Dead To Me Read online

‘Not a caution?’ Gill asked, the usual policy for that offence.

  ‘Already had two.’

  ‘Naughty step not working for him,’ Gill said. ‘There were signs of Class As at the scene.’

  ‘Paraphernalia,’ Lee said. ‘No drugs recovered, though.’

  ‘Word is, both Sean and Lisa were using,’ Mitch added.

  ‘Supplying?’ Gill said.

  ‘No, not that I’ve heard.’

  ‘Did have a couple of call-outs, domestics,’ said Andy, ‘knocking lumps out of each other.’

  ‘Doncha just love ’em!’ Gill shook her head. ‘And where are we with—’

  Rachel spoke up, interrupting her: ‘The brother, Nathan Finn, he died in January, suicide – but he was a junkie too.’

  ‘A family affair,’ Gill said. ‘Helps us how?’ She stared, unsmiling, put Rachel on the spot. The girl was bright, did she think this contributed to the case?

  ‘Dunno, background?’ Rachel slumped in her seat, smarting perhaps. Gill didn’t have time for it. ‘Do we fancy Sean?’ she asked the room.

  ‘Kevin does,’ Pete quipped. Laughter. Kevin gave him the finger.

  ‘We need more,’ Janet said. ‘I think he’s keeping something back but …’ She shrugged. Lukewarm about Sean being a credible suspect.

  Things could change, Gill knew; people cycle through the roles from victim to witness to suspect and back. ‘There’s another reason he delays calling us. Changes his clothes. Ranjeet reckons there would be some blood on the killer’s clothes.’ It was virtually impossible to knife someone and not come away with traces of blood. Especially when you retained the weapon. All they needed was a drop, a smear. Though with Sean, a defence lawyer would argue that he picked up blood traces in the process of covering Lisa up. It made the whole forensics side of it that much messier.

  After talking it through with Phil Sweet, earlier in the day, Gill had put together her list for Gerry, the forensics submissions officer. She had wanted them to examine trace evidence from the body, from the duvet and from the sheet in the bedroom, but Gerry wasn’t playing.

  ‘I can’t authorize all this premium rate, Gill,’ he said. ‘What are your priorities?’

  ‘The body obviously, but given her state of dress and the indications that she had sex, I’d like to include the material from the bedroom.’ She could try, couldn’t she?

  ‘Yeah, and I’d like a Lotus and early retirement on a six-figure pension. However … straitened times.’

  ‘C’mon, Gerry.’

  ‘The best I can do is put the body samples through premium rate as a first tranche and let you have the second lot as standard.’

  At least he wasn’t telling her to sit on part of her trace evidence, which might have happened. It would all get looked at, even if she had to wait longer for some of it. ‘You’re a hard man, Gerry.’

  ‘I am God’s gift, that’s what I am. You’re getting everything you want tested.’

  ‘Not when I want.’

  ‘Patience,’ he had said.

  ‘Go on,’ she told him, ‘bugger off and play with your budgets.’

  ‘For now, Sean Broughton is our witness, but talk to him again. Lisa’ – Gill moved the discussion on to focus on the victim – ‘left care, Ryelands House, eight months ago. They no longer have a duty of care but we should still pay ’em a visit. Lisa’s personal advisor is James Raleigh. Rachel, you talk to him: what was he dealing with, any recent trouble?’ Gill glanced at her papers. ‘Where’s Mr Finn?’ she said.

  ‘Mickey?’ Janet got there first.

  ‘Droll,’ said Gill. She saw a flicker of panic in Kevin’s eyes as he joined in the laughter. Poor sod didn’t know the term: Mickey Finn, a drink laced with drugs. Roofies the modern equivalent, rohypnol.

  ‘Bernard Finn,’ Pete said, ‘Irish citizen. Whereabouts unknown. Left the area in ninety-three. HGV driver.’

  ‘Right, now, we’ve only one FLO in place as yet and we are taking next-of-kin to do a formal ID.’ She looked at Janet: ‘OK, cock?’

  ‘Fine,’ Janet said.

  ‘If she’s fit, have a chat too.’ Gill saw Rachel glance at Janet, body language between the two of them like a pair of alley cats bristling for a scrap. ‘Take Rachel,’ she added to Janet. Throw them together, force them to work it out.

  ‘Thought I was doing the personal advisor?’ said Rachel.

  ‘Use your initiative,’ Gill said briskly, ‘time management. Kevin.’ Gill fixed on him, watched his face: untroubled, a kid, eager.

  ‘Boss?’

  Gill waited.

  Andy nudged him, gestured to Kevin’s notes. Though whether he had anything there apart from the schoolboy doodles he specialized in, Gill had no idea.

  ‘Yes, right.’ Kevin scratched at his head. ‘Erm.’ Kevin was a tier one interviewer, talk and write at the same time; how he’d progressed to Major Incidents was a mystery to all who had the pleasure of commanding him.

  ‘House-to-house,’ Kevin finally got going, ‘no sighting of Sean, though some more still to canvass. But old biddy at the end saw Lisa come home in a taxi.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Heartbeat was on, the first ad break.’

  ‘Which is …?’ Gill saw Andy roll his eyes in despair. He’d probably already told Kevin to pinpoint the time.

  ‘The one about the bobbies in the Dales.’

  ‘Time!’ yelled Gill.

  ‘I’ll check,’ Kevin said, affronted.

  ‘You do that,’ she said, making a mental note to discuss this with Kevin, how one piece of information needed developing, verifying. Coming home with half the story was not good enough. He had to join the dots.

  ‘Have we got the firm?’ she said to him.

  ‘I asked her that.’ Kevin was obviously pleased with himself about this stunning piece of detective work. ‘But she couldn’t remember.’

  ‘Get dialling, Kevin.’

  His face fell.

  ‘Are we done?’ Gill surveyed them. Nods of assent. People made to move, gathering up papers, drinks, pens.

  ‘Janet – a word.’

  Gill went to her office. Once Janet was inside, Gill closed the door to give them some privacy as the lads filtered back to their desks. ‘You’ve got your face on,’ Gill said.

  ‘I don’t have a face,’ Janet objected, baby blue eyes wide.

  ‘Yes, you do. I know you, kid. You’re sulking about Bailey. Not going to work, kiddo – drop it. Status quo.’

  ‘“Whatever You Want”?’ The tune popped into Janet’s head.

  ‘Things stay as they are.’

  ‘I never did Greek,’ Janet said. ‘Look, we’re at the mother’s and she wades in, intrusive questions, clumsy assumptions. You know what she said? Could we call the son round to be with her.’

  ‘Ouch!’ Through the glass Gill could see Rachel at her desk.

  ‘Right,’ Janet said, with feeling.

  ‘But you told her?’ Gill asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Janet said, the tone in her voice: Of course I did, what do you take me for?

  ‘Good, she’s learning.’

  ‘Seems to me it went in one ear and out the other,’ Janet complained.

  Gill had had enough. She needed to make it plain that Janet had to deal with this on her own, not come running to Gill with every gripe and squabble. ‘Time will tell. I expect you to train her up. She wants this, she’s got plenty between her ears, I’ve seen her files. She’ll learn. You point out her mistakes and you encourage her to do better. Clear?’

  ‘As glass.’

  Gill gave the thumbs up and went to ring the CSM. They needed a sit-down, see where Sean Broughton’s bed-making left them, forensically speaking.

  8

  ‘DC RACHEL BAILEY, Manchester Metropolitan Police. We sent you a request yesterday evening for call data on a missing phone.’

  ‘Nothing for you, yet,’ said the man on the other end.

  ‘You do realize this is a murder I’m dealing with
here?’ Rachel complained. ‘Can’t you get your finger out?’

  ‘You do realize that this is the police liaison department?’ the man said frostily. ‘All we deal with is murders. I’ve a stack of requests here. You wait your turn.’ And he hung up. Rachel looked at the receiver for a moment, taken aback. Then she made a note in her daybook about the call.

  Rachel was miffed at the way Godzilla had talked to her, making her look stupid in front of everyone. She had brought her into the syndicate and now she was being snotty to her. Making her tag along for the formal identification, for fuck’s sake.

  It had snowed in the early hours, not much, but enough to mottle the landscape with patches of white, a piebald effect. Slush already on the main roads. On the drive over to the mortuary Janet had explained it was policy to have two FLOs in the initial stages of an inquiry, before they knew what flavour it was. You didn’t know how many next-of-kin might come crawling out of the woodwork, you didn’t know if there was bad blood. Things might kick off.

  ‘One time,’ Janet said, ‘we had the father at the mortuary, he had been easy to trace. The mother had done a runner years before, leaving the kids …’

  Rachel looked out of the window; she knew what that was like, aware of the old twist in her stomach, the anger just underneath. How could she, the bitch? Didn’t want to think about her. Waste of space, waste of time. Dead. Good as.

  ‘… but,’ Janet went on, turning into the car park near the mortuary, ‘mother pitches up, completely trollied, seen the death on the news, and attacks the father. Only one FLO there and yours truly, trying to pull them apart. I got a smack in the face for my trouble.’

  Rachel still thought this was overkill, Denise Finn at the mortuary along with the FLO and two detectives. Three to one. Plus the mortuary staff. Janet obviously thought so, too. ‘You can wait in the car?’ she said when they arrived.

  ‘You’re all right,’ Rachel replied.

  ‘Frightened you’ll miss something?’ The woman thought she was a mind reader now.

  So they waited, while Denise Finn stood in front of the viewing area where her daughter’s body was laid out. The pale blue sheet pulled up to her neck. Blood washed away, her scuzzy hair combed – they’d have done that for the post-mortem, collecting trace material that might lead to her attacker. Denise Finn wore the same clothes as the previous evening, perhaps she had not slept. Perhaps she was a mucky one. She was huffing and puffing, a tissue balled in her hand. The FLO, Christopher Danes his name was, asked her the question: ‘Can you tell me if this is your daughter, Lisa Anne Finn?’

  ‘Yes,’ Denise said in a sob, her shoulders heaving. The FLO put his hand on her shoulder, suggested she sit down for a minute. She stared at him, looking lost, he repeated the question and she nodded. He showed her into the visitors’ room and came back out. The mortuary assistant closed the blinds. Rachel heard the squeal of the trolley as he wheeled it to the freezer.

  Rachel’s phone went. Alison calling. She let it go to voicemail. Her sister could talk for England; she went on about how overstretched she was at work, how big her caseload was, yet she still found time to make social calls in the day.

  Janet spoke to the FLO: ‘We’d like to talk to her again.’

  He nodded. ‘We’re going back to the house now.’

  ‘How’s she been?’ Janet said.

  ‘Not said much,’ he said. ‘Dumbstruck.’

  ‘She fit to talk?’ Janet checked.

  ‘Just about. She’s on sedatives, as it is. GP’s been, given her some sleeping tablets.’

  ‘I get to listen again?’ Rachel said on the way up, hoping she was wrong.

  ‘I think that’s wise,’ Janet answered. ‘You’re not exactly going to be her favourite person, are you?’

  ‘She’ll have forgotten by now,’ Rachel objected, ‘with all she’s got going on.’

  ‘You think?’ Janet gave her a knowing look. ‘You don’t give a toss, do you?’

  ‘We’re police officers, not agony aunts,’ Rachel said. ‘She can’t be much of a mother, can she? If Lisa was taken into care.’

  ‘Maybe Lisa was hard to handle. You can’t go making assumptions. We don’t know these people, we don’t know what their lives are like.’

  ‘Got a pretty good clue – trash.’

  ‘An interview is a conversation,’ Janet said, ‘whether it’s a witness or a suspect, it is a conversation – not a confrontation.’ Repeating it as if it were some mantra she’d learnt. ‘They need to trust us, we show respect, we listen, we don’t judge.’

  ‘I know.’ Rachel flung her head back against the headrest.

  ‘I don’t think you do,’ Janet said steadily. ‘Your body language, your tone of voice … If you’re sat there thinking, “What a slimebag, what a pitiful excuse for a human being”, and you let it show, then you won’t get that conversation.’

  Rachel got her phone out, had enough of the lecture, listened to her voicemail from Alison. Hi, it’s me. We’ve got vouchers for BOGOFs for the new Vietnamese place in Moston, use by the end of the month. Thought maybe you and lover-boy would like to make a foursome. You can’t keep him hidden for ever. She gave a grating laugh. Or are you ashamed of us?

  Yes. Truly, madly, deeply. It would be a horror show, Alison and Tony talking school admissions and tracker mortgages and offers on patio furniture from Wickes, and Nick strangling her with his eyes. Cottoning on that this was the Bailey family. With their tiny little lives. This was where Rachel had come from. The underclass, grotty estate on the wrong side of Middleton. She didn’t want him to think of her that way. She was different from Alison, from Dom. Hadn’t even told him of Dom’s existence. And she was way different from her parents, who didn’t even deserve the title. Langley was the past. She’d locked the door on it, she didn’t need Alison blurting stuff out now. Amusing anecdotes of free school meals and scraping by in hand-me-downs, and knock-offs from the market. Rachel was making something of herself. Her dad was still knocking around Middleton. No fixed abode. Half a chance she’d get a call-out one day and find him. Sudden death. Wouldn’t be that sudden really, been killing himself for years on the booze and the fags. Alison tried sorting him out every once in a while. Get him in a flat, take him to the hospital. Playing happy families. Same as Alison kept visiting Dom. Deluded.

  If she ignored it, Alison would keep nudging: Did you get the message? Have you decided?

  Rachel sent a text: No can do, him away, me overtime.

  Best kept separate. Some things wouldn’t mix, like putting lemon juice with milk: whole thing curdles.

  The small room smelled sickly, stale, fruity of booze. There was a glass, sticky with fingerprints, and a bottle of sherry on the side table. The air was humid, condensation on the windows, a towel on the radiator.

  The FLO left as they arrived, aiming to sort out some nebby neighbours whose offers of help were simply a way of having a good nosy.

  ‘Can you tell me about Lisa?’ said Janet, starting wide, letting Denise choose where to begin, what tack to take, which memories to share.

  ‘What about her?’ Denise asked.

  ‘You told me yesterday that she had been in bother, messing with drugs.’

  ‘That’s right, and Sean, he put her up to it.’

  ‘Did he? Why do you say that?’

  ‘She wasn’t doing so bad till she started going with him. It’s his fault,’ Denise said.

  ‘What’s his fault?’ Janet said.

  ‘That this … that she …’ It wasn’t unusual for those left behind to blame whoever was at hand. ‘I told her to get shot of him. He’s a junkie,’ Denise said. ‘He dragged her down in the muck with him. They was offering her rehab, but she wouldn’t listen … If she can just …’ She ground to a halt. Janet saw it almost like a truck hitting a wall. The impact striking the woman again, the reality. Lisa. Dead.

  ‘How would you describe their relationship?’

  ‘A bloody disaster,’ Denise said. She
cast about, found her cigarettes and lit one. Janet waited.

  ‘Mrs Finn, do you have any reason to think Sean had some involvement in Lisa’s death?’

  ‘He hit her,’ Denise said angrily, fanning the flames. ‘I seen her black and blue. He’s a right nasty piece of work.’

  ‘Did you have a lot of contact with her?’

  ‘She’s my daughter,’ Denise replied.

  ‘How often did you see her?’ Janet rephrased the question, aware that Denise had sidestepped it.

  Denise gave a bitter laugh. ‘More before he came on the scene. And then he sends her up here to scrounge. Expecting me to give them drug money.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Lisa was in Ryelands House until this April?’

  ‘I couldn’t manage. I tried …’ Janet sensed the woman’s shame at her inadequacy. ‘My sister took Nathan, but she couldn’t cope with the baby as well.’

  ‘When did Lisa first go into care?’ Janet said.

  ‘Four months.’

  An infant. ‘Was she in care all her life?’

  ‘No,’ Denise tapped the ash off her cigarette. ‘Only till I sorted myself out. I got her back when she was six, then … the end of primary and she just went wild. Running away, going missing, drinking.’ Taisie’s age, thought Janet. At least we’ve not had any of that to deal with. ‘I tried everything, but I couldn’t handle her. I’d school attendance on my back and your lot every five minutes. I thought it was for the best, but Ryelands – there’s more drugs in there than there is on the streets. Same as prison. Paedos hanging round an’ all,’ she said. ‘Some of the kids in there’ll do anything for twenty quid.’

  Janet knew Rachel would follow up on this when she spoke to Lisa’s personal advisor. Get details, help them sort out fact from fiction. But from what Denise said, it sounded as though Lisa had been experimenting with drugs before she hooked up with Sean. Janet brought the question round to recent contact again.

  ‘Have you seen Lisa recently?’

  Denise’s eyes filled. She was in bits. ‘No.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘My birthday – in October.’

  ‘Had you spoken to her on the phone?’