Landslide Page 4

  ‘Not yet, no’.

  ‘Well could I suggest that you do?’ said Tempest. ‘Because if Connelly is back and determined to try and get operative again then you could have mighty big problem on your hands because the organised crime syndicates that have moved in to fill the void of his absence will not appreciate him snapping at their heels’.

  ‘No pressure then’.

  ‘And Barton?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m not your enemy here. The NCA isn’t your enemy’.

  Barton put down the phone to the NCA and cursed himself for bringing the usual petty rivalries into his conversation with Tempest. It stood to reason that the NCA would want to be involved in trying to catch Connelly but Barton had also got the distinct impression from Inspector Tempest that there was more to it than that, giving rise to the petty antagonism. But he decided to put those particular suspicions to one side for the moment though and focus in on the job in hand.

  If June Hawkins was everything a nouveau middle class girl from the suburbs had worked her bollocks off to be, which she was in Barton’s opinion, then her sidekick at the pathology lab, Marcus Walters, was everything that his upper middle upbringing in the detached part of the suburbs had instilled in him from a young age. He went to private school and his parents wouldn’t have had to worry themselves sick about how they were going to financially support him through university like the parents of June Hawkins had done. Even now, in his early thirties, he still wore the same bow tie and checked waistcoat of a generation that went way back. His hair was black and casually ruffled and June wouldn’t have a word said against him. She’d heard of his background before she’d actually met him and was certain that she was going to hate him on sight. But it was quite the reverse. The two of them hit it off straight away and Barton liked him too. He had the same tendency as June to be rather more forthright than was necessary although he did use a little more wrapping paper than she often did. He‘d told June that he’d voted Labour at the last election which she’d been delighted at. She didn’t tell him that she’d always voted Conservative and was the kind of working class Tory to her boot straps who still mourned the passing of Thatcher.

  ‘How are you, Marcus?’ said Barton as he walked into the lab with DCI Ollie Wright. He always sniffed the faint smell of something unidentifiable whenever he walked into the lab, a mixture of death and chemicals, a place where a person’s life is studied after they’d passed being able to speak up for themselves.

  ‘Pretty good to be honest’ Marcus replied. ‘I can’t say the same for June who doesn’t like to be told that she has to take some time off’.

  ‘Your manager must be a very brave individual’ said Barton.

  Marcus smiled. ‘I think he had to have a large scotch both before and after he’d spoken to her’.

  ‘So Marcus, what can you tell us?’

  ‘Well these two are about as different as you can get’ said Marcus who was standing between the two slabs. He silently belched and tapped his stomach. He shouldn’t have had that second bacon sandwich this morning. His eyes really had been too big for his belly and it had been repeating on him ever since. ‘But let’s start with this gentleman on my right’ he began. ‘It’s quite straightforward really. A gunshot wound in the lower forehead just above the middle point between his eyes. He wouldn’t have known anything about it. The marksman was highly skilled’.

  ‘Probably very practised’ said Wright who looked closely at the greying corpse for a moment. Gary Makin had been an ugly bastard with far too many teeth for his mouth to properly contain and too many lines for one so young. He just looked like the sort of man who always had the weight of the world on his shoulders and couldn’t get through life without mindless drama happening every five minutes. His hair had been cropped to within a millimetre of his skull and he had a rather crude looking triangle tattoo beneath his right ear. Wright knew that he himself had lines this morning. He was absolutely knackered. His newly adopted daughter Alice had kept him and his husband Richard awake for what seemed like most of the night. She just wouldn’t settle. Richard had taken paternity leave from his job as a mortgage consultant for one of the High street banks and then he planned to go back to work part-time to fit around her hours at nursery. Still, these early hiccups were only to be expected. Nobody gets an easy ride where young children are concerned and the pair of them were absolutely besotted with their daughter. And Ollie wouldn’t want any sympathy now either. He was the stoic and practical type who knew he wasn’t the only new father in the world to be going into work exhausted this morning. He was one of many millions.

  ‘No doubt, Ollie’ said Marcus. ‘You’ve got ID on him, I understand?’

  ‘Yeah, small time until now’ said Barton. ‘But he’d clearly moved on to the big boys. It looks very much like a gangland style execution, a real professional job as it were, but it’s the why and by whom that interests us’.

  ‘Okay, well let’s leave him to one side for now’ said Marcus. ‘And let’s concentrate instead on this young girl to my left who might have been a great deal more unfortunate and that’s understating it’.

  ‘We’re not going to like this are we’ said Wright.

  ‘Nobody in their right minds would, Ollie’ said Marcus. ‘If what I’ve assessed is correct that is’.

  ‘Well you’ve never been wrong before, Marcus, so let’s have it’ said Barton.

  ‘Right’ said Marcus after a deep breath. ‘She’s no more than fourteen or fifteen but even though she’s so young she must’ve been through a lot’.

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Several sharp blows to the head’ said Marcus. ‘Maybe with an iron bar or some other such weapon’

  ‘But that’s not what concerns you most here, is it Marcus?’

  ‘No. You’ll have heard of female genital circumcision, gentlemen?’

  ‘Yes’ said Barton. Wright nodded. As the new father of a beautiful daughter he really didn’t want to know anymore but he didn’t have the choice.

  ‘Well we in the profession prefer to call it by its proper name which is mutilation. It’s one of the most barbaric practices known to human kind and is still used extensively in communities across West Africa in all religious groups, Christians, Muslims, all of them. This young girl was treated, if that’s the right word, to a particularly botched job of it. Whoever did it must’ve been using a fairly blunt knife is all I can say because there’s evidence of infection and extensive bleeding. But there’s more because whatever did happen around the mutilation she still managed to get pregnant. And it’s my guess that she gave birth more than once’.

  ‘Jesus’ said Wright, shaking his head. ‘If any little twat tries to come near Alice with sexual intentions when she’s only fifteen years old he’ll bloody well live to regret it’.

  ‘That’s why I’m glad I’ve got a son and not a daughter’ said Barton. ‘No matter how much even a new man tries he can’t help but feel over protective of his little girl’.

  ‘That’s why I’m glad I don’t have any kids’ said Marcus. ‘I don’t have any of these worries’.

  ‘There’s still plenty of time for you, Marcus’ said Wright.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s finding the right woman to think about having children with that’s my problem’ said Marcus, feeling suddenly reflective. ‘I don’t want to pick some pretty girl up in the pub one night, take her home, spend a night in her veins that produces a child and then try to live happy ever after as a threesome. I know a couple of people who’ve been hit by that particular scenario and they’re not happy. If the only feeling you’ve got for someone is your hard cock in their veins then it’s just not going to work long-term’.

  ‘Yeah, well thank you Jeremy Kyle’ said Barton who couldn’t help but smile at Marcus and his apparently earnest philosophy about relationships. ‘But let’s get on’.

  ‘I would assume that going by the custom the father of her child or children would’ve been much older�
�� said Marcus. ‘I don’t think they would’ve been the same age’.

  ‘Well that makes it ten times worse’ said Ollie. ‘Fucking sick or what’.

  ‘And what about her absent feet, Marcus?’ asked Barton, who’d noted to himself with admiration the emotions that being a new father was bringing out in Ollie. Everybody changes when they become a parent and people only run into trouble when they try and fight those changes because it’s the natural way of things when you’re suddenly responsible not only for yourself but also for this little person who’s depending on you. Barton had always thought that Ollie and his husband Richard would make good parents and he was pleased they’d finally made it through the adoption process although it made him angry that good, responsible people like Ollie and Richard had to jump through hoops of fire to adopt a child in need when scumbags who can’t even look after themselves let alone a child seem to push them out without any thought for how they’re going to look after them and social services wrap them up in cotton wool. So much so that they don’t even notice the kids are being abused until it’s too bloody late. He was ranting so much to himself that he almost didn’t hear Marcus’s answer.

  ‘The stumps in the lower half of her legs are recent wounds which suggests to me that her feet were cut off in the last few days’.

  Barton shook his head in disbelief. This job should’ve made him immune to the all the things that are done by all the sick bastards in the world but a case like this even pushes the boundaries of people like him whose experience should have made him resistant to the reality of what human beings are capable of doing to each other. And yet, as shocking as it was, there was something about it all that was ringing a bell inside Barton’s head. He couldn’t be certain but something about the state in which the girl’s body had been found in was making him feel this wasn’t the first time he’d either seen or heard of something like this.

  ‘So why would this poor child’s mutilated body be being transported in the boot of a car across country by two low level gangsters?’ Barton wondered. ‘It doesn’t make much sense to me’.

  ‘How are you doing with identifying the girl?’ asked Marcus.

  ‘Louisa, our civilian support member of the team is working on it. She’s looking through the missing person’s list as we speak’.

  ‘Well I don’t know but I would imagine our victim has been held against her will somewhere’ said Marcus. ‘There are signs around her wrists of her having been restrained’.

  ‘How long do you think she’s been dead?’ asked Ollie who was again peering close to the body. Her skin was young and looked so tender. But her hair was a mangled mess. Female black entertainers like Diana Ross probably spent hundreds of dollars and the rest on making their hair look wild and carefree. He and his husband Richard had been to see Ms Ross in concert in Las Vegas last year when they’d been on a touring holiday that also included Southern California. It was during that holiday that they’d finally decided to leave their wild days behind, get married and adopt a child.

  ‘Not very long’ said Marcus. ‘I’d say around twelve hours’.

  ‘Could she already have been half dead from having had her feet cut off?’

  ‘It could very well have sent her into shock, yes. And that can be lethal, especially when such a traumatic event happens to such a young girl who’s already been through other traumatic events. I also expect it was done in a pretty crude manner if the mutilation is anything to go by but I still say that the cause of actual death was a series of massive blows to the head’.

  Barton knew they were looking at the tip of a pretty sinister iceberg here but what he couldn’t get out of his head was the growing realisation that he’d seen the corpse of a young girl like this before. But he couldn’t put shape or form to his thoughts and would have to figure out a way of confirming them. Was it something to do with an old case? If it had been his own then surely he’d have remembered every detail of something as horrific as this?

  And where does his old friend Bernie Connelly fit into it?

  The boss had given DS Adrian Bradshaw just a couple of hours off so that he could go home and meet with the builder who was going to take out his old kitchen and fit a new one. He was glad to get away from the station for a while. His mate DC Joe Alexander was in a foul mood which all stemmed back to the antics of his girlfriend Erica-Jane who’d given him what for the previous night because he’d been so knackered he hadn’t been able to get fully aroused and it was her fertile time of the month. He’d bleated to Adrian that he’d tried his best to get down and perform but it was like trying to shove mashed potato up there with a knitting needle. Erica-Jane of course had been her usual kind, understanding self and accused him of having another woman. Adrian had told him to get on with kicking her out before she does get pregnant because it will be too late then and Joe will end up feeling morally obliged to marry the crazy bitch and bring up a child that he didn’t really want. And that would be him stuffed for life then.

  He’d only been in a few minutes and hadn’t even taken his jacket off when the doorbell rang and he went to answer the front door.

  ‘I’m Tim Adams’ said Joe holding out his hand. ‘The builder’.

  ‘Adrian Bradshaw’ said Adrian who shook hands with him. ‘Come in, Tim’.

  ‘Sorry if I’m a bit early’.

  ‘Not at all’ said Adrian. He felt his insides lurch in that way when a straight man with occasional bisexual tendencies meets another man for whom he forms an instant attraction. Tim was tall with dark blond hair and brown eyes. His face was covered in five o’clock shadow and he was wearing a long green short-sleeved t-shirt over workman’s jeans that had pockets all over them. So what did he do? Did he make suggestions about how indulging in a spot of man love doesn’t necessarily make you gay? It just makes you more sexually adventurous than the rest of your mates down the pub none of whom had the spine to even think of trying something different. Indeed, one of Adrian’s pub mates had been scared to admit that when his GP had put a finger up his arse to test for colon cancer he’d rather liked the sensation of the end of the doctor’s finger on his prostrate. He hadn’t wanted to admit it in case people thought he might have gay tendencies. Adrian had shook his head and laughed with the others though without revealing his own proclivities.

  ‘The traffic wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be’.

  ‘Where is it you’ve come from?’ asked Adrian. He looked down at Tim’s wedding ring that was spitting out poison at him like some puff adder. Mind you he’d come to realise that a wedding ring meant nothing to some these days. Indeed, sometimes it was used as a means of encouragement. He’d found out early on down this stage of his journey that some gay men made a point of being able to seduce a ‘straight’ man. That’s what some of them based their entire sex life on.

  ‘Oh just the other side of Oldham’ Joe replied. ‘I often do work on this Saddleworth side of town so I know it well’.

  ‘And how is business doing at the moment? Okay?’

  ‘It’s ticking over mate, yeah. I can’t complain really’.

  ‘Good. Well before we start can I get you a tea or coffee?’

  ‘Coffee mate, please. Milk and two sugars’.

  There was an overall vibe when straight men liked to play with other men. There were particular gestures, a way of their eyes lingering for just that moment too long. Like the guy in Crete a few holidays ago who’d been lying by the pool with his wife on the other side from where Adrian had been lying there with his late wife Penny and their three kids. The two of them had exchanged looks and when Adrian tested the waters by going off to the toilet round the side of the hotel block, the guy had followed him. They spoke. The guy told him what room he was in and Adrian followed him up there. It turned out to be the most sexually frenetic half an hour Adrian had ever known. The guy was also a Brit. A lorry driver from Southampton and they met up a couple of times after that.

  Of course in many straight men the thou
ght and the inclination were both there but they’d yet to find the courage to act upon it other than to dream about that man they’d seen in the bar when they were in the shower and knocking one out. Then there were those who liked to tease it out of others whilst never in a million years would they act upon it themselves. They wait for the other guy to make a move and then they turn nasty. They were the really dangerous ones, the ones who hate themselves because of what they feel. Adrian had been like it himself on occasion but he swore he’d never be like it again. One thing Adrian had taken to heart about life is that no matter how complicated you may feel about yourself, if you decide to take out your insecurities on other people then that makes you a very weak person indeed.

  ‘Anyway’ said Tim. ‘I don’t complain about anything these days’.

  ‘Oh? Why is that then?’

  ‘I found God last year, or rather he found me when I was at my absolute lowest point in my life’.

  Adrian was speechless for a moment or two. Of all the fucking hunky young builders to darken his door this one turns out to be a fucking born-again. He really hadn’t expected that although he now noticed a gold chain going round Tim’s neck and thought that there was probably a cross on the end of it that he couldn’t see under Tim’s t-shirt. He wanted to laugh. This was priceless.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘My business at the time was bankrupt. I was drinking away what little money we had. My wife was threatening to leave me and take our four kids with her’.

  ‘You’ve got four kids?’

  ‘The eldest is fourteen and the youngest is six months’.

  ‘Christ, your wife must’ve snatched you from the cradle to make a claim on your spunk’.

  Tim smiled. ‘Well I wouldn’t put it quite like that but I was only seventeen when Muriel fell pregnant with our Sonia’.

  ‘Muriel?’

  ‘After the Australian film Muriel’s wedding. Her parents are big fans of it’.