Follow the Leader (2 page)

Chapter Two

‘I’m going to be late now, because of you.’ Mark came into the kitchen thirty minutes later, just as Allie was making toast.

‘I didn’t hear you complaining much at the time.’ She raised her eyebrows.

But Mark didn’t smile back. He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes flitting around the tidy room.

‘What can’t you find?’ she said with a sigh.

‘My work ID pass.’ Mark scrambled around inside the kitchen drawer, scattering receipts and takeaway leaflets all over the kitchen floor. ‘I’ve only been off for ten bloody days.’ He scratched his head. ‘Have you seen it anywhere?’

Allie bent down to pick up the leaflets, put them back into the drawer and closed it. Then she reached into the cupboard above Mark’s head, where he kept his spare change on a saucer. By its side was a box that had contained a watch she’d bought him for their tenth wedding anniversary. She opened it and produced the card, waving it in front of his face.

‘It’s where you always put it and where you always forget you’ve put it,’ she told him with a shake of her head.

‘I didn’t put it there! You must have moved it.’

‘No, you put it there.’

‘Well, I can’t remember –’

‘It was you!’ Allie snapped. ‘I’m not one of those women who go through their partner’s pockets.’

‘Always time for that yet.’

‘Why, you cheeky git. I’ll have you know –’

Allie’s phone went off. This time the sound of The Kaiser Chiefs’
I Predict a Riot
. Her heart skipped a beat as she knew its importance. It was the ringtone for the police station
contacting
her.

‘DS Shenton,’ she answered.

‘Change those bloody ringtones, will you!’ Mark’s parting words as he went out the door. Allie stuck two fingers up to his disappearing form, and leaned her back against the worktop as she listened to the caller. Within seconds, she was alert and running upstairs to get dressed.

A body had been found near to Caldon Canal.

Allie crossed the bridge over the canal and caught sight of a uniformed officer. A member of the public stood by his side, one hand on a post, the other clutching his chest. An older man, late sixties at a glance. From the look on the man’s face Allie surmised he was the person who had found the body, and wondered if his stomach was doing a loop-the-loop as much as hers was.

It was a strange feeling to be excited about being called out to the scene of a death. Would it be suspicious? Would it be a suicide? Maybe just a prank gone horrifically wrong? An act of violence gone too far? Or even murder with intent? She wondered what she would find today. Couldn’t help feeling adrenaline
building
up inside her at the thought of a case to get her teeth into. Getting justice for a crime committed was why she had joined the police force, and until she didn’t get this buzz any longer she was staying with it.

She stepped over a low wall, climbed down the bank, treading carefully and then steadying herself as momentum made her jog the final few steps onto the level. As she walked, she swept her long dark hair away from her face and secured it into a ponytail with a band, so that it wouldn’t get in her way whilst she looked around. Then she pulled on a woollen beanie hat to keep her ears warm. Her breath formed clouds of mist in front of her. Ahead, she noticed PC Andy Rathbone standing guard. Although he’d been an officer for a few years, he was new to their station. He seemed adept at his job, a strong man to have on side.

‘Morning, Andy.’ She gave a faint but friendly smile. ‘Not a good start to the year.’

‘Morning, Sarge. No, it’s a bit of a bloody one, I’m afraid.’

Andy marked down her time of arrival before she slipped on shoe covers, gloves and a white suit. Then she lifted the flap and stepped into the tent.

The victim was on his back a few feet away from the tarmacked path. Fully dressed, a swollen, bloodied face with puffed eyes, clipped auburn hair, a silver stud earring in his left ear. By his side, a pool of blood had formed; a limp hand had fallen into the middle of it. Allie recoiled momentarily as flashbacks of the last murder she’d dealt with on her patch came rushing into her mind. A local woman, Steph Ryder, had been murdered in early
December
2011. The back of her head had been bashed to a pulp with a force more vicious than the act of taking her life needed. It had been a nasty case. She took a few deep breaths.

Stooped over the body was forensic officer Dave Barnett. Detective Inspector Nick Carter was on the other side but stood to his full height, towering over Allie as she moved to his side. His short blonde hair neat and tidy, he looked tanned and relaxed after a recent holiday.

‘I was heading to do a crime prevention talk in Burslem,’ he said, looking down at her. ‘I was a couple of minutes away when I got the shout.’

‘What do we have?’

‘Male, forty-two. Michael Taylor. Driving licence has an address half a mile away. Four stabs to the abdomen, one of them fatal by itself, it seems. He was kicked about the face too. Bit his tongue.’ Nick handed her a black leather wallet, wrapped up inside an exhibit bag. ‘This was found in the inside pocket of his jacket.’

‘Mickey Taylor?’ Allie moved to the side of the body and went down on her haunches, feeling her heels pressing into the wet icy ground. She peered closer. Christ, she hadn’t seen Mickey Taylor since her late teens, when she and her sister used to go out on the town. He’d been part of a gang of older kids she knew vaguely because they hung around with Karen. If she remembered rightly, Karen had had a huge crush on him during her last year at school but it had never been
reciprocated
.

‘Do you know him?’ Nick asked, bending down again to take a closer look.

‘Vaguely,’ she replied.

‘Does he have a record?’

‘I’m not sure – he used to go to my school. That’s where I
remember him from.’

It was the scar that did it. Underneath his right eye: 1988. She’d been there the day that fifteen-year-old Samuel Williams had pushed Mickey off the flat roof of the gym. He’d landed face first on the upper-school playground. By the end of that day, the rumour mill had him with a mouthful of smashed teeth and a broken nose and leg, when in reality he’d ended up with three stitches to a cut, a black eye and grazed skin on his cheek.

‘He’s the same age as my sister. I think he left just after I started in my second year,’ she added as she stood up again. ‘I wonder why he ended up like this.’

‘Probably some random attack.’ Dave stood up too, stretching his tall, thin frame as he did so. He pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘He’s hardly cold. Out walking his dog this morning and then gone, just like that, poor bastard. Seems he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

Allie doubted it would be that cut and dried. But then again, she knew that Dave probably didn’t think that either. Between them, they had worked on seven murders in Stoke-on-Trent during the sixteen years she’d been in the police force.

‘The victim was wearing a thick coat,’ said Dave, ‘but it was open so the knife didn’t need to go through it. Just his thin jumper over his shirt.’

‘Any watch?’ Nick asked.

Dave shook his head.

‘A mugging gone too far?’ Allie questioned, moving slightly so that the police photographer could take another shot. ‘Any money in that wallet?’

‘Sixty pounds – two twenties, two tens.’ Nick glanced at her as a flash of light went off above them. ‘So his name doesn’t register with you apart from school days?’

Allie shook her head. ‘But it might with Perry. He went to my school too. They’re the same age so he might remember more about him. I’ll check once I get back to the station. Shall I head there now?’

‘Yes. Start setting things up for me too.’

‘Will do, boss.’

Allie exited the tent, breathing in fresh air as she snapped off the sterile gloves, desperate to put her leather ones back on. Already there were a handful of onlookers on the bridge: a man in a fluorescent orange beanie hat; an elderly couple with a dog sitting at their feet; a child of about twelve in uniform late for school.

Walking back to the car, Allie let her eyes flick around. In days gone by, the canal system would have been widely used to transport pottery ware to other cities. Now the pathways were mostly worn out by walkers, cyclists and runners; the odd
holiday
barge came past every now and then. They were about a mile from
Hanley
, the
centre
of Stoke-on-Trent, and not far from Etruria Industrial Museum, the last steam-powered potters’ mill in Britain. The area in front of the mill was clean and tidy – easily pleasant if the weather was good and the pollen count low. The surrounding streets, however, left a lot to be desired – mostly boarded-up and overcrowded run-down terraced housing, abandoned cars and dumped rubbish.

As she stepped up onto the grass verge that would take her back to the road, she thought for a minute about where the body had been found. If it was a straightforward mugging with no intention to kill, surely the suspect would have panicked and rolled Mickey Taylor into the water so that it looked like he’d drowned? Made it look like he’d possibly had one drink too many, stumbled on the way home, hit his head and fallen in? The body might have resurfaced if it had gone under, but evidence might have been washed away too – which led Allie to thinking that the murder could have been premeditated. But then if someone
had
intended to do away with Mickey, again why would they leave the body on the towpath?

Two options and the man was hardly cold. Murder or robbery gone wrong? You decide: phone a friend or let the audience pick.

‘Allie!’

She turned on her heel to see Nick jogging to catch up with her, his hand curling around another exhibit bag. He’d taken up running recently and, for the first time, Allie noticed he seemed to be winning the battle against middle-aged spread. She jogged back a little and closed the distance between them.

‘We’ve just rolled him onto his side. We found this in the back pocket of his jeans.’ Nick held up the bag as he drew level with her. ‘I’m not sure if it’s significant or if it’s just something he’s picked up if he has small children.’

Inside was a green plastic letter – the magnetic kind used by children to spell words on fridges.

It was a capital E.

Chapter Three

Allie’s base was opposite Hanley Crown Court. They shared the street with the city’s main library, the Potteries Art Gallery and Museum, home to the recently discovered Staffordshire Hoard, and Sentinel House, the city’s local newspaper. She drove into the car park by the side of the station and squeezed her car into the tiniest of spaces.

It was quiet downstairs considering it was the first
Monday
back at work. Behind one of two desks protected by a glass screen, the duty sergeant smiled at her as she moved through the tiny reception area. To her right, in a row of bolted-down orange
plastic
seats, sat an elderly man with a tartan shopper at his feet. Close to him sat a young couple, their toddler child racing a toy car over the carpeting. The girl blew unsightly bubbles with her gum – pop, pop. The youth next to her, legs out in front, arms crossed, stared at Allie as she walked past. Allie wasn’t fazed by his cockiness. He’d soon move his foot out of her way if she caught it with her heel.

She swiped her card to gain access to the main building, turned to her left past the lift and jogged up two flights of stairs. There was already a buzz of activity in the open-plan office:
several
officers
on phones, a whiteboard at the far end of the room set up for details as they came in. Allie’s small part of the larger team were seated in the far right corner. She walked down a narrow walkway created by four banks of desks on either side. The room was so crowded that Nick didn’t have an office. His desk was set on its own in the
opposite
corner.

When Allie got to her desk, a flash of blonde hair bobbed up and down opposite her. Sam Markham was nodding as she took a phone call, her hand writing down details. Sam had been
working
with Allie for eight years now. Small and fragile-looking but with a kick-ass attitude that would push her forward in any situation, she was an asset to the team due to her meticulous analytical skills. Sam took pleasure in getting her teeth into the tasks that some
officers
might despair of – checking records, watching CCTV recordings, spotting irregularities. More than once it had been her determination and eye for detail that had allowed the team to make a conviction.

At the desks to her right were a detective constable and an empty seat. Perry Wright, four years her senior, had his eyes glued to his computer screen. The other member of her team, Matt
Radcliffe
, was on long-term sick leave due to a car chase the
previous
year. Through no fault of his own, it had ended with him crashing his car, resulting in a crushed ankle, a dodgy back and an injury to his shoulder.

‘Bit of a shocker this one, boss,’ said Perry. ‘Someone I knew.’

‘Yes, I thought so.’ Allie sat down and switched on her
computer
. ‘Did you know him well?’

‘I hadn’t seen that much of him since we left school.’

‘I saw him around town every now and then when I used to go out with Karen.’ Allie frowned. ‘Can you remember what he was like before then?’

‘He was a laugh if you got on with him but a bullyboy if not. A tough bastard, but I don’t think he’s been in any kind of trouble since he married and settled down. All the lay-dees loved him before that though, apparently. Can’t you remember?’

‘No, I was a bit young for that! I was twelve when you left – I’m four years younger than you, don’t forget.’ Allie reminded him. ‘But then again, I remember you said you were a heartthrob too and I can’t say I recall that either. Especially if you had the same spiked blonde hair and fake tan glow that you have now.’

A few feet away, Sam laughed before rolling her eyes as the desk phone she’d just replaced the receiver down on started to ring again.

‘If you weren’t my superior . . .’ Perry chided her. ‘Anyway, it seems Mickey Taylor did have the last laugh. I’ve just been
checking
out his business online – Taylor Made Pottery Factory. You know, the one that’s won awards for design and engineering. He’s done pretty well for himself.’

‘I wonder if there’s anyone jealous of that success.’ Allie raised her eyebrows. ‘Can you do a bit more digging around – maybe call Simon, see if he has anything on him?’ Simon was the crime reporter for
The Sentinel
. ‘I’m heading over to Mickey’s house shortly to talk to his next of kin. I’m meeting Nick there when he’s finished at the crime scene. And then you and I can go to his factory
afterwards
– check out the staff, their whereabouts, take a look around his premises.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’ Perry nodded.

‘There’s probably going to be family members working there too, so we’ll need to make sure that everyone has heard what’s happened to Mickey. I know it will be on the news but let’s not assume.’

‘It’s a small world’ was a phrase often heard in Stoke-on-Trent. Most people Allie knew, or had known, had lived in Stoke and stayed in Stoke and gone on to do other things without making a name for themselves, just a living. It was easy to become embroiled in day-to-day life, year after year. The majority of its residents worked there; hardly anyone travelled far. Daily commutes were worsened only by the occasional accident on the M6 or A500, blocking roads and causing chaos to rush hour traffic. Snow brought the city to a halt just as quickly. Other than that, most journeys from work to home for the majority of the workforce took less than an hour.

Yet Allie loved her birthplace. For all its faults, pointed out by this government survey or that departmental chart of figures, it was a city with a heart. It had a population just short of a quarter of a million, was no worse than the larger cities of Birmingham and Manchester in terms of its crime figures per number of residents and its people were helpful and friendly. Well, mostly.

A call came in from Nick to let her know he was on his way over to talk to Mickey Taylor’s family, who had already been informed of his death. Once she’d checked through a few urgent messages and set a few things in motion, Allie set off to join him. As she made her way back down the stairs, her shoulders sagged at the job awaiting her. Visiting the family was always the hardest part.

Patrick Morgan walked quickly but steadily, body hunched as if to keep out the cold. With his feather-light physique, he was used to feeling invisible when he went out in public. The knife he’d used earlier was tucked away in the inside pocket of his coat, inconspicuous, out of sight. Not that it would matter if he were to walk down the street with the knife held out in his hand. No one would notice him even if he’d dyed what little hair he had left bright green, let alone wielded a bloodied knife. But it was imperative that he walk back along a main road, stick to his normal routine. Even in his own neighbourhood, he wasn’t taking any chances.

He’d gone over the plan in his head hundreds of times. He’d have to be quick. Someone might
stumble
upon them if he didn’t do the job in a minute or two. Obviously it wouldn’t stop him but he didn’t want to chance getting caught at the beginning of the game.

He knew Mickey Taylor was a creature of habit. He had worked out where best to strike along the stretch of canal where he walked his dog every morning and evening, had determined that he always came alone. Last month’s final task had been to check out the timing, figure out when the bridge wasn’t in use as much and see if it was all possible. Being fairly small,
Patrick
was able to keep himself well hidden in the hedge while he counted the minutes when people went across it and when it went quiet again. Timing was going to be everything –
certainly
it would mean the difference between getting caught and
getting
away.

After the attack, Patrick had gone on to the next bridge, cut through a small hole in the fencing and walked quickly across a large field. About half a mile away by then, he’d crawled into a thick hedgerow out of sight.

He’d done it.

He hadn’t been sure that he would; he thought that he’d either bottle out before he’d faced Mickey or that, once he’d spoken to him, he would then lose his nerve and make a complete idiot of himself. Everyone had looked up to Mickey; girls
and
boys
followed
him around the corridors like sheep. He was one of a gang who had bullied Patrick at school. One of several who had made his life hell and walked off without a backward glance once the final bell had rung on the last day.

Before he’d gone to the canal, Patrick had tried to put out of his mind the fear of Mickey getting the better of him, remembering who he was and laughing at him, punching him when he showed any aggression. But no: Patrick had taken the knife and rammed it into his stomach. And it had felt so good.

He’d wanted to do it over and over – but he’d had to rein himself in at four blows, though. Four was sure to finish Mickey off, plus there was less chance of getting blood on himself. When he wasn’t out running, he’d worn dark-coloured clothes for a few months too – so if anyone did spot him out on his travels, he’d blend in even more. The black jumper, jacket and jeans he had on today hid any blood that might have soaked into them.

He’d sat there for four freezing hours until it was time for him to be seen. Every weekday morning, he went out at eleven to fetch what groceries he needed from Morrison’s supermarket on
Festival
Park. He always cut through Portland Street, turning right into Century Street and continuing on until he came out on Cobridge Road. He too was a creature of habit; everyone knew that, and everyone would think he was going about his business as usual, nothing out of the ordinary.

He’d gone prepared, taking with him a few baby wipes to clean away the blood from his hands, rub over his face just in case there was any splatter he couldn’t see. It wouldn’t do to plan all this only to have a smear of blood give him away. He’d remembered not to discard the wipes – he wasn’t entirely sure that the police would check the bins that far out but, well, you never knew, did you? And he’d removed his jacket, taken off his top jumper to reveal another underneath. He’d pulled out the Morrison’s carrier bag he’d brought with him and shoved the jumper inside. For all intents and purposes, it seemed as if he’d gone to the supermarket as he did most mornings and was now carrying his shopping back to his house.

He turned right into Century Street, where there were parked cars on either side of a row of terraced houses, and headed on towards Portland Street. Once there, he began to walk just that little bit faster. Even at eleven a.m., it was quiet; the day was cold but at least it was still dry. In the distance, two men from the city council were picking up litter, white plastic bags flapping about in the wind. He hadn’t spoken to either one of them in the years he had lived there but he knew them both by sight. It was good that they would get to see him this morning, hopefully recalling him doing exactly the same as he did every day if they were ever questioned.

At Waterloo Road, he turned right and crossed over, continuing down the bank until he reached the grassed area that he could cut across to get to his house. Finally, a few minutes later, he was in Ranger Street.

Only when the front door of number twenty-seven closed behind him did he let his shoulders drop. He closed his eyes, standing for a moment in the silence of the house. Holding out his hands in front of him, he watched them shake uncontrollably. He took off his gloves, rubbed some warmth into his fingers. There was blood under his nails, soaked through the woollen material. He needed to wash it all away. And his clothes – he needed to wash those too.

He went through to the kitchen. Stripping where he stood, he bundled his clothes into the machine and put on a cycle. Then he mopped the already clean floor. Around him, the worktops were spotless, not a teaspoon left out of a drawer after a quick cup of tea this morning. Plain beech-wood units stood in a line along one wall. Off-white tiles above those had a shine on them that would make any car manufacturer jealous. So too had the one full-length long window at the far end of the room, overlooking a small, tidy yard at the back of the house.

A faint smell of lilac intermingled with a whiff of lemon Jif clung in the air. Patrick associated the smell with a multitude of secrets kept well hidden over the years. He’d been twenty-five when he’d taken the worst beating ever from his father, coming close to losing the sight in his right eye. Luckily, exhaustion from the
ferocity
of the attack had left Ray unable to continue with his assault. Another kick or two would probably have finished
Patrick off.

More often, he wished he hadn’t survived the attack at all.

Before heading upstairs to take a shower, he went into the
living
room. Naked, he didn’t feel at all vulnerable as he stared at the map, seeing where the next murder would take place. On the sideboard to his right, a small bundle of letters bearing the logo of HM Prison had been shoved behind a photograph of a woman and two small children. Patrick picked up the first letter, redelivered three weeks ago. He pulled out the note inside, read the only words he was interested in. The writing was sprawling, similar to that of a child learning to join up the letters for the first time.