Death Call Read Online Free Page A

file on computer, and that they should look it up if they wanted to know more. To that effect, he had left them her last known address, social security number and date of birth. That was all that was needed to get a good background on someone.
     
    When Grant received the message on his arrival, he had gone straight to the National Criminal Records’ computer terminal in the squad room, punching in the young woman’s details. Within a minute, the following details had sprung up on-screen:
     
    Name: Joanne McCrae
     
    D.O.B: 5 April 1969
     
    N.I. number: NY3 4BCA
     
    Last address: 33 Thatcher Towers, London EC2
     
    Convictions: Soliciting in King’s Cross area.
     
    Carroll arrived looking suitably hungover and parked his rear end in a chair beside Grant.
     
    ‘Howya Tonto!’ he smiled.
     
    ‘Do you think you could ever manage to get in on time?’
     
    ‘Whaddaya got?’ Carroll asked.
     
    ‘The National Identification Bureau records for our victim.’
     
    ‘Already?’
     
    ‘Yeah, Osborne left us a message with her details. All from a set of fingerprints. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?’ Grant said with a wry smile.
     
    ‘Amazing. Well, let’s see who she is then,’ Carroll said, squinting at the computer screen.
     
    ‘You need glasses, man.’
     
    ‘I need a fucking holiday. That’s what I need.’
     
    Carroll read down through the records, picking out her previous convictions and noting her last date of arrest. It was quite some time ago. There had been no sign of her on computer or in the eyes of the police for over a year, but she must’ve still been on the game. There was no other explanation for her turning up naked and dead in a strange house. Carroll had had a gut instinct that she was a whore from the first moment he saw the body, but had dismissed it, as he had been taught. Gut instincts were no match for hard evidence. This time, however, his guts had been right.
     
    Joanne McCrae’s post mortem examination was due to take place in the afternoon down at the city morgue, but before then, Carroll wanted to find out where Joanne had been employed in the last year. It was fairly obvious that she must have been operating in the area up to the time of her death, so it should not be too difficult finding where she had been working from, he thought, turning to Grant.
     
    ‘Is Tracy Goode still working?’
     
    ‘Tracy who?’ Grant asked.
     
    ‘Tracy Goode, you know, the young hooker up at the Cross. She’s always being brought in....’
     
    ‘Well, we can always go check her out, I suppose. Do we have an address for her?’
     
    ‘I’ll get it from the uniforms, downstairs. They seem to keep an eye on her....’
     
    Carroll made a quick call to the desk sergeant and they were soon on their way to a flat in Highbury Place to see Tracy Goode.
     
    For a common or garden variety street-walker, Tracy was not doing too bad for herself. A nice two bedroom apartment in what could quite easily be a listed building seemed somehow inappropriate for a hooker. Visions of squalid and damp flats came to Carroll’s mind when he thought of where a prostitute might live. Grant seemed to think it was a housing association flat, where the rent would have been quite low. Either way, Tracy was not exactly ecstatic to see her two visitors.
     
    To the sound of a child crying, the two detectives were ushered in and told to sit down while she took care of the baby. They did as they were told. Tracy looked good for her age. Most young whores were either ugly or so wracked by drugs that you could not really tell what they looked like. Hell, she was only in her late twenties. Without the make-up, Grant thought, she could’ve looked like any mother on the street. He wondered what could make a woman turn to prostitution.
     
    Sitting down in front of the two detectives, Tracy seemed calm – as though she was used to dealing with the police and knew that being unhelpful only made her life worse than