The Tangled Lock (The National Crime Agency Series Book 3) Read online

  Chapter 8

  ‘What is your full name, Kat?’

  The nanny was sitting on the sofa, head down, wringing her hands nervously. Her face was hidden by wavy shoulder-length black hair, which had fallen forward. When she spoke, it came out in a whisper.

  ‘My name is Katalina Szabó. I come from Hungary.’ It sounded like a response she was used to giving. To officials and complete strangers.

  ‘There is nothing to be afraid of,’ said Jo.

  She wondered if the young woman knew that this wasn’t strictly true. Katalina raised her head and pushed her hair back from her face. Despite the grief, fear, and lack of sleep, she was still attractive. High cheekbones and oval hazel eyes were set in a teardrop face. Jo realised she had overestimated her age.

  ‘How old are you, Katalina?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘How old were you when you started working in this house?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  That seemed very young to be caring for two infants on her own when their mothers were out all night. Alarm bells were ringing. Had she been trafficked?

  The young woman seemed to read Jo’s expression. ‘I have five sisters and two brothers,’ she said. ‘I was eldest. My mother worked at night also, in factory. I was carer. I also studied one year at college in Budapest. How do you say? Childcare?’

  ‘Who did you come to England with?’

  ‘With my uncle. He works here in Manchester. You wish to speak with him?’

  ‘Not at the moment, Katalina.’

  ‘You wish to see my passport? My papers?’

  Katalina was becoming anxious again. Jo needed to reassure her before she became distressed once more.

  ‘Not now. Later maybe. But as I said, you have nothing to worry about. I just need to ask you a few questions about Ms Madden. Then you can get back to the children. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Katalina’s eyes were beginning to well up. She reached down, took a tissue from the box on the floor beside her, and dabbed them.

  ‘You must have got to know Mandy really well,’ said Jo.

  Katalina nodded.

  ‘Did she seem at all worried lately?’

  ‘Worried?’

  ‘Nervous, preoccupied, jumpy? Unusually anxious about anything?’

  Katalina crumpled up the tissue but clung on to it. Then she shook her head slowly. ‘No.’

  ‘Did she have a boyfriend at all?’

  Katalina’s eyes widened. She hesitated. ‘A boyfriend?’

  ‘Someone she was seeing regularly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about Sean’s father?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I never see him. She never talk about him.’

  Jo was running out of questions.

  ‘Have you seen anyone hanging around outside the house?’

  ‘Hanging around?’

  ‘Watching the house. From a car perhaps.’

  ‘No. Never.’

  There was a polite knock on the door. It was DS Muller. ‘Excuse me, Ma’am,’ he said. ‘The FLO is here.’

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ Jo said.

  She turned back to Katalina. ‘One last question. Do you know what kind of work Ms Madden and Ms Garbett have been engaged in?’

  Panic flitted across Katalina’s face. She shook her head. ‘They work nights somewhere in the city. Is all I know.’

  It was the right answer, if not a truthful one. Katalina was right to be afraid. She must also know that Jo had not been entirely truthful herself. Under UK law, whilst Katalina’s employers could not be prosecuted for selling their services, she herself could, for living off the earnings of prostitution. Fortunately it was not Jo’s decision. She smiled at the other woman, and was rewarded with a nervous lopsided grin.

  ‘Thank you, Kat,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘I can go back to children now?’

  ‘Yes, you can go back. And I suggest you give your uncle a call and let him know what has happened.’

  The young woman stood up.

  ‘What will happen to Sean? Can he stay with us? I look after him.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jo replied. ‘That will be for social services and the courts to decide.’

  Her second half-truth of the morning. There was no way Sean would be allowed to stay here, however happy and settled he might appear. Even if in the long run it might prove the best solution. Jo could tell from the way Katalina’s shoulders drooped as she left the room that the nanny knew it too. There were four people in this house whose lives would never be the same following Mandy Madden’s cruel murder.

  Jo briefed the family liaison officer and the social worker, who arrived within minutes of each other, and checked with Muller to see if anything relevant to the murder had been found. It had not. Finally, she rang Gordon and told him she was going to visit the victim’s parents at the address Tricia Garbett had given her.

  ‘They’ll need to make a positive identification,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ she told him. ‘If they have a problem with that, Tricia Garbett is willing to do it. She’s known her since they were babies, and they were best friends and co-workers.’

  ‘Must have hit her hard then.’

  ‘That’s why I’d like to spare her the identification if I can. Better that she remembers Mandy as she was in life.’

  Chapter 9

  Jo pulled up outside the modest semi-detached house in Newton Heath, just off Briscoe Lane. Less than two miles from their daughter’s maisonette and yet they had no contact, not even with their grandson. This was going to be interesting.

  The door opened until it met the resistance of a chain. Through the narrow gap she could see a woman in her early sixties. She had a nervous, haunted look and a voice to match.

  ‘Mrs Madden?’

  Her eyes narrowed.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘I am a special investigator with the National Crime Agency,’ said Jo, holding up her ID. It had been so much easier when all she had to say was ‘Police’.

  Suspicion was replaced by confusion and even greater nervousness.

  A male voice barked from the inner recesses of the house. ‘Sandy! Whoever it is, tell ’em to bugger off.’

  Jo placed her hand against the door and inserted her foot between it and the doorjamb. ‘I need to talk with both you and your husband, Mrs Madden. Inside the house.’

  Mandy’s mother slipped the chain and stepped back inside the hall. Jo followed her down a bright clean hallway into an open-plan kitchen-diner and lounge. The first thing that struck her was that everything was spotless. The stainless-steel sink, the range cooker, the faux-marble worktops, and the tiled floor all gleamed. The beige carpet in the lounge was immaculate. A man lay with his back towards them, sprawled on the couch, watching Homes Under the Hammer on the television. His stockinged feet were up on the coffee table. An open can of cheap full-strength lager stood on the floor beside him.

  ‘Who is it this time?’ he snarled. ‘Bloody double glazing again?’

  ‘It’s the police, Mr Madden,’ Jo told him. ‘The National Crime Agency to be precise.’

  Mr Madden tried to turn his head to look at her, but his immense bulk made it impossible. He slid his legs off the coffee table, sending the beer can flying, placed his hand on the arm of the couch, and began to push himself up. His wife rushed to the sink.

  ‘What the fuck!’ he said.

  Jo bent to pick up the can, and walked over to the fireplace, stepping over the spreading pool of amber liquid. She put the can down on the mantelpiece, turned to face him, and held her ID out in front of her.

  ‘Turn the television off, Mr Madden,’ she said. ‘I need you to hear this.’

  His wife was already on her knees mopping the stain with a sponge and dabbing at it with kitchen roll.

  ‘You too, Mrs Madden.’

  Mr Madden scrabbled around the sofa with his hands un
til he located the remote and then switched off the TV.

  ‘Mrs Madden,’ said Jo.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Sandy!’ shouted the husband.

  Jo flinched. Mrs Madden stopped scrubbing and sat back on her heels.

  ‘I think you had better sit down, Mrs Madden,’ Jo said.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ said the husband. ‘We’ve done nothing.’

  His wife’s face had paled, and her hands were trembling. Whether that was because she suspected why Jo was here or because of her husband’s belligerence, it was impossible to tell.

  ‘I am afraid that I have some bad news for you both,’ Jo said. ‘This morning the body of a woman was discovered close to the city centre. We have reason to believe it may be your daughter, Mandy.’

  The husband’s expression remained fixed. Jo could not tell from his rheumy eyes if he had registered what she’d said or was trying to compute it. The blood had drained completely from his wife’s face. She began to fall forwards. Jo moved to catch her, but Mrs Madden was now rocking back and forth, softly wailing.

  ‘Mr Madden,’ Jo said. ‘Did you hear what I said? We think—’

  ‘I heard,’ he said, cutting her off. ‘It’s her, isn’t it? On the news. The body they found down by the Medlock. It’s her.’

  ‘We think it may be your—’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Mr Madden yelled at his grieving wife. ‘What did I fucking say? I told you this was how she’d end up. I told her, didn’t I?’ He turned back to address Jo. ‘I told her. I said one of these days you’re going to end up dead in some dark alley or dumped in the canal. That’s where you’re heading, mark my words. And it’ll serve you right. And don’t think you can come crawling back when it all goes tits up. You made your bed, you can bloody well lie on it.’

  Jo couldn’t tell if this was the kind of bluster she had witnessed from grieving relatives before – almost exclusively men, for whom anger was a way of expressing their grief – or simply a cold-hearted statement of fact that he had been proved right. Jo sensed it was the latter. She turned her attention to his wife.

  ‘Mrs Madden,’ she said, ‘can I get you a drink? Some water? A cup of tea?’

  ‘If you’re putting the kettle on, I’ll have a coffee,’ said Mr Madden. ‘You’ll find it in the cupboard above the kettle.’

  Jo was tempted to tell him where to stick his coffee, but she knew it would be like water off a duck’s back. She ignored him, and placed her hand on his wife’s shoulder.

  ‘Mrs Madden?’

  Sandra Madden took her hands away from a face wet with tears, and seized Jo’s arm. ‘Little Sean,’ she said. ‘Is he alright?’

  ‘Yes, he’s fine, Sandy. Tricia and the nanny are looking after him.’

  The husband snorted. ‘Tricia? She’s another slag. She’s the reason our girl left home. The one who led her up the garden path.’

  ‘Mr Madden!’ Jo said. ‘Your wife is grieving. If you have an ounce of humanity in you, I suggest you keep your thoughts to yourself. Better still, why don’t you go and make her a cup of tea? Assuming you know how.’

  For a moment it looked as though he might object. Instead he muttered to himself. Then he used the coffee table and the arm of the couch to haul himself upright. He began to waddle towards the kitchen area and then paused to stare down at his wife.

  ‘And you, woman, if you think her brat is coming to live here, you can think again. Over my dead body!’

  Ten fruitless minutes later Sandy Madden followed Jo to the front door.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she whispered. ‘The identification. I need to see her one last time. I need to tell her . . . I’m sorry.’

  This close up, Jo realised that she was at least ten years younger than she had first assumed. Jo touched her lightly on the arm. There was a slight tremor beneath the flimsy blouse. This was, she realised, not a reaction to her daughter’s death but an enduring condition. Her nerves were shot.

  ‘Mrs Madden,’ she said, ‘what happened to Mandy had nothing to do with you.’

  It did not matter that it was yet another half-truth; it was what this poor woman needed to hear right now.

  ‘A car will come to pick you up,’ Jo said. ‘And I’ll make sure someone from Victim Care is waiting for you at the morgue. And, Mrs Madden, I suggest you make an appointment with your doctor to help you through this.’

  And beyond, Jo thought as she walked to the car. Both children dead. Her grandchild lost to her forever. The future bleak and hostile. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Chapter 10

  Jo pulled the car door to, and laid her head back on the seat rest. She was sure that if she’d stayed a moment longer she would have said or done something she’d regret. As for Sean moving there, it was out of the question. Social services would take one look at the relationship between husband and wife, and the father’s drink habit, not to mention his attitude towards his dead daughter and her child, and that would be it. Sean would be taken into care. He’d be found a long-term foster home or, better still, adoptive parents, who could give him the life every child deserved. She hoped that the manner of his mother’s death would never come back to haunt him. Her phone rang.

  ‘Gordon,’ she said. ‘I was just about to phone you. I’m outside the parents’ home.’

  ‘Coming or going?’

  ‘Leaving.’

  ‘How did you get on?’

  ‘Not good. The mother’s in pieces. The father’s a drunken bully. He reckons his daughter got what she deserved. He’s even refused to come and identify her.’

  ‘What about the wife?’

  ‘She waited until we were out of earshot and then told me she wanted to do it. I said we’d send a car when the morgue is ready for her. I assume you can arrange for someone from Victim Care to accompany her.’

  ‘No problem. How did you get on at the victim’s house?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Here are the headlines. The search team found nothing that might suggest there was anyone in her life with a grudge against her. Her best friend, who reported her missing, and the nanny confirmed that. We won’t know for sure until Forensics have analysed the victim’s laptop and mobile phone. Everything points towards your initial belief that this was an opportunist attack on a random victim by a serial killer.’

  ‘How’s the kid?’ Gordon asked.

  Jo was pleasantly surprised that this big bluff bear of a man should reveal his gentler side at a time like this. But then she had always known there was a soft heart beating beneath that tough exterior. Not least when she saw the tearful expression of guilt after she had been taken from under his nose by the Bluebell Hollow killer, and his relief that she survived the ordeal.

  ‘Confused,’ she said. ‘He’s only three. Too young to know what’s going on, other than that his mum is late home and the other women in his life are very sad.’

  ‘Poor little sod,’ he said. ‘Why is it always the innocent that suffer, Jo?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Gordon. ‘Or he’d do something about it.’

  Neither of them spoke while they processed the eternal question that haunted their professional lives, and explained why they did what they did.

  ‘I’m off back to the incident room to make sure everything’s set up right,’ he said. ‘We’ve started door-to-door interviews in the area, although what use that will be round there God only knows. It’s like a graveyard at night. No pun intended. Factories and warehouses mainly. That’s why it’s a red-light district.’

  ‘I do know, Gordon,’ she said. ‘I did do a spell with Vice.’

  ‘Course you did,’ he said. ‘I’ve arranged for night patrols to stop and question motorists using Pin Mill Brow between 11pm tonight and 4am tomorrow morning just in case they happen to be regulars, and may have seen something. It’ll play havoc with the street sex workers, but I doubt there’ll be many around somehow. Any that are will also
be interviewed.’

  ‘You’ll have people going through the CCTV footage?’ she said.

  ‘Number one priority,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got a team of three on it.’ He sighed. ‘There’s not a lot more we can do till after the post-mortem. It’s scheduled for 10am. Would you join me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Even though it’s Flatman?’

  She laughed. ‘He seemed to lose interest when he realised I was gay. I wonder why.’

  ‘I’ve scheduled a briefing as soon as we get back from the PM,’ he said. ‘I’ve been given Major Incident Room One at North Division HQ, Central Park.’

  ‘Is it alright if I ask Andy and Ram to join us?’

  ‘The more the merrier. I could do with all the help you can muster right now. What about Nailor?’

  ‘Max is tied up in court. Our boss said he can pitch in as soon as he’s free, if that’s okay by you.’

  ‘The way things are shaping up, the sooner the better,’ said the GMP detective. ‘The sooner the better.’

  That’s interesting, Jo reflected as she pulled away from the kerb. I thought GMP was supposed to be antsy about the NCA muscling in on their territory. Either that was all about Fourth Floor politics or Gordon was under real pressure to deliver results. Either way, this was what the BSU was all about. And she, for one, was ready.

  Chapter 11

  TUESDAY, 2ND MAY

  10AM

  Jo silently cursed the M60 superhighway improvements as she hurried along the corridor of the Clinical Services Building. She had been further delayed commiserating briefly with Mrs Madden, who, having identified her daughter, was just leaving with the Victim Care officer. Jo had never been late for a post-mortem before. Now that she was, it had to be one performed by the redoubtable Professor Flatman. If she crept in quietly, and sat at the back of the viewing gallery, there was an outside chance he might not notice her.

  The dissection and examination were over. The skullcap had been replaced and the face flap pulled forward. Benedict, the technician, was busy sewing up the chest cavity. Dr Hope, the assisting pathologist, was labelling samples on one of the gleaming stainless-steel shelves. Professor Flatman stood beside her, his back towards the gallery. Gordon and Nick sat four rows below Jo. They appeared not to have heard her enter. Professor Flatman turned around, and scanned the gallery.