A Velvet Scream (6 page)

Behind her Joanna could hear Korpanski shifting his weight on his feet. It sounded like a heavy, rhythmic thud. She knew he hated the ‘Take them, fuck them, leave them' epithet applied to men sometimes. And he had strong feelings about motherhood, too, which he had expressed before. She gave him a quick, warning glance. Korpanski's neck had turned red. A sure sign he was about to blow. She shook her head at him, warningly. He met her eyes with a steady gaze and a tightening of his neck muscles. Slowly his neck resumed its normal colour and his breathing slowed. She heaved a quiet sigh of relief. The danger was over.

Christine seemed not to notice any of this and continued with her story with barely a pause. ‘She passes out and then, when she comes round, she makes up this cock and bull story to explain what's been going on. Take my word for it, Inspector: that is what happened.' She lay back on the sofa exhausted. ‘Need a police investigation for that, Inspector?' she mocked.

Joanna glanced again at Mike, who was scowling, then at Bridget, who was watching the drama with her lips slightly parted, sitting very still. Joanna couldn't begin to work out what her response to all this was. Bridget's life had made her adept at the art of concealing her emotions.

‘Would you like WPC Anderton to drive you to the hospital to see your daughter?'

Christine puffed on her cigarette. ‘'Spose I'd better,' she said reluctantly, stubbing the cigarette out in a small brass ashtray and standing up. ‘It'll look bad if I don't.'

‘Kayleigh asked if you would bring her mobile phone charger, her iPod and some money.'

Even this seemed to upset Christine. ‘Oh, she did, did she? Anything else Lady Muck wants?'

‘I don't think so.' Joanna could have added so many words, so many sentiments, but wisely she kept her mouth shut and left with her sergeant.

As she reached the door, she turned. ‘By the way,' she said. ‘Kayleigh's father. Where is he now?'

‘Scarpered off back to London,' Christine said. ‘I haven't seen him in years.'

‘Was he a Londoner?'

‘Oh, yeah. When we split up he went straight back. Once a Londoner, always a Londoner.' She gave a cynical smile. ‘Bit like Leek, I s'pose. You never quite leave the moorlands behind.' She qualified the statement. ‘Not completely anyway.'

‘He had a London accent?'

‘What on earth has that got to do with this?'

‘Kayleigh said that her attacker had a London accent.'

Christine almost laughed. ‘There's probably millions of people with a London accent.'

‘Not in Leek.'

‘Yeah, well. Born and bred there, he was. I'd gone down there to work. You know  . . .' Again Christine Bretby smiled. ‘You know, it's the kind of the thing you do when you're in your teens and I was a bit of a tearaway. Bit like Kayleigh, really. Leek wasn't big enough for me so I worked in a hotel in Leicester Square. That's when I met 'im. He was a right charmer. We got married. He came back up 'ere with me but I don't think he could cope with rural life. He missed the “Old Smoke”.'

‘Has he ever come back to Leek?'

Christine shook her head. ‘Not as far as I know. He wasn't ever over keen on the place. Never really settled here. Couldn't wait to get back to London.'

‘Has he got any friends still here?'

Christine looked guarded. ‘One or two.'

‘Can we have their names, please?'

‘As far as I remember he knew a guy called Johnny Ollerenshaw. I didn't really know him. And there was someone else.' She screwed up her face. ‘A farmer from out Rudyard way – Terence Gradbach, I think his name was. Those were the only two he was really friendly with. He didn't make friends easy. He was a bit of a loner. But they used to go fishing together on the canal. I don't think there's anyone else he would have kept up with – if he's even kept up with them.' She looked up. ‘But Peter can't have had anything to do with this. We're history. He's not wanted any contact with Kayleigh since he's gone. You're barkin' up the wrong tree there, Inspector Piercy.'

‘Was he a smoker?'

Again Christine looked bemused by the question. ‘What the heck are you asking these questions for about her dad? What's this got to do with whatever happened to Kayleigh last night?'

Joanna hid behind, ‘Just answer the question, please.'

‘He was a social smoker,' she said grumpily. ‘Not heavy.' She gave a sour smile. ‘Not like me.' She glanced at the only ornaments in the room: the packet of cigarettes and plastic Biclighter on top of the television. ‘Addicted.'

‘OK. Right. Thanks for that.' Joanna smiled. ‘And his teeth?'

Now Christine looked at her as though she'd left her senses. ‘His teeth?' she chortled. ‘Same as everyone else's.'

Joanna persevered. ‘There was nothing –' she paused – ‘notable about them?'

‘No.' The answer came flatly.

‘Do you have a photograph of him?'

The question provoked both anger and humour. ‘Not bloody likely. I hardly had any affection for him after I'd gone. I wasn't going to keep mementoes.'

‘OK. One last thing, Christine. Do you have a recent photograph of Kayleigh?'

For a moment Christine sat still, as though thinking. Then she stood up and left the room, returning with a glossy picture. Joanna studied it. She would have found it hard to believe that the pale child in the hospital bed and this giggling, heavily made-up girl in a very skimpy dress were one and the same. The power of make-up and clothes, she reflected. They transform.

‘Thank you,' she said.

Most mothers in this situation produce a school photograph – something to underline the fact that their child is clean and pure, even when facts point resolutely in the opposite direction.

Not Kayleigh's mother. She wanted to portray her daughter as glamorous, tarty, older than her years: inviting sexual advances. If anything she appeared to want to blacken her daughter's reputation, not enhance it.

Interesting.

FOUR

A
s Barra had predicted the images from the CCTV outside Patches nightclub showed little. Most people were muffled up against the weather and stood with their heads bowed and their shoulders hunched. It was disappointing. Everyone was anonymous. There were plenty of couples walking together: clusters of girls and clusters of youths laughing, talking, smoking, drinking. All appeared perfectly normal. They ran through the tapes and then, a little before 2 a.m., they spotted Kayleigh by her silver skirt which shimmered and glistened in the lights. She was drunk. Very drunk, and staggering against a man who looked tall and thin and had a loose-limbed, gangly gait.

Joanna zoomed in but the picture was too grainy. They could get it enhanced but this was risky. Filling in too much detail could mislead people if they got the details wrong. Kayleigh had been accurate, though, in her description. The man was a good few inches taller than her even though she was wearing skyscraper heels that she was having great difficulty balancing on, sliding around in the snow and occasionally clinging on to the man's arm. They needed to measure Kayleigh's height plus the shoes she had been wearing to work out her attacker's height. But at a guess he was six foot one, six foot two. He was indeed wearing a dark leather bomber jacket. It could have been black or brown. Tight trousers displayed his skinny legs. His feet looked unusually small. Maybe a size six – round about the same size as Kayleigh's. He had light coloured hair. Not blond. It wasn't that light. It could have been grey or light brown and again, Kayleigh's description had been accurate. His hair was short and spiky, around half an inch all over, sticking up, but his face was bent down. They could not make out his features except for a thin mouth. He looked faintly disapproving. Kayleigh and her alleged rapist looked like any other couple, staggering drunkenly together, the man in much better control than the girl. No one would guess that the girl was a minor of fourteen years old or that the man was about to rape her then abandon her in sub-zero conditions, without caring whether she lived or died. Joanna watched the video again at normal speed then slowed it down and had to acknowledge that under the circumstances it did not look suspicious. That was the beauty of it. They were just another couple. No one would have given them a second look. But it was to be hoped that someone had. That someone had picked up on details which Kayleigh had missed.

‘Is he still around Leek?' Joanna murmured, fiddling with the zoom-in button and trying to decipher the man's features, which stayed stubbornly in the shadows, almost as though he knew the camera was following him. ‘Or has he gone somewhere else to try his luck? Maybe even gone home to a wife and kids?' She looked up at Korpanski. ‘And what if Kayleigh is lying? What if it was consensual sex?'

Korpanski's chin was square and firm. ‘We could still get him on having sex with a minor.'

Joanna raised her eyebrows.

‘Attempted murder,' was Korpanski's next suggestion.

‘We'd never get the CPS to run with that. He'd get away scot-free. It wouldn't stick, Mike. Even I can dream up the defence. His lawyer would simply say that he assumed the girl would take herself home. That he couldn't have known that she was so drunk she would pass out and lie there all night.' She fell silent. ‘This case is worrying me, Mike,' she said.

He looked up. ‘Any particular reason?'

‘I don't know,' she confessed. ‘Only that I feel a bit sick.' She met his eyes. ‘Rape is bad enough,' she said. ‘But can a man think so little of a woman that he just abandons her?'

‘Some men,' Korpanski replied gruffly. ‘Only some men.' He looked glum for a moment. Then he brightened up. ‘Let's go public, Jo,' he said. ‘We've got plenty to go on, and a good description. Let's flush him out of the woodwork and see what happens.'

She smiled at him. ‘That, Korpanski,' she said, ‘is a very good idea. We'd better prepare our statement. But,' she continued, ‘we'll keep it very simple. A description and just say we are anxious to talk to this man.'

They dispatched PC Phil Scott to ascertain how tall Kayleigh was, how high the heels had been on her shoes and what size footwear she wore. Kayleigh was bound to appreciate the company of the tall, blond policeman.

At half past five Steve Shand called in ready to give his statement. He looked very nervous and still a little pale and hung-over.

Joanna tried to put him at his ease by thanking him for calling in so promptly but it didn't help. He still looked very nervous.

‘Take us through last night first,' she suggested. ‘Who were you out with?'

He answered quickly. ‘Four of my mates. It were a night out with the lads.' He spoke defensively in a thick Staffordshire accent and Joanna guessed that Shand's girlfriend hadn't been too happy about his ‘night out with the lads'.

‘Their names?'

Shand looked uncomfortable. ‘Gary Pointer, Andrew Downey, Clint Jones and Shaun Hennessey,' he said, adding: ‘they've all been my mates since school. We go out fairly regularly.'

‘So they are all from around here?' Joanna asked casually.

‘Yeah. Leek born and bred.' Joanna gave Korpanski a quick glance but his face was sphinx still. He was giving nothing away. And she might have imagined the look of disappointment in his dark eyes. There was nothing Korpanski liked better than a quick ‘finger on the collar'. She would lay a bet his own fingers were itching right now.

‘Perhaps you'll ask your friends to contact us,' Joanna suggested. ‘Now, if you could run through the events of the evening?'

‘It was Shaun's birthday. The big three-o.' Shand grinned. ‘So we thought we'd hit the town. We went to The Quiet Woman first then wandered up to Patches around ten thirty or thereabouts.'

‘Was Patches crowded when you got there?'

‘No. The snow had kept people away, I reckon. It was pretty quiet. It's usually crammed.'

‘Did you notice the doorman?'

‘Andy? Yeah.' All of a sudden Shand looked concerned. ‘Why?'

‘Just curious. Did he check your ID?'

‘No. He knows us. He didn't bother. Just gave us the usual warning to behave ourselves. As if,' Shand grunted.

‘And then?'

Shand flushed. ‘Drinks, a few dances, a bit of a—' He stopped dead.

Joanna and Mike exchanged glances.

Shand looked from one to the other; a rabbit caught in car headlights.

Korpanski reassured him. ‘Look, anything you say in here will remain secret – unless it has a direct bearing on the case.'

He could tell that Steve Shand wasn't quite convinced. He eyed them warily.

‘I might have  . . .' His voice petered away. ‘Look,' he said. ‘I had a lot to drink. My memory isn't exactly sure what happened. I probably went outside with a girl. Bloody Claire,' he said, ‘my girlfriend. She'd kill me if she knew.'

‘Who was the girl?' Joanna's voice was deceptively soft and quiet.

‘I don't know,' Shand confessed.

‘Was it Kayleigh – the girl you found yesterday morning?'

‘Oh, no,' Shand said. ‘It weren't her.'

‘Sure, are you?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘We could do with knowing who it was.'

‘Look,' Shand said, gathering confidence now, ‘I haven't even said that I did go off with anyone. I just said I
might
have done.' He scooped in a deep breath.

‘What time did you call the taxi?'

‘Late,' Shand admitted. ‘The club closes around two. I guess it was around about then.'

Something else to check.

‘The name of the taxi firm?'

Shand looked wary. He didn't like all this checking. ‘Sid's Taxis,' he said grumpily. ‘I always use them.'