Authors: Rachel Abbott
He left the tent and walked about ten metres away, pulling the mask from his face. He stared away from the station into the city of Manchester beyond, seeing nothing. He heard steps behind him and a rustle of Tyvek
.
‘What do you think?’ Carl said
.
Tom shook his head slowly from side to side
.
‘If I didn’t know it was impossible, I would say the same girl had been killed twice.’
17
The rest of the day had dragged for Maggie. She knew she should be doing something, but she didn’t know what. She felt helpless, and alone. In the end she sat with Lily for a while mindlessly watching her daughter’s favourite film, her silent phone on the sofa beside her. She had left the room for just a moment to get the charger from her bedroom when she heard the unmistakable ringtone of her mobile.
She turned and flew down the stairs, but she hadn’t allowed for Lily.
‘Hello. Lily speaking,’ she heard a high-pitched voice say.
‘Yes, she’s here. I’ll get her for you, if you want,’ Lily added, turning to beam at her mummy, whom she clearly expected to be overjoyed by her daughter’s grown-up telephone manner. Maggie tried her best to smile at her as she took the phone.
‘Who is it?’ she mouthed to Lily.
‘A man,’ Lily answered loudly, turning back to the television.
Maggie swallowed. Not Duncan, then. She took the phone out into the hall and sat down on the second stair. The phone said the number had been withheld, just like last time.
‘Hello,’ she said softly.
‘Cute kid, Maggie. You’ve got her well trained. You just need to get her to ask who it is next time, so you don’t have to whisper to her so obviously.’
Maggie felt her muscles relax.
‘Frank, it’s you,’ she said unnecessarily, recognising the voice of the psychologist. ‘Did you call earlier?’
‘Yes, but there was no answer. Are you okay? You sound a bit croaky.’
Maggie tried to clear her throat of tears. It hadn’t been Duncan before, and the thought was unbearable.
‘I’m fine. It’s such a crappy mobile signal here. Do you want me to call you back on the landline?’
‘No, I can hear you. As long as you really are okay.’
‘I’m fine, thanks. What can I do for you?’
‘I wanted to talk to you about your number-one weasel client.’
Maggie should have been seeing Alf Horton, the old-lady batterer, before he had to go in front of the magistrates, but she hadn’t been able to make it.
‘Sorry I couldn’t be there, but I can’t get out of our road. We’re snowed in here.’ Maggie glanced out of the window. In truth the road was still covered with snow, but it had turned slushy and several people had managed to escape from their cul-de-sac – as, under normal circumstances, she would have done.
‘Your bosses sent one of your colleagues. I watched the interview. The guy’s not as good as you, and Alf’s backtracking like mad. He’s now saying he had nothing to do with the attacks on any of those women.’
Maggie sighed. She could really do without this.
‘We all know he did it, so when he didn’t deny it yesterday I thought it was only a matter of time before he confessed,’ said Maggie. ‘If he’s going for a not-guilty plea, though, it means we’ve got hours of his delightful company to look forward to while we work on his defence.’
Frank laughed and tried to engage Maggie in a discussion on the case for a few more minutes, but her mind was far away from Alf Horton.
‘Are you sure you’re okay, Maggie? You don’t sound yourself at all.’
Maggie took a deep breath. ‘It’s just Horton. I wish to God I didn’t have to defend him.’
‘You can refuse. You would be within your rights, you know.’
It was tempting, but she couldn’t do it. It would definitely set back her promotion hopes – not that they seemed relevant at this moment.
She tried to draw the conversation to an end, but Frank seemed in a talkative mood.
‘The police are going to apply for a forty-eight-hour extension before they formally charge him,’ he said, interrupting her thoughts, ‘which means you’ll have the joy of talking to him again. Will I see you tomorrow?’
She had to say yes. She had no idea whether she would make it to the office the following day but couldn’t think of an excuse. Ending the call, she ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back off her face. She felt she was drowning. Elbows on knees, she rested her chin on her cupped hands, unable to get her thoughts and fears under control.
Sitting there was achieving nothing though, so pulling herself together she pushed herself up off the stair and opened the sitting room door. ‘Lily, five minutes, sweetheart, and you’ll have to turn that off.’
‘Can I see what happens, Mummy?’ Maggie was tempted to remind her daughter that she knew
exactly
what happened next and could recite almost the whole film verbatim. But why bother if her daughter was happy. She had the feeling that unhappiness was waiting around the corner, ready to bite, so she would let her have any happy moment she could.
‘When I call you, tea’s ready, and you need to come. But you can pause it, if you want,’ she said.
She went towards the study, surprised it was silent in there. She pushed open the door.
Josh was kneeling on the floor, staring at the television – but there was no sign of a game on the screen, only the face of a woman. Josh was holding the remote.
‘Josh? What are you watching?’
Her son spun round, a look of something like guilt on his face. What did he have to feel guilty about?
‘Look, Mummy,’ he said, his voice tight with emotion. ‘She does look like you, doesn’t she? I was right.’
Maggie turned her attention to the screen. Staring back at her was a drawing – a realistic one – of a woman with long dark hair and red lipstick, wearing a shirt with a black and white geometric pattern. She had to admit the woman did look strangely like her.
‘Yes, she does a bit. Who is she?’
‘She’s the woman who was on Daddy’s phone yesterday. She’s on the news.’
Maggie felt a thud of fear deep in her chest.
‘Are you sure, Josh? It’s just a drawing.’
Josh nodded, his eyes round with alarm. ‘Yes, but it’s her shirt. That’s what the woman on Daddy’s phone was wearing.’
There was something about the face – something that made Maggie want to rush over to the television and turn it off right now. But she couldn’t let her son know how she was feeling.
‘There’s nothing to worry about, darling. Perhaps that’s why she was on Daddy’s phone. Maybe he’d seen something on the news about her, or perhaps somebody sent him the picture thinking it was me.’
Josh shook his head with determination.
‘No. That’s not right. She wasn’t in the news yesterday. They said the picture has just been released. And anyway this is a drawing. On Daddy’s phone it looked like a photo.’
Soft fingers of dread were crawling up Maggie’s spine.
‘So what’s she on the news for? What’s she done?’
‘She hasn’t done anything, Mummy. She’s dead.’
18
The girl in the drawing looked very real – a bit too real to Tom, who had so recently been looking at the same face on the autopsy table. The artist had done a good job, and now they could only wait and see if the picture’s publication in the papers and on the local news would bring any results.
Tom had already phoned Leo’s family to let them know the woman in the picture wasn’t her, and he had also made a quick call to his daughter, Lucy. She had come to know Leo well during the time Tom had been seeing her, and the drawing was so lifelike he didn’t want Lucy to see it on the television and think, even for a moment, that it might be Leo. He also had to prepare his daughter for the fact that he might not be able to see her that weekend. She was used to him having to change arrangements whenever some serious crime or other took over his life, but he hated it.
‘I’m sorry, Luce,’ he said. ‘As soon as this is over, though, I’ll have a word with your mum and see what we can sort out.’
Lucy had been quiet, and for a moment he had thought she was upset. When she spoke, though, he could sense reluctance to tell him something.
‘Actually, Dad, I was going to call you. I asked Mum to, but she said it was up to me to tell you.’
‘That’s okay, sweetheart. Just say it, whatever it is.’
‘You won’t be cross, will you?’
Tom laughed. ‘I seriously doubt it, Lucy. Try me.’
‘Well, the thing is that I’ve been picked for the school swimming team, and we have practice on a Saturday morning. I haven’t said yes yet, because I know it means I wouldn’t be able to see you for the whole weekend.’
Given the number of times he had had to let her down, Tom didn’t think he deserved this level of consideration.
‘Of course you’ve got to be in the team! I’m proud of you. Would it be okay if I came to watch when I’m not working? Maybe I could pick you up afterwards. Do you think that would work?’
‘Oh Dad, that would be brilliant,’ she said, and he could hear how pleased she was.
They talked for a few more minutes and, promising to call her again over the weekend, Tom hung up and went in search of Becky.
‘Becky, can you get someone to pull some old files out for me, please?’ he asked.
Tom saw Becky’s puzzled frown. She still didn’t seem to have entirely recovered from the morning’s upset, and her face had remained slightly flushed ever since, in spite of Tom making it clear that he fully understood the conclusion she had leapt to.
‘What old files?’ she asked.
‘We had two murders twelve years ago. Two girls were killed in fairly quick succession, both from Manchester University.’
‘Do you think they’re connected to this case?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
In all honesty, Tom didn’t know what to think. He remembered his shock when he had seen the second of the two dead girls all those years ago – girls whose murders he had been tasked with solving. The second girl had looked so similar to the first that it had knocked him for six. It almost felt like some kind of sick joke, but when later he saw pictures of the two girls alive and animated they actually weren’t that alike. The same blonde shoulder-length hair and the same blue eyes had seemed enough, though, when their faces were expressionless in death. There was something particularly sinister about the murders, as if it was the girls’ physical appearance that had got them killed, and the two abandoned locations – Mayfield station and Pomona docks – had somehow made the crimes feel even more disturbing.
The woman found this morning had no physical resemblance to those girls, but the three lines cut deep into the flesh of her thigh couldn’t be a coincidence. They had suspected twelve years ago that it might be the start of a serial killing spree, but the murders – as far as they were aware – had stopped. So did the three cuts signify that this was the same killer, and if so, why start again now?
In the original enquiry they had interviewed vast numbers of people, but there wasn’t a single tangible clue worth following up. The two murdered girls appeared to be totally
unconnected, other than by their physical appearance. They were both students at Manchester University, but then so were thirty-odd thousand other kids.
He explained the background to Becky.
‘The first girl was called Sonia – I can’t remember her surname. The other was Tamsin Grainger. The reports are thorough – most of them were written by a trainee detective. A young lady by the name of Philippa Stanley.’
Becky looked up from where she was scribbling notes, her eyebrows raised. ‘You are kidding me?’
‘Nope. She was originally on the fast-track programme, heading for the heights of Assistant Chief Constable or something like that. But her stint working with me gave her a taste for being a detective. She got no end of stick from our DCI at the time, who was a misogynist tosser, but she stuck with it and opted to stay in CID.’
Tom knew that Becky was aware of Philippa’s period as his inspector when he first became a DCI, but she hadn’t known the full history before. It gave him a certain edge when it came to dealing with Philippa, although he never forgot that she was now his boss and he respected her.
‘What do you want me to look for in particular in the files?’ Becky asked.
‘To be honest, I don’t know. Until we know who our latest victim is, it’s going to be difficult to find any links, but at least if we’ve dug out the information we’re ready to go as soon as we’ve got an ID.’
‘Okay,’ Becky said, pushing her chair back as if ready to leave.
‘Are you all right now?’ Becky flushed. ‘Look, it’s been a shit day. Why don’t you get one of your team to call you if we get any info on our victim and get off home. You’ve been at it since the early hours. They can hold the fort for now. Go and see Mark and get some rest.’
‘No chance,’ Becky said, standing up to leave the room. ‘I’ve still got bloody Alf Horton to sort out.’
‘We didn’t get the expected confession, then?’
‘No, sadly not. DS Blake conducted the interview yesterday and apparently Horton gave every indication that he was ready to admit to his sins. Blake said Horton’s solicitor looked as if she was going to be sick as the crimes were listed. It would have saved a stack of work and money if he had said, "Yes – I did it".’
‘Who’s his solicitor?’ Tom asked.
‘A new woman. She’s supposed to be a very good defender. I suppose she’s going to come up with something clever to get him off.’
Tom smiled. ‘That’s her job.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Becky gave a slight shrug of her shoulders as she opened the door, knowing this was par for the course. ‘I don’t envy her, though. Fancy knowing you might be putting a bastard like that back on the streets.’
19
The picture on the TV in the study was still paused. Maggie had sent Josh to wash his hands before going to the table, but she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off the screen. She rewound the news article. The woman had been found dead that morning, several hours after Duncan had apparently received a photo of her. Josh might have been wrong about the photo, but the drawing was lifelike and Maggie could see her own likeness to the victim. If Josh had caught a glimpse and seen the dark hair and the red lipstick it made sense that he had thought it was her. The dead woman’s geometric top was distinctive and unusual too. Josh was such an observant child she didn’t think he would have made a mistake. This was the woman in the photo sent to Duncan’s phone.