Lying Ways, page 7
The problem was that nowadays, there was no discipline. A lot of the lads inside started to go off the rails as youngsters. Every copper could tell you the local toerags who’d end up inside. Kids needed to be controlled, or else they’d end up in here. They soon learned that if you didn’t follow the rules then somebody would get to you eventually, and you’d pay for it. However, recently, he’d sensed an increase in tension. The prison officers had snitches on every wing, who’d tell you how things were going. D wing was a growing problem. One female officer had faeces thrown at her last week, and there’d been a quasi sit-in inside the cells, with inmates refusing to follow orders and barricading their doors. The stand-off had been diffused by another female officer, who talked the ring leader into opening his cell. Four guards had gone in and dragged him off to solitary, but not before he’d kicked out at an officer. That officer was now in hospital with a punctured lung. There was a time when Brian would have said that female officers in a male prison were worth their weight in conciliatory gold. They had a calming effect. However, all too often nowadays, female officers were attacked as frequently as males, and it was a concern.
He’d once seen himself as a visionary: he listened to opinions, and he was fair. But when inmates resorted to violence, he had zero tolerance. The bottom line was that the cons didn’t run the place, he did, and if they wanted to reverse that, then they shouldn’t have got themselves banged up in the first place. To counter that, though, Brian had learned over the years to accept that prison was a con’s home. An inmate’s tiny cell was his piece of turf, and a delicate dance of push and shove enabled every prison officer to go home unharmed to their loved ones at night.
Brian moved away from the window and sat behind his desk. He liked the young man they’d interviewed last week, and so did Liam Fawcett. They were both ex-army and had that in common. When he had time, he’d call Tom Gorman and offer him the position. They were desperate, and another ex-army chap was just what they needed. He was aware of the young man’s past, that he’d been discharged on mental health grounds, but to Brian, all that rubbish was irrelevant. The lads who fought for the country saw some seriously horrible stuff. It was to be expected that they’d struggle with it. A good straightforward job would sort him out.
D wing was on his mind. Every wing had a big cheese, a dick swinger who controlled everyone else. D wing was no different, but the punk dragged off to solitary after injuring one of his officers had not been the main man. Brian knew this because there was no main man on D wing, there were two. And they answered to him. They went by the names of Lofty and Titch, due to one being very tall and the other short. The short one was called Lofty and the tall one Titch. Prison humour. D wing contained sex offenders, child-murderers and mental cases, and as a result it was the roughest place in the prison. Rape offenders had become more accepted by the general prison population of late, and Brian allowed them to mingle more freely with other wings. It was a sign of the times: on the outside, rape was being downgraded.
Brian relied on cons like Lofty and Titch to keep the status quo. On A wing, that man was Rickie Burton, otherwise known as the Shed. However, all it would take was some kind of shift inside the wings and Rickie Burton could become a lot less powerful. Dinger had already gone, after his release on Friday, and he’d been another stabilising influence on the youngsters. Brian sensed a change in the old guard, and he didn’t like what was coming up to replace it. He certainly didn’t want the sex cases on Lofty and Titch’s wing taking over. For now, they were keeping a lid on things, but for how long? The old-timers like Rickie Burton didn’t do drugs and they dished out discipline fairly and swiftly. Of course, Rickie had his fingers in many lucrative pies, and some of them paid the governor a cut, but that was a fair trade. The new wave of cons were addicts and damaged dropouts. That could spell disaster for the delicate equilibrium inside Highton.
Perhaps a reshuffle was in order? He could divide and conquer, all but D wing, of course. The problem with spreading sex cases around was that they wouldn’t last long, and the beating of a paedo (well deserved as it was) could light the spark that could bring down the whole prison. A few trusted officers were used to feeding back information from the wings, and they’d informed him that Dinger’s absence hadn’t caused much notable change in behaviour. However, some of the youngsters missed his father-like presence and a few were on suicide watch. Rickie Burton seemed to be holding it together, but the events on D wing had rattled the governor. He sensed a precarious teetering on the edge of something, like a sickening feeling in his stomach, warning him that they’d had a very close call. Prison officers were going off sick at an alarming rate, and they couldn’t keep up with the smuggling; it was like a tsunami of illegal substances and weapons, all aimed at gaining more control and independence. Brian happened to believe in the rule book, but he also had a few clauses of his own.
Only the restoration of order would cheer him up.
His secretary sent a call through to his desk phone. He answered in a gruff voice.
‘Sir, it’s HMP Altcourse on the phone, they want us to take fifty prisoners off their hands, they’re twenty per cent over capacity and they’re Cat A inmates. It’s been approved by the prison service. They’re struggling, sir,’ she said.
‘They’re struggling! Where are we going to put them? Jesus H. Christ!’ he ranted, and his face turned purple. He knew he needed to cut back on the whisky and cigarettes, but with muppets like this on the end of the phone, how was he expected to handle stress? He felt his heart pump in his chest and slammed his fist on the desk. The telephone line went dead.
Chapter 11
Kelly’s team at Eden House was instructed to stop what they were doing and attend an emergency briefing. Kelly and Kate made their way back from Workington, leaving the local searches for witnesses in the capable hands of Workington coppers. It would be Kelly’s team of detectives, though, which would chase the evidence found at the crime scene. They had close relationships with several labs in Carlisle who’d drop their workload and shunt samples up the queue for Kelly or her father, the chief coroner. Lab work cost a lot of money, but solid forensic evidence was the only thing that stood up in court. The opinions of witnesses could be explained or argued away, so they chased the stuff under microscopes. It wasn’t glamorous but it was vital. Anything with an integral surface, including the victim’s hands, had been brushed for prints at the scene, and they’d found several. They were dealing with a fairly public space and so any prints found could have been there for weeks, even months, but chemical traces of people were a good place to start. Anybody with a criminal record had their fingerprints and DNA on record, so straight away that gave them access to thousands of potential suspects. With murder, one often found that the suspect had offended before. Crime, Kelly believed, was like a graduate course: thugs usually started with killing cats and ended up at murder. And in this case in particular, somebody with the stomach and the skill to torture on such a scale must have done it before. If they were lucky, he’d have left a trail.
Coffees were distributed and the team perched on tables or sat at desks. Kelly went to the front of the room and sat on the edge of a desk. Behind her was an interactive white board. She tapped the keyboard, linked to it, and an arrangement of boxes appeared on the large screen behind her. Photos of the body were positioned in the middle. The detectives not present at the scene with Kelly and Kate exclaimed their disgust.
‘Jesus, guv, what a mess,’ Emma said.
‘Yeah, it’s nasty. This is what Kate and I have gathered so far. Forensics have finished up now and the body is on its way to The Penrith and Lakes. I’m going to sit in on the autopsy.’ Kelly pressed some keys and information boxes popped up one at a time, forming the beginning of their investigation. Going forward, new information would be added to the system electronically, linking any key information. It was a form of dynamic reasoning, based upon the systems used across the whole of the UK. It meant that information couldn’t get lost across county borders. It also did the work of hundreds of officers. Before Kelly’s time, laborious Kardex systems were used to solve crime and it could take years to find suspects; meanwhile they were free to continue to commit offences. The modern information technology system could be applied to any serious malfeasance and was used by the Royal Military Police as well. Touchingly, the acronym was a nod to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. HOLMES stood for Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. It was easy to use and any detective could update it at any time of the day, making the management of a serious inquiry less onerous and more likely to succeed. Humans make mistakes, and keeping an eye on thousands of pieces of information, not just the evidence found at the scene, could frustrate an investigation.
Kelly went through what they had so far, using the images on the screen to clarify. She explained her working theories of a military element, a group attack, and the possibility that this wasn’t the first murder in the killer’s career.
‘Let’s get to work. Emma and Dan, take the physical evidence – the Zippo, the signet ring etc. Kate, you and Rob chase the lab on prints as well as tracing the van seen by Tania Carter on Sunday night. Contact me on my mobile if you need me, otherwise crack on and update HOLMES as you go, we really don’t want any delays on this. We have the witness statement from Tania Carter, who reported seeing several men at the warehouse. These guys have families somewhere. Emma, run a check on missing persons from the surrounding counties too.’
‘Yes, guv,’ Emma replied.
Emma and Dan cleared a space at a double desk and drew up a plan for who’d take what. Kate and Rob did the same. By the end of the day, they all hoped that the limited information they had so far would grow into something that made sense. The next forty-eight hours would be crucial in gathering as much information as possible to generate leads to chase.
Kelly went to her office to freshen up and gather what she needed for the hospital. Mortuaries were cold places, and she grabbed a sweater. She opened a drawer and rooted round for a small pot of Vicks VapoRub tossed in there a good while ago. There was a knock at her door, which she usually left open, and she looked up as Emma peered around it.
‘Hi, Emma,’ Kelly said. She continued to feel through the drawer and found the miniature container.
‘Guv, could I ask a question?’ Emma said.
‘Of course. Talk to me, what is it?’ Kelly said. She sensed that Emma was reticent and so she stopped what she was doing, popped the Vicks into her bag and sat down.
‘I was wondering if I could accompany you to the post-mortem,’ Emma said.
Kelly thought about it for a second and realised that she’d never suggested it to her team before, and equally never asked for volunteers. Had she assumed that they didn’t have the stomach? How narrow-minded of her. But then her enthusiasm waned as she thought of her brand new investigation and how much work they had to do. Could she spare Emma?
‘Tell you what. Come with me, and let’s see how long it goes on – it could be hours – and keep in touch with Dan about the leads I gave to you two. If something comes up, you can always head back over here,’ Kelly said. She watched as Emma’s face lit up.
‘Meanwhile, go and see if there’s a budding inspector downstairs who wants to get in on some action, they can help Dan out,’ she added. Emma nodded. Kelly knew that all good detectives came from the ranks, they had to, but they didn’t often get the chance to see what working a case was really like until they were qualified. Kelly had been given an opportunity to join an investigation when she was a uniformed copper and it had been this that had planted the seed in her head. She’d been given tasks that junior detectives normally get to do, such as interviewing witnesses and handling evidence. There was always a uniform hanging around who fancied themselves a detective, but who was seen as too young and inexperienced. It was an opportunity to see who was interested in making the jump. But Kelly rarely ventured downstairs, apart from to say hi, or to use the interview rooms.
‘Make it quick,’ she told Emma, who left the room, still smiling. Part of becoming a detective was crime scene investigation, that was pretty obvious, but real live autopsies were hard to come by. At the end of the day, they were expensive, and why go to the trouble for the vast majority of deaths in Cumbria, which were old people dying from degenerative diseases? Coroners only ordered autopsies in special circumstances, like murder. Kelly had come to take her position for granted. It helped that Ted was her father, of course. It meant that her positive relationship with the coroner was convenient when she needed it. That wasn’t always the case for detectives. Some pathologists didn’t appreciate intruders into their work spaces and felt they got in the way.
She took her bag and left the office, just as Emma walked back in with a young uniformed officer. Kelly smiled and nodded to Emma, indicating she was ready to leave.
‘Guv, this is Fern Brown,’ Emma said.
‘Ma’am,’ the young woman said. Kelly could see from her epaulette that she was a police constable.
‘Have you finished your probation yet, Fern?’ Kelly asked.
‘Just about to, ma’am.’
‘Right, come on then,’ Kelly said, walking over to Dan.
‘Detective Sergeant Dan Houghton, this is Police Constable Fern Brown. She’s interested in crime detection and I want her to shadow you today. I’m taking Emma with me to the hospital,’ Kelly said.
Dan raised his eyebrows and looked at Emma and winked.
‘I see this has been discussed before,’ Kelly said.
Dan smiled at her. ‘Leave it with me, guv,’ he said in his strong Glaswegian accent. ‘Come and sit down, constable,’ he said to Fern, who relaxed a little at the friendly welcome.
‘Dan, Emma’s on standby if you need her. Let me know if anything important comes up,’ Kelly said. They headed to the door and took the stairs.
‘Have you got something warm?’ Kelly asked Emma.
‘Just my jacket,’ she replied.
‘I’ve got sweaters in the car, mortuaries are freezing. I’ve got Vicks for under your nose too.’
Chapter 12
‘Are you ready?’ Kelly asked Emma.
‘I think so,’ she replied.
‘Here, put this under your nose, you’ll need it,’ Kelly said, passing her the Vicks. They’d parked the vast multi-storey car park run by a private company, and made their way through the labyrinth of corridors, down into the bowels of the hospital, to the mortuary. They’d been led into a changing room where they were given overalls. Ted would be inside already, she reckoned. He’d be scrubbing up and preparing everything he’d need to carry out his investigations inside and outside of the body, going through a checklist in his mind to help him to establish what had finally killed the man.
To get to the operating theatre, they had to walk through the cold storage room where dead bodies were kept at a steady two to four degrees Celsius; the same as a fridge. It slowed decomposition down to make the medical exam more accurate. But their stranger was already on the slab, ready for his turn. They proceeded to the main theatre and opened the metal door. The inside was a collection of everything industrial-grade steel, and the silver colour of the metal captured their attention. The only other colours belonged to the paintings on the walls, hung by Ted, and Kelly was familiar with all of them. Her favourite was the one depicting an eighteenth-century operating theatre. A wooden table was in the middle of the floor with some poor woman on it, knocked out from alcohol or a punch, with maybe a hundred men gathered around to watch the anatomy lesson. The men smoked pipes and the surgeon wore a dirty apron. There was a kick box full of sawdust on the floor to catch the blood and a collection of knives for amputation. Kelly pointed it out to Emma, who went to study it.
‘Christ,’ she said.
Another door opened and Ted came in, fully suited and booted for the operation. Many coroners weren’t medical at all, and were appointed from the legal and judicial services, but Ted was a skilled physician and the combination of the two roles saved much time. He could perform the operation, take the samples, examine the results and write the report. Kelly noted that Emma was quite star-struck and it made her feel proud of her father. They’d only had a relationship as father and daughter for two years, since Wendy had told her the truth about her biology. The man she’d grown up with, John Porter, had believed that he’d fathered both of his daughters, but Wendy had embarked on a brief but passionate affair with the handsome young pathologist and had never told a soul. At first, Kelly had been judgemental of her mother’s secret, but then she realised that she had no right to question the choices of another woman. How dare she? It was her ego that had been damaged, because the news changed her perfect image of her childhood. In fact, under examination, she’d realised that it wasn’t flawless after all, and the arguments, John Porter’s temper, and her mother’s stoicism all came back to her. Wendy had sought the arms of another man because she was bloody miserable. The fact that her mother had found love again with Ted three years ago warmed her and gave her peace. It had also brought joy to Ted’s life, even though it was cruelly taken away again so soon when Wendy had lost her battle with cancer.
‘I’d shake hands but I’m a bit indisposed,’ Ted said to Emma. She nodded and smiled profusely.
‘Kelly, nice to see you again,’ he added. They didn’t discuss their relationship at work and kept it professional.
‘Ted. We’ve still got no ID. Did you come up with a time of death for us?’ she asked. Time of death was an inexact science. The cadaver’s body temperature had been carefully taken every hour for several hours, so they could establish how quickly his body had cooled.
