Kill Me Again (20 page)

Maggie logged onto Facebook, found Carl Boardman’s page and sent him a message, asking if he knew the man in the attached photo. She gave a rather weak excuse that she was trying to track this man down, and she had remembered he had a friend called Carl Boardman. Carl seemed fairly active on Facebook, so she was hopeful of a quick response. She knew how unlikely a positive response was, but she couldn’t sit here and do nothing.

She looked at the printout and read again about the amazing woman who had fostered all those children. If – and it was a big if – Duncan had kept a page from a newspaper, in theory the article of interest could be on either side of the sheet, so Maggie decided to check if Patricia Rowe had a Facebook page. She was probably well into her seventies by now, but it was worth a try.

As she trawled through the inevitably long list of Patricia Rowe entries she spotted the letters MBE next to a photo of an elderly lady surrounded by children. She had found her. Mrs Rowe didn’t seem to post much herself but shared posts from other, much younger people, and Maggie guessed the lady was keeping tabs on the children she had looked after. There were no posts shared for the past two months, though.

One old post made Maggie’s eyes fill with tears.

Linked to the post were a number of albums, and Maggie could see they focused on children of various ages. She was sure Patricia Rowe would have been a great person to know. She decided to send her a message with a picture of Duncan too, but again she didn’t hold out much hope of a positive response.

By late morning, Maggie had heard back from Carl Boardman. He said he didn’t recognise the face she had posted – he didn’t know the guy. So that avenue was closed for now. And there was nothing from Patricia Rowe. It wasn’t a surprise, but it was frustrating.

She was about to close her computer and go and find the children when she heard a crash. It had come from the garage.

Her heart thumped.

She leapt up from her chair, ran to the garage door and stopped. Who was in there?

She was about to turn back into the house and make sure the children were safe when she heard a noise. It sounded like a sob.

Josh.

Maggie flung the door open. Josh was lying on the floor, Duncan’s bike on top of him.

‘Josh,’ she shouted. ‘Are you okay?’

Maggie rushed forward and lifted the mountain bike off him.

‘What happened?’ she asked as she pulled him to his feet. He was clearly not hurt – just upset with himself.

‘I was trying to get the bikes down off the wall. I was going to ask if we could go for a ride. But yours was caught around Daddy’s, and when I tried to get it down, it pulled Daddy’s off and it fell on top of me.’

Maggie pulled Josh towards her and gave him a cuddle. She looked at Duncan’s bike and had a sudden flash of memory. On his thirtieth birthday she had told Duncan to go into the garage, and there was his present – a beautiful new bike, the one he had wanted for ages. She remembered the surprise and pleasure on his face, and the happiness of that day.

Duncan’s old bike had been quite a sight. The main frame was yellow, but the bit at the front, which he told her was called the suspension fork, was red, and the back bit – the seat stay, Dunc said – was bright green. He had built it from spare parts.

There was just one thing that clouded the perfection of the memory. She had told the children that Daddy had won races on his old bike, and Josh – ever fascinated by detail – had quizzed Duncan about where, when and were there photos? Perhaps they were online. Josh wouldn’t shut up, and Duncan had lost his temper.

At the time, Maggie had been cross with Duncan, but it was soon over and they had all gone out for a birthday tea. Now, though, Maggie realised that like everything in Duncan’s past, she only had very sketchy details about his cycling success, and the races had never been mentioned again.

32

By late Saturday morning the incident room was buzzing. Becky had been right about the body they had found that morning: the victim’s name was Michelle Morgan, and she was known to the police. According to the vice team, she had been around for years and they considered her to be smarter than most of the girls. She had always been fairly astute at judging which cars to get into and which to avoid.

She had obviously got it wrong this time, but this suggested that whoever’s car she had got into, she hadn’t considered him to be a threat.

She was found well away from her own patch, which was apparently the eastern part of central Manchester around Piccadilly station, on the roads that ran under the railway lines. Tom couldn’t help thinking it was strange that the body had been moved to Castlefield when the first body had been found so close to Michelle’s preferred working area.

According to Jumbo, the woman hadn’t been killed
in situ
. There was no blood in the vicinity of her body, although there was plenty on her clothes. She had to have been transported to the position under the railway arches after death, most probably some time during the early hours of the morning. The body had now been taken to the mortuary, and the team had begun the examination of the shopping trolley against which her body had been displayed.

Tom hadn’t expected to get any update until the forensic investigation of the site was complete, so he was surprised when a clearly excited Jumbo called. ‘Tom, I think we might have something here. There’s something I’d like to show you, if you can spare the time.’

Castlefield was only a ten-minute drive for Tom and Becky, and if Jumbo thought it was significant, Tom was only too happy to return to the scene.

Crime scene investigators were crawling all over the place, but one item was centre stage, and Jumbo was standing guard by its side.

‘Take a look at the shopping trolley,’ he said, his wide smile back in place now the body had gone. ‘Look at its position in relation to where the body was situated. I think it was supposed to look as if it had been abandoned, but it’s not been here long.’

‘How do you know?’ Becky asked.

‘Look down here.’ Jumbo pointed to where two wheels were missing. ‘The body of the trolley is made of zinc-coated steel. Zinc corrodes over time, but it doesn’t rust like steel. Now look at where the wheels have been broken off. You can see the bare steel, and it’s not rusty. I think the wheels were broken off on purpose and very recently. We’re supposed to think this is just an old abandoned trolley, but what if they wheeled the body here in it and then broke the wheels off, thinking we would disregard it as junk? We’ll check it for blood, but if it is related, it’s good news.’

Tom knew exactly what Jumbo meant. If the trolley had been used to transport the victim’s body, the killer couldn’t have brought her far. It gave them a different search area than if, for example, she had been brought here by car. They knew she hadn’t been killed
in situ
, so if she had then been put into the trolley and pushed, they could start searching likely places in the vicinity. And if they checked out where the trolley had originated, it might give a geographic profiler something to start with.

Tom looked around for likely places for the murder to have been committed. There were too many, that was the problem. The arches under the railway lines were largely occupied by car repair companies and the like, and any one of the premises could be the site of the murder. They would all have to be searched.

‘There’s something else, Tom,’ Jumbo said. ‘When we were checking out the first victim, there were some wheel marks in the mud in the tunnel that could easily have come from a trolley like this. The marks were unclear because there were puddles and stony areas on the path, but we managed to get a couple of good sections. You were concerned about one man carrying a deadweight, but what if he didn’t? What if he wheeled her there?’

Tom remembered them thinking the same thing twelve years ago when Sonia Beecham’s body was found on Pomona Island.

‘That would take some nerve, wouldn’t it?’ Becky said, her face displaying her incredulity.

‘No more than carrying the victim over your shoulder. Either way, if somebody sees you, you’ve got a dead body with you. If she was in a shopping trolley you could at least cover
her up with a bit of carpet or something – make it look as if you’re moving some stuff around.’

If the two victims had been murdered in the same location, though, the killer would have needed more than a shopping trolley to transport them. There was about a mile and a half between the locations at which the bodies had been found. Somehow Tom couldn’t see anybody trundling through the streets of Manchester with a dead body in a shopping trolley, even with an old rug covering it. If it turned out that the trolley had been used in both crimes, that suggested the killer had a van of some kind – something that you could fit a trolley into. Then he could get close to his chosen place, stick the body in the trolley and push it the last few metres.

It was one more thing to add to their list – the suspicion that this man had a van.

‘Becky, let’s get somebody on to tracing the supermarket trolley. I don’t know how many stores from this chain there are around Manchester. Let’s get them all on a map and see if it helps. Then contact them and see if they have any video of trolleys being nicked by somebody in a van.’

‘I don’t suppose he’s left a pound coin in the trolley with a nice fat fingerprint, has he?’ Becky said with a grin.

Tom laughed. He wished life was so easy.

Fortunately for Tom, he and Becky had arrived at the murder scene in different cars so he didn’t have her driving to contend with on the way back to the incident room. This meant he was able to spend the time thinking, rather than clinging for dear life to the grab handle as Becky swung her car between lorries, buses and trams.

He tried to focus on the two dead women, but the resemblance of the first to Leo, and then the rather pathetic attempt to make the second look similar was unnerving him. The message was clear. If the profiler had been right all those years ago, three was the key number. She had offered an alternative perspective, though – that two of the three were merely to confuse the police and were effectively motiveless murders. So in searching for motive with the two women who were already dead, were they wasting their time? Was one of these two the ‘real’ victim, or was that going to be the third woman?

If the second theory was right, Tom’s every instinct said the crucial murder had not yet taken place. Hayley Walker didn’t appear to have any enemies, and the latest victim didn’t
even look like Hayley – she had been made up to resemble her. So why go to all that trouble with the second one unless it was a warning to somebody else? It would also explain why the bodies had been put on show. Twelve years ago Sonia Beecham and Tamsin Grainger had been left sitting upright, but in less public places where they were unlikely to be discovered immediately. This time, the killer wanted both girls to be found quickly.

The thought that the third victim could be Leo was tormenting him. He couldn’t think of a reason why anybody would want to kill her, but that meant nothing. She was out there somewhere. He could feel it. He knew it with every bone in his body. He just didn't know where, and he didn’t know where to start looking.

12 years ago - June

‘
Douglas! My office,’ the boss shouted from his open door
.

Tom had a feeling this wasn’t going to be a happy meeting. He picked up his files and made his way into DCI Victor Elliott’s office, closing the door behind him
.

‘What have we got on the dead girls?’ the DCI asked before Tom had a chance to sit down
.

Tom pulled up a chair to the visitor’s side of the desk
.