Cath Staincliffe - Dead To Me

Janet stilled. Unbelievable. ‘I did not hear that, did I? I did not just hear you say that.’

‘Whatever!’ Rachel folded her arms. ‘Take a left here.’

‘Why?’

‘Neighbourhood office, get his car reg.’

‘We don’t even-’

‘It’s five minutes,’ Rachel said.

Janet did as she asked. ‘How do you know which is his?’ she asked as they drew up. Half a dozen cars in the car park behind the security fencing.

‘Because when I left him last time, there was only one car out front. There – the blue Nissan Micra.’ Rachel wrote the registration down.

‘OK, imagine you’re on to something. Talk me through it, because I’m really not seeing it.’

‘Right. Raleigh does his placement and meets them all – Lisa, Rosie, her pal Angela. The following year, he rapes Rosie, beats her up.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Because he’s a scuzzy bastard. Then he rapes and kills Lisa.’

‘Again, why?’

‘Still a scuzzy bastard.’

‘Two years between the attacks.’

‘OK. But maybe there were others; you know how few women report rape to us.’

‘Very different attacks too: one woman is beaten, the other is stabbed – just once.’

‘But listen, we’ve got a DNA match for someone in both attacks. And now we’ve linked Raleigh to both women. And Angela Hambley is lying through her teeth.’

Janet sighed. It was tangled, chaotic, unclear.

‘We ask him for a DNA sample,’ Rachel said.

‘Gill won’t do that, not on such a shaky basis. We can’t just go asking people for DNA samples at random.’

‘It’s not random,’ Rachel insisted. ‘He’s a link.’

Janet gave a shrug.

‘So what, we do nothing? Let the bastard waltz around and get away with it?’

‘The only chance we have is to look at him more carefully first; tactfully, subtly. Was he in the area, can we find his car? Groundwork. If ,’ and she stressed the word, ‘Gill’s OK with it.’

‘If she’s not?’

‘Forget it.’

Rachel shook her head, hit the heel of her hand on the dashboard.

Janet decided it would be wiser to ignore her little tantrum. And they drove on in silence.

BACK AT THE station, Andy met her in the corridor. ‘Janet, can I just check something with you?’ Sounding as he usually did, but she could see from the tension in his jawline and his knuckles whitening round the file that he held there was a subtext.

‘Sure.’ She went with him into the meeting room.

He closed the door.

‘It was a mistake,’ Janet said, wanting to get in first. ‘I’m sorry.’

He didn’t say anything for a moment. Did he agree? Then he nodded slowly.

‘Ade, the kids. What were we thinking of?’ She gave half a laugh. Didn’t feel at all amused. ‘Just put it behind us, yes?’

‘Is that what you want?’ he asked.

Didn’t he? ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. Because she couldn’t do this, feel like this. The guilt was horrible.

He waited, moved as if he’d speak, then didn’t.

The door flew open and Janet jumped.

‘Not interrupting, am I?’ said Kevin in his leery way.

‘No,’ said Janet.

‘Fuck off, Kevin,’ said Andy, throwaway, but Janet saw a murderous glint in his eyes.

‘Right, Sarge,’ Janet said for extra cover. It’d be a total nightmare if Kevin suspected something. ‘I’ll pass it on to the CPS case officer, soon as.’

‘Appreciated,’ said Andy. Then he turned to Kevin: ‘Aren’t you meant to be scanning CCTV?’

Janet escaped, left them to it. A shaky feeling inside, not unlike in the aftermath of Rachel’s car stunt.

‘You tell her.’

‘We’ll tell her together.’ Janet knocked on Gill’s door and Gill waggled a hand: come in.

Rachel followed in Janet’s shadow, knowing she was out of favour and not wanting to sabotage the mission.

Janet cleared her throat. ‘We’ve been to see Angela Hambley, an old friend of Rosie Vaughan, less than friendly with Lisa Finn back in the day. Angela got very arsey when Rachel started asking questions.’

‘As you might.’ Gill’s eyes gleamed brightly.

‘Small detail, and it could well be nothing,’ Janet said diplomatically, ‘but James Raleigh, Lisa’s personal advisor…’

Gill nodded.

‘… was in a photograph, on the wall, looking very cosy. He’d done a placement at Ryelands when all three girls were there. Angela claimed to have no idea whether he was still knocking around, even though his photograph’s on her wall and she’s cut off the other people in it. Most likely her mate Rosie.’

‘Raleigh never let on to me though,’ Rachel said, impatient at how slow Janet was to tell the tale. ‘He talked as if he had only met Lisa once she was living on her own when he got given her case. Acted like he’d never set foot inside Ryelands.’

Gill waited.

‘So,’ Janet said, ‘maybe we could ask him about that?’

‘You saying he could be a person of interest?’

‘Well, he’s interested me,’ Rachel put in.

‘Why does that not surprise me?’ Gill said nastily. ‘Which makes you the last person to go back and talk to him.’

‘Oh, boss,’ Rachel complained, damned if she’d keep quiet.

Gill stared at her. Then came to a decision. ‘Smacks of desperation,’ she said. ‘No grounds there, not unless you give me some more.’

‘What if we can find him in the vicinity of the scene?’ Janet said.

Gill raised an eyebrow.

‘We could ANPR his car,’ Rachel said.

A moment while Her Maj made up her mind. ‘No sign – you park it,’ Gill said crisply. Bit unreasonable, Rachel thought, but they’d have to take whatever crumbs they could. ‘Do it,’ Gill said. ‘In fact, Rachel – you do it. And that man is off limits unless you can you bring me his car in Collyhurst in our time frame.’

‘Yes, boss,’ they answered in unison.

Rachel ran the registration through the PNC first and got confirmation that James Raleigh was the registered keeper. An address in Royton. She thought about the argument Lisa had had in the taxi, telling someone to get out of her life, stop telling her what to do – Raleigh? But that didn’t fit with the data from telecoms: no call logged then between Raleigh and Lisa.

Rachel set up the data for the ANPR, automatic number-plate recognition system. Developed to combat terrorism, it had become an effective tool for tracing vehicles in many other crimes and was far more efficient than trawling through CCTV if a car reg was known.

Her thoughts wandered as she waited for the software to do its thing, finding all the locations that the number plate was ‘pinged’ on Monday afternoon. Kasim had been up in the magistrates’ court on Wednesday and remanded on bail. He indicated he’d be pleading not guilty to the charges and so, if he kept that up, the case would go to trial in the crown court and Rachel would likely be called to give evidence against him. She was pretty sure all her paperwork was up to scratch on that. Nick would be opening for the defence at the Old Bailey tomorrow, or Wednesday, if there were delays.

Her stomach was growling; she thought briefly of burger and chips or pie and peas, but didn’t want to take a break. She wanted to prove she was right and give Gill something to stick in her pipe. Rachel scoured the results on the screen. Her pulse accelerated. She had Raleigh on Oldham Road at 1.55 and 2.34. Perfect timing.

‘Got you, you prick!’ she said aloud, and went to tell Janet.

‘He works in the area, keep that in mind,’ Janet said. ‘He could have been visiting a client.’

‘Yeah – Lisa.’

‘Another client.’