Director's Cut (7 page)

“Right,” Butler said earnestly. “And statistically, pregnant women –
those with a partner – don’t take off. Single, yes. They run from
parents or the perceived shame. And the forties and fifties, they take
off after the kids have left, looking for the last-chance saloon, looking
for something better or someone better, or maybe they’re wanting
space again, I don’t know. But not when they're pregnant. Not unless
the father lives someplace else.”

“How pregnant?”

“They range from a few weeks to four months. Helen Harrison only
just found out. You know that.”

“And do they play around?”

Anian raised her eyebrows and shook her head.

“It's a fair question,” Cole said sharply. “You're a copper, not a
social worker. Coppers can't afford the luxury of being politically
correct or non-judgemental. A spade is a spade and around here, like
everywhere else, married women do fuck around.”

She didn't like it but she nodded.

Butler didn’t like it either for it touched an open wound. He sighed
and said, “You tell me about Helen. But the others, who knows? How
the hell do you tell? My guess would be that they don't, play around
that is, but what do I know?”

Cole smiled at the detective sergeant's wry humour. Selfdeprecation
suited the worry lines on his face.

“Does Jack know about the pregnancies?”

Butler shook his head. “Until we knew about Helen it was only two
out of three and it didn’t even register. Two’s a coincidence but three’s
a wake-up call.”

Cole said, “So, talk to me. What do you want?”

Anian sat listening intently, steadying her glass on the arm of the
sofa, her fierce eyes more on the DI than the DS.

Butler spread his hands. “I'm in a fix. I've got a gut feeling about it,
Guv.”

Cole nodded. “Get on to the index and spread out. Go back a few
years and find some common ground, anything. There might be some
cold files knocking around. If you come up with something then stick
it under Jack's nose. If he's not interested then come back to me. But it
won't come to that. If you find something then he'll be interested. But
you should have mentioned the pregnancy connection. It seems pretty
relevant, particularly in view of your earlier comments. You’ve been
looking for a connection and you’ve got one.”

Anian said abruptly, “So what are we looking for? Prenatal clinics?
Marie Stopes? There’s an awful lot of places around here where you
can turn up with five-hundred quid and an overnight bag and get in line
with the girls from Dublin?”

The DI glanced at Butler. “I think that might be jumping the gun.
But it might be worth having another look at the odd one out.
Clutching at straws, but that's what we do best. If you can eliminate
her then all your girls are pregnant. I’m still not sure it will get you
anywhere. Jack does have a point. To be honest, pregnancies or not,
I'm leaning towards him on this. You're not looking for a villain here,
you're looking for a crime. At the moment you haven't got one and
we’ve got plenty of others to concentrate on. It can't go on
indefinitely.”

“Christ, Rick, it was you who asked me to see Ticker!”

“You’re right, and it has added weight to your pregnancy theory,
but you need more, or you can leave it to MPS.”

Butler's nod was resigned.

From the kitchen Janet called, “I'm coming through.”

Cole threw Butler an appraising look. “Come back to me with
something solid, concentrate on Helen Harrison. Her trail is fresh.
Don't waste time. If Jack decides to call it quits I won't be in a position
to argue. You'll have to find me something to use.” He nodded and
repeated, “Helen Harrison. Get to know her better than Ticker does.
He's obviously missed something that's right under his nose.”
Butler topped Cole's glass again and watched as his old colleague
made small work of it. They sat at the table where Janet was pouring
Australian white. Anian sat opposite Cole and he stole a glance. Her
nipples still poked through. They hadn't changed. He had. The scotch
was doing the trick and lifting away the curse of Orpheus.
His phone went.

Janet looked horrified and said, “Shit!”

Butler pulled a face.

Anian looked at Cole over her wine glass and smiled sweetly. She
knew something; maybe she'd caught his earlier glance.

ain be set aside. He caught his dimly lit reflection in the
rear-view and something blue-eyed and colder than the December
night looked back.

CB1 was Charlie Bravo One, an Astra hatchback panda, driven
by PC 7231 Wendy Booth. The car was three years old but looked older. Wendy
Booth was twenty-nine but felt older. She had been on the job for ten years
and on driving duties, which was her choice, for the last five. She was on the
late shift, which she preferred, for it was the shift most likely to involve
both ends of society: the brain-dead yobs who thought they controlled the streets
and the pinstriped suits who probably did. At 21:15 she was parked up in a lay-by
smoking one of her twentyaday Silk Cuts that occasionally ran to thirty, listening
to the excited voices on the radio and waiting for the shout to come her way.
It came at 21:23 and five minutes later she picked up the skipper, Sergeant
Mike Wilson. He was tall, slim and forty-two. All boots, bollocks and baggy
uniform, was how Wendy described him to her friends. His face was friendly,
big nose, soft eyes, easy smile and tufts of ginger

whiskers that he’d missed in the shaving mirror. In the old days, he would
have made a perfect plod. Everyone loved him and he had a big boot for the local
troublemakers. Unfortunately his day was done and, sooner or later,
one of the automatons from Westminster or, more likely, the Hague,
would have him out of the job.

At 21:31 she was moving along the High Road to the Square and
the leisure centre. She saw the flashing cars and vans, the streamers of fluttering
police tape and the army of plods spreading out from the SOC. The ambulance
had already left. As they passed she saw the white boiler-suited SOCOs beginning
their fingertip search. Another woman had been attacked, the second in two days
and, by all accounts, it was the same MO. A bad one.

A psycho had used a knife, one of the personality disorders that the
experts on the various committees decided were no longer a danger to
the public. Care in the community.
Keep taking the pills, my son, and
off you go.

If there was one thing that upset the police more

than anything it was the need to collar the same bastard twice.
They drove into the Square where the red lights from the dirty
bookshops and sex shops with their DVD booths still flickered. Gangs
of teenagers spilled into the road and the drunks zigzagged across the
pavements.

Sergeant Mike Wilson said soberly, “Where do these people come
from?”

“I don’t know where they come from, Skip, but for most of them
this is the end of the line.”

He grunted.

“What exactly are we doing here, Skip?”

“We’re showing a police presence. It’s good for the troops on the
ground and the front pages in the morning. And of course, we can keep
our eyes open for weirdos. Not the weirdo, mind you, he’ll be long
gone, but any weirdo will do.”

“They’re all weirdos. Show me someone normal around here.”
“She’ll do for a start. Pull over.”

Wendy slid the car to stop beside a forty-something woman. She
wore a black miniskirt, black high-heeled pointed boots, black
patterned hosiery and black lipstick that, as she smiled, cut her face in
half.

“’Ello Mikey, don’t ‘ave to ask what you’re doin’ daaahn ‘ere, do
I? You arfta anover discount, are you?” She leant down toward his
open window and rested a thin white arm on the door. Light from the
sex shop behind her gathered in the fair hairs on her forearm.
“Now, now, Elizabeth, don’t give me Mikey or even the micky.
There’s people here who might not understand your sense of humour
and go off telling others that I’m a customer.”

“Oooh, Mikey, are you insinuating that I’m a strumpet? Everyone
knows that men with a todger as big as yours gets it for free.” She leant
down a bit further so that her white blouse sagged and showed him her
dark nipples. She looked across at the grinning PC. “’Ello, Wendy
darlin’ , you all right? You’re not getting sexually harassed by this man
are you?”

“I’m all right, Lizzy. I can hold my own.”

“Yes, darling, I’ve heard you can. Better than most, I heard. Well,
darling, even so, if he asks you to take it up the arse make sure you get
a decent dinner out of it. None of this Big Mac Pizza House shit.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Mike Wilson tapped his nose. “You heard about the business back
there?”

“Who hasn’t, darling? It’s all over the Square. All the plods

knocking about is messing with the trade. We’re thinking of reporting
you to the Department of Trade and Industry.”

“Didn’t see anything, hear anything?”

“Not a thing, darling. First we knew about it was the ambulance.”
“What about last night?”

“That was just a one-off at the time so it didn’t cause a stir. Oneoffs
is happening all the time, you know that. Disgruntled punters or
pissed-off managers who think you’re holding back. But these girls are
civvies. They wouldn’t know a trick from a treat.”

“Be a good girl and ask around.”

“For you Mikey, anything. If there’s so much as a whisper I’ll be in
touch.”

“Appreciate it.”

She gave him an intimate little smile while her eyes brimmed with
melancholy. She blinked and looked across at Wendy again. “You take
good care of him, Wendy darling. He’s one in a million.” With that she
stood upright and faded into a crowd that had gathered outside the sexshop
window.

PC Wendy Booth slid the car back into traffic. Lizzy’s final look
had opened a tap of emotion and she swallowed hard before finding
her voice. “First time I’ve heard a pimp called a manager.” She threw
him a sideways glance. “One in a million, eh?”

“These girls are very astute. You could learn a few things, Wendy
Booth.”

“If ever I want evening classes, Skip, I’ll know where to come.”
“Don’t you fancy me, then, PC Booth?”

“I do, I do, and I’m having to hold myself back from jumping all
over you, but I’m great mates with your wife and I love your three kids
to bits so I’ll just have to live with it.”

Sergeant Mike Wilson nodded and said, “Right. So you’re a lesbian
then, are you?”

Eleven years ago Donna Fitzgerald had joined the force as a seventeenyearold cadet. It had been her ambition for as long as she could

remember and she had never considered an alternative career. She had
passed the interviews, the physical and psychometric tests and joined
the force in August, she remembered, the month that produced the
worst crime figures. She was also reasonably happy to be one of the
few officers at Sheerham schooled in the bedside manner; hers was the
sympathetic ear for the victims of rape and domestic violence and
other serious sexual assaults. She could have been part of a Sapphire
Unit and might even have been a substantive DC by now but that she
was still in uniform was her own choice. She had learned long ago that
CID was not for her. She had, nevertheless, accepted the role of
chaperon and learned the gentle touch technique.

Behind it lay the urgent requirement for information, the gentle
prod, encouragement, we're all girls together and all men are bastards,
and so on. You made notes afterwards, once you'd milked them and
sent them off to Victim Support. It was a job and you'd heard it all
before. You were a copper. The freezing process began on day one.
Donna Fitzgerald was on the wind-down of her shift when the duty
sergeant caught her. She was adjusting her heavy belt kit – extendable
metal asp, quick-cuffs, CS spray, torch and radio – non-digital for
Sheerham didn’t run to the upgraded 390Mhz and the Tetra network –
and was making her slow way to the locker room when she caught
sight of his scrawny features, recognized the look in his sly eyes and
felt a sinking sensation in her stomach. The prospect of a DVD and a
few vods after a Chinese diminished as his footsteps on the corridor
floor grew louder.

“Got one that's right up your street, Donna.”

She pulled a face. “Skipper, I'm on my way home.”

He smiled gleefully, enjoying himself. “You mean you were, lass.
We're stretched. Another woman has been attacked. It sounds like the
same guy.”

She’d already heard. The news had been all over the radio.
Twenty-four hours earlier a woman named Carol Sapolsky had been
knifed in what appeared to be a seemingly random attack. The police
were still looking for a motive and some return from a hastily arranged
appeal for information from the public.

She brushed some creases from the leg of her uniform and noticed
the front of her body armour was streaked with cigarette ash. She
fiddled with her regulation clip-on tie and tried to swallow from a dry
mouth.

The sergeant read her thoughts. “Get rid of all that armour and grab
yourself a cup of refreshing tea which you can drink on the way. Don’t
want you frightening her to death, do we? Not before you get some
details. Get down to the North Mid as quickly as possible and get me
something before they start. Make sure you don’t catch MRSA or
something.”

Once the medical examination began the police would have to wait.
In the case of assault by a stranger the trail went cold quickly. It was
called the golden hour. An hour could make all the difference.
Donna hitched her belt and threw him a tight-lipped look that
pleased him no end. He watched her arse all the way out until a door
swung shut and cut the view.

lain-clothed.

The incident room was makeshift, an old changing room. All the junk had been
cleared and the steel lockers were restricting the corridor outside. In their
place were VDUs, telephones, desks, and portable screens covered with photographs
and maps of the SOCs.