“Anton Gardiner, small-time pimp and drug dealer,” DC Grounds began. “Born 1988 to Shallene Gardiner, a single mum with numerous convictions for shoplifting. No father on his birth certificate and we’re unlikely to make any headway on that score. We don’t know much about Shallene, but we do know she was generous with her favors.”
Despite the subject matter, a few female members of the team suppressed smiles. There was something endearingly old-fashioned about DC Grounds.
“Anton went to school at St. Michael’s, Bevois, but left without any qualifications. His charge sheet starts when he’s about fifteen. Possession, theft, battery. And then it just gets longer and longer. We never pinned anything major on him, though, and his times in prison were brief and to the point.”
“So what about his girls?” Helen responded. “What have we got on that?”
“He ran girls from the mid-aughties onward,” Charlie replied. “Had a fairly big stable. Picked up a lot of girls from care homes, got them onto drugs, then made them work for him. I’ve spoken to a few girls who had ‘dealings’ with him, and by all accounts he was a nasty piece of work. Controlling. Violent. Sexually sadistic. And very paranoid. He was always convinced that people were watching him, that his girls were plotting to leave him, and he would often inflict terrible beatings on them for no good reason. He never used a bank—didn’t trust them—never carried ID and always had a knife close at hand, even when he slept. He was a guy forever looking over his shoulder.”
Helen let that thought settle, then added:
“Was he successful?”
“He made good money,” DC Sanderson replied.
“Any known enemies?”
“The usual suspects. No specific incidents around the time of his death.”
“I’m guessing he wasn’t married.”
Sanderson smiled and shook her head.
“So why was he targeted?” Helen replied, wiping the smile off Sanderson’s face. “And why was he hidden away? He’s an unmarried, low-life pimp, so there’s nothing to expose. He wasn’t a hypocrite with a loving family waiting for him at home. He was what he was and made no attempt to hide it.”
“And the heart was left intact,” DC McAndrew added.
“Exactly—the heart wasn’t removed. So what was the point? Why did she kill him?”
“Because he attacked her?” DC Grounds offered. “We know he used the old cinema to imprison and torture his girls.”
“But he wasn’t killed there,” Helen interrupted. “He was murdered elsewhere, then buried at the cinema. It doesn’t fit.”
“Perhaps she bided her time—after he attacked her,” DC Fortune said, picking up the thread. “Waited for the right time, then attacked him somewhere they wouldn’t be disturbed. Maybe she dumped the body at the cinema as a message to other pimps—and the other girls.”
“Then why bury it?” Helen countered. “Why hide him away if you want to make a point?”
Silence descended on the team. Helen thought for a moment, then:
“We need to find out where he died. Do we have any addresses?”
“We’ve got scores,” DC Grounds replied, raising his eyebrows. “He liked to keep on the move. He was like a snail, moving round Southampton with his possessions on his back. Always trying to keep one step ahead of his enemies, real or imagined.”
“Run them down, every last one. If we can find the crime scene, maybe we can link him to Lyra more clearly. We need to know the circumstances of his death. DC Grounds will take the lead.”
Helen wrapped up the meeting and pulled Charlie aside. She wanted to quiz her on her progress in tracking down the other forum users, but she never got the chance. The front desk buzzed through with a development that stopped them all in their tracks—Angel had killed again.
87
“Looks like it was quite a struggle.”
Charlie and Helen stood together in the freezing cargo yard, looking at the carnage in front of them. A young man—mid-twenties and heavily tattooed—lay on the tarmac, a large pool of blood encircling his head. A deep cut in the center of his face was being photographed by the SOC team, but what interested Helen was his torso. It had been slashed to ribbons in what looked like a frenzied knife attack, but his internal organs remained untouched.
Helen drew her eyes away from the grizzly sight in response to Charlie’s comment. She was right. There was blood all over the place, splattered against the crates where someone had landed heavily, smeared over the ground where the struggle had taken place and spread in short bursts along the connecting pathway as the surviving party had fled. The footprints were small and looked to have been made by high-heeled boots—Angel.
“I guess she met the wrong guy this time,” Charlie continued.
Helen nodded but said nothing. What had happened here? Why hadn’t she drugged him like the others? It looked like a desperate fight to the death. Perhaps Charlie was right. Perhaps Angel’s luck had finally run out.
