High-Wired (16 page)

At that point they were ejected from his room as he needed to rest. Hardy observed that it was just as well that the man had been involved in an accident, or he might be involved in a murder case by now, but she wished she had been able to prise his local contact out of him, and who was on that hit list.

‘I’d bet my shirt on it being our first two murder victims, and somehow I’ve got to tie up that abduction and murder with it too. I know it seems unlikely, but I can feel it in my water that they’re connected.’

‘It could have been a list of local goons,’ suggested Lauren. ‘Why don’t we get those men in again and re-question them? We can leave the driver to the Drugs Squad.’

‘Good idea.’

As they went to leave the ward they were approached by a nurse.

‘Yes, Sister,’ said Hardy, ‘what can we do for you?’

‘Are you the two detectives that came in to question our unconscious man?’

‘We are, indeed.’

‘I thought so,’ said the nurse, ‘only, I’ve just heard from one of my colleagues that that little girl that was so seriously injured in the other car involved in the accident …’

‘Yes, go on,’ Hardy prompted her.

‘They’ve done tests for brain death. I know it seems a bit early, but there really seemed so little hope for her, and the results have just come through. I’m afraid she is brain-dead, and her father is being asked to come in to discuss when – and if, I suppose – we turn off her life support machine. Poor man, to lose his wife and his daughter so tragically.’

‘That’ll be another charge of causing death by dangerous driving,’ commented DI Hardy in her official voice, her face as hard as marble.

Back in the car, Hardy dissolved noisily into tears and, when her sergeant asked her what was the matter, she replied, ‘It was only a few days ago that my own son was in there, and we didn’t know whether he was going to live or die. I’ve been so lucky, and I should stop feeling sorry for myself.’

‘Nonsense. You’ve been through a dreadful time.’

‘So have you,’ retorted the DI, trying her hardest to pull herself together. ‘Now, describe to me how you got those two lovely black eyes,’ and she sang the last four words, making Groves simultaneously smile and wince with pain. ‘Come on, let’s stop off at mine for a very quick coffee so you can tell me in complete privacy.’

CHAPTER NINE

As Olivia was spluttering with rage at what Kenneth had done and said, simultaneously making coffee – the good stuff this time – Lauren noticed that her boss walked with a slight limp that she had never observed before.

‘You didn’t fall over last night when we got back, did you?’ she asked.

‘Whatever makes you think that?’ Olivia was obviously surprised at the question.

‘Because you were rather pissed last night, pardon my language, and today you seem to be limping a bit. I just wondered if, in the hurry to sober up and get back to the station, you might have twisted your ankle.’

‘If only it were that simple,’ she replied. ‘It only happens when I’m very tired, and after the last few days that I’ve had, followed by a night on the lash and then being called back into work to deal with another grisly murder, you can imagine that I’m not as fresh as a daisy.’

‘Go on, then,’ Lauren urged her.

‘I got shot. Simple as that.’

‘You were shot?’ Lauren’s eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline, causing her considerable facial pain. ‘So what happened?’

‘I’m surprised some of the older staff haven’t told you. It was back when I was a PC, and the drugs squad was looking for volunteers for a raid on a notorious club on the seafront – it’s not there now. It burnt down a few years ago. Anyway, PC Muggins here volunteers, we went in mob-handed – stupid really – and some guy pulls out a gun, which we didn’t expect – we had no idea there were any firearms, not like nowadays when we know there usually will be. The guy with the gun shouts a warning and then I get this burning feeling in my calf.

‘He said he was aiming for the floor just as a warning, but does my leg look like flooring? It’s not as if I was sylph-like and he’d hardly noticed my slender existence. I was the same tub I am now. Anyway, that scared the life out of his mates – and him, incidentally, and he threw the gun to the floor. We got our arrests, and I got rather a lot of sick leave and a bowl of fruit – and, of course, this slight limp when I’m knackered.’

‘That must have been awful.’

‘Not as awful as having my husband punch me on the nose because my job was the reason for his infidelity, as if you ought to apologise to him for what you put him through in just having a life. God, if I ever meet this husband of yours, I think I’ll floor him.’

‘You won’t get a chance. I think they’re going tonight, to spend a night in the airport hotel, and they can’t get out of my house soon enough for my liking.’

‘You’re very brave. I couldn’t bear it if that happened between me and Hal.’

‘It’s not bravery, it’s the realisation that our marriage has been fatally flawed for years now, and that, although his salary’s been useful, I’d rather not have him attached to it. It’s been a sham for so long, I can’t even remember when I got tired of being used like a sex toy every night without complaint.’

‘Every night?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m surprised you haven’t castrated him.’

‘I have thought of it. I’m probably the only woman in the world who looks forward to her periods, just to be left in peace for a while.’

‘Jesus!’

PCs Franklin and Shuttleworth were dispatched to round up Messrs. Edwards, Stoner, Lord and Trussler, while Hardy and Groves went to the Laceys’ house to question the parents further. Although the parents had provided the police with her last school photograph, DI Hardy didn’t think this was really representative of how she may have looked on the last night of her life, particularly bearing in mind what had been found in her bedroom.

The two officers came armed with some photographs that had been printed from those on the girl’s computer, most of them selfies or shots with groups of friends, and they needed her parents to identify the friends that she usually hung about with, and who might have either been with her or egged her on to something she might not normally do.

It was not something that either of them looked forward to, but they were grateful to the young PC, Teri Friend, who had proved to have a real gift for breaking bad news and comforting those who were bereaved. At least they hadn’t had to do that.

When they arrived, the door was answered by PC Friend herself, who had stayed on to keep the Laceys company in the first hours of their loss. She knew she was a sounding board, and was excellent at dealing with anything that was thrown at her – they could either talk about their lost loved one, or rant on about the unfairness of it all.

‘Come in,’ she invited them in a hushed tone, calling into the living room, ‘DI Hardy and DS Groves are here to speak to you, Mr and Mrs Lacey.’ Both parents were huddled together on the sofa, their arms round each other, tears still running down their faces, but they were silent in their extremity of shock and grief, and didn’t even look up when the two new arrivals entered the room.

‘Sir, madam, we’d like to ask you a few questions about your daughter’s friends and the day she disappeared,’ DI Hardy began.

‘We’ve told you everything we know. We haven’t got anything else to say,’ replied the father, looking up from his wife’s shoulder.

‘We’ve brought some photographs printed from your daughter’s computer, pictures of Genni with some of her friends, and we wondered if you could identify them for us, so that we might start questioning them to see if anyone was with her the day she disappeared, or if someone egged her on – maybe dared her – to do something risky and out of character. I wonder if you’d be good enough to take some time to look at them?’

The DI handed a group of photos to Mrs Lacey, and perched on the edge of a chair, Groves following suit so that she didn’t stand out. As the bereaved mother began to sob, the sergeant got out her notebook and Hardy put a small tape recorder on the coffee table with a mumbled, ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

As Mrs Lacey began to cry as if her heart would break, her husband said, ‘I think we can tell you who most of these girls are, but our Genni’s almost unrecognisable under all that make-up.’

‘We did wonder about that. She doesn’t look at all like she looked in that school photo, does she? Perhaps you would be kind enough to give us permission to use one of those we have printed, to put it out with another appeal for any information about sightings.’

Lauren noted down three names as being those of her current best friends. ‘But you know what teenage girls are like – this week’s enemy is last week’s best friend,’ added Abi shakily through her tears. ‘There are some others here, but she’d either fallen out with them recently, or wasn’t particularly friendly with them anymore. They’re just on the periphery of her group now.’

’You said she was wearing a T-shirt and jeans when she went out?’

‘Yes, but she had her rucksack with her. After seeing what was in her bedroom, she could have had anything in there … but surely you know what she was wearing, if you’ve found her … her body.’

‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Lacey.’

‘My God, you’re not saying she was naked when she was found, are you? And had she been interfered with?’

PC Friend went over to the couple and took the spare space on the sofa so that she could comfort Mrs Lacey, who had once again disintegrated into heartbroken sobs. ‘My poor little baby. My poor little girl.’

‘Thank you for these names. We’ll go to their homes and question them, and we’ll let you know if we find out anything else. Thank you very much for your co-operation in your time of loss.’ Olivia hated the platitudes that had attached themselves to loss and death, but knew that they had to be observed and paid lip service to, or she might be accused of being flint-hearted and uncaring.

Franklin and Shuttleworth had had a bit of a game laying hands on the men who were wanted for questioning, but eventually they’d run them all to ground, Shuttleworth’s impressive build making sure that none of them tried to resist arrest. When they got their quarries back to the station, however, each of the men had insisted on having his solicitor present before they answered any questions. Having got their solicitors, however, they then said nothing more. This was still the situation when the DI and DS arrived there: the men sitting silently, with their cups of hot, stickily sweet tea, which they had been provided with courtesy of the duty officer.

Olivia and Lauren brought the broad figure of Shuttleworth to stand in the room with them while they taped the interviews, once the ‘briefs’ had arrived, and they questioned the men for the rest of the afternoon about what they had been doing on the evening in question, when Genni had disappeared, but to no avail.

They all told the same story: that they had been hanging around the town, popped into a couple of pubs for a drink, and then shared a takeaway. For some reason, the last bit of this group alibi seemed to amuse each one of them, but Hardy allowed that to lie for now.

Lauren had finally got the house to herself, and Ben Hardy had been allowed home from hospital to his parents’ home. Enquiries were ongoing in all three murders, as well as into the source of the drugs that had been found in Peter Hanger’s car, but Hanger himself had lapsed into a coma again, this time not an induced one, and they would have to bide their time.

There was a grim atmosphere in the station, with the unsolved crimes still hanging around, and even the town had taken on an air of wariness and fear, the streets being even more empty in the evenings than would usually have been expected of November. Pubs and clubs were under-attended, and parents kept a much closer eye on their teenage children for fear that whoever was out there hadn’t finished his grisly business yet.

It was into this atmosphere of apprehension and barely supressed horror that the news of another body arrived at the station. A local man who kept a fishing boat for pleasure had decided to take a trip to see if he could catch anything on a line. His boat had been stored inside a large unused boat shed, once part of the bustling local fishing community but now deserted and rotting. Once he’d got the boat into the main water he’d reached for the line from his metal mooring ring, and found a great resistance on the end of it. Someone had clearly tied something to the ring.

Instead of wasting time wondering what on earth could be tied to his ring, he yanked on it hard, eventually drawing forth a sack with what looked like the remains of a human head sticking out of it; one not very fresh and terribly nibbled and chewed. After throwing up his breakfast into the river, he immediately called 999 on his mobile and asked for the police.

There was a car at the scene inside ten minutes, and the sometime fisherman was told that a medic was on the way, along with a CSI team and CID. As they waited for reinforcements to arrive, the man, James Lister, now with a cool head since the contents of his stomach were dispensed with, said, ‘He’s gonna be a bugger to identify in that state, isn’t he? Have you not had anybody reported missing?’

The uniformed officers shrugged off the question and waited for their superiors to arrive. Their lot was just to keep schtum and monitor the situation, making sure that the scene wasn’t tampered with.

The pile of sodden remains on the ground was the only ugly thing in sight. It was a beautifully bright November morning, with a clear blue sky, the sun twinkling on the little wavelets of the river. The surrounding fields were covered with frost, making them shine like fields of jewels, and cobwebs appeared as delicate works of the finest filigree.

Into this almost perfect autumnal scene marched DI Hardy and DS Groves, originally rejoicing in the perfect day, but feeling the waves of trepidation wash over them as they approached the group of men on the bank. What had turned up now? They had been told there was a body in some sort of bag, but there had been no other concrete information. They had just been given the location and told to go out there.