Read Online Strangers by Paul Finch - Free Book Online
Authors: Paul Finch
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Crime, Contemporary Women
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place. I’m certainly not going to do you the disservice of trying to sugar-coat this, because that’d be a total waste of time. Likewise, I don’t want to spend time we can’t spare making formal introductions, aside from to introduce myself, which I already have done, and your two immediate line-managers, detective sergeants Sally Bryant from Merseyside and Maureen Clark from Lancashire.’
Two of the seated women stuck their hands up to indicate who they were.
‘You’ll obviously need to get to know each other,’ Slater said, ‘but you can do that on your first tea-break. You’re all wearing name-tags anyway, so that should help and there’re a couple of charts on the wall that you might find useful.’
Lucy glanced up. Among a mass of other paperwork, mainly maps and photographs with marker-pen notations all over them, there were two colour charts, one for women and one for men, each bearing ordered and neatly blown-up headshots, with essential details like name, rank, collar-number and police force of origin listed underneath. She skimmed through. Several of the women were already serving detectives, though the majority were PCs like herself. The male officers, she’d already learned, had largely been drafted from the Tactical Support Group, which meant they’d most likely be ex-military, which their burly physiques and hard, truculent faces also seemed to imply. Their role was basically to keep an eye on the women, but also to drive up in unmarked cars every so often, posing as customers, so as to maintain the illusion that the girls were working prostitutes.
‘What I will say is this,’ Slater said. ‘We’re a small but vital part of a very big operation. I’ve been a detective for sixteen years and I’ve never known a case where as many resources were being chucked around. I could put my cynical hat on and say that if we were investigating the usual type of serial murder … i.e. drug-addled hookers getting sliced ’n’ diced rather than the white, middle-class men who use their services, there wouldn’t be half as much media attention and nowhere near as much pressure on us to get a result. But I’m not going to. I don’t know if that’s the case, and frankly I don’t care.’
His gaze roved across them. His delivery was a low, taut monotone.
‘Mine’s a school of thought where all lives are valuable,’ he said. ‘Where each one that gets snuffed out leaves a hole in people’s lives that will probably never be filled. None of these fellas asked to get murdered, much less tortured. And that’s the other thing. That’s the really nasty bit … someone’s out there using a butcher’s knife to carve off these blokes’ crown jewels. Now I’m sure everyone here knows some misogynistic pillock who in one of your lighter moments you’d happily say deserves such a fate. But you’ve still got to ask yourself the question … do you really want someone wandering the streets who’s capable of this kind of sadism? I mean, disregarding the mistreatment she may have suffered at the hands of men, because that’s irrelevant to our role here … do you really want this woman walking about free? Because who gets it next? Not just the bloke who propositions her or offers her money … maybe the bloke who makes a politer approach, offering her a drink or asking her out on a date. Maybe the bloke who opens a door for her, or simply gives her a smile when he’s out walking his dog. And this is the real rub, ladies. Because when you get out there, this could be the very same person you’re swapping banter with when you’re fixing your make-up in the bus station toilets. It could be the girl standing on the next street-corner, the one who comes over every five minutes to scrounge a ciggie off you.’
He scrutinised them carefully.
‘When policewomen usually do decoy work, they’re standing among the prospective victims. This time you may be standing with the killer. And for that reason if
Two of the seated women stuck their hands up to indicate who they were.
‘You’ll obviously need to get to know each other,’ Slater said, ‘but you can do that on your first tea-break. You’re all wearing name-tags anyway, so that should help and there’re a couple of charts on the wall that you might find useful.’
Lucy glanced up. Among a mass of other paperwork, mainly maps and photographs with marker-pen notations all over them, there were two colour charts, one for women and one for men, each bearing ordered and neatly blown-up headshots, with essential details like name, rank, collar-number and police force of origin listed underneath. She skimmed through. Several of the women were already serving detectives, though the majority were PCs like herself. The male officers, she’d already learned, had largely been drafted from the Tactical Support Group, which meant they’d most likely be ex-military, which their burly physiques and hard, truculent faces also seemed to imply. Their role was basically to keep an eye on the women, but also to drive up in unmarked cars every so often, posing as customers, so as to maintain the illusion that the girls were working prostitutes.
‘What I will say is this,’ Slater said. ‘We’re a small but vital part of a very big operation. I’ve been a detective for sixteen years and I’ve never known a case where as many resources were being chucked around. I could put my cynical hat on and say that if we were investigating the usual type of serial murder … i.e. drug-addled hookers getting sliced ’n’ diced rather than the white, middle-class men who use their services, there wouldn’t be half as much media attention and nowhere near as much pressure on us to get a result. But I’m not going to. I don’t know if that’s the case, and frankly I don’t care.’
His gaze roved across them. His delivery was a low, taut monotone.
‘Mine’s a school of thought where all lives are valuable,’ he said. ‘Where each one that gets snuffed out leaves a hole in people’s lives that will probably never be filled. None of these fellas asked to get murdered, much less tortured. And that’s the other thing. That’s the really nasty bit … someone’s out there using a butcher’s knife to carve off these blokes’ crown jewels. Now I’m sure everyone here knows some misogynistic pillock who in one of your lighter moments you’d happily say deserves such a fate. But you’ve still got to ask yourself the question … do you really want someone wandering the streets who’s capable of this kind of sadism? I mean, disregarding the mistreatment she may have suffered at the hands of men, because that’s irrelevant to our role here … do you really want this woman walking about free? Because who gets it next? Not just the bloke who propositions her or offers her money … maybe the bloke who makes a politer approach, offering her a drink or asking her out on a date. Maybe the bloke who opens a door for her, or simply gives her a smile when he’s out walking his dog. And this is the real rub, ladies. Because when you get out there, this could be the very same person you’re swapping banter with when you’re fixing your make-up in the bus station toilets. It could be the girl standing on the next street-corner, the one who comes over every five minutes to scrounge a ciggie off you.’
He scrutinised them carefully.
‘When policewomen usually do decoy work, they’re standing among the prospective victims. This time you may be standing with the killer. And for that reason if
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