Read an Excerpt
That Thursday Liz was on six till two, which meant getting up at five and walking into work. Quicker than waiting for a bus that was late one day in three and some days never came at all. It was the best bit of the day, thirty minutes on her own, with Ian back at the flat dead to the world, and the sun coming up over the Valley Parade floodlights. Most shifts turned out the same – traffic accidents, lost purses, gas meter thefts – but there was always a chance today’s might not. Manningham Lane was on her patch. Every side road you crossed, you got another slice of the view – mills, chimneys, tight-packed terraces, the odd bit of green on the far side if you liked that sort of thing. Not the most respectable street in Bradford, but lively. Five-forty in the morning was the nearest it came to quiet, the pubs and curry houses and bookies all shut, just the newsagent putting out bills, the milkman nudging the door of the caff with his crate of pints, a couple of plumbers having a first fag inside.
‘You! Here!’
DI Sproson was stood across the road. She waited for a van to pass.
‘No rush – I’ve got all day.’
She ran the last few yards. Not easy in that flipping skirt. She’d seen him round the station. Mousy hair, pocky cheeks, but he thought he was Peter Wyngarde. Double-vent suits, coloured shirts. Even if he recognised her, he wouldn’t know her name.
‘Down here.’
The ginnel gave on to a backstreet. Half the terrace had been pulled down. Somebody’s wallpaper on view like a slice of Battenburg. Fly-tipped rubbish in the passage entries. The same sprayed scrawl by each door. EL OFF. She used to think it was rude.
He handed her a roll of barrier tape. ‘No one gets past that lamppost.’ There was nobody around, but once she’d got the tape up word would soon spread.
‘What is it you’ve found, Sir?’
His face went blank. It was summat blokes did, you’d think she’d be used to it by now.
‘A body.’
‘What – like suspicious?’
‘Or she’s been bloody careless with a carving knife.’
That’d be something to tell Ian when she got home.
He went into the end house, the one with SLAG sprayed across the front door. Liz set up the cordon, wishing she’d had breakfast. Could be a long morning.
‘You seen mi mam?’
A little lad was stood behind her, wrong side of the tape. About six. Mucky face. No socks.
‘I haven’t, love, no.’
‘She an’t come home.’
‘What about your dad?’
No dad, she saw it in his face, so then she knew where this was going. Soon as Rossy or Kaz turned up, she’d be on babysitting duty.
‘Where d’you live, love?’ He waved his arm. Could’ve been pointing anywhere. ‘Has your mam got a friend round here?’
He was off, flipping fast for a tiddler, heading for the condemned houses. She caught him halfway up the stairs. He bucked and kicked, yelling, ‘Mam!’ It was all she could do to keep hold of him.
DI Sproson came out of the front bedroom. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
All he had to do was shout and the kid went limp. Liz noticed a smeared trail where the stair carpet used to be. Dry but recent.
‘What’s your name?’ the DI asked him, looking at her like she were s’posed to know.
***
When Liz applied to the police, she’d had this fantasy about the interview. A white-haired bloke on the other side of the desk. He’d look at her over his glasses and write something on the bottom of her form. When she stood up to go, she’d read it upside down. CID. Maybe a question mark, but she wasn’t bothered about that. All she’d need was half a chance. Anyway, the interview turned out to be a grilling in her mam and dad’s front room. This woman inspector wanted to know why they’d moved from Sheffield to Bradford, why she’d had two months off school in third year, why she’d packed in her job at Brown and Muffs. Did she have a steady boyfriend? What were her hobbies? (Watching telly didn’t count.)
They must’ve thought she was all right. Ten days later she got a letter calling her to the induction week at Bishopgarth training centre. Like being back at school. Twenty of them in a classroom where Olive Oyl’s twin sister read them their rights (meal breaks, shoe and stocking allowance) and told them ‘law and order’ got it the wrong way round. Order came first. There was an inspection parade ten minutes before every shift. Hair short or in a bun, nothing round the face. Ponytails weren’t safe – they could get pulled. Knee-length skirt, white shirt with detachable collar, clip-on tie (real ones were a strangling risk), black 20-denier stockings, not tights. Keep your seams straight. Thirteen weeks training at Dishforth and a refresher course halfway through her two-year probation, all so she could stand in for lollipop men off sick. School visits, getting kids to chant look right, look left, look right again. She knew what Inspector Hitchens thought. On the lookout for a husband with a copper-bottomed pension. Aren’t they all?
So it was down to her if she wanted to get on. No one was going to give her a leg up. They did let women into CID, but only one per office. At Queens Road it was Mandy Summersgill. She got up an hour earlier to trowel on the warpaint and blow dry her hair. ‘I’m Mandy, fly me,’ they sang in the canteen, and to be fair, she did look like a trolley dolly. Maybe it was worth it, if you got to be a detective. Liz wouldn’t last two minutes, trying it in uniform. Hairy Mary Mole’d be down on her like a ton of bricks. Anyroad, Mandy’d told Helen all she did was answer the phone all day.
***
Liz was playing scissors-paper-stone with the lad when the police surgeon turned up in his Volvo. Then it was the crime scene lads. Thirsty Hirst, Nutty, Sparkplug, Nosey Parkin with his camera, a couple of forensic blokes from the Home Office lab. The bigwig who cut them up in the mortuary gave her a nod, ducking under the tape. Frankula, they called him. At seven Helen fetched up to take the kid to Social Services. Matt. He didn’t know his other name. Helen gave him a packet of Quavers.
‘Hairy Mary were right pissed off you missed parade.’
‘Not my choice.’
‘You were first on scene?’
‘Nah, the DI. He had a tip-off. I were just passing.’
Helen looked round at the lad, busy with his crisps. ‘Come on, then.’
‘What?’
‘You know.’
Liz didn’t. And then she did.
‘He dun’t do Bradford.’
‘He does now.’
‘Who says?’
‘It’s all round station.’
If Matt had slipped her grasp and made it upstairs, Liz would’ve seen the body. And so would he, so it was just as well she’d held tight. Only Leeds CID knew what He did to His victims. Something special. She’d heard a dozen theories in the canteen, and every one of them made her feel sick. But yeah, it was exciting. The street looked different, now she knew it’d be on telly tonight. Five prostitutes murdered in two years. Leeds were logging every car that drove through the red light district, so He’d made a detour ten miles down the road. For all she knew He’d driven past her, honked his horn. Happened all the time. The uniform was a turn on. Like nurses or French maids.
Helen lowered her voice. ‘Have you told him?’
The lad was licking his finger and chasing the crumbs in the bottom of the bag.
‘We dun’t know she’s his mam.’
But neither of them had much doubt.
‘Poor little sod,’ Helen said.
***
At twenty past eight Liz had to shift the tape to let the task force in. Ten of them in a line on their hands and knees, another ten doing the empty houses. By mid-morning there was a crowd. Women with shopping bags, schoolkids wagging it. Kaz turned up to take over the barrier. Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned round. DS Moody was stood that close she got a face-full of last night’s beer.
‘What you doing, Liz?’
‘Just heading back to the station, Sergeant.’
He looked her in the eye like they had a secret, but it was obvious to everyone. Helen called him Smoochy Moody. Liz was the one with the secret (you fancy me, but I don’t fancy you).
‘Stick around, I might need you.’
‘What for, Sergeant?’
Helen was right, she’d have to watch it. Flirting with him to stay out of the station was one thing, but she didn’t want to be stuck in the pub with him all night.
Most blokes in CID weren’t that good-looking, but they dressed smart. Nice suit, clean shirt, shiny shoes. DS Moody wore a suit and tie, but he was scruffy. Moody Blues they called him back at the station. Everybody had a nickname. Pongo, Zebedee, Psychobobby, Hissing Sid. Helen (Betty Boop) said she didn’t know what they called Liz. Meaning Liz didn’t want to know. Odds-on it was filthy or cruel or funny, or all three.
‘Owt I should know before I go in there?’
‘I’m just a woodentop, Sergeant.’
He grinned.
What did I say that for?
By the time he came out, twenty minutes later, she’d realised she did know something.
‘Was the victim wearing a cross, Sergeant?’
‘No, why?’
‘Her son’s called Matthew. Could be Catholic. One of the parish priests might know her.’
‘A bag?’
‘You’d be surprised, Sergeant.’
She watched him weighing it up. Yeah, he fancied her. On the other hand, he was a DS and she was a PC. She could have written down His name and address and most of them would’ve screwed it up and chucked it in the bin.
‘Father Conal at St Mary Magdalen’s your best bet, Sergeant.’
He sucked his bottom lip. ‘You an’t mentioned this to anyone else?’
Turned out she was right. Father Conal had known the victim. Marie Gallacher. Only been on the game a couple of months. Her husband knocked her about so she’d done a runner, frying pan to fire. Moody said he owed Liz a drink. That was how she ended up in the Carlton at half past twelve sipping a voddie and tomato juice, breakfast and lunch in one.
***
You could buy all sorts down the market. Darning stools, stitch rippers, plastic brides and grooms for the top of wedding cakes, broken biscuits, buckets of whelks, pinky-red bricks of carbolic soap, all for half what you’d pay anywhere else. If you could find them anywhere else. The prices were written on bits of card in felt-tip pen. They swilled the floor with disinfectant to get shot of the dog dirt tracked in on people’s shoes and the crushed ice off the fish stall backed up in the drains. Ian said it stank of poverty, and he wasn’t exactly a millionaire.
The caff in the corner was packed with OAPs. Blokes with deep creases in the back of their necks and gravelly coughs, and a yellow flash in their Brylcreemed white hair. Old dears with teeth the colour of Murray Mints muttering about their operations; all the bits they’d had scooped out or stitched together and stuffed back inside.
Liz said to Helen ‘What d’you reckon, we get her sat down, do it over a cup o’ tea?’
‘With the radio playing the Barron Knights? Just find somewhere quiet and tell her.’
‘Me?’
‘She’ll ask you anyway. You’ve got that sort of face.’
‘That’s worst thing you’ve ever said to me.’
‘Gie ower.’
Yeah, it stank in here. Fried bread and sugary coffee, Embassy Regals, talc on warm bodies, wet wool coats. Liz didn’t mind. You couldn’t be a copper and gag at the general public. But the smell of raw meat was different – that always got up her nose.
Crocker’s was the biggest stall in the market, run by teenage lads in white nylon coats with all the chat. (‘Ooh, I’ve got something for you, my darling.’) They sold every sort of sausage, chops, cutlets, brisket, oxtail, streaky and best back, and you could see it was good quality, not too fatty. It was the offal turned Liz’s stomach. Massive ox tongues, sheep’s heads (teeth and eyeballs intact), chicken hearts, four kinds of liver, lamb’s kidneys, pig’s trotters, cow heel, stuff no one in their right mind’d want to eat. Cow cods, lamb stones, chitterlings, sweetbreads, honeycomb tripe. It all got weighed in the scales and wrapped in brown paper.
‘Don’t look if you don’t like it,’ Helen said.
‘I still have to smell it.’
‘It’s just blood,’ Helen grimaced, ‘and things.’
Liz nudged her. A bony woman, eighty if she were a day, was weighing out a pound of mince for a West Indian bloke in a pork pie hat.
‘Mrs Gallacher?’
She never even gave them a look. ‘You’ll have to wait your turn, love.’
‘We’re on duty.’
‘Good for you, but we’re busy. You’ll have to wait.’
A couple of women in headscarves laughed. Liz and Helen joined the queue. Mrs Gallacher dug her spoon into a bowl of beef dripping.
Helen was reading the signs pinned up along the back of the stall. You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps.
It was their turn, at last.
‘Is there somewhere we can have a chat in private?’
‘No, love. We’re short-staffed and Ron’s on his break.’
‘It’s important,’ Helen said.
Liz thought they’d better check, just in case. ‘You’ve got a granddaughter – Marie, yeah?’
She froze, then she started to shake.
***
Liz hadn’t been in the murder incident room before. Hairy Mary’d have a fit. Overflowing in-trays, out-trays, ashtrays. Some on the phone, some checking off reg numbers on a printout from Hendon, some making up index cards, collating information collected door-to-door. Boring work, but she would’ve changed places with any of them.
DI Sproson was stood talking to Allenby, Herron and DS Moody. She could’ve put the overtime forms on his desk and left, but she waited.
‘You wun’t think He could do all that and leave no trace.’
‘He din’t have it off with her?’
‘Din’t even have a wank.’
‘Maybe He din’t fancy her.’
‘So He’s a maniac with good taste, then.’
Liz was the only one who didn’t laugh.
‘You wanting something, love?’
‘Sergeant Mole asked me to―’
Herron talked over her. ‘Could be the boyfriend, trying to cover his tracks, make it look like one o’ Chummy’s.’
‘Nah, he dun’t have brains.’ DI Sproson turned to Moody. ‘Any luck on Love Lane?’
‘Blacks think we’re Drugs. Bags think we’re Vice. We tried the Perseverance. Whole place got up and walked out. Pints on table, fags still burning, dominoes half played.’
‘Bloody monkeys.’
Liz dropped the forms on the nearest desk. If he couldn’t find them in all that clutter, too bad.
‘Hang on, love.’ She turned back. ‘DS Moody says you fancy being a lady detective?’
Smirks all round.
‘Yes, Sir,’ she said.
Moody winked.
***
One of the forensics blokes showed them Marie Gallacher’s clothes. Flowery skirt from C&A, strappy heels, bra gone grey in the wash, blue skinny rib top with seven brown splashes. It’s just blood, for Christ’s sake. With Allenby or Herron, she’d’ve got away with it, but Moody never took his eyes off her.
‘You all right, Liz?’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’
Ian was at work, but she made Moody wait in the car (which stank of chips). She was surprised he didn’t make some crack about her owning same clothes as a bag, more or less. Wrong colours, but it wouldn’t show in black and white. By half-eleven Nosey was pointing his camera at her.
‘Tits out, tummy in… Nice one. And again. Now, how about a topless shot for my private collection?’
She flicked two fingers at him, smiling like it were funny. Moody looked sideways at Nosey and slipped a pound note down her V-neck.
‘You can whistle if you think you’re getting that back,’ she said.
Next morning it was in all the papers. Liz’s body with the dead woman’s face on top.
