Dirty Old Town Read online

  ‘What does the husband have to say for himself?’ Ted asked.

  Sarah made exaggerated quotation marks in the air as she replied, ‘Not me, guv, I was in the pub with me mates. I kept telling the wife she had some dodgy friends. Druggies and such, and she should steer clear of them, but she wouldn’t listen.

  ‘He reckons one of them must have come round while he was out, kicked the door in, argued with her over something, then shoved her over and legged it. And to prove it, he’s got about half a dozen or more of his mates all prepared to swear blind that at the time it happened he was having a drink and a game of darts with them in their usual pub, where they’re well known. And the bar staff confirm he was there. It’s taking us a while to get all the witness statements, but they basically all say the same thing. Exactly the same thing.’

  ‘Does he work? What’s his job?’

  ‘Security work on an industrial site.’

  ‘Does he fancy himself as a bit of a hard man? It can sometimes go with the role, though not always. What’s his background?’

  ‘Not a glowing employment record. Bits of this, bits of that. Walks the walk for the tough guy. He works rotating shifts. Two weeks of days, two weeks of nights.’

  ‘So who reported the death?’

  ‘The next-door neighbour who says things were far from harmonious. He went out to the back garden to put something in the bin. He noticed the neighbours’ back door was wide open and no signs of life so he stepped over the fence – it’s only low – and went to have a nosy, as he put it. You could say he’s either a good citizen or someone who likes to interfere. He did have the presence of mind not to touch anything, when he saw the victim lying on the floor, other than to check if she was still alive, so we’ve got his DNA to eliminate from the scene. But he confirms there was no sign of the husband in the house, and he hadn’t noticed him go out earlier. And before you ask, he’s older and quite frail, so I’m not at the moment suspecting him.’

  ‘Right, keep it as a suspicious for now, unless the PM throws up anything strange. Let me know if you need any more officers and I can draft some in as needed, but you seem to have everything well under control. I was particularly impressed with your written reports.’

  She smiled at him as she said, ‘Creative writing is my hobby, so I try to string sentences together to make some sort of sense.’

  Once Ted had been round most of his new area and Hector had dropped him off, with a reminder he wouldn’t be available the following day as he was driving the Chief Constable, he went into the station to find Inspector Kevin Turner for a catch-up before rejoining his own team.

  ‘How’s your report for the ACC coming along?’ Ted asked him, taking a seat.

  He and Kev were going to a meeting the following day, with other officers from various divisions, to discuss crime statistics with the Assistant Chief Constable (Crime), Russell Evans. A way to concentrate available resources where the demand was highest.

  ‘Crime?’

  From his tone, Kevin Turner was not in the best of moods. He shuffled papers round on his desk, pulled up the sheet he was looking for and brandished it in the air.

  ‘I’ve been pissing about with these papers all day when I could have been doing something useful. And do you know what’s come out near the top, statistically, of the so-called crime that’s currently getting reported to us? Fly-tipping! Bloody fly-tipping. Our officers aren’t binmen. What do the public expect us to do about it? The ACC’s going to love that as a statistic.’

  Then he got a grip of himself and calmed down a bit.

  ‘What about you? What’s currently top of the charts in Serious Crime? Gang stabbings? Drugs deaths?’

  ‘Domestic violence,’ Ted told him. ‘Of the killings we’ve got on our books at the moment, the highest number relate to domestic violence. So spare a thought for me having to come up with some sort of preventive strategy for that which would get the ACC’s backing.’

  * * *

  She was lying on top of the bed clothes, spooning around her sleeping son. He smelled of soap and shampoo. He’d been so unsettled about the earlier incident he’d actually allowed her to help him with his bath and to wash his hair for him. He hadn’t done that for a long time.

  It had taken him some time to settle when she’d helped him into bed. Even as he dozed off, he kept twitching and thrashing about for nearly half an hour before exhaustion finally caught up with him. He was now sleeping deeply and soundly.

  She felt the sudden flutterings of panic in her stomach as she heard the front door open then close again. Firmly, but quietly. Never loud. Nothing to alert the neighbours.

  His tread on the stairs was heavy, measured. She heard him go first to the bedroom they shared, then give a tutting sound of annoyance not to find her there. Then he stumped along the landing to the boy’s room, pushed the door open and walked in.

  He didn’t raise his voice as he spoke but it still chilled her.

  ‘Get up. Stop smothering the boy. He’s far too old for you to be treating him like a baby.’

  When she didn’t immediately react, he crossed the small room in a couple of strides, grabbed a large handful of her hair and pulled her up. The boy stirred for a moment then burrowed back down into the sanctuary of sleep.

  His mouth was close to her ear, his voice still icily quiet. His breath stank of beer and whisky, with overtones of strong curry.

  ‘Get up, when I tell you to, you stupid bitch. Time to do your wifely duty.’

  He dragged her from the room, closing the door softly behind them, his grasp on her hair so vicious she felt it being torn out by the roots. She tried to keep up with him, to stay level. Anything to stop the terrible pain in her scalp. Once again he shut the door noiselessly. She heard the key turn in the lock.

  He forced her face down on the bed, his hand still grasping her hair, kneeling across her legs to immobilise them. She could barely breathe, her face pressed down as it was into the duvet.

  She felt him tearing roughly at her clothes. Heard the unmistakable sound of his own trouser zip being yanked down in haste.

  She let the same tune play over and over in her head on a loop the whole time it was happening to her.

  ‘When you wish upon a star ...’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Right, boys and girls, remember what I said. Line up at attention in an orderly fashion. The Big Boss is home.’

  Ted, putting his things away tidily in the hall, chuckled at Trev’s words to the cats from in the kitchen.

  ‘Not quite the Big Boss, but trying my best to fill his large shoes,’ Ted replied, walking through to find his partner once he’d hung up his jacket. His tie had long since been relegated to the pocket.

  Trev paused in his cooking to give him a brief kiss, then said, ‘Poached salmon, okay? Fish is supposed to be good brain food and I thought yours might need refuelling after a hard first day in the new job. How was it?’

  ‘That sounds great, thank you. What’s for afters?’ Ted asked hopefully, looking round for clues.

  ‘You and your puddings,’ Trev laughed. ‘It’s a wonder you aren’t the size of a house, with that sweet tooth of yours. It’s sticky toffee pudding, of course, with clotted cream. I thought that would work for whatever kind of day you’d had. So how was it?’

  Ted was carefully greeting each of their cats in turn, in order of seniority. He was making young Adam wait until the end, for once, despite his protests. When he did get to him, he scooped him up for a sneaky cuddle which sent the little cat into a squirming frenzy of purrs.

  ‘My new driver made me sit in the back like a proper Big Boss. He’s got my measure. He’s going to be a big help, I think. I met most but not all of the new teams. Some good ones, some might need a bit of a kick up the backside. Especially as some seemed to think, unwisely, that they might get an easier ride from me than from Big Jim.’

  ‘Oooh, I sense a few kick-tricks coming on,’ Trev told him, bringing full plates to the
table and setting them down.

  Ted was unbuttoning his cuffs and turning his sleeves back in readiness for the meal.

  ‘And if you start exposing bare flesh at the dinner table, I won’t be responsible for the consequences,’ Trev went on teasingly as he sat down. ‘So to prevent unseemly behaviour I will, just this once, permit you to talk shop in the house. Tell all.’

  Ted was already tucking into his food. He vaguely remembered grabbing a sandwich at some point during the day, but it certainly hadn’t made a lasting impression. He hadn’t realised quite how hungry he was and the meal was as good as Trev’s cooking always was.

  He didn’t often talk about his work at home. Certainly not at the table. Although he had shared with Trev his frustration and disappointment at not managing to arrest everyone from their last big case. He was constantly worried that those who had given them the slip would go on to start up their operations somewhere else. Which was why he’d taken the opportunity to talk to each team he’d met about the need for vigilance. Details had been circulated throughout the Force area and beyond, but Ted knew only too well that such things often got overlooked when teams were busy with other cases of their own.

  ‘Those who don’t know me, and were clearly surprised to see a skinny little short-arse turn up as Head of Serious Crime, looked ready to have me sectioned once I started telling them about our blind dwarf, who probably isn’t blind at all.’

  ‘You have to admit, if you read that in a crime fiction book, you’d be hurling it at the wall saying it was absolutely too far-fetched to be considered.’

  Ted looked at him in mock offence.

  ‘I don’t hurl books against the wall. Well, at least, not very often.’

  ‘Ted, your nose is growing into your salmon. I’ve seen you do it.’

  Ted grinned at him, looking guilty.

  ‘That was under extreme provocation. Nobody would make an arrest like that. And certainly not without searching the premises for evidence. The author even got the caution wording wrong, for goodness sake.’

  Trev was busily grinding more black pepper over his meal. He held the grinder up in invitation. Ted shook his head.

  ‘No, thanks, this is fine, just as it is.’

  It was these mundane exchanges which helped Ted to unwind at the end of a working day. One of the reasons he didn’t like to talk too much about work once he got back to the sanctuary of home.

  ‘By the way, I’ve no idea what time I’ll be back tomorrow, so don’t wait for me. Go ahead and eat when you’re hungry. I’ve got this meeting at Central Park, so no doubt there’ll be the usual uninspiring food to tide us over.’

  ‘What are your crime figures looking like?’ Trev asked him.

  Ted had mentioned fleetingly to him what the meeting was all about.

  ‘Depressing,’ Ted said frankly. ‘There’s a real spike in statistics related to domestic violence. There’s direct correlation, too, between things which tend to keep people stuck inside the home and the numbers going up. Bad weather over a Bank Holiday weekend, for one. Sporting fixtures cancelled for whatever reason. A team losing unexpectedly. When people suddenly find themselves shut indoors together, staring at four walls. That’s when it all starts to kick off.

  ‘It’s a crime that knows no boundaries, too. Classless. It’s an urban myth that it’s predominantly working class. No one has a clue what goes on in households, until they start looking at the kind of statistics I have been. Most towns have it. A dirty little secret people don’t know about. Sometimes even people in the same household are totally unaware.’

  Trev put down his knife and fork, reached across the table and took hold of one of Ted’s hands. His expression was serious.

  ‘Ted, stop it. I know what you’re doing. Stop beating yourself up. About everything. You couldn’t possibly have known what was going on between your parents. You were a little boy, for heaven’s sake. Annie’s told you it only happened when you were safely asleep in bed and they were in their own bedroom together. There’s no way you could have known anything about what was happening, or even understood it, at that age.

  ‘Stop taking everything so personally. It’s what makes you a good copper and a decent person. But it makes you impossible to live with sometimes, and it could finish up destroying you. Go and see Carol. Get some more counselling sessions. Don’t let it take you to a dark place again.

  ‘Ted, I mean it. Promise me.’

  Ted was saved from replying by his mobile ringing. The screen told him it was his DI, Jo Rodriguez. He made an apologetic face at Trev as he answered the call.

  Trev glared at him and mouthed, ‘This isn’t over between us.’

  ‘Jo, yes, what have we got?’

  Ted stood up as he spoke, moving to step outside into the garden. Trev automatically rescued his plate and put it safely out of cat reach.

  ‘Nothing for you, Ted, but I wanted to keep you in the loop,’ Jo told him, informal while they were out of the office. ‘An almost certain homicide. I’ve sent Mike Hallam initially, with uniform, because it’s not too gory.’

  DS Mike Hallam was not known for having a strong stomach when attending gruesome scenes of crime. But he was a good, experienced sergeant. He would do a thorough job for the initial investigation to assess the situation.

  When Ted asked for detail, Jo told him, ‘Man and wife arguing in a flat. She tried to leave. He’s gone after her, grabbed her and thrown her over the handrail down two flights of stairs. She seems to have died instantly, from what appears to be a broken neck. At least that’s what it looks like from first impressions.

  ‘He’s denying it furiously. His version is that the wife had serious mental health issues, including self-harming. He denies any argument. He says he was trying to stop her hurting herself again. Then she ran out and started to try to climb over the handrail. He grabbed her and wrestled with her but he couldn’t hold onto her and she jumped.

  ‘It’s possible we might get lucky on this one, though, Ted. For once neighbours rallied round and got involved. Apparently they were getting fed up of the frequent violent shouting matches in the flat, so some of them came out. Sadly too late for the woman, but they made a citizen’s arrest on the bloke, called it in, and any number of them are offering to testify that the blazing rows were a regular thing.

  ‘With a bit of luck and a following breeze, it should be a nice straightforward one for us to wrap up quickly. Although, of course, with no eye witnesses and him offering a seemingly plausible reason for any marks we find on her body left by his hands, it’s not guaranteed.

  ‘It’s only a shame no one thought to come forward sooner or it could possibly have been prevented. It really goes to show how much of this sort of thing goes on. People are always so reluctant to get involved in whatever happens inside someone else’s house. The “famous behind closed doors” thing, with all the dirty little secrets that hides.’

  * * *

  ‘What’s this shit?’

  The clash of his knife and fork against his plate sounded so loud in the neat kitchen that she jumped involuntarily, only just managing to hold on to the glass she was washing up in the sink.

  She kept her voice quiet, meek, as she replied, ‘Lamb chops.’

  ‘No they bloody aren’t!’

  His voice stayed low but there was barely controlled anger now in his tone.

  ‘This is a pile of gristle and bone. You wouldn’t serve that up to a dog. I’m not bloody eating it. I give you enough money to buy decent stuff. What do you do with it all that you’ve been buying this crap and daring to serve it to me?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Ours were all right. Quite nice, in fact.’

  She’d stopped the washing up and was drying her hands on a towel. She was trying to make light of it. Daring, for once, to contradict him.

  ‘Do you want me to make you something else instead? I’m sorry yours wasn’t as good as ours ...’

  The sound of his chair scraping back on the tiles as he
got to his feet made her flinch in anticipation. Her hand, as she reached out to take his plate, was trembling visibly.

  ‘Leave it!’ he barked.

  His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, his fingers biting into the flesh, deliberately letting his nails dig in. She tried to stifle the gasp it provoked.

  He dragged her towards him, half across the table, bending her hand down towards her inner arm until the wrist joint was screaming as much as she wanted to.

  The television was on in the next room where the boy was watching something. He hadn’t yet appeared.

  The man put his mouth close to the woman’s ear as he held her.

  ‘You’ll pay for this later, you bitch,’ he said softly, almost gently, into her ear.

  Then, keeping the tight grip on her wrist, lifting his voice to normal conversational level, he pulled her upright and moved her over to the work surface.

  ‘How many times have I told you about cutting the fat and gristle off mine before you serve it to me?’

  His tone was reasonable, patient. Explaining something, which should have been obvious, to someone who was slow on the uptake.

  He reached a hand out towards the knife block, tucked away in the far corner of the work surface. He pulled out the boning knife he was looking for. Then he let go of her wrist but put his full weight up against her, pinning her there with no chance of getting away.

  She was not surprised to feel how hard he was already, and she knew he had barely got going.

  His free hand reached for the sharpening steel and he started to stroke the knife blade against it. Slowly to begin with, then speeding up to a faster tempo. Grinding his hips against her with each movement of his hand.

  He held the knife and the steel between them. The sharp point of the knife moved perilously close to her with each movement he made, the blunt end of the steel digging viciously into her.

  She was crying silently now, both from the pain of being crushed up against the handles of drawers in the units behind her, and from the revulsion of what he was doing. She kept her face averted. Anything not to have to look at the expression on his face as his thrusting movements accelerated, his hand on the knife increasing its speed all the time to keep pace.