Death Call (16 page)

The stairwell was dark and the handrail, which he knew to be red, felt cold to the touch as he made his way up. Stopping at the top of the stairs he thought of Sarah, who would be in bed by now waiting for him to return, so that she could get to sleep. She had never been able to sleep until he had come home. But it would be some time yet before Sarah would sleep.

Carroll pressed the little black button on the intercom system and waited for a reply.

‘City Slickers Escort Agency, what can I do to you?’ Carroll recognised Jeanie’s voice immediately.

‘This is DS Dan Carroll, I spoke to you about Isabella Visi....’

‘Just a moment,’ Jeanie said, pressing the entrance buzzer so Carroll could enter the reception area.

Carroll pushed the door back and walked in. Jeanie was sat where he remembered her sitting when he and Grant had come to ask her a few questions. She looked better than he remembered.

‘Well, well. What can I do for you, DS Carroll?’ Jeanie asked, smiling.

‘Remember what you said about coming up to see you?’

‘Is this a social call?’

‘You could say that I suppose,’ Carroll said, feeling more than a little nervous. It was the first time that he had ever considered having sex with a prostitute.

‘So you want to do some business then?’

‘Yeah, some business.’

‘Well, we only have the one girl here at the moment and she’s due to go out on a call. You might have to wait a while....’

‘What about you? I thought you worked as well?’

‘It’s me you want then?’ Jeanie asked, smiling seductively.

‘Yeah, that’s why I came here. For you. Is that okay?’

‘I haven’t really been working as such for a few months – I’ve more or less stopped and confined my self to desk duties, sergeant....’

‘Dan – call me Dan.’

‘Well, I suppose I could take care of you,’ Jeanie said, still wearing that damned sexy smile.

‘Well then?’

‘Come with me. In here,’ she gestured, leading Carroll toward the room that lay to the back of the reception. The room where he had seen the two young women pleasuring each other with their mouths. The room with a bed in it. The room he had been thinking about for the last day or so. Only now he wasn’t thinking – now he was doing.

****

Noel Harrigan was always to be found with a pipette or some such piece of scientific apparatus in his lily-white hands. Between petri dishes and glass slides, Noel Harrigan did his job. A job that made life much easier for the likes of detectives Carroll and Grant.

The merest trace of a body hair, a skin or semen sample, and Harrigan would have it analysed in a matter of days, giving the investigating officer every possible detail that could help them make an arrest.

His white coat and his red, fuzzy hair, singled Harrigan out as something of a mad scientist in Carroll’s book. It was just the uniform of the job, but to Dan, it looked like the kind of thing you’d see in a Frankenstein movie. Science amazed and terrified him all at the same time. The only science he was interested in was biology, and the lesson that young Jeanie had given him. Now that was the kind of science that he could get to grips with.

Harrigan removed his protective goggles and gestured to the two detectives, who were waiting at the door to his laboratory. It all seemed so white and clean in there, Grant thought, almost afraid to touch anything.

Carroll opened the bidding this time.

‘Well, Noel, what’s the story? I take it that we have one suspect for both killings, yeah?’

‘Correct. Have you spoken to Henry about this yet?’ Harrigan asked.

‘Yeah, we saw him the other day, but he hadn’t really finished up on the report. Still, we got what we needed. Do you have anything more for us?’ Carroll asked.

‘Well, apart from the fact that she was with three men on the day she was murdered, and that I found traces of Joanne McCrae’s killer’s semen in her, there really isn’t anything new. The crime scene was something of a mess, as you know. Blood everywhere. That tends to make it a little more difficult to pin down the evidence. The other problem, of course, is that she was murdered on the bed. It just slowed down the tests a little, as we had to arrange to get samples of hair from the Slater family – so we could eliminate them, you know?’

‘Yeah. So we already know that it was the same guy who killed Joanne McCrae?’ Grant asked.

‘I’m almost positive of that, Detective Grant. The odds against it being him are something like five million to one. The hair and semen samples match up.’

‘Okay, so she’d had three men that day, and presumably our man was the last...’ Carroll said, thinking aloud.

‘That much is obvious,’ Grant said.

‘I know, I know – I’m just thinking aloud....’

‘There’s not really much more for me to tell you on this, boys,’ Harrigan said, twiddling a pencil in his hands. ‘I’ve done as much as I can on the case.’

‘What about that earring that I gave you – can you tell us whether it was from the killer?’

‘The earring?’ Grant said, forgetting the earring that Samantha Gibson had given to Carroll when he went back to question them after Jo McCrae’s murder.

‘The earring belongs to the murderer. I’ve established that much. It looks like it was ripped out of his ear. There was even a little flesh left on it....’ Harrigan smiled. ‘That must’ve bloody well hurt!’

Harrigan seemed anxious to get back to work. He said he was working on a multiple murder involving three children and their mother. The cops had the father in custody, but he wasn’t saying anything. The mother had been stabbed to death in the shower and the three little girls had been smothered in their beds. It was just a matter of time before the evidence pointed to the father, according to Harrigan. Another day, another murder. It was part of the job. A job that left you feeling more than a little cold inside. Cold at the thought of having to prove that the little girls’ father had in fact smothered them, having first stabbed their mother to death. Presumably for some supposed transgression or illicit affair. That was usually the motive behind those kind of cases – sex. Shit, Carroll thought, sex is behind most cases when you think of it that way. Sex and money. The only two things that regularly lead people to murder. But what is it that drives people to sex? Quiet desperation? Loneliness? Fear? A desire to feel loved? Carroll wasn’t really sure – despite the fact that whatever emotion it was that he was trying to put his finger on, it had driven him to the City Slickers Escort Agency in the early hours of Sunday morning. It had emptied him of his guilt, his tension, his fear of death. Sex always took away the fear of death, replacing it with a distinct fear of life and unimaginable guilt.

Harrigan smiled and told them he’d do what he could if they found anymore evidence. But there was no more evidence. At least not yet. Carroll and Grant still had a few doors to knock on at the rear of number 12 Baalbec Street, from where the killer made his escape. Surely someone had noticed something that afternoon. Four thirty in the afternoon. A time when kids are coming home from school and mothers are struggling home with the shopping in an effort to get the dinner ready. Somewhere out there was a witness. A man, maybe a woman, who has seen a man in a sweat-top running down Baalbec Lane, to the rear of the house. A man with a hood covering his face on a day when it wasn’t raining. A man covered from head to toe in blood. The blood of a young Italian prostitute, whose parents would never understand why their daughter had to die.

Chapter 17

DCI Jones was okay when everything was running smoothly. But things never ran smoothly in his station and, as a result, he was always more or less grouchy and picking holes in the work of his officers.

There wasn’t much you could do about that, but when it came to having him pick through your work, it was a bit too much. Carroll had complained to Grant about it, following yet another dressing down on their lack of progress.

‘Results, results, results,’ Jones had said. ‘That’s what you get paid for. Not driving around pretending to be cops!’

Carroll had just smiled at him and said nothing, letting him vent his rage. Once he had calmed down a little, Carroll began to tell him of their next step – the questioning of the people who owned the houses behind Baalbec Street, who may have seen some suspicious activity on the afternoon that Isabella Visi’s body was discovered. Jones scratched his beard and told them to get on with it and stop making his life difficult. The Chief Superintendent had been on to him and had given him a verbal ear-bashing following Carroll’s little media speech. The papers were now running all sorts of stories about a serial-killer who was on the loose. They even made the guy out to be a cannibal in one particular paper, and had illustrated their story with the picture of a recently executed Russian cannibal who was found to have murdered and eaten over fifty people. The press were having a field day on the killings and the Chief Superintendent was not enjoying the Keystone Cops comparisons that were being made with his division. Things had better shape up very, very quickly, he had told Jones. And now Jones was telling Carroll. It was a pity that no one could tell the killer this, Dan thought. Always at the end of the delegatory line, always....

Back at their desks, Grant had once again given Carroll the silent treatment, as if to blame him for their lack of progress. He just sat back in his chair and looked at his new partner with an air of resignation which, roughly translated, read something like: ‘Why in the name of God did I get you?’

There was no answer to that, Carroll thought, wondering why he too, had been saddled with such a sad bastard.

Carroll offered his partner a cup of coffee as a sort of peace-making gesture, and Grant accepted. As Dan had began to pour the foul-smelling liquid from coffee pot to mug, the phone on his desk rang. Grant answered it and Dan continued pouring. He had a funny feeling that he wasn’t going to get to drink that cup of coffee. He was right.

The desk sergeant had just taken a call from Tracy Goode, who was looking for Carroll or Grant. She wanted to talk to them, he had said. She said she’d be home all afternoon. Grant thanked the man and turned to his partner.

‘Tracy Goode just rang and left a message. She wants a word with us, but didn’t say what it was about. Could be important. What do you think?’ Grant said, taking his coffee from Carroll.

‘I think we’d best get over to Highbury and have a word with her, see what’s on her mind. She was helpful with Jo McCrae’s details, wasn’t she?’

‘But this could be anything....’

‘Then why did she ask for us? It must have something to do with McCrae – maybe she’s got a bit more information for us....’

With an air of resignation, Grant put down his steaming coffee mug and reached for his coat.

‘Shall we?’

‘Yeah, why not – the coffee’s shite, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, it is. Can’t you do anything right?’

‘There are some things I do better than anybody else – but unfortunately you’ll never find out what they are, Sam, seeing as you’re a man....’

Grant shook his head in disbelief and headed for the door.

Tracy Goode’s apartment still confused Grant. It was just too nice for a hooker to have, he thought, as he pressed the button on her intercom system.

‘Hello?’ Grant said, expectantly.

‘Who is it?’ came a female voice.

‘It’s the police – DC Grant and DS Carroll. Is that you, Tracy?’

‘Just a minute, I’ll be down – the buzzer isn’t working....’ The intercom fell silent, and the noise was quickly replaced by the sound of someone coming down a flight of stairs. The door opened. It was Tracy Goode.

‘You rang us up earlier today, Tracy?’ Grant said, opening the way for Tracy to talk.

‘Yeah, I might have some information for you – you’d better come in – I don’t want people seeing the police on my doorstep....’

For an instant Grant understood why people called the police ‘pigs’ – who’d want a pig on their doorstep for the neighbours to see? Tracy Goode wasn’t above selling herself down on the Cross, but she was above being seen with detectives from CID. Figure that one out, he thought to himself.

Tracy worked her way up the stairs in a less than graceful manner, wiggling her ass like a seasoned pro. Shit, she was a seasoned pro, Carroll thought, reminded of the way Jeanie had made her moves on him. Very professional indeed. It was a nice warm thought, albeit slightly tinged with guilt. Tracy was wearing well for her age, and didn’t look like she was on the junk.

At the top of the stairs, the sound of a crying child filled the air. It wasn’t a worried sounding screech – more of a pick-me-up-and-love-me sort of sound. Tracy picked up her daughter, sat on the sofa and bounced her gently on her knee. The crying subsided. Carroll sat in an old armchair, and Grant stood. He’s as uncomfortable as ever, Dan thought, sitting back.

‘Well, what’ve you got for us, Tracy?’ Carroll asked.