If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) (8 page)

‘So you and Naveen have the flat to yourselves in the evenings, technically.’

Stacey bristled. ‘It’s not like that.’

Groombridge smiled. ‘I was merely pointing out that you may
come and go as you wish. That you and Naveen have no real alibi for the night you and your so-called friends kicked a defenceless old man to death.’ He delivered these words warmly, but with such calm surety that Stacey blinked in surprise.

The lawyer placed a hand on her arm. ‘You have no evidence to back that assertion, Inspector.’ He wasn’t to be as easily bamboozled as the social worker, but it wasn’t him whom Groombridge needed to charm. The legal could only fend off questions; the social worker could slam the door on proceedings.

‘We can match Stacey’s clothing with that seen on CCTV not far from the scene of the brutal murder. Naveen’s too, and the rest of her so-called friends.’

‘We’re hardly talking one-off catwalk lines or bespoke tailoring, Inspector. You can’t build charges on high-street clothing.’

‘Individually, no. But juries do love the coincidence of an ensemble outfit.’

‘If all you have is coincidence, why are we even here?’

‘Because Stacey has been told to lie, threatened most likely, by her so-called friends, to protect themselves. They’re hiding behind you, Stacey.’

Stacey just stared at the desk.

‘Did you happen to notice anyone desecrating the war memorial on your way home?’ asked Groombridge.

Stacey looked up sharply. The legal’s confused frown suggested Stacey had neglected to mention this titbit.

Groombridge pressed on: ‘We erected an incident board there asking for witnesses. We have three independent sightings of a gang of youths drinking at the memorial around one a.m. We also took fingerprint and DNA samples from the lager cans, et cetera. The results are due anytime. I wonder if they’ll throw up any names I recognize?’

A touch of panic crept into Stacey’s eyes. Fear, too.

Groombridge smiled sadly. ‘I’ve been doing this for a long time, Stacey. I can tell when someone’s lying and I can usually tell why. Some people can’t help themselves. Some lie for fun. Most to avoid the repercussions of their own selfish actions. Many to protect the people they love, or are loyal to. And sometimes people lie because they’ve been told to and they’re scared shitless. You’re scared, Stacey,
I can tell. Just as I can tell that you’re sorry for what happened, and that none of it was your idea or your fault. You never laid a finger on those poor homeless people. You don’t have a vicious bone in your body, do you, Stacey, not really? But you’re afraid if you tell them to stop they’ll turn on you, your so-called friends.’

He let that sink in. ‘I can help you. I can stop you being scared. I want to. But I need your help to do it. I need you to help me stop this happening again.’ With that, he began sliding photos on to the desk in front of her, one by one. The victims, bruised, battered, bleeding, terrified. ‘Or this,’ he added, sliding a picture of Alfred Ladd across, cold and lifeless. ‘I need you to help me stop this.’

Her eyes were drawn to the pictures in growing horror. Tears welled, but she said nothing.

‘Bring in the goody-goody,’ whispered Fran next to Stark.

As if on cue, Groombridge shared his best sympathetic look with the social worker.

‘Here it comes.’ Fran smiled.

The social worker gently placed a hand on Stacey’s arm. The lawyer reached out, too late, to prevent it. ‘It’s OK, Stacey,’ said Lauren. ‘It’s OK.’

Crumbling in slow motion, like the calving of a glacier, Stacey burst into tears. Sobbing, she pushed the photos away. The social worker murmured supportively, passed tissues and held her around the shoulders until the crying subsided. No one spoke for a good minute.

‘Will you help me?’ asked Groombridge.

Stacey finally looked up into his eyes, her own red and racked with remorse.

‘I can’t,’ repeated Superintendent Cox. ‘That’s all she said?’

‘All she would or could say,’ replied Groombridge. ‘After more tears she clammed up. The social worker made us call it a day and the legal reminded us we had little grounds to hold her. Uniform gave her tea and a biscuit and dropped her home.’

Cox sighed. ‘Do you ever get tired of the lies?’

‘They come with the job.’ Groombridge dodged the question. It would be nice if every guilty suspect confessed but most did not.
Perpetrators lied, suspects, witnesses too, even victims. Testing who was lying about what and why was at the heart of investigation. Lies were essential. To say you were tired of lies was akin to saying you were tired of being a copper, which was not something to admit lightly to your boss. It was best not to take Cox’s cheerful bumbling or moments of introspection at face value. The man had agendas. ‘I still think we have a good chance of turning her, sir.’

‘Softly, softly …’ Cox agreed. ‘Good. How’s your team?’

‘Sir?’

‘How’s our new man settling in?’

When Cox had first placed Stark’s application before him Groombridge had sniffed the air for the odour of public relations, but the application had merit and Cox seemed genuinely taken with it. They both understood the potential downside, should Stark not cope physically or, worse, mentally. ‘Well enough.’

‘I got the sneaking suspicion he might be a deal smarter than he lets on.’

‘I’m sure we’ll find out, sir.’

Cox nodded. The twinkle of amusement said he appreciated their game. ‘See if a few drinks loosen him up a little, eh?’

‘Care to join us, sir, you’re always welcome.’

Cox laughed. ‘If there’s one thing I’m quite sure of it’s that my presence in the Compass Rose on a Friday evening would not be welcome.’

Cox needn’t have worried. The atmosphere in Rosie’s that Friday evening was muted anyway. It had been a frustrating day. Groombridge sat with Fran and Harper, but she could be little deterred from shoptalk, while his sour mood had returned now that the low-priority case, once his, had escalated into murder. The rest of the team had joined with all the other coppers to put the day behind them and enjoy themselves. Groombridge noted Stark among them, but not long later saw him quietly slip away.

Stark limped down to the cab rank in town and rode home. He was tired, and sore, and the effort of smiling with his new colleagues had quickly proved too much of an effort. Faced with either pills, whisky and a Saturday hangover or an early night and some chance of recuperation
he had taken the coward’s way out. He didn’t think anyone had noticed him leave. It was the weekend, and he was glad of it.

He swallowed a couple of pills and collapsed on to his sofa with a deep sigh of relief, feeling the tension in his aching muscles finally relax. He didn’t even know he was falling asleep until the phone woke him with a start. ‘What?’ he managed, sitting up stiffly, blinking at the fresh dawn light.

‘Stark?’

Fran’s voice? He rubbed his face, still confused. ‘In theory.’

‘Dixon is on his way to pick you up.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Ferrier Estate. We’ve got a body.’

Stark thanked his lucky stars he’d left the pub early. Dixon looked positively green at the gills.

They arrived moments before Fran pulled up with DCI Groombridge. Even at this hour a respectable crowd of morbid gawpers had assembled. Uniform had strung tape across an entrance to one of the main courtyards and people were craning their necks to glimpse something gruesome. The sun was rising, but the rectangular arrangement of tower blocks would keep swathes of their courtyards dim and cold till mid-morning.

Groombridge greeted the sergeant standing guard. ‘Nice boots, Tony.’

Stark remembered the stocky Sergeant Clark from his first-day introductions – something of a legend among the uniforms, Ptolemy and Peters had said later.

Clark looked down at his blue wellingtons. ‘SOCO’s finest, sir.’ His uniform shoes were, no doubt, in a sealed evidence bag.

‘What have you got for us, then?’ Groombridge gestured towards the weighted blue plastic tarpaulin at the foot of one of the ugly blocks.

‘Female, late teens. Looks like she took a tumble from up there,’ replied the sergeant, pointing up the brutalist façade. ‘Resident found the body on his way home from the night shift and called it in just after five. SOCO got here a few minutes ago.’

‘ID?’

‘The poor girl is not at her best, facially speaking, and you know how SOCOs get if you go rooting around.’

‘Mm,’ agreed Groombridge. ‘Young Jones looks a bit peaky.’ He jerked his head towards the blue-booted constable guarding the tape.

‘We all remember our first body, sir,’ replied Clark, sagely.

‘Even grizzled old campaigners like us,’ added Groombridge.
‘Relief is on its way. Take Jones for a cuppa on me, and a bacon roll, if he can stomach it.’ He handed over a tenner.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Remember
your
first body, Stark?’ asked Groombridge.

‘No, Guv.’

The momentary embarrassment on Groombridge’s face left Stark cursing his careless honesty. Perhaps lost for words, Groombridge turned to scan the SOCOs. In their white disposable overalls and blue rubber boots, they were proficiently establishing the inner cordon with its common approach path of raised steel chequer-plate stepping stones. Aside from the crime-scene manager, busy directing them until the scene was ordered to his satisfaction, another man in overalls watched over them, like a general. The pathologist, Stark guessed. Groombridge waved to catch his eye but the man just held up a hand. ‘Ten minutes, Chief Inspector. Hop into some blues.’

The impatience of Stark’s superiors was apparent, but it was vital Forensics got the first look. One of the SOCOs supervised as they passed through the transition area, a cheap plastic pergola tent full of cheap plastic crates. They ripped the plastic off blue disposable overalls and over-shoes, then pulled them on over their own clothes and stepped over a low bench into the clean area. Stark recognized the set-up from the surgical area of Camp Bastion field hospital.

All the SOCOs froze while the pathologist examined the area and the body alone, occasionally talking into a Dictaphone. When he had finished, he spoke to the CSM, then came to meet them.

‘Marcus,’ said Groombridge.

‘DCI Groombridge. And DS Millhaven,’ he smiled, ‘always a pleasure. Who’s your new friend?’

Fran answered. ‘Marcus, this is TI Stark, latest CID victim. Stark, this is Marcus Turner, senior forensic pathologist and crime-scene nerd.’

Turner indicated his gloves by way of apology for not shaking hands. ‘Grist to our ever-grinding mill, Constable, muted congratulations.’ In his early forties, verging on plump, with a receding hairline and greying temples, he might have been mistaken for a very ordinary man, were it not for his occupational attire and the amused twinkle in his eye.

Groombridge gestured at the corpse. ‘Cause of death?’

‘Deceleration,’ replied Turner, deadpan.

They all looked up at the concrete block. ‘How high?’ asked Groombridge.

‘Sufficiently. Top-floor balcony probably.’

‘Fall or pushed?’

Turner offered a Gallic-style shrug. ‘Too soon to say. There are some anomalies. You’d better come and take a look.’

They followed him carefully along the stepping-stone path. Marcus had pulled the tarp back over the body but one hand protruded. Young, slim fingers, bloodied –

Stark’s head swam. Dehydration, exhaustion and the afternoon Basra heat were beginning to tell. He crouched beside the hand, a child’s, slim-fingered, grey with dust and dried blood, protruding from beneath some buckled corrugated iron. He dug away bits of rubble to expose the wrist. No pulse, but that might only be restricted circulation. He called out but heard no reply.

The hand felt warm, but in this temperature bodies didn’t cool. Hours now since the car bomb had torn into the crowded market. They hadn’t found anyone alive in a while.

Such a small hand, soft, almost weightless in his …

The fingers twitched.

Yelling for assistance, he began tearing at the rubble. The corrugated iron was burning hot in the merciless sun and his fingerless combat gloves offered little protection as he tried to bend it up.

Marcus pulled back the tarp.

Stark wiped sweat from his eyes and realized it was tears.

Now he blinked, new reality snapping away old.

Jesus! He glanced around but everyone appeared too fixed in the present to have noticed his brief absence. Christ, as if the dreams weren’t bad enough … When was the last time he’d had a flashback? Damn it! Another tear ran down his cheek and he wiped it away hurriedly, angrily, fighting to bring his breathing and heart rate under control.

He stared down at the body before him, lying on its front, limbs twisted and broken. Blood had congealed into clothing and hair, and into the cracks of the concrete paving slabs fractured by the impact. The downward side of her skull was similarly shattered and the girl
stared along the ground through one lifeless, blood-clotted eye. Not for the first time Stark was struck by the surreal stillness of life extinguished, the repellent, baffling polarity between the animate and ex-animate.

Dixon put one hand over his mouth and turned away, his face now white.

‘Shit.’ Fran sighed.

Marcus winced sympathetically. ‘Someone you know?’

Groombridge closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. ‘Stacey Appleton.’

Fran swore again, then turned to Dixon and Stark. ‘Right. You two work with uniform door to door. Someone saw something. Someone heard something. Someone
knows
something. Go.’

According to uniform, the proprietor of the embattled off-licence had heard a scream around midnight, so Stark went to talk to him first. A Sikh man with large calloused hands, he answered his questions in imperfect English scattered with jarring South London idioms and studied brevity. He had heard the noise, gone downstairs into the shop to check all was well and, finding no intruders, had gone back to bed. He had seen and heard nothing else until the blue lights arrived in the morning, he said emphatically. His wooden smile and anxious glances at the door suggested he could not wait for Stark to be gone. His wife hovered timidly behind him, saying nothing. Stark tried a smile. ‘Did you see or hear anything?’ he asked.

Her husband barked something in his native tongue, Punjabi most likely, and the wife retreated from view. ‘My wife speaks little English, forgive us.’

Something in these words made Stark doubt them but he thanked the man all the same. Outside he glanced up at movement in the window above the shop. The wife’s face stared down for a moment, before she let the net curtain fall back. They were frightened.

And they were not alone. Other residents also reported hearing the scream around midnight, but they had long given up peering out into the night at disturbances. No one had yet reported seeing anything, and if they knew anything they weren’t letting on. Fear hung over the estate, like smog. It was truly depressing.

At least it corresponded with Marcus’s preliminary time of death
estimated from body temperature. Suicide, accident or foul play, at around midnight the previous night, while officers of the law revelled or slept, one of their suspects, their best potential witness, had met her end.

‘How’d the mother take it?’ Williams asked Fran.

‘Not well. It’s a shame we couldn’t tell her in the afternoon when she’d be drunk. Stacey was right. Her mother is not at her best sober.’

Informing Stacey’s mother: Stark was heartily glad to have escaped that particular duty during his on-the-job training. He stared up at the tower, wondering which window hid the grief-stricken woman.

‘Did we get her killed?’ asked Dixon.

Stark noticed Fran glance his way. She was wondering the same thing. And bringing Stacey in had been his idea.

Groombridge finished a phone call and waved them over. ‘OK. Stacey’s mobile phone was found smashed a few feet from her body. The memory chip survived. She sent a text at six minutes past twelve last night – “Goodbye Nav I’m sorry”. That’s it. Not much of a suicide note. Let’s go see what Naveen Hussein has to add.’

‘What about the rest of them, Guv? Shall we round them up?’ asked Fran.

Groombridge shook his head. ‘I can’t face another round of their bullshit posturing yet. Not until we know more. Harper, you and the others knock on doors and get the occupants’ whereabouts last night. Let me know who you think is lying.’

‘I can tell you now, Guv,’ muttered Harper. ‘They all are.’

Fran glanced at Stark as they trudged up the concrete stairs and traversed the open balcony corridor to Naveen’s front door, wondering why she’d dragged him along. She had resolved overnight to confess to the DCI that it had been Stark who had suggested speaking to Stacey again, not her. Now, of course, it would look like she was trying to shift blame. If Stacey had been killed as a result, it was Fran’s fault, not Stark’s. She had brought it to the DCI. Christ, she had even said it might rattle the others. Either they’d driven the stupid girl to suicide or made someone kill her.

‘It’s not our fault,’ said Groombridge, out of the blue. His knack
for guessing her thoughts was as disconcerting as it was maddening. ‘We deal with people on the edge, but we don’t put them there.’

‘And sometimes they fall,’ said Fran.

Groombridge glanced at her but said nothing more as he knocked firmly on the door. A plump-faced Asian woman wearing a black hijab answered. ‘What’s he done now?’

They were shown into the living room, a space barely large enough for the
faux
-leather three-piece, over-large television, cluttered keepsakes and photographs. They declined the offer of tea and were told Naveen would be through soon. It was impossible not to overhear the hissed tirade she unloaded on the teenager from the hallway, though for the most part it was delivered in her first language. At one point Stark chuckled quietly.

‘Something funny?’ demanded Fran.

‘My Pashto is sketchy,’ said Stark, wincing at the next broadside. ‘But I think she blames the father.’

Fran rolled her eyes.

Moments later the mother shooed Naveen in, clearly stirred unwillingly from his bed and worried to find three police sitting in his living room. ‘Well! Go on, then!’ prompted his mother, in accented gunshot English. ‘Tell them where you were last night.’

‘Here,’ said Naveen, sullenly.

‘And for once it’s true!’ cried the mother. ‘Good-for-nothing layabout. Does nothing but sleep, muck about on that computer with the door locked or he’s out and about with that cheap little harlot from block seven!’

‘Mum!’ protested Naveen.

‘Her mother is a drunk! What does that girl know? I ask you! Fifteen years old and her mother lets boys stay all night long!’

Never mind that it’s your boy she’s letting sleep over, thought Fran.

‘And now there’s girls being murdered right outside our windows!’ railed the woman, breathlessly. ‘Where are their mothers? I ask you!’

Fran held up a hand. ‘Mrs Hussein! Forgive me, but are you confirming Naveen was here all night?’

‘Yes! Tapping away on that computer. Playing games or masturbating to pornography –’

‘
Mum!
’ cried Naveen, desperately.

Fran held up her hand again. ‘Naveen, can we see your phone?’

‘No!’ He was automatically defensive. ‘Why?’

‘Did you receive a text message just after midnight?’

‘I don’t know, why?’

‘Could you check?’

He stomped out of the room, glaring at his mother, and returned with his mobile. He thumbed through some content, then frowned. ‘“Goodbye …”?’

‘From Stacey Appleton?’ asked Groombridge. Naveen’s frown deepened, but he stared at the message in silence. ‘We know that text was sent from her phone to yours last night. And I’m sorry to have to tell you that we found Stacey dead this morning.’

Naveen looked up sharply, clearly shocked to the core. ‘Bullshit!’

‘
Naveen!
’ barked his mother.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ said Groombridge. ‘At this stage we think she died in a fall. Had she been depressed, or worried about anything?’

Naveen glared back. ‘Only about you lot! Pest’in’ us when we done nothin’! But this ain’t right, man, this ain’t right! Stace didn’t do this.’ He waved the phone angrily. ‘
This is bullshit!
’

That was too much for the mother. Launching into another incomprehensible barrage, she scolded her errant son from the room.

‘Some of them seemed, or acted, surprised,’ reported Harper. ‘Kyle Gibbs wasn’t around but his mum said he was at home all night. Nikki Cockcroft acted like she didn’t give a shit. Her mum said she was at home.’

‘So they all claim they were at home,’ said Groombridge, not that he’d expected anything else.

‘And they’re all lying,’ said Harper.

‘Hard to prove until we get forensics. Find out if any of the pay-as-you-go numbers they coughed up last week are still active, or even real. I’ll get on to HQ about warrants for call-location traces. Check with uniform whether any of the gang were seen out and about. Talk to any residents we missed this morning and any we’ve spoken to who looked frightened or edgy.’