Cross and Burn (15 page)

F
ielding was already on the phone as the door of the health centre swung shut behind them. She talked as she walked, moving surprisingly fast for such a small woman. Paula almost had to break into a trot to keep up.

‘Get a car round here now,’ Fielding said briskly, heading for the car. ‘Yes, Harriestown Road Health Centre. Pick up Ashley Marr and take her to the Trafford Centre. She can identify where Nadia parked her car on arrival that Saturday… Yes, that’s right, three weeks ago. Nadia said she was going to watch some French film at the multiscreen that same evening. I need another team down there, finding out when the film ended and checking out the CCTV for routes from the multiscreen to where the car was parked… I appreciate that… Pull them off the diary contacts, this is the strongest lead right now.’

Fielding ended the call as she got into the passenger seat. ‘What’s Ashley not telling us?’

Paula eased into a space in the steady flow of traffic. ‘You think she’s holding on to something?’

Fielding popped a piece of nicotine gum into her mouth. ‘There’s always more. They don’t always know it, but there’s always more.’ She rubbed one eye with a knuckle and stifled a yawn, skin stretching taut over her fine bones. Paula realised she wasn’t the only one who’d been up late the night before. ‘Another thing,’ Fielding added. ‘Why is he going to all this trouble to cover up the fact that he’s taken her? All the texts and the emails?’

‘I wondered that too. The only thing I could think of was that most private security cameras recycle their recordings, whether it’s tape or digital. They only keep them for a certain length of time. Maybe he was worried about the CCTV at the Trafford Centre and reckoned a month of blue water between the abduction and the alert would keep him in the clear.’

Fielding brightened up for a moment, her brown eyes alert and shining. Then she scowled. ‘So why kill her after three weeks if you’ve bought yourself some extra time?’

‘I don’t know,’ Paula admitted. ‘Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her when he did. Maybe she did something to make him lose his temper. And then once she was dead, he just wanted rid.’

Fielding gave a little snort of cynical laughter. ‘Aye, right enough. You wouldn’t want a corpse lying around making the place look untidy.’

‘They are a nuisance,’ Paula said. ‘It’s always easier to deal with them sooner rather than later, before they start decomposing and leaking all over your car boot.’

‘Yeuch. But you’re right, McIntyre.’

‘Thank you. Todmorden, then? Anya Burba?’

‘Sure.’ There was a moment’s silence, then Fielding said, ‘I had respect for Carol Jordan. I imagine you learned a lot, working for her.’

It was a statement, not a question. In Paula’s head, she’d worked
with
Carol Jordan, not
for
her. Not that there had been any doubt who was in charge. It was more that Carol had always acknowledged the different skills in her squad and had made sure they all understood that MIT was greater than the sum of its parts only when they played as a team. A team of mavericks, admittedly, but a group of people who saw the personal advantage of being part of a successful unit. Paula didn’t sense that same collegial spirit in Fielding. She was very clearly the boss and apparently everything went through her. Paula knew which style she preferred. But her preference was irrelevant. She had to work with what she had. Not to mention that Fielding’s methods also seemed to get results. ‘We all came out of MIT better cops than when we went in,’ she said, trying not to make it sound like a challenge.

‘I’m glad to hear it. You’re my bagman from choice, not necessity. But on this firm, we don’t go off on our own, McIntyre. We do things through the proper channels. We clear on that?’

Paula kept her eyes on the traffic and her face expressionless. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Is that what you called Jordan? “Ma’am”?’ It wasn’t quite a straight question.

Paula wasn’t comfortable with where this was going, but she wasn’t willing to start lying over something so apparently trivial. ‘No. I called her “chief”. She wasn’t very keen on “ma’am”.’

‘No more am I. Ma’am’s what you call the queen. It’s fine in formal situations, fine from the grunts in uniform to remind them who’s in charge. But it makes me feel a bit of a twat coming from my own officers. My lads call me “boss”, but “chief” would be fine.’

So, it was a power play.
Call me ‘chief’ or I’ll assume you rate me lower than Carol Jordan.
Paula had never had a conversation like this with a senior officer before. Was that because men just assumed they’d be treated appropriately according to their rank but women had to fight for that right? Whatever. She’d try to avoid calling Fielding anything. If she had no choice, she’d go with boss. If it was good enough for the lads, it was good enough for her. She was saved from answering by the beeping of Fielding’s phone.

‘Text from the pathologist,’ she said, bringing it up on her screen.

‘What’s Grisha got to say?’

‘He’s finished the post-mortem. I need to call him.’ She plugged her phone into the car jack so she could make the call on speaker and keyed in the number.

‘Shatalov speaking,’ came from the tinny speakers.

‘DCI Fielding. I got your message. What have you got for me?’

‘I completed the post-mortem on Nadzieja Wilkowa. Cause of death was internal bleeding from multiple blunt trauma injuries.’

‘Not the head injury?’

‘The blow to the head was probably sustained first, given the bleeding around the site, but it’s doubtful whether that would have been enough to kill her on its own. I’d say she was beaten with a tapering cylindrical object such as a baseball bat. And she was kicked repeatedly. So much so that the skin was torn and bleeding. That’s not all. There was a considerable amount of old bruising at various sites all over her body, consistent with regular assaults over a period of up to two weeks.’

‘Not longer than that?’

‘Bruises generally fade completely after two weeks. So any predating that will have disappeared.’

There wasn’t much to say to that, Paula thought. But Fielding found something. ‘On the scale of beatings you’ve seen, where would this figure? Top five? Top ten?’

A moment’s silence then, his voice flat, Grisha said, ‘I have only ever seen one body more severely beaten than this. And that was the victim of a biker-gang punishment beating.’

‘Thank you. What about sexual assault? I mean, before the superglue, obviously.’

‘I treated the superglue with solvent so I could examine the genital area. I would say she had recently had violent sexual intercourse, vaginally and anally. There are internal tears that would suggest a pretty brutal rape scenario. Again, there’s old bruising in the genital area, and some internal tearing that is partially healed.’ He let out a heavy sigh. In all the years she’d known him Paula had never known Grisha to be blasé. Being confronted with the terrible things humans did to each other still caused him distress. ‘No semen. Either he used condoms or a foreign object.’

‘A foreign object?’ Fielding’s question was clinical.

‘A dildo. Maybe even the baseball bat he used on her head. It’s impossible to say.’

‘Then theoretically it could be a woman?’

Grisha gave a hollow laugh. ‘Theoretically it could be a woman, yes. She’d have to be pretty strong, to move your victim around. But yes, it could be a woman.’ Silence, while they all thought about that one. ‘One other thing,’ Grisha said. ‘It was hard to pick up at first because of the bruising and the damage to the skin. But I found three instances of two puncture wounds close together. One on her right shoulder, one on her left thigh and one on her stomach, by the navel. The one on her shoulder was almost totally healed. All that’s left are the purple-pink marks of scar tissue.’

‘Knife wounds?’

‘No. Much smaller and shallower. There are some tears to the skin in four of the cases. I can’t be sure but I think they might be damage inflicted by taser probes.’

‘You think he’s tasered her?’ Fielding sounded intrigued.

‘I can’t be certain, I don’t have much experience in this area. I’ll need to do some research. But yes, that would be my cautious opinion at this point.’

‘That would explain how he acquired her without any report of a struggle somewhere public…’ Fielding’s voice tailed off as she thought through what she’d just heard.

Paula took her chance. ‘Hi, Grisha. It’s Paula here.’

‘Hi, Sergeant Paula. How’re you enjoying your promotion?’

‘I can’t remember when I last had this much fun without laughing. Grisha, what have we got on time of death?’ Fielding gave her a dirty look, as if she’d been caught speaking out of turn.

‘I’d say between nine in the evening and four in the morning. Can’t do better than that, sorry. Stomach contents are no help because there are none. The small intestine’s also empty, so it looks like it was at least twelve hours between her last meal and the time of death.’

‘No question that he kept her before he killed her, then?’

‘Looks that way. And that he beat her regularly while he had her.’

‘That fits with our thinking,’ Fielding snapped. ‘Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate your help. When will we have your full report?’

‘My secretary will email it to you as soon as she’s finished the transcript. Good luck with your investigation. This is a bad one, Inspector.’ And he closed the connection.

‘Nothing there we couldn’t have predicted,’ Fielding said, her tone suggesting that Grisha had failed them.

‘Apart from the possible taser wounds.’

‘Well, he had to have some way of subduing her and that’s one of the more straightforward methods.’ Fielding wasn’t giving any ground.

‘Three separate times, though. And only one of them in a place where the taser would get you from behind. That’s interesting. And what Grisha said? It does support our theory that she never went to Poland.’

Fielding grunted and started typing texts into her phone. There was none of the batting around of ideas and possibilities that Paula had grown used to in the MIT. All of her colleagues had thrived on speculation, trying out theories and testing them against the evidence. Whatever was going on in Fielding’s head, she was keeping it to herself.

Anya Burba was stashed behind the closed door of the head teacher’s office. Her sharp features were swollen with tears, her make-up streaked and ugly. ‘Ashley texted me,’ she said as soon as the head left them alone with her. ‘I couldn’t believe what she says. How can Nadia be dead? How is this possible? You must have made a mistake.’

‘Sorry, Anya. There’s no mistake. I’m very sorry for your loss.’ Fielding’s sympathy was underscored with briskness. ‘We need your help so we can find the person who did this.’

They sat at a round table in a corner of the office. It was strewn with children’s artwork. Anya cleared it impatiently to one side with a sweep of her arm. ‘Stupid art competition,’ she said, her voice shaky. ‘How did she die?’

‘We can’t go into details, I’m afraid,’ Fielding said.

‘Was it quick? Tell me she didn’t suffer.’

Paula reached out and touched her shoulder. ‘There’s a lot we don’t know, Anya. But Nadia was your friend and we need you to share what you know about her so we can stop this happening to somebody else.’

She shivered and wrapped her thin arms round her body, pushing her small breasts upwards. ‘Please God, not that.’

And so Paula worked her way through the final Saturday again. Anya confirmed what Ashley had told them, and had nothing to add. But when she turned to the subject of Nadia’s ex-boyfriend, Anya turned slightly in her seat, away from Paula, and abruptly became noncommittal.

Whatever was making her uncomfortable, Paula was determined to get to the heart of it. ‘There’s something more, isn’t there, Anya? Something you don’t want to tell us?’ Her voice was gentle. ‘Nothing you say can hurt Nadia now, Anya. But I think she’d want you to tell us anything that could help bring her killer to justice.’

Anya shook her head. ‘It’s nothing. It’s not connected to her death. It’s just… nothing.’

‘Anya, I’m trained to make connections that nobody else can see. But if you don’t give me something to work with, I can’t make anything. Please, tell me what you know.’

Anya blew her nose noisily. ‘Pawel – he has no wife and children.’

If she’d been intent on stopping them in their tracks, she’d succeeded. Even Paula, the consummate interviewer, faltered. ‘What? What do you mean, no wife and children?’

Anya looked embarrassed. ‘The row, in the nightclub? The woman? I was at the bar, getting drinks. I was on my way back when it happened, the woman shouting and accusing Pawel and taking their photo. I think if I had been with them, it wouldn’t have happened. Well, it wouldn’t have happened then.’

This was making no sense. ‘I don’t understand,’ Paula said.

‘I know this woman. Maria is her name, I don’t know her family name. She isn’t even from Gdansk. She worked in a bar in Lvov, where I used to live. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I didn’t say anything at the time, because I wanted to get the truth. So next evening, I went to the coffee shop where she works now. It’s out at the university, we never go there normally. And I told her, I know you’re lying about Pawel. Tell me what’s going on or I bring Anya here and make you tell her.’ She fiddled endlessly with the cheap silver rings on her fingers.

‘And what was it she told you?’

Anya looked haunted and hunted. ‘I want to go outside, I need to smoke.’ She jumped to her feet and headed for the door. The detectives followed her as she ran down the hallway and out the front door. They rounded the corner of the building and saw her slip behind a steel container. By the time they caught up, she had a cigarette at her lips, her fingers shaking uncontrollably. Paula took her lighter from her pocket and held the flame to Anya’s cigarette, taking the opportunity to have one of her own in spite of Fielding’s frown. ‘What was it, Anya?’