Scarred for Life (8 page)

‘What’s his name?’

‘Buster. Stupid bloody name. Some kids’ TV show, I think. My daughter named him.’

The dog rolled onto his side, still nuzzling against Philip’s shoes.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Jessica said, touching him on the upper arm. ‘Our scene was screwed the moment it started raining. The body had been out there for more than twenty-four hours anyway. By the time you found it, pretty much anything useful we were going to get had been washed away.’

That wasn’t strictly true and Philip’s tumble around the body certainly hadn’t helped – but there was no point in making him feel any worse than he already did.

‘Your girl who interviewed me said I could go home but I don’t think I can face it yet. I called my wife to say I was going to be late. I didn’t tell her about the body, not over the phone, I just said I’d gone for a longer walk. She asked if I could pick up some milk on the way home. I don’t know why but it made me laugh, not because it was funny – it was just one of those things. I was thinking, “Milk, bloody hell, there’s some poor girl that’s been cut up and I’ve got to worry about nipping by the corner shop on my way home.”’

Jessica wanted to say something soothing but what was there? It was always the normal things that got you.

‘Who was she?’ Philip asked.

‘We’re not sure yet.’

‘Bloody waste, though, isn’t it? Some young girl like that. Can’t be any older than twenty-one, twenty-two. Christ, my Emily’s only thirteen. You think they’ve got their whole lives ahead of them and then you see something like that.’

Jessica didn’t reply for a few moments, allowing the gentle breeze to skim between them. ‘We can have someone take you home if you want, plus we have people you can talk to.’

‘Aye, I know, love. Your other woman told me. I’ll be all right. I’ve seen a few things in my time, not like that but, y’know . . .’

Back at Longsight Station the usual Saturday morning chaos was fully in evidence. The regular array of Friday-night drunks were being processed, the quieter ones sent on their way after a telling-off, the ones with the big gobs left downstairs in their cells to stew for a few hours longer. Some people never learned that shouting their mouths off at the police got them nowhere.

A pair of constables was pulling together a list of missing people who could potentially be their victim, so Jessica went to her office and flicked through the messages on top of her keyboard. Something about pensions, a note from Fat Pat about forgetting to sign cars back in, notification of some all-department briefing, blah blah blah. If they filed these things straight into her bin, it would save her the hassle.

Jessica picked up her desk phone and called Archie. One ring, two rings, five rings: ‘Can’t you pick up on the first ring?’ she said.

The familiar Manc twang: ‘Jess?’

‘Yes, y’lazy sod. What are you doing?’

‘Give over – it’s my day off, it’s Saturday.’

‘I know what day it is and it’s my day off too. They found some body out Walkden way, just off the East Lancs Road. Some poor girl.’

‘I’ve not had the news on. Do you need me in?’

‘No, I was wondering how you’d got on sniffing around the rowing club.’

‘Well, it smells like shite, that’s for sure. I went through those membership lists and started to get together a few potential names. They have a website that tallies all of their results going back years, so I’ve been cross-reffing. I don’t want to start phoning everyone because then the word will get around, so I’m trying to find a certain type of member. The ones who row in the main teams are going to be quieter than a City fan after derby day, so I’m trying to find people who were members of the club but not mentioned. There’s bound to be someone who’s annoyed at being left out.’

‘Find anyone yet?’

‘I only started yesterday afternoon?’

‘So what are you doing taking days off then?’

‘All right, bloody hell, they told me you were a nightmare.’

‘Who told you?’

Archie’s muffled cough revealed nothing. ‘You know . . .
they
.’

Jessica let it go. ‘When are you back in?’

‘Tuesday.’

‘Are you working part-time?’

‘Ha ha, very funny. United are playing this afternoon, so I—’

‘Whatever, just get something sorted and we’ll talk on Monday.’

Jessica hung up just as Archie’s muttered protests were getting abusive. She knew it was harsh but that was the way things were. The fact that she was turning into one of the inspectors she used to complain about wasn’t lost on her either. What a cow.

With that sorted, her notes filed in the bin and a cheeky Hobnob from her desk drawer devoured, Jessica went through to the stupidly named sergeants’ station, where Izzy was having an agitated phone conversation with her other half. She swiped a pile of cardboard document folders away from the space in front of her and offered an apologetic smile as Jessica sat and waited on the corner of the desk. As Izzy lowered her voice to use a very rude word, Jessica picked up the tattoo robbery case file and started shuffling through the information. The original version of the photograph she’d shown to Bex was at the front and she stared at the tattoo, knowing that if it had been etched onto her body, then she would have done whatever she could to get rid of such an obvious glitch.

Izzy soon hung up and turned to Jessica. ‘Sorry – you’d think I somehow managed to have Amber by myself, like some sort of immaculate conception.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, aren’t you off?’

‘I’m always hanging around.’

‘Like a bad smell?’

‘Something like that. I wanted to go through these photos. How closely did our guys look at this?’ Jessica pointed to the fuzzy part of the tattoo on the robber’s wrist.

Izzy took the photo and looked at it again. ‘I flagged it up straight away but they had already seen it. They said it had to be a problem with the camera footage because the tattoo doesn’t look like that on the other pictures.’

Izzy slid out the images they had from the other robberies and showed Jessica what she meant. In those, the scythe shape on the robber’s lower arm connected perfectly with the dark line as it reached his wrist. Jessica took each photo and peered at them closely. She had only had the single photograph the evening before, which she’d taken on a whim. Neither Jessica nor Adam had tattoos but one of Adam’s friends at the university where he worked had a keen interest in them. She’d hoped he might have something useful to add but had forgotten to take it out of her bag, only remembering when she met Bex.

She thought back to that morning: the tattoo on the dead woman’s back and the sodden conditions. Jessica held up the most recent photo again. ‘What day was this taken?’

‘Monday.’

‘What was the weather like?’

Izzy shrugged. ‘Probably raining. It usually is.’

Jessica tried to remember. Monday had been her last day off and she’d celebrated by going to Tesco and then sitting at home watching daytime television. It definitely had rained because she’d got wet lugging the shopping bags back to the car. She also remembered watching the news the previous night with Adam where the weatherman had promised it was going to be a dry day. The fact that most of their advance forecasting seemed to involve looking up and guessing was beside the point.

‘Why?’ Izzy added.

Jessica chewed on her bottom lip, thinking. ‘Is there somewhere we can find out what the weather’s been like for each day there was a robbery?’

Izzy peered at Jessica for a few moments but didn’t ask the obvious question; sometimes it was best to let potentially mad ideas run their course.

Between them, they found a website that contained an archive of weather for the region. After cross-checking the details with the dates of the first three off-licence thefts, Jessica picked up the final photo again, staring at the same smudge as before.

‘What are you thinking?’ Izzy asked.

‘The first three robberies were committed when it was dry. On Monday, it was due to be clear but it rained. When we saw the very first photo of the robber, we thought this would be one of the simplest cases ever, didn’t we?’

Izzy nodded. ‘Yes, because the robber was clearly stupid – if you had markings so distinctive, you’d do everything you could to cover them up.’

‘When we put these pictures out, we thought we’d get a call from at least one member of the public. The few we did have were from the usual nutters and well-meaning people who’d got things wrong. We wondered how no one could have noticed such an intricate mark on someone’s wrist – but what if it’s not a proper tattoo? What if someone drew that onto themselves and then deliberately left their sleeves up to throw us off?’

Izzy thought for a moment and then a half-smile crept across her face. ‘It would have to be non-permanent, otherwise it’d be noticed the same as a normal tattoo. So when it rained unexpectedly, it smudged slightly?’

‘Exactly.’

10

Although Jessica now had a theory about Izzy’s tattoo robbery case, they didn’t have the officers to start working on it. Identifying the body in the woods had been simpler than it could have been and, instead of spending a day or two waiting for a positive ID, officers were now busy delving into the victim’s background.

While Jessica was at the rowing club on Thursday night, trying to figure out what had happened to Damon Potter, Cassie Edmonds had gone out. When she hadn’t returned home, her boyfriend, Carl, assumed she’d stayed at a friend’s house and then gone straight to work the next day. On Friday evening, he’d gone out with his mates, got back to their shared flat late and guessed she’d gone out too. By the time he’d woken up hung-over on Saturday morning, the realisation that she hadn’t replied to any of the text messages he had sent and wasn’t answering her phone had hit. He called her friends, only to be told that none of them had seen her since Thursday evening. That was when he’d called the police and, after being asked about any distinctive features she might have, he’d described the tattoo on her back.

That was his story and, at least for now, they had no reason to doubt it. Well, no proof anyway – doubt was always the first thought.

With someone dispatched to formally take the boyfriend’s statement, and a couple more officers trying to confirm his alibi, Jessica’s day off that wasn’t stretched into the afternoon.

By the time she arrived at the dead woman’s flat, Cassie’s best friend Jade was helping the police while trying to avoid going to pieces. She invited Jessica in, streaks of mascara lining the area around her eyes and red raw rings in the bags underneath from where she’d been rubbing her skin. She held the door open, sniffing and trying to suppress more sobs, then led Jessica into her living room. Celebrity magazines were scattered on a table and some dance tune thump-thump-thumped from a set of speakers in the corner.

‘This was our song,’ Jade said, failing to stop her voice cracking. ‘We used to play it when we were getting ready to go out.’

The poor neighbours.

Tea and tissues at the ready, Jade settled on her sofa opposite Jessica. ‘She was my best mate,’ Jade said, just about holding herself together as she twiddled the large hooped earring in her right ear.

‘And you were out with her on Thursday?’

‘We were at this place just off Tib Street for one of our other friend’s birthdays. It was supposed to be a quiet night – Italian and a few drinks – but we’d ended up staying out a bit later, even though we both had work the next day.’

Jessica took the details of the other friends who were there, as well as the places they had visited. ‘How was the evening?’ she asked.

‘It was good, a bit like the old days. We’ve all known each other since school and have been going out since then. We used to get dressed up and head to town to try to get into places. Some would serve you, some wouldn’t . . . although . . . I probably shouldn’t tell you that, should I?’

Jessica smiled, remembering her own youth. ‘I was young once too.’

Jade coughed a sombre smile through the still-near tears. ‘Right, so you know what it’s like?’

‘Too much make-up, shoes you can’t walk in, push-up bra, try not to make too much eye contact, in you go.’

‘Exactly – you have the best time of your life . . . well, you tell yourself that at the time. Back then, you scrape together a few quid and go out when you can, then get one of your dads to come and pick you up if you don’t have enough left for a taxi. Things begin to catch up with you, though, because you get jobs and boyfriends – two of our old mates, Jane and Vee, have little girls – slowly you drift away.’

‘But you’d stayed friends with Cassie?’

Jade let go of her earring and blew her nose loudly. ‘She was my best mate.’

Jessica thought of her friend Caroline and the relationship they had now. Since first meeting as teenagers all those years ago, they’d travelled together, lived together, drifted apart, back together and then, to a degree, apart again. Life did that. On some level, they’d always be a part of each other’s lives. In different circumstances, this could have been her giving the interview.

‘How often did you see each other?’

‘Once or twice a week? She worked at this office near the Printworks and I’m at a tanning salon in the centre. We’d go for lunch now and then. Even if we didn’t have time, we’d text all the time.’

‘How frequently would you all go out?’

Another sad smile slipped onto Jade’s face. ‘Not often enough. Once a month? Maybe not even that. If one of us had a birthday, we’d try to make an effort. Yasmine was turning twenty-three and we’d managed to get everyone together for the first time in ages. Even Jane and Vee were there.’

‘Talk me through the evening.’

‘We’d arranged to meet at the Italian place for eight but Cassie, me and Yasmine had gone to this pub around the corner first.’

‘What time did you get there?’

‘Seven. It was pretty busy – a load of lads in suits out after work. It’s always like that.’

‘Did anyone show any particular interest in you?’

Jade curled her feet up on the chair and shook her head. ‘I don’t think so; we had a booth in the corner and shared a bottle of wine. We were talking about work and TV – the usual things – having a laugh.’