Cross and Burn (17 page)

M
arie Mather was pleased with how the new job was going. She’d split the team into groups of half a dozen and she was working her way through short but intense briefing sessions, group by group. She encouraged frankness in the people who worked for her. That meant the first step was making them feel secure in their dealings with her. They had to believe there was common ground they all occupied, and a common enemy in their business rivals. Once they’d reached that point, they could be manipulated into all sorts of work practices and agreements. Having everyone facing in the same direction – that was how to make progress.

Rob had sat in on the first two group sessions. He claimed he wanted to see how she worked so he could make sure his tactics fitted in with her overall strategies. Marie suspected it was more to do with him wanting to stare at her legs, given that his eyes never left them and he didn’t take a single note. It didn’t matter; whether she won him over with the shapeliness of her calves or the competent way she wrangled her staff, he would be firmly on her side in no time at all.

So far, the staff seemed eager to impress her. That was the joy of an economy in the doldrums. Anyone who was in work was desperate to stay that way. Even people whose natural inclination was to be cross-grained whatever the situation generally knew enough to turn on a smiley face when it came to impressing the new boss. They all wanted to make sure that if the new broom was going to sweep clean they wouldn’t be the ones in the dustpan.

Of course, there were always the exceptions. Gareth, for example, had made no contribution in his group session. He’d sat with folded arms, head cocked to one side, an expression of bored superiority on his face. She had tried to get him to tell the group what he had hinted at when they’d spoken the day before, but he’d only grunted and said, ‘Best if I run it past you first. No point in getting this lot excited about something that isn’t going to happen, is there?’

Maria had looked at Gareth’s performance indicators and understood that he was one of their most productive workers. It was clear he knew that too. But she wasn’t prepared to let him trade on it, to take his quarterly bonus as a given. If she didn’t turn the screws a little to show him who was boss, he could easily become a thorn in her flesh, stirring up unease at the way she was going about things. So she’d smiled sweetly and said, ‘I always think the more the merrier when it comes to thrashing out new ideas. We’ll be having short group meetings every fortnight from now on. Gareth, I’d like you to write a proposal for the next meeting that outlines your ideas and the reasoning behind them. I’m sure we can find better ways to achieve our goals, and nobody understands that better than you. I’m counting on all of you to come up with constructive suggestions. Gareth, I’m delighted you’re going to lead the way on this one.’

He’d scowled at her, clearly baffled at being outflanked. But he’d said no more. And he hadn’t had the chance to foment dissent round the water cooler because, like Rob and half a dozen others, he was using his accumulated time owing to take the afternoon off. Bradfield Victoria were due to play Newcastle United in the FA Cup, and their loyal fans were leaving work early to travel up to the North East for the game.

When lunchtime rolled around, Marie followed the football fans out. She wanted half an hour outside the office, looking at faces that weren’t her responsibility, stimulating her mind with images of beauty rather than office cubicles. The city art gallery was a brisk three-minute walk from the office, and she particularly liked their collection of Scottish Colourists on the second floor. Twenty minutes of staring at the paintings of J. D. Fergusson and William McTaggart and she would be refreshed and renewed, ready to face the next bunch of employees who needed to be energised and inspired.

Marie sat on a leather-covered bench in front of a large canvas showing the impressionistic figures of two small children in white smocks kneeling among sea grass and pinks, behind them the tousled blues and whites of the sea, above them a sky filled with plump cumulus clouds. She took from her bag the carrot and home-made piccalilli salad she’d made that morning and munched her way through it, eyes fixed on the painting, drinking in the complicated build-up of brushstrokes that came together to create certainty in the mind of the spectator. She’d loved these paintings ever since she’d first encountered them in a small Scottish town where she’d been seconded to a branch of her previous employer. She’d escaped to the art gallery during the lunch hour and she’d been astounded by the effect they had on her. She’d hardly been able to credit that there was a whole collection of them in the very city where she lived. ‘We’re philistines,’ she’d said to Marco, insisting he visit the gallery with her. ‘Imagine not knowing this was right here on our doorstep.’

She knew that Marco didn’t share her enthusiasm for the paintings. But he liked to come with her, to share her excitement. And somehow, it gave her a sense of security to know he was sitting on one of the benches, playing Angry Birds on his phone while she moved among the paintings.

But it wasn’t Marco who was watching her that day. Marie ate her lunch, oblivious to the fact that she was being studied. On a similar bench in the next gallery, a man was apparently enjoying a pair of L. S. Lowry seascapes, a surprising contrast to the artist’s usual subject of working-class life. However, the target of his attention was quite different. He was intent on Marie, fixated on every move she made. She was a neat eater, he thought. You wouldn’t want just anyone eating their lunch in the midst of expensive artworks. But Marie was someone who could be trusted not to splash or drip or even leave a trail of crumbs behind her. He liked that about her. A woman who took care about how she ate in public would probably be fastidious in other ways. Not one of those sluts who couldn’t look after a man properly.

The world seemed to be full of women who were rubbish at being a woman. It took a man like him to see clearly that something needed to be done about that. The trouble was his foolish optimism. Three times now he’d been mistaken. He’d had such high hopes of the latest one, but it was already obvious she wasn’t capable of meeting his criteria. He’d been willing to deal with the consequences of his mistakes, but deep down, all he really wanted was a woman who would fulfil his dreams of womanhood. It wasn’t as if he asked too much. The failure was theirs. Every time. And it was his right to set things straight. He was doing the world a favour by weeding out the ones who would never be fit for purpose.

He looked across at Marie and smiled. This time, he’d chosen well. She was smart, well turned-out and she knew how to behave in public. If she showed the same ability in private, he’d be very happy.

Otherwise, he’d keep on searching. It wasn’t like it was a hardship.

T
he last time she’d been out to the Kenton Vale industrial estate, Paula was pretty sure the building that housed the private forensic lab had been a CD-pressing plant for the indie music business. But the world moved on. People downloaded music directly to their devices and criminal investigation was outsourced.

Gaining access would probably have been easier when it had been churning out CDs. In order to get inside, Paula had to display her ID to a camera, wait while it was checked against who knew what database, then press her right index finger against a small glass screen. By the time she had crossed the foyer to the reception desk, a laminated ID was waiting with her photo, her fingerprint and a QR code.

‘Nice to see you again,’ the woman behind the counter said with a friendly smile. ‘I see you’ve been promoted. Congratulations.’

Given that the company had occupied completely different premises and that her last visit had been months ago, the welcome made Paula deeply uncomfortable. It tripped over the border of what she considered normal behaviour and landed somewhere in the intersection of
1984
and
Blade Runner
. It occurred to Paula that even her choice of references dated her. There was no longer any possibility of her passing for young or cool. Not that she’d be mourning that any time soon.

She managed an uneasy smile and said, ‘I’m here to see Dr Myers.’

‘He’s expecting you.’ She gestured to a door behind her with a waist-high pillar beside it. ‘Hold your visitor ID against the glass panel and the door will open for you. There’s a cubicle on the right where you can suit up. Don’t forget the shoe covers. Dr Myers’ lab is the second on the left. But don’t worry if you forget.’ She pointed to the ID. ‘That’s the only door your ID will open.’

Paula found Dr Dave Myers in a white suit and gloves, filling tiny test tubes from a large syringe, his big brown hands moving with surprising delicacy. He glanced up when she walked in and nodded. ‘Gimme a minute, Paula, while I get this lot started.’ He finished what he was doing and slotted the tray of samples into a tall fridge. While she waited, Paula looked round the lab. She realised she had no idea what most of the equipment was for these days, nor which reagents and stabilisers did what. It was a relief to spot a microscope in the middle of a bench. It felt like Neanderthal technology alongside the other analytical tools.

Amidst the lab equipment were bagged and labelled evidence bags sitting in plastic boxes to avoid any possibility of cross-contamination. Paula recognised Nadia Wilkowa’s clothes from the crime scene; she was pleased to see they’d made it that far up Dave Myers’ priority list.

He closed the fridge and gestured to a lab stool. Paula sat down and he perched next to her, pulling his protective mask down. ‘New facial hair,’ she said, nodding towards a geometrically precise soul patch beneath his lower lip.

He pulled a face at her. ‘Male pogonotrophy is often culturally associated with virility and strength.’

‘But in your case, we’ll make an exception.’

‘You’re not growing more charming with age, Paula,’ he said, clutching at his heart in a mockery of pain.

They’d known each other for years. When Paula had first joined CID, Dave had worked in the police lab, analysing the assorted traces humans left behind them at crime scenes. DNA analysis was in its infancy; Dave and his colleagues were on the cusp of a series of biological breakthroughs that would transform what they could glean from criminal carelessness. It would spawn TV shows whose relationship to reality would be, as always when it came to anything to do with criminal investigation, tenuous at best. It would create unrealistic expectations in both prosecutors and the victims of crime. But it would also produce the kind of evidence that was impossible to argue against. It would take criminals off the streets and put them behind bars. Most importantly, it would promote a conviction among the population that justice was being better served.

All of which came at a price. And when budgets were squeezed to the point of strangulation, bean counters made ruthless decisions about which categories of crime merited forensic intervention. Within those categories, there were very clear guidelines governing how much a Senior Investigating Officer could spend. If those guidelines were exceeded – and Paula had been involved in MIT cases where they had been smashed to smithereens in the interests of saving lives and nailing killers – the money had to be found elsewhere. So now a key part of any serious criminal investigation was weighing up how little they could get away with in terms of forensic expenditure. It was hardly satisfactory, in Paula’s opinion. But nobody in the budget team much cared what the troops on the front line thought.

So, for officers like Paula, who had learned her priorities from Carol Jordan, cultivating relationships with individual forensic scientists and crime-scene investigators had become as essential as developing what the acronym-obsessed hierarchy termed CHIS – Covert Human Intelligence Sources. What used to be called ‘snouts’. A CSI who was your friend could be persuaded to go the extra mile for you, to cut bureaucratic corners in processing crime-scene material, even to suggest what might be fruitful lines of inquiry and evidence-gathering. When you actually liked them, it was a bonus.

And Paula liked Dave Myers. They’d discovered early on that they shared the same tastes in music and comedy. Dave, ever the scientist, used to prepare monthly spreadsheets of upcoming gigs and email them to Paula. They’d spend half a dozen evenings a month in scuzzy pubs and crummy music venues sampling whatever took their fancy, occasionally branching out into bigger auditoriums when their favourites hit the big time. They’d kept up the habit for years, until eventually Dave married Becky and became a dad. Then Paula had teamed up with Elinor. Now they met up as a foursome every couple of months at a comedy club or a more salubrious music venue than in the old days. Dave no longer did the spreadsheets, but he still had the knack of picking good nights out.

‘King Creosote,’ he said now, crossing his lanky legs and leaning one elbow on the upper knee.

‘Definitely. Email me the date.’

‘It’s at the Methodist Central Hall, so you’ll have to smuggle in your own drink.’

‘Not a problem. OK, Nadia Wilkowa. Where are we up to?’

‘Crime scene’s a mess of prints so we haven’t even bothered processing the DNA. It’s a waste of your money at this point, unless any of the prints throw up a person of interest. Obviously, if you hit a brick wall down the line, we’ll revisit that decision with your guv’nor. Based on past experience, DCI Fielding doesn’t like spending unless she’s pretty damn sure it’s going to move the case forward.’ He made an apologetic face. ‘She’s keen on clear-up but she likes to keep the top brass happy too.’

‘No bad thing these days.’ Paula pointed towards the evidence bags. ‘What about the clothes? Have you had a chance to examine them? We’re looking at an underlying sexual assault.’ She shrugged. ‘Might be something there?’

‘Harley went through them and I had a quick eyeball earlier, but I’m not hopeful. You know yourself how it goes when the killer’s abducted his victim. He’s usually careful and he usually gets her stripped as soon as possible. It’s not like a street assault, where you’ve got DNA all over everything.’

‘All the same… May I?’ She nodded towards the bags.

‘As long as you’re gloved and masked,’ Dave said. While Paula pulled a mask on, he brought over the bagged-up clothes, then turned back to his bench and started checking some bar charts on his computer.

Item by pathetic item, Paula went through the clothes. It looked as if Dave’s assessment was correct. There was no obvious sign of disturbance or of unexpected staining. The last item out of its bag was a fitted dark navy jacket with a line of small buttons up the front. It was clearly not new, but Paula recognised the signs of someone who took care of her clothes. There were no obvious stains on the front of the jacket and the buttons were all firmly attached. The inside of the collar was worn but clean, the lining intact though sagging a little along the seams. Finally, she went to check the cuffs for stains. What she found startled her. ‘Did you notice this, Dave?’

He looked up sharply, his brown eyes narrowing in a frown. ‘Did I notice what?’

‘There’s a button missing on the left jacket cuff. Look, there’s six on the right sleeve, but only five on the left.’

‘I never counted,’ he said, peering at the two sleeves where she’d laid them side by side on the bench. ‘Harley did the preliminary pass, I only took a very quick look.’ He took a magnifying glass from a drawer in the bench and studied the fabric. Then he turned the sleeve inside out and examined it. ‘There’s still some threads left, pulled through to the inside. That suggests a recent event, if she wore this jacket regularly.’

‘She didn’t have many clothes. Even if she rotated them regularly, she’ll have worn this once or twice a week. So maybe this button came off when she was taken? Either in a struggle, or just the process of him getting her into his vehicle? What do you think?’

‘It’s possible.’ As he spoke, Dave was reaching for a box of cotton swabs. ‘And if there was a struggle…’

Paula finished the thought. ‘Then maybe there’s some blood.’

‘Exactly.’ He scanned the shelf above his work station and took down three bottles.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘A Kastle-Meyer test. To see if we’ve got any latent bloodstains. It’s very accurate and you only need a trace for it to work.’ He opened one bottle and dipped the swab in the liquid. ‘Ethanol first. Pure alcohol, Paula. But not for the Methodist Central Hall. We use it to break down the cell walls and release the stain. Makes the test more sensitive.’ He rubbed the swab over the threads on the inside sleeve and then took a second swab and applied it to the material on the outside.

The second bottle had a rubber bulb and dropper built into the cap. Dave added a globule of the contents to each swab. ‘Phenolphthalein reagent,’ he said. ‘And finally, a single drop of what the laydeez use to bleach their moustaches. Hydrogen peroxide.’

‘Don’t be mean, you – holy shit, it’s turned pink. That means blood, doesn’t it?’

Dave nodded, a rueful smile on his face. ‘It does. And how crap does that make me look, that it takes a plod to come into my lab and spot what my highly paid crew has missed?’ Dave tried to sound as if he was taking it lightly, but Paula could tell he was genuinely pissed off.

‘Like you said, Dave, you’d only given it a preliminary once-over. Someone would have picked it up down the line. All I’ve done is speed things up a bit.’

‘Which DCI Fielding will be pleased about. We’ll get on this straight away, Paula. You’ll have a full sample and a database search tomorrow morning.’

‘Thanks, Dave. Oh, and I meant to say, Grisha thinks the killer might have used a taser on her. Could you check for any bloodstains on her clothes on the right shoulder, the left thigh and the stomach in the navel area?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Now she tells me. I’ll get somebody on it and see what we can come up with. Go on, get out of here before you end up busting the budget.’

Paula grinned. ‘It’ll be worth it when we catch the bastard.’

‘Save it for Fielding,’ Dave said. ‘Times like these, I bet you miss Carol Jordan.’

Paula’s good humour vanished, banished by his words. ‘Every day. Every bloody day.’

The hours had passed in a blur of pain and discomfort. Sometimes Bev had drifted off into a kind of sleep, only to jerk into consciousness when the centre of hurt shifted and sent a new bolt of agony shooting through her nervous system. At one point, the pain in her head had been so intense it had morphed into nausea and she’d retched and coughed bile over her legs. Normally so fastidious, she had reached a stage beyond disgust and she didn’t even try to shift away from the puddles of vomit.

When the light came back, it was just another source of distress, stabbing her eyes and making them water. The taser was almost a relief because it was so all-encompassing a sensation. She really didn’t care when he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out of her white coffin.

The shock of the freezing spray from the hosepipe smacked her back into consciousness as nothing else had done. All at once, Bev was herself again, her fight and determination reawakened by the sharp cold needles of water. She struggled on to hands and knees, squinting in a vain attempt to see past the deluge to the figure behind it. She screamed in rage, struggling to get to her feet.

He kicked her in the head so hard she felt her jaw separate from her skull, a tearing crack that made her recoil into a whimpering heap. Before she knew what was happening, he had rolled her in polythene sheeting, fastened it tight with packing tape and dumped her in the boot of her own car.

Hardly able to breathe, terrified and driven mad with pain, Bev McAndrew made her last journey. This time, when the light came back, she didn’t even notice. And that was the closest she came to mercy.