‘We don’t need to go in, you know,’ Heck said. ‘We could go for a drink somewhere. Just to unwind. Can’t hurt … we’re both wrecked.’
‘No.’ She gave him a studied sidelong glance. ‘I don’t think that would be smart. Because if we go for a drink together, the way I’m feeling right now … this time it’s me who might jump on you. And like I said before, that wouldn’t be good for either of us.’
She climbed from the car and closed the door.
‘Speak for yourself,’ Heck said under his breath.
‘Heck!’ Garrickson yelled across the MIR.
The DCI was seated in Gemma’s chair, but he didn’t look especially comfortable; if anything he looked harassed. His tie was uncharacteristically loose and his jacket had been tossed into a corner; his attention was divided between various forms splattered across the desk and his open laptop.
‘What’ve you got in your diary for today?’ he asked without glancing up.
‘We’re working our way through the staff at the zoo,’ Heck replied. ‘I thought it might help to draw up a list of ex-staff too. Anyone who’s been and gone recently.’
‘Good idea. Stick it in the log and give it to someone else. I’ve just had a call from DI Kane in the Leeds Incident Room.’
‘Okay?’ Heck didn’t like the sound of this.
‘He’s got another corpse for us.’
‘Oh, Jesus …’
‘But personally, I’m not sold on this one.’ Garrickson swung his laptop around.
Heck stared down at more grainy crime scene footage, this time with a West Yorkshire Police insignia in its top right-hand corner. The quality was so poor that at first it was difficult to see what exactly was going on. The harsh glare of lights didn’t help, while water was dripping from some gantry overhead. By the looks of it, a ragged figure lay huddled in foetal fashion amid a mass of crumpled, rain-soaked cardboard. Its head resembled a soggy shoebox squashed out of shape, but the blood that drenched it had turned black.
‘This was shot in Manningham, Bradford, about two hours ago,’ Garrickson said. ‘Some tramp’s had his head bashed in with a stone.’
‘Doesn’t sound like one of ours,’ Heck replied.
‘My thoughts too. But local plod have told Kane they think this might be the place where the Jane Doe in the crocodile pool got abducted from. Seems the clothing we circulated is very similar …’ he glanced at a notebook, ‘to that worn by a local tom called Chantelle Richards. She went missing from her normal pitch with a mate called Gracie Allen the best part of a month ago.’
‘And this is the pitch?’
‘Sounds like it. I suppose it’s possible this poor sod saw whoever took the two girls and got his head caved in as a result …’
Heck nodded. This was worth looking into. ‘Good job Ben Kane’s on the spot.’
Garrickson switched his computer off. ‘Ben Kane’s taken charge on our behalf. I’ve scanned him over the dental X-rays we took from the crocodile girl. He’s taken them to a local clinic where this Chantelle Richards used to go for health check-ups. But Kane’s already DSIO on the Father Christmas murder. So he can’t do it all himself.’
Heck knew what was coming next. ‘I’m guessing you want me over there?’
Garrickson sat back. ‘Why not? You’re our Mr Roving Commission … or so everyone keeps telling me.’ He scooped up the documents on the table – Heck recognised them as fax sheets – and shoved them across in no particular order. ‘Here’s the necessary paperwork. Chop fucking chop, sergeant … we’ve got some killers to catch!’
Though Bradford wasn’t far away in real terms, about fifty miles – and the M62 motorway ran straight over there, rising and falling like a rollercoaster as it breasted the high Pennine moors – the traffic was sluggish, and it got worse. As Heck crossed Rockingstone Moss in snail-like fashion, a thunderstorm broke. Clouds so pregnant with rain they were bruised a livid green and purple, split open amid blistering flashes of lightning, and a cataclysmic downpour commenced, drumming on vehicle roofs, thrashing on windscreens. The tussocky moorland grass lay flat beneath its onslaught; soon there was several inches of surface-water on the road.
Heck finally entered West Yorkshire’s second largest city several hours after he should have done, in early afternoon. Still the rain teemed down, drenched pedestrians dashing across the gridlocked streets, sheltering beneath brollies or briefcases. Heck’s sat-nav at least was unaffected by the elements, and finally brought him to the correct coordinates, a decrepit district of empty lots and condemned properties. But so many local police vehicles, both uniform and CID, were already crammed into the narrow side-streets here that he had to park about half a mile away. He zipped himself into his anorak, pulled up the hood and headed along an alley running between two rows of boarded-up terraced houses. In the near-distance blue lights flickered on the underside of a decayed railway viaduct.
DI Ben Kane’s usual ‘lecture hall’ garb was hidden beneath an all-enveloping sou’wester. He was waiting at the crime scene’s outer cordon, on a cobbled backstreet jammed between a derelict mill and the viaduct, the extensive area beneath which was a forest of rain-sodden trash: dumped fridges, car wrecks, broken furniture, and rotted, mould-covered mattresses.
‘Where’s everyone else?’ Kane said, seeing that Heck was alone.
‘Who else were you expecting?’ Heck replied, glancing over the tape; thanks to the big arc-lights West Yorkshire had set up under the gantry, the tramp’s motionless body was visible even from a distance of thirty yards.
‘You’re kidding me, right?’ Kane said. He indicated various men and women, presumably West Yorkshire officers, some in Tyvek, others hatted and coated, standing in watchful silence under any bit of shelter they could find. ‘This lot already think we’re a bunch of fucking idiots.’
‘They’ve been reading the newspapers too, have they?’ Heck said.
‘They hardly need to. They’re waiting to find out whether we want this or not, so they can process the scene. I don’t think they were expecting to wait all day.’
Heck nodded at the corpse. ‘He’s in no rush, is he?’
‘Very funny. The point is we still can’t pronounce whether it’s ours or theirs five hours on. And when I ask for some assistance, I get one man.’
‘We have a few other victims,’ Heck reminded him. ‘Time of death?’
‘Doctor reckons around twenty days ago.’
‘Same night this Chantelle Richards went missing?’
‘There or thereabouts.’
‘Anything back on the X-rays?’
‘Not yet. The medical centre where I sent them … it’s a kind of walk-in place. A lot of street people get fixed up there. Going like a chippie twenty-four-seven.’
‘Well we can’t make living patients wait for dead ones.’ Heck glanced around. ‘I can see this is the arsehole of Bradford, but it shouldn’t have taken someone three weeks to find this poor bastard.’
‘He was wrapped up in that box,’ Kane said. ‘Could have been there a lot longer, but West Yorkshire turned up here when two local toms spotted a Crimestoppers flyer concerning the crocodile pool girl, and thought they recognised the clothing. They decided they hadn’t seen these two mates of theirs, Chantelle Richards and Gracie Allen, for quite some time and reported it.’ He handed over two documents in clear plastic envelopes. ‘Here are their witness statements. Apparently, this was Richards’ and Allen’s regular pitch, so West Yorkshire came and had a poke around, and lo and behold …’
Heck glanced across the waste-ground beneath the railway. ‘What about the other dossers? Did no one else see anything – the girls being abducted, this fella getting his head smacked in?’
‘Fuck’s sake, Heck! I only found out about this a couple of hours ago, and I’m supposed to be running the Incident Room in Leeds. I haven’t got the time or the men to go scouring the streets for homeless lowlives who may know something. That’s why I’d hoped her ladyship might have sent a team over.’
‘Do either of the missing women have families?’
Kane again consulted his notes. ‘Chantelle Richards does. She’s got two kids, but she doesn’t live with them. They’re officially in the care of her mother.’
‘Have they been shown pictures of the clothing?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do they even know she’s been reported missing?’
‘Course they do. Well, the mother does. She’s probably worried sick.’
‘Gee, do you think …’
‘Look, I know what you’re getting at.’ Kane’s voice became a harsh whisper. ‘You reckon someone should get down there. Well, I’ll tell you now, if you think I’m going to be the one who tells some sweet old grandma and two tiny tots that their beloved mum may –
may
, Heck! – have been torn to pieces by a fucking crocodile, you can forget it!’
Heck could hardly upbraid him for that. It wasn’t the kind of duty any police officer would volunteer for. ‘What about Family Liaison?’
‘We haven’t got anyone on this side of the Pennines … the only victim we’ve got to date over here is Ernest Shapiro and he had no family.’
‘Can’t West Yorkshire help us?’
‘I can ask, I suppose.’
‘You haven’t already?’
‘Don’t even think about judging me, Heck! I’m up to my eyes as it is. Anyway, we need to wait for the results from the medical centre. With luck they’ll tell us it’s not Richards. Then we can hand this whole mess back to West Yorkshire and get on with what we’re supposed to be doing.’
‘Whether or not it turns out Chantelle Richards is the croc girl, the mere fact that she
may
be is a development. We can’t just not tell them anything because we’d rather someone else did it.’
Kane shoved his hands into his anorak pockets. ‘In that case, DS Heckenburg …’ his expression was bleak, ‘
you’re
the guy from head-office.’
Heck opted not to wait for the results from the medical centre, partly because it was only right that the family be updated, and partly because something else now nagged at him.
Above the city’s tower blocks and old, industrial rooftops, thunder still boomed in a prematurely darkened sky. Rain fell in sheets as he tried to negotiate a chaos of late-afternoon traffic, his headlight beams slashing through the downpour.
‘Garrickson,’ said the voice on the other end of the line.
‘It’s me,’ Heck shouted into his mobile, at the same time trying to follow his sat-nav to a place called Great Horton.
‘Anything?’ Garrickson asked.
Heck glanced at the witness statements. ‘The crocodile woman’s clothing has been identified by some of this missing girl’s fellow sex-workers. I mean, black stockings, denim skirt, pink high heels … ten-a-penny stuff individually, but when all taken together it’s a hell of a coincidence. I think this’ll turn out to be our girl, which means the dead tramp is ours too.’
There was a brief silence as Garrickson took this in, no doubt wondering how the hell they could operate an incident room in Bradford as well. ‘Shit … look, we need to be sure before we officially take charge.’
‘We will be soon. Sir, there’s something else.’
‘Go on.’
‘It may be too late for Chantelle Richards, but perhaps not for this other lass, Gracie Allen.’
‘Something to suggest she’s still alive?’
‘Nothing to suggest anything. She hasn’t shown up yet, but we can be damn sure she will at some point, and Christ knows what they’ll have done to her. We’ve got to try anything we can to head that off.’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘The only thing I can think of is we get Claire Moody to put a false story out. Lie to the press that we’ve got a couple of perps in custody and that they’re talking. It’s a long-shot, but it may frighten the rest of the gang into running before they can do any more harm.’
Garrickson contemplated this. ‘If we panic them, it might just make them kill the girl and dump her.’
‘They’re going to do that anyway.’
‘Obviously, I’ll need to run it by Detective Superintendent Piper first.’
‘You’d better do it quick, sir. These guys are working to their own timetable.’
‘I’ll try and get her now.’ Garrickson rang off.
Heck hadn’t bothered to mention that if the gang killed their second hostage because they’d been panicked into thinking the law was onto them, at least they might kill her quickly, without ritual or torture. It wouldn’t be much of an advantage to gain for the poor woman, but it would be better than the alternative.
Ten minutes later he arrived at the home of Irene Richards, the missing prostitute’s mother. It was in a better-kept neighbourhood than the run-down slum where the two women had been abducted, but still comprised rows of old terraced housing, and under a leaden sky and lashing rain, looked dismal and decayed. The terrace in which Irene Richards lived fronted onto a small park, though even that was a storm-swept wilderness.
A narrow paved footway led along the front of the row. Irene Richards lived at number nine. Warm lighting was visible inside. Just as Heck tapped on the red-painted front door, his mobile rang.
‘It’s Kane,’ said a distant, despondent voice.
‘Yeah?’
‘Just got that medical report. Those X-rays are a match.’
The front door opened.
‘Did you hear me, Heck?’ Kane said into his ear. ‘The girl from the crocodile pool is definitely Chantelle Richards.’
Heck managed to focus on the person standing in the doorway. As Kane had forecast, she looked like a sweet old lady: probably just past sixty, wearing slippers and a cardigan over slacks and a sweater. She had neat white curls and wore a polite but enquiring smile. Two pretty children, a girl and a boy, perhaps two and three years old, stood one to either side of her, each holding their grandma’s hand. The girl was in a flowered dress and buckled shoes; the boy wore a t-shirt with a print of Donald Duck on it.
As Gemma descended the stairwell from Joe Wullerton’s office at New Scotland Yard, she felt a tad more upbeat than she had done earlier. That meeting could actually have gone much worse. At least she still had a job and a team, though both still felt as if they were hanging by a thread. Outside, thunder rumbled; through every window she saw a London sky so grey it was almost green, the effect of which was to create an eerie, shadowy gloom inside the building. Jags of lightning sparked in the distance. Rain bounced from the encircling rooftops.