A Velvet Scream (7 page)

Joanna waited.

‘He took me straight home.'

Joanna smiled. Now it was time to dig a little deeper. She produced the photograph of Kayleigh that Christine had given them. ‘Did you notice this girl
inside
Patches?'

Shand hardly looked at the picture. ‘No,' he said quickly. ‘I didn't.'

Joanna kept silent for a minute, waiting for Shand to speak again when he had put two and two together. ‘Is that the girl that  . . .?'

‘It's the girl whose life you probably saved,' Joanna said.

Shand looked horrified. ‘But she looks so  . . .'

‘Young? She's fourteen.'

He shook his head. ‘No. I meant lively. Alive. You can't imagine her freezing to death and, well – ' His blue eyes looked confused as he stared at Joanna. He ran his fingers through the short, spiky brown hair, a movement that emphasized a receding hair line. ‘Dying,' he finished.

‘She was wearing a silver miniskirt,' Korpanski put in gruffly. ‘That might help to jog your memory.'

‘Oh, f—!' Shand looked shocked. Until this moment he had not connected the half-dead girl with the sexy thing who had been gyrating around him.

‘
Now
do you remember her?'

Like many weak men, Shand hid behind a lie. ‘No,' he said firmly.

But Korpanski was not going to let him off the hook so easily. ‘Sure?'

Shand looked at the burly sergeant and visibly shrank. ‘No,' he said. ‘I didn't see her last night.'

Korpanski gave him a straight, innocent stare. ‘And yet you say that the club was quiet.'

‘It weren't that quiet,' Shand said. ‘There was a few people – later on.'

‘Right.'

Joanna then produced the best print they had obtained from the CCTV pictures of their suspect. ‘What about him?'

Shand gave this a little more attention. ‘No,' he said. ‘I don't remember him.' He looked up. ‘Sorry,' he said.

‘OK. He had had a cockney accent. Did you notice anyone with a cockney accent – at the bar, maybe in the gents?'

Shand shook his head. ‘No,' he said. ‘Sorry.'

‘That's OK. So you went home in one of Sid's taxis, and presumably went to bed.'

Shand risked a moment of levity. ‘Sneaked into the spare bed, more like,' he said. ‘I didn't want to wake Claire.' Man-to-man, Korpanski and Shand exchanged a glance of shared male sympathy and Joanna felt both excluded and resentful. What was it about men that felt they had to play the part of Don Juan?

She hauled the pair of them back to the present and away from amorous dreams that they were irresistible to legions of women.

‘And this morning?' she proceeded briskly.

That wiped the smile off Shand's face. ‘I got Claire to drop me off at the car park,' he said. ‘But I couldn't get into my car. The locks were frozen. I breathed on them and tried again. Then I heard a noise. I saw a cat and thought it must be that. But I heard it again and so I thought I'd better check it out. I went towards the bins. There was piles of rubbish.' He swallowed. ‘Just lying there. And then it moved. I was so shocked. I saw it was a girl. I rang nine-nine-nine.'

‘OK,' Joanna said. ‘As I said, you almost certainly saved her life. Thank you very much. Now I wonder if you'd mind giving us your fingerprints.'

The broad, open grin that had melted away was replaced by a look of wary anger. ‘What is this?' he demanded. ‘The third degree or something? I'm not under suspicion, am I? I'm the good guy here, surely?' He looked from Joanna to Korpanski. ‘I'm the one who found her. If it wasn't for me she'd be dead, wouldn't she? You've said that. Hey,' he continued, ‘I'm the knight in shining armour here.'

Neither Mike nor Joanna could deny this. Shand persisted. ‘I'm the cavalry, mate.' He was appealing to Korpanski – as another man, Joanna observed. ‘I'm the one who called the ambulance and gave her my coat.' He looked from one to the other. ‘Why are you asking me all these questions anyway? You must know I had nothing to do with the assault on a fourteen-year-old girl.'

As Shand had elected the male option Joanna let Mike explain. ‘Purely routine, sir,' he said calmly.

The politeness didn't mollify Shand. He still looked cheated, as though he'd had a winning lottery ticket and then found someone had pinched it from his pocket.

‘Why do you want
my
prints?'

‘To exclude them from anything touched at the scene of the crime,' Joanna said.

‘I don't think I did touch anything.'

‘You almost certainly did,' Joanna insisted. ‘You'd be surprised. And it could save us a lot of time, trouble and money.' She gave him one of her wide smiles.

Shand responded and caved in. ‘All right,' he said. ‘Fine by me. So long as you destroy them after.'

‘As soon as this incident is solved, Mr Shand.'

He looked mollified at that. Joanna would have been happy to let him go, but Shand seemed to want to drive home his point.

He drew in a deep breath. ‘I was just out with a few mates. All right? Having an innocent night out with the lads. It doesn't make me a rapist.'

‘A rapist,' Joanna queried sharply. ‘Where do you get that from?'

‘Well, it's obvious there was a sexual attack, isn't it?' He was on the defensive. ‘She was hardly wearing anything when I found her. I've got a brain cell, you know. There's your interest. And the local radio station said a “serious sexual assault”. It doesn't take a lot of filling in.'

He squeezed his eyes tight shut. If only he could blot out that girl dancing provocatively in that shimmering skirt, right in front of his eyelids. Flirting.

Joanna was watching him carefully. Beads of sweat were breaking out like dew on his forehead. As though he needed to pretend they weren't there he didn't wipe them away.

She continued. ‘The description Kayleigh has been able to give us is of a tall, thin man with spiky hair, in his thirties or early forties, with a strong cockney accent. Do any of your “mates” fit that description?'

Shand shook his head decisively. He was on safer ground now. ‘No,' he said. ‘My mates are all from round here. Not a cockney amongst them. Staffordshire born and bred. Like – I – said,' he finished deliberately.

‘Right,' Joanna said and tried another tack. ‘Apart from the accent, do they fit the physical description?'

Shand thought for a moment. ‘I suppose Gary looks a bit like that,' he said reluctantly.

Mike's pen was poised over his notebook and Shand reluctantly gave him his friend's name and address.

‘And what was Gary wearing last night?'

Shand blew out through his lips. ‘I can't remember,' he said. ‘Jeans, I suppose.'

‘A coat?'

Shand shrugged. ‘Haven't a clue, mate,' he said, again addressing Korpanski. He grinned. ‘I don't really notice what my mates are wearing. More –' He stopped at that.

Korpanski took the questioning further, still in the same jokey, matey tone. ‘Did Claire mind you clubbing with a few of the “boys”?'

Shand looked angry. ‘Whatever's that got to do with this? Whether my girlfriend minded me having a bit of fun with my mates is nothing to do with this. How could it be? You're just prying.' He frowned at them both in turn and picked on Joanna as the softer target. ‘You're tryin' it on. Get a kick out of this, do you?'

‘Answer the sergeant's question,' Joanna said flatly.

‘She doesn't like it much,' Shand admitted. ‘Especially there. It's known as a bit of a knocking shop.'

‘Is that why she dropped you off this morning and didn't wait to see whether you could get into your car?'

Shand heaved a big sigh. ‘Sort of.'

Joanna shot Mike a quick glance. ‘Do us a favour,' she said, chummily addressing Shand. ‘Ask your mates if they'll pop in and make a statement, will you? Sooner rather than later.' Without waiting for him to respond, she added: ‘Thanks. You're free to go now – after you've given us your prints.'

Timmis and McBrine had got themselves a few bags of crisps and some Diet Coke and were enjoying themselves watching the CCTV shots from earlier in the evening, which had captured activities on the dance floor and around the bar. The girls were all flinging themselves around in the tiniest of clothes, some of them see-through. They got the odd flash of knicker and some very good views of cleavage and bosom. There were plenty of bumps and spills as the dancers were overambitious in their moves. There was the odd spat between women over the men and a couple of hefty chinning-ups as beer was spilt accidentally or deliberately over the odd guy. But all in all there was a reasonably amicable atmosphere in the club.

McBrine leaned forward. ‘There she is,' he said. ‘That's our Kayleigh.' The silver skirt made her easy to pick out. She seemed to be dancing alone rather than with a female friend or with a bloke. They watched her for a while. ‘Good dancer,' PC Timmis observed.

‘She's fourteen,' McBrine growled.

‘I know,' Josh Timmis replied, ‘but it's really hard to remember that when you see her move.'

‘Behave,' his pal said good-naturedly. ‘We've a job to do.'

‘Yeah.' Timmis popped open another bag of crisps then leaned forward. ‘Hey. Look at that.' Just as the man grabbed hold of Kayleigh she disappeared from view behind a gang of mixed revellers.

They rewound that bit but all they could see was a man in a white shirt putting his hand over her bottom. He pulled her towards him and then they lost her. There had been three sets of tapes; one from each of the cameras. They snapped the ring pulls of a second can of coke, split opened more cheese and onion crisps and settled back again.

Joanna met up with a few uniformed officers and quickly outlined the case and the direction of her enquiries.

‘See if you can find out anything more about Kayleigh's father,' she said to Detective Constable Danny Hesketh-Brown: a keen, fresh-faced officer from the Potteries who had been ragged mercilessly on account of his double-barrelled name but now was accepted as ‘one of the lads'. ‘One of his fishing buddies might be able to help you. I don't really think we have much to worry about there but it's as well to check.'

Hesketh-Brown nodded.

‘Also, it might be an idea to track down Neil Bretby and interview him. It might give us some insight into Kayleigh. This is still being treated as an alleged rape case,' she said to the assembled officers. ‘Looking at the CCTV footage we'll be lucky to make a positive ID from it.' Groans from the force. ‘It's too grainy and indistinct. We'll see if we can get any trace evidence from her clothes. When Kayleigh is a little better we'll do an identikit picture but she tells us he has a London accent. She was fairly obviously drunk as a skunk so we'll have a word with the owners of Patches about underage drinking and they'll have to be more careful in future about letting in under-eighteens, but for now let's concentrate on the case in hand.' She paused. ‘The fallout will come later – how come a fourteen-year-old is in a club for over-eighteens, drinking?'

‘And getting raped,' came a voice from the back.

‘Quite,' she commented dryly.

‘Timmis and McBrine – anything meaningful from the CCTV footage from inside the club?'

McBrine grinned. ‘Plenty of eye candy.'

‘
Meaningful
,' she repeated.

‘We've had a couple of sightings; her dancin' with someone but not yet, ma'am.' They were unabashed. ‘We've got another couple of tapes to go.'

‘Good.' Joanna ignored the ripple which went round the room.

‘Lucky buggers.'

‘Some people get all the luck.'

This male banter was something you had to get used to working in the police force. To the general public it may portray itself as politically correct but underneath it was as sexist as ever.

But the women were fighting back.

‘Decent
men
there too?' Hannah Beardmore asked innocently.

Joanna smiled. ‘Well, we'll be interviewing anyone who feels they have something to contribute and I'll put something out in the press. Dawn, how did the meeting between Kayleigh and her mother go?'

‘Frosty, to say the least. No love lost between those two. They really hate each other.'

‘Any idea why the feelings run so deep?'

Dawn shook her head. ‘Apart from the obvious: Kayleigh having robbed her mother of married bliss.' She met Joanna's eyes squarely. ‘I'd say that's enough, Joanna.'

‘OK. I'm treating the London accent as an important lead.' She deployed a few officers to check in the shops, pubs and hotels. ‘If our perp is from out of the area he must have stayed somewhere. If we come up with nothing from Leek we can widen the area to cover Stoke, Stone and Macclesfield. I'll also be doing a broadcast on local radio and we'll see if that bears fruit. Anything else?'

There wasn't and the officers dispersed.

FIVE

Thursday, 2 December. 8 a.m.

S
he dressed carefully and nervously in a grey skirt suit, cream silk blouse and black court shoes, feeling as though she was dressing for a funeral – her own. She brushed her hair, applied the lightest of make-up, feeling sick with dread as she peered at herself in the mirror and saw how pale and apprehensive she looked. Matthew came behind her, grinned at her into the mirror and put his arms around her. ‘Good luck,' he said, kissing the back of her neck. She turned around to face him, Korpanski's words about Matthew wanting a ‘wife at home plus kids' biting into her. ‘You'd probably be pleased if I lost my job, wouldn't you, Matt?'

He shook his head. ‘No, I wouldn't because it wouldn't be you, Jo.' He tilted her chin up, kissed her on the lips then searched her face. ‘I can't imagine you at home all the time, going out to lunch? No thanks. It wouldn't be you.' Oddly enough this was one of the few times he chose to mention his ex-wife. ‘That's what Jane was like: happy to chitter-chatter with her socialite friends, days out to London, shopping, partying, going to the theatre, that sort of stuff.' His green eyes clouded. ‘I was just a provider. She was never interested in my work or my opinion or anything. She had her own friends and didn't like my medic friends.' He frowned. ‘She found them boring. We had nothing in common, Jo.' He gave a short laugh. ‘Can you believe it? I was married but I was lonely. Really lonely.' He dropped his arm around her shoulders and she was aware that however strange the timing this was one of the most honest, deep and heart-searching confessions he had ever made to her. He continued. ‘When I met you I felt we connected.' He smiled, kissed her again and his face lightened. ‘Now that's enough of this maudlin, self-pitying talk. Let's just leave it at this: I can't imagine you being anything other than what you are, Joanna Piercy, soon to be Mrs Levin. I love you the way you are, I promise. And don't forget, we're going out for dinner tomorrow night whatever happens.'