Roxanne, p.9
Roxanne, page 9
She hoped Prescott would remember because she didn’t want to say the word “body” in front of his wife. You get to recognise the triggers that begin it all over again.
Prescott stood up, and Freeman did the same.
He said, ‘When?’
‘Tonight, if possible. You can bring someone with you, of course. Or-’
‘It’ll be me,’ Prescott said. ‘We’ll call Emma,’ with a look at his wife, ‘and she can stay with Cathy. What time?’
Some people become business-like – it’s another way of coping.
Freeman said, ‘Whatever suits you, Mr Prescott. I can arrange-’
‘I’ll say seven. Where do I need to go?’
She explained, thinking this left barely any time for the Markham woman to make sure the girl’s corpse looked acceptable. She still thought of her as Morticia Markham, even though the joke had fallen flat when she made it months ago. “Most droll” had been the comment but the look that accompanied it seemed to be measuring the new detective chief inspector for a steel table of her very own.
At the front door, Freeman said, ‘We can offer you some support, Mr and Mrs Prescott. Someone to sit with you and guide you through this,’ and Prescott thanked her but said they would manage. And then, ‘Will it be you?’
He meant, will you be taking me to see her? It shouldn’t be, of course – anyone could do that. It’s just an identification.
‘Yes, Mr Prescott. It’ll be me.’
Once they were back in her car, Freeman had pulled away immediately but only as far as the first turn, so they were out of sight of the Prescotts’ home. Then she parked up again, switched off the engine and said to Denise Sterling, ‘Anything?’
The detective sergeant’s face showed no surprise at the question.
‘No, ma’am. The room’s a bit of a shrine already. As far as I could make out, the girl last spent time in it about a year ago – just a few days between places before she moved to the house in South Wood. Some of her stuff is still in it, but nothing recent.’
‘And Mrs Prescott? Nothing from her?’
‘A few more tears but no more meltdowns. She wanted me to know about Roxanne’s good sides, if you know what I mean.’
Freeman was looking at her messages. Her detective inspector was telling her there wouldn’t be any chance of a routine post-mortem until early next week. She looked up and said, ‘What were Roxy’s good sides?’
‘She was funny and bubbly, could be a lot of fun. She could be generous to a fault and give too much to people she thought were in need. Between the lines? Maybe a bit bi-polar and unstable – that’s just a guess. But I think mum was telling me this because she knows what we’ll find out. I think the parents know what she was doing, ma’am.’
‘And you think right – they do. Mr Prescott as much as admitted it. Even so, he’s convinced she hasn’t used in two years.’
Freeman looked directly at Sterling and waited – she needed to see an experienced officer’s first reaction to the idea. Eyebrows raised, maybe mild surprise before Sterling said, ‘When I was in Yarmouth, I worked with street girls a few times. Every one of them was on something – it was usually the reason they’d got onto the game in the first place. Are the ones who call themselves escorts any different?’
Another text buzzed Freeman’s phone. Greene was asking whether she was bringing anything back that would need the team’s immediate attention; in other words, could he let them go early for once? She sent back No. 08.30 briefing in the morning. If the post-mortem is months away, see if we can at least get a tox screen tomorrow.
She said to Sterling, ‘No idea. I don’t know much about escorting. It wasn’t on my list of career choices.’
Sterling said, ‘Me neither. The only escort work I could have got was driving a Securicor van.’
Freeman smiled and Sterling followed suit. Carrying with you the news of a dead child, handing it over and watching the damage it does is emotionally exhausting – just sitting here for five minutes was the right thing to do. She said, ‘Andrew Prescott was holding it together pretty well.’
Sterling nodded, but then she said, ‘He was. And he’s the one it will destroy, ma’am.’
Freeman waited because parenthood too had not been on her list of career choices, and Sterling continued, ‘Father and daughter stuff is complicated. Often the bottom line is, the more grief a kid gives you, the more love you give them. I’ll guarantee their youngest was the favourite.’
Freeman said, ‘What about yours? Your daughter. I’m sorry if this has been difficult, Denise.’
Sterling took a moment. Was it the saying sorry or the thought of her own child in such a nightmare?
‘Rebecca. I sometimes think she’s nothing but one great pain in the backside. But then, she’s fourteen. She’s in for a shock tonight, though.’
‘Why?’
‘She’ll get cuddles ’til it hurts and as much cookie-dough ice cream as she can eat.’
Freeman smiled again, and turned the keys in the ignition. The dashboard lit up but before she could start the motor, Sterling said, ‘You think there’s something here, ma’am?’
‘Here, at the family home? No.’
‘But you think there’s something.’
It was not a question. Denise Sterling was not glamorous and she probably never had been. The joke about being a Securicor guard was a joke made by someone who has no illusions about themselves. But Sterling could read people. That’s why she was here today, in the passenger seat of a detective chief inspector’s car.
Waters had looked inside the Mini, and he hadn’t seen what should have been there. He hadn’t seen a bottle, pills or a syringe. Maybe the funny, bubbly, bi-polar girl was the sort who always tidied things away. Maybe she was OCD as well. Maybe the answers were all in the handbag. But then there was the blood that had not pooled where it should have. If Waters was right about that…
Freeman started the car and said, ‘A tox screen should tell us something.’
Chapter Ten
‘At just after seven last night, Andrew Prescott identified our body as his daughter, Roxanne. Or Roxy, as she seems to have been known to the family. Understandably, he was devastated. I decided he shouldn’t drive home, so I arranged for uniform to get him and his car back to where they live. I promised I’d speak to him again today if there are developments. I’ve also alerted family liaison, just in case this one becomes a runner.’
Freeman paused and Waters looked around. The full squad was present but that was normal, unless someone had a good operational reason to be absent. Detective Inspector Terek was also here, and Waters assumed this was for the same reason he had been at the scene yesterday afternoon; if the girl’s death proved to be a natural one or she had taken her own life, the Criminal Investigation Department would play their obligatory but minimal role in reporting the circumstances to the Coroner’s service. Every death must be accounted for, every sparrow that falls…
Freeman was looking around at them, the way she does, as if she had asked a question. He thought, she’ll have been here until late last night, but even though I was early myself this morning, she was here before me. When does she sleep? More to the point, Smith might have asked, what’s she running away from? What do we know about our DCI? Her mother’s ill and she helps to care for her. A couple of months ago, Serena happened to find out exactly where she lives, and it’s a big old place on the edge of a very desirable village, worth more than a million, according to his female detective constable.
‘So,’ said Freeman, ‘that’s the first question. Is this a runner? Tom, what do we have so far?’
Detective Inspector Greene sat immediately across from Waters. The notes were in that impeccably neat style, headings underlined, the individual points numbered, a new line for each one.
‘Roxanne Prescott is in the system as a runaway teenager, reported three times, the first seven years ago when she was fifteen. On each occasion, she returned home or was found by the family themselves. She was, as a result, on the at-risk register. I haven’t accessed the Social Services records but we can do so if necessary.’
Greene looked at Freeman, who indicated she didn’t think that was likely to be the case. Serena Butler said, ‘How old was she the last time, sir?’
Greene didn’t need to look – he said, ‘Sixteen. It happened three times in just under a year. Presumably, after that the ongoing family crisis moved into a new phase that didn’t require her to run away.’
Sterling said, ‘I’m not sure she was ever a runaway.’
Freeman looked at her and said, ‘Go on, Denise.’
‘As far as we know from what they told us yesterday, Roxanne never left Kings Lake. She started staying out all night and they didn’t know where – which is frightening enough for the parents of a fifteen-year-old – but I don’t think she was ever actually missing. When she got to sixteen, reporting that behaviour to the police becomes a bit problematic, especially as by then the girl’s already known to us.’
Freeman said, ‘Agreed. Let’s just say then that this girl was giving her parents a lot of grief, and I’m sorry for the expression, because I know what you’re thinking now. Tom?’
Greene had a pencil in his right hand, and Waters watched him tick off the first item in his list of notes.
‘Roxanne doesn’t appear anywhere else in the system. One of her housemates does. Melanie Haines is twenty-nine, and today is an anniversary for her – four years ago this morning she was given a police caution for soliciting in the Raglan Road area, here in Kings Lake. It appears to have been a known locality as a number of other girls were cautioned at the same time.’
John Murray said, ‘It still is a known locality, ma’am. It goes back to when the docks were a lot busier than they are these days.’
Freeman smiled and said, ‘As ever, we bow to your local knowledge, John.’
Murray had been the last of the squad to accept Freeman as “the boss”, which was probably why he had become something of a favourite. Tom Greene continued, ‘The assumption that Roxanne was involved in similar activities is tenuous at present. However, the DCI has the feeling her father knew something, and we can see from her car and the contents of her bag that she had money. She owned an iPhone 10, a top of the range job.’
Waters looked around again. There was a blindingly obvious question that someone would shortly be asking, but it wouldn’t be him – he had already guessed what the answer was going to be.
Greene ticked off the second item, and moved on.
‘Unless circumstances change, the post-mortem will be done here next Wednesday. The recent rumours of a new pathologist appear to be malicious; mortuary services are under review and we might lose the one we’ve got. However, I have arranged for a basic tox-screen to be done from a blood sample. That should,’ with a glance at his wristwatch, ‘already be on its way. I called in a favour from the lab I used to use in Peterborough, and we might get something back this afternoon.’
Freeman thanked him and invited a contribution from Detective Inspector Terek, who said, ‘As you know, ma’am, no one from the other teams has been involved in this matter, as yet.’
‘Except you, Simon. You were at the scene and saw more of it than anyone apart from Chris. Now you’ve had time to reflect, what are your thoughts?’
Everyone else in the room had learned the lesson by now – there is no hiding place. Therefore, stop trying to hide, find another strategy. Terek, on the other hand, still seemed to be trapped by his own resentment of Freeman’s appointment. The detective inspector hadn’t spoken to Waters since yesterday afternoon and would not look at him now, even though the detective sergeant’s name had just been mentioned. After some moments that made his discomfort apparent, he said, ‘I haven’t changed my opinion, ma’am. There were no signs of violence or any sort of struggle. If the young woman was involved in sex work, it’s likely she was using drugs, and those factors lead to an increased likelihood of an accidental overdose or suicide. Obviously, the results of the tox screen are key to how you proceed.’
“You proceed”, not “we”. Freeman would not have missed that, Waters knew, but she didn’t react, at least not visibly so. Instead, she thanked the detective inspector, and then said, ‘Anyone else?’
Clive Betts raised a hand and said, ‘Ma’am – as we have this iPhone, can’t we just plug it into the kiosk? It could tell us more than the tox screen, couldn’t it?’
This was the question Waters had anticipated. Freeman looked at Greene and said, ‘Tom?’
The detective inspector said, ‘OK. Has a crime been committed? We can use mobile data extraction only to search for evidence in relation to an offence. We don’t know that there has been an offence. If DI Terek is correct, there might not have been any offence at all, in which case we have no grounds for opening the mobile phone. There are no specific regulations – which is part of the problem – but it’s easier in practice to search the phones of suspects than it is of victims.’
Waters had been present when the phone they seized after arresting Ryan Shepherd had been connected to the Universal Forensic Extraction Device. From the point of view of investigators, this is an incredibly useful piece of hardware. Nicknamed the kiosk, it’s a black box about the size of the one you use to carry your sandwiches in, but it can in a matter of seconds download the entire contents of your phone – call records, texts, contacts, emails, photos, videos, all your GPS data, WhatsApp, chat history from Facebook and all encrypted data. Shepherd had remembered to turn his mobile off on the way to Kings Lake, and so his GPS stopped at Dereham that night, but everything else had become available to the squad, and once they had filtered it for the Murfitt case, the entire cache had been sent on to the detectives at Regional Serious Crimes.
Betts wasn’t prepared to give up yet. He said, ‘But if someone just, say, had a quick look, would that be recorded anywhere? Would the phone show that it had been accessed? I mean, if, as you say, there are no specific regulations, then having a look isn’t a specific offence, is it?’
Greene said, ‘I imagine that an iPhone would record that sort of activity…’ and then Freeman took over. She liked tenacity and clearly didn’t disapprove of Clive’s making the suggestion.
‘Tom’s right. It’s a grey area. Sometimes that works for us and sometimes it doesn’t. There has been no new legislation since the UFED was introduced. The instruction from chief constables is that we must consider something called proportionality. We have to weigh up the right to individual privacy against the likely value of the evidence that a mobile might contain. Going into a victim’s phone is about as grey as it gets. And DI Terek’s point holds – we don’t even know that she is a victim, other than maybe a victim of circumstance.’
Clive Betts nodded, convinced, and then Freeman continued, ‘And also, here at Kings Lake, we have another problem as far as the kiosk is concerned. Because a certain national newspaper has mounted a campaign to have use of the kiosk subject to additional search warrant procedures, a certain senior officer has locked ours inside a cupboard in his office. We have to ask for the key before we get to use it anymore.’
Waters had nephews and nieces. Regularly he heard complaints that parents had taken away their iPads as the latest sanction in the battle for supremacy in the home. Detective Chief Superintendent Allen had, it seemed, made a pre-emptive strike for supremacy in the offices of Kings Lake Central.
The briefing had come to an end. There was other work to be done, cold cases to be defrosted once more. Detective Inspector Terek left the room, and Waters saw Greene adding details to that page of notes. Somewhere in a file there would be lists of actions to be taken subsequent to, and depending upon, the results that came back from the blood tests, and possibly the post-mortem next week. Like the body of the girl herself, the investigation into her death went back into temperature-controlled storage for the remainder of the day.
Most detective work is routine, and much more so than viewers of television series and readers of crime fiction realise. After a quarter of an hour watching seven detectives reading five-year-old witness statements, wouldn’t most of us switch channels or put down the book in exasperation? And yet, that is what Waters did, along with the rest of them, until lunchtime, when, because there was no urgency in such work, he went out alone for forty-five minutes to get some fresh air, a sandwich, a decent cup of coffee and to send Miriam a message. She didn’t reply or even listen to it while he watched and waited for her to do so, and he realised she was quite possibly busier than he was.
When he arrived back in the office, there was still no sign of Freeman. She had returned to her own office shortly after the end of the briefing, vacating the desk in the main office that she used when there was anything going on. Her absence signalled that there was nothing going on as effectively as a message displayed on the interactive whiteboard. At two o’clock, the door opened and Priti Hussain appeared. She was looking for Freeman but only to hand her some files – since the woman had been appointed as the senior investigating officer’s personal scribe, there had been nothing for her to do in that role.
Priti left and the silence returned. Waters read a page of a witness statement about an argument that took place in a pub weeks before someone was stabbed in a street-fight years ago but it was just names and places, times and dates. The detritus of detail that accumulates in every investigation, the dust that settles on stories of lives lost long ago. As a student of history, this surely should appeal to him. Wasn’t he better equipped for this kind of work than anyone else in the room? And yet, Waters’ thoughts came back once more to the girl in the car.
He didn’t have much visual imagination. He couldn’t draw or paint to save his life. But he had vivid recall of the people and places that had been significant in every investigation since he joined the force. He could see every body and could focus in on every detail that came to matter, as if the images were digital and there was no limit to the number of pixels. And it is the details that matter. How that lesson had been pressed home, time and again. That funny bruise on Wayne Fletcher’s forehead? Why was there just the one call made on the phone Jimmy Bell left on the gas platform? Why wasn’t there a speck of rust on the shovel that killed Mark Randall?
