Reprobates (32 page)

Dylan
’s first feeling was one of anger against the hierarchy but before he had reached the admin office where Jen was sat, he had realised the absurdity and misuse of his brawn.

Jen smiled as he relayed the conversation. Out of every negative comes a positive
, she thought. Dylan might not have been too keen on trying for the next rank to start with, but now she knew from his tone he was certainly determined to see it through.

‘
Well, Eddie Thornton should have known not to throw down the gauntlet,’ he said.

It was Jen who felt the nausea of the obvious discouragement. She knew only too well that if an officer was prompted to go for the next rank it was highly likely it would be achieved. If they were discouraged at the first hurdle it was often a telling sign they didn
’t feature in the contest. And Dylan thought she was naive?

‘
Well I’ve got to go, I’ll see you tonight,’ he said.

Jen
’s eyes were very solemn. ‘I guess we will just have to see what happens, won’t we?’ she said to Rita who had heard the conversation.

‘
You know as well as me what the outcome will be. I wouldn’t hold your hopes up if I were you,’ she said.

***

Vicky and Paul walked down the central reservation of desks in the Incident Room, towards Dylan’s office. They had news he could tell by the look on their faces and the determination of their walk. He felt like a gust of air had blown in when they entered. Vicky’s face suggested some inward excitement.

‘
Remember the un-identified fingerprint in the rear of Richard Bryant’s van?’ Paul said.

‘
The one in Kirsty’s blood?’ asked Vicky.

‘
Well, it’s no longer unidentified. We have a positive ID... and wait for this, it belongs to none other than Brian Fisher.’

‘
Harper’s boss at the mortuary,’ said Dylan.

‘
They had his fingerprints for elimination purposes because of the alleged burglary, but Karen Ebdon who took the fingerprints remembered a specific marking and checking it out, she was spot on for us.’

‘
I didn’t expect that,’ Dylan said.

‘
Never assume anything’s what you tell me, boss, and if it doesn’t make any sense it’s probably either something totally weird or some sexual perversion.’

‘So…
the plot thickens,’ Dylan mused as he stood with his back to the charts on his wall.

‘
And there’s more,’ Vicky said sitting down and indicating to Paul to sit next to her. ‘The telephone intelligence show links between Fisher, Bryant, Harper, Simpson and Gallagher. There are clusters of calls around relevant dates. They also show calls too, wait for this one, to Barrington Cook, the man we pulled dead out of the canal and there are others who we will make inroads to seek out. It’s all being charted up for simplicity. Ruth says she will have the updated analysis charts on this, ready for you for tomorrow morning’s briefing. Also the computer geeks have retrieved some sort of distribution network from the computers we have seized. It could prove to be a worldwide network they are warning us. The staff in the office are coming over in the morning to go over their findings with us.’

‘
That’s great news. We will need to do a vast amount of research on them before we consider our approach to this obviously ever increasing group. I don’t suppose they suggested how many we are talking about by any chance?’

‘No.
’ She gave Dylan a comprehending look.

‘Don
’t worry. It’s all coming together nicely. It will be good to know who their other links are. I’ve a feeling we’ve only got the worker bees in the net so far.’

Brian Fisher was the man in charge of the mortuary and had worked in that post for a number of years. He had no police record. They would have to wait to find out more about him and who his partners in this network were. Dylan liaised with the Obscene Publications Unit. Perhaps they could take this side of the enquiry forward in unison with his team who could then keep focused on the double homicide investigations. This way any relevant information would be shared. Ultimately the outcome would be available for disclosure purposes prior to any court case.

Dylan picked up the telephone and spoke directly with the supervisor asking him to pass on his personal gratitude for the excellent work in identifying marks found at the variety of scenes. The personnel in the department worked hard behind closed doors. It was a highly skilful job, done with enthusiasm and determination. A lot of their work went unnoticed, but not by Dylan. They were a very important cog in the investigative unit’s wheel and like the rest of his team they were industrious in their approach. On numerous occasions by identifying marks left at a scene it gave the detectives, not only evidence but a name which resulted subsequently in a person standing before the Court.

Dylan
’s head was bent over his work. It would be an embarrassment for the Coroner’s Office once news broke of Fisher’s involvement, he thought. He would speak to the Coroner, in confidence, prior to the media being given the information. He sat reflecting on who else would be on the list, and from what walks of life would they would come? He was never shocked by what people did any more, although he found it bizarre on occasions, but that didn’t stop him from feeling repulsed. Never more so than when the perpetrators were revealed to be in positions of trust and should be an example to others as pillars of the community. There would be a lot of red faces in the coming weeks and the usual comments would follow. ‘We will look closely at what lessons need to be learned,’ was always a good one that they put out.

Dylan pondered on the saying,
‘the quiet ones are always the worse,’ and he wondered where the saying originated and how it stood the test of time, for he was sure he’d heard his parents say the same kind of things. He had heard the saying used many times at a road traffic accident or a major crime scene when as a first aider you were always told to deal with the casualty that was the quietest, as the ones ‘making the noise’ were the ones still breathing – hence the quiet ones are the worst. One thing for sure, he wouldn’t be quiet about it once he knew who was involved. The public needed to know, although they would be disgusted and repulsed to find out that even in death people were not safe, they would gain some satisfaction from those responsible being brought to justice.

Tomorrow would move this enquiry forward and bring it out of the dark shadows. It concerned him that he was unintentionally being side-tracked by promotion issues. His main focus was the murders and the only motive so far being that the perpetrators were sexually driven, the climax being murder.

‘Vicky, will you let Paul know about tomorrow’s meeting?’ asked Dylan.

‘Yeah, I
’ll send him a message subject heading Bare Poster.’

‘
Bare Poster
? Ah, the name Harper gave it,’ said Dylan.

‘It
’s also an anagram of reprobates,’ she said. ‘Uncanny that isn’t it?’

Dylan was the first in the office after a restless night. It was quarter to seven and he was sat at his desk eager to start the day. Now he had to wait for the others.

He looked at his computer to see what had occurred in the last twenty-four hours that was serious enough to be sent for the Chief Constable’s information, known as the Chief’s Log. He shuffled his papers in his in tray, took out anything marked urgent and put it back a few moments later. He plucked a folder from the shelf next to him marked ‘Of Interest for Promotion’. The contents had grown considerably since its creation. A few minutes later he tossed it to one side. He needed to make some important decisions today and at the moment his mind was in turmoil, a frenzy of his own caged energy. Was the real struggle about promotion with himself he wondered, and not the hierarchy? But they indeed played their part. He had learned through experience that transparency didn’t mean the same to them as it did him and others like him.

The first to arrive in the office was Paul Robinson and Vicky followed. There was no disguising the arrival of Detective Sergeant George Buck, the head of Obscene Publications. He was an ex-sergeant major who always brought about a cyclone effect wherever he went. He shook Dylan
’s hand, clicked the heels of his brown boots and gave a guardsman’s salute, his big hand quivered. Dylan had come across George some years ago when he had done some undercover work for the Obscene Publications Office. George hadn’t changed in his manner, he was a big, raw-faced creature, all belly, voice and a blonde moustache. He cast off his long raincoat.

‘
Come to report, sir,’ he said. His face was like undercooked beef with two blue round pebbles for eyes.

‘Long
time no see, George. How’s things?’ asked Dylan, standing to shake his hand.

‘It
’s quite like old times... except you’re the boss now. Office bound mostly these days apart from targeted arrests, hence the weight,’ he said. George Buck moved his fat hands to grab his wholesome belly.

‘
What happened to the mop of hair, George?’ asked Dylan with a laugh.

‘
It will come to you, Dylan. It’s called old age. I decided to shave off what remained a while ago. Still got the old raincoat.’

‘
Ah, a stark reminder of the good old days?’

‘
If I remember rightly, you had far too much fun when you worked undercover. Didn’t your team hold the record, twenty-four visits to a brothel before there’s “sufficient to raid it, sir?”’

‘
I was a young back then. “Martine’s!” my God, it was a classy joint even by today’s standards and I was getting paid to go there.’

‘
A classy brothel? Surely not, sir,’ Vicky said as she entered.

‘Don
’t get him started, Vicky, some of his stories will even make you blush.’

Wallace J. Hooper from the computer suite joined them, briefcase in hand.
‘Anywhere I can set up the presentation?’ he asked Vicky.

Vicky took him into the Incident Room and George Buck took control. He made no bones about who was the boss and who was his junior. He outlined the decoding and subsequent download from the systems recovered from Derek Harper
’s computer. ‘Bare Poster’ created some seven hundred images which were classed as indecent. The three main categories for convenience were named men, women and children.

‘
This team are relatively newbies. The earliest date of publication being just over a year ago,’ said George. ‘However, we must be aware we have intelligence only from Harper’s computer at this time. There are ten identified main players on our patch who feature and who visit and download from this particular site on a regular basis. As you are aware we are in possession of some of their computers and work is ongoing.’ Wallace held up a chart showing the links between the individuals. Their plotted activity resembled a spiders web. Those present didn’t utter a sound but listened intently to what they were being told.

‘
These ten people, through the web have been identified as the following individuals. Derek Harper, Richard Bryant, Brian Fisher.’ Dylan nodded his head in acknowledgement. ‘Jerry Noble, Mark Stringwood, Lance Tenby, Nigel Smith, Jason Coombe, Barrington Cook, the recently deceased John James. We have prepared schedules for each showing their individual activity and downloads from the Bare Poster site.’

‘
John James, he worked at the funeral directors. I was on-call negotiator when he jumped to his death,’ said Dylan

‘
How awful for you,’ said Wallace Hooper.

‘
I didn’t actually get to speak to him. He went over just as we arrived.’

‘
Just on him, boss. John James has been identified as the guy in the photo in Kirsty’s car.’

‘Well he
’s one less to worry about. Maybe he knew we were getting near to finding out about his association. What we need to know now,’ said George, ‘is where the other people are. Then we can decide if our office can pick them up.’

‘
As you are aware Harper and Bryant are in custody. Our team are heavily involved with them at present. It’s what we can find out about the others that’s important to us now. Jerry Noble... that name ring a bell.’

‘It
’s best to pick up the outstanding six in simultaneous raids in my experience, Dylan, to ensure they don’t get a chance to destroy any evidence if they so much as get a whiff of what’s going down.’

‘
Whilst we know the names of those involved I want to know more about these depraved people and what they have in common in their lifestyles,’ said Dylan. ‘I want you out and about on your urgent enquiries today. The raids need carrying out as soon as possible in case any information is forthcoming in relation to the ongoing murder enquiries.’

***

A defence statement from Perfect & Best Solicitors was waiting for Dylan on his desk, along with a covering letter in respect of their client Richard Bryant. Bryant had entered not guilty pleas in respect of both murders for which he had been charged and they were demanding separate trials. If the prosecution couldn’t link them it was likely he would get his wish.

‘
Doing a spot of reading?’ asked George as he stood before him. Dylan hadn’t heard him enter the office. The big man could be very quiet on his feet. He wore his coat and was ready to leave.

‘
The brief outline for Bryant’s defence statement to the charge of murdering Kirsty Gallagher is...’ he looked at him.

‘Not guilty.
’

He nodded his head.
‘He’s admitting to obstructing the Coroner and disposal of the body through “sheer panic” would you believe,’ he said. ‘He’s yet to put forward a defence statement in respect of Billy Simpson,’ Dylan said waving the piece of paper in his hand. ‘He will have to come up with a good one to convince a jury with the evidence we have.’ Dylan was more than confident a jury would see through his lies after he had been in interview with him.

‘
They’re not stupid,’ said George.

Dylan threw the piece of paper down.
‘What links do the Bare Poster lot have, George, apart from their perverted intent?’

‘
Probably nothing. Some will know each other through social networks. People tend to seek like-minded people out.’

‘
And the murderers?’

‘
Taking it to the ultimate level to get their kicks. But as long as we can link them conspiring together for a conviction are we really bothered how they met?’

‘
No, you’re right, and we won’t ever know how far the chain goes, will we? I still feel as though we are only scratching the surface.’

‘
Time will tell,’ said George.

***

The day had passed quickly and Dylan wanted some home time and that was where he was heading. A copy of the Anacapa Charts in his briefcase. A determined look was in Dylan’s eyes. He knew these charts showed the extent of the communication and liaison between the perpetrators and the increase in their activity at relevant times and dates, and he would not hesitate to seize the opportunity of casting another eye over them.

‘
I’m on my way home
,’ he texted Jen.