03-Savage Moon (3 page)

Jon felt himself frowning. What had happened to her sense of humour? He thought back, trying to remember the last time he'd heard her laughing. When she was working as a beautician she'd always be giggling, relaying the gossip from the salon, recounting Melvyn's outrageous exploits in the Gay Village. Too much time in the house, that was the problem. He hooked a frizzy strand of hair from her face. 'Hey Ali, why don't you leave Holly with my mum and nip into Melvyn's for a haircut? Your work mates, they'd love to see you.'

'It's not a barber's, Jon. He'll be fully booked for days.' Suddenly she shuddered. 'You've put me off now. We'll probably end up going to the Trafford Centre.'

Jon pictured the gargantuan shopping centre on the eastern edge of Manchester. 'I'd rather take my chances with the Monster of the Moor than the hordes of zombies shuffling around in that place. And give Melvyn a call; the treat's on me, all right?'

Three

Half an hour later Jon was grinding a cigarette out in the car park of Longsight police station.

Much to Alice's disapproval, he'd been smoking again since his involvement in the hunt for the Butcher of Belle Vue that had taken place earlier that year. It had culminated in a major clash with his SIO, DCI McCloughlin. In the pressure cooker environment of a major investigation, one such occurence might not have been problematic, but it was a repeat of a similar falling out they'd had on the Chewing Gum killer case the year before.

Nothing had been explicitly said, but it was no surprise to Jon when he wasn't among the officers named to work with McCloughlin on his next case. Instead, he'd been moved to DCI Edward Summerby's syndicate. The man was white-haired, overweight and due to retire next year. Jon wasn't that bothered

– he was finding it impossible to cope with McCloughlin's dictatorial style anyway.

The only problem was that the less demanding cases were being farmed out to Summerby in the run up to his retirement. The result was that Jon found himself walking down the corridor to a side room, where he made up a team of one trying to catch the assailant of men skulking round car parks looking for casual sex. How fucking sad, he thought, knowing it was a fairly commonplace practice. A natural consequence, he concluded, of a society that, despite all its comforts and luxuries, left many feeling isolated and alone. So they jumped into their cars in search of contact with other humans.

His smoking went up and down in its frequency. Some days he hardly touched them, but on others the nicotine was a vital way of perking him up. You're just tired, he told himself, not wanting to admit that the job he so loved could be starting to bore him. Stifling a yawn, he pressed the buttons on a dispensing machine and watched as a spindly stream of black coffee fell into the plastic cup below. The liquid died away to a succession of droplets like the end of a piss. He picked up the cup and entered the side room.

As he made his way over to his desk in the corner, a few colleagues working on a fraud case acknowledged him with a lift of an eyebrow or a tilt of a head. None smiled: there was a tarred brush dangling above DI Spicer and no one wanted to get too near.

He sat down, glanced at his in-tray and turned on his computer. Increasingly this was now his routine – sitting at a desk and spending all day staring at his screen or shuffling paper.

The search of the crime scene at the car park hadn't revealed anything other than the trail of blood. A sample had been taken and tested for DNA, but there was no match on the national database. Following that, Jon had placed an incident board at the end of the car park giving the time and date of the attack and requesting that anyone with information call his number. The phone hadn't gone once.

He'd even parked there himself one evening and approached car drivers as they pulled up. It was amazing how many men had 'got lost', 'made a wrong turn' or were 'looking for a toilet' as he produced his badge.

When he decided to approach a car with his identification hidden, he'd been greeted by the sight of a fifty-year-old man sitting with his flies wide open. His penis was jutting upwards like an extra gear stick. Jon almost nicked him for gross indecency. When he returned the next night he was the only one there; word obviously spread fast within that particular community.

He wondered how his partner in the Butcher of Belle Vue investigation would handle things. DS Rick Saville was a graduate on the accelerated promotion scheme. He had a razor- sharp eye for detail and an ability to relax people when questioning them. He was also gay – perhaps he could provide a few pointers. Last he'd heard, Rick was back at the Greater Manchester Police's headquarters at Chester House on a rotation with police complaints. Maybe he'd give him a ring and suggest a beer at the Bull's Head.

He lifted the few pieces of paper in his in-tray. There was a response from the communications liaison unit letting him know that the person who'd called 999 on the night of the incident had done so from a pay-as-you-go mobile. The chance of tracing him from his phone records had just vanished.

With a sigh, Jon looked at the next sheet of paper.

Confirmation from the A&E department at North Manchester General hospital that no one on the night of the twenty-fifth had been treated for injues consistent with being repeatedly hit with an iron bar. Just like every other hospital in the region.

He picked up the final piece of paper, a status report from the two civilian assistants who were helping him on an intermittent basis. Jon had got a list of vehicles with licence plates that began MA03 then had the letter H in the remainder of the registration. There were several thousand of them.

Of the vehicles registered to drivers in the Greater Manchester area, many were smaller models or saloons, some were four- wheel drives and around a third were estates. So began the aspect of police work Jon detested most – the laborious trawl through a massive list, slowly crossing off possibilities one by one.

The person who'd dialled 999 had described the attacker as a lad: so he'd gone through the list of estate drivers under the age of twenty-five checking for any with a record for violence. There were fourteen of them, but all appeared to have solid alibis for the night of the attack.

After that, he'd requested that his civilian assistants call every local car owner under the age of twenty-five from the list and ask if they could give their whereabouts on the evening the incident took place. Whenever their questions were met with vague or elusive answers the civilians flagged the call and gave the details to Jon for following up.

It was a tenuous way to go about an investigation and the process was worsened by the fact that his assistants were rarely available to actually help him. Time and time again they were being commandeered by DCI McCloughlin to provide back-up in his pursuit of an armed gang terrorising post offices around Salford.

His phone rang. 'DI Spicer here.'

'Jon, it's DCI Summerby.'

'Morning, Sir,' Jon replied, sitting up straighter.

'Morning. I have ten minutes if you're not too busy. Just wanting to see how things are progressing down there.'

Jon rolled his eyes. 'I'll be straight up.'

As he slipped the pieces of paper in his report book he thought about his boss. DCI Summerby's style of management couldn't have been more different to that of his old boss, DCI McCloughlin.

Summerby was softly spoken and led through a permissive approach, involving his officers in the decision-making process and giving them as much autonomy as he could in the investigation.

McCloughlin, gruff and bristly, was far more autocratic. He took decisions on his own then issued sets of commands to his team. And if an officer strayed from his designated role McCloughlin didn't like it – as Jon had discovered to his cost.

He climbed the stairs and knocked on Summerby's door before opening it.

'Jon, come in.'

He stepped into the room, immediately noticing that the window was wide open despite the crisp chill to the morning.

'Beautiful day, isn't it? Shame to be stuck in an office,' said Summerby, hand cutting through a ray of sunlight as he gestured to the chair on the other side of his desk. Jon had a sudden image of him pruning a garden. 'Though you look like you've been up well before dawn's rosy fingers crept over the horizon.'

Jon gave a crooked smile, aware of the dark smears of skin below his eyes. 'You're not wrong,' he replied, running a hand through the cropped brown hair on his head.

Summerby gave a sympathetic smile. 'How is the baby?'

'Fine, thanks. Eating for England she is.' He glanced at the photos on the wall of two young men, mortar boards on their heads, academic gowns draped from their shoulders. 'I bet you can hardly remember the horrors of night feeds.'

Summerby linked his fingers and looked off to the side. 'True. You only remember the good times I'm pleased to say. Anyway, how's this case going?'

Jon tried to keep his voice from sounding too negative. 'Not much headway so far, Sir. The person who reported the incident called on a pay-as-you-go phone, so that's a non-starter. No hospital in the area treated anyone for blunt trauma injuries to the head that night. I'm currently working my way through the car registrations, but progress is slow I'm afraid. My civilian assistants seem to be spending all their time on Operation Stamp.'

'McCloughlin's post office investigation?' Summerby looked slightly irritated.

Jon nodded.

'Let me make a call. We'll get you an agreed number of hours since the man seems unable to stick to an informal arrangement.' Glad to have some support behind him, Jon smiled inwardly.

'How about the request for information at the scene?'

Jon thought about the forlorn incident board sitting at the end of the car park. 'Nothing from that, Sir.'

'And your own efforts? Didn't you visit the car park a couple of times yourself ?'

'No luck there either, Sir,' he replied, cringing at the memory.

Summerby leaned back. 'Well, keep plugging away. How many more to get through on the car registration list?'

'We've almost gone through every owner aged under twenty- five. I'll open up the rest of the list today, though I think we'll be very lucky to get anything from this line of enquiry.'

'I'm afraid I agree,' murmured Summerby. 'Still, look at it this way. It's the ideal case for an officer with a young baby. No long hours, no running around. Use the time wisely, Jon. We'll give it another week and I'll have to look at moving you to something else.'

'OK, Sir.' Jon got up, wondering if he'd die of frustration before then.

He headed down the corridor and opened the doors to the station's main incident room. Around a dozen officers were busy on the phones, civilian assistants were typing up reports and the allocator was giving out a load of actions to a group of plain- clothes detectives.

Jon glanced hungrily at the whiteboards, eyes moving over the grainy CCTV stills of the balaclava-clad gang. Dotting the board were photos of the burnt-out getaway cars from each robbery.

From the corner of his eye, he saw McCloughlin staring at him from his inner office, hands on hips. What are you doing on my territory? his posture demanded.

Fuck you, Jon thought, savouring the prospect of the phone call his former boss was about to receive from Summerby. He looked around and spotted one of his civilian assistants at her desk nearby. A glamorous-looking woman in her forties, she was elbow deep in piles of witness statements. 'Hi there, Pam, how's it going?'

'It's Pat,' she coughed, and Jon cursed his inability to remember names. 'Not too bad. We've got a lot of typing to do.'

He noticed the note of impatience in her voice. Obviously my trivial demands are inconveniencing you, he reflected.

'Looks like it,' Jon replied, keeping his voice friendly as he removed the list of car registrations from his book. 'When you get the chance, can you start calling these owners?'

She gave a heavy sigh. 'Yes. But I don't know when, it's very busy in here.'

Jon lowered his voice. 'Don't worry, you're about to be allotted some time for it. I'll make a start on these ones.' He removed the top three sheets from the list and left her to it.

He spent the rest of the morning working his way through the numbers, frequently getting answer machines at people's homes. Many were recorded by women – wives or partners. Jon left terse messages, asking the man to call him as soon as possible and not giving a reason why.

Pat walked into his side room just before lunch with a piece of paper in her hand. 'DI Spicer, I think I've got something for you.'

'Go ahead,' he replied, motioning at the spare seat opposite.

'Well, DCI McCloughlin instructed us to spend the morning on your calls.' She gave him a look that spoke volumes about McCloughlin's manner when he gave the command. 'Anyway, this man's answers were most odd.'

'How do you mean?' Jon asked, placing his elbows on the table.

'Well, I started off in the usual way. Said I was with the Greater Manchester Police and explained we were investigating an assault that took place in the car park at Silburn Grove last Thursday night. Well, he immediately asked how I had his phone number.'

'And?'

'I told him a car with a registration very similar to his was seen leaving the scene. He became very flustered and asked me to repeat when and where the incident took place, but I could tell he was just playing for time. When I asked if he drove an estate car he started complaining about his right to privacy and then hung up.'

For the first time in days, Jon felt the blood quickening in his veins. 'How old did he sound to you?'

'Not young. Hard to say, forty or over?'

'Really?' The answer caught Jon by surprise. The person who dialled 999 had described the attacker as a lad, not someone over forty. Perhaps we've tracked down the victim of the incident, he thought, taking the sheet of paper from her. A large star had been drawn next to a name near the bottom of the page,

DEREK PETERSON,

5 BURMAN STREET, CLAYTON.