Before Hunter and Grace had even got halfway up the narrow stairway they were confronted by a snarling Steve Paynton on the landing above, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts and wielding a baseball bat.
“What the fuck?” he shouted, glaring down at them.
“Police.” shouted back Hunter halting his jog. “Drop that now.” he bellowed, pointing towards the wooden bat.
Hunter could see why many feared Steve. Although he wasn’t big in terms of his physical proportions, his frame was lean and muscular. The definitions of his well-toned muscles were punctuated here and there by black tattoos of barbed wire and tribal markings. Add to that the shaved head and he realised why to some he could cut such a menacing figure.
“I hope you’ve got a warrant?” he demanded, lowering the bat to his side.
“Sure have,” Hunter responded now continuing back up the narrow stairway, though much slower, wary of how Steve Paynton might react.
“You could have fucking knocked. You didn’t need to kick my bastard door in.”
“I did knock — repeatedly,” he emphasised, “but no one answered…did they Grace?”
Behind Hunter, Grace Marshall nodded.
“Repeatedly” she agreed.
“Bollocks.” Steve groused as he backed-off to his bedroom. “I’ll get fucking dressed, you fucking morons.”
They followed him into his room. It was a pigsty of a mess. Hand rolled cigarette butts, porn magazines, several loose weight training barbells, and an array of clothing in various states of dirtiness littered the floor. It was hard to determine whether the marks on the carpet were design or stains. This room also had a strong smell of cannabis, mixed with the musty stench of body odour, causing Grace to crinkle her nose at the unpleasantness.
“Cleaners day off Steve I see,” she said rubbing thumb and forefinger across the bottom of her nose, as though it might wipe away the stench.
Steve Paynton was just fastening the last button on his jeans and he stepped forward to within a foot of Grace.
“You really don’t want to be doing this you black bitch,” he snarled moving his shaven head forward into her face. A large prominent vein, which threaded its way from the front of his ear to where his hairline should have started was pulsing angrily.
She held his stare. She had heard this type of abuse so many times over the years. “Roll with it girl,” her father had told her so many times. “Never let them see they’ve got to you. You’re better than them. Fight back how you know best.”
“A bit of a racist as well as a wanker,” she curtly replied.
“Me, I’m a signed up member of the Ku Klux Klan,” he quipped back.
Hunter rocked onto the balls of his feet, curling his hands into tight fists yet leaving then dangling at his sides — ready.
She pushed a polished red fingernail towards his nose. “Hey, white boy you really don’ know who yo’ messin’ wid,” she mimicked her Jamaican father’s patois.
“You stupid bitch,” he snapped “I’ll sort you out.”
In that same instant Hunter sprung forwards, swinging a punch from his hip. It smacked into Steve’s side, catching the bottom two ribs and the breath exploded from his mouth.
He sank to his knees clutching his side, and for a few seconds his face went bright red, eyes almost bulging from their sockets as he fought for breath. Then he caught it, gasped loudly, and fell to one side.
“You bastard. You fucking bastard.” He screamed.
Grace stepped over Steve Paynton’s prostrate figure, grabbed the rigid handcuffs from the waistband of her suit trousers and snapped one end onto his right wrist. Then she forced her knee into the small of his back, completely flattening him to the floor and slammed the jaws of the remaining cuff onto his other wrist.
“Fancy that, Steve Paynton being done over by a little black girl. This is really going to damage your street cred,” she announced twisting the rigid cuffs until he winced. “You’re nicked.”
He tried to push himself up, but Grace was now pushing his head into the carpet. “What for?” he mumbled, trying to avoid swallowing the fibres from the pile.
“Assaulting a Susan Siddons, and assaulting and raping a Mary Bennett. Those names ring any bells?”
“Might do, but they wouldn’t dare make a statement against me.”
“Oh believe me when I tell you they have given two very detailed statements about your activities. And we’re adding to that resisting arrest, just in case you feel like complaining about police brutality. Now get up and get down those stairs you insignificant little piece of shit.”
As Steve scrambled to his feet, helped by Hunter’s hands under his arms, Hunter turned to Grace “My my, we are somewhat tetchy this morning ma’am.” He said smiling, before helping her guide the prisoner towards the stairs.
As Steve Paynton was led away by the arrest team Hunter and Grace donned their latex gloves and joined the search team who were already busying themselves in the downstairs room.
Much of the house was squalid, despite some very expensive items of furniture and electrical equipment dotted around. They picked their way amongst dirty crockery, some of which still held days’ old remnants of food, strewn across stained seat cushions, which had to be removed in order that they could search down the sides of the suite. They also checked several large screen televisions and DVD players, no doubt stolen, as the serial numbers and markings had been erased, and removed them to the marked police van outside. Behind the washing machine in the kitchen they discovered a stash of cannabis weed, about half a kilo in a plastic bag, amongst hundreds of packets of rolled tobacco, but they knew these day’s that this amount wasn’t quite enough for CPS to prosecute for supplying, or smuggling, and so they continued. What they really needed was something that could connect him to either of the two murdered girls, and so they methodically and painstakingly moved appliance after appliance, household effect after household effect, and even tore up the carpets in the hope of a breakthrough. And it came; in the bathroom; virtually the last room on the checklist. Working under the strains of a dull glow from the bare electric ceiling bulb, probing the nooks and crannies beneath the bathtub, one of the searching officers spotted a chink of light catching the edge of something metal deep in one corner, and only Grace was small enough to crawl into the space to remove it.
She cursed as she dragged herself back out, her pale grey suit now covered in cobwebs, dirt and other detritus.
The tea caddy she held was probably from the late 1950’s and was in poor state. She pulled at the lid and it jerked forward as she prised it open, spilling some of its contents over the bathroom floor. What they stared at took them all by surprise. A collection of black and white, and colour photographs of girls, from pre-pubescent children to young teenagers, in various stages of undress, including nude, lay scattered around their feet. Grace lowered herself onto her knees, and Hunter joined her as she carefully shook out the remaining contents of the caddy. Using only a forefinger she separated the photos and began to sift through the images.
“Bingo.” she exclaimed as she dragged away four, single, faded colour photographs. They depicted a young pubescent girl doing what could only be described as posing indecently. In two she was wearing only a pair of white cotton panties, and in two others she was completely naked.
“Recognise her?” Grace enquired catching Hunter’s gaze.
“Certainly do,” he replied, recollecting the images from the missing from home files. “That’s Carol Siddons; a very young Carol Siddons.”
* * * * *
“Which one do you want to be: good cop or bad cop?” asked Hunter as he paused at the cell area interview room door, glancing through the folder of paperwork and evidence he was carrying, ensuring it was in correct order for the interrogation.
For a brief moment Grace Marshall returned a look of deep thought. Then, narrowing her eyes, exposing her laughter lines, she said, “bugger it. We’ll both be bad cop. We’ve got enough evidence to send him away for a bloody long time.”