Gut Instinct (6 page)

Rohypnol he pondered the date rape drug with no rape, but was there a date? 

She clearly knew her attacker, there had been no forced entry and she had not put up any form of resistance.
Well now we know possibly why?

Stephen looked up, his team were gathered in the office and were all looking at him.  He looked at his watch four forty five, he was late. 

He had got so wrapped up in his thoughts, he’d lost track of time.  He jumped up and made his way to the main office, carrying some interesting news and wondering if they had anything new for him.

**********

Stephen was driving home on auto pilot,
deep in thought. H
e’d not left the office until six forty five.
His staff meeting had run on longer than he had expected.

Paul and Vera had interviewed Jane’s ex and he had a cast iron alibi, being in Germany at the time of the murder, not that he was a prime suspect but it’s always best to check these things out.
  Often the first port of call in these cases was the husband or estranged husband as he was.

He had
told them that he had
no idea who could have done this, did not know of any enemies that Jane might have and was unquestionably distraught by what had happened.

The positive was that he was now going to quit his job and bring up his little boy, that was his first priority now, and he was keen to be kept informed on how the investigation was going.

Or not going. Stephen thought still exasperated by how little evidence they had.

Derek and John had revisited the sister and she had been pleased to see them, she was going to call them as something had crossed her mind.

About four weeks ago Jane had been involved in an affray in her son’s school playground with another mother
.

Jane had been quite upset at the time because this was not her style
,
to be fighting in a school playground.  A classmate of her sons had been bullying him and Jane was quite sensitive about bullying as she had been bullied at school herself.

She’d approached the boy’s mother and attempted to speak with her to try and amicably sort thing
s
out.  The other mother had turned vicious though and began pushing and shoving Jane, to which Jane responded by fighting her back. 

The other mother who had the reputation of being
a bit of a ‘hard nu
t’
had come off the worse, and Jane’s sister wondered if the humiliation had caused her to go round and kill her sister.

It was a long shot but
Derek and John had gone round to see this mother,
whose
words
had been

“Karma,” when they informed her of
who
they were and why they had called.

However this woman had been at an engagement party on the night in question and had provided Derek and John with the details of other people that could clarify this, one of those being a lawyer who was a cousin to the
potential
groom.

He had remembered her
well;
he
made quite disparagi
ng remarks about her behaviour on the night, “made a righ
t show of
herself
” he had said.

The party had gone on until the earl
y hours and she had been flat out
on the floor
highly intoxicated when the lawyer had left at around 4 a.m. S
o the lads didn’t think this was anything
they needed
to follow up any further.

The rest of his team had chased up other witnesses and nothing of great value there. 

This case was becoming like a nightmare; the priority of the homicide division was to get murderers off the street and usually with all cases there was something, some small titbit that when investigated lead to something else and eventually they had an arrest, but this one was not providing even a morsel of information to follow up.

Stephen had updated them on the pathologists report and they had revisited the case once again.

No-one could quite ‘get’ why someone had given her a date rape drug and yet not raped her.

“Perhaps it was to subdue her” Vera had contributed “Stop her from struggling while he killed her”

“He went along to kill her
, it was definitely pre-mediated, to be carrying Rohypnol” Paul added “and
of
course
the .......
erm
card he left”

“Maybe then this guy didn’t have the certainty that he
would be able to overpower her” John added.

“She was seven stone nothing John most guys would be able to overpower her” Derek questioned.

“Maybe it wasn’t a guy” said Paul.

The room went silent for a moment, while people contemplated this fact.

Vera broke the silence, “Girls don’t usually carry around a date rape drug, maybe it was just a small guy, there’s plenty of you around” she said teasingly looking directly at Derek.

This went on for nearly two hours and Stephen
had left feeling
that they were no further forward than they had been at the beginning.

They were just going around in circles, so he had called it a night and sent them home.

What the hell was going on here he thought are people closing ranks?  Are the public frightened to say anything for fear of repercussions? 

There was something going on he knew that but just couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Somebody somewhere must know something and if anyone was going to get to the bottom of it he was.

He pulled up at his destination and turned off the ignition and at the same time turned off his mind, something he had learned to do, otherwise this job would send you insane.

Chapter
Nine

Ve
ra was feeling really perturbed when she arrived home after her shift. B
eing the only girl on the team she saw herself as the sensitive one, the mother figure even though she was not old enough to be any of their mothers.

She was forty years of age but didn’t look it
. S
he
had
inherited youthful genes
, or so she thought because she never really used face creams or paid any particular attention to her skin.

She
had blonde curly
hair that
drove her mad at times but would be what most girls would
give their high teeth for.  Brown eyes, a petite figure and Kate
Winslet
style lips that most men wanted to kiss
.

She hadn’t got much time for men, much to their
disappointment
, she’d had one very bad relationship and that had put her off for life and so therefore had dedicated her life and her love to her job, beco
ming a little bit of a feminist too.

She was not enjoying her work so much these days though, they were a good team but since Paul had joined the team things had become a little tense.

It wasn’t
Paul;
although he could be a pain in the arse sometimes when he had his intellectual head on, it was Stephen
.

H
e had taken such a dislike to Paul and showed his feelings whenever he had the chance, unnecessarily humiliating him in meetings.

It didn’t help that Derek and John took the Mickey out of him too, behind his back, they had worked their way up the ladder and didn’t take to kindly to this ‘bookworm’ joining the team.

If only they knew what she knew about Paul, he wasn’t always an intellectual, in fact far from it.

Vera didn’t rate this type of
behaviour;
she believed that they all had to work together so therefore should treat each other with respect. 

We were all different and she believed that this enabled everyone to bring something unique to the table.

Vera had experienced a difficult childhood
, things she kept to herself, things that she tried not to think about or it would drive her mad. However
this made her ultra sensitive to other people’s feelings. 

In her training the senior officer had told her that she had ‘too much empathy’ and needed
to lose that if she was going to make it as a copper. 

Vera
had
n’t
take
n
t
his
on board as she
had
disagreed with it and
believed that
her understanding of people’s feelings
made her a good copper and thought that too many in the force
had very little compassion.

Certainly her experience of the police in her younger days hadn’t been a pleasant one; they had shown no compassion for her. 

Vera wanted to be different and she wanted to make a difference, so the unhelpful criticism she had received in training was dumped right where it belonged, in the bin.

She’d thought about addressing her boss about his behaviour towards Paul and telling him how uncomfortable this was for the rest of the team
and how uncompassionate he was being.

N
ormally Vera would have no qualms about doing this, she was not one to hold things in
and let them fester, but she didn’t want to give h
im any excuse to go against her.

S
he needed to stay on this case and keep on top of the information that was coming in and she knew Stephen well, if you challenged him,
and he didn’t like it
then for a while he would let you know that he wasn’t happy, would put you on menial jobs and withhold information that she needed to hear right now.

Paul had hit the nail on the head, when he said that it was a serial killer, she agreed with him entirely but was not going to be seen to be agreeing with him, and she wanted to be an important member of the team when the next bodies turned up, which they would she knew that. 

Stephen Roberts was not the only one with a good intuition; she had
a
well
practised gut instinct too.

She’d had to develop one to survive her childhood.

Her stomach churned when she thought of those times,
it was surprising she had done well at all,
but look at her now, she had her own home, a good job and she was happy.

Vera was
the
computer whizz
,
and that was the gift she brought to the team, anything that needed research, or if computers needed hacking she was ‘man for the job’. 

Problem was
she had a morbid curiosity; in fact
she was
downright
nosey
and in her spare time liked to research her colleagues.

She would look into their private lives because she perceived that
s
he needed to be one
step
ahead of them all the time
. 

Vera felt that knowledge was important, the more knowledge you had about people and things, the more powerful you were.

She had accrued a lot of information about her colleagues, knew a lot of things about them, things from their past and present and
regularly
kept an eye on their computer activities.

‘Oh yes’ she thought ‘if ever they managed to get anything on me, then I would have enough on them to persuade them to keep their mouths shut’.

Vera did not want her past coming out, she didn’t want peoples sympathy, she didn’t want to lose her tough girl image and boy didn’t you need to be tough to survive working with seven men.  You needed thick skin, very thick skin indeed.

Her tough image all the same was a show, she knew this, she knew that it was her protection from being hurt, it was her survival mechanism that she had developed at a very young age, and one she would find difficult to let go of, and besides it didn’t harm anyone, most people liked her and it kept her safe.

Her mind wandered back to Jane Smith
, poor girl to die so young.  But at least it had not been a violent death; at least she had not
suffered. Her children wi
ll be looked after by their Dad, they will be alright, and he seemed a good sort.

And the card, the card said.

“GUESS WHO”

Guess who indeed she thought.

Chapter
Ten