One Dead Witness (37 page)

This time she did have the room.

She took aim carefully ... and the baton rose high.

She smashed him hard and deliberately on the back of his skull
in a very controlled fashion. She did not want to lose her temper,
but by the same token she secretly hoped she would kill him with
the blows and fuck the consequences. It was a very satisfying
feeling - once... twice ... smack, crack.

Trent’s whole body quivered and collapsed. His fingertips were
touching the knife-handle. Danny saw he was still breathing. She
quickly pulled his arms round his back and applied a pair of cuffs,
purposely ratcheting them too tight.

Then she turned to her boss. ‘Henry, Henry, you all
right?’

She heard him moan. ‘Ohh, hell,’ he spoke to the carpet,
‘where did he come from?’

‘
Right behind you.’ Danny helped him sit up.

‘
Jeez,’ he gasped. He crossed his left hand over his right
shoulder and reached for the shoulder-blade. ‘Feels like he hit me
with a hammer.’

‘
No, just a knife. You were lucky.’

Henry nodded. It wasn’t the first time that protective body
armour - on this occasion a stab-vest - had saved his
life.

‘
I need a fucking ambulance, you bastards.’

Danny and Henry looked at Trent. It was only then Danny saw
her blows with the baton had split his scalp in two places, rather
like knife-slashes across upholstery. She leaned over him with a
delicious smile. ‘You’re fucking lucky you don’t need a hearse,’
she hissed into his ear.

She checked her watch. Eleven-thirty.

Not a bad day’s work.

Most police officers believe, in principle, that prisoners
should have rights. That principle usually goes crashing out the
window when the officer gets personally involved in a case.
Particularly child murders or abuse. Then they don’t want to give
prisoners anything - except a hard time.

Danny did not want to allow Trent to go to hospital. But the
law is the law and off he went, handcuffed and escorted by three
no-nonsense coppers and a driver. He wouldn’t be going anywhere,
other than straight back to the cells to be interviewed after he’d
received treatment.

And in the meantime, Danny became very upset when Henry told
her he had decided not to allow her to interview or have any
further connection with Trent because of her personal involvement.
He would allocate a team of four experienced jacks, working in
pairs, to process, interview and charge Trent. Henry did not want
any slip-ups. He wanted the prisoner to be dealt with fairly,
correctly and above board. He knew Trent would be making
counter-allegations of assault and the case would be difficult
enough as it was.

Personal baggage would just make things more
difficult.

He explained all this to Danny as she drove him back to the
police station. She wasn’t a happy bunny.

‘
You’re rambling, Henry. That blow on the head’s done you,’ she
said rudely.

‘
Don’t argue, Danny. I’m right, you know I am.’ He did have a
hot zinger of a headache, additional to the one he had started the
day with, but he was thinking clearly, planning the next
twenty-four hours with Trent, or longer if need be. There would be
a lot of people queuing up to see him and politics would no doubt
rear its ugly head. The police investigating Trent’s prison escape
and the bloodbath which accompanied it would want first call on
him; they had seven murders to clear up. But Henry wanted Trent to
stay in Lancashire. He had killed a police officer up here and a
child. Henry would fight them all the way.

At the back door of the police station Henry and Danny bumped
into a couple of detectives rushing out. ‘Is there a fire or
something?’

‘
No, boss. Another body.’

‘
Any details?’ asked Danny.

‘
No, not really, but according to the uniform at the scene, it
looks like the girl who’s been missing a few days.’ Danny’s heart
nearly stopped. ‘Claire Lilton?’

‘
Yeah, that’s the one.’

PART TWO

Chapter Fifteen

Since the death of Steve Kruger and the Armstrong brothers,
life in the offices of Kruger Investigations in Miami had been very
subdued indeed. There was no chatter, laughter or any of the
lightness Kruger had brought to the workplace when he was alive. A
shroud had descended, seemingly impossible to lift.

Myrna Rosza spent most of her time walking around, speaking to
the employees. Sitting down over a cup of coffee, listening,
encouraging and attempting to get everyone back on track, to get
the place humming again, people motivated.

All to no avail.

And, God, Myrna missed him dreadfully. She could empathise
with the way in which every employee was feeling, except for her it
was a million times worse.

Kruger’s funeral had been one of the most testing occasions of
her life. Of course she was allowed a little tear and her husband
accepted that. Only natural. All she wanted to do, though, was let
herself go; prostrate herself over the coffin, wailing and
hysterical, and make a complete fool of herself.

She didn’t. She stood with dignity and poise and denied
herself the outburst she really needed.

She had not realised how much she loved him. Standing beside
her husband whilst watching the coffin disappear slowly beyond the
purple velvet drapes at the chapel only magnified those latent
feelings. By the same token, it revealed to her how much she
did
not
love her
husband, Ben. Not that she disliked him, nor had any axe to grind
with him - because he was a good husband, even if his work often
took him away for long periods. She simply did not love him any
more. They were more like friends, these days, and it was many
weeks, maybe months, since they had last made love.

During the service Ben had reached for Myrna’s hand in a
gesture of support and comfort. She pretended not to see it coming
and wiped a tear away instead, avoiding contact. On the same night,
Ben had tried to cuddle her. She rolled away, pulled herself into a
tight ball and rocked gently to sleep.

Myrna had also attended the double funeral of the Armstrongs
at their home town in Virginia. At least she had not been in love
with either of them, though the crimson-vivid memory of the walk
down that hallway could not be shaken from her mind as their
coffins were carried past her.

How had they reconstructed the bodies?

Were they in little pieces, fitted into their coffins like a
jigsaw? An arm up here, the head down there?

And now, two days after Steve Kruger’s funeral, Myrna was
sitting at her desk, alone in her office, the staff having gone
home. Silence was everywhere. It
was
Wednesday, 7 p.m.

Myrna stared with growing disbelief at the telephone on which
she had, only seconds before, finished a conversation with her
husband.

‘
Wha..?’ she blurted to the wall. ‘I can’t believe. . .
Christ!’ She could not stop her head from shaking as the words
tumbled over and over through her mind. ‘The asshole, the bastard,’
she uttered and slammed the desk hard with her fist. Everything
rose a millimetre and fell back into place, blotter, phone,
pen-stand, laptop, everything.

She rose to her feet and stalked around the room,
fuming.

‘
Hello, darling, it’s Ben...’ the conversation had started.
There was a crackle of static on the line and it was difficult to
hear, yet immediately Myrna could tell something was not quite
right. ‘How are you, honey?’

‘
Under the Circumstances, doing okay,’ she answered
guardedly.

‘
Look, dear, I have some sad news for you ... something to tell
you. . .’ And with those words, Myrna knew. ‘As you know, I’m out
here in LA. I . . .’ he hesitated.

‘
Spit it out, Ben.’

‘
There’s no easy way to say this. I won’t be coming
home.’

Myrna remained silent as an icy blast of chilled air wafted
over her.

‘
Are you still there, Myrna?’

Yes, she was. Her voice was brittle. ‘Who is it? Somebody I
know?’

‘
No, no, it’s someone I met at a convention in Salt Lake last
year, a fellow surgeon.’

‘
A fellow surgeon! That’s a nice way of putting it. What’s her
name?’

‘
No, Myrna, you don’t understand. When I say “fellow” surgeon,
that’s exactly what I mean.’

Bombshell number two. A crackle of static on the
line.

Myrna sat there, wide-eyed, as the meaning struck home.
‘You’re leaving me for a MAN?’

‘
Yes, I’m sorry. We are very much in love. You’d like him.’ Ben
sounded weak and contrite.

‘
I doubt it.’

‘
He’s a heart-surgeon, too. Married, couple of kids. We’re
setting up over here, both got positions in the best private
hospital around. Chief surgeons. You can have the house and the
cars. I don’t want anything from you, Myrna . . . just your
understanding and maybe one day your blessing.’ His words tumbled
out. ‘I know you haven’t really loved me for some time and I think
this coincided with two things: Steve Kruger, and me discovering my
sexuality. I think you’ve secretly been in love with Steve for a
long time, haven’t you? I just wish I’d had the courage to let you
go to him sooner. . .’

It was on these words that Myrna slammed the phone
down.

She stood at the window. Miami was in darkness, a million
lights on in buildings. She rested her forehead on the glass and
cried as the heavens opened and torrential rain sluiced down over
the city.

Without any financial recompense, merely accumulated days off
which she would never find the time to take, Detective Sergeant
Danny Furness had put in sixteen hours a day since the
Monday-morning arrest of Trent and the subsequent discovery of
Claire Lilton’s pathetic, battered and sexually mutilated body on
the perimeter of the public golf course in Stanley Park.

‘
Welcome to life on CID,’ as FB might as have said.

What Danny had hoped to be a smooth change of career had been
anything but. By the time midnight came on Wednesday, she was, once
again, mentally and physically a wreck.

She crept into her bed after a long cold drink. Her newly
installed house alarm was set, and the panic button on the wall
within reach from the bed, glowed a dim, reassuring red. She lay
naked under the cool sheet, legs and arms splayed wide, constantly
searching for the next cool bit, loving the sensation of lying in a
bed she had not seen for seventeen hours. She had not even bothered
to have a bath, so desperate was she to get in. She was aware of
the dried body sweat, the stale hair, the make-up and the rather
obscene knickers she’d had to toss into the washing basket with a
grimace of disgust on her face.

A deep sigh lifted her chest and she explored her physical
sensations.

She had leg-ache, like she used to get when she was a kid; no
doubt varicose veins were a real possibility. Her stomach gurgled
in protest at the junk food she had consumed thoughtlessly for the
last seventy-two hours, food she would not normally have even
looked at. Her eyes were heavy and dark patches grew daily
underneath them.

Suddenly the desire to sleep came over her. She reached out,
clicked off the bedside light. As she drifted off she thought about
the last three days. . .

Danny had immediately recognised Claire Lilton, though the
youngster’s face had been smashed to a pulp and was bloated
horrendously by the ligature around her neck. Once the work at the
scene had been done, Henry went with the body to the mortuary
whilst Danny went straight to see Claire’s parents. She had
delivered numerous messages in her time and it seemed that always
-
always
- the
receiver of the message knew what the bad news would be even before
she opened her mouth. Danny could see the knowledge in their eyes,
and Ruth Lilton’s eyes had been no different.

She knew her daughter was dead as soon as she saw
Danny.

As she delivered the tragic news, Danny kept one eye on Joe
Lilton, the stepfather. Danny knew never to judge a person’s grief;
grief was an individual thing, dealt with by people in their own
way. Sometimes they were hysterical, other times they reacted with
cold detachment. No two people were ever alike, but something crept
up Danny’s backside when she witnessed the shifty look of
discomfort on Joe Lilton’s face. He squirmed where he sat. And it
caused Danny to wonder. . . Joe, what the hell do you know about
Claire’s death?

Before leaving the Liltons’ that day, Danny did everything she
could for Ruth.

The work of investigating then began, even though the prime
suspect was already in custody.

During the course of that first day, Danny and Henry had
little contact with each other. They managed to get together late
to have the drink they had missed a few days earlier, when things
had taken a bad turn for both of them. Unfortunately, their meeting
brought about the second argument Danny had ever had with
Henry.