A Long Time Dead (The Dead Trilogy) (16 page)

“You okay?”

Even with a mask to hide behind, Paul looked queasy. “I still feel seriously too hot, that’s all.”

“You’re not going to puke, are you? Tell me you’re not going to throw.”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

“We’ll take a breather soon.”

Both changed gloves, throwing their old pairs into a black bin liner that was already half full of empty film boxes and cellophane wrappers. Next, they tied bags around her stiffening hands and cold, clammy feet.

“Right,” Chris said, “tapings next, I think.”

 “Shouldn’t we wait until the pathologist gets here?”

“Yes, we should. Shouldn’t have bagged her head either, but we have things to do, and we can’t wait around all bloody day for him to finish his round of golf. Anyway, when he gets here, he’ll ask if we’ve taped the body, so we may as well get on with it.”

They completed the tapings, twelve in all: two for each limb and four for the trunk: two front and two back. “Okay, go and ask Shelby where the bloody Exhibits Officer and Pathologist are?”

“Right.”

“I’m gonna start taping the inside of the body bag.”

Paul stopped and turned. “Why?”

Though he didn’t have the time to educate him on every point, Chris told him anyway. Knowledge belonged to all, he remembered. “If we find any hairs on her at the mortuary that don’t belong on her, where could they have come from?”

“From the murderer,” Paul said.

“Correct. But they could also have come from Mrs Bloggs in China or bloody Japan, or wherever it is they get this cheap crap from, whose job it is to inspect these bags and then fold them into the nice neat little square of black plastic you’ve just unwrapped. See?”

Chris knelt beside the bag and half-heartedly dabbed sticky tape around its inner surface. His attention was yanked from the task by noise on the stairs, of scene suits crackling, latex-clad hands creaking on the banister. Chris stood with anger in his eyes as Shelby and the Pathologist entered, the Exhibits Officer behind them, and a couple of DCs behind her. Paul was last in, standing out of the way. Chris said, “Please tell me none of you used the banister on your way up here?” He looked at the ensemble. “Well?”

“We might have grazed it,” one of the DCs said, eyes squinting in a grin.

Chris recognised those eyes; it was Haynes, the dick from Sally Delaney’s PM. “Don’t you know anything,
anything
, about murder scenes?”

Haynes looked away.

Chris screamed to everyone, “Touch nothing! This is my bloody scene and you go nowhere unless I or the DI say so. And just to make sure we understand each other: keep your bloody hands by your sides!”

“But we all have gloves on,” Haynes said.

“Whoopee-fucking-do.”

“Chris, that’s enough,” Shelby warned.

He glared between Shelby and Haynes. “Sorry.” And then, just for the officer’s benefit, “What happens to the murderer’s fingerprint, which is made of nothing more substantial, nothing stronger, than oil and water, when a clumsy—” he checked his language, “when a clumsy soul like you drags his hand, his
gloved
hand, right through the centre of it?”

“I’m sorry,” Haynes said. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Super,” Chris said. “Super.”

Everyone remained quiet, successfully chastened. Bellington Wainwright inspected the body, made scribbles on a dog-eared note pad of the blood distribution patterns on the wall, and of the body’s position and surroundings. “No Conniston today?” he asked Chris.

“He has other commitments.”

Wainwright seemed pleased that he was absent. He took the names and designations of those present, then asked Chris, “Have the tapings been done?”

“Yes. And head and hands bagged, and scaled photos of the blood on the wall and the bed, and photos of her clothing…” Chris trailed off, bored by the man.

“And we taped the body bag, too!” Paul chipped in; hoping to sound like an old hand.

“Of course, your blood splatter photos won’t be perpendicular.” Wainwright stated.

“We’ll be doing them again when the body’s gone and when we can pull the bed away from the wall.” Chris’s gloves creaked as he clenched his fists.

“Good. Splendid.” Wainwright studiously – and slowly – took measurements, made more notes and peered at the girl’s fingernails through the crinkling plastic bags. He ignored Chris’s constant and rude sighing. “Do you think,” he turned to Shelby, “that we could arrange the PM for about seven-ish?”

DC Clements, a slip of a girl with hair the colour of ginger biscuits and with Chanel No. 5 leaking into the room, perked the place up a bit and helped Paul to bag up the girl’s belongings, which included her black jeans, flimsy white top, several sets of underwear lying across a chair, more underwear on the floor, and her shoes. They took further photos of the room now Nicky had been taken away, including the pools of blood she had left behind, and the duvet with its indented mark. Then DC Clements bagged that too, and with some regret on Paul’s part, left the scene, taking her fragrance with her.

Within fifteen minutes, they had marked the height of the bed on the wall and pulled it far enough out of the way to get the camera in so they could take perpendicular scaled, arrowed and measured photographs of the blood distribution patterns on the wall. Chris said nothing throughout the operation.

“Are we having a biologist, Chris?” asked Paul.

“No need. The photos are good enough.” Chris put a fresh 3M mask over his face, pulled up his hood and opened the lid of his fingerprinting kit. “Anyway, it isn’t going anywhere; if we change our minds later, he can come out and see it in the flesh.” He wore new latex gloves and began brushing black powder over all the surfaces he deemed suitable for this technique: doors, doorframes, windows and sills, and even the unpreserved banister rail. Not surprisingly, few marks developed. She was obviously a clean girl, and probably had visitors infrequently.

Black powder, like soot from a freshly swept chimney, still floated around the room when Chris took out his clipboard and began drawing a plan of where each mark was located.

“Chris?” Paul was signing over the seals of a brown paper sack with police evidence plastered across it. “I thought you were going to let me do that?”

Chris stopped sketching. “You’re right; I did say you could do this, didn’t I? Bloody hell.” He stroked an arm over his glistening forehead, and left a black smear. “Look, Paul, for the sake of speed, I’ll do the upstairs part of the fingerprint photography while you start powdering downstairs – which, I might add, could prove to be equally important, and then you can do the fingerprint photography down there?”

“Yeah, okay.” Paul mumbled as he plodded across the aluminium stepping plates, heading dejectedly for the stairs.

“Stop. You’re right, come back here.” He held out a sheet of labels and smiled. “Fuck the time, Paul, write out some blue labels; you can do it.”

Like a small child given the sweets recently denied him, a grin burst back onto his face. “Seriously?”

“Don’t look so bloody happy,” Chris said, “it’s tedious work.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“Good, ‘cause it would bore me stupid.”

“Where shall I stick ‘em?”

Chris raised an eyebrow, then showed him where the marks were and handed him the fingerprint camera. “You okay with it? Want me to watch over you?”

“Might be an idea, just for the first few, at least.”

“Go on, then, get on with it.”

The flash popped, and as he wound the film on, Paul asked, “I wonder how your horse did.”

“What?”

“Your horse. The one we stopped at the bookies for on the way here.”

“Keep your damned voice down!” Chris growled and then jumped as Shelby peeked his head around the door.

“Progress report, if you please, Chris.”

“Start downstairs now, Paul.”

Paul tutted loudly enough for them to hear, set the camera down and without glancing up, he pushed past Shelby and thudded down to the lounge.

Chris watched him go, shook his head. “A few marks in here that we’ve just photo’d, a couple on the landing; er, the girl’s clothing and photos of the scene. That’s really about all, I’m afraid.”

“Can’t say I’m not disappointed. I expected far more evidence than this.” Shelby strode into the centre of the room, perched on a stepping plate, his mood heavy. “Did I tell you that we pulled Richard Andrews in?”

“Who’s Richard Andrews?”

“Sally Delaney’s pimp.”

Chris became attentive. “No, you didn’t. Has he coughed to it? Have you found the weapon?”

“No, and no. He didn’t do it. His alibi checks out.”

“What alibi?”

“He was in the cells at Wood Street. Drunk and disorderly.”

“Can’t get a better alibi than that, can you. Any other leads?”

“We’ve interviewed a dozen or so of Sally’s known associates, had two other pimps in for a chat. Zilch. I got a Prison Intelligence Liaison Officer trawling through Wakefield and Armley’s files just in case some known associate pops his acne-riddled face above the parapet, and I’ve got three Informant Handlers scouring her locale. Bugger all so far. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed on the cash.”

“What cash?”

“For a hard-up prostitute, she had a large amount of cash in the lounge—”

“But we searched the lounge.”

“Not well enough, Chris. Anyway, it’s gone away for chemical fingerprinting now, so we’ll soon see.”

“Well, you won’t find anything as lucky here, I’m afraid. All very straightforward.”

“You call this straightforward? It’s not straightforward from where I’m standing. I have nothing to go on, Chris. I’ve got a dead girl and bugger all else.” Shelby strode to the window, looked through the rain and out on the fields.

“Nothing from house-to-house?” Chris asked.

“Nope.” Shelby sighed. “I had a full OSU team on it. But Chamberlain bawled me out, said it was misuse of resources, that I should use divisional coppers.” He folded his arms and added, “Tosser.”

Chris stared at Shelby’s back.

“I need a leak,” Shelby made for the bathroom, already pulling at the zip on his scene suit.

“Whoa, no you don’t, Graham.”

“What? Why?”

“You don’t use the facilities in a crime scene. Rules.”

“Whose rules?”

“Mine. Oh, and ACPO’s too. You’ll have to use a neighbour’s house.” There was no room for negotiation in Chris’s voice.

“Thanks.” Shelby went back to the window. “Do you think the attacker was forensically aware?”

“Well, I don’t know. I mean, the marks we’ve developed
may
belong to the offender and so we might already have him in the bag.” He pulled his hood back and lifted the mask up. Sweat clumped his grey hair. “Then again, they may all belong to her or even Micky, in which case—”

“We’re shagged,” he shouted. His voice boomed in the silence, and then his volume shrank back to a whisper, “Correction, I’m shagged.” There were no familiar crows-feet visible on Shelby’s friendly face now. He looked only a day away from haggard. “You know, they say ‘find out how they lived and you’ll find out how they died’, and until now I thought there was some validity in that. I think there
was
with Sally Delaney’s case, even though we’re no further forward with it yet. But this… Nicky Bridgestock just blew that theory right out the fucking water.” Shelby pulled his mask off too and wiped a plastic sleeve across his face. “You know what I find the hardest thing?”

“What?”

“I haven’t got a hypothesis for this. It’s motiveless as far as I can see. And they’re the worst bloody ones to solve.”

Chris relaxed again. “Are you going to send her clothing away? Maybe that could give us an idea.”

“Oh, I’ve already got some ideas,” he huffed. “I’ve got hold of the CCTV footage from Wakefield town centre.”

Chris paused, “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

“Half of the bloody cameras around town are out of order, some of the loop tape in the others is only fit for cross-stitch, and some of the bloody things are dummies! Which I did not know about, and…”

“And,” Chris prompted.

“And the rest, which are in fine working order, are pointing in exactly the wrong fucking direction. We know she came out of Biggles’ at about one-thirty-ish and one witness – who was totally paralytic at the time – said she was talking to someone in a dark car. A
dark car!
I ask you, a dark car?”

Chris felt almost sorry for him.

“Well that narrows it down a bit,” Shelby said.

“Neighbours not heard anything, then?”

“There’s still three or four to contact yet, travelling salesmen, long-distance truckers and the like, oh and next door-but-one set off for Wales in the early hours of this morning. Still out on that one.” Shelby rubbed his lips with latex-clad fingers and then inspiration struck him. “Couldn’t we use the Fingerprint Development Laboratory here? I mean is it the right kind of wallpaper, the type that works with their chemicals?”

But Chris seemed to have drifted off at this point, mind on other troubles.

“Snap out of it, Chris. I’m on a tight enough noose already without you pulling on the other fucking end.”

“Sorry.”

“I asked if FDL would be any good here.” Impatience rattled Shelby and he closed in on Chris, ensuring his full attention.

“By all means get them out, you never know, we may find the mark that cuts you down.”

Shelby rubbed his plump throat and looked not at all amused as he thudded past Chris. “I’ll get them involved,” he growled. And then he stopped before even reaching Nicky’s bedroom door. Without turning, he asked, “Not found any keys, have you, Chris?”

“Keys?”

“Funny shaped bits of metal that make you feel secure at night, or that can lead to you getting stabbed in the throat if you turn them for the wrong person. Yes, keys!”

“No, no keys.”

Shelby seemed to contemplate Chris’s words as though they were a riddle unlocking the secret of life. Or the secret to this investigation.

“You think she let someone in after she got home then?”

“Just another option,” was all he said.