Crime | Violet's Vegan Comics

PLEASE NOTE: THIS MURDER MYSTERY/ CRIME STORY IS NOT SUITABLE FOR READERS UNDER FIFTEEN YEARS OLD

For the story so far, click here

Tuesday 21st April

“Michael Carter. That’s right.” Fran waited while the office manager at The Trade Clearance Company talked to a colleague. “Right. I see. We’re trying to get – great. Thank you.” She scribbled onto her jotter and put the phone down. “The TCC says he only helps them out occasionally. Last time was January.”

“And?”

“He did work the carpet warehouse clearance two years ago!” She keyed a number into her desk phone, “and he’s got more than one phone!” It rang five times.

“The person you are trying to call is not available at the moment. Please leave -”

“Not answering.”

“Maybe he’s got no signal. Or his battery’s dead,” Bonner suggested. “What were you going to say to him anyway? Please come to the police station, we’d like to talk to you about a few murders?”

Fran flashed a sarcastic smile. “I was going to ask him if he was available to do a factory clearance.”

“If either of those numbers made or received a call or a text on the day of the murders, we’ll be able to find out where they were.” Toby pointed out.

Fran could hardly believe she’d forgotten that. She left to update Ann.

Toby smiled. Bonner threw a packet of crisps at him. “Don’t get smug.”

Fran returned a moment later. “I want to know who this guy is. What’s he like? Where does he go? Who does he hang out with?”

“Back to the neighbours?” Toby asked.

“I don’t want to spook him. Let’s just see what we can find out from here. He doesn’t have a criminal record, but does he belong to a group, a political party, a gym? Get his vehicle registration and see if it’s been caught on any ANPR cameras. Put a marker on it.”

“Right.”

Bonner retrieved his packet of crisps from the floor and went to put the kettle on.

****

Wednesday 22rd April

“Looks like he wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Toby commented.

“If murderers looked like murderers we could all work half days,” Bonner chuckled as he wandered lazily to the gents.

“I wish you’d work half a day.” Fran grumbled. She looked at the face in the photos. “You knew the camera behind Marvin’s wasn’t working; and that the carpet warehouse was empty. May well have had a key to it. Now we find out you’re a medical courier.”

“Used to be.”

“So you know how to transport organs without damaging them. Are you selling them?”

“This is too sick!”

“Sicker than cutting them out for no reason?” Fran followed her train of thought. “Medical couriers keep organs fresh for transport. For transplants.”

“Murder to harvest organs? For money?”

“What else?” Fran tapped a few words into the search engine. “Look at this – a heart is worth over a million dollars for transplants and research. And livers can fetch $157,000.”

Toby shook his head. “I guess people have murdered for a lot less. But what about the feet?”

“There’s no mention of feet on this list, erm, oh, they’ll pay for bones and ligaments though. $5,000 per bone! We need to get an arrest warrant.”

“On what grounds? This is all circumstantial.”

“I don’t know. Failure to update address on driving license!” She marched into the chief’s office.

***

“We need an arrest warrant.”

“What have you got?”

“We’ve got a self-employed electrician who knew about the empty warehouse and the camera not working behind the superstore.”

“That warehouse has been empty for two years. Plenty of people knew about it.”

“Do plenty of people have a key for it?”

“Does he?”

“He might have. He worked for the company that cleared it out. They say he would have had one when he did the job.”

“And he didn’t return it?”

“The point is, he had it that day. He could have copied it.”

Wicket frowned. “That was two years ago. Did he plan the murders a year in advance?”

“No one else knew that camera wasn’t working at the back of the superstore. Except the night manager and he was on camera inside the building the whole night.”

“So, maybe the night manager blabbed to someone else and forgot. Or maybe the electrician did.”

“No, I know it was him. I know it! Oh – and he used to be a medical courier! They know how to transport organs.”

This new information gave him pause. “Hmm, that does make him a person of interest. Okay, we’ll issue a BOLO for him and I’ll get Collins and Shaw to watch his house.”

“Discreetly.”

Wicket nodded.

***

When she returned to her desk, Fran was handed a sheet of paper by Bonner.

“From Ann,” he told her.

She took it from him. “DNA results?”

He nodded gravely. “From the autopsies.”

It only took a moment to read the first line. “The warehouse victims were twins.”

“Read on.”

She read on. “And they were siblings of the first victim, from last May.” Her jaw dropped and she stared at Toby. “Three victims from the same family. What does that mean?”

“The mother must be in on it.” Bonner spoke almost inaudibly.

Fran shook her head slowly. “Have you ever been pregnant Jim?”

Bonner tutted. “Oh yeah, couple o’ times.”

“Didn’t think so,” she stared at him, her mouth drawn tight around her words. “I could tell because someone who had been pregnant wouldn’t have said something like that. Someone who had endured months of discomfort followed by hours of agony for the purpose of bringing a tiny, precious, helpless baby into the world,” the words caught in her throat, “wouldn’t give them up to be butchered. Not for anything!” Tears pricked her eyes as she suppressed her simmering fury.

“Not all mothers are good mothers.”

“True. But she’d have to be a hell of a lot worse than ‘not a good mother’ wouldn’t she? She’d have to be pure evil.” Fran looked at him in silence for a moment. “Were any of the other victims related?”

“No.”

“So that means there are at least six different mothers. How likely is it that Carter found six evil mothers who were willing to help him?”

Bonner shook his head. “If they’re not evil they’re still negligent,” He blew his nose on a ketchup-daubed hot dog napkin, “letting their tots get snatched.”

“You can’t watch them every second!” Fran snapped defensively.

Bonner didn’t usually bother to get caught up in serious arguments but he was irritated. “Three? Three taken from the same mother? Don’t you think most not-evil mothers would keep a closer eye on her other children after she’d lost the first one?”

For once Fran heard him and she sat down to go over her notes again. Jim was right. If they didn’t know anything else the mothers must know their children are missing. They must be desperate to find them. Yes, there are terrible mothers in the world but not these. She was sure of it. These mothers weren’t perpetrators. They were victims.

“They’re being held captive,” she said quietly to herself.

“What?” Bonner pulled the semi-colon and comma keys off his keyboard and removed the half peanut that was hindering their movement. “Who’s a captive?”

“The mothers. They’re being confined, raped, impregnated, and then robbed of their children. They are his baby factory. His organ factory.”

“Oh my God,” Toby felt sick.

“As soon as one pregnancy ends, he impregnates them again.”

Toby pushed his fingers through his hair. “There must be another explanation. This can’t be -”

“It is.” Fran clenched a black marker in her fist and hammered it onto her pad until it and her hand were covered in ink.

****

Thursday 23 April

“Run this down will you?” The inspector handed Fran a page from the Action Book. “Might be nothing.”

Fran scanned the notes, “or it might be something.” She nodded eagerly, returned to her computer and logged in.

“It’s 11:05 on Thursday 23rd of April. Present in the room are DS Trent,”

“DC Melton.”

“And -”

“Caroline Smith, solicitor.”

“And -”

“Alistair Kerdy, 5.4.84.”

“Your occupation?”

“Bit of this, bit of that.”

“Meaning?”

Kerdy raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Meaning, I am what you might call: Self. Employed.”

“Doing what exactly?” asked Toby.

Kerdy grinned. “If I told ya I’d have to kill ya.” His solicitor frowned and shook her head at him. “I was joking!” he said with exasperation.

Fran pushed a sheet of paper towards him. “Your fingerprints Alistair.”

“Yeah. What about ’em?”

“We found them at a crime scene. Burglary on Fisher Street.” Kerdy said nothing. “The occupant has been on holiday. Came back yesterday afternoon to discover a broken window, an open back door and a missing laptop.”

Kerdy remained silent.

“She called us as soon as she got in, explaining that her burglar alarm was linked to her old phone, the one she’d left at home, so she didn’t see the text alert until she got back.” Fran took a sip of her tea. “The alert was sent at 4.11am, on Wednesday the 15th of April.”

Kerdy stared at mark on the floor. “No. Comment.”

“The thing is Alistair, we believe that alarm spooked another offender nearby, and we’d rather have him than you. So, if you help us now, we might be able to forget about what you were doing.” She tore up the photocopy of his prints. “Tell us what happened Alistair, after you left the house on Fisher Street. Did you go straight home?”

Alistair looked at his solicitor and then back at Fran. “I don’t trust you lot, or your fake promises.”

“Look at it this way,” said Toby. “We already have you for the burglary. We know it was you. So why not take a chance? What have you got to lose?”

Kerdy was tempted but knew he did have more to lose.

Fran glanced at his rap sheet. “Looks like it’ll be a custodial sentence this time Alistair.”

Kerdy knew she was right. “Will you let me off everything that happened that night?”

Toby and Fran looked at each other. “If it’s nothing serious,” Fran told him.

“You don’t have to say anything,” his solicitor reminded him.

“It was an accident! Wasn’t even my fault!” Kerdy was determined to make sure he was safe before he told them anything. “So if someone told you it was my fault, he was lying!”

“Well, we did wonder.”

“Should have had his lights on!”

“Alright Alistair, go on. Where was this? What happened exactly?”

Kerdy took a deep breath and started at the beginning. “When the burglar alarm went off – it was really loud – I got out! I grabbed the laptop off the kitchen table, ran out the back door, down the garden and over the fence at the bottom. Fisher Street backs onto the industrial estate and that’s where I leave – left – my car, in the empty PlayDome car park.” Without realising it, Fran was holding her breath. PlayDome was two doors down from the old carpet warehouse. “There’s no one around and I get in the car and drive off. Turn out of the car park into Billings Road, then – bang! He was on the wrong side of the road and didn’t have any lights on!” Relieved that both detectives made a note of that, Kerdy continued with more confidence. “I got out, like you’re supposed to, to see what damage. My bloody radiator grille was all mangled, and his right headlight was smashed. But he didn’t get out. Just kept trying to start his engine – he must have stalled when we hit. He tried a few times before it started, and all the time I’m shouting – telling him he’s gotta pay for the damage – then he took off. ”

“Which way did he go?”

“Down the old road to Little Rollingham.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah! I wasn’t gonna let him get away with that! I followed him.”

Fran took a deep breath and tried not to show her excitement. “What kind of car was it?”

“Medium-sized hatchback. Dark colour.”

“Make?”

Kerdy shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Where did it go?” Kerdy didn’t respond. Toby asked again. “So you followed it down the old road, – did it go through Little Rollingham or turn off before that?”

“There is no turn off before that! You new around here?” Toby didn’t respond and Kerdy hesitated before continuing. “You said, if I told you what happened, you’d let me off the Fisher Street thing. So you can’t take that back if I don’t tell you what you want to hear – they can’t take that back can they?” he asked his solicitor.

“Alistair,” Fran spoke in an unusually gentle tone, “unless we discover that you have been dishonest in this matter, we will not be pressing any charges for the burglary on Fisher Street.” Kerdy nodded. “We believe that the vehicle you followed belongs to a very dangerous man.”

“Er,” Toby’s eyes widened and he tried to stop Fran from saying too much. “Did you see the car stop anywhere?”

“We need your help to catch him, Alistair.”

Kerdy wished he could help. “I don’t know where he went,” he admitted, “but he did stop, for a second, when a car that was coming the other way stopped next to him. Then he drove off again but, when I tried to follow, the other car,” he paused to look at Toby who was taking notes, “it was a van – did a three point turn in the middle of the road so I couldn’t get past. Then it didn’t even turn round. Went the same way as it was facing before, back up the old road towards town. By the time the van got out the way, the other car was gone.”

“Where was that? Where did he stop?” Fran asked eagerly.

“I don’t know! It was dark. In the middle of nowhere!”

“Before you got to Little Rollingham?”

“Yeah.”

“Before you passed the quarry?”

“No. I think it was after the quarry.”

“Do you remember passing anything else?”

“No. I don’t think so. It all looks the same down there at night.”

“What about the station?”

Kerdy thought carefully. “I could see the level crossing sign.” His face lit up slightly. “It was just before the station. Just this side of it!”

“What kind of van was it?” Toby asked.

“A smallish one.”

“Colour?”

“Black, or dark blue maybe, and yellow. It had a phone number on the side.”

“I don’t suppose you can remember it?”

“Of course I can, just call me Rain Man.” Kerdy shook his head. “But it wasn’t a landline, I remember that. It was a mobile number. And there was a picture under it.” He suddenly resembled a child eager to please his teacher. “Looked like a rounded square with short fat oblongs sticking out on one side. And a curved line on the other side.”

Fran gave him a pencil and a piece of paper. “Can you draw it?”

Kerdy nodded and did his best. “Something like that. The middle line was longer. I remember that. The top and bottom ones were shorter.”