No Smoke Without Fire (A DCI Warren Jones Novel - Book 2) (46 page)

“I see,” said Warren, wondering where this was going.

“With that in mind, I have gained permission for you to enter the ward as long as you are prepared to follow our strict infection protocols.”

“Of course.” Warren felt a rush of excitement. At last, some progress. Calling to Susan to let her know where he was going, he phoned Tony Sutton. The DI was enthusiastic.

“At last, progress on something. I feel as though I’m banging my head on a bloody brick wall here.”

Warren was sympathetic, but declined an offer to meet at the hospital. He had a feeling that the doctors and nurses were going out on a limb to smuggle him into the ward and he didn’t want to abuse that.

Arriving at the hospital, he was escorted to a staff locker room where he was issued with a set of surgical scrubs fresh out of a sealed packet and a hairnet. After stripping to his underwear and donning the sterile garb he was shown how to clean his hands and forearms as if he were about to go into surgery.

Finally he was ready. Warren had made certain to take a digital tape-recorder with him to get a full and complete record of what she said and as he reached her bed he turned it on, placing it on the bedside table. This time her speech was less halting than the previous visit; her colour was still pale but a faint hint of pink highlighted her cheeks.

As before, she was confident that she had recognised her attacker, although she couldn’t now give any details beyond that he was white and probably in his thirties. She couldn’t recall his hair colour or any distinguishing marks. He had approached her on Truman Street two days before the attack, offering her five hundred pounds if she would accompany him to a birthday party.

She admitted that she wouldn’t normally take such a risk, but she couldn’t afford to turn down five hundred pounds. Another girl had made a note of the man’s licence plate, but Melanie couldn’t remember who.

Moving on, Warren asked if there was anything unusual about the job.

“It was a bit weird, but I’ve done worse. The man drove me to a bed and breakfast over on Gravel Rise. You can hire rooms by the hour and the owner has a problem remembering faces.” It was probably useless, he knew; nevertheless, Warren made a note of the address and decided to send a couple of officers around to question the owner.

“When we got there, there was an older man waiting. The bloke who paid me said that the old man hadn’t had any for a while and that he had to cum. He was really insistent about that. A bit odd, I thought, taking such an interest. I did wonder if he would stay and watch, but he didn’t. He left the room. He also insisted that I use a condom.”

Clearwater sniffed. “I always do if I don’t know them. It’s safer, innit?”

Warren wasn’t quite sure how simply knowing a client would protect her from any diseases that he might have, but said nothing.

“So what happened then?”

“Well, we sat down and discussed the state of the economy — what do you think bloody happened?”

Warren shrugged an apology. It had been a silly question on the surface of it, but he had to be certain.

“Were there any…problems?”

“No. The old guy was a bit out of practice and it took him a while but he managed it in the end.”

“So you don’t think he could have been angry?”

Clearwater shrugged. “He seemed pretty satisfied.”

“What about the younger man, the one who set it up?”

“He came back in again and asked if he had cum. Bloody obsessed he was, even looked in the waste-paper basket to check I wasn’t lying. Guess he’d have wanted a refund if I hadn’t performed as expected. I think the old guy was a bit embarrassed. Then he told me to get my clothes on again and said he’d call me a cab to take me back to Truman Street.”

“So he didn’t drive you back?”

She shook her head. “They never do. Guys will do anything when they’re all horny, then as soon as they’ve shot their load they get all repulsed and don’t want to know any more.”

Warren looked down at the brief sketch of events and decided to see if he could fill in any details.

“So, starting from the top, let’s see what else you can remember. Can you be more specific about the date and the time of this first meeting?”

She shook her head, clearly frustrated, and Warren was quick to reassure her.

“Don’t worry. You said that there was another girl around. We’ll interview her.” He almost winced at the white lie. Despite their best efforts they hadn’t been able to track down anyone who had seen Melanie getting into the client’s car.

“Do you remember anything more about the men’s appearance?”

Again, she shook her head. “The younger man was about thirty and white. The older guy was fifty or sixty with grey hair. That’s all I can remember.”

“Clean-shaven or bearded?”

She shook her head.

“Did you hear either of them use a name?”

Her brow furrowed under the bandages as she tried to remember. “No…not that I remember. It was weird, though. I did get the feeling that they might know each other. I mean, really know each other.”

“Why was that?”

Again she shrugged. “I can’t remember. It was just how I felt at the time.”

Warren could see that she was starting to tire again. Besides which, he could see that she wasn’t going to be the most reliable of witnesses. Any halfway decent defence lawyer would tear holes in her leaky testimony.

“Moving on to the night you were attacked — tell us what happened.”

Again, the young woman’s testimony was sketchy and full of holes.

“I was standing on the kerb a few metres down from the alley. I had my back to the pavement and was looking at the road, waiting for clients. I didn’t hear him approach. I think he came through the alley? Anyhow, he called my name and I turned around and saw him. I recognised him immediately.

“He asked how I was and if I wanted to earn some more money. I’m not sure how it happened but we suddenly seemed to be standing in the alley where no one could see us. He had his wallet out and I remembered how much he’d paid me before…” At this, her voice began to shake. “I can’t remember any more. Everything goes kind of hazy.”

Warren let her compose herself.

“You’ve done well,” he reassured her. “There are several promising lines of inquiry here and I’ll make sure the team gets everything that you’ve told me. In the meantime, if you can remember anything else you can get me on this number.”

As he put his coat on he noticed the huge bunch of plastic flowers. They were the only ones on the bedside table and he felt a wave of sorrow pass over him. It said something when the only person who actually cared that you were in here was your pimp. Warren fought off the sadness. He’d seen the way that Yvonne Fairweather had looked at the young woman. No, make that two people who cared that you were in here. On impulse, Warren picked up her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, rules be damned. She squeezed back, smiling slightly. Make that three, he decided.

Tuesday 3
^rd
January

Chapter 59

Thirty-eight years old. Twenty-four hours ago he had been thirty-seven. Warren stared at himself in the mirror. The face staring back was the same as the one that had looked back yesterday; yet it felt older. So much older. Why? The dark brown hair still had no traces of grey, the features still sharply defined. Perhaps it was his best mate’s card — younger by two months, he made some sort of joke every year along the lines of ‘no matter how old I get, you’ll always be older’. Or perhaps it was Susan teasing him that he could now no longer claim to be in his mid-thirties, he’d have to start describing himself as late thirties.

Ageing didn’t used to bother him. He could never understand why so many of his friends became morose as they passed into their thirties. It wasn’t as if life were slipping him by, with nothing to show for it: happily married with his own house, a good education, plenty of friends and the rank of Detective Chief Inspector — not a bad place to be for a man of his age. What, then? Why was this year so different? He wasn’t even forty and was in robust health. All the statistics suggested he wasn’t even halfway to the grave yet.

Maybe that was it. In the past few weeks, he’d gazed upon the bodies of four young women, struck down in the prime of life, and buried a woman his heart had thought would live for ever. So much death. No wonder he was in such a downbeat mood.

Downstairs the doorbell rang. Reflexively, he glanced at his watch. Twenty past eight. The hour’s lie-in had been a small birthday present to himself. Susan had only just left for school; the teachers were having a training day so she’d enjoyed the lie-in with him, giving him his present and a little taster of the treat he could expect when he got home from work tonight.

Swapping his towel for a dressing gown, he hurried downstairs, the doorbell ringing for the second time. Opening the door, he apologised to the delivery man standing in the cold, the icy blast of air turning his freshly showered skin to goose-bumps. The Parcelforce worker grunted and handed over the electronic clipboard for him to sign, before passing across the large package.

Taking it into the kitchen, he flicked the kettle on then studied the parcel. It was large and soft, clearly some sort of clothing. The neatly handwritten label on the front was addressed to him, with ‘Angleterre’ below the postcode. The top right of the package was covered in several euros’ worth of French postage stamps, plus a delivery label from an international parcel firm. The postmark was blurry, but with a bit of squinting he made out ‘Les Orres, Hautes-Alpes’. Warren smiled at his detective work. Jeff had mentioned that he and Felicity would be spending the New Year skiing in the Alps with another family.

Using a pair of scissors from the junk drawer, Warren carefully opened the package to reveal a thick black padded ski jacket and a birthday card.

‘Something to keep you warm the next time you get called out. Happy Birthday. Lots of love from Felicity, Jeff, Jimmy, Sammy and Annie. xx’

Warren was stunned at the generosity of the gift and its thoughtfulness. He knew nothing about skiing or the clothes one wore, but it was clearly expensive. Hell, the postage alone must have been a small fortune. He knew the couple could afford it, but still…

The kettle clicked off and Warren poured himself his first coffee of the day. The brew was too hot for his taste, so he jogged back upstairs and got dressed whilst he waited for it to cool. A quick wrestle with a comb — he knew it was time for a haircut when his hair started misbehaving after his morning shower — and a squirt of the new aftershave Susan had bought him and he was back downstairs, the coffee now just the right temperature. Forcing himself to eat a banana, he gulped his coffee down, slipped on his new jacket and, after a quick once-over in the mirror to admire it, he left for the office, grabbing the box of cakes he’d bought for break-time.

The CID office was in full swing when he entered, only the Christmas decorations a reminder that the world was just returning from a major party season. Various colleagues wished him a happy birthday as he entered his office. Placing the cakes on top of his filing cabinet — he knew from prior observation that if he put them anywhere near the coffee urn, the early-bird gannets would polish them off before the rest of the office got a look-in — he logged onto his computer.

The holiday season had reduced the volume of email somewhat, with much of the make-work and gossip absent. Nevertheless, he spent the better part of an hour filing and deleting rubbish — it seemed that not even Christmas and New Year were reason enough for the force’s health and safety committee to rest. He moved the latest guidelines on the need for ‘electrical safety testing of personal electronic devices brought into the workplace’ to the folder marked ‘crap to read when bored’.

The sharp rap on Warren’s door was a welcome distraction. At his bidding, DC Gary Hastings entered, the light in his eyes and his visible excitement making Warren’s pulse speed up.

“Sir, we’ve found a connection between Sally Evans and Carolyn Patterson.”

* * *

The area around Gary Hastings’ workstation was crowded with most of the team members working the murders.

“I was reviewing the CCTV from the sports centre on the night that Carolyn Patterson was abducted,” Hastings was explaining, “trying to identify people coming and going at about the same time she did. At around the time Carolyn Patterson’s boxercise class entered the bar a group of lads in their twenties and thirties also entered.”

With a click of the mouse, he zoomed in on a picture showing three men with kit bags and wet hair walking through the door. Two of the men were wearing matching tops, although the logo over the left breast was too small and the still image from the video too blurry for Warren to make out the details.

“Meet Middlesbury Sports and Leisure Centre’s over twenty-one men’s football team, currently sitting third in the local amateur league. They train on Mondays and Thursdays and finish at the same time as Carolyn Patterson’s boxercise class. Their star centre forward, absent the last couple of weeks for obvious reasons — one Darren Blackheath.”

“Nice work, Gary. Do we know if the two groups socialised at all in the bar?” asked Sutton, patting the young DC on the shoulder.

Hastings nodded and it was clear that there was more.

“I spoke to one of the bar staff, who helped me identify them and he said that a couple of the girls in the boxercise class actually did the class out of convenience, because their husbands or partners were playing football at the same time. The night that Carolyn Patterson disappeared there was more mingling than usual between the two groups — the girls from boxercise were having an early Christmas drink because their class was finishing. Unfortunately, he doesn’t remember if Carolyn Patterson spoke to the footballers or stayed with her friends.”

“What else have you got, Gary?” Warren could feel the young detective was bursting to share even more.

“The team have a website — just somewhere to share their match reports and fixture lists, post pictures and include links to news articles. That’s where I found Darren Blackheath’s name. The website also has an archive — guess whose name I stumbled across in match reports about two years prior to this season?”