Chapter 2

By Monday morning, they had sorted the boxes into some sort of order, ready to be worked on as they went forward. There was no pattern in the streetwalker dumpings, the sites looked as if they were chosen randomly. The places where the victims had been snatched from varied wildly, as well. One had been taken from Birmingham city, two from Sheffield, another two from Manchester and one from Coventry. There was no regular period between the bodies being found. All were naked when found and all had died by drowning.

When Sally came in, she was greeted warmly and introduced around, Most of the team remembered her from the raid and sting. When Sky walked in, he was greeted with cheers and hugs. It was a good feeling in the room that day.

Sally was given the six files and told to see if anything jumped out to her, while the others started looking at the future cases. Mid-morning, she asked for attention and the others turned to her.

“These girls were mostly found at old coalmine sites. I see that they were mostly towards Blackheath, to the west of the city. One at the Eagle pit, one at the Old Lion pit and three at various Saltwells pit sites, of which there are many, and the girls weren’t all taken from here. But there’s one that doesn’t fit. That one was found on the Piccadilly Recreation ground, way over to the east. What wasn’t picked up was that Piccadilly was the site of the old Kingsbury colliery, which has been totally erased by new development, mainly the FedEx building at one end, and the oil depot at the other. That makes it a definite in the series. The other thing that I noticed was in the autopsy reports. These girls weren’t drowned in a bath, the later ones drowned in pure water that had been passed through limestone, which, I think, would have put them near a spring or a pool near limestone cliffs.”

The others congratulated her on her findings.

“But wait, as they say, there’s more. The autopsy reports are all similar in a couple of other ways. All say that there was no obvious sign of rape, with no damage to the vagina or anus, so they must have had natural sex if that was what their murderer wanted. Also, any markings on their bodies were postmortem, so had been caused by handling the body. Then there’s a very interesting link to them all. In all cases, their last meals had been tinned goods, like spam, and veg. The tests showed the preservative additions clearly. I don’t know what that tells us, but it might be a factor if we find the place where they were kept. The last thing is that they were all identified by fingerprints, having been pulled in at various times. No clothing or personal ID has ever been found for any of them.”

The others sat, stunned. Lee was the first to react, as he got up to go over to Sally to give her a hug.

“That’s bloody brilliant, Sally! I’ve looked through those files a few times but those never jumped out at me. We can add those to the queries to other areas.”

Andy laughed.

“Actually, Lee, I sent off those queries on Friday morning and I’ve had a few replies while we’ve been working this morning. Manchester had two in their cold case files, Sheffield had one and so did Leeds. Nottingham had three. They’re all sending us the hard copies by courier. I make that our six, plus another seven, all similar. The Nottingham bodies were found near the old Welbeck Mine, the Hucknall Mine and the Cinderhill Colliery, the last closing in 1966. The one from Sheffield was found at Harworth Estate, a new development planned for the old Thoresby mining site, which closed in 2015, just out of Edwinstowe. The Manchester ones were both found in different places in Newton-le-Willows, which is actually in the Merseyside division, but the girls were both from Manchester. The village was the site of the old Parkside Mine, which closed in 1993. The Leeds one was found very recently, on the doorstep of the National Coal Mining Museum for England, on the site of the old Thornhill mine that closed in 1972.”

They all sat back, wondering about what Andy had just told them. Sally gulped.

“So, my first day as a detective and I’m investigating thirteen deaths? I don’t believe it.”

“You’d better believe it, Sally,” whispered Maria. “We were told, just a few weeks ago, that big serial murder cases only happen once or twice, in a career. We had better let Sue know about this one.”

She got up and went to see Sue, bringing her back to their corner.

“Andy, you’d better tell Sue what we now have.”

“OK. Sue, Lee brought us six similar cases of dumped and dead streetwalkers. I put out a query to other stations and we are expecting the hard copies of another seven cases, all streetwalkers and all found dumped by old coalmine sites. We’ll know the timeline when we get the files, but I do know that the latest was found, near Wakefield, just three months ago. There are other links in the cases, but we’ll wait for the other files before we present you with what else might be common.”

“Wow! That’s something right out of left field. If anyone can track these, it’ll be you lot. I’ll let the CS know so that he can smooth the way for you to work out of our divisional area. You’ll have to be able to see all of the dump sites and pick-up points for yourselves. This will be your priority for now, what’s in those other boxes can wait until you either crack this or run out of steam. This is a good one to start your CID career Sally, if you’re successful.”

“Yes, boss, I don’t know what to say, I thought that I would be tracking down forgers or bank robbers once I got here, not straight into a serial murder investigation.”

“They’re all alike, Sally, it’s just the crime that’s different. They all take a lot of hard work, a lot of reading, a lot of walking and a lot of patience.”

They spent the rest of the day, making lists of what they knew, and a timeline, with the new information that was coming to be added to it. They all looked, critically, at the files and reports, again. Maria saw that Jenny had made notes in a few, before she transferred out, mainly linking a few of the dump sites to old mining sites, as she had grown up in Blackheath. Maria knew the area well, as it wasn’t far from the Harborne station. She silently thanked her friend for her insight. At the end of the day, they went to the local, to have just the one drink, before going home.

The next morning, as they were back to looking at the files, while waiting for the courier to arrive, Harley Handscome, the manager of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, was cycling along Coalport High Street, on his way to unlock the entrance to the Tar Tunnel. When he arrived, he found that the lock had been ground off. Cursing modern cordless tools, he opened the door and stood back, to allow the pungent smell of bitumen to exit, then turned on the tunnel lights.

Thinking that it may be a squatter who had broken in, he called out. When he hadn’t received a response, he walked into the tunnel. Although the shaft went over three thousand feet into the hillside; after the first three hundred feet, it was closed off to visitors as the bitumen gasses were too dangerous without masks and oxygen. The figure was slumped against the iron grill that designated the no-go part. He stopped short and then went slowly to the naked girl, putting his hand out to touch her, only to feel the coldness of death, something he had felt before, in the Falklands.

He knew what he had to do, get out of there and call the police. Outside the door he waited for the local copper to arrive and take charge. He knew that there would be no Tar Tunnel walks today, or for some days to come, so he called the ticketing office to put up a sign that the tunnel was closed until further notice.

It took until the afternoon before word came through to Aston. It had gone from the local copper to his station, to the CID and eventually to Terry, who had passed it to Sue. The four investigators went to the Tar Tunnel in the Audi. They donned FSI suits to go and see for themselves. FSI had already dusted the door, and the lock, for prints, as well as the bars behind the body. The Police Doctor had examined the girl but hadn’t moved her until the detectives could get a look.

Maria asked the FSI to take the girl’s prints, and to run them through the vice files. Andy told the doctor that he wanted a contents of stomach analysis, as well as an analysis of any water that may be found in the lungs. The doctor looked at him quizzically, so Andy explained that this body showed all the hallmarks of others that had been found, except that it wasn’t at the site of an old coal mine. The doctor smiled behind his mask.

“Maybe the murderer has decided to diversify, there are only so many coal mine sites, after all.”

“He did that with the last one found on the steps of the Coal Mining Museum at Thoresby. I think that now he’s just getting cocky.”

They did all they could in the tunnel and would have to wait for expert analysis to find out more. Andy pulled out his phone and asked Doggy to see what cameras were around the area, and if they could have any pictures taken during the night. Beyond that, they spoke to the local CID officer and asked him to talk to all those places close by, to find out if anyone heard the noise of the angle grinder during the night. Andy gave the man some of his cards to hand out, in case someone remembered something later. He then drove them all back to Aston so that they could pick up their cars. He and Maria went home. On the way Maria looked across at him.

“Not just an intellectual exercise now, is it? We were the first on the scene today. That was a first for me, as well, as Butt wouldn’t let us poor girls look upon such nastiness.”

“I keep thinking that this guy has got away with it for a long time, mainly by spreading out his pick-up and dumping points. The last drop was a deliberate break of pattern, with this one going a lot further. We’ll know when we read the other files, but the drops have usually been somewhere that he could just drop the body and go. This took time and effort to get that girl in there. What if he had been in the tunnel and someone had come by to investigate the grinder noise? It was a dangerous statement that he made, almost as if he had tired of the hunt, and wanted to goad us into chasing him.”

“You could be right, we’ll know more, tomorrow.”

The next day, when they got into the office, they found Lee already at one desk, with some new files open, and Sally at her desk, with her nose in another. Andy and Maria said their good mornings and opened up the files that had been left for them. Later, that morning, they finished the timeline. One thing was following Andy’s hunch, the drop points were random, and no area had subsequent drops, making sure that no station would pick up on the serial nature of the deaths. The timeline brought up one surprise, in the fact that the earliest victim was found ten years ago, with a year before the second. The interim periods got less as time went on, but no more than two discoveries were made in the same year until the two latest ones.

“It looks as if he got the killing bug, but now wants to be stopped. He may have started to feel guilty and wants us to find him. The state of the bodies haven’t changed, over the years, all drowned and not showing signs of sexual damage. A couple did show scratches and cuts, but the reports say that these were caused by some kind of rock.”

“I think you’re right, Lee. It’s a pity that the early ones didn’t analyse the water, even if all the stomach contents were checked and all show similar intake, tinned goods. I think that you should do a tour, Lee, to inspect the early pick up and drop sites, make plenty of notes and take a camera with you. I’ll run it past Sue to cover the expenses; make sure you keep all receipts, for food, petrol, accommodation. Start at the furthest north and work back. We’ll look at the local places as far as Nottingham. We can take the rest of the week, by the time we’ve finished, we’ll have more reports from yesterday.”

After Andy had checked with Sue, Sally went off to look at the local sites, Andy and Maria went to look at Nottingham, while Lee headed north. Over the next couple of days, they looked at the dump sites, took photos, spoke to detectives in the other towns and were taken to the likely pick-up points. It was in Sheffield when Leith met Candi, a streetwalker who had known Roxy, one of the dead girls. She had been angry that nothing had happened yet.

“That girl was one of the good ones. She didn’t do drugs, like most of the girls down this road. She made sure where she was being taken to and would make a note in her phone.”

It made Lee think about that. He couldn’t remember if any phones were listed in the properties that had been collected from the dead girl’s homes. None of the dumped girl’s had anything left with them. With the Birmingham files, he knew that there had been no checking of phone records.

When they all got together, on Friday morning, he raised his concern.

“I think all of the victims, at least those from the last few years, would have had phones. You can’t live without them, these days. I know that Harborne didn’t try to get their phone records. Can we check with the service providers, we have the names and the addresses, to see which ones the girls were with. They might still have records of the last calls that were made. If we’re lucky, they might have a note of the last tower that the phone was by.”

Maria nodded.

“That’s a good idea, Lee. I expect that they were taken to a motel style place, where they could be subdued and carried out to a vehicle. That would be where the phone was turned off and the card removed, I expect. One thing bothers me about all of the cases. The files show that the surrounding areas were unsuccessfully searched for clues. I wonder if the murderer kept their things, as mementos. He might be TV and gets his jollies wearing their things, they were all a similar size, weren’t they?”

Andy smiled.

“I suppose that you realise that we never thought to look for clues, ourselves, at the Gorge. We expected that FSI would look around. Perhaps we should go there on Saturday and familiarise ourselves with the area, on foot. The girl may have even been carried in over the footbridge from the other side of the Severn. We assumed that she had been brought by car.”

On Saturday morning, Andy and Maria picked up Sally at her home, then met up with Lee at the parking area to the south of the Shakespeare Inn. They walked around that side of the river for a while, and then crossed the Memorial Bridge to the other side of the river.

“Do you realise, that this is the first time I’ve been on this side. My parents had taken me to the Coalport China Museum when I was young, but there’s nothing like that on this side.”

Sally laughed.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Andy. This side is all craft and selling. To the south it goes to countryside, but, to the north, there are some shops and a café once you get past the private houses.”

They strolled along Ferry Road until they did, indeed, reach the Craft Centre and the café, where they sat for a little while, until they were joined by the local constable.

“Oh, it’s you. Sorry to bother you, officers, but the locals have got antsy since that girl was found. A couple rang the station to report some suspicious strangers looking too closely at the fronts of their houses. Most tourists stay on the path closer to the river.”

“Sorry to have bothered you, constable. We’re just trying to figure out why no-one heard, or saw, the padlock being ground off. Standing on this side, you would have seen the glow across the river. The noise should have made someone wonder.”

“Yes, there’s a couple of reasons for that. The first is old Ferdie, he lives close to the Boat Inn. He has a habit of metalworking into the evening, but usually stops at around eight. He makes metal models that they sell around Ironbridge, scale versions of the bridge, among other things. The other reason is that, on the evening she would have been put there, there was a musical evening at the Boat Inn, with a live band. They make enough noise to wake the dead, but, as most of Ferry Road is in the pub, we don’t get any complaints.”

They bought the constable a cup of tea and sat, talking about the problems of the local area, then strolled back to the footbridge and their cars, Andy and Maria lagging behind, hand in hand. At the cars, they decided to go into Ironbridge. They had all lived nearby, and all had known about the bridge, but none had actually seen it. They drove along the riverside road until the arrived in the village, finally finding a couple of car parking spaces in a parking area off Waterloo Street. There was a path, just opposite the car park, which ran alongside the river and gave them a wonderful view of the first ever cast-iron bridge, still standing, strong and proud, since 1779.

They walked up to the bridge level and went across it, just to say they had. Maria spotted an ice cream shop on the way back, so they all had an ice cream before stopping at the Tontine Hotel for lunch. They all used this time to relax and recharge, only talking about the case over coffees, after lunch. Andy looked at the others.

“Well, my friends, what do we know, and where do we go, now?”

Sally put her finger down on the table.

“One, we know that all the victims were taken from a range of places. Two, we know that they were taken somewhere, for how long, we don’t know, but we do know that they were fed on a diet of tinned foods, so it must be somewhere that they are isolated. Three, we know that they were drowned in spring water when they had reached the use-by date. Four they were dumped in sites with links to old mines, naked.”

Lee put his finger down.

“Five, we think that they were taken off the street to a place close by, where they were subdued. If we can pinpoint those places, we may strike lucky with the registers, but that will probably only give us a heap of John Smiths. I think that we now have to try hard to get their phone records. If nothing else, it might give us the last tower that registered the phone.”

Maria added her finger.

“Six, we know these girls gave themselves, willingly. To me that means that they knew, without a doubt, that they had no chance to escape, and that they lived as long as they made their captor happy. To me, that’s somewhere that isn’t a normal building, where there could be a small hope. I’m going for a cellar, in a secluded place, or a tunnel. It could be that he has access to an old coal mine, seeing his penchant leaving them by one.”

Andy shook his head.

“I don’t think that a coal mine would be the place, mainly because of the spring water near a limestone cliff. I don’t see them co-existing, but it’s one thing we can get expert help with. One thing that I’m sure of, and that’s the holding place is, as you’ve said, somewhere isolated, and, quite possibly, underground. We could be looking at a cave. If this guy was a miner, or had some dealings with mines, then he has no trouble being underground. I’ll research the likely areas with caves in limestone hills.”

Maria was making notes.

“Next week, we should have some news about the latest case, then we can look carefully at the pick-up point, as well as the victims usual activities. If the previous one was only three months prior, then we might be able to get a lot of information on this one. I’m starting to get optimistic about these cases. If we can crack the new one, the others will fall into line. It’s quite possible that traffic will have the photos from near the pick-up. You never know your luck.”

On Sunday, the two lovers went to see Andy’s Aunt. While sipping tea, she told them that she was thinking of moving into care, as her hips were making it hard to do all the usual things, like the cleaning, shopping, and even sitting comfortably. She was not in a hurry, and when Andy asked her how much she wanted for the house, both he and Maria were pleasantly surprised at the figure.

“Auntie, I will be due to receive my inheritance in a few months, when I turn twenty-five. With what’s coming, I think I’ll be able to put a substantial deposit down and use the shop as collateral for a mortgage. This would be perfect, for us, after we get married. We could do it, even if we both left the force, with the shop being our income stream. Once Collette retires, we could just take what we need, leaving the remainder for the shop income. We could attract a new clientele by bringing in more teenage fashions. Mum always aimed at the rich, but elderly. Some of the stock is for the young, but was mainly aimed at the daughters, not working girls with a few Euros to spare.”

“So, you’ve popped the question, have you? Where’s the ring, my girl?”

Maria looked in her bag and brought out a jewellers box and showed her the ring.

“It’s not super expensive, but I love it. I’m not wearing it in case I go into work with it on. That might cause us some trouble, as they don’t like a married couple on the same team. Once we do marry, one of us will have to retire, or else get split up. I don’t think that I could be happy with that. If we take over the shop, I could be front of house once I’ve had some training from Collette. It could be a tight squeeze, but we’re going to be starting with quite a bit behind us.”

On the way home, they talked about the plan, now a lot more solid than it was before they arrived. They were upbeat when they cooked dinner, and in a good mood when they went to work the following day.

Marianne Gregory © 2023