Dying Eyes (2 page)

DS Cassy Emerson certainly hadn’t failed to notice it, though. She was leaning against the bookcase in Price’s office as Brian entered and flicked a nervous smile in his direction. She had to hide any sign of amusement, contact or sympathy, of course, in case Price decided to bollock her, too.

Price waddled over to Brian and pulled the coffee out of his hand. The hairs in his nostrils were growing bushier by the day. “Nice of you to bring me my morning coffee,” he said before taking a swig.
Fucker
. Brian waited for Price’s eyes, bothered by the heat, to sting and twitch, but he simply washed the drink around his cheeks and took another large gulp.

“Sorry for being late aga‌–‌”

“Ah, shut your face,” Price said.

Brian looked at Cassy, who moved her gaze back towards the ground, her arms wrapped around her front. Recently promoted to Acting Detective Sergeant, she was more accustomed to taking shit than Brian. Had only been working in Preston for a few months, too, after transferring from Bolton. But that’s just the way it was‌–‌the further you climbed up the ladder, the more people there were to shout at, the fewer to shout at you. Bullshit rolled downhill, and she didn’t want to be at the bottom anymore.

Brian cleared his throat. At least his headache wasn’t as intense now. There was no way in hell he could’ve put up with this grumpy bastard otherwise. Every cloud had a silver lining…

“What have you got?” Brian asked.

Price took another gulp of coffee. “I thought you’d never ask.” Some of the coffee dribbled down his chin as his cheeks puffed out like a hamster’s pouches. He picked up a newspaper and threw it over to Brian. “I’m guessing you haven’t seen the news this morning.”

No photograph. Just a bold, strong headline:

NEW YEAR TRAGEDY FOR PROSTITUTE GIRL.

Brian looked back at Cassy, who was still quiet, arms folded. “So…‌there’s a girl been murdered?”

“Your crash course briefing today is from the fucking
Lancashire News
,” Price said. “One of the residents around the crime scene thought a morning call to the journalists would be more appropriate than a call to the police, and you know how the
Lancashire News
is acting with us lately. We’ve not even put a name on the girl yet. Some bloke just so happened to find this poor soul dead in her flat. Foster Road.” He grabbed a sandwich from his desk and held it up to his mouth, even though the lettuce was going brown. “No prizes for guessing what he was up to down Foster Road, but anyway. You two know each other already, and you’ll both be leading this investigation, so you’d better get down to Foster Road before the bloodies find something else to moan about.”

Brian flicked the front page of the newspaper over.
The bloodies.
Price’s name for the crime scene investigators.
“Always stating the bloody obvious, those lot,”
he’d say.
“Get paid for absolutely nothing.”

“How does the newspaper know she’s a prostitute?” Cassy asked. It was the first time she’d spoken since Brian entered.

Price glared at her. “Emerson, have you ever
been
down Foster Road? Or were there no such things as prostitution hotspots in Bolton?”

Cassy opened her mouth to reply, but thought better of it and looked down at her shoes.

In the newspaper, the same old stories. A dog had learned to talk, or some crap like that. A rising charity company received funds for an awareness fair. Local businessman fiddled with taxes. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Having a good read, Detective?”

Brian looked up at Price and shuffled the newspaper pages shut. “Sorry, Price‌–‌”

“It’s
fucking
Detective Inspector, okay?”

“Detective Inspector, Detective Inspector. I’m guessing the CSI are already there to‌–‌?”

“Of course they bloody well are,” Price exploded. His face was so red that a pinprick could have burst it.

Brian walked towards the door, smiling at Price as well as he could. He gestured for Cassy to walk ahead of him.

“Crime scene investigators,” Price mumbled under his breath. “Crime scene investigators. Who the bloody hell are they kidding?”

Brian shut the door. He turned ‘round to face the office, who stared at him, stunned at the lack of battle wounds. “Got yourself fired yet?” Stephen asked, his ventriloquist’s dummy grin poking above his computer screen.

Brian laughed. “Actually, I’ve gone and got myself the dead prostitute case. What’s it you’re working on at the moment? Getting your pin dick up?”

Stephen sat red-faced as the rest of the office erupted with laughter, whooping and clapping their hands.

“Still got it, Granddad,” DC Forbes shouted, his oval glasses shaking as he chuckled.

“As a matter of fact‌–‌” Stephen squirmed, refusing to back down‌–‌”I’m investigating a new street drug. Dramatically lowers inhibitions. Almost unidentifiable when blended with cannabis.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Brian walked away from Molfer, who continued to argue his case. “Come on, you.” Brian smiled at Cassy. “Better get this scene checked out.”

Foster Road wasn’t too far from the offices. Then again, nothing was too far from anything in the city centre. It was hardly a sprawling place. Still, the residents found plenty of fresh things to moan about. Sometimes, the lack of cycle lanes. Other times, the distance between the bus station and the train station.
Lazy shits.

Other cars already perched outside the flats as men in black leather coats with cameras flashed away. Yellow tape bridged the gap between the main road and the claustrophobic alleyway.

As Brian opened the car door, he noticed the handle had gone stiff. He turned to Cassy, who smirked.

“Quit messing about, Cas.”

“What you gonna do? You shit yourself whenever you’re around Price, and he’s an old fart. What you gonna do to me?” She thumped him in the arm playfully.

“Whatever.” Brian rubbed his arm. He liked Cassy. She was a tough, smart cop, new to the game over the last few years. “A new generation of officers,”
her previous employers at Bolton said. Price probably hated her for that reason, but then again, Price hated everybody. It probably didn’t help that she was a woman. Hardly ticking many boxes on Price’s “Perfect Police Officer” checklist.

The two of them got out of the car and immediately caught the eye of a nearby journalist. He rushed over with his camera like a fly towards dung, his gelled-back hair and thick-rimmed glasses hiding that punchable face underneath.

“Detective Sergeant, is there any news on the identity of the‌–‌”

Cassy pushed him away and he tripped backwards like a diving footballer. Brian kept his head down and walked towards the alleyway of flats. More journalists flocked around their fallen comrade like alarmed ants.

“Cheers for that,” Brian said, when Cassy caught up.

“I did it for me, not for you.” Cassy looked up and winked at Brian before they crossed the yellow tape and slipped through into the alleyway beside Foster Road.

The door to the house, painted in a flaking white, was wedged open, and the dim glow of a light crept out. The nearby buzz of voices echoed from the room like whispers in a museum. Brian turned to Cassy and handed her a blue, disposable forensic paper suit, which he knew would be several sizes too large for her. “Ladies first,” he said as they stood by the door.

Cassy pulled a false smile as the paper suit dangled over her neck before thumping his arm again and leading the way inside. “Tellytubbie ‘Tectives!” she said.

The first thing Brian noticed on the girl was the purple bruises around her neck. Then the plastic ties around her ankles, cutting into her paling flesh.

The “bloodies” were already at the scene, sniffing out clues and evidence like well-trained dogs. One of the men in a clear coat turned to face Brian and sighed. Jake Coolham, crime scene manager.

“What do we have?” Brian asked.

Jake slipped his glove off and grabbed a Soft Mint out of his pocket before tossing it down his throat, his flabby neck shaking as he gulped it down. Handling a dead girl, then tossing Soft Mints into his mouth. Brian tried to keep a straight face as Cassy cringed.

“Girl. Obviously.” His cheeks wobbled as he spoke.

Nice sense of humour, too.

“Probably early twenties. By the nature of the wounds, I’d say she was probably held down, forced into submission, something like that.”

Brian edged over to the side of the bed. The room was low on light and dingy, the air moist with sweat.

The girl was completely naked. Her eyes were open wider than seemed humanly possible, staring up in absolute terror at the ghost of her killer above. Around her ankles, sharp plastic ties squeezed into her flesh, piercing the skin. Bruises covered her pale, goose-pimpled body, and a blue one gripped around her neck. Fear lingered in her dead eyes‌–‌the realisation of her imminent fate glaring out between thick, stained eyeliner.

Brian put a plastic glove on and crouched down beside her. The goose pimples looked permanently engrained, crafted into her skin like a waxwork model. “Nothing at all on who she could be?”

Jake shrugged. “We’re not sure yet. In fact, we’re not sure about anything. No one’s come forward about her after the vultures leaked the news. Probably just a whore, no family to give a shit, you know? Which makes it even more difficult for us. Thing is, she doesn’t seem like your typical whore. No signs of malnutrition. No obvious signs of drug abuse. Looks a little grubby, but I bet she was a looker when she was scrubbed up.”

Brian turned to Jake, took a deep breath, and moved to the other side of the room. A candle that had burned out long ago poured solid wax onto a fresh pack of unopened Durex on the bedside table.

“It’s a shame for the girl,” Jake said. “No one to spend Christmas or New Year with, now no one to look out for her. Real shame.”

“Any prints? Hairs? Anything like that?” Brian looked around the room. An empty glass, red lipstick coating the surface, gathered dust beside the bed.

“The room’s covered in ‘em,” Jake said. “As you’d expect from a filthy whorehouse like this, really.”

Brian sighed. Hundreds of men and women would have been in here at some stage. Then again, with no identity for the girl, at least hundreds would narrow it down slightly from every damn person in Preston. “Get all the prints checked. We’ll see what we can do with them.”

Jake began to dust an empty glass. “I’ll do my best, but you know what forensics is like for timing these days. Budget cuts‌–‌who needs ‘em?”

Jake was right. Since the new government had been elected, every area of the police department was being squeezed to the point of incompetence.

“You get the idiots on the streets‌–‌the idiots in the press‌–‌blaming us for everything,” Jake said, moving in to dust the bedside table. “If they want to complain, they should take it to bloody Downing Street!”

“What was she holding?” Cassy called as Brian rubbed his head and walked towards the door for some air. His headache was beginning to sear again.

“What d’you mean, ‘holding’?” Brian turned to Cassy. She crouched down by the girl’s side, looking at her fingers.

“Her nails.” Cassy frowned intently at the girl’s lifeless fingers. “They’re dug right into her hand. It’s as if she was holding on to something.”

The girl continued to stare up towards the ceiling in fear. “I dunno,” he said. “Holding on for dear life, probably. Who found the girl?”

“Well, ‘anonymous report’. You know how they are around here. Place is practically the Amsterdam of the north. No one wants to admit any involvement or anything like that. But the bloke next door
was
lurking about a lot…‌Seemed very interested in everything, more so than anybody else. Just saying, that’s all.”

Brian crept out of the doorway and leaned his arms against either side of the door. The alleyway was narrow and unkempt, the smell of damp brickwork strong in the air. There was a series of four to five black doors, before a set of stairs that lead to another row of flats. He turned to the door next to the room they were in and nodded at Cassy. “We’ll have a word with him after we’ve bagged and tagged everything for forensics.”

The alleyway that broke off Foster Road was like all inner-city alleyways; damp, run-down, and not very pleasant. After gathering everything they needed for forensics, Brian stepped across the broken glass under his feet and walked towards the corroding door of the neighbour who had been lurking around the police and the press. Brian hoped for his own sake that the
Lancashire News
wouldn’t pay him out for breaking the story. The last thing they needed was the incentivisation of crime.

Dry paint flaked from the door’s surface as Brian knocked. Cassy twitched and sighed beside him.

“What you getting so het up about?” Brian asked.

“This bastard sold the poor girl out to that journo before contacting us. No time for lowlifes like that.”

“Ah, you’ve got a lot to learn about the world, girl.”

“Don’t patronise me.” Cassy frowned at him. “Just because you’ve got a morbid view of anything and everything doesn’t mean you have to rub it off on everybody.”

“I’m not patronising you. It’s just called life experience. Come back to me when you’ve got more of it.” He winked at her.

Cassy smiled back. “Life experience, right. How are your wife and kid again?”

Brian felt the weight of a bus hitting him. His smile completely crumbled to the ground. It was a good job the door in front of them opened, or he’d have had to dig himself a hole to fall down.

Brian cleared his throat and stepped ahead of Cassy. He didn’t want her to see his cheeks flushing.

The man at the door had short hair and a big jaw that seemed to shoot itself out of his pea head. A mole protruded from underneath his eye. It was hard to tell whether he was smiling or pulling a funny face. He waited to be spoken to.

“Mr…?”

“Ad,” the man spat. “What you doing? I’ve already had police around fucking asking me que‌–‌”

“Mr. Ad,” Cassy said, slicing through the man’s rant. “We just want to clear up a few things so we can work it out in our own heads, okay?”