Paul Finch - Strangers

Perhaps if they’d been investigating the ripping apart of female victims, consensus that they weren’t offended by it would not have been achieved so quickly. It might also have been the case that, given what they were all about to undergo – and no doubt this had been preying on several of their minds for the whole of the weekend – this mischievous rebranding of their unit by an outside party did not seem such a big deal.

When agreement was reached, DS Sally Bryant agreed to leave the sign there. In fact, she said she’d take it home with her after shift and have it laminated so that it could be a permanent fixture on their office door.

After this, they got down to business, using the locker room attached to the briefing room to change from the casual attire they’d worn to travel to work, to the street-gear they hoped would help them blend in when they hit the streets.

Lucy had chosen a clingy blue camisole with lacy ribbons down the front rather than buttons, blue satin hot pants, fishnets and blue suede thigh-boots with platform soles. Over the top, she wore a black plastic mac. Her hair hung loose, while her make-up was loud and garish. All the girls affected similar transformations, looking each other over approvingly before deciding they were ready. There were some titters and sniggers, but an air of nervousness prevailed as the realisation finally dawned that they were going out there more or less alone. They’d have their phones and their ‘guardian angels’, as the plain-clothes TSG guys were now being referred to, but none of them would be carrying radios or wires. If they got into a cat-fight, they’d been advised, they’d have to see it through on their own (unless it turned very nasty), because it was always possible that communications devices could be exposed through yanked or torn clothing.

Lucy was only thirty, but she was actually one of the oldest present and certainly the most experienced. Deferring to this, more than a couple of the other girls came over seeking words of comfort or encouragement, neither of which she was able to offer in abundance. Detective Sergeants Bryant and Clark were in a similar boat; technically, they were the girls’ line-managers, but in reality they’d be role-playing themselves and thus unable to act as normal supervision.

Shortly after three, DI Slater appeared, having run through several pointers with the male members of the team in the next room along. He now went through everything again with the girls, and then gave them a quick pep talk.

‘This isn’t going to be easy,’ he said. ‘You don’t need me to tell you that. Ordinarily, we’d put you through a month’s training for a job like this, but there simply isn’t time. It may interest you to know – and this is totally embargoed, so don’t go blabbing – we’ve got another couple of APs. Both were found this morning on wasteland near Bickershaw.’

There was a dumbfounded silence in the room. If there’d been any doubts in any minds about the necessity of this action-plan, they’d been expunged now.

‘They may be ours, they may not be,’ Slater said, ‘but … well, they probably are. All the signs are there. If so, that makes it six victims and counting. Ladies, this assailant is absolutely relentless and the public is getting wind of it. When this next two hit the headlines, there’ll be a total circus, which’ll mean extra pressure on the investigation team, more stress, more mistakes. We need to pull together and get it sorted. So go out there and do your job, but watch your backs as well, and I mean watch them closely. The more men die at the hands of Jill the Ripper – sorry, I hate using that name but I don’t see what difference objecting to it will make now – the more vulnerable you people are going to be.’

Lucy would find out for herself what Slater meant by this approximately one hour after arriving at her designated pitch, which was a small picnic area – in reality little more than a thinly treed grass verge – just off the stretch of the A580 dual carriageway, better known locally as the East Lancashire Road or ‘East Lancs’, that ran south-west from Boothstown towards Lowton.

Her guardian angel that evening was PC Andy Clegg, a TSG officer in his early twenties. He was a bullish lad, well built around the chest and arms, but whose regulation-cut dark hair, ruddy, chubby features and permanently grave expression only served to underline his youth. Lucy wasn’t sure whether to be encouraged by this or unnerved. When they chatted before setting off, Lucy seeking nothing more than an informal introduction, he responded to her questions in taut monosyllables, which suggested that he was either very focused on the job, which was good, or that he was tongue-tied and abashed in the presence of a female officer who happened to be showing leg and cleavage, which wasn’t so good. There was a time to be embarrassed, and this wasn’t it.

Clegg would be sitting in an unmarked car on wasteland on the other side of the East Lancs – a battered old relic of a Ford Focus, equipped with a pair of night-vision binoculars. Without doubt he’d have the physical ability to help her, and the willingness to get stuck in – young male coppers were nothing if not reckless in their efforts to prove themselves. She just hoped he had the judgement to go with it.

And this was to be tested as soon as they arrived at her pitch.

Lucy was dropped off at the picnic site by an unmarked van with fake company logos on the sides. The hoped-for impression was that she’d just successfully serviced a bunch of navvies. The TSG lads inside the van assisted by beating on its sides and whooping aloud as the vehicle roared away. Following this, she stood out in the open, which wasn’t difficult given the proximity of the streetlights and the semi-leafless state of the autumnal trees, brandished a fistful of twenty-pound notes, and commenced a slow, deliberate count.

It had the desired effect.

Two girls were waiting nearby, only half discernible in the dank shadows. One of them was black, one of them white; both wore leather jackets, short skirts and heels. They sauntered towards her side-by-side.

‘Who the fuck are you ?’ the white girl wondered, her accent strong Scouse.

‘Who’s asking?’ Lucy replied, tucking the money up the sleeve of her mac.

The black girl leaned forward menacingly, an impression enhanced by an old scar that diagonally bisected her mouth and was still clearly visible despite a preponderance of emulsion-like lip gloss. ‘What the fuck’s it got to do with you, you gobby bitch!’ she snarled. ‘This is our pitch and you’re fucking trespassing!’

Lucy shrugged, but her spine was already tingling. ‘Don’t see a signpost, love.’

The black girl snapped her hand out, and a gleaming blade sprang into view. ‘I’ll slice your fucking tits off, you cow!’

‘Or alternatively, you can pay up,’ the Scouse girl said.

Lucy gazed from one to the other, affecting dimness. ‘What?’

‘We share everything here. And we know you’re not short of cash given that road crew you’ve just balled … so cough up.’

Even from across the dual carriageway, Lucy heard a thud from the back of the Ford Focus, as if Clegg was already getting set to intervene. That’d be great. She could just picture him clumping across the blacktop in his army surplus trousers, hoodie top and baseball cap. He’d save her of course, but it’d be quite a coincidence – that the moment the new girl was threatened, a tall, dark stranger stepped in.

But by a miracle, perhaps suggesting that he was smarter than she’d thought, he held off.

‘So I have to pay you two for the privilege of standing here?’ Lucy said. ‘On this stretch of public highway which anyone else can use free of charge?’