You'll Get Yours, page 6
“And...?” Lyons asked. “How does all this explain that infernal racket?” He pointed accusingly at the phone.
Cahill squirmed in his seat. “This is a banging new radio station I’ve just discovered. They’re playing every single UK top 40 hit from 1952 until 1999. All 15,275 of them!” He said this as if it was something good. To Lyons’ further dismay, he saw Cahill was finding it difficult to contain his excitement as he explained further. “Every song that radio forgot is finally getting a chance to shine!”
“And this noise...?”
“Not my favorite type of music, but enough people enjoyed it to send it into the charts. Most of the songs I’ve never heard in my life before. Sure, I’m only 23 years of age, so I am.” He glanced down at the readout on his phone. “Luckily for me, but, they show the artist and song title, and year and number of the song’s peak. This says it’s ‘Psychonaut’ by the Fields of the Nephilim. Number 35 in 1989. Bloody awful, I must admit. But this is an education and a diversion for me at the same time.”
This was suddenly followed by that hit from the 90s that everybody knew whether they wanted to or not. Lyons’ granny particularly liked this one on a brandy-filled Christmas Eve, and he found himself tapping his foot to...it sounded like a girl group...who sang it? He looked down at the readout on Cahill’s phone. Number 3 in 1996.
“Ah, the Sparklettes,” Lyons said. “Derry’s pride. And then Derry’s shame.”
“All before my time, Tom,” Cahill said. “Obviously, the age I am. But even now my mam and da talk about the controversy. There was something about Eurovision, wasn’t there?”
The annual music competition watched by millions. It had made many a career, but humiliated a few who received no votes at all from the jury, so ‘nul points.’
“Aye,” Lyons said. “They were from Derry, had a few hits, they were put forward for Eurovision, but they represented the...UK.”
This blast from the past was followed by a Stevie Wonder classic. Cahill drove across the pedestrian area, through Shipquay Gate and parked the car in front of the Rocking Mermaid.
A few smokers were shivering under the awning of the rustic brick facade of the building beside the dark green of the aged timber door. Two stained glass windows. Opposite the quiet street, the slabs of stone that formed the city walls towered over them. Police tape fluttered in the rain across the entrance to the ramp. There was no sign of the wheelie bins that usually sat there. They’d been taken away by forensics for examination.
Cahill turned off the car midway through ‘Boogie on Reggae Woman.’ They got out of the car and hurried through the rain. The smokers gave them a wide berth, suspicion in their eyes. Even with Lyons decked out in his fancy gear, and Cahill in his hoodie and baggy distressed jeans, they knew the two were peelers. It was how they held themselves, even Cahill after his short time on the force.
Lyons nudged Cahill and pointed up at the visible security camera above the name of the pub. It was indeed pointed across the street. He felt the blood surge in his veins.
They entered. The old-style Irish pub was empty at this hour, the smokers outside the only punters.
They approached the barman, a stout older man with a bushy brown beard and a bald head. He was wringing out a sopping bar towel.
He scowled at them. “Och, what are you here for now?”
The man’s name was Colm Daly, and after some to and fro, he deigned to show them the surveillance footage.
Daly led them to the back room, where an antiquated security system groaned. Its grainy black and white footage was displayed on three small, boxy monitors that were stacked atop a disorderly pile of invoices and beer coasters.
Daly grabbed a chair missing its back and dragged it to the desk. The police officers stood behind him on the sticky linoleum.
“That one’s the bar area, that’s the snug in the back, and this one’s outside. I guess that’s what you’re interested in?”
“Aye.”
Lyons and Cahill strained to make out the walls opposite the pub on the screen. The entrance to the ramp was in the lower left-hand corner. The time stamp was in the lower right hand. Fluorescent green. Very old-school.
“The system operates on a loop,” Daly explained, “and burns the data to DVDs. Aye, not quite state-of-the-art, but at least it’s not VHS. And it cost a bomb at the time. I gather you want to have a look at last night?”
“Aye.”
“Let me pull it up, then you can burn a DVD with the relevant footage. What time of night were you looking for?”
“Shall we start at half nine or thereabouts?” Lyons suggested.
Daly grunted, every task a chore, and the officers watched as he rewound the footage to the previous evening.
“We also need to know about your rubbish collection, sir,” Cahill said timidly.
“Sir, sir,” Daly mimicked in a high-pitched voice. “What the bloody hell about it?”
“What days do you put the bins out? And how many? And when is the rubbish collected?”
Daly let out a labored breath of irritation as if he had been asked to perform one of Hercules’ twelve labors.
“Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday,” he spat. “They come to collect it at 7 in the morning or thereabouts.”
Cahill noted this down, and finally, Daly got to 21:30:04 the night before.
He stood up abruptly.
“Just press here if you want to fast-forward, here if you want to rewind.” He stomped to the filing cabinet and grabbed a handful of DVDs. “And here’s the DVDs. You can figure out yourselves how to burn them. Now I’ve real graft to perform. Fill your boots.”
He marched out of the room.
Lyons perched himself on a chair worse than Cahill’s passenger seat, wondering if he’d have to make a trip to the dry cleaners. Cahill located a short stool and pulled it up to the desk.
They stared at the screen, rapt. Lyons pressed the fast forward. They could make out in the grainy gloom a few heads of smokers who wandered to that side of the street, but that was about it. They watched the timestamp move from 21:30:11 to 21:45:01 to 22:15:54 to 22:39:09 and their excitement began to wane.
Starting at eleven, there was more activity. The pub was closing and punters were leaving. They caught more than one view of a bald head that presumably was the bouncer’s, not Daly’s. Lyons slowed down as jerky scenes of drunken debauchery and mild violence, a lone instance of spewing up against the side of the wall, unfolded before their eyes.
There was no sound, but they could see on the bouncer’s face that he was roaring abuse at the worst of the lot. Then there was a period of inactivity. Lyons didn’t dare fast forward. A barmaid rolled out one wheelie bin across the street and placed it next to the entrance to the ramp, then retrieved the others. She leaned against the wall, a hand wiping her brow, and lit a cigarette. As she puffed away, she shoved a hand under the black suit jacket she was wearing and adjusted her breasts. She finished her cigarette, then headed toward the camera, going back into the pub.
“We’re getting closer, Tom,” Cahill said.
“Aye.”
They saw the staff leaving for the evening in a group. They all headed to the left in the direction of Shipquay Gate and were soon out of sight. It was 23:32:17.
A few minutes passed, then the image grew even dimmer. They strained their eyes to see not much of anything.
“That must be your man Daly, turning off the outside lights,” Lyons said.
The bit of light they could see was apparently from a lamppost not far off. They could just about make out Daly’s bald head as he left the pub after presumably locking up.
Lyons rubbed his hands together.
“Now we’re on!”
“Aye!” Cahill breathed.
They stared at the four wheelie bins just sitting there in the gloom. Three recycling, one for regular rubbish. Time passed. A pack of drunken teen girls staggered by, arms wrapped around one another. More time passed. It was 23:47:47.
A group of three males in hoodies, also drunk if their wavering was anything to go by, passed by. One of them kicked one of the wheelie bins. The wheelie bin fell over, and beer and wine bottles rolled out onto the street.
Cahill gasped, and Lyons winced as he felt the younger man’s fingers clamp onto his shoulders.
“Could this be it, hi?”
“Hold your horses, just,” Lyons said, unable to take his eyes off the screen.
But on the lads staggered, punching one another, heads back as if in laughter.
23:49:06. The bottles sat there, the wheelie bin on its side. The other three just stood there, getting wet in the light drizzle.
Then nothing. And more nothing.
By 00:32:43, Lyons was starting to despair. Could they have gotten it wrong? It was past the time of estimated death. Maybe they were wasting their time watching minute after minute of sweet FA. Maybe the bastard had already hauled Regina Steps up the staircase way over at Magazine Gate.
Lyons’ mouth was a small tight line. He turned to Cahill.
“Och—”
“Wait!” Cahill practically squealed. “There!”
Lyons’ head snapped around.
The lower half of the screen was taken up by a patch of white.
“What the bloody hell...?” he asked.
“It was a van!” Cahill said. “Rewind it. You’ll see it pulling up into our line of sight.”
Lyons rewound, and it was just as Cahill had said. A van slowly inched across the screen and parked right there before the camera, blocking their view of the bins and the ramp. The side of a van. That’s all they could see. He hadn’t been able to make out anything from the driver’s cab when it had first come into sight. It was just a dark blur. It was 00:45:32.
“Gotcha, you mad bastard!” Lyons said.
“I can’t believe we caught him in the act!” Cahill said.
Hopefully, they had.
The blood was pumping in their veins, their eyes straining as stared at the side of the van just sitting there, while presumably the perp had been at that moment dragging Regina Steps’ dead body in a wheelie bin across the city walls and toward the cannon.
Then, at 00:55:27, the van pulled away. They were staring at the bins again. All four were standing up.
“Way hey!” Lyons roared, a fist punching the air. “Result!”
Cahill whooped, they high-fived.
Still shaking slightly from their find, Lyons and Cahill left the pub and had a look around the cobblestones opposite the entrance, the side of the wall, the police tape strung across the entrance to the ramp. This was where they were now fairly certain the murderer had started to dispose of Regina Steps’ body, after all. But there was nothing to see. Hopefully, forensics would find something in the wheelie bin.
They made their way back to the Kia. Lyons was still gripping the freshly burned DVD in his hand.
“Ah, there’s nothing like a grand day’s work, so there’s not,” he said as he sank into the seat. He didn’t care about how grotty it was.
Cahill stuck his key in the ignition and turned on his radio station. They were assaulted by frenetic guitar riffs, raw youthful male vocals. Cahill knew this one.
“Ha!” he exclaimed, pointing down at the readout.
Lyons looked down.
‘Caught By The Fuzz Supergrass 1994 #36
“Case solved?” Cahill asked.
They could but hope...
CHAPTER 8
EXCERPT FROM JOURNAL ENTERED INTO POLICE EVIDENCE
Took me long enough, feels like a lifetime waiting but its done. Its done and I have to say I can’t believe I actually went thru with it. I knew I was doing it but it felt like somebody else was doing it sort of like I saw myself from above doing it. Down there it was like I was just a ball of red anger not even human just red. It wasn’t easy but. Have you any idea how long it takes to strangle someone? I’ll tell you shall I? Bloody long that’s how long. You have to keep pressing then releasing then pressing and releasing and all the while you have to stare into the eyes. well I wanted the light to go out of those eyes didn’t I? Thats why I did it. I thought mayby twenty minutes went by but mayby it wasnt that long. So now shes gone.
RAIN BEAT DOWN ON THE station's leaky roof. The incident room was heaving, a sea of black uniforms and lanyards. DCI Nix had gathered up even more uniformed coppers from other divisions—the bomb out at Crescent Link had been a false alarm and more officers from Strand Road were now available—and there were now more than twenty coppers sweating side by side in the cramped confines of the room. The atmosphere was tense.
The new recruits were leaning forward eagerly, notebooks at the ready..
Interspersed among them were those coppers from the Twilight Station branch, who had been working all day long, a morning briefing in the evening the last thing their bodies wanted. But the first 24 hours were the most important in any murder investigation.
As the radiators made their clanking noises—they couldn’t be turned off, and the windows had to be opened though the temperature had dropped drastically outside—DI McLaughlin paced before the blank whiteboard. DS D’Arcy had perched herself atop the desk to the left. In those freshly disinfected hands, she clutched a bulging folder. DC Lyons leaned against the wall to the left of the whiteboard. DC Hawkins was looking on from the back, still ensconced at her desk. DC Cahill was lost somewhere in the throng.
McLaughlin was chuffed with the security camera footage retrieved from the Rocking Mermaid. They were gathering more and more puzzle pieces. Now to fit them together where they belonged. He hoped a few wouldn’t be lost under the table to be eaten by the dog.
Having just completed a quick debrief with McLaughlin and the rest of the team, DCI Nix was leaning on a desk in the back of the room, arms folded, silver fox short back and sides shining under the flickering strip lighting. He would watch the proceedings over his rectangle wireframes. The press was rabid for information and he’d had nothing to give them except ‘inquiries were ongoing.’ But he had full confidence in DI Liam McLaughlin.
Whereas other SIOs would probably give a quick review of the case and parcel out the tasks, job done, McLaughlin treated his morning briefings similar to a Q and A at a press conference, allowing the coppers to let their voices and theories be heard, making sure they were invested in the investigation and ensuring he got the best possible results from his team, especially the relative strangers who might have been seconded onto the team.
“Greetings, all,” McLaughlin began, a hush falling over the assembled masses, “as you are all aware, a most heinous murder was uncovered on the city walls early this morning. A group of Yank pensioner tourists called it in.” He avoided Lyons’ eyes. “The vic is 45-year-old Regina Steps from Antrim Terrace in the Moorside.”
Murmurs spread throughout the assembled constables and notes were scribbled as McLaughlin attached a photo to the whiteboard with Blu-Tack. Regina and her bad perm smiled down at them all, her eyes frozen in time forever behind those oversized red glasses.
“And I may as well say from the onset that we’ve no suspects as of right now, so it’s an open playing field.”
McLaughlin grabbed the marker and wrote REGINA STEPS above the photo. “And, D’Arcy, if you could put up the photos from the crime scene so’s everyone can see what madness we’re dealing with?”
“Right you are, sir.”
D’Arcy slid the glossy photos out of the folder and attached them to the whiteboard. There was an audible gasp in the room from those who hadn’t seen the crime scene before.
“The perp’s taking the piss, surely!” called out someone. “That thumb in the mouth? Like a wain sucking her thumb? Or like the perp’s sticking their tongue out at us!”
“So,” called out another, not without some anger, “either humiliating the woman herself. Or us!”
“Or both,” said another copper.
McLaughlin held up a hand with an understanding nod of the head.
“Those are indeed valid interpretations.”
“But what do you think, sir?” asked another.
There was a rustling in the seats. All eyes stared eagerly up at McLaughlin, awaiting his words of wisdom. McLaughlin sucked in air through his teeth, then said, “Fecked if I know, lad.”
There were scattered laughs.
McLaughlin continued. “This homicide’s an odd one, I agree. Let’s get through the basics first, or we might be here all night.”
A change had come across the room. There was a spark of determination to catch whoever had killed this woman.
“According to Dr. Keedy, Regina was killed sometime last night between nine and eleven. The likelihood is, there was some sort of altercation, she was knocked unconscious, then strangled with the killer’s bare hands. I know what you’re probably thinking with poor Regina sat there in her knickers, but as of yet there’s no evidence of sexual abuse.” He paused to allow this fact to sink in as a buzz spread through the room. “No DNA traces as of yet either, but we’ve uncovered quite a few intriguing clues that might help our investigation. Before I get to those, but, I’d like to ask you all...just who the bloody hell is this woman? Have any of you new on the team any clue? Ringing any bells out there, folks?”
He saw apologetic looks and a few crossed arms, the shifting of legs from those in the seats before him.
McLaughlin sighed. “Worth a try. And what is the chatter on the streets?”
He managed to locate DC Hawkins from her blonde hair and gave her a pointed look.
“Fern?”
“The chatter is, a woman’s been murdered, but nobody knows who.”
McLaughlin nodded. “Regina Steps is not on social media, and we’ve no idea where she worked, where she comes from. IDing the victim has been a struggle. DS D’Arcy and myself had a scrabble around her flat, but slim pickings. Very little in the way of anything personal.”
There was a raised hand, a burly youngster with an intense face and an untidy mound of black hair. McLaughlin nodded.
