The Dead Place

5

‘She never liked using that car park,’ said Geoff Birley. ‘But it was the only place near enough to the office, without her having to walk a long way.’

He stared down at his large pale hands where they lay helplessly on his knees. He’d given his age as forty-one, three years older than his wife. He was a foreman on the despatch floor at one of the big distribution centres just outside town. Hard physical work, no doubt, but never any sign of sun.

‘That’s the trouble with this town, you know. Not nearly enough parking spaces.’

He looked at DI Hitchens for understanding. Always a mistake, in Diane Fry’s view. But Birley’s face was pale and set in an expression of shock, so maybe he knew no better at the moment. A family liaison officer had been appointed, a female officer who might make a better job of sympathizing with Birley and getting him to talk once the detectives had gone.

‘They keep opening more shops, and encouraging more and more tourists to come in, but they don’t give people anywhere to park.’

Hitchens didn’t answer. He left it to Birley’s sister, Trish Neville, a large woman wearing an apron, who had insisted on making tea that neither of the detectives had touched.

‘Geoff, I’m sure the inspector doesn’t think that’s worth fretting about just now,’ she said. ‘He has more important things to talk to you about.’

She spoke to her brother a little too loudly, as if he were an elderly relative, senile and slightly deaf.

‘I know,’ said Birley. ‘But if it hadn’t been for that … If there had been somewhere nearer to park her car, and more secure. If the company had provided parking for its staff …’

They were sitting in a low-ceilinged room with small windows, like so many of the older houses in the area. Peak Park planning regulations wouldn’t have allowed the owners to knock holes in the walls and put picture windows in, even if they’d wanted to. It wouldn’t have been in keeping.

The room might have been dark and gloomy, if it hadn’t been recently decorated with bright floral wallpaper and dazzling white gloss on the woodwork. Somebody, presumably Sandra Birley, had arranged mirrors and a multi-faceted glass lamp to catch what light there was from the windows and spread it around the room. Fry found herself seated in an armchair with a chintz cover, facing the windows. Normally, she disliked the fussiness of chintz intensely. But in this room it seemed to work, softening the crude lines of the stone walls.

Geoff Birley had stopped speaking. He licked his lips anxiously, as if he’d forgotten what he was saying. He seemed to know they were expecting something of him, but wasn’t sure what it was. He looked up at his sister, who was standing over him like an attentive nurse.

‘Well, I’m just saying, Trish,’ he said. ‘About the car park.’

Trish Neville sighed and folded her arms across her chest. She looked at the two detectives. Over to you, she seemed to say.

‘Despite that, your wife used the multi-storey car park regularly, didn’t she, sir?’ said Fry.

‘Yes, she did,’ said Birley. ‘But she always tried to get a space on the lower levels, so she wouldn’t have to go up to the top to fetch her car if she worked late at the office. Only, you have to get there early, you see. You have to be there at seven o’clock, or you’ve had it for the rest of the day.’

‘And she was late yesterday morning?’

‘She got held up by a phone call as she was leaving the house. It was only her mother, mithering about nothing as usual. But Sandra always has to spend a few minutes listening to the old bat and calming her down. Sandra is like that – if she cut her mother off short, she’d have felt guilty about it all day. So she made herself late because of it. By the time she got to Clappergate, the bottom levels of the car park would already have been full. A few minutes make all the difference, you see. And when that happens, you have to go up and up, until you’re on the bloody roof.’

‘Her car wasn’t quite on the roof level, in fact,’ said Fry. ‘It was on the one below, Level 8.’

‘She was lucky, then. She must have nipped into a space.’

Fry and Hitchens exchanged a glance. The fact that Mr Birley should still be describing his wife’s actions as ‘lucky’ told them that reality hadn’t sunk in for him yet. The one thing Sandra Birley hadn’t been last night was lucky.

‘Mr Birley,’ said Hitchens. ‘When your wife went back for her car, we think she used the stairs to get to Level 8, instead of the lift. Yet the lift was working. Would that have been her usual habit, do you think?’

The question seemed only to confuse Geoff Birley. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Would your wife normally have used the stairs to go up eight floors, rather than take the lift?’

Birley hesitated. ‘It depends. What did it smell like?’

Now it was Hitchens’ turn to look puzzled. ‘I’m sorry, sir?’

‘The lift. What did it smell like? Did anyone open it and have a smell inside?’

Fry had been present when the lift was examined. Even now, she had to swallow a little surge of bile that rose to her throat as she remembered the stink.

‘Yes, it smelled pretty bad.’

‘Like somebody had thrown up in there, then pissed on it?’

‘Those smells featured, I think.’

Birley shook his head. ‘Then Sandra wouldn’t have gone in it. She might have pressed the button and opened the doors. But if the lift smelled as bad inside as you say it did, she wouldn’t have used it. No way. She couldn’t stand bad smells in an enclosed space. It made her feel sick.’

‘So you think she’d have used the stairs, even though the lift was working?’

‘Yes, I’m sure she would. You can count on it.’

Trish put her hand on her brother’s shoulder, perhaps detecting some sign of emotion that Fry had missed. She left it there for a few moments, while Birley breathed a little more deeply. The two detectives waited. Fry noticed that Trish’s arms were broad and fleshy, yet ended in surprisingly small, elegant hands with long fingers, as though the hands had been transplanted from someone else.

‘I’m fine, really,’ said Birley at last.

‘Your wife was late leaving the office too, wasn’t she, sir?’ said Fry.

‘Yes, she was. There was a late meeting, and then she had some work she had to finish. She’s done very well for herself at Peak Mutual, you know. She’s an account executive.’

‘Did you know she’d be late?’

‘She rang me just before five thirty to let me know, and told me not to wait for her to get home before I had something to eat. I got a pizza out of the freezer and left half of it for her. Hawaiian-style. She likes pineapple.’

Fry saw Trish’s hand tighten on his shoulder in an affectionate squeeze. She was anticipating Birley’s realization that the five-thirty phone call was the last time he would ever speak to his wife, that Sandra would never come home to eat her half of the pizza. But the moment didn’t come. Or at least, it didn’t show on Geoff Birley’s face.

‘When Mrs Birley called, you were already home, sir?’ asked Hitchens.

‘Yes, I was on an early shift.’

‘Your wife didn’t happen to say what the work was she had to finish?’

‘No, she didn’t often talk about her work. She told me about the people in her office – little bits of gossip, you know. But she didn’t bring her work home. She was good at her job, but she liked to keep the two halves of her life completely separate, she said.’

It was a good trick if you could do it. Fry glanced at Hitchens, who nodded.

‘Mr Birley, we have to ask you this,’ she said. ‘Can you think of anyone who might want to harm your wife?’

He frowned and shook his head. ‘No, not at all. Everybody liked her. She wasn’t the sort of person to get into arguments. She hated upsetting people. If there was someone at work she didn’t get on with, she would just try to avoid them.’

‘I see.’

‘It wasn’t somebody Sandra knew, was it? Surely it was one of these lunatics who prey on women? She was a random victim. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘Most likely, sir,’ said Hitchens. ‘But we have to cover all the possibilities.’

Geoff Birley looked up at his sister again. It seemed to Fry that it was Trish he was talking to now, as if the police had already left his house.

‘Only, I’d hate to think it was someone Sandra knew that attacked her. I couldn’t bear the thought of that. It had to be a stranger, didn’t it? That’s the only thing we can cling to. It’s some consolation, at least.’

‘What time did you first try to call your wife’s mobile, sir?’

‘About eight, I suppose.’

‘And it was already off then?’

‘Yes.’

Hitchens leaned forward in his chair, as if about to leave.

‘Would it be all right if we take a look around while we’re here, sir?’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘Anything that might help us find your wife.’

Puzzled, Birley looked at his sister, whose face had set into an angry expression. ‘I suppose it’ll be all right,’ he said.

The Birleys lived in a detached limestone cottage with an enclosed garden. Fry guessed there were probably three or four bedrooms upstairs. From outside, it was obvious that the property had been created by combining two cottages whose roofs were at slightly different heights. An external chimney stack at one end suggested there might have been a third cottage in the row at some time.

Fry looked first into the kitchen and saw an enamelled range, the kind that provided central heating and hot water as well as cooking. She’d never be able to manage one of those herself. In the sitting room, the focal point had been a castiron stove with a carved surround, which looked equally impractical.

In the dining room, Fry paused to admire a carving of a leaping dolphin on a table near the fireplace. There was much more light at the back of the house, thanks to a sliding door that led into a conservatory, with pine floorboards covered in raffia matting. She walked straight through it and out into the garden, past a lawn and a series of raised borders, until she found a brick store place and a garden shed that had been painted bright blue. Neither of them contained the body of Sandra Birley.

Re-entering the house, Fry saw Hitchens descending the stairs from the bedrooms. She shook her head, and they both went back into the sitting room, where they were met with a glare from Trish Neville. Geoff himself was gazing at the carved surround of the stove, as if searching for a meaning in its decorative curlicues.

‘Is that your car parked outside, sir?’ said Hitchens. ‘The green Audi?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Do you mind if DS Fry takes a look?’

Birley found the keys to the Audi without argument. Either he’d cottoned on by now, or his sister had explained it to him while they were out of the room.

Fry went outside and checked the interior and boot of the car. It contained nothing more incriminating than half a roll of blue stretch wrap that looked as though it might have come from the despatch department at a distribution centre.

‘I don’t know what I’ll do without Sandra,’ Birley said, as the detectives prepared to leave.

‘We don’t know that your wife is dead, Mr Birley,’ said Hitchens.

‘What? You think he might be keeping her prisoner somewhere?’

‘It’s quite possible. Until we know one way or the other, we’re keeping an open mind.’

Birley had begun to look hopeful. But now he dropped his eyes again.

‘You’re just saying that. You’ll find her dead, won’t you? You know you will. Why else would he have snatched her from that car park?’

‘Until that happens, we can still hope for the best, sir.’

As soon as he’d spoken, Fry remembered having said something similar quite recently. But she couldn’t quite recall when and where.

Detective Chief Inspector Oliver Kessen leaned against the side of the crime scene van and thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘Well, this place must be dead overnight,’ he said. ‘Do many people leave vehicles in here until morning?’

Fry assumed that the DCI was talking to her, though he gave no sign of it. Scenes of crime had almost finished with Sandra Birley’s Skoda, and were moving away along the retaining wall towards the ramps.

‘Very few,’ said Fry. ‘It’s too expensive.’

She looked around for Ben Cooper to get confirmation.

‘This is a shoppers’ car park,’ he said. ‘It’s meant for short stay. But some of the office workers use it, if they need to. The other parking facilities get full.’

‘That’s what Mr Birley told us, too,’ added Fry.

Kessen kept his eye on the Skoda, as if it might do something. Perhaps he expected it to crack open its bonnet and make a confession.

‘The attacker must have known it would be empty by that time.’

Fry nodded, though she knew Kessen wouldn’t see her gesture. He’d barely looked at her yet.

‘Yes, he certainly seems to have known his way around. There are eleven CCTV cameras in here – one on each level, and two at the entrance and exit. But he must have known exactly where they were, because none of them seem to have caught him, so far as we can tell from the attendant.’

One of the SOCOs, Liz Petty, glanced over towards them and smiled. Fry thought she’d found something significant, but she went back to dusting the edge of the wall near Sandra Birley’s car. Elsewhere, DI Hitchens was supervising a search on the stairs and in the lift, followed by the concrete parking bays between them and the car. The whole of Level 8 had been sealed off, which meant no one could reach the roof level of the car park either. Apart from the Skoda, the only vehicles here now belonged to the police team.

‘Just one attendant?’ said Kessen.

‘At that time of night, yes. He has a little office on the first level, and he monitors the cameras from there.’

‘Someone will have to go through every bit of footage.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Looking at the vehicles lined up in the multistorey car park reminded Fry that her Peugeot was due for its MoT this month. She ought to check the date on the certificate – she suspected there were only a few days left before it expired. It didn’t do a police officer’s reputation any good to be caught driving an illegal vehicle.

Sealing off the two top levels of the car park was undoubtedly causing problems. The ‘full’ sign at the entrance had already been illuminated when the first police officers arrived to look at Sandra Birley’s car. Now, frustrated motorists were continually pulling up to the barrier at ground level and reversing away again.

‘What about the lifts?’

‘They’re cleaned out every day,’ said Cooper. ‘The interiors are specifically designed for easy washing and disinfecting. It’s a familiar problem, apparently.’

‘And here I was thinking it was only a problem in high-rise flats on council estates in Birmingham,’ said Fry. ‘You’ve imported some dirty habits into Derbyshire, haven’t you?’

‘Well, I got on to the cleaning contractors a few minutes ago. They swear the lift at the Hardwick Lane entrance was thoroughly cleaned early yesterday morning. So it shouldn’t have smelled of anything but industrial disinfectant with a hint of pine forest when Mrs Birley arrived.’

‘When she arrived, yes. But somebody had been up to their dirty tricks by the time she came back for her car that night.’

‘Do you think she’d have been safer using the lift?’

Fry strode in front of the DCI and gestured at the Skoda, the SOCOs in their scene suits still clustered round it. It wasn’t a murder enquiry, not without a body. So Kessen would disappear soon. He needed to know who had the ideas at an early stage.

‘Well, look at the layout of this level,’ she said. ‘If Sandra Birley used the lift, she’d have had only a few feet to walk before she reached her car. In fact, I think it’s likely she chose that parking space precisely because it was near the lift. But the exit from the stairs is fifty yards further on, and it meant she had to pass the bottom of the down ramp from Level 9 on the way to her car.’

‘Where her attacker may have been waiting behind the concrete barrier.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So it seems her own fastidiousness led her into danger.’

DI Hitchens trotted towards them from the stairs, red in the face and puffing slightly. He was followed by the crime scene manager, Wayne Abbott, who was about the same age as Hitchens but looked much more fit.

Abbott had recently been appointed senior SOCO for the area after finishing a scientific support management course at the training centre near Durham. Fry didn’t much like having to deal with him at a crime scene. There was something about his aggressively shaved head and permanent five o’clock shadow that suggested too much testosterone. From the first time she set eyes on him, she’d wondered why Abbott was a civilian. He ought to be kitted out in full public-order gear, wielding a baton and breaking down doors.

‘Sir, the bad news is that only half the CCTV cameras in this place are operational,’ said Hitchens. ‘The others are dummies.’

Kessen cursed quietly. ‘And Level 8?’

‘One of the dummies.’

‘Damn and blast.’

‘The camera at the exit is working, sir. We can get registration numbers for any vehicles that left the car park after the attack.’

‘He wouldn’t have been so stupid,’ said Kessen. ‘Ten to one he was on foot.’

‘That would make the job much more difficult than just bundling someone into a vehicle.’

‘But it would be the only way to avoid the cameras. So what about pedestrian access?’

‘Two flights of stairs, one at either end. Lifts at the entrance into the shopping centre. Also, the attacker could have made his way down through the levels via the car ramps. That would be a dangerous thing to do during the day, when it’s busy. But after seven o’clock it would be so quiet that he could do it easily. And he’d have heard any car coming a long way off. Noises really travel in here, have you noticed?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘But wouldn’t the operative cameras pick him up on some of the levels, at least?’ said Fry.

‘Yes, you’re right, DS Fry.’ Kessen looked thoughtful. ‘Who’s talked to the attendant?’

‘The FOAs. He’s got his supervisor here with him now, too. He called his head office as soon as we arrived.’

‘We need to talk to him again,’ said Kessen. ‘If it was so quiet in here last night, it makes me wonder what exactly the attendant was doing down there.’

Hitchens wiped his face with a handkerchief. He was getting very unfit if he couldn’t walk up a few flights of stairs without risking a heart attack.

‘At least he heard the scream,’ he said.

‘Oh yes, the scream.’

‘It helps us with the timing.’

‘Well, it’s a pity he wasn’t quicker off the mark getting up here, instead of staring at his little screens wondering if he was on the wrong channel.’

‘According to his initial statement, there was no one around when he did come up to check, so he thought it must be kids messing around outside.’

‘And then he went back to his tea break, no doubt,’ said Kessen.

Hitchens shrugged. ‘Also, the mobile phone network recorded the logging-off signal from Mrs Birley’s phone. But I don’t think that will help us much, in the circumstances.’

The smashed phone had been bagged by the SOCOs, along with the bits of broken plastic scattered across Level 8 by the tyre of a Daihatsu 4x4 that had driven over it. The SIM card would identify the phone definitely, but it matched the description given by Geoff Birley – a Nokia with a soft leather case and a red fascia.

Fry walked to the outside wall of the car park and looked over the ledge at the buildings in Clappergate. Far below, a group of youths wearing rucksacks went by with their skateboards, whistling between their teeth as they entered the shopping precinct. She tugged at the wire mesh, but it didn’t shift an inch.

A movement caught Fry’s attention, and she saw Liz Petty again, walking across to the crime scene van to speak to Abbott, who was now her supervisor. She had pushed her hood back from her face, and she looked flushed. SOCOs didn’t like wearing the hoods of the scene suits if they could help it, especially the female officers. Petty brushed her hair back and tried to confine it in the clip behind her head. She saw Fry watching her, and smiled again.

‘I’ll get everything under way, sir,’ Hitchens was saying. ‘DS Fry and I have an appointment with the psychologist.’

‘The phone calls?’ said Kessen.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I don’t suppose we’ve had a call since Mrs Birley disappeared?’

‘No. And it’s difficult to know whether we should hope for one or not.’

‘At least we’d know where we stand. You need to make the right call on this one, Paul.’

Fry felt a little sorry for Hitchens. Nine times out of ten there were other reasons why people went missing, especially adults. They usually turned up alive and well, with surprised looks on their faces at all the fuss they’d caused. That could waste a lot of time and resources if a hasty decision was made.

For now, Hitchens was the man who had to make that judgement. He’d want firm evidence of a serious crime before he pressed the alarm button. A vague message from a disturbed individual wasn’t adequate justification – not enough to look good on paper when the DI’s handling of the case was reviewed. But add a scream in the night, a dropped mobile phone and a missing woman, and the equation became much more difficult. All Fry could hope for was that it added up on the right side for Sandra Birley.

6

Dr Rosa Kane wasn’t what Fry had expected at all. New experts with fresh ideas were fine, but they weren’t supposed to be young and attractive, with Irish accents and the shade of red hair that DI Hitchens had a weakness for. These were factors that distracted Fry from the start, and somehow interfered with her ability to listen to what Dr Kane was saying with serious attention.

‘We can make some tentative deductions from the language he uses, of course,’ said Dr Kane, some time after the introductions had been made and the content of the calls summarized.

‘Can we?’ said Fry.

Then she realized immediately that her surprised tone might give away the fact that it was the first comment from the psychologist she’d really heard.

‘For a more detailed analysis, you’ll need the services of a forensic linguist. But some of it is fairly obvious. If you’d like my opinion, that is …?’

‘Please go ahead, Doctor,’ said Hitchens, smiling as he saw an opportunity to save on the expense of another expert.

‘Well, for a start, there’s his tendency to make grammatical switches from first person singular to first person plural, and then to third person. That’s very interesting. When he says “I”, “me” and “my”, he’s almost certainly telling the truth. But when he switches to the plural or third person, or to a passive form, that’s when he’s concealing something. It’s an unconscious sign of evasion.’

Intrigued now, Fry hunched over the transcript. She ran a yellow highlighter pen through some of the phrases. Perhaps I’ll wait, and enjoy the anticipation … I can smell it right now, can’t you? … I promise … My kind of killing … And then there was a change halfway through a sentence: as a neck slithers in my fingers …

There were a few more sentences with ‘me’ and ‘my’. But then the entire final section was couched in the first person plural, as if to draw his listeners into a conspiracy. The question isn’t whether we kill, but how we do it. That section contained all the stuff about Freud and Thanatos, too. No ‘I’ in it anywhere. ‘I see what you mean,’ Fry said, reluctantly.