Chris Simms: Killing the Beasts

'About quarter to ten,' she replied shakily, stubbing a cigarette out in the full ashtray.

'And you found her in the front room?'

She nodded once.

'On the floor?'

'Yes, lying on her back with her arms out by her sides.'

'How did you get into the house?' 'I have a key. We were going shopping together in town.'

'Was the door locked when you arrived?'

Another nod.

Keeping eye contact, Jon continued, 'OK, Mrs Mather, it's best you go now and let us take over. Margaret here will accompany you down to the station. We'll need to take a statement. Is that OK with you?'

'Yes.' Then she whispered beseechingly, 'What happened to my little girl?'

'We'll find out, Mrs Mather. We'll find out,' Jon said, a note of firmness now in his voice.

As they stood CSO Payne asked, 'Can we call anyone to meet you at the station?'

She shook her head and Jon wondered if it was an unwillingness to share with anyone else what had happened to her daughter.

He led the way back towards the front door, CSO Payne with her arm round the mother's shoulder. He paused in the doorway to the living room, subtly trying to discourage any further contact. 'We'll be as fast as we can, Mrs Mather. You'll have your daughter back as quickly as possible.' No mention of the coming autopsy, the gutting of her corpse, the sifting-through of her stomach contents.

At the front step he instructed CSO Payne to keep to the grass. Once the two women were back on the street he called out to the young policewoman, 'Oh, your torch. I've left it in the kitchen.'

She walked back across the grass and into the house. Jon was waiting for her. 'Did you touch anything in here?' he asked, handing it back to her.

'I don't think so. We got the mum out of the front room as quickly as we could. I brought her in here and made her a cup of tea…' She pointed to the draining board at the side of the sink.

Jon saw that she wasn't pointing at the sink full of dirty cups and glasses. 'Where did you find the mug?'

'Just there sir, washed up on the draining board. Next to that other one.'

'Washed up? You mean still wet?'

'Yes, I dried it with the tea towel.'

Jon ran his fingers through his cropped brown hair in a gesture of disappointment. 'Go on.'

Aware that she was now being questioned, the officer went on more carefully. 'She smoked three or four cigarettes. Stubbed them out in the ashtray on the table.'

'Yeah, they were Lambert amp; Butler.' Jon looked into the ashtray and said almost to himself, 'The daughter smoked Marlboro Lights, I think. There's Silk Cut and Benson amp; Hedges in there, too.' The urge to light up suddenly hit him. He turned away from the ashtray and its stale smell that should have been so unpleasant. 'OK, get her to the station; we'll need her fingerprints, a DNA swab and samples from her clothes. Her fibres will be all over the body.'

'So it's definitely suspicious then, sir?' She sounded thrilled. 'I thought she might have had a heart attack or something.'

'Don't get too excited — you're in for a bollocking from your sergeant out there. You forgot to check for a pulse. But yeah, I'd say it looks dodgy. The neighbour described her as a ravehead and there are signs of her smoking heroin in the bedroom. And whatever that stuff is blocking her throat, it doesn't look or smell like puke to me.'

As soon as he was alone, Jon went back into the kitchen. Balanced on top of the soiled glasses and cups in the sink was a bowl and spoon, fragments of bran flakes clinging to the surfaces. If the cups and glasses were left over from the night before, and the bowl was from breakfast, why were there just two freshly washed up cups on the draining board? Had someone else been here that morning? Someone she had offered to make a drink for?

He pulled his phone out and called his base. 'Detective Chief Inspector McCloughlin, please. It's Detective Inspector Spicer.'

After a few moments his senior officer came on the line. 'DI Spicer, I hear you were the first plain clothes officer at the scene of a suspicious death. What have you got?'

'Young female, appears to have choked to death on something. We'll need a post-mortem to ascertain what. My guess is that, if we have a killer, he came in and went out by the front door. It appears the person was let in, so she probably knew them. There's certainly no signs of forced entry or any kind of struggle.'

'So you don't think the case will turn into a runner?'

'I doubt it. My guess is it will be the usual — a friend or family member. I think it should be fairly clear-cut.'

'Right, how do you want to play it?'

'Well, until we've established cause of death, there's no point panicking and calling the whole circus out. We need to photograph her and get a pathologist down to pronounce her, so we can get the body to Tameside General for an autopsy. The scene is preserved here, so I'll call in a crime scene manager to make sure it stays that way. Then, if cause of death turns out to be suspicious, we can start worrying about calling in a SOCOs and the full forensics rigmarole.'

'Sounds like a good way of playing it. Which other cases are you working on?'

'My main one is the gang hooking car keys through people's letterboxes.'

'Operation Fisherman?' asked McCloughlin. 'How many officers are assigned to it?'

'Seven, including me.'

There was a pause as McCloughlin mentally divided up manpower and caseloads.

Jon knew his senior officer was deciding whether to move him to the murder investigation. Before he could decide, Jon said, 'I'd really like to remain on Operation Fisherman, if only in a minor role, while this murder investigation is ongoing.'

'Your partner's still off with his back problem, isn't he?'

'Yeah,' Jon replied.

'Listen. It's time you led a murder investigation yourself. This one seems like it should be quite straightforward. I think it'll be a good one for you to cut your teeth on.'

'You're making me Senior Investigating Officer?'

'You've got it. Just keep me up to speed on everything.'

'And Operation Fisherman?'

'They can do without you while you get this one wrapped up.'

A mixture of excitement and disappointment ran through him. The gang stealing high-performance cars had taken up so much of his time over the last few months, but now he had his own murder case. 'Will do, boss,' Jon replied.

Next he called his base. 'Hello, Detective Inspector Jon Spicer here. We need a pathologist, a photographer and a CSM at Fifteen Berrybridge Road, Hyde. Who's available for scene management?'

'Nikki Kingston is on duty,' said the duty officer.

Jon immediately smiled — the case had just become a whole lot more attractive. 'Send her down please,' said Jon, flipping his phone shut and popping a stick of chewing gum in his mouth.

The pathologist and photographer arrived less than fifteen minutes later. While they were still clambering into their white suits, Nikki's car pulled up. She climbed out and went straight round to the boot, opened it up and put on a large red and black jacket that looked like it had been designed for scaling Everest in. As she walked over, the bulky garment only emphasized how petite she was and Jon found himself wanting to scoop her up and hug her.

Looking Jon up and down she said, 'You not freezing your nuts off in that suit?'

Jon grinned. 'Good to see you, Nikki.'

She was already looking at the house. 'So come on then: scores on the doors, please.'

'OK, the two CSOs over there are passing the house on a foot patrol when they hear a commotion inside. They go in to find what turns out to be the victim's mother in the front room hugging the body. One officer retires immediately to call for supervision; the other officer manages to get the mum away from the daughter and into the kitchen. I arrive, check over the rest of the property…'