‘Come.’
Stick shuffled into the Chief’s office. ‘Hello, Chief.’
‘DS Rowley. Take a seat.’
‘You’re confused, Sir. I’m only a DC.’
‘You’re confused Detective Sergeant Gilbert.’
‘I am?’
‘Congratulations.’
‘You mean . . . ?’
‘I can always take it back if you don’t . . . ?’
‘No, that’s all right, Chief. What about Sergeant Blake?’
‘Detective Inspector Blake to you.’
‘That’s great. I’m glad you came through for her, Sir.’
‘Everybody says you’re too nice, Gilbert. Why is that?’
‘I don’t know. Have you told DI Blake yet?’
‘No, I was going to tell her this morning.’
‘You wouldn’t mind if I told her first, would you?’
‘I suppose I could go to the hospital this afternoon.’
‘Thanks.’
‘So, you’re going to be without DI Blake for at least a month.’
‘As long as that?’
‘Probably longer, but we’ll see.’
‘Will somebody be taking over the case from DS . . . I mean DI Blake?’
‘Yes, you.’
‘Me?’
‘You’re a Sergeant now, Gilbert.’
‘Yes, but . . . Well, what about some help?’
‘Help? Are you saying you can’t cope, Sergeant?’
‘If it’s too much trouble . . .’
‘I’m only joking, Gilbert.’
‘I didn’t realise you were so funny, Sir.’
‘We’ve got a detective constable on loan from Shrub End in Colchester. She’s staying at a small hotel on the outskirts of Hoddesdon.’
‘That was quick, Sir.’
‘She was coming to us anyway. A question of lying low for a month or two.’
‘Oh?’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘She’ll be outside, by now. Her name is Isolde Koll, and I expect you to show her the ropes and the courtesy we normally show guests of Hoddesdon Police Station.’
‘Of course, Sir.’
‘So, that’s it, Gilbert. Well . . . it would be it if the new Chief Constable wasn’t coming for a visit on Friday. How long have you had this case now?’
‘Since Monday.’
‘Wasn’t the hand found on Friday.’
‘Well yes, but . . .’
‘So, that will be a week by the time the new Chief Constable arrives?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I would have expected DI Blake to be massaging the figures Gilbert, not you.’
‘Sorry, Sir.’
‘Let’s cut to the chase, shall we. Promotions are always temporary until they become substantive. I’d like the new Chief Constable to see the Murder Investigation Team in a positive light, but with two cases that seem to be dragging on . . .’
‘Two?’
‘Oh, don’t think I’m just picking on you, Gilbert. I understand that you’ve lost DI Blake in the middle of an investigation, but you need to climb back on the horse – so to speak. I want the case solved by Friday at the very latest. Are we clear?’
‘Very clear, Chief.’
‘Good. I expect you to come and brief me first thing in the mornings.’
‘On my own, Sir?’
‘Why, is there someone you’d like to bring with you?’
‘I was thinking of DC Koll.’
‘Ah! Yes, you can bring her. No offence Gilbert, but you’re not the best looking detective I’ve got.’
‘I understand.’
‘Right, I have work to do. Congratulations again, and pull your finger out on solving the case.’
Outside, he grinned at the Chief’s secretary – Carrie, who introduced him to DC Isolde Koll. He guessed she was about twenty nine, and she wasn’t what he’d expected at all. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but he knew it definitely wasn’t the person who was standing in front of him. She was small and petite, had long dark hair past her shoulders, and an angular face.
‘DS Gilbert,’ he said offering his hand.
She shook it. ‘You know who I am.’
‘Yes. How come you’re not a model?’
‘Too short.’
‘I didn’t realise modelling had height restrictions like the police.’
‘Oh yes. You’ve got to have long legs, and my legs are short and dumpy.’
He took a pace backwards and looked her over. She wore a dark grey trouser suit with a chiffon top and he could just make out the pattern of her bra. ‘I think you look lovely.’
‘You’re not hitting on me already, are you?’
‘I never would. I’m not like that.’
‘Okay, I just thought I’d mention it.’
‘Come on, I’ll brief you on the case, and then I have to go and see DI Blake at the hospital.’
‘Yeah, I heard about your partner. I hope she gets better soon.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘It’s best you see for yourself.’
***
She’d expected to see something on the news, in the papers, or at least as an item on Yahoo, but there was nothing. Of course, if she looked at it from another angle – why would there be? Basement 7 was a secret government facility, after all. If they called in the police the facility wouldn’t be secret anymore, and that probably wouldn’t be any good.
She did see the news items about William Ismay, Lorna Boyce and the contract killer – Terry Merry. There was no need to ring Jerry now, she thought. Although there was still the important issue of her money. Even though the whole thing had been a fucking disaster in more ways than one, she still expected to get paid.
When she got back to the squat she took the morning after pill and hoped those bastards hadn’t given her any diseases. At least she’d been unconscious when they’d raped her. So, although she felt bruised and battered down there, she actually had no memories of the rape and didn’t need to dwell on it.
Shrek had a screamer with him. If she’d been in a better frame of mind she might have recorded the noises – a bit like a wildlife recording of strange creatures in the undergrowth – so that they could have laughed about it later, but then she remembered that Romeo and Harley weren’t there to laugh about anything anymore.
She ripped off her clothes and stood in the shower for over an hour scrubbing every part of her that she could reach – inside and out. Then she crumpled down into the shower pan like a broken flower and cried.
‘Fucking bastards,’ she whispered over and over until the water ran cold.
Crap! She’d forgotten her towel again.
She stuck her dripping head out of the bathroom door.
The nocturnal noises had ceased.
She hoped they were asleep as she slip-slopped naked along the landing.
Shrek opened his bedroom door before she reached it and stepped onto the landing in his boxers.
‘Very nice,’ he said, as he looked her up and down.
She didn’t bother trying to hide herself – she wasn’t ashamed of her body, and he’d seen it all before anyway.
‘There’s no need to stand out here with your ear at the door having an orgasm, you know. I can accommodate two women at the same time.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Lovely. Are Romeo and Harley back as well?’
‘I know you’d like me to stand out here freezing my tits off for your pleasure, but you can fuck off.’
‘I’ll see you later then.’
‘You’ve already seen more of me than is good for you. I might have to . . .’ She was going to say she might have to kill him, but he was the only one left she hadn’t killed.
She’d ran to her room, slammed the door behind her and sat on the floor and cried. Later, she knew she’d have to tell him about the other two, but first she needed to sleep. And she did, a deep dreamless sleep.
Now, sat up in bed she took her laptop out of the rucksack. ‘Let’s see what’s it’s all been about then,’ she muttered out loud.
Contrary to what that bastard had said about people looking at her laptop – nobody had tried to access it. She went online and entered the vault where she’d transferred everything from the Basement 7 server and began skimming the codenames.
Alpha 33 described a failed mission from 1999 to provide financial and military assistance to the Chechen separatists, which would have helped them move away from Russia. Buckshot was a partially successful mission to disable Russian Tupolev-95 bombers in Archangel, Russia to prevent them from flying over Britain to test our defences.
She skipped a few of the files, because she was bored rigid. Delta12 was another failed mission to oust Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Duluth concerned pilots flying missions to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad by carrying cash from Russia, and weapons and explosives from Iran. It had always been understanding that the British Government supported the rebels not the Assad regime.
Epsilon was mildly interesting because it described a series of five genetic experiments on monozygotic twins in the early nineties at St Winifred’s Maternity Home in Heybridge by someone called Dr Orvil Lorenz.
She skipped some more files. Gamma54 described a current mission to destabilize North Korea and their nuclear program . . . Mmmm! Very interesting – not. She wrote a program to search for Grace Dingle or Grace Rush and made herself coffee and toast while it went about its business.
The search took twenty-three minutes and found the name Grace Rush in a file with the codename Mustard64. In 1964 Grace Rush was born Ava Rosenholz in East Germany. She was the daughter of a Stasi officer, whom she betrayed in 1989 before the official collapse of the Berlin Wall. She was smuggled out of East Germany, given a totally new identity and relocated to England at the age of twenty-five. Well, that cleared that mystery up.
She dipped into the copied emails, but apart from a couple of messages from a Ruth Völker, at the Defence Geospatial Intelligence Fusion Centre relating to Epsilon5 and someone called Jed Parish, she quickly reached her boredom threshold.
Maybe in the future she’d read the files properly, but she doubted it. She’d keep everything in the online vault just in case, but the people who would be interested in the files and know what to do with the information contained in them would be Group 323 – she’d send them copies anonymously, and then sit back and watch the shit hit the fan.
***
They heard a train rattling along the Cheshunt to Broxbourne railway line beyond the playing fields of Turnford School as they walked from the car park towards the reception.
Richards was driving, so Parish had rung ahead and arranged an appointment with the Headteacher. He explained what they were looking for to save time when they got there.
Polly Hubery – the Headteacher – met them in the lobby and escorted them into her office. She was thin, had lank brown hair to her shoulders, designer oblong glasses and a mouth that sloped downwards. There was another woman sitting in there waiting for them. She was older, with grey hair, a fat face and a patchwork quilted jacket.
‘I’ve only been here for eighteen months, but my deputy – Claire Brimacombe – has been here thirty years and remembers Fannie Binetti. Can I offer you a drink?’
‘No, we’re fine thank you,’ Parish said.
They looked at the deputy.
‘Yes, we saw the terrible news that Fannie had been murdered.’
‘It hasn’t been released to the press yet, but Rene Hollitt was also found murdered in the same manner this morning.’
‘How awful,’ the Headteacher said.
Brimacombe continued. ‘The two girls were in a gang called The Poison Girls, and believe me, they were poison. They terrified everybody, staff included.’
Richards pulled out the Polaroid picture. ‘We have a picture with five girls in it.’
‘Yes . . . as well as Fannie and Rene there was also Yolanda Lusko, Gayle Turell and Elena Ottenad. I got the feeling that Fannie and Rene were the ringleaders.’
Richards wrote down the names in her notebook.
Parish said, ‘We think the killer knows these girls, and the only connection we’ve discovered between them is the gang that all five girls were in. What I’m about to tell you is confidential and hasn’t been released to the press yet . . .’
Both women nodded.
‘The killer is carving a broken heart on their abdomen pierced with an arrow. On one end of the arrow he puts their initials, and on the other end we’re assuming his initials – GH.’
Claire Brimacombe took a sip of her drink. ‘GH? Those initials don’t ring any bells, but we might not be talking about the same year group. I also don’t recall any incidents out of the ordinary from around that time. There were lots of incidents believe me, but none involving a GH.’ She opened up a laptop that was sitting on the coffee table beside her. ‘I’ll go into the SIMS database and identify children since . . . Well, the girls started the gang in Year 9 – always a troublesome year group – so that would have been 1990. I’ll do a search from Year 7 at that time – 1988, to Year 11 – 1993 by the time they left, and see who we come up with.’
The database query didn’t take long.
‘Here we are,’ the deputy said. ‘Eleven names. Two in Year 7, three in Year 8, one in Year 9, four in Year 10 and one in Year 11. You’ll want all the relevant details such as date of birth, parental details, address and so on . . . ?’
‘Yes please,’ Parish said.
She pressed the “Enter” key with a flourish. ‘There. I’ll just pop to the staff room to get the printout and then you’ll have what you came for.’ She stood up and left the Headteacher’s office.
Richards and Parish stood up as well.
‘We’re very grateful for your help,’ Parish said.
‘I hope you catch whoever is responsible for these ghastly murders,’ Miss Hubery said.
Claire Brimacombe returned with the names and handed them over as if they were a list of MI5 agents.
They made their way out.
‘What do you think, Chief Constable?’
Richards smiled. ‘Not that old potato again? Instead of driving around aimlessly, I think we should go back to the station and do our homework. We ought to find out who these men are now, where they live, where they work and so on. If the killer is one of them, we’ll find him.’
‘Well done, Little Miss Detective.’
Richards grinned as she headed towards the station. ‘We ought to visit DS Blake in hospital, you know. Take some flowers and a bunch of grapes.’
‘Isn’t it a bit soon? And she’s a DI now, anyway.’
‘Really? We ought to congratulate her as well then. I would say the sooner the better, because if we leave it too long it’ll be noticeable.’
‘We’ll go this afternoon. You buy the flowers and grapes.’
‘You give me the money to buy them then.’
‘Haven’t you got any of your pocket money left?’
‘The amount I get paid, it could fall under the category of pocket money.’
‘Gilbert has been promoted to Sergeant as well.’
‘Everybody’s getting promoted except me.’
‘How many years do you have on the force?’
Her face reddened. ‘It shouldn’t be about length of service, it should be about the quality of the individual.’
‘It is.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘It doesn’t mean anything. Except . . . correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you fast-tracked onto the Crime Investigator’s Development Programme four years before you should have been?’
‘That’s different.’
‘I don’t think so. That was a significant promotion. And won’t you be a Detective Constable by the end of the year?’
‘But . . .’
‘Did you know that humans are the only creatures who refuse to be what they are?’
‘Is that another saying?’
‘Albert Camus – a French Nobel prize winner who invented the philosophy of absurdism. What I’m saying is that it’s all right to be dissatisfied with your lot. As George Bernard Shaw said: As long as you have a want, you have a reason for living – satisfaction is death.’
‘I’m still not getting promoted, am I?’
‘No.’
***
‘Good morning, Sarge,’ Stick said as he went into Xena’s room. He’d asked Isolde to wait outside until he called her in. He had something to do first.
‘What’s good about it?’
‘You’re alive.’
‘I want you to get my mobile phone from the nurses.’
‘Oh! Why would that be?’
‘So we can ring each other.’
‘What for?’
‘Somebody’s got to be in charge of the investigation.’
‘We’ve got a new DS who’s taken over.’
‘I bloody well knew it. I have a minor bout of hormone realignment and they replace me with a younger model. Who is it?’
‘Me.’
‘You?’
‘Yes.’
She pulled a face. ‘The world has gone crazy. So, it’s dead men’s shoes, is it?’
‘Except you’re not dead.’
Her eyes creased to slits. ‘They’ve given you your own numpty, haven’t they?’
‘Yes, she’s outside waiting for me.’
‘I bet she’s pretty, isn’t she?’
‘Very pretty.’
‘So, I’m surplus to requirements now, am I? I’ll get out of here, they’ll put me on light duties until I can hobble about unaided, and then they’ll transfer me to a place where there’s a dog, a pub and an old man with bad breath and a red nose.’
‘Seems likely.’
‘Well, thanks for nothing, partner.’
‘The least I could do.’
Xena turned her head on the pillow and closed her eyes. ‘You know where the door is.’
‘I have some more information.’
‘I’m not in the mood anymore.’
‘DC Koll is only here for a month or so while you’re off sick.’
‘How does that interest me?’
‘We’re still partners.’
She opened her eyes. ‘I don’t know if I can work with a numpty who’s the same rank as me.’
‘You won’t have to. You’re now a DI.’
‘You do know that when I get out of here you’re going to die an agonisingly painful death?’
‘I know, but it was worth it. Congratulations, Inspector Blake. The Chief is coming in this afternoon to tell you officially.’
‘And you thought you’d take the opportunity to wind me up this morning when I’m loitering at death’s door?’
‘Yes.’
‘I still need my phone. Now that I’m a DI it’s even more important I take control of . . .’
‘Sorry. I’m in charge now. You’re off sick. In fact, DC Koll and I have probably solved the case now anyway. So, all you need to do is lie back and think of England, Ma’am.’
‘You can stop calling me that for a start. I think I might have to refuse the promotion if you’re going to call me that. Well, come on then DS Stick, tell me how you’ve solved it.’
‘Jennifer and I will come in tonight. I’ll let you know then.’
‘Maybe I should start looking for another partner.’
He called in Isolde. ‘This is DC Koll. She’s going to be my partner until you stop taking things easy.’
‘Hello, Ma’am,’ Koll said shaking Xena’s free hand. ‘I hope you get well soon.’
‘Never mind that crap. You’d better look after him while I’m ill, or you’ll have me to answer to.’
‘I’ll look after him, Ma’am.’
‘And stop calling me that.’ She turned to look at Stick. ‘If you’re not going to get my phone, then you can sod off and leave me alone.’
He grinned like a Halloween pumpkin. ‘Have a good day, Inspector.’