One Bad Turn (2 page)

‘Maybe not for the want of trying…’ Coupland observed. ‘Her bag was found beside her too,’ Mallender added, ‘a good one, by the look of it. Her mobile was inside it; along with a purse containing fifty pounds in cash, so the motive isn’t likely to be a robbery is it?’ The question was rhetoric; he’d already turned his gaze away from the tent’s interior.

‘What’s her name?’ Coupland asked.

‘Sharon Mathers.’

Coupland had put it off long enough; he leaned over the woman’s body to get a closer look, allowing his gaze to travel upwards. A halo of scarlet pooled around what remained of her head. Something foul tasting caught in his throat. The public seemed to think this part got easier, the more dead bodies you saw on the job the more immune you became to the sorrow but there was no truth in that. This woman had been loved, was still loved, Coupland may even have crossed paths with her at some point, sat beside her at the dentist, made small talk with her in a supermarket queue, she’d lived and breathed and cared for someone, yet had been discarded like a broken doll. It was the eyes that always did for him, the last fearful moments reflected in each victim’s stare. Their faces were never at peace: they were shocked, frightened, or just plain sad. It was a palpable sorrow, one that weighed heavy on his shoulders every time. ‘Jesus, have you seen what he’s done to her face?’ he whispered. There was a crater in the front of her skull; one eye socket was no longer visible. It seemed grotesque that the make up on the other half of her face was intact. From what remained Coupland thought she might have been pretty.

Once.

‘Look at her hands,’ Mallender prompted, and Coupland got down on his haunches to study them. Red painted nails were unbroken but her knuckles were swollen. ‘She managed to get a punch in then,’ Coupland muttered. All that fight yet it had still come to this. Coupland felt his hackles rise. He had a wife, a daughter, how often had he told them just to run away, put their energy into escaping rather than screaming for help, and failing that kick the bastard where it hurts and then run. But the truth was men were stronger than women, and a bastard hell bent on doing harm was nigh on unstoppable. Coupland stepped out of the tent, he’d seen enough. This young woman had literally fought for her life and lost in the worst possible way. He pitied the poor sod who’d stumbled upon her. He locked eyes with Mallender. ‘Who found her?’ he asked.

The DCI pulled a face. ‘Boyfriend. Been living together for the past three years. She was late home from drinks after work. He’d started to get worried when she didn’t answer his calls. Walked along the route she’d normally take when she got off the bus. Kept dialling her phone as he looked for her when eventually he heard a ring tone he recognised coming from the clearing.’

‘Poor bugger.’ Coupland muttered. He looked at his watch then realised he hadn’t changed it back to Greenwich Mean Time. He pulled his mobile from his pocket. It was 3am. No wonder he was knackered. ‘So the boyfriend found her about 1am?’ Mallender nodded. The bus service was pretty regular until midnight, which wasn’t a late night by many standards. Most people only considered cabs once the buses stopped running. Coupland ran a hand over his face. His euphoria on landing in one piece had long since evaporated; he felt like the walking dead.

‘How did the boyfriend seem?’ Coupland was referring to the defence wounds on the victim’s hands. By the state of her knuckles her punches had found their target. Whoever killed her won’t be looking too pretty by morning.

‘He’s clean by the look of it. No black eyes or bruises emerging but we’ll carry out a full check on him.’

‘Where is he now?’

Mallender inclined his head in the direction of a small development of houses beyond the bus stop. ‘Back home, he’s been assigned an FLO. I want you to go over there first thing. Get as much out of him as you can. Obviously until we get the all clear he’s our key suspect.’ Coupland knew the drill, not that it made it any easier. The fact remained that every week two women in the UK were murdered by their partners, so the process of elimination followed by the police during a murder investigation was not without just cause. ‘I’ll finish up here,’ Mallender offered, ‘Curtis will want a preliminary report on his desk first thing and you look ready to drop.’ Coupland nodded, grateful to be making his way back to his car.

He’d intended to go home to grab a couple of hours sleep but found himself driving on autopilot, arriving at Salford Precinct station some fifteen minutes later. A bit like Coupland, from the outside the station seemed barely to have changed since it was built in the seventies, although the interior had had a major refurb over the last five years, first to bring the building in line with modern safety regulations, secondly to reduce heating and lighting costs, make it run more efficiently. Apart from five years spent at Stretford which he’d rather forget, Coupland had spent his entire career stationed here. Starting out as a young cop on the beat, in the days when that meant pounding the streets alone, never certain of what was round the next corner. Some of his contempories looked back on that time with nostalgia, reckoned it was better back then, safer, the public held the police in high esteem. Coupland wasn’t so sure. Hard faced men have stared him in the eye for as long as he can remember, all that’s changed are the fashions, not the attitude.

Coupland enjoyed one last cigarette before leaving the car. Yes, he was tired, he could sleep on a clothes line given the chance, but two hours kip wouldn’t even make a dent in it. Might as well work through his exhaustion. They’d be setting up an incident room by now and he had a chance to read through the early statements that had been taken, get some momentum going under this investigation before he called it a night. Or day, depending how you looked at it.

Chapter 2

Coupland’s desk was scattered with files, biscuit crumbs and reports needing sign off but he’d seen worse. The lack of paperwork didn’t reassure him, his inbox would be full to bursting with circulars from HR he wouldn’t bother reading and incident updates he’d been copied into in the general arse covering way that the senior ranks preferred, all marked ‘High Importance,’ making it impossible to prioritise. There was a card on his desk from Alex Moreton, thanking the team for baby Todd’s gifts with a post script which read: ‘The nipple cream you sent has really come in handy.’ She’d added a smiley face after that bit. Coupland looked around the night shift officers setting up a dedicated incident area for Sharon Mathers’ murder, holding the card aloft in his hand, ‘And who was the joker?’ He demanded, ‘I thought I’d checked everything we’d bought from the whip round before it got posted?’ Coupland stared at the men around him half-heartedly, time was when he’d have been the instigator, sending a rubber ring or cabbage leaves to the new mother but what was once harmless fun between colleagues was now seen as harassment. Mallender would be all over him like a rash in an STI clinic if he got wind of this. He returned the card to his desk. He wasn’t going to make a big deal of it, the team knew he was displeased and that would have to do for now. DC Turnbull had been pushing a desk from one end of the room to the other. He stopped, raised his hand sheepishly. ‘It was me, Sarge,’ he pulled a face, ‘I just wanted to lighten the mood a bit, you know, after everything…’ How could any of them forget the murder of a young DC on their watch? It had hit everyone hard, including Alex, who’d named her new baby after him. ‘Fair enough,’ Coupland grunted, locking his drawer, ‘but best not to draw attention to it, though, just to be on the safe side.’

‘Good holiday?’ DC Robinson called over, preparing the incident wall with the photograph and scant details of the victim they’d gathered to date. ‘Not too shabby at all,’ Coupland responded, trying but failing to supress a grin. ‘Lynn took to Blackjack like a duck to water, and I had my first ever full body massage in a spa. Thank Christ for the twin centre holiday.’

‘And Amy?’

‘She spent all her money shopping in Vegas then all her time on the beach texting some lad from college.’

‘Expensive,’ Robinson sympathised.

‘You don’t know the bloody half of it,’ Coupland grumbled but his eyes told a different story. Turnbull and Robinson returned to setting up the incident room, a harmless enough duo, they could be relied upon to carry out tasks assigned to them. Both detectives had worked together so frequently they appeared to Coupland as a single unit, like the Chuckle Brothers, or Ant and Dec. ‘Has Alex’s maternity cover come through?’ Coupland enquired. ‘You mean you’ve not been keeping up with your emails while you were away, Sarge?’ Turnbull laughed, ‘Shame on you. Nice threads by the way.’ Coupland looked down at himself, remembered he had responded to the call straight from the airport. He was wearing light coloured chinos and a flowery shirt the girls had bought him teamed with a creased linen jacket. The man from Del Monte meets Hawaii Five O. At least he’d not made the mistake of wearing his flip flops on the plane; he had on brown loafers Lynn had bought for his last birthday that he’d never worn before and his tan was so deep he’d gone without socks. There was a time when a get up like this would have made him feel self-conscious but the good people of Antigua hadn’t batted an eyelid. Lynn had certainly been complimentary. That was one of the many differences between men and women, he mused, when a man found himself a wife he didn’t want her to change while a woman saw a husband as a work in progress, as though the clothes he wore and the way he cut his hair were just trial runs until she took over. Having said that, the tan combined with the holiday wardrobe he had cultivated over the last couple of weeks did make him feel like a million dollars. ‘You can joke,’ Coupland countered, puffing up his chest, ‘I might start dressing this way every day.’ A couple of the officers snorted. ‘You’ll be moving into a houseboat and getting an alligator as a pet next,’ Robinson panted as he leaned into a filing cabinet to nudge it along the wall a bit. ‘You’ll have to explain to the children,’ Coupland responded, glancing at the officers under forty who were looking at Robinson perplexed. Leaving the DC to explain the merits of Miami Vice to the Matrix generation Coupland made his way over to Turnbull. ‘Seriously, have we got enough cover for this?’ With Alex on maternity leave they were one man down but no one’d give a toss about that when they were looking at the unit’s clear up rates. A murder on his first day back. A logistical nightmare when they weren’t working at full strength. Coupland reminded himself it was no walk in the park for Sharon Mathers’ family either. Turnbull nodded. ‘He started last Friday. Transferred from The Met by all accounts, left under a cloud if rumours are anything to go by.’ In Coupland’s experience there was a grain of truth in all gossip, far more than in the official spin often meted out in an attempt to deter it.
‘Relocation to be near family,’
was just the bull people churned out to save face after a demotion. ‘So, he thinks he’s a big fish in a small pond, does he?’ Coupland grinned; he wasn’t averse to bringing some jumped up southerner down to size. ‘What’s he like then?’ Turnbull hesitated; a pained look came over him though it could have been trapped wind. ‘Looks a lot like that Luther fella on the telly,’ he managed. The room fell silent. Coupland could feel the collective discomfort around him. ‘He means I’m black,’ The gravelly voice came from behind Coupland forcing him to turn. ‘I can see that,’ he shrugged dismissively, ‘Ignore Turnbull, you’ll get used to his lack of detail after a while, just don’t ask him to put together an E-fit or you’ll find yourself trawling the city looking for stick men.’ The detective studied Coupland before holding out his hand. ‘DC Chris Ashcroft, Sarge, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.’

‘DC?’ Coupland repeated, sliding a glance over at Turnbull who’d sloped off back to pushing furniture around, ‘You came back for family reasons then?’ his eye had a sly gleam to it.

‘Something like that.’ Ashcroft murmured. He was taller than Coupland, around six foot two, with a waistline that suggested abs rather than paunch. The men weighed each other up. ‘Don’t be taken in by my Tweedle Dum exterior,’ Coupland warned him, ‘in my spare time I have been known to run into burning buildings and rescue small children.’

‘I was admiring your jacket,’ Ashcroft replied, ‘Ralph Lauren if I’m not mistaken.’ Coupland shrugged. ‘My missus shops at TK Maxx, can’t resist a bargain. I feel sorry for her at times, can’t seem to help getting ideas above her station. Goes to sleep dreaming of Daniel Craig and wakes up staring at Johnny Vegas. Mind you, she hasn’t changed the locks yet so I must be doing something right.’ Coupland eyed Ashcroft suspiciously. ‘You’re early for the day shift,’ Ashcroft shrugged. ‘Couldn’t sleep so I had the radio on. News report said a body had been found. Thought I might be more use here. Anyway, what’s your excuse?’

‘Me? When I finally sleep it’ll be the sleep of the dead. Might as well work up a head of steam before that happens.’

Mallender passed by the window looking into CID
.
Did a double-take when he saw Coupland talking to the new DC. ‘I thought I’d told you to call it a night.’ He chided, putting his head around the door. ‘No point,’ Coupland rubbed the back of his neck, ‘besides, I’d rather crack on,’ He also didn’t fancy his chances of getting any shut eye with Sharon Mathers’ injuries etched into his brain. Mallender nodded. ‘Have you got a minute, then?’ Indicating that this was something he wanted to say in private. Coupland turned to Ashcroft, ‘Make yourself useful, start reading through the notes taken so far relating to the boyfriend, bring me up to speed on anything worth pursuing first thing. Oh, and get me something out of the drinks machine.’ With that he followed Mallender out of the room. ‘What do you want, Sarge?’ Ashcroft called after him. Coupland shrugged. ‘I’m not bothered, as long as it’s warm and wet.’

‘Sugar?’

‘I’d prefer it if you called me Sarge until I know you better,’ he chided, before shaking his head in answer, ‘no, I’ve got sweeteners…’ A hush descended on the CID room followed by sniggering. He could feel the collective mickey taking that would be triggered by this new revelation. ‘Lynn’s finally got me to pack in sugar, so what?’ he said defensively. Friends were already saying he looked better for it but this lot would never say anything nice now everyone knew the effort he was making. Christ, what the hell would they do when they found him in possession of a vapour stick? Where the hell was Alex Moreton when he needed her? ‘Neanderthals, the lot o’ you…’ he hissed under his breath.