Animal Instinct (8 page)

His ‘Just-for-Men’ dyed hair glistened with an unnatural auburn hue under the artificial lighting of the boutique. He reeked of cheap aftershave, which he purchased in bulk from a local cash-and-carry warehouse. Despite its clinging sickly sweet aroma, the powerful fumes failed to mask the dreadful halitosis that emanated from his mouth whenever he breathed conversation.

“I'm Detective Inspector Massey, local C.I.D. I need to speak with you on a matter of urgency,” announced Massey, flashing his warrant card towards Kimberley.

“Can't stop now,” replied the boutique manager, busying himself with a carton of recently delivered denim jeans. “I'm short-staffed, one on holiday, one pregnant and…er…well you obviously know about the other one.”

“Yes, it's Lara Crawford whom I came to discuss with you.” Massey glanced around the empty shop. “You hardly look run-off-your-feet.”

“I need to catch up after the bank holiday. It's all very inconvenient with no staff to help out.”

“The young lady who worked for you has been murdered. If that's inconvenient for you, I'll make it far worse by taking you off to the station for questioning,” retorted the inspector angrily. “It's your choice. Here and now or you close the shop and you leave with me.”

“I know nothing about her murder,” protested Kimberley.

“I said that I came to discuss your employee, not what befell her. Are you going to co-operate or not?”

“I suppose I can spare you a few minutes.”

Massey wondered how a beautiful young girl with modelling aspirations could have possibly agreed to work for such an objectionable man. As Mrs Crawford had explained, her daughter's basic motive for working in the shop was purely financial, but what a price to pay, thought Massey.

“She was a dreamer…you know, a bit scatty.”

“Some of the greatest inventors on the planet were dreamers,” replied Massey, “but one would hardly describe them as scatty, nor is it a reason to be murdered. Why would you say that about her?”

“Well, you know, she had this crazy idea of becoming a model.”

“Surely, she had good reason. She was certainly a stunner.”

“Yeah, but here in this god-forsaken place! Who's going to discover her here?”

“Are you referring to your shop or the town, Mr Kimberley?”

“Well, the town of course. It's full of overspill shit.”

“And where do you hail from?” asked the inspector, knowing already that Donald Kimberley was Manchester born and bred.

“Is that relevant? I thought that you were here to ask about the girl.”

“So, if she was scatty, why did you employ her?”

“Well, she was a bit tasty. She brought the blokes in. They spent loads of money on designer gear, just to impress her. She was always being chatted up.”

“I understand that she had a regular boyfriend, your assistant manager.”

“She was too good for him. She deserved better. I don't know why she wasted her time on him. Andrew was like the rest of them. They all just wanted to get into her knickers.”

“I take it that you disapproved of these young men sniffing round her, apart from the fact that it was good for business?”

“She needed a more mature person, someone to bring her back down to earth. Her father was dead, you see. I think she lacked parental guidance. She needed some stability in her life.”

“Is that how you saw your role, Mr. Kimberley?”

The shop manager turned away and busied himself with the carton of jeans. “I was just her employer.”

“But you still fancied her? Is that why you were jealous of all the attention she received. Did you try it on with her? Did she reject your advances? Did that make you angry, Mr. Kimberley?”

Spilling a pile of denims onto the floor, Donald Kimberley spun round to face the inspector. He trembled as he spoke. “I didn't kill her. Honest, I didn't kill her.”

“Did I accuse you of killing her?” asked Massey. He looked down the shop towards the entrance. “You'd better pull yourself together. You have customers.”

Kimberley looked relieved by the interruption. Massey stepped towards him. “Do you use any caustic cleaning materials here?” he asked.

The boutique manager looked confused. “I don't know,” he stuttered. “You'd have to ask the contract cleaning company.”

“Don't stray far, Mr. Kimberley. We may need to question you again.”

The detective, convinced that the boutique manager was not a suspect, walked towards the exit as a couple of teenagers made their entrance. In a less buoyant mood, Massey headed for his office, hoping that other officers had achieved better results.

*****

After an Easter weekend of unusually mild weather, a depression had settled over the north west of England. The sun had disappeared beyond the clouds and the first spots of rain marred his windscreen as Massey pulled into the rear yard of Winsford police headquarters. He grabbed the sandwich and the Eccles cake, which he had purchased for his working lunch, before meeting up with some of the team to discuss their morning's endeavours.

Roker reported that Andrew Davenport had indeed been in Spain at the time of the murder. Turner and Jones furnished a list of business premises of a more industrial type that Lara may have passed on that fateful morning and, as there was no new information from forensics or from the other team members, they decided that their only option was to focus on any suspect buildings where her journey may have been curtailed.

As most of the team were still involved with house-to-house enquiries, Massey decided to split the visits to the selected businesses between Roker, Turner, Jones and himself. In addition to four public houses, there was a cycle shop, a dry cleaning shop, a hairdressing salon, a garage and a small engineering unit. They considered that these were premises that could possibly use some type of chemical substance.

He spelled out some guidelines. “Initially, ascertain their recollections of Thursday morning, their individual movements and the names of any staff who were working during that period. Focus on what would have been their normal work routines for that particular day. For example, most licensees appear to work to some weekly pattern, governed by opening hours and special events. Remember, however, that this was the day prior to Good Friday, so changes and abnormal adjustments may have been made to their usual working practices. Don't forget to ask each one of them about their procedures for rubbish collection.”

“I thought we were planning to hold a reconstruction,” said Turner.

“D.C.I. Wainwright's organising that. He's currently in touch with someone about contacting Crimewatch.”

“What if we don't get a result from these visits?” asked Roker. “Where do we go from there? The forensics team has yielded zilch, apart from the fact that there was possibly a connection with some caustic substance and that she was pregnant.”

“There was little else to report,” replied Massey. “Maybe her pregnancy was an issue. The boyfriend is not in the frame, as he was in Spain. Maybe he was not the father. Did she have someone else in tow…not according to Fiona Wilson? If the commercial premises are a dead end, perhaps we need to delve more deeply into the life of Lara Crawford. In the meantime, let's keep our fingers crossed and hope that the visits bear fruit.”

The two teams set off on their allotted assignments. Because of the Easter weekend three of the four pubs, the George and Dragon, the Gateway and the Barleycorn had received deliveries on the morning that Lara disappeared as opposed to their normal delivery day, which was Friday. Of the four licensees whom they interviewed, only one, the publican at the George and Dragon, had commented that he had briefly observed a young woman resembling Lara, walking away from the nearby bus stop.

Massey thought it might be useful to contact the brewery, which had serviced the three outlets that day. Maybe the draymen had also witnessed the girl. Roker and Turner also drew blanks from the sports shop and the hairdressing salon, which they had visited. They found the dry cleaners closed for the whole week. A follow-up was required at the garage as a different forecourt attendant had been on duty on the Thursday morning prior to Easter.

Later in the day, Massey met up once again with John Nuttall in forensics.

“I have some other information which may be of interest,” said Nuttall. “Your team isn't terribly observant.”

Massey said nothing.

“One of my guys at the landfill site made a comment which may resolve the issue of how the body could have been dumped. If you think back to one of our earlier discussions, we concluded that it must have been taken there by a refuse truck as the perimeter fencing and the gates were too high to heave a corpse over without mechanical means.”

Massey nodded.

“There is another access, a section not enclosed by the mesh fencing. At the far side, the site is enclosed by a dense line of fir trees with no fencing.”

“I thought the river formed a natural barrier on the far side?” said Massey.

“Yes, but between the river and the line of fir trees, there's a privately owned mill which has undergone a lengthy renovation.”

“Not long completed, I believe. Any idea who owns it?”

“Some wealthy businessman. Who he is or what he's involved in, I haven't a clue.”

“Thanks,” said Massey. “We'll check it out.”

*****

The enquiry was reaching an impasse. Massey asked Turner to join him for a drink in the Barleycorn. A few beers at the end of the day would relieve his stress before heading home, despite the fact that arriving late would only antagonise his wife, causing further stress to his problematic marriage.

“Anything from the house to house team yet?” asked Turner, as they settled into a quieter corner of the main lounge area.

“Nothing so far,” replied Massey, disconsolately. “She obviously left the bus at the square and walked past the George and Dragon, where she was spotted by the licensee, Charlie Meadows. To catch the next bus to Northwich, she would have to pass here towards the junction with the by-pass, but he said that she appeared to be heading towards the town centre. That means that, after passing the Barleycorn, she must have turned left down the High Street as opposed to the direction of the bridge over the river.”

“We're assuming that Charlie was correct. If he only saw her walking towards the main road, she could have turned in either direction, carried straight on or even turned onto the towpath by the river.”

Massey looked across at the bar. Sean was serving one of the local scallywags. “If our man here was expecting a delivery, it's strange that he didn't clock her passing the pub, unless he had already received his delivery.”

“He said that he'd never seen her when I showed him her photo.”

“Check with the brewery. Find out if they have a record of the exact time when they made their deliveries to the three pubs in this vicinity.”

Turner nodded in agreement. “We're stuffed until we have that info and confirmation from the bus company that she not only boarded at Moulton but also caught a connection to Northwich. Until we can pinpoint where she actually disappeared from the map, it limits our chance of discovering a potential crime scene and a likely suspect.”

“At this moment in time, everyone in this area's a possible suspect,” said Massey. “Maybe the reconstruction will be more profitable. You're right, the bus company's key to our enquiries. If we can pin down the time when she got off the bus…that's if she caught the bus in the first place… passed the George and Dragon and the Barleycorn and finally in which direction she walked, we can then focus our efforts on a specific area within a precise time-frame.”

“Another beer?”

“No, let's start digging again, but no forks this time. Let's tidy up the loose ends…the brewery, the bus company and the forecourt attendant who was on duty over the road. I've a feeling in my water that the recon may not be necessary.”

Before returning home, Massey called in at the police station, leaving messages for those members of the team for whom he had earmarked jobs to undertake the following morning. Information had arrived from the bus company. He called Turner and Roker with the news. Half an hour later, he parked up on his driveway. Though he arrived a little later than he had promised, Helen, his wife, was all-smiles.

“You seem pleased with yourself,” remarked her husband.

“Chris called in on his way home. I hear you have a possible location for the murder of that poor young girl. Well done. You must have moved quickly.”

“He's no right to discuss the case with you.”

“Don't worry. He didn't give out any relevant information, except the fact that you may have identified a possible route, which she may have taken from the bus stop. He was very discreet.”

“It's only a first step at the moment. We need further corroboration before we can progress it.”

“Is it true that she was pregnant?”

“So it appears, according to the post mortem.”

“It seems a shame that a child has to die like that, when couples desperate for a baby have negative results.”

“Here we go again,” moaned Massey, “the same old agenda.”

“We are not an agenda,” snapped Helen. “This is real life, your life, my life, our lives together and, do you know what is so sad about it?”

“I'm sure you're about to tell me.”

“We're not living a life; we just exist. We're not even a couple. You're a copper, I'm a teacher and that's about the be-all and end-all of our life together.”

Massey sank into an armchair. “I have a demanding job to perform. You knew that when you agreed to marry me. For God's sake, Helen, you only need to look at your own brother and his lifestyle to realise that it's not a nine till five occupation.”

Helen stormed towards the door leading to the kitchen, before turning to reply. “I expected that, out of twenty four hours every day, seven days a week, you would find one moment, one special moment when you could switch off that bloody focussed mind of yours and acknowledge that I actually exist as a person. Not as a cook, a housekeeper or a bed-warmer…but as an individual with feelings, with needs, with future aspirations…or is that asking too much?”