Legacy of the Ripper (6 page)

"Maybe we have to assume that the killer is from outside the estate sir, or even from out of town. Maybe he's a visitor, someone who was just here for a short time and took the opportunity to carry out a grisly little murder to leave us cops something to do."

"I bloody well hope not, sergeant. If the bastard is from out of town we may never catch him. He could have run off to a bolt hole anywhere in the country and without anything to tie him to Brighton or the Regent Estate, we won't have a snowflake in hell's chance of ever identifying him."

"Unless he does it again somewhere else."

"That's a good point, Carl. Not only that, but maybe this isn't his first kill. We should take a look and see if there've been any similar reports of unsolved murders matching this one
prior
to ours, anywhere in the country."

Wright eagerly seized upon Holland's idea. The sergeant had been particularly appalled by the horrific sight that had presented itself to him when he'd first viewed Laura Kane's body and he as much as his Inspector was committed to bringing the killer to justice and the frustration of recent days was getting to him.

"I'm on it, sir," he said, and immediately left Holland's office to return to his own desk where he painstakingly e-mailed every force in the United Kingdom with a request for information relating to any murders exhibiting similar characteristics as that of Laura Kane.

Half an hour later, as Carl Wright looked up from his computer screen, he saw Holland striding towards him across the office. Within minutes the two men were heading for the Regent Estate once again. Despite the previous thorough forensic examination of the murder scene and of Laura Kane's home in an almost identical tower block to the one in which she was murdered, Holland wanted to go over the girl's home one more time. It was always possible that the forensics team had missed something. Improbable, he knew, but possible.

Number 44, Marchland Towers presented a sad and sorry sight to the two detectives. Located on the second storey of the tower block, the doorway retained the blue and white police tape across the door. The murdered girl's home was still sealed as part of an ongoing murder inquiry and as yet no-one but the police and forensic teams had set foot inside the place since the discovery of Laura Kane's body. After breaking though the tape and using a key to gain entry to the flat, Holland and Wright were met by the dismal vista of the deceased's home. Laura Kane hadn't possessed much in the way of furniture. A battered dark blue sofa stood in the middle of the living room, in front of a well used, probably second-hand TV table on which stood a small television, also second-hand by its careworn appearance, with what looked to be nothing larger than a fourteen inch screen. A rather out of place standard lamp stood in one corner, it's shade a bright yellow, the only slash of colour in the room. A cheap pine effect dining table with matching chairs completed the furnishings in the living area. The carpets throughout the flat were threadbare and had seen better days long before Laura would have obtained them.

Laura's bedroom presented an even grimmer picture to the two men. The bed stood centre stage, and Holland wondered if the girl had ever brought clients back to this room in order to earn a few pounds. If she had, he mused, the clients would have been mad if they'd ever returned a second time. The bed itself lay unmade as she'd left it, a plain blue duvet cover loosely thrown back to reveal a crumpled miss-matched blue sheet of a totally different hue beneath. At least, he noticed, the pillow case on her pillow teamed up with the sheet.

An old wind-up alarm clock, long since stopped, stood on the small bedside cabinet on the window side of the room. Opposite the bed a chest of drawers stood forlornly, its drawers left open and the contents, various items of underwear and a couple of sweaters, three blouses and an equal number of cheap and very short skirts lay neatly where they'd been left by the forensic crew. Holland suspected the forensic people may have been tidier than the victim in their treatment of her clothing.

The bathroom revealed an even more Spartan décor. The bare walls were unadorned with any fixtures or fittings and a small make-up mirror was the only 'luxury' item present in the room, standing forlornly on the window ledge. A pink towel lay draped over the side of the bath, a smaller hand towel in the same material hung limply over the solitary white plastic stick-on hook that hung behind the door. A floral make-up bag with Laura's lipsticks, mascara and other personal items lay discarded on the floor under the wash-hand basin.

"Not one for much in the way of creature comforts, eh?" said Wright as he took in the sad and pathetic sights of the murdered woman's home.

"I can't argue with that hypothesis," Holland replied. "I suppose you noticed that not one of these rooms has any wallpaper on the walls?"

"Couldn't help but notice, sir. Bloody hospital green paint on every wall in the place. It's enough to give you the creeps. How could she live like this?"

"It strikes me that Laura Kane never had much of a life, sergeant. She may have been 'on the game' but what she made from the clients she managed to pick up wasn't enough to keep her in any sort of luxury, that's for sure."

"Maybe she thought she'd one day make it big and have enough to get away from here, what d'you think?" asked Wright, trying to inject some belated optimism into the scenario surrounding the victim's dismal end.

"Maybe, Carl," Holland replied. "We'll never know, will we? I'll bet almost every penny she earned went on fuelling her drug habit. The coroner said she showed signs of prolonged drug abuse. Now, let's start nosing around and see if we can find anything that the forensic boys might have missed."

Twenty minutes later, Carl Wright called to Holland, who was searching and rummaging under the small kitchen sink in the living area. Holland quickly made his way to the bathroom, where he found Wright on his hands and knees in one corner of the room.

"Found something?" Holland asked.

"Just this, sir," said Wright, triumphantly holding up a small passport sized photograph.

"Where was it?"

"When I lifted the carpet, I thought I could make out a bit of white between two of the floorboards. I went back to the bathroom and took the tweezers out of the girl's toilet bag and came back, got down here, and hey, presto!"

He held the photo out towards Holland's outstretched hand and the inspector took a hold of it and studied it carefully. The black and white photo showed the murdered girl together with a young man, apparently clean and well shaven, with longish hair, probably some years younger than herself. It was a typical photo-booth shot, the two of them smiling and leaning their heads in towards each other happily.

"Well, well," said Holland thoughtfully. Maybe we just got our first clue, eh Sergeant?"

"How on earth did forensics miss it?" asked Wright.

"Remember, this wasn't the murder scene. They'd have gone over that with a fine tooth comb, but this was her home and not directly linked to the mechanics of the crime so they probably wouldn't have been instructed to go as far as lifting carpets and floorboards. They'd have been searching for straightforward evidence that might have linked the girl to her killer, but bearing in mind the desolate picture this place portrays, I doubt they'd have spent too long in going over the place. I'm damn glad you thought to lift the carpet though, sergeant, damn glad indeed."

"Now we need to see if we can identify this young man," Holland went on. "So far we've been working under the assumption that Laura had no friends or close acquaintances. This photo tends to prove the lie to that theory."

"What about everyone we've already questioned about her friends, you know, the neighbours and so on?"

"They'll be as good a place to start as anywhere," Holland agreed. "As we're here, let's go knock on a few doors, and then we can go back to the office, have this blown up and copied, and get the beat boys to check with the crowds in the red-light areas once darkness brings them out."

Unfortunately for Holland and Wright, their inquiries around the flats in Marchland Towers proved as useless as before. Either the residents denied knowing or ever seeing Laura Kane, much less the man in the photograph, or they simply refused to open their doors to the officers. The night shift met with almost identical results when they hit the streets later that night, with no-one showing willingness to identify either of the two people in the photograph. To all intents and purposes, it was as if Laura and her mystery friend had simply never existed.

Carl Wright sent the picture to forces around the country and checked the face against all known police photo-fits and mug shots, with no success. Their mystery man remained just that, a mystery.

In a frustrating conversation with his sergeant two days after the discovery of the photograph, Holland reasoned that it was going to take something quite extraordinary to loosen a few tongues amongst the underclass of predominantly less than wholly law-abiding types who lived in the rabbit-warren like flats and corridors of the Regent Estate. Even those decent law-abiding folks who were forced to endure life in the tower blocks of the estate were either too scared or too far removed from the nefarious goings on around them to be of help to the police.

Unfortunately, within days, as the Laura Kane case dragged on towards what would normally might have proved an unsatisfactory unsolved murder case, Mike Holland's 'quite extraordinary' event proved him tragically correct, and the occurrence that eventually opened one or two of those sealed tongues was every bit as gruesome as the murder of Laura Kane had been.

A Chance Meeting

As events prepared to escalate and Holland and Wright were about to become embroiled in one of the most baffling and gruesome cases of their respective careers, across the town from their office at police headquarters a young man known only to his associates as Michael was waking from a deep sleep. As his eyes opened fully, he squinted against the glare of the shaft of autumn sunshine that cascaded into the room through the uncurtained window a mere three feet from the end of his bed. The room was small, dirty and unkempt and completely matched the two occupants who shared the meagre accommodation. Michael rubbed his eyes, squinted again and turned his head away from the bright rays that met his waking gaze. Instead, he looked across the room to where a second low framed bed stood. Its occupant still slept soundly and though he didn't present quite as filthy a picture as Michael, the young man who lay snoring in peaceful oblivion in the bed also resembled little more than a bundle of unwashed humanity. The single cheap blanket that served as his cover had slipped to the side revealing socks that had holes where the toes showed through, and the frayed hems of what had once been an expensive pair of jeans.

Michael had met his new flatmate a mere four weeks previously. 'Jacob' had been sleeping rough on one of the benches that lined the Brighton seafront as Michael walked home one night after one of his regular excursions to obtain the drugs that had long-ago become the sole focus of his life. At first, Michael thought the young man might prove an easy target for an opportunist theft. His head rested on a rucksack that Michael considered might contain some items of value that he could possibly sell to one of the many 'fences' who he regularly did business with. A return of less than fifteen percent of the value of his ill-gotten gains wasn't much, and he had to work hard to raise the money to fuel his ever-expanding need for drugs.

Unfortunately for him, as he approached the bench, the sleeping man began to stir so, ever the opportunist, Michael instantly changed tack. He might be a druggie, but he was an intelligent one. His brain, slowly becoming poisoned by the cocaine, still had the ability to think quickly and sum up a situation in a few seconds.

"Hey, man, you can't sleep on the benches round here. The cops will soon pick you up and treat you as a vagrant. At best you'll spend a night in the cells and at worst they'll have you up in front of the magistrate and you could end up with a fine and being run out of town."

The sleepy figure rose slowly to a sitting position as Michael appeared to tower over him.

"And why should you care what happens to me?" he asked of the man who'd disturbed his sleep.

"Look, friend, I don't like to see anyone getting into bother with the cops. That's all. I thought that maybe you're new in town and might need a few pointers. What's wrong with being friendly, eh?"

"What gives you the idea I'm new in town?"

"Hmm&maybe the rucksack is a bit of a giveaway, or the fact that you look like you need a place to stay. When did you last have a shave, man?"

"Look who's talking," the man on the bench replied. "You're not exactly Mister Clean yourself by the looks of you."

"Ah, but my appearance is all a part of my persona," Michael replied. "I look this way because I want to. You look like that because you've got nowhere to stay, am I right?"

"Yes, okay, I need a place. I haven't been here in Brighton for long, just a few days."

"And before that?"

"That's got nothing to do with you. I've admitted I need a roof, and that's all you need to know."

"Hey, calm down a bit. Like I said I'm just being friendly. Look, my name's Michael, what's yours?"

There was a slight hesitation from the young man on the bench before he replied.

"You can call me Jacob," he said.

"That's as good as anything I suppose," Michael replied, sceptically.

"It's my name!" said Jacob, defiantly.

"Yeah, sure it is. Like I say, it doesn't matter a fig to me, man, long as I've got something to call you. Now listen, how would like to have a warm bed for the night and a place to stay while you figure out what it is you want to do here in town?"

Jacob appeared suspicious.

"Look, you're not some sort of weirdo are you? Or gay? I'm not into that side of things, or anything like that."

"Listen, it's just a friendly offer of a roof over your head, nothing more, nothing less," Michael lied. He had a plan and Jacob would be just the man he needed to help him put it into effect, if he could convince the young man to throw in his lot with him.