Cath Staincliffe - Blue Murder

‘First solid lead,’ Janine told her. ‘Sounds like this could be the bloke we’re looking for.’

Dean lay on the sofa bed in Douggie’s lounge with just the glow from the VCR to take the edge off the darkness; he waited till he reckoned the others were asleep. There’d been no sounds from upstairs for a while. The place had cellars: one room with a washer/dryer in, two others derelict under the back of the house. One of them would do. He could have asked Douggie for a safe place but, since he’d learnt what Douggie was wrapped up in, he knew he should be cautious. Safer all round to keep it to himself. He had stretched over and switched on the table lamp, retrieved the carrier bag from his holdall.

The lounge door creaked when he opened it but he figured if either Douggie or Gary heard him they’d assume he needed to take a leak or get a drink. The light in the cellar worked, he went carefully down the wooden steps. Washing machine straight ahead. Turned back on himself to the empty cellars. Doorways into gloom. The first took a bit of light from the bare bulb hanging on the wire at the bottom of the stairs. Enough to spill across the dusty floor over bricks and old milk bottles and to the edge of a pile of junk up against the far wall. The place reeked of coal, the tarry smell rich in the cold, damp air, a whiff of mould too, catching at his throat.

Dean stood and examined the possibilities. He moved closer to the pile of junk. The chassis of an old pram, thick with rust, cardboard boxes, rags. There was a folding chair, striped canvas clotted with black mildew. Dean opened it a little and put the bag in the middle, folded it shut. He lifted up a piece of rotting blanket from the floor and draped it over the chair. Pushed the whole thing round to the right hand side of the rubbish, the darkest part. It wasn’t perfect, Douggie or Gary could come down here and start rooting about but it was better than leaving it lying around upstairs. Ripe for anyone to pick up. That my shopping? Bloody ‘ell, look at this. What you doing with this, Dean? Looking at him in a new way, thinking all sorts because of what he had in the bag.

He was lying on the table in the garden. Lesley called to him but he didn’t answer. She walked over to him but suddenly there was a crowd around the table and they wouldn’t let her pass. ‘He’s my husband,’ she shouted to them, ‘please, I have to help him.’ People pushed and jostled her, called names. She fought her way through them with a terrible urgency.

Then she was beside him, the others fell silent.

‘Matthew,’ she took a pace back, her breathing heavy, the sweat cooling rapidly on her arms and legs. Matthew moved. He raised himself up and turned to face her. He smiled.

Why had she been so frightened? He was fine. ‘Oh, Matthew.’ He held out his arms and she walked into them, he embraced her and she let her tears fall on his chest.

‘I thought you were dead,’ she said.

‘I am.’

She pulled back and he was all bones, a grinning skull.

Lesley woke with a jolt. Her stomach twisted tight, her heart batting against her chest. Sweating. Oh, Matthew. She missed him so. Dread came washing through her. Would it always be like this? How could she bear it?

Day 2: Sunday February 23rd

The kids were never at their best at six-thirty on a Sunday morning. Nor was Janine. Yawning and struggling to clear her mind, she scraped together breakfast for them.

Tom sneaked into the room and launched himself onto her back.

‘Jesus! Mind the baby,’ she yelled. ‘Get dressed and get your inhaler.’ He shot off. ‘And get Eleanor,’ she called after him.

Michael was prowling around, hunting through the cupboards. When had she had the chance to get any shopping in? ‘Michael,’ she told him, ‘if aliens had landed in the middle of the night and stocked the larder I think we’d have heard them.’

Pete was on the doorstep when they reached his place. A trendy waterside development in Salford Quays, which he’d rented when he’d slung his lot in with Tina. There was no way he was going to move into the place Tina already had. Liked his comfort did Pete. Janine thought he looked slightly ridiculous in his new setting; fifteen years too old and not nearly trendy enough.

The kids filed out of the car. Tom dived at his dad who caught him and swung him about before sending him inside.

‘Least they’ll feed us.’ Michael’s parting comment.

Janine wound her window down a bit. ‘I’m not sure when I’ll finish. I’ll ring. Tom’s a bit chesty, I think he’ll be all right but keep an eye on him. Oh, and Eleanor’s gone completely veggie now.’

Pete looked sick. ‘Well, what on earth do we give her?’

Janine started the engine, flashed him a brittle smile and waved as she drove off. Petty maybe but deeply satisfying.

Emma was still asleep but Lesley had been up since three. She had wrapped herself in a duvet, turned the fire on in the lounge and tried to get warm. The phone went very early but they had left the answerphone on as the police had suggested. She listened to the stilted recording and then the caller spoke. She recognised his voice before she even made sense of the words. Adrenalin coursed through her, raising gooseflesh on her arms and making her heart stutter.

‘Lesley? Pick up the phone.’

She shook her head, petrified. Clasped her hands to her ears to shut out the voice. ‘Lesley, I know you’re there. Pick up the phone. Talk to me, Lesley.’

Her teeth began to chatter and her breath came in little gasps. He was after her. Oh, God! He was after her.

The team were there on time, though DS Shap looked as though he’d not stopped to wash or shave on the way in. Janine plonked a large box of croissants down on the table alongside the coffee that Richard had ordered for the meeting.

‘Dig in,’ she told them, helping herself to a chocolate one. Butchers moved with surprising speed for a man of his bulk, as if he was frightened there wouldn’t be enough to go around. The others dived in after him.

‘Ferdie Gibson,’ Janine nodded to the board where Ferdie’s details had been added. An unflattering photo of the shaven-headed youth complete with inky blur on his neck. ‘We should have known about the stabbing yesterday.’

‘Not on file, boss,’ DC Chen explained, ‘it was never reported.’

‘We’ll be paying Ferdie a wake-up call after this meeting. Now,’ Janine licked her fingers, ‘we still have nine a.m. as the last sighting. Witness places Matthew Tulley between his house and the allotments then.’ She turned to Shap and Butchers. ‘I want all house-to-house accounted for by the end of today.’

They nodded.

‘One thing’s puzzling me,’ she continued. Richard looked expectant. ‘Why didn’t Lesley Tulley tell us about Ferdie Gibson?’

‘Shock?’ he suggested.

Janine pulled a face. She looked at the boards again where Lesley Tulley’s picture was up beside that of her husband. The picture had appeared in the morning papers, Lesley leaving the house for the mortuary, her face bleak and blank.

‘Husband’s been killed. We ask her if anyone had a grudge – I mean you’d mention it in passing wouldn’t you?’ She took a swig of her drink. ‘Post mortem?’

Richard held the report. The salient points had already been written up on the boards.

He summarised them for the team. ‘Death due to a massive haemorrhage from the wound to the abdomen. Defensive cut on the right arm. Time of death between nine, last sighting, and eleven, when he was found. Also the victim’s fingers were clean, no compost or plant material under the nails.’