The Bodies at Westgrave Hall

by Nick Louth

  The music from the PA suddenly ceased.

  ‘Call it in, ambulances as a precaution, give CSI a heads-up,’ Butterfield shouted to Thorne. ‘We’re going to need lots of uniforms for crowd control.’ She slipped on the latex gloves.

  ‘Roger that.’

  ‘I’m going to take a look.’ She set off for the library, watching the athletic man fiddle with a keypad by the double doors, while simultaneously talking on a phone clutched between neck and shoulder. He managed to open the door just as Sophie Cawkwell, the hem of her long dress gathered up in one hand, arrived by his side. ‘Sasha’s in there!’ she shouted. ‘I’ve got to help him.’

  ‘No, stay here,’ he said, easing himself in. He closed the door in her face, trapping the hem of her dress. A few moments later Zoe arrived as the TV presenter banged on the glass with both hands, swore vigorously and yelled, ‘Sasha! Sasha!’

  Ponytail man was now at the door, still on his radio. ‘Wolf, come now!’ He bellowed into the device.

  ‘Get this door open!’ Sophie yelled at him, trying to wrench out the fabric which trapped her leg against the door.

  ‘Just a moment,’ he said, pressing his thumb against a receptor and tapping in a code on the keypad. He still appeared to be on the phone, shouting to someone in Russian. The door didn’t open, but merely flexed when he pushed it. ‘Shit, yesterday’s code.’

  Another shot rang out. Then another.

  ‘Open the damn thing, for Christ’s sake, Sasha’s being murdered!’ Sophie yelled.

  Ponytail guy ignored her, yelling in Russian even louder into the phone as he worked the keypad.

  Peering through the smoked glass, Zoe could make out a short section of entrance hall, lined with bookshelves, and an open-plan staircase going up a half landing, then turning back on itself. The view higher into the atrium was completely blocked by the huge lump of suspended rock, the massive fossil she had heard so much about. Only a few ground floor spotlights appeared to be on, but there was more lighting on the floor above.

  Four more shots rang out in quick succession, and there was a cry. Someone tumbled down the upper half of the staircase, arms and legs flailing, coming to rest face up on the half landing. It was the same man who had just entered, a huge red patch spreading on the crisp white of his shirt. A pistol slipped from his right hand and clacked and banged down two more steps.

  ‘Oh my God, we’ve got to do something,’ Sophie screamed, crouching down until she could get the material from her dress into her mouth. She began tearing it with her teeth. ‘Fourteen thousand quid’s worth, ruined,’ she said, spitting out fibres as she ripped the dress.

  Ponytail man tried the keypad again. No luck.

  Zoe ran back towards the bridge and picked up a waist-high freestanding ashtray and offered the other end to Sophie. The TV star was now free of the door hinge, but in half a dress, ripped to the waist on one side. ‘Let’s give this a go,’ Zoe said.

  ‘Right,’ Sophie replied.

  The two women made a short run at the door and smashed the heavy ashtray at the lock. The door merely shuddered.

  ‘Don’t do that, you’ll break the lock!’ the ponytailed man yelled.

  ‘That’s the whole idea, you moron,’ Sophie said, as they swung for another blow. Natasha Fein joined them, struggling to carry another ashtray she had found in the middle of the bridge. A group of young men from among the guests ran to help, masculinity clearly threatened by female initiative. They were joined by a half a dozen members of the security team, identifiable by their shaven heads and earpieces. Every one of them seemed to be shouting to everyone else.

  Wolf could now be seen running over the bridge, gesticulating wildly. ‘If you jam lock, we never get in. This glass armoured glass!’ he yelled at the women, before returning to bellowing over the phone. ‘Why he need code change every day? Suka, blyat!’ he yelled, to no one in particular.

  Finally, one of the security men passed across a slip of paper to Wolf, who tapped in a code. The door released, and he and Sophie were first in, running straight past the fallen body and upstairs. Butterfield squeezed in after them and then, seeing the great press of others converging on the door, slammed it shut. A satisfying clunk as the lock kicked in. This was a crime scene, and she had to do what she could.

  She knelt by the man on the stairs and felt for a pulse. None. Blood no longer flowed from the hole in his shirt but was seeping from his mouth and down his chin. He was clearly dead. The only dead body she had ever seen before was in her first week as a constable, an old man of ninety who’d died on the toilet in a tower block. This was completely different. This guy had been young and fit, handsome too, with everything to live for. She took a deep breath. Mustn’t think about it. Keep focused.

  From upstairs she heard a great wailing cry from Sophie Cawkwell: ‘No, no, no!’ Wolf was shouting too, almost beside himself with panic.

  Adrenaline was coursing through Zoe’s veins. A hundred actions crowded into her head. Which to choose? In seven years on the force, she had never had such responsibility.

  Images, images, images. Before the crime scene became too compromised. It was the best thing she could do. With her phone she took half a dozen pictures of the body on the stairs, then made her way up, taking care not to add to the trail of bloody footprints Wolf and Sophie had left behind. However, she heard the ping of metal, and realised she had probably just kicked a cartridge case.

  The stairs led up to the gallery, which ran right around the edge of the two-storey atrium within which the huge blade of rock was suspended. There was a body on the walkway fifty feet from where she stood. A sizeable man, middle-aged, wearing evening dress, with long whiteish-blond hair. He was face down in a huge pool of blood. He was clearly dead, a triangular hole in the back of his skull revealing a mauve pulpy mass beneath. It was only one of many visible wounds.

  ‘Who’s he?’ Butterfield shouted to Wolf, pointing to the body in front of her. Sophie and Wolf were at the far end, almost sixty yards away, crouching by a third man. He was seated on the floor back against a wall as if tired.

  ‘You not know? That is the famous Maxim Talin,’ Wolf replied.

  She took a good dozen photographs with her phone. ‘What about the guy downstairs?’

  ‘Bryn Howell. Is Sasha’s bodyguard.’

  ‘I thought you were his bodyguard, Wolf?’

  ‘No, I’m security manager. Million jobs without trailing after boss.’

  ‘Well I guess you won’t have to do that anymore,’ Zoe muttered to herself. She made her way along the balcony toward the third body. A clear trail of fresh crimson footprints, Sophie’s and Wolf’s, led from one recumbent victim to the other. More pictures.

  ‘Is he still alive?’ she called, although Sophie’s wailing had already answered the question.

  Wolf shook his head. ‘Mr Volkov is dead. No pulse. No heartbeat.’

  ‘Then this is now a crime scene, and I need you to move away. Both please take off your shoes, so you don’t leave any more gory footprints.’

  Sophie removed her high heels and placed them sideways on a bookshelf. ‘Has anyone seen Yelena? She was here with Talin when I left them.’

  Wolf shrugged. ‘I don’t know who was here.’

  Zoe carefully made her way along the balcony edge towards them, avoiding the still-wet bloody footprints. As she approached the body of Alexander Volkov, she could see at least three bullet wounds, including one in his cheek. Blood had poured from his nose and mouth down the front of his white evening jacket and shirt. She took pictures. If she stopped to think about what she was actually seeing, she was not sure she would cope.

  ‘Wolf! Come away from the body. Take your boots off and walk around the other side of the balcony.’ He just looked at her and blinked, showing no signs of complying. From somewhere came the muffled sound of banging. The crowd outside, maybe.

  There was hammering on the glass downstairs and a rising chorus of shouts. In the distance the sound o
f sirens. And still there was the muffled banging noise, as if there was building work next door.

  ‘I think the ambulances have arrived,’ she said. Wolf was now walking round the other side of the balcony. He still had his boots on.

  The banging continued.

  ‘We have to keep everybody outside, Wolf. For just a couple more minutes, until the paramedics come. I’ve got to get lots of pictures before the paramedics trample through everything. Take your boots off!’

  ‘What is noise? Is coming from inside,’ Wolf said, walking back towards Volkov’s body.

  ‘Is it not downstairs?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘No. It from here I think.’

  ‘How many rooms are there in this place?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘Two large conference room downstairs, the three toilets plus some storage and office. Up here one conference room, two office…’

  Suddenly the lights went off, throwing the room into darkness except for the green glow of the emergency exit sign downstairs.

  ‘Maybe assassin still here in building,’ Wolf said, flicking on his mobile phone. It lit his face from below, giving him a devilish appearance, and throwing his shadow like a giant on the far wall.

  Shit! Zoe needed help, and she needed it now. She reached for her tunic torch and turned it on. If the shooter was still in the building they were in serious trouble. Her light knifed the darkness, as she tried to isolate where the sound was coming from. She reached under her jacket and unholstered her Taser, a weapon she had never used outside of training.

  Three dead already.

  Now it was down to her to prevent another three dying on that blood-soaked balcony.

  Chapter Four

  DCI Craig Gillard was the on-call detective overnight. It was just his luck to be lumbered with the Christmas shift, which this year he’d really wanted to avoid. His wife Sam was still struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder after being kidnapped earlier in the year and had wanted him to be home with her. But unfortunately, day-to-day staffing requirements intervened. Gillard still had no boss, DCS ‘Radar’ Dobbs being off again with depression, and there were three other detectives off sick, including DI John Perry, who had flu. Perry had been due to take this shift.

  The good news was that he’d got to 1:15 a.m. and it had so far been pretty quiet. Sam had gone to bed, and he was thinking of joining her. The only incident he’d been called out to was an altercation at a city centre pub in Redhill, in which a young man had been stabbed in the arm. Painful but not normally life-threatening.

  Most Christmases you would expect a few domestic incidents, often including a murder. Families forced together, the expectations of happiness, and the pressure cooker of all sitting down at a table together caused no end of trouble. Uniforms were at the sharp end of all this of course, the late-night call-outs, the drink-driving and the pub fights. He was only involved in the very worst cases. Tonight, there had been very few of them.

  Gillard was in shorts and T-shirt, squinting into the mirror. His wife had always described him as rugged, by which she meant sexily scruffy. Certainly he could do with a shave, and his short iron-grey hair was expanding into his sideboards, making him look further into his fifties than he was. His five-eleven physique too was a little out of shape, muscle definition awaiting a return to his regular swim. He was just cleaning his teeth when the control room rang his mobile. He wiped toothpaste away on the towel as he answered.

  ‘We’re getting reports of three dead in a shooting in the village of Steeple Risby,’ the operator said, her wavering voice betraying a little emotion at the unexpected death toll. ‘I’ve already called CSI, and paramedics are on their way.’

  Steeple Risby was at the far western edge of Surrey, almost in Hampshire. ‘Do you have any details of exactly where?’ he asked.

  ‘Westgrave Hall. Christmas party. It was called in by PC Thorne.’ She passed on the postcode, which Gillard tapped into his phone. ‘Happy Christmas, sir.’

  ‘And to you,’ he said.

  Gillard dressed rapidly, snatched up his grab bag, which contained wellingtons, torch, booties, gloves and a fat stash of evidence bags, and headed for his unmarked Vauxhall parked on the drive. The moment he was in the car, he called PC Thorne on the hands-free phone.

  ‘DCI Gillard here, on my way over to you. What’s happened?’

  ‘Three dead in a shooting. No further injuries reported.’

  ‘Has CSI arrived?’

  ‘No. But I hear sirens. That could be paramedics,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Is the crime scene secure? I heard it was a party.’

  ‘Describing it as party, sir, is like describing the Titanic as a boat. We’re having trouble to be honest. The good news is that the scene is self-contained, it’s a library with one entrance and I’m on it. The bad news is that one of the dead is the billionaire oligarch Alexander Volkov. There is a big crowd outside, with a Russian TV crew recording the whole scene.’

  ‘How did they get there so quickly?’

  ‘I think they were already here to film the party.’ There was a bang and some shouting, then Thorne said: ‘I’m holding the door with the help of their head of security. PC Zoe Butterfield is inside the library, taking pictures. I’m told it’s a mess.’

  ‘Any ID on the other dead?’

  ‘One just behind me is the bodyguard, British national I believe. The other guy we don’t know for sure, but it may be the US businessman Maxim Talin.’

  ‘Good grief. I’ve heard of him. The billionaire battery pioneer?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir.’ There was a lot of background shouting, some of it in a language Gillard didn’t understand. He heard Thorne, clearly rattled, telling someone to back off, before he returned to the call. ‘Got to go, sir. I hope the cavalry arrive soon,’ Thorne said.

  Gillard hung up, and then immediately picked up another call from Chief Constable Alison Rigby. With his boss off sick, Gillard was often exposed to her workaholic scrutiny.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Craig,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry that the festivities have been interrupted for you.’

  ‘Part of the job, ma’am, particularly when you’re on call.’

  ‘Indeed. Just a heads up for you. I was awoken by a call from the Home Office about this… incident. Expect Special Branch to be poking their noses in, with the security services in tow. If I were you, I’d get every bit of evidence you want ASAP, before they pull rank. You don’t want to lose control of the crime scene.’

  ‘Yes ma’am. Did they say why they were interested?’

  ‘No, they never do. I rang Counter Terrorism Command to see if it was in connection with that, but it seems not. At least not at this stage.’

  ‘Russian oligarchs dying unexpectedly in the UK,’ Gillard said. ‘We’ve had a few, haven’t we, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes. Like those Russian dolls, one mystery inside another. I should think by now we’ve got the complete set. Work fast, Craig. Nail down everything you can as quickly as possible. I don’t trust the security services. Their priorities are not always our priorities.’ She hung up.

  * * *

  In the Volkov Library the lights came on again after a few seconds. Then off. On and off and on again several times, in an almost rhythmic fashion. Zoe took out her own torch and turned it on.

  ‘Suka, blyat! What now?’ Wolf yelled. He was back on the phone in Russian, expressing furious shrugs to whoever was on the other end.

  The flashing lights continued for the next minute, but the banging stopped. ‘It’s Morse code,’ Sophie said. ‘SOS. Three short flashes, three long, three short.’

  ‘But where is it coming from? Where are the light switches?’ Zoe asked. ‘Maybe the same person was making the tapping.’

  ‘There’s a panic room here,’ Sophie said. ‘I heard Sasha mention it.’

  ‘Yes, behind here,’ Wolf said, tapping the granite end wall. ‘Six-inch thick steel door, own air supply, food, computer room, snooker table and pinball machines. Al
l down in basement. Sasha’s body is blocking door which leads to staircase.’

  ‘Somebody must be in it, trying to get out,’ Zoe said. ‘Which way does the door open?’

  Wolf frowned. ‘Outwards. Yes, outwards.’

  ‘So that’s it,’ Sophie said, leaning towards her dead fiancé. ‘If we move Sasha, we can open the door.’

  ‘Do NOT move that body,’ Zoe yelled. ‘This is a crime scene.’

  Wolf gave an expansive shrug. ‘If someone in panic room, why they no ring? There is satphone in it.’ Not getting an answer, he sighed heavily, took his own phone and tapped out a number. ‘I ring satphone now.’

  A ringtone sounded on Volkov’s body. Zoe gingerly reached inside the dead man’s jacket and retrieved a larger than normal mobile phone. It was sticky with blood. ‘Maybe he was trying to use the phone when the shooting started.’

  ‘Okay, so satphone is here.’ Wolf killed the call, and the ringing stopped.

  Zoe’s radio crackled into life. Thorne was downstairs, asking to be let in. ‘CSI is on its way. I can see the first ambulance coming up the drive.’

  ‘Hold them back for now,’ she said. ‘We’ve got three dead bodies but no injured.’ She watched Wolf, finally taking off his boots. He had pink socks on, with a hole in one toe.

  The tapping resumed.

  ‘Wolf, I take it there is no other way into the panic room?’ Zoe’s radio continued to crackle away, updating the arrival of more police resources.

  He shrugged. ‘Whole point of panic room is only one entrance.’

  Zoe realised that whoever was inside may well have been a witness to the shooting. ‘Is there any other way of communicating with the panic room?’

  ‘Electronic shield, yes of course, like main panic room in Westgrave Hall. There is no mobile phone reception, except via satellite phone aerial. Command system has own computer, and I can send email, whoosh, over secure line. Panic rooms both have own encrypted WhatsApp addresses.’

  ‘That’s fine if you’re familiar with it. But I think it must be Yelena who is in there,’ Sophie said. ‘She wouldn’t have the passwords or anything.’