Chris Simms - Killing the Beasts

Ges hesitated. 'You all right, Tom? I'm sorry I haven't called round before. You can imagine how it's been.'

Tom waved the comment away. 'Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. 'He looked back out of the window. The silence stretched out as he kept his eyes on Ed unlocking the Porsche and climbing in. 'Well, I'd better get back too…' Ges suggested. He walked slowly back to the front door and hovered at the top step. 'Give us a call. We could go for lunch one day. How about it?'

Tom nodded. 'Yeah.' He glanced around Ges to have one last look at the car, then shut the door in the face of one of his few remaining friends.

3 November 2002

The investigation was going nowhere. More than fifty officers were now assigned to the case. Despite dozens of statements from anyone who had been in contact with the three victims, an obvious thread linking them together refused to emerge.

In desperation they had begun to retread old ground, including raking through the contents of each victim's home again.

Jon was en route to the facility at Trafford Park police station to help go through the refuse recovered from Polly Mather's flat when the call came through on his mobile.

'Bad news, Jon. Another body has just been discovered. A Gabrielle Harnett, same MO as all the rest,' said the officer back at Longsight.

Jaw set tight, he speeded up, anxious to get to Trafford Park and start making phone calls. He pulled into the car park about a quarter of an hour later. Without bothering to get out of the car, he called back the incident room at Longsight.

'DI Spicer here. The victim who's just been discovered — what type of property did she live in?'

'Some sort of flat complex.'

'Can you give me the phone number of any officer attending the scene?'

He jotted the number down and immediately called it. 'DS Moffatt? DI Spicer here. Where are you exactly?'

'Outside the victim's flat.'

'What's the parking situation like?'

'Bloody nightmare. Half of Manchester's newspaper reporters are already here. I don't know who's got more vehicles in the vicinity

— us or them.' 'I mean for the residents. Is there private parking for them?' 'Oh, hang on. 'There was a pause. 'Yeah, I'm standing in a kind of courtyard. It's all little one or two bedroom flats, residents-only parking. Each slot is allocated to a flat.'

'And what's parked in the slot for the victim's flat?'

'Hang on,' he said again. 'Flat six, here you go. It's a Mini — one of those new BMW ones.'

'Registration?'

Jon noted it down, then called the incident room at Longsight again. 'Hi, DI Spicer. Can you run me a vehicle check?' He read out the registration and waited with his crossed fingers resting on the steering wheel. 'Please don't let it be Gabrielle Harnett's,' he whispered to himself.

'Here we go,' said the operator, 'Gabrielle Harnett, flat six, Richmond Court…'

'Fuck!' He thumped the back of his skull against the headrest.

'You just crashed?' came the alarmed voice.

'No. My fucking theory has, though.' He hung up, got out and walked over to the prefabricated hut in which the rubbish had been laid out on long trestle tables. Standing outside the doors were a couple of uniformed officers getting a last cigarette in before having to don rubber gloves and start sifting.

'Morning,' said one, seeing Jon approaching.

'Morning,' Jon grunted. A couple of seconds' silence followed before the officer produced a packet of cigarettes and held one out.

Jon realized his eyes had been fixed hungrily on the man's lit cigarette. He hesitated for a second, then sagged a little and took it. 'Cheers. This case is doing my head in.' He leaned forward to take a light as Nikki Kingston stepped out of the hut. Her face had brightened on seeing Jon but, on spotting the cigarette in his mouth, her smile died. Their eyes met and with a sigh Jon pulled the cigarette from his lips. 'Bad day, all right?'

'Here,' she said and gestured him inside. They walked along the side of a table scattered with a layer of mouldering food scraps, old tea bags and crumpled packaging. 'What's up?'

'Another body has just been found.'

'Oh, Jesus.' She picked up her handbag and took out a pack of chewing gum. 'Try one of these. I'm not sure about the flavour, but it's got to be better than going back to smoking.'

He conceded with a half smile and slid a stick from the pack. After popping it into his mouth, he said, 'What is it? Lemon flavour?'

Nikki looked at the pack and with a lofty tone said, 'Actually, it's citrus flavour with extracts of energy-giving guarana. Limited edition too, so count yourself lucky.'

Jon was shaking his head. 'What is it with these limited edition sweets? They were doing mint-flavoured Kit Kats the other day. Meddling with a classic. Go on, let's have a look.'

She handed him the pack and he looked at it with a cynical expression. Alongside the spiky yellow lettering spelling 'X-treme' was a yellow lightning bolt that zig-zagged down the ice-blue wrapper, its point entering a cartoon-style lemon sitting on a bed of what he guessed were guarana leaves. His eyes narrowed and he looked at the rubbish on the trestle tables.

'What?' said Nikki, watching him closely.

'I've seen a pack of this stuff before. Where did you get it from?'

'Some freebie handout,' she said, putting her handbag back on the chair.

'No, I've seen it somewhere else. Not in a shop, either.' He searched for the memory and started seeing all sorts of images. A white-painted room, crushed packets of cigarettes, cups stacked up in a dirty sink, rows of tins in a cupboard, empty beer cans piled high in a waste-paper basket, a drawer slightly open with the contents neatly arranged inside.

He knew that he had two strands of memory twisted together: one suggested cleanliness and carefully controlled behaviour, the other disorder and abandonment. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed against them with a forefinger and thumb, trying to make sense of the opposing images. Polly Mather's kitchen? No, her place was a tip. Must have been Mary Walters' kitchen. Then the memory of the discarded chewing gum wrapper sprang up in his mind and he saw the distinctive diamond pattern of the carpet surrounding it. 'Polly Mather's floor. In her front room,' he said, certainty filling his voice. With that strand of memory established, he was able to concentrate on the one suggesting a well-ordered living space. He clicked his fingers and opened his eyes. 'And in Mary Walters' kitchen drawer.'

Nikki looked at him in silence with her eyebrows raised.

'Have you got any gloves?' She handed him a pair.

Jon walked round the tables, stopping at the one marked 'front room'. The waste-paper basket was lying on its side and next to it crumpled beer cans, cigarette butts and torn-up packets of Rizla covered the surface. With a forefinger, he poked around, suddenly stopping and holding up a loosely folded rectangle of paper. Straightening it out, he said, 'Bingo.' It was the outer wrapping from a stick of X-treme gum.

Nikki was standing next to him. 'Yes?'

'I'm sure there's also an unopened pack of this stuff in Mary Walters' kitchen drawer.'

She turned her hands outwards. 'So? There's probably tins of baked beans in both their flats, too.'

'Yes, but this is unusual isn't it? A limited edition — part of a relatively small batch.'

Picking up on Jon's line of thought, she clapped her hands together in excitement. 'I saw it for sale just the other day!'

'Where?'

'One of those dodgy stalls in the Arndale Market that sells end-of-line and out-of-date stuff.'

He put the gum wrapper in an evidence bag, then yanked his gloves off. 'Come on. I'd like to know how the stallholder came by it.'