Dead To Me

12

GILL WAS READY, the team were assembled round the table. All except one.

‘Where’s Rachel?’ Gill demanded.

Janet shrugged.

‘Anyone?’ Gill said.

They sat there like a load of muppets. No one missed the briefing. Not without Gill’s express permission. The team relied on everyone carrying their weight. Absent staff led to gaps in the shared knowledge that was crucial to a well-run investigation. ‘We got her report?’

‘No,’ Andy said.

Gill shook her head, annoyed, considered sending someone to see if Rachel was having a fag, or in the canteen, but dismissed the idea. She wasn’t running a nursery. If Rachel didn’t exhibit the professionalism Gill required of her DCs then she’d be out on her ear. Gill thought the girl had more sense. Was Janet right? Was Rachel a bad fit?

‘Lads,’ Gill clapped her hands and began, ‘good work. Timeline shaping up nicely. Look at the first page. Texts and calls made and received. Now this…’ Gill pressed the remote and played part of the video recording of Sean Broughton’s witness statements.

Janet asking, When was the last time you heard from her?

Sean’s reply, I rang her just after one. She said she’d be back about half three. That’s how I knew to go round, like.

Gill paused the tape. ‘The phone records show us the call from Sean was made at ten past one when Lisa was practically home.’

‘We haven’t got cell-site location through yet,’ Mitch pointed out.

‘Accepted, but if they confirm that this call happened somewhere along the taxi route or even once she reached home, then we have an anomaly. Sean’s telling us Lisa said she’ll not be home for another hour and twenty minutes, so he bides his time and shows up at half three. Was Lisa lying to him because she wanted a bit of time to herself for some reason?’

‘Or is he lying to us?’ Janet said. ‘Maybe he was at the flat earlier.’

‘He found the body,’ Lee said. Lee had been a psychiatric nurse in his previous life. He was well qualified, both in academic terms and in experience. Gill knew he had a keen interest in the way people’s minds worked, in human behaviour.

‘Which makes him of special interest,’ Gill noted. A significant proportion of killers actually ‘discovered the body’ and reported it to the police. Assumption being, in their tiny brains, that if they did this it put them above suspicion.

‘We’ve got the domestic violence too,’ Andy said.

‘Agreed. Janet, your report flags up two areas-’ Gill pointed the remote at her.

‘Yes,’ Janet said. ‘Could be nothing, but at one point Sean hesitated more than I’d have expected and couldn’t make eye contact. Then later he’s anticipating a question and again he’s tense, he won’t look at me. I know we can’t rely on body language, but…’

Gill nodded. It was notoriously difficult to spot lies from a person’s gestures. The old saws of licking lips and eye movements (up and left for recall, up and right for invention), of sweaty brows and hands covering mouths had all been discredited in study after study. There was one rock-solid way to tell whether someone was lying: by proving what they said was untrue. Nevertheless, Gill trusted Janet’s intuition.

Janet carried on speaking, ‘First time was with the shopping, then when I asked if he’d taken anything-’

Rachel Bailey burst through the doors, a clutch of papers in her hands, breathless. ‘Sorry, I’m late, it’s just that I-’

‘Sit.’ Gill pointed to a chair.

‘When I was going over the-’

‘And shut it,’ Gill said sharply.

Rachel sat down, placed the reports on the table. Gill turned back to Janet: ‘Go on.’ She passed the remote to Janet.

‘This bit – when he says she was going shopping – he was reluctant to talk about it.’ Janet played them the sequence. ‘And this is where I ask him about taking anything.’ She skipped the tape forward to the next excerpt. When it had finished, Janet froze the image. ‘Then we’ve the unaccounted for thirty-five minutes. It doesn’t take that long to cover somebody with a duvet. Could’ve been his chance to clean up, get rid of the knife.’

‘Boss,’ Rachel interrupted again.

‘Hey, madam!’ Gill hated having her concentration broken. ‘You swan in here late, you fail to provide a report on time – we’ve still not got cell-site location, which was on your slate. So stop bloody interrupting.’

‘But the shopping…’ Rachel ploughed on regardless. Gill was gobsmacked. Had she no sense of self-preservation? ‘She’s been in town all morning,’ Rachel said urgently, ‘but there was nothing in the exhibits. Where was the shopping?’

Gill froze. Valid point.

‘Window shopping?’ Mitch said. ‘My missus does it all the time.’

‘Only ’cos you’re too tight to give her any spends,’ Pete teased.

‘Ask the taxi driver,’ Gill said.

‘I did,’ Rachel said. ‘He can’t remember.’

‘What about cards? Bank statements?’ Gill asked.

‘Debit card only, overdrawn. No activity yesterday,’ Andy said.

‘She could have used cash to buy stuff.’

‘Or nicked it,’ Rachel said. ‘Her mother said she’d shoplifted stuff before.’

Janet chipped in: ‘If Lisa was shoplifting, then maybe Sean took the “shopping”.’

‘And her phone,’ said Lee.

And her life?

‘For starters,’ Gill replied, a tickle at the back of her neck, the case growing wings, the scent of a quarry, the excitement of identifying a potential suspect – caution, though; softly, softly, catchee monkey – ‘I think we should get to know Sean a whole lot better.’

So, the girl done good, Gill thought. But she needs taming, follow the rules, cover the mundane stuff. No room on the team for a lone flyer. No prima donnas wanting to dance their own steps.

‘The cab picked her up on Shudehill?’ Gill tapped her forefinger on the papers. ‘Had she got any shopping then or not? Where had she come from? Rachel, Kevin – CCTV. Trace her backwards.’ She saw the clench of annoyance on Rachel’s face. ‘Crack on, then,’ Gill said to them all. ‘Keep it up.’

‘Nice call,’ Janet said to Rachel, chancing to be in the Ladies at the same time. Janet brushing her hair, Rachel washing her hands.

‘Hard to tell,’ Rachel said. ‘Godzilla wasn’t giving anything away.’

‘You were late, you weren’t prepped – two strikes.’

‘Three and you’re out?’

‘Not quite, but some rules are best not broken. She’s a stickler, she has to be. And she expects the same from us.’ Janet pulled her hair back, fixing it with a barrette, and made to leave.

‘There’s something else,’ Rachel said quickly, unsure whether to mention it, knowing it was iffy, tenuous.

‘Go on.’ Janet paused at the door.

‘We picked up a rape, back in 2008: Rosie Vaughan. She’d been in Ryelands.’ It was a brutal attack, which made it all the more frustrating that they’d never pinned it on anyone. ‘There could be a connection,’ Rachel said.

‘Because they were both in Ryelands?’ Janet said incredulously, giving a look: You thick or what? Eyebrows high, mouth turning up, half a sneer.

‘They’d both been in Ryelands, but both were living independently when it happened.’

‘Ours is a murder, not a rape,’ Janet argued.

‘It could be a rape, too – we don’t know. He used a knife.’

‘Vaughan – did he stab her?’

Rachel shook her head.

‘That it?’

Rachel wished she’d never raised it now.

‘There’s thin and then there’s non-existent,’ Janet said.

‘But two attacks within eighteen months, both girls from-’

‘They’re not the same,’ Janet insisted. ‘Besides, you run an analysis of crime stats and feed in that demographic and you know what you’ll get. The very fact that they were in care increases the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime, including a victim of serious sexual assault, several times over. Dig enough and you could find more rapes, domestic violence, assaults – it doesn’t mean we’re looking for a serial offender.’ Janet looked at her, face screwed up in disapproval. Snotty cow. ‘Did you have anyone in the frame?’

‘The neighbour, for a while. He’d done a stretch for previous and he’d been hassling her, but we had nothing. She refused to press charges, wouldn’t tell us who’d done it. She knew him, I’m convinced of that. Sean Broughton picked Lisa up when she was still in Ryelands. Maybe he’d done the same with Rosie. You’re going there anyway, to Ryelands, aren’t you? It wouldn’t do any harm to ask if Sean was known to them back then.’

‘DNA?’

‘The rapist used a condom. We had traces in the flat from the neighbour, but that could have been from a previous visit. He used to call round for a cup of tea, he said, watch porn together. We’d unidentified DNA too – hair and skin cells, no hits. Case is still on file. She was a fruitloop, anyway. The whole thing was a mess.’

Janet was shaking her head. ‘Sean’s in the system. If he was your rapist, there’d have been a match.’ Rachel could see it in her eyes, on a hiding to nothing, mind made up. Maybe someone made a mistake, Rachel thought, it has been known. She gave it one last try. ‘Look, I could at least find out if Rosie knew him.’

‘You could,’ Janet said flatly, ‘or you could actually do what you’re supposed to be doing.’

When Rachel got back to her desk, she’d an email through from Lisa’s phone company, a document attached, with the cell-site locations. She pulled up the mapping software and entered the coordinates. The first call, to Speedy Cabs, was made close to the end of Cross Street, near the Arndale Centre and the big wheel. The other calls, the ones Lisa received from Sean and Denise, were both taken at points along Oldham Road on the way to Fairland Avenue. It dovetailed with their information so far. Rachel felt a glow of satisfaction.

Rachel went and knocked on her ladyship’s door. Her Maj waved her in, impatient rather than welcoming. Rachel held up the printout. ‘Cell-site locations, it’s all good.’

Gill nodded, pointed to a tray on the table by the filing cabinet. Returned to her screen.

You’re welcome and fuck you too, ma’am.

Kevin was waiting for her as she came out. ‘We’d better get going. You and me, a dark room, popcorn…’ He gave a sleazy grin.

‘Zip it, pal,’ Rachel said, ‘or I’ll zip it for you,’ letting an edge of the streets through. And she was that close; another inane bleat and she’d lamp him. ‘I’m off for a fag, see you in the car park.’

Luckily for Kevin, luckily for Rachel’s prospects in the Manchester Metropolitan Police, he took heed. Sidled off muttering something about lezzies under his breath.