Hard Girls (13 page)

Danny Foster was nonplussed for a few moments, he had never experienced anything like this before with Patrick or Desmond. They had always been perfectly in tune. He guessed there was an underlying Kate knew from experiencll at one time or anotherlt d problem here that he didn’t know anything about. He also had the feeling that he didn’t want to know what it was about either, if this was how it was affecting them both. Desmond and Patrick went back longer than the Ark of the Covenant; if they were arguing like this, then it was serious.

Patrick stared at the door for long moments then, turning towards Danny, he said quietly, ‘Well, I think we can safely say I fucked him off, so how do you feel about me and you going out on the town?’

Danny grinned. ‘After
that
, I think it’s the only thing we can do.’

‘Do me a favour, Danny Boy? Never let your head rule your heart, it only leads to heartbreak, suspicion and a general feeling of dissatisfaction. And that, my young friend, is on the
good
days.’

Danny had enough sense not to give Pat any kind of answer. He understood that this was one of those times when all that was required was a drinking partner and someone who would listen, agree and then promptly forget what had been talked about. He also knew that Patrick Kelly had been like a pressure cooker lately, and he was on the point of exploding. What Patrick needed was an outlet for his emotions, and Danny decided he would make sure that was exactly what he was supplied with. A warm-blooded outlet.

‘You look fucking terrible, Kate. And coming from me, that’s quite something, given that I spend my days looking at dead people.’

Kate couldn’t help laughing, even though it was the last thing she had envisaged herself doing for a long time. Megan McFee was a tall, red-headed Scotswoman with a ready smile and a problem with food. Her eyes were a faded blue, but her high cheekbones and porcelain skin saved her from being plain. She had the skeletal figure of a supermodel, and the hands and feet of a ballerina, but it was her dress sense that really made her stand out. Like most people who secretly diet by forcing up anything they eat, she dressed in loose layers. It suited her somehow, she had good taste in clothes and they made her look almost normal.

‘You don’t look so good yourself. How’s things?’

Megan looked around the mortuary and, opening her arms wide, she said, ‘How do you think things are, Kate? I’m surrounded by the dead, the murdered, the unwanted and the relatives to match.’

‘You love it, Megan, and you know it as well as I do. Did you find anything else?’

Megan looked at her friend and saw the damage the years could do, to women especially. Kate looked old, wrinkled and pale, she wasn’t even trying to hide it. Bereft of make-up she looked every inch her age. Patrick Kelly must have had more going for him than she had thought if he had done this to her friend. Kate had always taken care of herself, and as someone for whom appearance was of paramount importance, Megan had admired that about her friend.

Kate said sarcastically, ‘Calling Megan, come in Megan McFee.’

‘There’s no need to be like that, Kate. I’m just shocked at your appearance, that’s all. You look like a bloody tramp or something. Sort yourself out, woman. You still have a life, which is more than I can say for this lot in here.’

Kate knew Megan meant well, but coming from someone who had battled bulimia all her adult life it rankled. But she knew Megan was trying to help in her own taken out her frustrationsedwhogoy strange way. She
did
look terrible, and she knew it was being remarked on. She also knew she didn’t give a flying dinosaur about any of it.

‘Seriously, Kate, you need to remember that you are being observed by everyone, including the press. Get a grip.’

Kate swallowed down the retort that came so easily to her lips. Instead she said calmly, ‘Have you anything for me, Megs?’

Megan nodded. Suddenly she was all business and her whole demeanour seemed to change as she went to her desk and picked up some files. ‘The girls were given a cocktail of drugs. It’s taken a while to get the results back, you know what it’s like. It was the usual, cocaine, amphetamines. And then there was something different. A paralytic was used on them as well as the GHB and Roofie. A drug normally prescribed only to chronic insomniacs, and even then only for a few days at a time because of its potency and side effects. These range from hallucinations to psychotic breaks. In large doses it’s guaranteed to paralyse the patient so that, alongside the Rohypnol and GHB, would have laid these girls out in no time. They would have been unable to move, no matter what was being done to them. Danielle Crosby, the first girl, probably knew exactly what was happening to her and was unable to do anything about it. She would have put up a weak resistance, but some kind of resistance nonetheless. He must have learned from that as the others were given far larger doses. That rules out anyone in the medical profession. The girls would still have been aware of what was going on, for a short while at least.

‘The drugs that were used are available on the internet, or on the street. The doses were huge, they would have killed them anyway, or in the case of the paralytic, would have left them in a coma. Whoever this man is, he is using trial and error on them, the doses were all different. No thought has been given to, say, the girl’s weight, which, as with any drug, affects its potency. There was one anomaly though, that I found in all the girls. They had all drunk a mug of
tea
very close to the time they died. I think that’s how they ingested the drugs, through the stomach lining.’

‘Tea?’

Megan nodded, unfazed by Kate’s obvious disbelief. ‘Good old Lipton tea, to be exact. I made sure I found out the exact brand, I knew you would want to know. We aren’t exactly
CSI Miami
, but we do get there in the end.’

Kate nodded. ‘We didn’t find any cups or mugs at any of the crime scenes that held tea.’

‘I know that, there were a few used coffee cups, but they were harmless. Whoever gave these girls the tea took the time to take the drinking vessels with him when he left.’

‘He really does seem to think of everything, doesn’t he?’

Patrick was pleasantly drunk, and as he looked around the club he owned, he wondered why he didn’t come here any more. It was nice. It had a great atmosphere and good music, but then it was Over Twenty-fives night. And, best of all, it had a really well-stocked bar. He was enjoying every minute of it. He had liked the out once upon a time, even when he was married he had liked to get out once or twice a week with his mates. Of course it had been necessary at first, it was how he had done a lot of his business. He enjoyed the company of his peers, and liked the camaraderie between them.

As he sipp-ST-0 { font-size: 1rem; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 4px; margin-top: 12px; } ft { display: block;elf. You were

font-size: 0.75r b ded his brandy and looked around him, he felt pride in what he had achieved. This was a nice club, it catered to nice people. The girls were a bit young, but that was par for the course these days. They were good looking, well presented, and up for a laugh. He saw the attraction for them; well-set-up men with money to spend and the time to spend it. After all, they were hardly doing the nine to five, were they?

Danny Foster was talking to a petite blonde with huge blue eyes and tits that were struggling to stay inside the tiny top she was wearing. Every time she laughed they were in danger of escaping once and for all. Pat smiled, he had always looked down his nose at the men who took advantage of the little birds, the young girls. Now though, he felt that he had been unfairly critical towards them. The girls were aware of what they were getting themselves into, and more than happy to get themselves into the situation in the first place. He spied a tall brunette with a slim frame and an expensive suit. She had a nice smile, and a very feminclass="tx" aid

Book Two

For the wages of sin is death.

Romans, 6:23

taken out her frustrationsedwhogohe was

Meine Ruh’ ist hin,
Mein Herz ist schwer.

My peace is gone,
My heart is heavy.

Goethe, 1749-1832
Faust

Chapter Six

‘Do you think we can assume this is all over, Kate?’

Kate shook her head. She hated it when she was asked questions no one could know the answer to. It was all speculation, no matter how they dressed it up.

‘I don’t think so. It’s been over a month and I hope to Christ that I’m wrong, but I think this is just breathing space for him. He’s waiting for it all to die down, waiting for the girls to feel safe again. Either that, or he’s been nicked for something else, been run over by a bus, he might even be on his holidays.’

As she spoke, Kate wondered at how quickly the deaths had left the news. There was hardly a mention of them now. It was as if the murders had been relegated alongside the credit crunch and the Eurovision Song Contest. She hated that they had nothing to go on. All their enquiries, all the door-to-doors, all their hard work had yielded them precisely nothing. It was as if the man responsible didn’t exist outside of the murders. He had left nothing tangible, had left nothing that could be used to identify him.

He had to have a knowledge of forensics, but that wasn’t unusual these days. Anyone who could read, use the internet, or afford a Sky package could learn about forensics in a few hours. Could be experts in a few days. From real-life dramas to handbooks on forensic science, it was all out there for anyone who wanted to know about it. It grieved her, she knew that any crime could be researched, looked into, and committed again, with all the flaws ironed out this time, and there was nothing she or anyone else could do about it. It was harder than ever to get a conviction because even juries expected the same kind of evidence they saw on their favourite television programmes.

It was all well and good seeing a profiler for the FBI solve a crime in under sixty minutes, or a forensics expert find a piece of glass that couldn’t be detected by the naked eye, and subsequently tie someone to a murder, again in under an hour. That was the magic of television and novels. They were not meant to be real, they were there for entertainment, no more. And that kind of entertainment was not something she enjoyed these days. Not that she enjoyed anything that much these days.

Patrick Kelly was in her every waking thought. She missed him, missed everything about her old life. She wondered at how she could have been so stupid as to walk away from him without even attempting to iron out their differences. In her anger, she had only seen that he had not told her about his involvement in the flats. She should have understood that he had his fingers in so many pies he would be hard-pushed to tell her about all of them. But it went deeper than that, and she knew it. They had been steadily coming to an impasse, and it had taken them both by surprise when the inevitable had happened.

‘Are y sooner rather than laterse along to help dou OK, Kate?’

She looked around her, saw the canteen with its dull grey walls and its metal chairs. She saw the newspapers scattered across the tables and the scratched floor tiles that she had been looking at for over twenty years. This place had been her refuge once; after her divorce from Dan, she had been wary of ever letting herself get close to anyone again. Her job had become her life, and she had thrown herself into a career in which she had become one of the leading figures of her profession. Once that had been enough for her, once that had made her feel as if she had really done something with her life. So why did it mean nothing to her now? Why was her involvement in this latest case making her feel as if she was in over her head, making her feel that she was somehow lacking?

Her confidence was at an all-time low. She was back where she started and, for the first time ever, her job just wasn’t enough. She had given her life over to something that was without meaning to the majority of the populace. She had happily lived her life for what she saw as for the good, she had spent serious amounts of time chasing the bad guys and catching the good majority of them. So why did it seem pointless, why did it all feel so futile to her? She had finally come to realise that her hard work, when it came down to it, was worth nothing. She had put herself out, put herself on the line, had spent the best part of her life doing what she thought was right, and for what? She had caught two prolific murderers, and she was proud of that. But it had come at a cost, it always did for women. The young ones down the nick knew her by reputation and that she was only on board now because of her past victories. Kate understood that her creds were all she had left. And her creds were not enough to give the rest of her life meaning; she felt so alone, so very lonely. She wanted to find this murderer, wanted to see him pay for the young lives he had destroyed. But she also knew she needed something for herself as well. Before it was too late.

Geraldine O’Mahoney was new to the life, and she was more aware of that than anyone. At twenty-nine she was a bit old for a beginner, and she knew it. But her husband had gone on the trot with a young girl called Regina, who had once been the babysitter, and it had thrown her, had made her realise that life as she knew it was over. She had relied on him for everything, had not thought that would ever change. But she had been wrong, and how wrong.