The Dead Place. Stephen Booth
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.
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.
She pushed the highlighted transcript across to the DI, who smiled. A cheap result.
‘As