Driving Dead

by Stephen G Collier

  ‘That’s the rear portion of the frontal lobe,’ interrupted Kirsty.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, the primary motor cortex – you probably see them more than me.’

  ‘You could say that,’ agreed Kirsty, ‘but doesn’t that require stimulation from other parts of the brain?’

  ‘Correct – which is why whoever has re-synthesised this drug has a far deeper knowledge of how neurotransmitters work in the brain than I do, or perhaps anyone else here.’

  ‘So, how do we move forward?’ asked Jake, who had been sitting quietly watching the two women talk medicine that was well over his head.

  ‘We can do a bit of work here, but it’s going to take time.’

  ‘Which we’ve already said we don’t have. There is an expectation that this person will strike again soon.’

  ‘We can’t have that now, can we? OK, I’ll do my best.’ That smile again.

  ‘That’ll have to do then, but you need to let us know as soon as you get anything.’

  ‘I’ll give you a ring, Kirsty, as soon as I have something.’

  The two left Tanya’s office and made their way back to the car. Jake was sombre, thinking. Quiet. His copper’s instinct was on high alert. Something was not right.

  Kirsty took his hand lightly, bringing him around from his thoughts. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Yes, fine – if she can’t help us, I don’t know what we can do.’ What Jake had decided not to tell Kirsty, was that he was convinced that Tanya knew more than she was letting on. And that disturbed him.

  As Jake got back into their car his phone rang. He answered it. It was Randall.

  ‘Have you got Dr Kingsfield with you?’ No pleasantries, just launched straight into it.

  ‘Yes, we’ve been to see Dr Nicholls, about my enquiry. Not that I had to tell you that. Why do you need her?’

  ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Fulborough Wood – we’ve got another body.’

  31

  By the time Jake and Kirsty arrived at Fulborough Wood, the area had been sealed off and officers were meticulously searching the area. Scenes of Crime had arrived with their incident vehicle and had begun to erect a SOCO tent to cover the body. The sky was grey with thick clouds threatening more rain, so the race was on to get the tent erected before it started, to protect the body and its surroundings.

  Jake saw Randall talking to Freeman and other officers in a huddle, on the edge of what used to be Fulborough Wood. Randall saw them and waved them over.

  ‘What have we got?’ Kirsty asked as they joined the group.

  ‘White male – mid thirties – looks as if he’s been laid out,’ Randall said, ‘he’s about a hundred yards in.’

  ‘Is the body complete?’ asked Kirsty.

  ‘If you’re asking whether the body is decomposed, then the answer is no. For all intents and purpose, it’s.’ Randall thought for a moment, then said, ‘Fresh.’

  ‘That makes a change,’ Jake said.

  ‘Right, let’s go and have a look.’ Kirsty walked off towards the SOCO van and climbed in. She came out wearing a SOCO suit.

  Jake joined her. ‘Are you going to be OK?’

  ‘Yes, Jake, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Only – I thought – you know – the location and everything.’

  Kirsty nodded. ‘Don’t fuss, I’ll be OK as long as I stay focussed.’

  They continued to walk towards the completed SOCO tent over the body.

  ‘Focused or not, I’m going to stay with you, OK?’

  Kirsty nodded again. ‘This is déjà vu, for me. Twelve months ago I was doing the same thing, only with my husband. You’ve parked in the same place he did. I changed into a SOCO suit in the same van, and he walked with me, like you’re doing up to the scene. It’s as eerie as it is disconcerting, Jake.’

  ‘Do you want me to go then?’

  ‘Part of me says yes, but the stronger part says no.’

  ‘We should really get the other pathologist to come out.’

  ‘Can you see Randall being up for that? I don’t think he’d be very happy.’

  Jake smiled. ‘No, could you just imagine the look on his face if we suggested it?’

  Kirsty shook her head. ‘Better get on with it then,’ she said quietly.

  They could hear someone walking up behind them. They both turned to see Randall approaching.

  As they got closer to the scene, Kirsty stopped and put her head down.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Randall asked behind them.

  Jake turned to him and nodded as he passed them, as Randall walked on towards the SOCO tent.

  Kirsty raised her face toward the sky. The rain had started quite heavily. Jake watched. Kirsty gave a big sigh and looked up into the sky. She let the rain wash away the tears that nobody else saw, except Jake. He touched her arm lightly and smiled, but said nothing. For there was nothing to say between the two people whose paths had run parallel and close for so long that no words needed to be said at this point. Both knew that what they were doing simply required the resolve of professionalism. The time to cry would come later. She smiled back at him briefly.

  He knew that this was an emotional rollercoaster. Her love for her husband and the closeness between them must be a torment. Jake hoped that she would be able to put it all out of her mind and concentrate on the job. Just for a little while.

  Kirsty entered the tent. Randall had already moved inside out of the rain and he beckoned Jake into the tent.

  ‘May as well join in, Jake,’ he said.

  Jake stepped in immediately recognising the corpse as that of Ian Morton. His presence seemed to make it even more humid, with the rain hammering on the roof of the tent, reminding him of the times he’d spent under canvass in the rain.

  He watched Kirsty bend down towards the body. She removed her recorder and spoke into it. ‘Body is that of a white male. Laid on his back with his arms down by his sides. Feet together. Dark hair appears to have been combed and was neat. Eyes closed. Clean shaven.’

  Kirsty looked up at Randall. ‘I think this has this been staged. What do you think?’

  Randall shrugged.

  ‘To all intents, you may think that he’s just asleep, if it weren’t for the pale blue tinge to his skin.’

  ‘It does make you think that whoever dumped him here, did so with some reverence, or…’ he paused, ‘love.’

  Kirsty nodded. ‘Possibly.’ She lifted the body’s eyelids and looked into both of his eyes with a pen torch. ‘Pupils fixed and dilated. No petechial haemorrhage meaning he wasn’t asphyxiated.’

  She went back to her observations. ‘Hands are calloused, as if he did hard labour, but not very often. Dressed in a green Dickies overall, brown caterpillar boots, a green gillet. Under the overalls a thick jumper, farmer’s shirt, blue jeans. Any belongings on him?’

  ‘Not looked yet. Thought we’d better wait for you.’

  Kirsty asked the SOCO to come into the tent to photograph the body in situ. The SOCO continued to take photographs, as Kirsty searched the body methodically. She retrieved a wallet from the back pocket and gave it to Randall. There were some keys in his gillet pocket which she also gave to Randall.

  ‘Nothing else on him,’ she said.

  Randall nodded, as Kirsty watched him open the wallet with his gloved hand.

  ‘Any I.D?’ she asked.

  Randall searched the wallet and removed a driving licence. ‘Driving licence – name of… ’

  ‘Ian Morton,’ Jake said.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Dave Harte and I interviewed Morton, about him and his workers taking backhanders from Philpott for hiding the second body here.’ Jake waved vaguely towards the entrance.

  ‘So he should be in the system then?’


  Jake nodded. ‘Whatever the case, it gives you a head start.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Philpott knows him. Lord Fulborough knows him and Ian has a girlfriend.’

  ‘We’d better get onto it then,’ Randall said, as he moved towards the tent entrance.

  ‘Why would he be left here?’ Kirsty quizzed. ‘It’s as if someone wants to tell us something. The body is almost in the same place as the one we found twelve months ago.’

  ‘Does that concern you?’ Randall asked.

  Kirsty took a deep breath before she answered. ‘No. Why should it?’

  ‘No reason,’ Randall said nonchalantly. ‘What about time of death?’

  ‘Looking at the body and rigour, I can’t be precise – within the last thirty-six hours, I’d say. I’ll know more when I’ve done the PM.’

  Randall said nothing.

  ‘I can’t see any cause of death externally,’ she added, ‘no marks on his neck or hands, nothing under the nails, as far as I can see. Nothing on the body, so I’ll get him to the morgue and see what we can find.’

  ‘Thank you, doctor. Can we move him?’

  She nodded. Randall turned and retired from the tent. Kirsty heard him giving instructions. She stood then took one last look at the body before leaving the tent herself.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Jake asked her.

  ‘Yes, but would you take me home, please?’

  He nodded. As they walked back towards their car, Kirsty told Randall that she’d do the PM, first thing in the morning. Jake thought he seemed rattled by that, but the last thing she was going to do was jump when he wanted her to.

  32

  Jake had been informed that Freeman was putting together an enquiry team and to get himself over to the briefing room. The latest find at Fulborough Wood appeared in some way to be linked with his collection of road deaths and that Burnett and the ACC wanted Freeman to start a full enquiry.

  A team of traffic officers and detectives gathered in the briefing room to discuss this new information that had come to light.

  As Jake entered the room, Randall acknowledged him and noted the obvious demarcation between traffic and CID. The detectives were sitting on the left of the room close to the windows. The sun shone brightly making that part of the room warm with the haze of dust swirling about slowly. All the traffic officers sat on the right of the room. Jake went and sat down with his colleagues, next to Kirsty who was engrossed with her phone. She looked up as he sat down and smiled at Jake.

  Randall began the briefing and after the preliminaries introductions, said, ‘For those of you who have just joined the investigation, I’ll give you a brief run-down as to where we are. As of yesterday, this enquiry has been given a high priority status. It appears that someone out there is determined to drug and kill people, which seems random. Dr Kingsfield has just confirmed that the blood toxicology of the victim, Ian Morton, is the same as those deaths in which Sergeant Jordan is investigating. He and his team from roads policing initiated this enquiry, following a number of fatal collisions, the toxicology of which showed some unusual results. And, before anyone asks, all the collisions are unrelated, as far as we can see. Six or seven collisions have been identified.’ He turned to Jake to confirm the number, who nodded in agreement. ‘These collisions took place in various parts of the county, but the latest one involved the multiple collision on the motorway a few days ago. I’ll hand you over to Sergeant Jordan to continue.’

  Jake stood and joined Randall at the front. ‘From what we can make out so far, these collisions all involve women of a certain age and a particular appearance. The ages are between twenty-five, the youngest, and the oldest, thirty-six. All the women had dark brown hair, cut in a bobbed style.’

  DC Fred Martin raised his hand.

  ‘Yes, Fred?’ said Randall, acknowledging his detective.

  ‘Boss, if you say that all the women were of a particular type, do we know whether they were single or married?’

  ‘Both,’ replied Jake quickly.

  ‘No pattern there then.’

  ‘Nothing we can see at present.’ Jake went on. ‘What we do know is that CCTV has confirmed that all the victims were seen in clubs and pubs in the town centre the night before their deaths.’ Jake was acutely aware, as he spoke, that Chris Prentice was squirming a bit in his seat. Jake continued his briefing, knowing how some of the information may be embarrassing to Prentice, but it had to be said nonetheless.

  Kirsty stepped up to talk about the toxicology angle which didn’t take too long. Jake could see that she was uncomfortable talking to the group, even though most of the detectives knew her.

  As Kirsty sat down, Sergeant Stevens spoke up. Jake looked at him, expecting some sort of quip, but he simply asked, in a matter of fact way, that took Jake by surprise, ‘If they’ve been seen on CCTV in the town, have they looked to see if they were with anybody or has the same face popped up in the vicinity of our victims?’

  ‘We’re still on that, Sergeant,’ Randall responded. ‘The forensic computing team are looking through hours of footage. Hopefully something will come out of it.’

  Stevens nodded. Jake, in the meantime, had put photos of all the victims up on the big TV screen at the front of the briefing room.

  ‘All these victims,’ he said, pointing to each of them individually, ‘have families of some sort or another. The most distressing of these collisions also involved the son of the last victim, who lost his life in the minibus being driven by his mother, so the family are doubly traumatised. We’ve allocated FLOs to these families.’

  ‘Have we checked their mobile phones?’ Fred called out. ‘Bound to have taken a selfie or some other snaps of their boozy night out surely?’

  ‘I’m glad you brought that up, Fred. The answer to that is yes, particularly for the last victim.’

  A picture appeared on the screen showing two women, apparently the worse for wear, who had taken a selfie somewhere out in the street. They could see one of those horrible coloured doors behind the pair leading to a nightclub.

  As the picture was displayed, the colour in Chris Prentice’s face drained and he sat low in his seat. This reaction was not lost on Jake or Randall. Randall looked at Jake – neither spoke but both had an idea of what Prentice was thinking.

  ‘So, if anyone recognises the blonde in the photo, they had better come and see us.’ They both looked at Prentice.

  ‘But if all of your victims have so far been women,’ Stevens asked, ‘how come we have a dead male?’

  ‘That we can only surmise,’ Randall said, ‘it’s possible that he may have been an experiment – in the similar vein as young Prentice here.’

  A chuckle went around the room. Prentice simply sat with his head bowed. ‘Or,’ Randall said as the room came to order again, ‘he may have got in the way of our murderer and until we find out who it is, I hope there will not be any more.’

  ‘There are a few leads on that,’ Jake said, ‘which we’ll let you have now.’

  After distributing tasks, the briefing ended and everyone left, except Chris Prentice.

  ‘I thought you might stay behind, Chris,’ Jake said.

  Prentice nodded. ‘I think you know what I’m going to say.’

  Jake gave him an encouraging look for him to continue. After a short pause, Prentice said, ‘I think the blonde in the photo was the woman who – you know…’

  ‘I thought as much,’ Jake said. ‘Would you recognise her in the club again?’

  ‘Of course – I’d hope she’d recognise me as well!’

  ‘Not unless you were naked,’ smirked Randall.

  ‘Yeah, right, thanks for that, boss,’

  ‘At least we have a lead,’ Jake said.

  ‘A slim one,’ Randall added.

  ‘So, how are we going to capitalise on th
is information, Inspector?’

  ‘Any ideas, Prentice?’ Randall asked, turning to him.

  Prentice shook his head.

  ‘No,’ said Jake slightly more animated, ‘but I have. An idea which might draw our killer out in the open.’

  ‘How?’ Prentice and Randall asked in unison.

  ‘I recently gave evidence at a disciplinary tribunal… ’

  ‘You’re not going to suggest, Parker,’ Kirsty pitched in, finally drawing herself away from the picture on the screen.

  ‘Got it in one!’ Jake said smiling.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘She wants to prove herself.’

  ‘She won’t be proving much, if she ends up dead!’ Kirsty retorted.

  Jake looked at Kirsty for a second or two, trying to work out what to say next, but was interrupted by Randall, before he could say anything.

  ‘She wouldn’t have to do it, if she didn’t want to.’

  ‘No, but I’m going to go with her,’ Prentice said.

  ‘How’s that going to work then, if she only targets lone females?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Prentice, ‘she doesn’t. She waits for people to approach her. That was my downfall – long legs and a short skirt, sitting alone at the bar.’

  ‘Not that you remember anything of it,’ smiled Jake.

  ‘I don’t remember the getting handcuffed bit, I’ll agree.’

  A silence descended in the room while they contemplated their next move.

  ‘Well,’ Randall said, breaking the silence, ‘it seems that this is all we’ve got, so let’s run with it.’ As he stood to leave the briefing room, he turned to Jake. ‘Go talk to Parker, Sergeant,’ he said, as he disappeared out of the briefing room.

  Jake watched the big black iron gates swing open, as he waited to drive into the rear yard at Daventry police station. It was a modern, square, red-bricked building of three storeys, built in the 1960s. Jake remembered seeing an old photograph of the place taken in 1965 and it looked fairly new then.

  The yard was small, barely large enough to park eight or ten patrol cars of various sizes at any one time. Fortunately for him, most of the patrols were out, so he found no difficulty in parking his BMW estate.