What You Left Behind (15 page)

“I thought we could drop into the local police station and find out how things are progressing with Sonia’s stolen computer.”

Jo pulled an incredulous face. “That computer will be long gone by now and no one apart from you cares. Not even Sonia gives a hoot about the damn thing anymore.”

Lorraine grinned. “OK, I admit I want to mention Gil’s drawing and give the visor to the officer in charge.”

Jo sighed. “Don’t, Ray. If the police go to see Gil, it’ll upset him no end. Not to mention what it’ll do to Sonia.” She stared out the passenger-side window, shaking her head.

“Actually, I have no choice,” Lorraine said. “It seems to me that Gil may have witnessed something very important. Besides, there are special procedures in place for dealing with people like him.”

T
HE
W
ARWICKSHIRE
J
USTICE
Center was a five-minute walk from the cinema, where they’d left Freddie in charge of Stella. They went up the front steps of the modern white building and entered the police department.

“I won’t be long,” Lorraine said, guiding Jo to a row of seats.

She went up to the desk to explain who she was and why she was there, and was then taken through the security door and led up several flights of stairs. Moments later she was standing in the office of the detective who’d been in charge of the Dean Watts case. He was sitting at his desk, facing a window that looked out onto the back of a row of terraced houses and drainpipes. Raindrops wiggled down
the small square of glass. All Lorraine could see of the detective was the curve of his shoulders and a balding mottled patch on the back of his head. When she knocked lightly on his open door, he swung round, an expectant look on his plum-shaped face.

Lorraine froze, but it was too late to back out.

Fuck
.

“Good grief,” he said slowly, heaving himself out of his desk chair. “If it isn’t Lorraine Fisher.” The smirk thinned his lips, as if her name had left a bitter taste on them.

Greg Burnley. His accent was certainly the same, flecked with phlegm and smudged-together words. He had less hair now, and he’d lost weight, though not a lot, Lorraine thought grudgingly.

“Detective Inspector Fisher, in case you’ve forgotten,” she shot back. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.” Or ever again, she thought, forcing a smile to hide her shock.

“Apologies,
ma’am
,” Burnley replied sarcastically. His face turned red, the creeping capillaries on his cheeks plumping up as he hitched his trousers higher on his hips. He came out from behind his desk. “Funny you should say that though.” He edged his backside onto the corner of the desk. “Me too. Passed my exams. Got the T-shirt. You know.”

Lorraine nodded, trying to hide her incredulity.

“Please, sit down.” He pulled across a chair with his foot.

The main office space was large and open-plan but they were in one of a series of smaller offices that had been partitioned off. On one of Burnley’s walls there was a corkboard on which were pinned several photographs of overweight children, a German shepherd dog, and a plump woman in pink running gear. His family, Lorraine presumed, rather than anything crime-related. Scattered across his small desk were case files and more photographs—this time of crime scenes—three empty coffee mugs and a half-eaten meat pie.

“What can I do for you?”

“I’ve come about the Dean Watts suicide a month ago. You were in charge of the case?” Her tone was businesslike and cool, though not so much that he could accuse her of being unfriendly.

DI Burnley nodded. “It’s put away now, you understand.”

“I have new evidence that may change that.”

Lorraine swiftly explained her connection with the Hawkeswell family, told him about Gil, and mentioned how she’d come to be in possession of the drawing and the visor.

“And that’s new evidence?” Burnley said with a discernibly mocking tone.

Lorraine nodded, pulled the rolled-up paper from the plastic bag, and unfurled it. She noticed his eyebrows flicker when he saw the drawing.

“Gil says he saw another passenger on the motorbike. And there’s a female hand drawn in there.” She pointed to the spread of fingers wearing the ring in the bottom right-hand corner of the drawing. The paper kept rolling up, so Lorraine used two of the mugs on the desk to keep it open.

“I think it’s worth looking into,” she continued. “Gil is autistic but you shouldn’t discount what he’s saying. He’s upset and no doubt concerned he’ll get into trouble for not speaking up sooner.”

“You think I should reopen the case even though the coroner has ruled suicide just because some autistic chap has drawn a picture?” He scratched his temple.

“I do, yes.”

“There was a suicide note, Detective. The case is closed.”

“Then unclose it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Burnley slipped on his jacket, stuffed his wallet into the inside pocket, and gathered his keys from the clutter on the desk.

“Why not?”

“Lorraine … 
ma’am
,” he said in a fake voice, “if you’d come to me with a painting by Leonardo da bloody Vinci showing a homeless
lad being murdered by my own grandmother I wouldn’t do anything about it.”

Let’s get real
, Lorraine thought he’d said after this, although she couldn’t quite tell because he was holding his car keys in his mouth while gathering up a pile of papers.

“I’m sorry, love.”

That she did hear. He’d called her “love.” He’d fucking well called her
love
. The moment she’d walked in and recognized him she’d decided not to pull rank, but now she couldn’t do that even if she chose. He was, by some bizarre machinations of their superiors, the same as her.

“Look,” she said, struggling to hold on to her businesslike tone, “I’m presenting you with potentially case-changing evidence. I suggest you take it seriously.” She was tempted to add “given your track record,” but decided against it. “Do you remember what you said when you left Birmingham?” she asked instead.

Burnley sighed loudly and folded his arms.

“You said, ‘You can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs’ when you let those scumbags get off scot-free. Do you not think you should crack a few eggs now?”

“That’s irrelevant,” Burnley said. He forced a cough. It sounded as if he still smoked heavily. “The intel the scumbags traded saved me a load of trouble. Besides, that kid was dead anyway.”

Lorraine felt her neck tense as she shook her head. “I am on leave,” she stated tersely, pointlessly. She was never on leave. None of them were. “But I am prepared to pursue this.”

Then he dropped his bombshell.

B
URNLEY
’
S CAR WAS
dirty inside and reeked of meat pies and cigarette smoke, and he was driving too fast. Lorraine opened the window.
He pressed the button and put it up again, turning the heater on full blast. “Doctor’s orders,” he stated. “My back mustn’t get cold.”

“Hurt in action?” Lorraine said sourly. When he’d worked for West Midlands, before his enforced transfer, he’d barely left his desk if he could help it. Burnley’s style of policing was conducted with a cake in one hand and a pen in the other. He’d probably strained his back reaching across his desk for his coffee.

He ignored her. “Some parts of the body have been photographed and bagged already. We’re tented up because of the earlier rain. I need to get the railway track open again, although they’ve rerouted where they can. You know what it’s like, pressure from Transport.”

Lorraine remained silent as they drove on, heading southeast out of the spa town. Back in his office Burnley had told her there was a note, had asked if she’d wanted to come along, throw in her two cents. He made some quip about her disproving another suicide. But that wasn’t what had dragged her out with Burnley. It was the homeless bit that had got her. Another lad from New Hope. She wouldn’t have wasted a moment of her time with him otherwise.

Before they’d left the Justice Center, Lorraine had told Jo where she was going, that she’d get a taxi back later. Jo said she’d go and do some shopping and wait for the kids.

As they slowed down, Lorraine’s BlackBerry located them at a place called Blackdown Woods. Unnervingly, it wasn’t far from Radcote, and equidistant from Wellesbury. Burnley pulled into a rest area and yanked on the hand brake. He folded his arms and stared across at her. “What’s left isn’t nice,” he remarked before they got out of the car.

It was a peaceful and warm spot, the brewing heat hanging over the surrounding fields like a shroud now that the rain had finally stopped. A couple of wood pigeons hoo-hooed overhead as they crossed the lane and headed down the narrowing track that led into the woods. If someone had particularly wanted death by high-speed
train, this was the place to do it, Lorraine thought—private, remote, a serene resting place, even if the aftermath was horrific for those left to clean up.

The trees seemed to swallow them up in darkness, even in the day. Lorraine didn’t relish being alone in the forest with Burnley, and she certainly wasn’t dressed for such terrain in her linen trousers and sandals. But they marched on, cut across toward the railway line, and scrambled down the leafy bank, Lorraine tearing her cotton top on a bramble bush. Before long they met up with several white-suited forensics officers scouring a patch of ground. A rabbit froze in the bracken fifty feet or so away and watched them before tearing off across the line.

“The others have gone now, boss,” one of the forensics said to Burnley. He gave a cursory glance at Lorraine as if she was his wife who’d come along for a bit of sightseeing. “We’ll be done soon too.”

DI Burnley nodded and scanned the scene. “Over here,” he said to Lorraine, beckoning her with his head. She followed him down the edge of the double railway line, crunching over the granite chips. “A pair of hikers found him a couple of hours ago.” Burnley stopped. “Correction. They found his legs. He was spread about.” He thrust his hands in the front pockets of his nylon trousers. “No reports from any train drivers, so it probably happened during darkness. Went unnoticed. Poor fucker.”

Lorraine walked briskly beside him, listening, scanning the scene. Nothing seemed particularly unusual, apart from the deceased being another lad from the homeless shelter. She presumed that was why he’d brought her along. To make a point about the Dean Watts case.

The stench in the small white pop-up tent reminded Lorraine of the butcher’s shop she went to with her mother as a child. She stared at the remains that had clearly been flung away from the spot where the train had actually hit him. Shredded blue jeans were black with
congealed blood, barely adhering to the legs that had become separated from the torso at the hips. Yellow-orange fat bubbled out of the top of one leg, the remarkably strong tendons showing stretched and white.

Lorraine swallowed. “White male, possibly late teens, early twenties,” she said automatically. She thought of Freddie.

“Leonard Jackman,” Burnley said. Lorraine noticed that he wasn’t looking at the body parts, rather the gently flapping sheeting of the tent. A breeze was getting up. “Nineteen. There were ID details in a bag found nearby.” He tapped his phone screen and handed it to Lorraine. “His note,” he said, zooming in on a photograph of a piece of pale blue paper set out on a white sheet.

Lorraine tilted her head and read it. It was badly written and pitiful, almost beautiful in its raw simplicity. The words of a young man who’d had enough. She closed her eyes for a beat and passed the phone back to Burnley.

“That makes it a suicide, does it?” she said, thinking of Dean, of Gil.

“Pretty much,” Burnley replied. “He was a hopeless fucker. Known to us for years and always in trouble. Addict: theft, aggravated assault. His file says his last outing was stealing a laptop from the homeless shelter where he stayed.” Burnley covered the body parts with a plastic sheet. “Biting the hand and all that. Want to see the head?”

Lorraine nodded, absorbing the news.

Burnley removed another sheet to expose it. The eyes were semi-open, giving Lenny an intoxicated expression. The rest of his face was hard to determine because of the blood and matted hair and other detritus that had become embedded in the skin. At first glance it appeared that his head must have tumbled a good distance on impact, such was the bruising on the cheeks and forehead. The neck was severed relatively cleanly compared to some she’d seen. But it
was the face, the skin, the direction of the bloody streaks that spread from mouth to chin and mouth to hairline, as well as the swollen bottom lip, that shocked Lorraine most.