One Dead Witness (39 page)

Suddenly Danny cut back into the conversation. ‘Can you
pinpoint exactly how old the sperm is, Doctor?’ she demanded to
know.

Her eyes flipped open. ‘Damn,’ she said out loud to the
bedroom ceiling. ‘Why the hell can’t I get to sleep? What have I
done wrong? Come on, God, tell me.’ She flicked off the duvet and
went to the loo again.

Myrna stood by the door of the restroom next to her office and
knocked tentatively.

‘
Some towels for you,’ she called.

There was a murmur from the other side of the door which Myrna
took to be some form of permission to enter. She opened the door
and stepped in. The shower was hissing and steam rose towards the
extractor fan. Through the frosted glass Myrna could see the naked,
but indistinct shape beyond, soaping down.

‘
They’re just outside the shower door.’ She dropped them onto
the floor.

Another murmur was the response.

Myrna retreated from the restroom. Back in the office she sat
on her leather chair and tried to work out what the hell was going
on. On the desk-top lay the newspaper the female had been carrying.
It was soaking wet, near to deterioration. Myrna considered tossing
it into the wastebasket. Before she did, she unrolled it
carefully.

It was a five-day-old edition of the British
Daily Mail.
Not an
unusual sight in Miami, where British newspapers were common on the
streets and sold at many stores. Myrna flattened it carefully so
the sports headlines were uppermost. She turned the paper over and
read the news headlines.

The irony of it was that, through snoring loudly, Danny woke
herself up. She cursed. She had been to sleep and then, fuck it,
she had woken herself up. This, she thought, was going to be one of
those nights.

She rolled over, tugged the duvet tight around her head and
shut her eyes. It was one o’clock. In six hours she had to be up.
Six hours ... if only she could get six hours, that would be bliss
- almost a normal night’s sleep. Six lovely hours. . .

The restroom door opened and Myrna looked up.

The sex-chatline telephonist, who had been a vital witness
against Bussola, the girl by the name of Tracey Greenwood stood
there, one of the bath towels folded around her, another smaller
towel around her head. Myrna had to admit she looked a thousand
times better than she had done an hour before when Myrna had
brought her into the office.

‘
Hi. How are you feeling?’

‘
Okay.’

‘
You should really go to hospital.’

‘
I’m fine, nothing’s broken; you didn’t run into me, I jumped
onto your bonnet.’

‘
Bonnet?’

‘
Bonnet - hood - you know.’

‘
Oh yeah, I see. Bonnet’s English.’

‘
Yeah, summat like that.’

Myrna stood up. ‘Come on, sit over here.’ She pointed to the
sofa. ‘I’ve got some coffee on, but I’ve only been able to find
some cookies to eat. There’s not much food around the
office.’

‘
It’s okay, I’m not really hungry.’

The girl pulled the bath towel tight and tottered across the
office to the sofa. Myrna watched her out of the corner of her eye
whilst she fixed two cups of steaming coffee from the filter
machine. The girl was deadly thin, her legs seemingly no fatter
than a ballpoint pen; her shoulders protruded bones and her arms
were like twigs, dry-looking and capable of being snapped. She
looked anorexic and like a drug addict. The mainline marks on the
inside of her arms and the backs of her knees were prominent. Some
had scabs on them, where blunt, rusted or pre-used needles had been
inserted. It
would not be long before she
was dead.

Myrna handed her a coffee. She took it gratefully, hands
a-quiver. She piled numerous lumps of brown sugar in then added
cream.

Myrna drank hers back. She lowered herself down onto the
opposite end of the couch.

The girl sipped her sweet brew. Her eyes traversed the office
and the view across Miami. ‘Nice office,’ she commented.

‘
Thanks.’

‘
I suppose you’re wondering why I threw myself at
you.’

‘
You could say that.’

A massive shiver suddenly convulsed the girl’s whole body. She
almost spilled her coffee. ‘Oh God,’ she gasped, ‘I really need a
fix.’ She looked hopefully at Myrna.

‘
Coffee’s as far as I go.’

‘
I really wanted to see Kruger.’

‘
He’s dead.’

‘
I know.’

‘
So why have you come?’ Myrna demanded because she suddenly
remembered that Kruger’s death might have been prevented if only
this girl hadn’t disappeared. ‘You’re partly responsible for him
dying. If you’d stayed and testified in the first place, Bussola
might still be in the can.’

‘
No way. Don’t try to pin that one on me.’

‘
Okay - so I ask again: why are you here?’

‘
I know something,’ she said. A look of horror crossed her face
and remained there. Myrna studied her carefully and thought the
girl’s expression was the result of seeing something so painful
that even its memory brought back terror. The girl’s head flicked
quickly towards Myrna; her opaque, lifeless eyes produced tears
which tumbled down her white cheeks. ‘I know something,’ she
repeated with a sob of anguish. ‘Something terrible.’

Danny was in a sort of dream-filled twilight zone, somewhere
between sleep and deep sleep, images of fifteen years ago zipping
through her mind. She was walking towards a door. From behind the
door were voices. Angry. Raised. Arguing. Danny was in uniform. Her
police car was parked behind her. There were white chippings
underneath her feet, scrunching as she walked. She got closer to
the door. The voices became louder. A man and a woman. The words
had meant nothing to her. Merely jumbled. A big disagreement,
possibly the first stages of domestic violence.

At the time she only half-listened to what was said, yet the
words must have lodged themselves into her mind subconsciously.
Like someone half-seeing a number plate and subsequently dredging
it out of the recycle bin of the memory whole and
complete.

But the mind is a curious organ. Often it stores things the
owner doesn’t even know are there. The skill is in the process of
recall. Sometimes it is a skill which can be acquired. Other times
it is pure luck or circumstance which is the catalyst.

And that night it was a dream, because Danny had fallen asleep
thinking about poor Claire Lilton . . . and the coincidence was
that fifteen years before she had visited Joe Lilton’s home on the
outskirts of Blackburn to do a firearms enquiry and had stumbled
into a domestic dispute, but at the time had not really heard the
words which were being said as she walked to the door of the
house.

In her dream, Danny was back there. It was a perfect
reconstruction. All her recall was superb, even down to the words
which passed between Joe and his then wife.

Danny woke abruptly and for once did not lose the dream. It
was there with her, vivid and exact.

‘
Jesus, Jesus.’ She threw the duvet off and got into her
dressing-gown. She dashed downstairs, cursing herself for not
keeping a pen and paper next to the bedside. She found both in the
kitchen odds and sods cupboard and scribbled down the
words.

Suddenly they all made sense.

The memory must have hurt the girl. Since speaking those last
words she had lapsed into a vague silence, blankly staring through
the window.

‘
What do you know, Tracey?’ Myrna asked softly, unable to stand
it any longer.

Tracey jumped like a charge had been passed through her. She
raised a thin finger and pointed to Myrna’s desk. ‘The newspaper
... can you get the newspaper?’

Myrna placed her coffee down, crossed the office and peeled
the wet paper from her desk blotter and carefully carried it back,
handing it over to Tracey. She took it and laid it on the sofa. She
did not open the paper, as Myrna expected her to, simply pointed to
the headlines.

‘
What? You know something about that?’

Tracey nodded.

Myrna twisted her head and skimmed through the story
underneath the headlines. It was all about the discovery of a
girl’s body in some woodland in the North of England. It was a
fairly run-of-the-mill story in national newspaper terms and had
only made headlines because other good news was scarce, and the way
in which the body had been discovered was obviously of great
interest to many people. Lovers frolicking in a woodland glade
don’t often find bodies - but when they do they can rest assured
the whole world will want to know and so will their legal
partners.

‘
What do you know?’ Myrna asked.

‘
I know the girl who was murdered. . . Annie Reece. She was my
friend.’ Her voice faltered. ‘And I know who killed
her.’

‘
Go on,’ said Myrna

‘
His name is Charlie Gilbert. You know him too ... he was one
of the men who were defiling that girl the other night.’

Chapter Sixteen

‘
A sodding dream?’ Henry exclaimed with mixture of contempt and
amusement. ‘You want to go and investigate something because you
had a dream? I need you here, not gallivanting across the county on
some cockamamie goose chase.’

Danny rubbed her face and held her thumb and forefinger at the
bridge of her nose in an effort to alleviate the monstrous headache
she had as a result of the lack of sleep. ‘I know it sounds whacky,
Henry, but I think it’s worth following up.’

‘
Tell me what the dream was and I might let you go.’

‘
It was ... oh God,’ she began hesitantly. The images which had
been so alive had now faded away to nothingness. It was a good job
she had written some of the words down. ‘Words. I just remembered
some words I’d heard years ago and I think there might be some
connection with Claire.’

‘
And how many years ago did you hear those words?’ There was a
hint of mockery in his voice.

‘
Fifteen.’

‘
And Claire was only eleven, right?’

‘
I know it sounds completely stupid and my mind is like a
little ball of cotton wool at the moment, which doesn’t help
matters.’ She was pacing Henry’s office. ‘But humour me. Give a
sucker an even break.’

She stood across the desk from Henry. Pale, tired, drawn. She
had not even bothered to put on make-up, which was very unusual.
She looked ill.

‘
Okay,’ he relented. ‘Although I don’t know how I’ll justify it
if anyone asks me – “my DS is following up a lead from a dream”.
Sounds like something from
The
X-files.’

‘
Thanks, Henry. I’m grateful.’

‘
You’ve got until five today, then it’s back to reality, Danny
- and take a mobile with you, just in case we need you back
here.’

She shot out of the office before he finished
speaking.

Tracey was sleeping now, curled up on the sofa with Myrna’s
overcoat laid over her thin body. She twitched constantly and
moaned, sometimes fearfully, as though demons were chasing
her.

Myrna leaned back in her big office chair, feet on the edge of
the desk, her half-closed eyes on Tracey, working through the
horror story Tracey had spent a couple of hours relating in minute
detail.

The sound of police sirens on the streets below permeated
through the triple-glazed windows.

The big question for Myrna was - what was the next step to
take? Or even, did she believe what Tracey was saying? Or was it
simply revenge?

Myrna believed it was true. It was other people, she guessed,
who would have to be convinced. She flicked open her electronic
organiser and tabbed through the directory to find the phone number
she required.

Within thirty minutes of leaving Henry’s office, Danny, in a
plain CID car, was leaving the motorway and heading east towards
Blackburn. She bore left towards Clitheroe and passed British
Aerospace at Salmesbury, the classic English Electric Lightning
guarding the gates like a huge Airfix kit. Even compared to
jet-fighters today, the Lightning still looked the biz.

Minutes later she turned left off the main road and cut down
towards Osbaldeston.

In fifteen years the place had changed little. She drove
straight to the large house which had once belonged to Joe Lilton.
Apart from a new colour for the woodwork, the house looked exactly
the same. A large Mercedes was on the driveway, the same colour as
Danny’s somewhat older model had been. She experienced a tinge of
sadness at the thought of her lovely car, but was thankful the
insurance meant that in the not-too distant future, there would be
a brand-spanker on her drive.

As she walked to the house this time there were no sounds of
people arguing. A couple of dogs barked when she rapped on the
door, which opened after a short wait. Two black Labradors bounded
out and surrounded her in a friendly way.