No Smoke Without Fire (A DCI Warren Jones Novel - Book 2) (35 page)

Because that was where she intended to spend her Christmas. Even if Warren spent his Christmas Day in the CID office, she would be waiting at home for him. This year he needed her more than ever.

She would have to come back down to Middlesbury at some point before Christmas, if only to get some fresh clothes for the holiday. They’d figure the logistics out for that at a later date. There was a regular train service between Middlesbury and Cambridge and equally frequent trains from Coventry to Cambridge.

The atmosphere was leaden in the CID office as Warren entered. He knew that at least some of that was due to his own personal circumstances — that was human nature.

“Before we start, I’d just like to thank you all for your thoughtfulness. The card and the contribution to Nana Betty’s favourite charity was very much appreciated.”

There was a collective sigh of relief. Clearly the boss wasn’t going to collapse in a heap on the floor and they wouldn’t need to tiptoe around him.

“Tony, can you bring us all up to speed on this latest murder?”

“We have a positive ID: Gemma Allen aged twenty-three. As you can see, blonde-hair and pretty — just like the other two. The missing persons report actually came in as we were attending the scene; it seems that she was due to start a shift in her local Costcutter first thing yesterday morning. When she didn’t appear, her manager Mr Hardeep Singh tried to contact her, ringing her parents and her mobile. Eventually, he closed up and drove around to see her in her flat. When the neighbours said they hadn’t seen her since Saturday morning — when she left to go to work — Mr Singh hit the panic button and rang the police. I suppose that’s at least one positive effect of all this publicity — people don’t hesitate to contact us.

“Once we were confident of her identity, myself and DC Hastings travelled to Stevenage to meet her mother. She took it very hard and we had to call a doctor to sedate her. Family Liaison stayed whilst her sister came over.” He looked apologetic. “Sorry, she was in no fit state to be interviewed. We’ll try again this morning.”

Apparently, the body had been discovered at about two p.m., partly concealed in a blackberry patch off a bridle path between two farms. It had been gone ten p.m. before Sutton had phoned him. At first Warren had been annoyed — he was the senior investigating officer and he needed to know these things as soon as possible. But as usual, Susan had spoken sense to him. Two p.m. was in the middle of the wake; no way would Sutton be crass enough to phone him then.

If he’d phoned earlier in the evening, then what could Warren have done? He wasn’t in a fit state to drive to Middlesbury and so he’d have just spent all evening worrying about it and harassing them by phone. As it was, by the time Sutton had called him, pretty much everything Warren suggested had already been done, the team moving swiftly and smoothly. At Warren’s insistence, Sutton had sent photographs of the crime scene and the victim but, with no wireless connection or obvious means to transfer the photos to Susan’s laptop, he’d been reduced to looking at them on the phone’s tiny three-inch screen.

Sutton, with the blessing of Det Supt Grayson had moved quickly. A preliminary search of Gemma Allen’s apartment had revealed no signs of a struggle. It also suggested she had lived alone — something that her mother had yet to confirm. Photographs suggested that she might have a boyfriend; however Mr Singh, the shop owner, wasn’t entirely sure.

With the time of death as yet unconfirmed — but probably at least twenty-four hours previously and the autopsy scheduled for first thing Tuesday — Sutton had decided that it would be prudent to assume that Gemma Allen had been abducted on her way home from work on Saturday night. He’d blocked off the streets on her route home and organised parties of police officers to go door-knocking. Starting first light today, teams of officers would scour the roads, looking for evidence.

In this case, everyone was hopeful that the streets might yield something useful. A small pool of dried blood had already been identified close to a junction and samples taken for typing. At first glance, pictures of Gemma Allen’s battered face indicated that she had ended up face first with considerable force on a surface consistent with pavement at least once. The area immediately adjacent to the blood spot would serve as one of the focal points for the search.

Meanwhile, a list of Gemma Allen’s workmates and friends was being drawn up. The list was short so far as her mother was too shocked to speak still and Mr Singh knew precious little about his employee. One thing was for sure, however: at seventy-nine years old with an artificial hip and a cataract in his left eye, the old man wasn’t very high on the suspect list.

Because of the injuries to her face, the team was so far cautious about linking this latest murder to that of Sally Evans and Carolyn Patterson. Her age, build and long blonde hair weren’t really sufficient to do so. The autopsy might reveal a closer link.

Whether the attack was linked to Melanie Clearwater, the battered prostitute lying unconscious in hospital, was a different matter. Both women had serious facial injuries with a possible attempt to batter them to death; however, Clearwater hadn’t been raped so far as they could tell. Had Gemma Allen supplemented her wages at the Costcutter with work as a prostitute? It was a line of inquiry worth pursuing, decided Warren.

Tony Sutton had suggested roles for the team and Warren signed off on them. With the meeting concluded, the team leapt to their feet, a sense of urgency in the air. Three murders plus an attempted in two and a half weeks. The signs were ominous. If this was the work of just one man, he was now officially a serial killer and everybody was worried that it wasn’t going to end until he was stopped.

Chapter 42

By ten a.m. it was time for yet another visit to grieving relatives. The routine was becoming depressingly familiar and part of Warren had wanted to take up Tony Sutton’s kind offer to perform the duty on his behalf. However, Warren was too involved now. He couldn’t imagine not being there.

Checking his tie in the mirror one last time, he met Tony Sutton and Karen Hardwick in the car park. The young detective constable had shown a finely judged mixture of compassion and insight in her previous dealings with the victims’ loved ones and Warren was keen for her to take part in this latest interview.

The three police officers were silent during the half-hour drive to Gemma Allen’s mother’s house in Stevenage. Warren had the car radio tuned to the local BBC radio station, listening to the news. The body’s discovery was reported in detailed fashion and, despite the lack of information released by the police, speculation was rife that the murder was linked to the previous two cases. Detective Superintendent Grayson was expecting to give another press conference later that afternoon. Warren resigned himself to the fact that he would be spending yet more time in front of the cameras.

Gemma Allen’s mother lived in a shabby-looking two-up, two-down in one of the housing estates a mile or so from the leisure complex. Blocky grey high-rise flats cast their shadows over the untidy street. A police car sat outside the house, a uniformed constable deterring reporters and the curious. Although Gemma Allen had yet to be named, word had spread fast through the community and already bunches of flowers and soft toys had been left either side of the front gate.

Parking his car under the watchful gaze of the PC, Warren led the team up the cracked front path. Before he got a chance to ring the doorbell, the door swung open, a family liaison officer greeting them.

According to the details given to the team before they arrived, Gemma Allen’s mother, Lucy Allen, was a fifty-year-old cleaner-cum–dinner-lady at the local primary school. Gemma was her only child. Gemma’s father had left when she was three years old, leaving her upbringing to her mother, assisted by her grandparents and her mother’s older sister.

The woman sitting on the couch could have been in her sixties, Warren decided, the stress of the previous twenty-four hours adding years to a face already aged by a lifetime of poverty and hard work. Traces of her daughter’s pretty features could clearly be seen, beneath the lines and creases; nevertheless, she looked more like Gemma’s grandmother than her mother. Sitting next to her, holding her shoulders, was another woman, probably her sister.

Paramedics had sedated the poor woman the night before; her shaking hands and unfocused eyes, along with the smell of whisky, suggested that she had also been self-medicating. Nevertheless, her voice was clear without slurring and she insisted that she was ready to talk.

After accepting a cup of tea and expressing the team’s condolences, Warren started with a bit of general background. Gemma was twenty-three years old and had lived in Middlesbury for the past year and a half. By her mother’s own admission, the two had had a difficult relationship since the girl’s late teens. Gemma had been ‘a bit of a handful’; skipping school, smoking, drinking and dabbling in drugs. Warren had already read the police reports, noting a couple of cautions for shoplifting in her late teens. She’d moved out of the family home to stay with some friends at seventeen and had drifted in and out of casual jobs for the past few years.

However, about eighteen months ago, she’d finally realised that her life was going nowhere and decided to get back on track, renewing her relationship with her mother and restarting her education.

“It was that Facebook thing that did it. I don’t understand computers myself, but apparently you can get in contact with people you went to school with and that. She said that she was reading about some of the girls she remembered from class. Some were married with kids, others had been to university or were settled down in good jobs. She said she realised that if they could have a nice life like that, so could she.

“She also had a bit of a scare after a one-night stand at a party. It turned out to be a false alarm, but she realised that she didn’t want to be a single mum on benefits in some shitty housing estate like this.” Lucy Allen smiled through her tears and laughed hollowly. “At least she learnt something from her old mum.

“Anyway, she decided she needed a clean break. She moved to Middlesbury and managed to wangle a job at a corner shop, then went to the local college. She passed her GCSEs in English and Maths last summer.” Lucy Allen’s voice broke. “I was so proud of her.”

Her sister handed her another tissue and whispered comfortingly in her ear.

“Anyway, she’d just finished a six-month hair and beauty course at the college and enrolled on a new, more advanced one. She was going to start in January. She was going to come and spend Christmas with me for the first time in years.”

This last pronouncement resulted in yet more tears from the distraught woman and Warren and the team waited patiently whilst her sister comforted her.

“I’m very sorry, Ms Allen, but we are going to need to ask some more questions.” The woman nodded and Warren continued, “Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt your daughter? Perhaps somebody she knew before she moved to Middlesbury that she didn’t get on with?”

Her mother shook her head. “She had the odd falling out with people, but nothing recently. She was generally pretty popular.”

“Did she have a boyfriend, anyone she was seeing?”

Again a shake of the head. “She was too busy. She was working as many hours as the social would let her without losing her benefits and she was getting ready for college.” Her mother paused again, before deciding to continue. “She was also doing a bit of cleaning on the side, to make a little extra money. I don’t think she had the time.”

Given the previously poor relationship between the mother and daughter, Warren was uncertain that she would have necessarily known about Gemma’s social life — especially since she lived in a different town. He was deciding how best to phrase the question, when Karen Hardwick spoke up.

“You said that she made a clean break of it when she went to Middlesbury. Do you know if she had any special friends that she kept in contact with after she left Stevenage?”

Her mother thought for a moment. “She kept in touch with her friend Chantelle. I don’t have her phone number, but her mum lives across the road at number forty-five. I know that she used to catch the train to Middlesbury occasionally to spend the weekend with her.”

Mrs Allen was clearly becoming distraught again and so the three officers agreed to take a break for a few minutes. In the meantime, Tony Sutton suggested that they had a look at Gemma’s old room.

The moment he entered the room, Warren figured it was probably a waste of time. The room was pretty much empty, the only remaining furniture a single bed with a plain pink duvet set, a wooden wardrobe and a bedside table with a cheap reading lamp. Faded rectangles and scraps of Blu-Tack on the wallpaper suggested the removal of long-standing posters. Faint indentations in the carpet hinted that bookcases and a desk might have once sat there; Warren was willing to bet that furniture matching the dimensions of the marks would probably be found in Gemma Allen’s Middlesbury flat.

The wardrobe was almost empty, save for a few empty clothes hangers. The bottom two drawers of a three-drawer unit inside the wardrobe yielded only dust-bunnies. The top drawer had a couple of pairs of plain knickers and bras, some faded T-shirts and a small wash bag with a used toothbrush and toothpaste. The toothbrush was dry. Probably in case she visited and decided to stay overnight unexpectedly, Warren decided.

With the help of Tony Sutton, Warren lifted up the single bed, looking for anything that might have slipped down the back or underneath. Karen Hardwick meanwhile removed the drawers from the wardrobe and the bedside cabinet, checking for anything concealed within.

It took little more than five minutes before the team had exhausted all of the possibilities in the small room. It was clear that when Gemma Allen had moved out, she’d taken everything with her. Her flat in Middlesbury was now her home; her childhood bedroom just the guest room where she stayed when visiting.

Returning to the living room, Warren was taken to one side by the young woman serving as Family Liaison Officer. “If you want to ask Lucy any more questions, I’d suggest that you do so sooner rather than later,” she whispered quietly, nodding discreetly towards the grief-stricken woman. “She had another large glass of whisky whilst you were upstairs. I don’t think she’ll be much use to you if you delay any longer.” She bit her lip, clearly not sure what to do. “I think she has a drinking problem. What should I do?”