
Tandy brushed his jacket free of crumbs from the cream bun he’d been offered on his arrival. ‘Firstly, I want to acknowledge DI Carter’s suggestion that we
aren’t necessarily dealing with a male perpetrator here. I agree wholeheartedly that each of these victims could have suffered at the hands of a female killer, although she’d need to be a strong woman, strong enough to wrestle with men.’
‘No wrestling involved,’ Kate said. ‘There isn’t a man alive who can’t help but respond to a flirtatious woman. I’m guessing — if our killer is a woman — that she’s using her femininity to lure her victims into a situation they can’t get out of.’
Tandy looked at her quizzically over his glasses. ‘Are you saying then that DCI Hawksworth here, for instance, is a dead set rollover to your charm, DI Carter, simply because you have breasts?’
She flushed scarlet but held her ground. ‘Not at all. What I’m saying is that most men wouldn’t be openly rude to a woman acting in a friendly manner. I’m not saying either of these men expected to fuck her, Mr Tandy,’ she said pointedly, hoping to sting him straight back, but instead prompting a round of tut-tuts from her colleagues, pursed lips from Joan and a frown of disappointment from her boss, ‘but I am saying that any good-looking woman could certainly win your attention if she asked you to help her with street directions or to carry something into her car and the like.’
‘What about an ugly one?’ Cam asked. Kate ignored him.
Tandy looked appropriately chagrined. ‘I’m sorry, DI Carter, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I was simply using you and DCI Hawksworth as a blatant example of how stereotyping is unwise, sometimes downright dangerous, in this job.’
She bristled at the condescending tone. ‘I’m not stereotyping, Mr Tandy. We could go out on any Saturday night and watch just how easily led men can be by an attractive woman determined to win their attention,’ she said, not attempting to soften her own acerbic tone. ‘And in this instance, with Sheriff and Farrow, I’m putting forward a far less erotic situation.’
‘But how does a woman tackle someone like the second victim — what’s his name?’ Tandy looked through his bifocals to the victim photos. ‘Ah, Farrow. He’s around six feet in my old language.’
Kate was ready for this. It was a scenario she too had chewed over. ‘From what Cam found out, the woman who was with Farrow on the night he died was giving him a ride home. She had already persuaded Farrow to get into the car and feel comfortable alongside her. It’s not a big leap to think that, if she’s the perpetrator, drugging him is likely the easiest scenario, and then if he’s not out cold, he’s surely dazed, compliant and at her mercy. No wrestling involved, although I do agree she’d need to be strong enough to shift his dead weight later. But with some effort, someone as slight as me could drag DCI Hawksworth or DI Marsh around if they had the time and the upper body strength. Maybe she even used a trolley.’
‘But how, Kate?’ Cam said, exasperated. ‘What do you think she could say that would persuade this big dumb bloke to obediently drug himself for her?’ He tried not to notice his chief’s glance of censure at his choice of words.
Kate shook her head, equally frustrated. ‘I don’t know, Cam. Perhaps she had some sort of hold over
him already. He wasn’t a particularly attractive guy, was he? So to have a hot gal in a red sports car offering him a lift must have been flattering.’
‘As if,’ Cam replied.
‘No, DI Carter’s right,’ DS Jones piped up, and squirmed to have all eyes turned on her suddenly. ‘Farrow was slow, remember, so he probably wasn’t thinking as you might, DI Brodie — “this girl wouldn’t normally give me a second look”.’ She paused, realising that she’d possibly just insulted one of the senior members of her team, but a grin from her boss urged her on. ‘Clive Farrow’s comment to the fish and chips guy tells you that. Remember how he objected to Ritchie Brown calling the woman his girlfriend?’ Everyone nodded. ‘Well, Kate’s theory isn’t that unlikely. Perhaps he knew her, so there was nothing intimidating about her.’
Cam shrugged. ‘So I’m guessing we’re now headed down the path that these four boys in our picture all knew the killer — this woman that we’re suggesting.’
‘It’s not implausible,’ Jack offered, keen to let his team do the brainstorming. ‘But it’s merely a hypothesis at this stage. All we know at this point is that two of the boys in this photo are dead. The other two may be irrelevant to the case. And the female killer scenario is also speculation, but not as farfetched as it may first sound. Kate, you obviously want to say something?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and turned to Cam. ‘So why wouldn’t Farrow, after thirty years, be interested in talking to this woman, especially if she’s being very friendly? Perhaps she offered him a drink in the car and it already had the drugs in it. Michael Sheriff was
already well gone before that hoax call came in, which would have made it easy to administer the drugs to him.’ She stopped, stared around her.
Tandy took up his previous thread. ‘This is all valid but if this is a she, then she still had to move two big bodies around.’
Kate shrugged. ‘She’s strong, works out. Hell, there are enough women at the Yard’s gym who could lift all of us in this room! Okay, I exaggerate, but it’s not an impossibility.’ She looked to her chief for support and won it.
‘What do we know about Springfield Park?’ Jack asked.
‘Part of a deprived area,’ Swamp answered. ‘The River Lee runs through it. Hackney Marshes has playing fields surrounded by council housing blocks and the roads run downhill to the river where it’s not all that unusual to find a body, if those dumping it can get past the shopping trolleys and old mattresses.’ He glanced at his chief and got quickly back to the point. ‘There are various public toilets in the parklands that run alongside the river — known as Springfield Park. What else can I tell you? There’s a rowing club, small row of shops, couple of pubs.’