through the case without his help.
Carol crossed back to the whiteboards, where the rest of the team were gathering. She couldn’t help admiring the exquisite cut of Stacey’s suit. It was clearly bespoke, and expensively so. She was aware that the team geek had her own software business independent of her police job. Carol had never enquired too closely, believing they all had a right to a private life away from the shit they had to wade through at work. But it was clear from her wardrobe alone that Stacey had an income that dwarfed what the rest of them earned. One of these days Sam Evans was going to notice the almost imperceptible signs that Stacey was crazy about him. When Sam the superficial put that together with her net worth, there would be no stopping him. But by the looks of it, Carol would be long gone before that happened. One drama she wouldn’t be sorry to miss.
Paula cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. There was nothing bespoke about her creased jeans and rumpled brown sweater, the same clothes she’d been wearing when she’d picked Carol up the night before. ‘We were called in last night by Northern Division. The body of an as yet unidentified female was found in an empty warehouse on the Parkway industrial estate.’ She fixed two photographs to a whiteboard, one of the whole crime scene with the crucified body at the heart of it, the other of the woman’s face. ‘As you can see, she was nailed to a wooden cross then propped up against the wall. Upside down. Gruesome, but probably not enough to involve us on its own.’
She stuck three more photographs on the board. Two were identifiably tattooed human wrists; the other could have been any scrap of material with letters written on it. In each case, the letters spelled ‘MINE’. Paula turned back to face her colleagues. ‘What makes it one of ours is that it’s apparently number three. What links them is the tatt on the wrist. That and the fact that they’ve all been found on Northern’s patch, which isn’t necessarily where you’d expect to find dead sex workers.’
‘Why not?’ Chris Devine was the team member least familiar with the nuances of Bradfield’s social geography, having originally moved up from the Met.
‘Most of the street life happens around Temple Fields in the city centre. Also most of the inside trade,’ Kevin said. ‘There’s a couple of pockets on the main arteries out of town, but Northern’s pretty clean on the whole.’
‘My liaison at Northern’s a DS called Franny Riley,’ Paula said. ‘He told me they’ve had a hotspot lately round the new hospital building site. Half a dozen or so women working the area where the labourers park up. He thinks they’ve mostly been East Europeans, probably trafficked. But our first two victims were both local women, so maybe not connected to that.’ Another photo, this time of a worn-out face with sunken eyes, prominent cheekbones and lips tightly pressed together. Nobody ever looked good in a mugshot, but this woman looked particularly pissed off. ‘The first victim, Kylie Mitchell. Aged twenty-three. Crackhead. Five convictions for soliciting, one for minor possession. She mostly worked on the edges of Temple Fields, but she grew up in the high flats out at Skenby – which is bang in the middle of Northern’s patch, Chris. She was strangled and dumped under the ring-road overpass three weeks ago.’ Paula nodded to Stacey. ‘Stacey’s setting up the files on our network.’
Stacey flashed a smile so quick anyone who blinked would have missed it. ‘They’ll be available at the end of the briefing,’ she said.
‘Kylie’s the usual depressing story. Dropped out of school with no qualifications and a taste for partying. Soon graduated to sex for drugs, then moved on to working the streets to support her crack habit. She had a kid when she was twenty, taken straight into care, adopted six months later.’ Paula shook her head and sighed. ‘As
Carol crossed back to the whiteboards, where the rest of the team were gathering. She couldn’t help admiring the exquisite cut of Stacey’s suit. It was clearly bespoke, and expensively so. She was aware that the team geek had her own software business independent of her police job. Carol had never enquired too closely, believing they all had a right to a private life away from the shit they had to wade through at work. But it was clear from her wardrobe alone that Stacey had an income that dwarfed what the rest of them earned. One of these days Sam Evans was going to notice the almost imperceptible signs that Stacey was crazy about him. When Sam the superficial put that together with her net worth, there would be no stopping him. But by the looks of it, Carol would be long gone before that happened. One drama she wouldn’t be sorry to miss.
Paula cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. There was nothing bespoke about her creased jeans and rumpled brown sweater, the same clothes she’d been wearing when she’d picked Carol up the night before. ‘We were called in last night by Northern Division. The body of an as yet unidentified female was found in an empty warehouse on the Parkway industrial estate.’ She fixed two photographs to a whiteboard, one of the whole crime scene with the crucified body at the heart of it, the other of the woman’s face. ‘As you can see, she was nailed to a wooden cross then propped up against the wall. Upside down. Gruesome, but probably not enough to involve us on its own.’
She stuck three more photographs on the board. Two were identifiably tattooed human wrists; the other could have been any scrap of material with letters written on it. In each case, the letters spelled ‘MINE’. Paula turned back to face her colleagues. ‘What makes it one of ours is that it’s apparently number three. What links them is the tatt on the wrist. That and the fact that they’ve all been found on Northern’s patch, which isn’t necessarily where you’d expect to find dead sex workers.’
‘Why not?’ Chris Devine was the team member least familiar with the nuances of Bradfield’s social geography, having originally moved up from the Met.
‘Most of the street life happens around Temple Fields in the city centre. Also most of the inside trade,’ Kevin said. ‘There’s a couple of pockets on the main arteries out of town, but Northern’s pretty clean on the whole.’
‘My liaison at Northern’s a DS called Franny Riley,’ Paula said. ‘He told me they’ve had a hotspot lately round the new hospital building site. Half a dozen or so women working the area where the labourers park up. He thinks they’ve mostly been East Europeans, probably trafficked. But our first two victims were both local women, so maybe not connected to that.’ Another photo, this time of a worn-out face with sunken eyes, prominent cheekbones and lips tightly pressed together. Nobody ever looked good in a mugshot, but this woman looked particularly pissed off. ‘The first victim, Kylie Mitchell. Aged twenty-three. Crackhead. Five convictions for soliciting, one for minor possession. She mostly worked on the edges of Temple Fields, but she grew up in the high flats out at Skenby – which is bang in the middle of Northern’s patch, Chris. She was strangled and dumped under the ring-road overpass three weeks ago.’ Paula nodded to Stacey. ‘Stacey’s setting up the files on our network.’
Stacey flashed a smile so quick anyone who blinked would have missed it. ‘They’ll be available at the end of the briefing,’ she said.
‘Kylie’s the usual depressing story. Dropped out of school with no qualifications and a taste for partying. Soon graduated to sex for drugs, then moved on to working the streets to support her crack habit. She had a kid when she was twenty, taken straight into care, adopted six months later.’ Paula shook her head and sighed. ‘As
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