by Ian Williams
Marilyn awoke early. It was the first day of her new job and she was keen to get organised. It was 6:15 a.m., her alarm wasn’t going off until seven but she decided that a run around Emberton Lake would set her up nicely for the day. Donning her cycling shorts, London Marathon T-shirt and her Asics trainers which had quite a few miles on the clock she exited her flat and ran down to the lake. It was a crisp Monday morning, everything was still, and there was a light mist which hung over the lake and surrounding fields. There was no one about at this time and the only noise was of the birds in the trees and the few vehicles which drove down the A509 towards Milton Keynes and the M1 Motorway. On her first lap she passed numerous tents, all with fishing rods and fishing gear near them. Emberton Lake was a popular spot for night fishing. It also encompassed a rowing club and caravan park so was always reasonably busy.
As she was coming up to completing her first lap after passing the rowing club she saw a small green tent near the waters edge. From a distance it looked a bit of a mess as there was a chair on its side and various bits of fishing gear all over the place. As she got nearer she realised that the rods were all actually in the water and there seemed to be something else in the water too, filled with curiosity and a touch of fear she began jogging over there to check everything was okay, however as she got to within thirty feet of the scene and finally got a clear view she realised that the shape in the water was actually a real person, motionless in the water and all around the body was red water. The body was part submerged, the face was fully submerged which spared Marilyn too many gory details and adding a personalisation to the scene which would have magnified the intensity of her horror. The person’s clothes were soaked through where the water had gradually been absorbed by the materials. The empty beer cans, fallen chair and cool box added to the mayhem of the scene. Marilyn stopped in astonishment, put her hands to her face and then screamed. Two men who had just entered the park on mountain bikes came racing over at a great pace. They instantly saw the scene of carnage before them. One of them grabbed Marilyn and turned her away from the scene, walking her down the path so she could escape the grisly scene. The other man, Elliot quickly grabbed his mobile phone and called 999.
‘Hello police, a man is dead near Emberton Lake, you need to get here now. He’s lying half immersed in the water, there is blood everywhere, he…he isn’t moving’
‘Okay Sir, please keep well away from the area, a police car will be there shortly.
Within an hour Emberton Park was overflowing with police, police cars, ambulances, forensics teams, sniffer dogs, plain clothes officers. The severity of the attack had meant that Emberton Park, and Olney, a quiet village in the middle of the green Buckinghamshire countryside was in lockdown.
No one was allowed in or out of Emberton Park. There were six policemen and two squad cars at the gate turning people away. The various entrances to the park were sealed off and there were three officers on each entrance. The Olney locals who were coming to the park to walk their dogs, jog, cycle or take their kids for a stroll were all turned away. Further in Emberton Park at the caravan site there was bedlam. No one was being allowed out and they were asking all residents to stay in their caravans until they had been questioned. Numerous families were becoming irate at this annoyance and there was still some confusion as to what had actually happened and what it had to do with them. The police were calmly and patiently repeating the mantra that there had been a serious incident in the park and all persons details needed to be taken; they had to be questioned and to verify where they had been last night.
There had even been a few arrests where one rather annoyed man who had more tattoos than brain cells, (four) had tried to put his family in the car and drive off. He had even tried to nudge the police car out of the way which was blocking the entrance but this had only led to his driver’s airbag going off and his seat belt tightening and trapping him in the driver’s seat. The police officer’s had opened the door to a cacophony of profanities and air filled plastic and his wife repeatedly called him a moron and how she told him it had been a stupid idea but would he listen…ohh no of course he wouldn’t, whilst all the while in the back seat, tightly ensconced in a baby seat was a two year old boy with bright blue eyes, a shock of blonde hair, who was still in his breakfast coated clothes playing with his transformer oblivious to the commotion at the front of the car. However after this arrest and two others the place calmed down and the police finally managed to take it in turns to go over the stories of the parties concerned and take all relevant details. It was pretty unanimous that nobody had seen anything. But the police officers diligently went from caravan to caravan, tent to tent, person to person to get their details and build up a detailed list of whom was there and what they had seen. In all fairness most of them were families so would surely have been tucked up in bed asleep reasonably early so everything seemed in order.
Meanwhile back at the crime scene the full horror of the incident was becoming more apparent. David Holmes and his fishing gear, empty bear cans, stale sandwiches, reclining chair and tent were all now under the cover of a large white tent. His body still lay in the water as the evidence team carefully brushed for fingerprints, as the flash and subsequent whine of the camera flash recharging filled the tent with an intense white light. Over two hundred photos were taken in total. With the improvements in technology these were all now taken on a high resolution digital camera. The images would be loaded onto a PC and sent back to the police station immediately for analysis.
The gruesome murders which had occurred in London had obviously been all over the news and when the team realised that David Holmes’ pancreas had been removed then a call was made directly to the Met police headquarters at New Scotland Yard in London.
Chapter 16 – ‘Not far now…..come on’