Liz Mistry - Last Request

Langley edged as close to the hole as he could, peered over and then exhaled. ‘Got owt to put down over this bog, Gracie? I’ll lie on my stomach – get a better look that way.’

Gracie and one of her team, with Sajid and Nikki’s help, managed to slide a plastic sheet over the mud and Langley knelt on it before stretching his body along the sheet so he could examine inside. ‘Hold my feet, someone. Last thing I want is to slide into this morass.’

Nikki nudged Sajid, who reluctantly leaned over and held on with his huge hands circling the pathologist’s ankles whilst everyone else waited for Langley’s opinion.

‘Look, visibility is rubbish. But there’s a huge crack in that skull – whether it’s peri or post-mortem, I can’t say for sure yet. But I can tell you that the skull looks to have been there for at least ten years and it’s human and I can see metacarpal bones, an ulna and a radius. You’ll be needing to get in a forensic anthropologist.’

Nikki uttered a silent, ‘Yeah!’ to herself. Thank God! This one was someone else’s business, not hers. They had a cold case team for this sort of thing and she’d be happy to hand this over. She had more important things to deal with on the Listerhill Estate and a decade-old murder, for that’s what it surely must be, wasn’t going to detract from her little discussion with Deano Gilmartin.

Who’d have thought it? For years they’d been banging on about doing up the Odeon. Years! Now they’ve finally started – and I’ve been waiting, wondering when they’d get round to that car park. Wondering how far down they’d dig, how far they’d need to go. Some days I convinced myself they’d leave the foundations – the ones they put in fifteen years ago. Other days I was certain that they’d pull the lot up. Made sense really. They’d need to go deep if they were going to extend their plumbing and their electrics – stood to reason, didn’t it?

It’s been grand watching them, waiting to see when they’d hit gold. When they started near the building, I knew who they’d find. I nearly pissed myself though when I saw who rolled up from the constabulary. Couldn’t have planned it better if I’d tried. Nikita Parekh! I’ve seen her loads over the years. ’Course I have. Bradford’s not that big a place and of course, she hit the news a few years ago. Got her that jammy promotion on the back of it.

They all mouth off about the Yorkshire Ripper and the Crossbow Cannibal, but they’re amateurs compared to me – abject amateurs. How fucking sick of them to go for women – prostitutes. Disgusting really. Sexual motivation makes me sick, makes me want to vomit. I can feel the hatred surging in my stomach. I knew a man like that once but he’s where he belongs now If you’re gonna rid the world of scum, make it the right sort, eh? Them that deserve it – not just so you can get your rocks off.

Wonder when they’ll realise though. Wonder when they’ll expand their horrid little narrow minds and see what’s really going on here. Don’t think I’ve owt to worry about for now. Don’t think they’ve got the brains. They’ve already let one slip through the crack – bet they’ll do the same this time. They’ve got no imagination, that’s their problem – no imagination at all.

Listerhills was a strange estate. A combination of terraced houses backing onto one another and worn cobbled alleyways like moats winding between them. Running at either end, like the top and bottom strokes of a capital I, were two Seventies-style ex-council-housing estates. As a whole, the area was known as Listerhills despite the fact there wasn’t a hill in sight and Lister – presumably he of Lister woollen mills fame, Samuel Lister – was long dead. What made Listerhills so notable was that unlike many of the Bradford estates, it was a hotchpotch of races and cultures. Bordering the university and being within spitting distance of the city centre, it was unique. In Bradford, the word estate was often considered a mucky word. Nikki hated it. Folk used it as an insult and, once branded an estate kid, it was a difficult label to shift.

Nikki often wondered which jackass had thought that nobody would notice that Listerhills was missing a botanical garden, a boat pond, a pavilion and a manor house, when they’d categorised it an estate . Did they think snotty-nosed kids forced by economics and unemployment into wearing wellies in summer and sandals in winter would grow up to have high aspirations? Nikki snorted. Who was she kidding? That was her childhood, these kids faced other challenges. Poverty only changed its face, it never went away.

She stood on the corner of Lister’s Front Terrace, leaning against the wall, waiting for Deano to emerge from his mother’s house on Lister’s Avenue. In the shadows, she was barely visible, although the flicker of lights in the houses opposite kept her company. The rain had persisted throughout the day and it seemed that most people had been driven indoors for the road was almost deserted. Cars lined the streets, half of them mounting the kerbs, and standing like sentries along the pavements were a series of wheelie bins. Must remember to put the bins out tonight. On a different day, Nikki would have got out her supply of police notices, to tell people to park properly. Not that it did any good. Within days, they’d be back to their old tricks, blocking the pavements making it impossible for wheelchair users or mums with pushchairs to pass. She’d swapped her leather jacket for a parka and had replaced her mud-soaked Doc Martins for her old pair. She reckoned she’d be lucky to salvage them, but she’d bunged them in the washing machine on a quick low-temp wash, in the hope that she might be able to eke out a few months of wear in them.

Even from across the road she could hear the TV from Deano’s house. Anywhere else there’d be a noise complaint within minutes, but not here and definitely not now Deano was back. Deano’s house was like a cold sore between two perfectly manicured premises. The gate was hanging off its hinges and someone had wrapped a rope round it in an attempt to stop it clattering to the pavement. The garden was more weeds than flowers with an old sofa, its arse hanging out as if it had evacuated a volcano of yellowing foam from its innards. Three old crates, two burst black bin bags and a broken coffee table completed the ensemble. Deano’s wheelie bin lay on its back, lid half detached, and with the house number 38 scrawled across it in black paint. An enormous tabby cat sat on the windowsill observing the proceedings indoors like some sort of feline Gogglebox character.

As she waited, Nikki scrolled through her texts. One from Charlie saying she needed twenty quid for some school trip or other and five, no six texts from Marcus. She responded to Charlie’s, telling her to tidy her room and help the younger two with their homework and maybe she’d consider it. The others she deleted, squashing the pang of guilt that she was becoming more and more used to of late. Marcus sensed she was pulling away and she knew she was. The one thing she didn’t know was why . And that was something she’d analyse sometime in the future when hell froze over.

If the little rat didn’t come out soon, she’d be forced to head over and knock on the door. Last thing she wanted, though, was to stress Margo out. Poor woman had enough on her plate with an abusive husband and now her runt of a son was back. If Nikki turned up on her doorstep, she could guarantee that Margo would be sporting a black eye at the very least, next time she saw her. No, best to get Deano on his own and exert her own kind of threat if his mum got hurt.