Chapter 8 #2
Chelsea’s flat was tidy, the furniture and décor cheap but thought had gone into them.
The TV was obscenely huge, a litany of games consoles stacked on a sideboard next to it.
In the kitchen at the back of the living room was a fridge covered with kids drawings and certificates, most of them dated more than a year ago.
A stack of unopened bills were between the microwave and the fridge. I pulled on a pair of gloves from my pocket and passed a pair to Vinny. We moved about the room as if performing a well-rehearsed dance. Not our first search, wouldn’t be the last unless Vinny won the lottery.
“What’ve you found?”
“She was in debt. Unpaid gas and electric – surprised she wasn’t on a meter. There are credit card bills and a CCJ. There are also letters from the school threatening fines for her kids’ attendance.” I put them back where I’d found them. “This isn’t the murder scene.” Stating the obvious.
“We know she was in debt, we suspect she owed loan sharks – loan sharks aren’t in the habit of murdering people who owe them money, but it’s possible Chelsea has more than a few enemies.
” He put his hands on his hips and stretched out his back.
“At least this isn’t rancid. You remember that house in Levenshulme that we went through and there were rats in the walls? ”
“Unfortunately that place has stayed with me. I think Mrs Kinsella’s sons might be loan sharks.” I started to look in the kitchen drawers. Rizlas, a grinder and a small stash of cannabis were at the back of one.
“Why’s that?” Vinny had his head in a cupboard so sounded slightly echoey.
“She said they work in finance. She also had some very expensive gear in her house – coffee machine that must’ve cost a grand because it’s the same brand as my flatmate’s, TV that’s more than you or I can afford but looks subtle. I reckon they’re gifts off her boys.”
“Local intelligence can help with that. Ring it in and get Lachy to make a call. It’ll help his hangover.” Vinny stood up, stretching his back again. “Think I overdid it in the gym yesterday.”
“Probably because you’re getting old.” I carried on going through the drawers and cupboards, finding nothing I wouldn’t have predicted was there.
We searched the whole flat in under two hours, finding everything and nothing, taking photos and sending anything through that we thought needed following up.
It was grunt work and it was how we usually got results, and it was something to occupy myself with so I stopped over thinking who’d sent me the email.
By four o’clock that afternoon we knew more about Chelsea Bainbridge than I did about my flatmate, and yet we still knew nothing at all.
Cops down south had informed her ex of her murder.
He spoke of a current boyfriend who was from Manchester but didn’t know his name, and mentioned a friend called Selena Bowen, who Chelsea sometimes stayed with if she wanted a night out there.
He was cut up, apparently, crying while he poured out his regrets about how the relationship had ended, but calling her several names throughout.
I left the office and headed to the gym needing to do something physical while I process the last thirteen hours.
A few of my colleagues were continuing through the evening, trying to identify Chelsea’s boyfriend and friend that she stayed with, but I was off the clock, the four am start granting me an early finish.
I’d stopped doing gymnastics when I was fifteen, and took up Muay Thai instead, lessons paid for by my father, who was doing a stretch inside for the fourth or fifth time, and approved by the social worker, even though strictly speaking, he shouldn’t have been able to.
I stuck with it, through A-levels, and then continued when I moved to Manchester for my degree, training at least three times a week, trying out a few different gyms until I found State Eight, based in Burnage and owned by a former pro fighter, Arun Srivongchai, who was absolutely insane and fearless.
It wasn’t a pretty gym. The showers were unisex for those who dared use them, and the place itself wouldn’t have scored highly in any review for its cleanliness standards, but that wasn’t what it was about.
My trainer was a fighter, competing regularly. He was full of hyperactivity, bouncing round the gym like a spring, overflowing with energy and laughter, never taking himself too seriously, which, when I’d spent all day with other coppers, was a release.
He was one of the few people I trusted not to hurt me, someone who could hold space for someone else without losing too much of themselves, which was rare. The only other person who could do that for me was my old professor and mentor, Daniel.
I made a note to go and see him. He’d been my tutor for my degree, and mentored me through my masters, and the advice he gave when I talked to him about cases was always sound and would make me consider other perspectives than what my gut was telling me, bringing me back to the facts and what we knew about the human condition.
“Mia!” Jalen spotted me as soon as I entered the gym, putting my bag down out of the way because we didn’t bother with lockers. “Ready for some action?”
I found myself grinning. Jalen was a bit older than me, a dad, although he’d long since split from their mum, but there was something childlike about him. A vibe.
“Just about. Not sure how aware I’m going to be. I’ve been awake since four.” Which was now catching up with me. After this I’d be home, showered, fed and in bed.
“This’ll sort you out. Start with skipping.” He handed me a rope.
I began automatically, the ritual and the pace focusing me purely on the now, on the single space between the ticks of a clock. Nowhere else to be, the past was done. All I had was where I was right now.
It was a therapist’s trick. Language to help the taking of control back, looking at only what was in your power. I specialised in criminology and profiling when I was studying, but I’d learned alongside enough people who were pursuing a career in psychotherapy and clinical psychology.
“Speed it up.” Jalen said quietly from nearby.
I hadn’t realised how close he was.
I carried on until I was almost breathless, dropping the rope and going through warm-up exercises, the movement of muscles and the quickness of it waking me up, my mind clearing.
It was similar to the effect that running had.
When I ran I’d lose myself, just like I would here, but here I had to be more aware, more alert at what was happening around me.
When I ran, what I was passing was inconsequential, a blur of grass and greenery.
“Pads today?” Jalen waited for me to finish a set of burpees.
“No. Self-defence. I want you to come at me.”
“But you’ve already said you’re half asleep.” He put his hands on his hips and viewed me, like he could see everything I was trying to hide.
“Exactly why we should do this now.”
“You’re on that new case, aren’t you? The woman-pusher?” He led the way onto the mats. This would be street-fighting, struggling, grappling. Jalen would pin me down but always know the point where he needed to let go.
I nodded. “It’ll be released to the press later that we’ve identified her. Nothing to do with the pusher or any other urban legend.”
“I don’t know, these things come from somewhere. We will start with some pad work. Glove up.”
Ten minutes later and I’d started to sweat, the routine pattern of jab, cross, hook, uppercut as Jalen moved around the mat, shifting his position, leaving out the words.
Knees got involved, then shins and elbows, my body starting to hitch up a notch, awake and alert.
Then he ditched the pads, and it was glove against glove, reading each other’s movements, his sometimes too quick, too agile.
“You’re not at your best, Mia.” He dropped his gloves at the side, letting me catch my breath. Jalen was, of course, unflustered, barely sweating.
“I know. How shall we do this?”
“You won’t have to try to be unaware, so why don’t I try to grab you from behind and drag you back. You fight me off?” He put his hands on my shoulders and pressed down.
I felt muscles untense.
“Okay. Don’t go easy on me.” Because this was how I felt safe when I was on my own, hunting down a suspect or a witness with the potential to be dangerous, and not really a witness at all.
It was how I knew I’d be okay walking through quiet estates at two in the morning when the only souls about weren’t ones you wanted to meet.
But maybe that was how they felt about me.
I walked slowly across the mat. Jalen had turned the music up louder, and no one else was in the gym – Sunday evenings were always quiet.
I let myself drift off into thinking about that email and who’d sent it, how they knew who my mother was.
I hadn’t used her surname since I was a teenager, known as McAllister like my foster sister.
I changed it formally by deed poll when I was eighteen.
Just then, I felt arms grab me from behind, clamping around me, over my arms.
I didn’t fight, not straight away. Panic was flung in a box, and I took a deep breath and dropped my weight.
Jalen’s centre of gravity was knocked; although I wasn’t heavy, I was strong and flexible, hitting my head hard into his stomach, maybe a bit too hard given it was a practice session, and then it became a struggle.
His goal was to get me on my front or my back on the floor; my goal was the same, but ideally it would be him face down, wrists behind his back, ready for my cuffs to go on them.
I’d never succeeded. Jalen never went easy on me. He was strong and lithe and a good fighter, part of his talent in predicting where hits and kicks were going to fall. Every time we practiced this, he got a little quicker, a little more real.
Trusting me more to tell him when to stop.