Gut Instinct (10 page)

Stephen pulled into the station it was five fifteen he had arranged a briefing for six o’clock.  As he got out of his car his heart dropped.  The press!  How the hell had they got information this quick?

He walked towards the entrance head down and pushed his way through the small crowd of vultures
who
were hungry for a story.

“Detective Roberts, is there any link between this murder and the Jane Smith murder two weeks ago?” shouts one of them.

No reply.

“Detective Roberts do you think this a serial killer?”

Fuck! He thought how the hell
had
they
got hold of that one.  If that Paul was anything to do with this he would hang him to dry!

“Detective Roberts have you got any leads?”

No reply.

“Detective Roberts have you any plans to hold a press conference?”

He reached the door, keyed in his security code and shut the door on their ravenous faces, with a sigh of relief.

Just as his heart
ha
d stopped pounding the door opened again and Derek dashed in.

“Bloody hell sir, the scavengers are here, who tipped them off?”

“No idea” said Stephen “but I intend to find out!”

He walked though the main office to his office and everyone was in, the place was bustling and everyone was either talking about the murder or on their computers searching for
information that may lead them to their man.  Well he hoped they were and not surfing on
face book
, or some other social network site.

What a day, he thought, lounging back in his office chair.  He’d phoned Tanya from his mobile after leaving the house.  Cancelling another Saturday night, she’d be going off him at this rat
e and he had phoned the florist to have some flowers delivered.

He attended the briefing at six o’clock and after looking at the basic details, his team shared what
t
he
y
had got.

Paul and Vera had been to see Brenda, she was devastated at the news of her
friend’s
death, sobbed for England,
it
had
taken
them a lot of skill and patience to get anything out of her.

They’d had a great night however the evening had ended with Brenda going home alone in a taxi cab and Lizzie in another with a bloke she had been seeing down there and dancing
with
for the last four weeks
.  She couldn’t remember his name. Ian she thought but couldn’t be sure.

Her description of him wasn’t much to go on either. About five foot eight, wh
ite, brown hair, and medium build
aged between thirty and forty. 

Lizzie had not said anything about him to her, just that she might be seeing him down there this week. 

Nothing at all on what he was wearing; she’d jumped from a blue shirt to a brown shirt, then jeans to trousers.

Bloody hell, Stephen thought that could fit the description of half the men in Leicester
.

Vera had looked at all the people they had on computer file that had been arrested in the last ten years with the first name
Ian,
there had been forty five Ian’s. She was happy to follow that up, but didn’t hold out much hope, and besides they didn’t even know for sure that his name was Ian.

Stephen had spoken to the neighbour,
who had maintained to have seen or heard nothing.
Derek and John had spoken to the other neighbours in close vicinity and
there w
a
s
Zilch
information there
too. T
hey had tracked down the nightclub owner.  He was going to speak with his staff and he would get back to them if anyone had any information that might help them.

And that was it. 
Nothing.
The rest of his team had nothing solid either.

“Okay” he said aware that his voice sounded exasperated. 
Lets
brainstorm ideas, see what we can come up with.

“Mind shower, sir” Paul said.

“Mind shower?” Stephen asked trying to see what relevance this had to the case.

“Brainstorm is politically incorrect now sir, so we have to use mind shower”

“Okay” Stephen replied as calmly as he could, incen
sed at the audacity of this man. T
hey were investigating a fucking murder case for Christ’s sake, who
the fuck gave a shit.

“Mind storm it is then.”
He said.

The briefing ended around eight o’clock, nothing of any consequence came out of it, other than the pillow, the pillows in both cases came from the women’s bedroom. The murderer would have had to go upstairs to fetch that, how might that have happened.

Lots of ideas were thrown into the pot so to speak, but the consensus was that he could have dosed her with the date rape drug first, then when she was out of it, he could have fetched the pillow then.  Not that this led them any closer to the murderer, but it was part of the process, part of the picture building or part of the jigsaw puzzle as Stephen like to call it.

Then it was raised that
if
she was given a date rape drug
and they could only surmise as they hadn’t had a toxicology report back yet, however most have them would put money on it,
then she wouldn’t necessarily take that willingly so he would possibly
have
spike
d
her drink. 

As it was quick acting, then that would more than likely be done at home rather than the club. 

Brenda had said that she was fine when she
had
left her.  So where were the cups or
glasses?
  There was nothing at the scene,
that hadn’t been checked, so what had they missed? He could have washed it up and put it away.

Ironically it was Paul that
had contributed most of these points to the table and
t
hey were
good point
s
.
Very good points Stephen had thought we’ll make a good copper out of him yet. 
He was beginning to use his gut instinct rather than his text books.

Stephen had asked two members of his team to get back to the scene, collect every cup, glass, anything that could be used as a vessel and get them to the lab for the forensic guys.  They
could have a fingerprint or two on them as well.

They had then looked at the message on the ‘calling card.’  This had put a smug smirk on Pauls face, Stephen had noticed.

“
Another one bites the dust
”

One of his team stated that it was a line from a song, sung by the group Queen
.  He volunteered to download the song and the words to see if there was any hidden message or significance.

Stephen detected that his whole team was motivated to catch this killer and he had left the meeting feeling proud and confident that they would.

Hopefully before he struck again!

Chapter Fifteen

Having spent most of the weekend at the station, Stephen arrived in at around eleven o’clock on Monday morning. The place was quiet, most of his staff
was
out and about, he guessed.

First thing he needed to do was speak with his chief to update him on the weekends events and how far they had got in the investigation
, which needless to say wasn’t very far, they were all holding out for the DNA results now, nothing had come from the crockery that the
forensic team had spent all weekend on.
  There had been no traces of any
drug, nor were there any fingerprints.  Either the perpetrator had worn gloves or had wiped any vessel used.

This killer knew what he was doing; he knew how to avoid detection, but then there was allsorts on the internet now to help people commit the perfect murder, even these criminology courses would describe how to get rid of DNA and what the scenes of crime officers looked for when investigating a crime.

His stomach took a lurch and he repeated back in his mind what he had just thought ......even these criminology courses would describe how to get rid of DNA etc. 

Interesting thought, but he couldn’t just jump in because of a belief, he had to have evidence and that was in short supply right now.

It didn’t stop him thinking about the knowledge Paul had, he had the knowledge of covering up a crime scene and he had the inside knowledge of the investigation
and he
seemed to know there would be another murder.  He could be secretly taunting them, he could be a psychopath and contrary to people’s beliefs, there were psychopaths in good jobs, high powered jobs in fact.

He was just contemplating whether to wait until they had the pathology report through before he rang his boss when his telephone on his desk rang.

“Hi Stephen” his boss said raucously but quite jolly, which put Stephen’s mind at rest, “he
ar
you’ve had another busy weekend?”

“Yes Michael” Stephen responded “I was going to call you but I was waiting for the pathologist to ring first, so I could hopefully have some more information for you”

“That’s why I’m ringing Stephen.
” Michael said.
 

“
Owen called less than an hour ago, he’d worked all weekend too, and as you weren’t around he spoke to me.  So here goes, have you
got a pen, if not don’t worry he’ll fax it over later anyway”

“Fire away Sir, I have a pen” Stephen answered, pen poised attentively listening.

“Death
was
by suffocation again.  Toxicology report reads that she had Rohypnol in her system. And
we have some DNA”

He could hear Stephen’s sigh of relief. “That’s brilliant news sir, was it from the bite”

“No” he replied “she’d had sex, doesn’t appear to have been forced sex, so she either did it willingly or he did it to her when she
was
out for a count, nevertheless, sloppy bastard didn’t use a condom!”

“When do we hope to get the
DNA results sir?” he asked, hop
ing this bastard had been arrested in the past.

“Seven to ten days, though they know to rush it through.”

Stephen put the phone down
both
elated
and frustrated
.
 

He was happy they had some DNA but frustrated that it would take so long to get the results.  He knew that someone would have to sit and go through the database to find a match, but surely there was a simpler system than this.
 

Maybe they could break the system down into areas, and then they could start by looking in this particular area to find a DNA match, searching further afield if there was not one.  It wasn’t rocket science for goodness sake!

Never-the-less, in terms of his case a
t last they might be on to something. 

For several years now they had been swabbing anyone that was arrested, even if it was a driving offence, they were building up quite a
large DNA data base.  He had to accept that it
would take time. 

He just hoped
that
this bastard had been arrested for something.

His gut told him that he had, so it was just a waiting game now.

He had been surprised at his boss’s joviality they had two murders now and no suspect he would
have expected him to be ranting, maybe he was getting calmer in his old age.

He liked Michael, he was sixty and considering retirement, often police officers retired earlier than this, but Michael loved his job too much for that, however he was getting a little slower now and his aches and pains were starting to get to him
, he had, had this discussion with Stephen already and he had said that his wife was nagging him to retire and to spend more time with their family.

He and his wife had five children between them and something like eight grandchildren, so he was finding it difficult to keep on working and fulfil his family commitments.

Stephen was secretly pleased as this would mean that he could apply for his job, fill his boots so to speak, and naturally leading the team into action to solve these murders wouldn’t do his reputation any harm.

That would be the pinnacle of his career; he didn’t need to go any further, he had only ever had his sights on that goal.

And getting a result for these murders would be a bonus.