Concrete Evidence (6 page)

Annie felt Stirling pulling them backwards like they were ragdolls. Time seemed to slow down to a standstill. She was about to turn and bite his head off when the bedroom windows exploded outwards. Thousands of tiny shards whistled past her. Tongues of orange flame reached out beyond the eaves blistering the guttering and an audible whoosh sucked the oxygen from the air. Thick black smoke and burning embers climbed skywards and the fire crackled loudly as it began to devour the house. “Move back!” the firemen screamed at the top of their voices. They sprinted past Annie like 100m finalists. Her reactions seemed painfully slow as she turned to run. Kathy was five metres in front of her, Stirling five metres behind. It took time to get his bulk moving at speed. As they reached the cordon, the fire reached a new intensity. She turned to look as the flames roared upwards. The heat was unbearable even at that distance and she raised her arm to shield her face.

“Tell me that Graham took all the evidence bags out with him,” Annie said panting. Kathy nodded, her mouth open gasping for air. She was about to speak again when an explosion rocked the building. Roof tiles were launched high into the air, leaving a ragged hole ten metres across. Annie was reminded of a volcano erupting. The chimney stack teetered and then collapsed into the hole with a thunderous crash to be replaced by a tower of flickering orange flames. Broken tiles, splinters of roof beams and nuggets of concrete began to fall from the smoky sky showering the onlookers with a deadly hailstorm.  

CHAPTER 7

Tod Harris stared at the lead story on page two of the Mirror
. H
is hands were shaking worse than before
. H
e could hardly hold his tea to his lips without spilling it.
T
he more he read, the worse he felt. There had been times over the last few days when he actually thought that he might get away with it. Lying on his sunbed, floating in the crystal clear pool or drinking ice cold beer and listening to music in the busy bars had all given him a false sense of security. He had felt that he could stay there forever, untouchable, invisible and safe from arrest but the newspaper article had shattered his illusions into smithereens.

“Here you go, handsome,” Gordon placed an oval shaped plate in front of him. It looked like a heart attack on a dish. “And here’s some toast,” he said leaving a rack of golden triangles. “If you eat all that up, you’re a pig!” he chuckled. He noticed the palour of Tod’s face and stopped smiling. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, are you okay?” he frowned and leaned toward him. “Are you feeling okay?”

Tod looked up from the paper with a blank expression on his face. His eyes seemed glassy and unfocused. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “What did you say?” He looked around and saw that some of the other diners were staring at him. That was all he needed. Tourists staring at his face. A face that would be splashed all over the newspapers when they realised what he had done. It might take a day or it might take a week but they would remember his face and when his mug-shot was all over the press, they would remember him from their holidays. He tried to pull himself together.

“You look terrible,” Gordon said kindly. “Too much to drink last night?”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s all it is,” Tod tried a smile but it turned into a sneer. He sat back and put the newspaper down next to his plate. “This looks good!” he commented a little too enthusiastically. “This would get a rhino back on its feet. It’s just what I need.”

“Do you want another orange juice?” Gordon smiled again. “The vitamin C will do you good and it’s on the house.” He held up his hand to stop any arguments. “To hell with the boat, another juice please, Gordon,” he shouted inside. “This wee man needs some energy inside him. Tuck in and I’ll bring your juice.”

Tod smiled thinly and picked up his knife and fork. His appetite had vanished but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He put the knife down and reached for the ketchup, zigzagging the red sauce across his eggs. He took a triangle of toast from a stainless steel rack and dipped into a bright yellow yolk. It popped and ran across his sausages. He took a bite and closed his eyes and wondered what the hell had happened that night. How could things have gotten so out of hand?     

CHAPTER 8

“The victim didn’t have a tattoo on her toe, Mrs Windsor,” Annie said calmly. She was sat in her car watching the fire brigade trying to get the inferno under control. The old lady had a gauze pad pressed to her head where a piece of debris had fallen from the sky and cut her scalp. A bloodstain the shape of Africa had seeped through. Ambulances were en route but Annie needed some answers before they arrived and began to take the injured away. “And her feet were much smaller than a size six.”

Mrs Windsor’s eyes widened and she shook her head. Tears stained her cheeks and a look of confusion set in. “I don’t understand,” she spoke quietly. “I gave the police officer a picture from my purse. Was she that badly hurt that you couldn’t identify the body from the photo?” Her voice was almost a whisper. Annie detected a privileged background in her accent. That might explain how a single woman could afford a new three bedroom house on a Special Constable’s wage.

“Photographs can be deceiving,” Annie lied. “That’s why we always ask for distinguishing marks, tattoos and the like.”

“I’m not stupid, Inspector.” Deep lines creased her face when she frowned. “It would be much simpler to use the photograph unless her face was so disfigured that it made it useless.”

Annie sighed and felt a little embarrassed, “I know you’re not stupid. I can’t talk about the details. The long and short of it is that the victim didn’t have the tattoo that you described on her toe.”

  “Are you telling me that Jayne is not dead?” her thin lips quivered as she spoke.

“No,” Annie said frankly. “I’m not telling you that at all but the victim in the bedroom was not Jayne.”

“Of course, you can’t say much more can you?” As she spoke, her hand touched her face, wrinkled by age and coloured with dark liver spots. She was a pretty woman for her years. There were deep lines at the corners of her eyes but her cheeks were smooth. Only her hands gave away clues to her age. Annie put her closer to sixty-five than fifty. “I don’t understand, Inspector.” She jumped visibly as the roof of the house collapsed in on itself. A deep rumble echoed across the street. Burning embers, smoke and steam spiralled skyward. “She could be in there couldn’t she?” Another tear broke free and rolled down her face. “Buried beneath all that rubble.”

Annie looked at the notes that the liaison officer had made. “Listen, Elsbeth,” she said. “May I call you that?”

“Beth,” she sniffed. “Everyone calls me Beth.”

“Okay, Beth. The facts are that the body we found didn’t have a tattoo and her feet were too small to be Jayne’s,” Annie explained. “The other thing to consider is that her car is missing. Can you think of any reason why it wouldn’t be parked on the drive?”

Beth thought about her comments and shook her head. “She didn’t drink so she never left it anywhere else.”

“Then the chances of her being in there,” Annie looked at the smouldering shell, “are very slim. We didn’t have a lot of time in there but a preliminary search was done by the responding officers. There was no sign of another victim.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good thing, Inspector,” Beth smiled thinly. Her eyes had intelligence behind them. “Whoever killed that poor woman probably took Jayne with them.” She watched Annie’s face for a reaction. “At least that’s what I would be thinking if I was in your position. She could be lying dead somewhere while we’re sat here discussing her couldn’t she?”

Annie nodded and sighed. “She could be but we don’t know that for a fact. A neighbour saw her going out on Saturday night. Who did Jayne socialise with?”

“Jayne didn’t have many friends,” Beth said staring at what was left of her daughter’s home. “Might be my fault that she was awkward around people.”

“How so?”

“I had her very late in life you see,” she explained. “I’d turned forty. Her father died when she was a baby, heart attack and I wrapped her in cotton wool. I was a little over protective.” A tear formed and spilled from her left eye. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and took a deep breath. “Do you have children?”

“No,” Annie smiled. “They’re not conducive with being a DI.” In her head she added ‘and now that I’m a one-eyed freak, I’m hardly likely to have much choice in the matter’ but she didn’t say it aloud.

“Yes that must be difficult to get a balance.” Her voice drifted off as if she was in deep thought. A tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. “Don’t leave it too late like I did. Every woman should have a child, it makes them complete.”

Annie didn’t agree. Some of the mothers that she encountered on a daily basis should never have been allowed to breed. It wasn’t a debate that she needed to get into. She didn’t want to lose her just yet. “You were telling me who her friends were?”

“Pardon?”

“Her friends?”

“Oh yes,” Beth snapped back to reality. “Please forgive me. A senior moment that’s all.”

“You have suffered a nasty shock, Beth but it would really help me if you could tell me their names.”

Beth nodded and smiled but it was a sad smile. “That will not be a very long list, Inspector. As I said, she didn’t have many friends at all.” She wiped another tear away. “Her best friend is, was, oh dear,” she sobbed. There was a long pause as she closed her eyes and composed herself. “Jackie Webb. She lives in a flat near Sefton Park. She told me that they were going out to town on Saturday night.” Her eyes widened and she looked at Annie in the eyes. “Do you think that might be Jackie in there?”

Annie swerved the question. “Do you have an address and a number for her?”

“Yes,” Beth stammered. “I have her business card here. A few years back she set herself up as a mobile beauty therapist, doing permanent mascara, lip liners and the like.” She fumbled in her handbag, which Annie noticed was a hand stitched designer Vuitton. “Here it is.”    

“Was she blond?”

“Yes, most of the time. She had a jet black phase but it didn’t last long,” she half smiled. “Was the victim blond?”

Annie didn’t want to answer that question. Luckily the sound of ambulance sirens arriving rescued her. “I’ll need to talk to you again soon but for now, we need to get you to hospital and get that head wound stitched.”

“Do you think Jayne’s alive?” she asked quietly. “I mean in your mind, do you believe there’s any hope?”

“There’s always hope, Beth.”

“Not always, we both know that.” Beth seemed to shrink in on herself. She looked frail, shattered and vulnerable. “This is a violent world that we live in. sometimes there is no hope at all.” She touched Annie’s hand. “Find her for me, Inspector. I want my daughter home.” She swallowed hard. “Even if she is,” she couldn’t bring herself to say the word, “You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Annie nodded. “I know what you mean. I’ll do my best,” Annie squeezed her hand and opened the door, desperate to escape the woman’s grief. She climbed out of the Audi and took a deep gulp of smoke tainted air before walking over to Stirling who was talking to a CSI. He saw her approaching and broke off from his conversation. “Anything?” Annie asked.

“Nothing yet, they’re still searching the neighbouring gardens, bins etc,” he shrugged. “Early days yet, Guv. Did you get anything from the mother?”

“I got the name, address and phone number of Jayne’s best friend, Jackie Webb. She said that Jackie is who Jayne had planned to go out with. Apparently, she’s a blond.”  

“Oh dear.”

“Oh dear indeed. Get uniform to her house just to check. She works for herself and she’s mobile so if her vehicle is parked up and there’s no answer, we’ve found our victim.”

“You said she was mobile, mobile what?” Stirling frowned.

“Beautician apparently.”

“In which case if she is missing she’ll have a lot of disappointed customers leaving angry messages on her phone,” he said. “I’ll get her phone records and check her inbox. It could speed things up.”

“Good thinking,” Annie looked around as they spoke. “Where’s Kathy?”

“She’s gone back to the lab to get started on what they had bagged.” Stirling pointed to the growing group of press reporters. “Are we going public to see if we can trace where they went on Saturday night?”

Annie bit her bottom lip and watched the group. Some were chatting, some squabbling. The BBC camera crew were jostling for the best position to film the fire. “Last resort,” she decided. “Let’s get pictures of them both distributed around the city centre. Two girls out on a Saturday night, they’ll have been wherever still has a dance floor. That should narrow it down to a few hundred places.” She said sarcastically. They were looking for a needle in a pile of needles. “I want a team of four working on the script that was on the body. Put Watkin’s team on it. Graham took a lot of pictures of it. Have him send over everything he has and tell Watkin that I want to know what it is and what it says and tell him that I want to know today. In the meantime, let’s hope Kathy finds something.”

CHAPTER 9

             
Constable Bowers brought his vehicle to a halt outside a new apartment block, which overlooked Sefton Park. Ornate railings separated the manicured lawns from the road and the entire plot was surrounded by well established trees. Bowers recalled that a school once stood on the spot. Developers had built sixty flats on it, which netted them millions. “How the other half live,” he sighed. He checked his notes for the apartment number and grumbled to himself about how many years he would have to save just to raise a deposit to buy a flat in a property like that. Feeling aggrieved at being sent on such a tedious errand, he opened the door and climbed out.

              He glanced over at the park; acres of lawns ran gently down to the boating lake. A tractor purred in the distance, trimming the grass and clearing fallen leaves. The cool breeze that ruffled his greying hair had deterred all but the most determined walkers from enjoying the greenery. Bowers walked through the gates and checked the parking bays. According to control, a woman called Jackie Webb owned apartment number four and had a Mercedes SLK registered to her name. Most of the parking bays were empty but number four had a vehicle in it. There was a German made vehicle there but it wasn’t a Mercedes. It was a 3-series BMW.