Cath Staincliffe - Bleed Like Me

‘I believe you,’ Rachel said sceptically.

‘Just like “all coppers are bastards”, eh?’ Janet said, a nod to the graffiti initials ACAB that were still regularly daubed on walls and shop shutters and hoardings and reflected the attitude of many of the people they had to deal with day in and day out.

‘Right,’ Rachel said, ‘’cept me and you.’

Gill had attended the post-mortems. Watching in turn as the pathologist did external then internal examinations, combed the hair, taped the body and scraped the fingernails, swabbed the orifices. Photographed and measured the wounds, inspected, weighed and measured the organs.

Back in the office she received excellent news: they’d an ANPR report of Cottam’s Mondeo heading north on the M6 near Penrith.

‘Andy.’ She put her head round her door, into the outer office. Told him about the breakthrough.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘So we know he’s still moving.’

Alive . ‘Yes. Heading up to the Lakes, perhaps? Old stamping ground. I’m going to contact both Lancashire and Cumbria police,’ she said. ‘Bring them up to speed.’

She made those calls, alerting her colleagues in the neighbouring forces to Cottam’s movements so they could brief their own officers. Then her phone rang – the front desk. Margaret Milne, Pamela and Michael’s mother, had arrived. The family liaison officer who’d met Mrs Milne at Manchester Airport would remain her point of contact with the police. Normally one or two of Gill’s DCs along with the FLO would accompany the next of kin to identify the victims, but on this occasion, Gill intended to go herself.

Gill knew Janet and Rachel were heading back in with an eyewitness who could place Owen and the two boys alive at six thirty that morning. Had he killed them after that, then taken the bodies with him? As yet there were no additional crime scenes other than those of the first three victims, no ominous pools of blood in the hall, or the living area. If he had killed the boys, why remove them? The fact of their absence seemed to suggest they were still alive when Cottam fled the scene.

Gill would use Janet to talk to Margaret Milne. Janet was her best interviewer. After the stabbing, in March, when Geoff Hastings had almost killed Janet, in that long week that followed when it was touch and go, Gill didn’t dare to think Janet would ever come back to work. The best she could hope for was that her friend would survive and be able to have some quality of life in the aftermath.

An attack like that, life threatening, was no easy thing to come back from. Gill knew coppers who would never work again, at any job; others, physically maimed or psychologically troubled, were shadows of their former selves, their previous talents and abilities ruined by the trauma. Janet’s strength, her solidity, her resilience, amazed Gill. Not only had she resumed her duties after convalescing but she retained her ability to empathize with the people she interviewed, to make them comfortable enough, safe enough, to open up. To woo them into her confidence so that talking, telling her what she needed to know, was easier than not.

Rachel could take the eyewitness and Janet the bereaved mother.

On her way downstairs her phone rang again. Chris on the display. A little burn of pleasure inside her. She answered the call. ‘You heard?’

‘Can’t think why. Triple murder, two missing kids.’

‘So tomorrow…’ she said regretfully.

‘You putting me off?’ he said.

‘God knows when I’ll get home. You know the score.’ And he did. Working in the National Policing Improvement Agency, consulting on hard to solve murders, going wherever in the country he was needed. The same job that Gill had done, had loved, until her hubby Dave shag-bandit Murray had finally been caught doing the dirty and left her for the whore of Pendlebury. Leaving Gill holding the baby; well, the fourteen-year-old. Sammy needed at least one parent in the family home on a regular basis. Gill’s high-flying career went out of the window and she took on the syndicate instead. Still working senseless hours but near enough to drive home afterwards and have breakfast in the mornings with her son. And now even that had gone… She tore herself away from thoughts of Sammy’s recent flight into the toxic bosom of Dave’s new family and back to Chris.

‘I miss you,’ Chris said and she felt her stomach drop.

‘Me too,’ she said. It was impossible. If she wasn’t up to her eyes he was in Cornwall or Northumberland or wherever. Then when they did schedule something together, like now with him taking leave to come up for a week, she was landed with a trio of dead bodies and the prospect of more to come.

‘Could still come up,’ he said.

‘And do what? Twiddle your thumbs while I’m here night and day?’ Nice thumbs he had, like the rest of him. ‘Book a flight somewhere,’ she said. ‘Treat yourself.’ She imagined him at the beach: tall, really tall, but he carried it so well. She loved his height, his youth, her toyboy. ‘Send me a postcard.’ And the fact he really liked her, her mind as much as her body. They spent hours talking about work and he got it, got the same buzz she did from solving the puzzles they were set, from strategy and insight. With Dave she’d shared anecdotes but there’d been an undercurrent of resentment on his part. Although he’d lumbered up his own career ladder, more or less winched up by a crane, she thought sourly, he had never had the smarts that Gill knew she had. Of course back then she’d done that whole modest act, so he wouldn’t look dim. No need with Chris. Equals.

‘Think of it as research,’ she said. ‘Find somewhere perfect we can go together next time I take leave.’

‘Do you ever take leave?’

‘Yes,’ she protested, though probably not always her full quota.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Talk to you later.’

‘Sardinia,’ she said. ‘Sardinia sounds nice. Or New York?’ and ended the call.

Margaret Milne’s complexion was so grey Gill wondered if the woman was having heart failure. She asked her if she’d like anything to eat or drink or whether she would like to see a doctor if she wasn’t feeling well.

‘No, thank you,’ she said, her voice wavering.

‘Perhaps just a cup of tea,’ the FLO, Julia, suggested. No one wanted her keeling over when they got to the mortuary.

‘Okay. Thank you.’ She nodded.

While tea was fetched, Gill gave the woman her condolences. ‘I’m so very sorry for your losses,’ she said, ‘for what has happened to Pamela and Michael and Penny. And I promise you we will do everything in our power to find and punish the person or people responsible.’

‘Owen,’ Margaret Milne said, her lips puckered as though the name itself was bitter.

‘If he’s responsible,’ Gill said. Important to acknowledge that they were working on assumptions, bloody likely ones, but assumptions all the same. Until the evidence was in place and firm enough everything was modified with ‘alleged’, ‘probable’, ‘believed to be’, not ‘known to be’. Not least because giving a grieving relative information that sounded cast-iron and was later disproved caused extra anguish.

‘And the babbies?’ she said, her Irish accent sounding stronger.

‘No news. We believe Owen took them with him when he left the area this morning. Our sole aim now is to prevent any further loss of life. We have specialist staff, hostage negotiators and so on, ready to act as soon as we find them.’

The tea arrived and Margaret Milne picked up her cup then stared at it, at a loss. And she hadn’t even seen the victims yet. Her son and daughter, her granddaughter.

‘After we’ve been to the mortuary, if you are able to confirm that it is Pamela and Michael and Penny, we’d very much like your help.’