Cath Staincliffe: Blue Murder

‘Won’t let you down, sir. What is it?’

‘Gorton Avenue, allotments off Mauldeth Road West. Man found there by one of the other gardeners. We’re treating it as suspicious. You can set up an incident room here. Near enough. Doc’s on his way as are socos.’ He referred to the scene of crime officers. ‘Not sure who’ll assist as yet. Janine?’

‘Yessir.’

‘You report to me on this.’

‘Yessir.’

‘Daily, any concerns, queries, cock-ups – you bring it straight to me. Understood?’

‘Yessir.’

He sat back indicating she should leave.

She stood and nodded at the computer screen in the corner. ‘Alt, control, delete, sir. Only way out.’

His jaw twitched. Only trying to help, Janine thought.

In the corridor she checked there was no one in sight, took two or three steps and then broke into a shimmy, thumbs up. ‘Yes! Yes! Yesss!’

There were buses from the Arndale centre every quarter of an hour. Dean stood with his holdall. The bus station had a chill feel to it. The buses would lumber in every few minutes and disgorge a bunch of people. The drivers exchanging a word with their mates, nipping out for a fag or a cup of tea. Dean was starving but he didn’t want to use up anymore of his cash.

He hoped Douggie was there. He’d tried his mobile but there was no answer. Eejit had probably switched it off. He smiled. Douggie was a good mate. The best but he wasn’t all that sharp sometimes. They’d met in Hegley Young Offenders Institution, Deadly Hegley they called it on account of all the suicides. Kids had been dying to get out of there. Literally. Swingers; found dangling in their cells, or bleeders; hacking away at veins with any bit of an edge they could find. Rumour had it that one lad tried to top himself by smacking his head against the wall. Again and again, like trying to crack a coconut. He’d not managed but he had given himself brain damage, which was probably just as good a way out. Then another rumour flies round how it was the screws that did it; bit of punishment got out of hand. Sex and violence with a lad who’d never tell. Couldn’t after that, anyroad.

Maybe he’d call Paula from Oldham. Explain that he had to get away. Try and assure her. He had a sudden glimpse of her face, a frown puckering her forehead, swinging her hair in a shake of annoyance that rattled her beads together.

He thought of losing her and felt his eyes smart. She didn’t go with anyone else but him. She had wanted that. It was an easy promise to keep – he’d never had such good sex or so much of it. He felt himself swelling at the thought. Paula had taught him the intoxicating art of seduction, of teasing and waiting and playing and making it last and last so they could be up most of the night with dirty soul music on the CD player, stopping now and then for a spliff or some wine or even some food and then back to it. He groaned, partly because of the sensation in his groin but mainly because of the despair that the prospect of life without Paula raised in him. And he couldn’t see his way round the problem.

A gust of diesel-filled air swirled the litter up and cast it around the place. His mouth was dry. Sod it, a can of Coke and a bag of crisps wouldn’t break the bank. If he missed the bus there’d soon be another. He pushed himself off the shelter and headed off in search of a kiosk.

From the bridge on Withington Road Janine Lewis could see the tent they’d erected to protect the scene of the crime. It would be hidden to passing motorists, as would the whole of the allotments which were on lower ground adjacent to the disused railway line. The cutting was awash with rubbish: mattresses, spilt bin liners and rusting metal. Plenty to clear up if they were going to use this for the MetroLink extension and bring the trams along here to link Chorlton and Didsbury.

She took in the scene before her. The allotments stretched below, in a rough rectangular patchwork, five rows deep and five or six plots across. The railway line formed the boundary to the left, and Gorton Avenue, a row of terraced houses with their yards and a back alley, ran along the right. A similar row, Denholme Avenue, stood at the far end facing her and parallel with Withington Road.

The city was full of housing like this, built to accommodate the workforce that had piled into Manchester to work in the cotton mills, the docks, the warehouses, on the canals and railways. Serried ranks of redbrick terraces, grey slate roofs.

Most of the garden tracts were models of industry, rows of winter cabbages and sprouts, soil dug ready for sowing, canes like wigwams for the coming season’s beans and sweet peas, greenhouses, piles of pots and compost heaps. A couple of the allotments had run to neglect, with tall weeds, long grass and ruined sheds.

The whole picture glinted in the silvery winter sun.

The allotments could be reached from either of the stretches of housing. Plenty of escape routes. Someone fleeing the scene could have headed for the houses, or gone along the railway line in either direction or even up the steps to the bridge and away along the road.

She turned back to the tent and the comings and goings of small figures. It was pitched in the corner plot nearest to her, on the back row furthest from the long stretch of houses. Here and there faces peered out of bedroom windows, a child sat on a back alley wall and a small knot of neighbours waited in the alleyway near to the scene. She needed to get the house-to-house started. But first, she had a corpse to view. She opened the car boot and pulled out protective overalls and shoe covers; lucky they were a fit and she was able to close the zip up over her bump.

Janine made her way to the young PC who was guarding the entrance to the scene.

‘You got the call?’

‘Yes, ma’am, boss,’ he stumbled over his words. Couldn’t be much older than Michael.

‘From the beginning, Constable. Nice and slow.’ Janine told him. She knew she’d get a better response if she gave the lad some time to get his act together. He fumbled with his notebook.

‘I was on Mauldeth Road West when I heard the dispatch. Eleven o’clock. I got here and a Mr Simon said there was a Mr Matthew Tulley, he knew him, like, on the allotment. He rang from home, Mr Simon I mean.’

Well it would hardly be Mr Tulley, would it? She nodded.

‘Mr Simon lives at the end there,’ he pointed to the terrace nearest to the road bridge where Janine had surveyed the scene. ‘So I come down and have a look and checked for signs of life but there weren’t none.’ The man swallowed hard. His first body, she assumed.

‘Did you touch anything else?’

‘Only the body… the deceased.’ He remembered the correct terminology. ‘His neck and his back, when I was checking him.’

‘And since then?’

‘Socos arrived and secured the scene.’

‘Good.’

An appalling blush suffused the young man’s face. Christ, she thought, they’ll eat this one alive.

She walked along the path towards the far plot where the plastic tarpaulin had been erected and the soco team were busy. Janine ducked underneath the blue and white police tape that cordoned off the area and trod carefully on the metal plates that had been laid down for everyone to walk on, to minimise disturbance of the scene. She could see the body, the head and shoulders on the ground immediately outside the shed door.

Rachel Grassmere, the scene of crime specialist, was taking notes, peering carefully at the floor and adding to the small card markers that had been numbered and placed at points to indicate possible evidence. Other scene of crime officers worked the scene: measuring, recording, filming, collecting, in among the little white markers.