Right to Kill

by John Barlow

  ‘You’d be very welcome.’

  ‘Job Club?’ he said. ‘Thanks, but gainfully employed. Well, employed.’

  She smiled. ‘Job satisfaction’s overrated.’

  ‘You run it?’

  ‘The club? Yes. We do banking skills, personal finance, some basic accountancy. It’s just a hobby of mine.’

  ‘Good hobby.’

  ‘Is it? I’m a teacher, actually.’

  ‘Now that is a job! Local?’

  She nodded. ‘Whitcliffe Mount School. Just round the corner. I teach Maths.’

  ‘Funny, I used to be a teacher. French and Italian. Not anymore, though.’

  She looked him up and down. ‘Let me guess. Actually, you still look like a teacher. Y’know, one of the well-dressed ones.’

  He held up his card. Best get it out of the way.

  ‘Oh, right. That’s…’ she searched for the right word ‘…impressive.’

  There was the slightest blush in her cheeks. Surprise? He often got that. He simply didn’t look like a copper.

  ‘I’m investigating the murder of a young man. Quite close to here. You might have seen it on the news?’

  ‘I haven’t seen the news for a few days. Was it recent?’

  ‘Yes. Craig Shaw. Last seen down near the town centre on Tuesday evening. Perhaps you’ve seen him around?’

  He found a photo on his phone.

  She looked at the image of Shaw, took her time.

  ‘Should I have? I don’t think I’ve seen him here in the library. And certainly not at school.’

  She returned to the poster. But the poster didn’t need her attention. There was a moment’s deliberation, for them both. It was silly, Joe told himself, now, in the middle of a murder investigation. He hedged his bets.

  ‘I’d be able to find you at the school? For some background on the town? It’s always useful to speak to a teacher, someone who knows the place, the people. I’m from Leeds. Not too familiar with this part of the world.’

  She remained there, looking at the poster. Then she turned.

  ‘Chris Saunders.’ She took a phone and waved it in front of him. ‘I’d be happy to help.’

  He knew what Bluetooth was, but not how to do it on his new iPhone. Besides, whenever he tried to use Bluetooth something always went wrong. It was like a digital will-o’-the-wisp, impossible to pin down.

  She recognized his helplessness, and recited her number for him. As he wrote it in his notebook she moved closer and watched, as if checking his work for errors. Her perfume reminded him of those first optimistic months in France, when everything had smelled sweet.

  ‘I damn well can!’

  The raised voice took them both by surprise. They turned to see a middle-aged man holding a poster. Between him and the other notice board was the librarian. The two men were engaged in what looked like a form of non-contact martial arts, moving this way and that, with Mark Sugden trying to stop the poster being pinned up, both of them speaking in aggressive but hushed tones as they did their dance.

  ‘I say what goes up here!’

  ‘We booked the room. We are allowed to advertise the fact!’

  ‘Perhaps you should intervene?’ she said, a hint of playfulness in her voice. She was at his side, so close that they were almost touching.

  At that point the man with the poster relented, uttered a huge sigh of exasperation, and looked around for moral support.

  ‘England! The land of petty officialdom!’

  Sugden laughed out loud.

  ‘Put the poster up, then! See how long it stays there!’

  With that he marched back into the library, where he pretended to occupy himself at the main counter, within earshot of the entrance.

  ‘You’ll see,’ the man said over his shoulder as he finally pinned his large, glossy poster for the Lobster Pot on the board in the space where the previous copy had been, ‘it’ll be in the bin in two minutes.’

  ‘Are you the coordinator of this group?’ Joe asked, stepping towards the irate man.

  ‘I am indeed,’ he said, his face lighting up. ‘Leo Turner. Pleased to meet you.’ He thrust out a hand and gave a hard, enthusiastic shake. ‘Always looking for new faces. Are you interested in social justice?’

  ‘Actually,’ Joe said, watching the elation drain from Turner’s face as he was shown the warrant card, ‘I do have a few questions.’

  Meanwhile, Chris moved past them and went into the reading room, mouthing a silent goodbye. He watched the smooth, controlled movement of her body as she disappeared, wondering what kind of books she liked to read.

  ‘We generate quite a lot of hostility,’ Turner said, lowering his voice and moving towards the main doors, out of the range of the librarian.

  He was in his fifties, slim, with thinning hair and an undeniable air of superiority, despite being somewhat flushed after his skirmish with petty officialdom. The Professor, they called him. More like Assistant Lecturer, Joe thought as he scanned the poster, confirming that it appeared to be exactly the same as the others.

  ‘I’m not really interested in fresh views of society at the moment. What I do need from you is a list of everybody that attended the group on Tuesday night.’

  ‘May I ask why? Because if it’s more harassment from the authorities…’

  ‘Murder, Mr Turner. I am running a murder inquiry, and we need that list.’ He waited. ‘Now.’

  Turner shook his head. ‘I don’t carry that sort of information around with me.’

  ‘I’m guessing that it’s a small group. Now, you seem to have a laptop there. Perhaps you have a members list saved in a file. Please?’

  Turner pursed his lips, thought about it.

  ‘Well, officer. We are very pro law enforcement. The rule of law is what distinguishes us from the animals, is it not?’

  Joe wasn’t answering that one. He waited.

  ‘What I can do,’ Turner said, keen to fill the silence, ‘is quickly check on the situation vis-à-vis Data Protection, which I can do on the internet here in the library, and I’ll be with you presently. Is that acceptable?’

  ‘Daniel Cullen and his two sidekicks, Daz and Ranksy. Yes or no?’

  ‘Like I said…’

  ‘OK, I’m from Leeds CID. Let’s do this at Elland Road. That’s half an hour there and half an hour back. Plus however long it takes me to find somewhere to do an interview, and a duty solicitor. Or you can phone your own lawyer on the way if you prefer. Off we go.’

  He held the door open, gripping it hard to contain his irritation.

  Turner took a moment, then nodded. ‘Fine. They were here.’

  ‘What time.’

  ‘Seven-thirty ’til nine.’

  He was about to ask for Turner’s address and phone number. But then he had a better idea.

  ‘OK. Why don’t you read up on Data Protection? I’ll be wanting a full list. You’re also a member of the English Patriot League, correct? I’ll need a list of League members too, Data Protection permitting.’

  With that he pulled open the door and threw himself out into the refreshingly chill morning air.

  ‘Prick!’ he hissed as his fingers jabbed the screen of his phone.

  ‘Rita? It’s me. You up at the crime scene? I’ll see you there in a few minutes. Oh, and guess who I just bumped into? The Professor himself, Leo Turner. Can you get someone from Kirklees to email me his contact details, plus anything of interest about him? He’s kicking up a legal fuss about access to the group info.’ He stopped, listening incredulously to Rita’s reply. ‘A lawyer? Shit.’

  He ended the call and tried to put Turner out of his mind as he walked back to his car. On the way he noticed a bike chained to a drainpipe at the corner of the building. Judging by the average age and condition of the library users today, it must have belonged to the uncooperative librarian.

  ‘Oh, I bet he bloody loves bragging about how he never pollutes the environment!’ he chuntered as he got his car keys out.
>
  16

  When he arrived, Rita was poking around in the trees close to where the burnt-out Toyota had been found. Not far off was the Land Rover, driver’s door swinging open in the wind, keys still in the ignition.

  ‘They’ll nick your motor!’ he shouted across to her as he parked and got out.

  ‘They’ll friggin’ try,’ she said without turning around. ‘Owt up at the library?’

  ‘Few people of interest. Some of ’em were playing curling on the carpet!’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of that,’ she said, now turning to look at him. ‘Sounds fun! Leo Turner?’

  ‘Librarian wasn’t happy about him putting up his Lobster Pot posters. Seems like a crank to me. Anyway, I got the email with his info. Thanks for that. One thing: he forgot to mention he was a lawyer when I spoke to him. Strange, eh?’

  ‘They’re all bloody strange in the League. Anyway, are you lot all done here?’

  He sensed the qualified accusation. You lot?

  ‘You’ve seen the SOC report?’ he said. ‘There’s nothing obvious with the tyre tracks. Motor comes in. Straight into this corner. There wasn’t much in the way of forensics.’

  ‘He was in the passenger footwell. No one bothered to shift him into the driver’s seat, to make it look like an accident. Or suicide.’

  ‘Or they were in a rush. Either way, it was a well-planned job. Efficient. Perhaps CCTV’ll give us a second car.’

  Rita crossed her arms. If she’d tutted it couldn’t have been more disparaging.

  ‘There was no second car,’ she said. ‘Our man drove here in the Toyota.’

  ‘Man? Or men?’

  ‘Man.’

  ‘Care to explain?’

  She unfolded her arms as if the effort was considerable and she was doing it just for him. Then she went back towards the trees, speaking over her shoulder.

  ‘You torch the car, then what? You’ve chosen this spot ’cos it’s near the trees, but also ’cos it’s close to the road.’

  They walked through the trees, and there was the wall, just where it had been yesterday. He let her have her Poirot moment.

  ‘If you wanna be away quick, over the wall you go, and you’re off,’ she said. ‘Which bit would you go over?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s only three feet high. That’s not going to matter, is it?’

  ‘Take a closer look, partner.’

  He resented her cockiness, but he knew there’d be a reason, which made him resent it even more. He looked up and down the length of the wall, just like he’d done yesterday.

  ‘Rita, if you don’t tell me what I’ve missed this might end up being a double murder.’

  She snorted. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not gonna kill you for incompetence! Just look.’

  She pointed to a section of the wall about fifteen feet away. The ground in front of it was slightly risen, and there was a protruding stone a little way up, just enough to serve as a step.

  ‘That’s where I’d go over,’ she said as they moved towards it. ‘Hasn’t rained since Thursday, but it rained Wednesday, right? The rock’s still damp, never really dried out. But see that? It’s still raw.’

  He saw it immediately, the lighter hue where a sliver of the old sandstone had been dislodged, right where you’d put your foot.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘if you were carrying something that you had to get over the wall, this stone’d be perfect. You’re desperate to be away. In the rush you drag it over, it scrapes against the stone as it goes…’

  Shit. Shit. Even now, as she extended her index finger he could see scratch marks in the dark, weathered stone. Fresh marks. But that wasn’t all. There were the tiniest fragments of something yellow.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Scrape marks. And there are minute bits of plastic in them. Something’s been dragged over the wall.’

  His mind spun.

  ‘Could that be from a bike? Y’know, the tape they have on the frame?’

  He sprang over the wall and down onto the road at the other side, making sure he landed on the tarmac, avoiding the bare earth close to the wall. And there it was, in the still-damp earth. A perfectly formed tyre track. A bicycle tyre.

  ‘Different kind of track, Joe,’ she said, looking down at him. ‘And it’s one set of tracks. One bike. I think we just made some progress.’

  He was already on his phone.

  17

  They’d taken a cast of the tyre track and mud samples themselves. Rita had a kit in the Land Rover. By the time they were back at Elland Road, the CCTV footage of the various routes away from the crime scene had been prioritized, anywhere a bike could have gone, a spider’s web on the map, spinning out in all directions from the crime scene. The only thing now was finding someone willing to go through it all.

  ‘You get anywhere with Karen Cullen last night? Your report was a bit vague.’

  They were in the pathologist’s lab, speaking in hushed tones, as though the dead might resent the sound of raised voices.

  ‘Not sure. I think so. It felt like there was something going on. I reckon she’ll tell me. Got her mobile number.’

  She smirked. ‘You always get their number?’

  ‘I wish.’

  ‘You phoned that French chick up at the university yet?’

  ‘What? No!’

  In truth he’d forgotten all about her. No wonder he was single. Then there was the woman from the library. He had managed to get her number. But that was work-related. For the moment, at least.

  ‘You know,’ Rita said as they waited for the pathologist to go through the paperwork, ‘you’ve got a good way with folk. All those little silences of yours, the pauses, the patience? I mean, I’m more the jump-in-with-both-feet type.’

  ‘I’d noticed. By the way, what was all that we-don’t-think-you-did-it stuff yesterday with Cullen and his goons?’

  ‘Well, we don’t, do we? Not yet. No point rilin’ ’em up ’til we’ve got a main suspect. Then we can go a-rilin’.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

  The pathologist was new. She had a Scottish accent and couldn’t have been much more than a teenager. Joe wondered whether Sam might end up doing the same thing, poking around in the singed remains of a scumbag that no one cared about. Was there a more dispiriting way to spend one’s Saturday?

  ‘Jesus,’ Rita whispered as the white plastic sheet was whipped back.

  It was a mound, not a person, so far removed from a discernible cadaver that the dull, depressing sight of a murder victim was replaced by a macabre curiosity. What was it Karen Cullen had said? It’d be the end of my life. He wanted to drag her down here now, so she could see what had happened to someone else’s child, their only child.

  ‘Death came before the fire,’ the pathologist said in a clipped tone, as if her coolness was being assessed for its exact degree of disinterest. ‘Around forty-eight hours before, I’d estimate.’

  ‘How precise is that timeframe?’ Rita asked, notebook already out.

  ‘Eight hours either way, give or take. Some of the internal blood and organs were more or less intact. Death itself was by means of a pencil.’

  She waited. New to the job she may have been, but she certainly had a sense of theatre.

  ‘A pencil?’ Joe asked, annoyed by her manner.

  ‘It was inserted through the right eye socket, directly into the brain. All the way in, seven inches to be exact. An entire pencil, pushed in as far as the cerebellum. That’s at the back of the head. It caused a lot of brain damage. Intracranial haemorrhaging and the associated mass effect caused by the penetrating object. What that means is…’

  ‘We know what it means,’ Joe said.

  ‘OK… So, massive trauma to the brain parenchyma. You’re know what…’

  ‘No, you can explain that one, love,’ Rita said.

  ‘Neurons and glial cells, the things that keep the brain going. There was severe damage. Given the assumed trauma, a pencil pushed right t
hrough the brain, it was probably sudden and forceful. There might have been some lateral movement too.’

  ‘Evidence of a struggle?’

  ‘Can’t tell. The pencil seems to have gone in cleanly, but the lesion certainly fans out a bit. That would have made things worse.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The brain was so badly damaged that it bled out. Intracranial haemorrhage isn’t always fatal, but in this case he clearly didn’t receive any treatment.’

  ‘Could he have been immobilized instantly?’

  ‘That depends on many things, but essentially yes, it’s possible.’

  ‘No other injuries? Nothing before, or after?’

  She shook her head. ‘Difficult to see in this state. But nothing I could find. No broken bones. Nothing showed up on his bloods. No drugs, no meds, no alcohol.’

  ‘Clean-living boy,’ Rita said, noting it all down.

  Joe didn’t quite understand.

  ‘There was nothing about a pencil in the initial report.’

  ‘That’s because there was no pencil. But right at the back of his brain there was the tip from a pencil, just a bit of lead. It must have broken off. The lesion fits the dimensions of a pencil. Also, there was a small fragment of paint, again, from a pencil, I assume.’

  ‘And…’

  ‘Forensics have it. I sent everything up an hour ago.’

  18

  The operations room was quiet. Weekends are rarely busy in CID. And it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in plain clothes, there’s one difference from uniform that always raises a smile: no hung-over troublemakers to process and turf out on a Saturday morning.

  ‘Ah, right,’ Joe said as they made their way across to his desk. ‘There’s Gwyn Merchant over there, he’s the deputy on the case.’

  Merchant was at the back of the room, leaning against the wall, hands in pockets, the best suit in the department, chatting to a young female clerk at a data terminal. He looked up, squinted for a moment, then broke into a mad grin.