Gut Instinct (4 page)

He never touched alcohol, didn’t like it and it would piss him right off if he had to give up his dope whilst the rest of them drank themselves into oblivion at the end of their shift.

He took a long drag on his joint and settled back into the chair, the contents of the drug rushing thro
ugh his body and rapidly soothing
his anger
.

He was convinced this was not a one off, no matter what Stephen Roberts said,
but maybe
he should have perhaps kept his thoughts to himself though,
in hindsight he had been a bit
premature but
they weren’t as educated as he was, would never quite ‘get it’ not like he did.

He’d studied hard at university, knew his stuff, had waited for this day when he could put his skills to good use and that had been thwarted
by his boss.

He could understand him being sceptical, jealous even, worried about being undermined, but there was no need to emasculate him in that way, not in front of everyone.

There would be another murder he was confident of it, then that would show them, show them who the clever one was.
Then Stephen fucking Roberts would have no choice but to let him do what he was trained to do.

He thought back to the case and what they had so far, what
was it that
had convinced him that this was not just a one off.

The card
, it was a ‘calling card’ he was sure of that.  It made no sense otherwise.
Why would someone even bother to leave a card if he
didn’t want to taunt the police, if he had no plans to do it
again?

The joint was kicking in big style
now;
he f
elt
whoozy
, his thoughts starting
to converge into one another, no point wallowing over today he thought.  They will see in the end, see that he was right all along.

Chapter Five

Stephen was on his way home, it had been another long day and they were no further forward in their investigation. Nothing had come up in the house to house enquiries and despite what Paul (criminal psychology nut) thought his gut told him that this was a one off. 
His gut was usually always right.

Paul, why did he dislike this man so much, he knew that he had been hard on him today, but he had a knack of getting his back up. 
Had done since the day he’d been put on his team,
new boy just left university and thought he knew more than those on his team that had worked the streets for the same amount of time as he had sat in
a
comfy
classroom learning
the ropes
from a
bloody
text book.

A serial killer I ask you.  One murder and all of a sudden they’ve go
t
a serial killer on their hands!

This
murder
was
down to
a disgruntled friend, a debt collector. Or most likely a drug dealer not got his money. 

As harsh as it was, these types of women mixed with all sorts of dubious characters and subsequently as sad an
d
unnecessary that it was,
sometimes this
was the consequences of their own deviant behaviour. 

Not that anyone deserved to die, the fact of the matter was
that
they
sometimes
did and he and his team were left to pick up the pieces.

Tomorrow was another day he thought hopefully they would have something from the
pathologist then and be able to move forward a little, even catch him, clear another degenerate citizen off the streets of Leicester.

He would have liked to have seen Tanya tonight, but
Fridays and Sunday’s
were their ‘buddy nights” they’d agreed on that from the beginning of their relationship.

Only one problem with that, he had no buddies, so was left to spend the
se
night
s
on his own.  He didn’t have the time or inclination for male bonding, and in his eyes females were for laying not for camaraderie.

He liked Tanya, he wouldn’t say that he was in love with her, he’d never been in love with anyone in his life, wasn’t quite sure what love was, but he enjoyed her company, she made him laugh and in his job there was very little to laugh about.

For a therapist though she didn’t discuss much about her own life or her childhood,  he had managed to get out of her once   that she was an only child and that her parents had died
when she was three in a car crash.  She had been raised by her Grandparents who had died when she was twenty one, leaving her an orphan with no family.

S
he had changed the subject very quickly.  She was a good at that he thought, going off on a tangent when she wanted to avoid a topic of conversation that she wasn’t comfortable with.
 

She would answer a question with a question too if she wanted to
sidestep an uncomfortable
query, he’d told her that she should have been a lawyer.
 

She was a mysterious woman alright, probably the reason he was attracted to her, he hated the predictable, women who told you their life story on their first date, moaned about their ex husbands and nagged like washer women by the third date.

Tanya was not like that; she had never mentioned any ex partners and never nagged. 

He’d asked her once about children and she had made it quite clear that kids were not part of her life plan, she had no interest in having them.  Full stop and changed the subject as quick as most of his other girlfriends had dropped their knickers.  He’d never raised it again because it wasn’t part of his life plan either. 

Nor was marriage, he’d made that decision early in his career, he was married to his job and he’d learned very early on that being in the police force and marriage did not mix.  He’d seen too many of his colleagues divorce because of the demands of the job, left with just a cardboard box of  meagre belongings after years of marriage and alimony payments for kids they no longer saw which crippled them.

Women could be so selfish; have no understanding of the demands of the job, there were three divorces on his team when that young girl’s body was found near Leicester Forest East about twenty years ago.  His men had to work all hours, manning the phone
lines, doing door to door enquiries and collecting DNA samples from all the local men
between a certain
age
.  This had been
the first time DNA was used in an investigation and so they were being closely scrutinised by the media, the top dogs,
and politicians
alike.

You’d think with it being a young girl murdered that they’d have little bit of empathy, give a little bit of leeway but no all they were concerned about was having their husbands at their beck and call.

No
,
marriage was definitely not on the cards for him.
It was far t
oo much agro.  As long as he had a regular shag buddy he was hap
py. 

He would never
have
consider
ed
using
prostitutes,
he never had it was
too risky
. H
e couldn’t risk having someone he had slept with being arrested he’d never live it down with the guys at work, he’d lose their respect, and that’s one thing he had, their respect.  They may not like him,
might
not like some of the decisions
he made, but he had their respect and that was important to him.

Was that what she was
, Tanya, a
shag
buddy?  He thought earnestly, she was more than that he reconsidered.  He liked
her
lot, knew very little about her, but time would change that he
believed.

They never talked about anything other than at a superficial level at the moment, nothing deep and meaningful.
They j
ust enjoyed each other’s company and the sex of course. It wasn’t earth shattering for him
or
her he would guess. It was cosy and a release of pent up stress, which was good enough for him, he didn’t really want nights of
acrobatics;
he didn’t really want to put that much effort in.

They never talked about each other’s work, past, present come to think of it what did they talk about?

He shrugged, what the hell she was a nice, genuine girl, his gut told him that and he could always rely on his gut.

He pulled up outside his cottage, locked the car and
looked forward to relaxing in front of the television with a nice drink or two, or three.

Put the week behind him.  It had been a long week.

Stephens’s
cottage was
cosy;
he’d brought it ten years ago when house prices were low. 
At the same time he ha
d also brought antique furniture to go with the style and year it was built
.
He still had that same
furniture;
he was never at home enough for there to be
much
wear and tear.  He’d not overdone it though, it wasn’t cluttered.  He hated clutter and hated just as much needless ornaments. 

It was detached, and in a
cul
de sac of five other cottages with enough space between each cottage to not
stifle
one an
other.   He didn’t mix with neighbours much and wanted to be far enough away from his neighbours not to have to.  This suited him just fine. 

He popped on his CD player and the disc already in place began mellowing out the
soft
tones of ‘Catherine Jenkins’
h
e loved classical
music;
they
were the bulk of his collection.

To the dulcet tones of his favourite singer,
he began preparing a microwave dinner all he could be bothered to muster up, trying to chew over the last few
days
events. 

They must have missed something he thought, there can’t be zero information. There was always something, something they could get their teeth into, he had a good team, they would follow up every lead, but the limited leads they had, had lead to nothing.  He was left feeling ineffectual, nothing constructive to send his team out to investigate on Monday and his Chief wasn’t going to be very pleased about that.

He thought back to the note left with the body, maybe there was something more to that, some sort of clue “Guess who” was that a message for them or for her, o
r for someone close to her, a boyfriend
perhaps
, that no-one knew about
. 

Th
e
ex husband
was
coming
back
early and should land in England
tomorrow and
he was
coming
in
to be
interviewed perhaps
something might come out of that, some further leads.

He finished his meal and fell asleep in the warmth of his living room, lulled by the soft voice of Catherine Jenkins.

C
hapter
Six

My memories haunt me day and night now; the dreams are no longer pleasant ones. I have no respite at all from the horrors that she
put me through.

I am two or three years old, still in my pram
,
so maybe younger. We were going to the park, I was excited I didn’t even know what the park was but I was still excited. She wasn’t very happy, my clothes were creased I had to look my best she’d said. 

“What sort of mother am I to take my son to the park in creased clothes?”

She had taken the iron out of the cupboard and plugged it in. I sat quietly, even at this age I knew that I had to be quiet, listening to the hissing of the water in the iron as it was heating up, watching her putting together a picnic of ham and cheese and blackcurrant juice.

I watched as she preened herself, admiring herself in the cracked mirror
standing on the window ledge. I smelt the lemon perfume as she over indulged and
the fumes drifted into my pram, and me trying to stifle a cough so as not to annoy her.

Then it happened.

She sprayed the steam onto my white cotton shirt, the creases dropping out as the heat
of the vapour
touched the fine material, the smile on her face as her little boy was beginning to look well turned-out
.