Raj nodded.
‘I guess although we should never assume, we can perhaps presume in this case that the others are from clients at Brelland Dental Practice?’ said Vicky.
‘He told the investigating officers at the time that they were at his home for research purposes but wouldn’t go on to explain what. It’s surely not credible that he’d display the objects as an ornamental piece, is it?’ said Raj.
‘Who knows. Can we house him?’ said Dylan.
‘His address on the file is 15 Rock Villas and I’ve checked the up to date Electoral List and it shows one occupant, which is a Timothy Woodcock,’ said Raj.
‘That’s one of those big houses near The Moor isn’t it, overlooking the valley towards the hillside of Norland?’ said Vicky.
‘That’s perfectly central to our murders,’ said Dylan thoughtfully. ‘Get your coats on we’ll have a quick look around the area and knock on the door.’
***
Dylan parked on the opposite side of the road to Rock Villas. The three officers got out of the car. He crossed the wide flagged pavement and stepped over the small wall that he had done so many times as a small boy having being brought up in the area. Standing on the unkempt patch of grass he surveyed the steep drop over huge, craggy rocks. The spot offered a glorious view. Directly ahead and to his right was a well-worn, unlit footpath that he knew continued down through the wood that was full of bluebells in spring, because he had picked them year after year with his granddad. This path led out onto the main Waterford Road, which led to the cycle path of the canal. As a kid he’d hurtled down that path, as fast as he could on his bike more times than he cared to remember. The journeys resulting in many a scraped knee. The exposed tree roots had proven no fear for him as a young lad. ‘JB Priestley, on his travels for English Journey declared this terrain, “the hilliest of any town of its size in England,”’ he said. Dylan’s voice was momentarily lost in the wind. He continued for a moment or two to silently consider the view and the ladies chattered. The main road directly to the left also dropped down to the valley and eventually to the canal. Buildings, factories and rows of houses seemed to strike out among trees at all angles in the craggy hillside below. He turned around and looked back at the large houses with windows that looked over the scene and seeing the properties, and taking into account the location.
When there was no answer to their knocking and it was obvious that no one at home. Dylan turned to Raj. ‘So, plan of action; get hold of Sergeant Clegg. We need the operational support team to do a house-to-house around the area. If they have no joy I want them to create a questionnaire asking the occupants if they knew any of the deceased. If they use the cycle path or the canal, I want to know. And, is there anything that you haven’t been asked about which you think may assist the police... we can’t presume people will tell us. We need to locate Timothy Woodcock and speak to him.’
‘I’ll get someone in the incident room onto that now,’ said Raj.
‘Get them to do a quick draft. I want to see it before they print hundreds.’
Raj nodded in the affirmative.
They drove back to the police station via the road which ran adjacent to the canal. ‘Is there any local fishing done around here?’ he said.
‘You’re thinking about the garrotte aren’t you?’ said Vicky.
‘Yes. Have we got someone looking at where fishing line can be sourced around here?’
‘We have,’ said Raj. ‘It appears that particular type appears to be rather antiquarian now.’
***
Every day Dylan awoke he was relieved to know that there had not been another murder. But, he was more than aware that if the killer wasn’t caught it was only a matter of time before he struck again and that made him anxious.
Forty-eight hours after Dylan had visited Rock Villas, the Operational Support Unit were knocking on the doors of the homes situated in the vicinity of Rock Villas. A team of ten were doing the footwork, speaking to people and completing pro forma. Each day the information was fed into the system; the HOLMES team having created a separate category for this house-to-house information seek. A member of the team had called at 15 Rock Villas each day but no one had answered their knocks. They confirmed with neighbours that the occupant was a man they knew to be Timothy Woodcock.
Woodcock’s neighbour, at number seventeen, told us that since his wife had left him the retired dentist has been ill. He was taken into hospital about two months ago with a bad foot, diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and ended up having his leg amputated below the knee,’ said PS Clegg. ‘Since then he’s been looked after in a nursing home.’
‘Anyone else live at the property?’ said Dylan.
‘Not according to the neighbours or the Burgess Roll, sir,’ said Simon Clegg
‘And do we know where his wife lives?’
‘Ex-wife, she lives in Lytham St Annes with her daughter and son-in-law. The Woodcocks also have an adopted younger son but he hasn’t lived at home since he went away to university.’
‘The neighbours know a lot about the family?’
Sergeant Clegg chuckled. ‘Yeah, and so it seems they’ve also now given Mr Woodcock a watertight alibi for the murders,’ he said. ‘They also supplied us with contact details for his next of kin.’
Vicky walked hurriedly into Dylan’s office. Her rush took Dylan and Simon by surprise.
‘I’ve been checking the system and there’s a recent report of a burglary at Woodcock’s address, sir,’ said Vicky.
‘Really,’ said Dylan. ‘But there has been no one living there...’
Chapter Seventeen
From his office Dylan witnessed many comings and goings. DCs Andy Wormald and Ned Granger were about to leave the incident room for Lytham St Annes. Their Action brief by Dylan was to visit Mrs Edna Woodcock and find out more about the Woodcock family. Dylan needed to clear the ground beneath his feet before he moved on. It was possible to get local officers to do an enquiry out of the force area. But he wanted his officers to go and see Timothy Woodcock’s ex-wife and daughter in person as they would have more idea of what information was relevant to the case.
‘Be thorough. Find out what you can and Ned don’t let me catch you sending pictures to the team of you eating ice cream on the beach, wearing Kiss Me Quick hats or riding the Big Dipper, do you hear me?’ said Dylan with a beady glare.
Ned lowered his head and turned to go. ‘As if,’ he said, to Vicky under his breath.
‘As if what?’ Dylan said loudly in a growl of a voice. Ned stopped in his tracks.
‘As if, sir,’ he said turning on his heels and saluting Dylan.
Dylan couldn’t help but raise a smile.
‘You missed riding a donkey sir?’ said Vicky.
‘He wouldn’t dare?’ said Dylan.
Vicky raised her brows. ‘You think not?’ she said.
There was always a feeling of great satisfaction for Dylan when he could update his policy log with ‘an elimination criteria’ for possible suspects. If it could be proven that on one of the dates, for any one of the murders, a suspect could be accurately placed elsewhere, Dylan knew he could rule them out of the enquiry. Albeit the team would still need to obtain a reliable alibi or get some evidence and have it verified.
‘The younger adopted son?’ Vicky said.
Dylan’s eye brows knitted together. ‘Whose son?’
‘The Woodcocks’ son – Jim?’
Dylan lifted his head. ‘Yes?’
‘I’ve contacted him and he’s going to call in to see me.’
‘Good.’
She slipped into a seat opposite Dylan. ‘When I was an aide, I once went with a detective to Hull on an enquiry and he called in at the docks on the way home to bring back some fresh fish to sell to his mates in the pub. Trouble was he left his share in the boot of the CID car and it was locked in the garage. We didn’t half get a bollocking off the boss,’ Vicky said.
‘They used to take orders bef
ore they set off on an out of force enquiry in my younger days. If you went to Northampton it was shoes, Scotland was haggis but don’t tell Ned that,’ Dylan said winking at her.
***
Edna Woodcock’s home was an interesting place and disappointingly for Ned away from the hullabaloo of the seaside town. The two detectives paused at the gateway and looked up the driveway at the grand old building. A uniformed police car was parked outside the big old green, glossy, painted door with its brass ornaments; several bicycles, one with a basket upfront were parked under a bike shelter. Ned walked ahead of Andy, up the big steps, in-between the large stone pillars; he rang the doorbell. It was answered by a tall, well-built young woman in medical scrubs with a face mask still hanging about her neck. On seeing their warrant cards the detectives were invited into the hall and asked to wait. The woman’s bare feet made no noise on the rich wool carpet as she vanished swiftly through one of the large wooden doors that led off the vestibule. Ned and Andy were silent as they looked first at each other and then about them.
The house was pristine. Rays of sunshine filtered through the stained glass window and fell on the table filled with vases of flowers in the centre of the room.
A few moments later a uniformed officer beckoned them into the lounge.
‘We’re just in the middle of taking a statement from Mrs Gillard. It appears Mrs Woodcock is suffering from dementia. We’ve been here an hour,’ he said. He tossed his head in the direction of another officer who was busily taking notes. ‘She says she’s been burgled.’
‘Has she?’ said Andy.
‘When we arrived she showed us a safe full of expensive jewellery, diamonds, rubies, gold, silver, the lot. She insisted the robbers had taken away the real stuff and left her with fakes and she wanted us to take it away. We had to contact her daughter at work.’
Edna Woodcock was sitting on a chair by the big bay window. She had a white, translucent complexion and a little red beak of a nose. Her green eyes were very bright but vacant. She got up to greet her newly arrived visitors, whom she seemed delighted to see, but the young woman who had opened the door to them, gently coaxed her back to her seat to continue her conversation with the police officer.
Once she had settled her, Mrs Woodcock’s daughter joined them. ‘I’m sorry, I’m Ginny Gillard, Mrs Woodcock’s daughter. I must have appeared very rude,’ she said to the detectives. ‘As you can see... well.... What can I do for you?’
DC Wormald explained that they had come from West Yorkshire to speak to Mrs Woodcock about her ex-husband.
‘Dad? You have?’ said Ginny.
‘Yes, we arranged it with her yesterday but I can see you have other pressing matters. Is it okay if we come back later in the day?’
‘I’m sorry. I fear you have had a wasted journey. Mum is getting progressively worse. We really are going to have to do something about this,’ she said. She looked irritated and then apologetic. ‘She loves all the attention you see. She gets lonely when Devlin and I are out at work and so she would have been highly delighted if you rang to say you wanted to come and see her. Then she forgets...’
Mrs Woodcock was left alone, fiddling with the buttons of her cardigan as the woman police officer who had been speaking to her joined them. ‘The safe is now locked Mrs Gillard,’ she said. ‘If you could just check nothing is missing when you’ve a minute.’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Ginny said.
‘We’ll see ourselves out,’ the officer said.
The uniformed officers nodded in the detectives’ direction and left them alone.
‘Please take a seat and I’ll go and make us all a drink. It’s the least I can do for your trouble,’ Ginny said to Andy and Ned.
They sat side by side on the sofa facing Mrs Woodcock. She smiled sweetly, happily humming to herself. She proceeded to wet the corner of her handkerchief with spittle to polish the chrome on the handle of her chair.
‘My daddy was a dentist you know,’ she said.
‘Was he?’ said Andy.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What did your daddy do?’
‘My dad was a fisherman,’ said Andy.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she replied, excitedly. ‘My daddy loved fishing too, how jolly,’ she said. ‘Maybe they fished together?’
‘Maybe,’ said Andy.
Andy looked at Ned and he shrugged his shoulders. All was quiet except for the clinking of utensils on china that they assumed came from the kitchen. The grandfather clock struck the hour and Edna Woodcock counted the chimes.
‘Mum, what on earth are you doing?’ Ginny scolded Edna the moment she reappeared. She put the tray laden with china cups and saucers on the coffee table and whipped the stained, lace handkerchief from her mother’s hand, replacing it swiftly with a cup and saucer. She offered her mother a biscuit and she took it.
‘Now be careful. It’s hot,’ she said. Mrs Woodcock flinched at the raising of Ginny’s voice.
Tears welled up in Edna Woodcocks eyes, then she looked up at her daughter sideways and smiled sheepishly as she dunked her rich tea biscuit. Ginny Gillard sighed heavily ‘What am I going to do with you?’ she said, putting a comforting hand on her mother’s arm before turning to Andy and Ned. She sat down. ‘Now, where were we?’ she said brusquely.
***
It was dusk. Jack Dylan stood at the office window looking out into the empty backyard. He watched the light fade, and the world go grey. Revelations that fingerprints were recovered in the back of the taxi by Forensic had caused a stir – now they could check them with anyone who had a criminal record. The sky was clear, the night warm. He opened the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. Headlights of a car came through the big metal gates at speed and glided into the parking space beneath his window. The driver turned off the engine and alighted, as did his passenger. Dylan went to make three cups of coffee.
***
Dylan sat and listened and as he did so he made notes.
‘Ginny, the daughter told us that they didn’t have a lot to do with her dad. She seemed bitter. He had promised her a partnership in his practice after she qualified,’ said Andy. ‘That didn’t materialise.’
‘His daughter’s a dentist?’ said Dylan. His eyes widened.
‘And so is her husband. They both felt the need to move out of the area to practice. Mrs Edna Woodcock, she’s been diagnosed with dementia. Her daughter tells us she has good days and bad. She can remember things from years ago but not what she did yesterday,’ said Andy. ‘She was telling me her dad was a dentist and he loved fishing but apart from that offered us little in the way of help.’
‘Seemingly they went over to the family house at 15 Rock Villas very recently, after Mr Woodcock was taken into hospital and she was insistent that her husband had got rid of some of her things that had been given to him by her father,’ said Ned.
‘Then again she had reported her jewellery stolen this morning so...’ said Andy.
‘And was it?’ said Dylan.
‘Was it what?’ asked Ned.
‘Stolen?’
‘No.’
‘Vicky said there had been a report of theft from Mr Woodcock’s address,’ said Dylan.
‘If it was from Mrs Woodcock you might want to take it with a pinch of salt,’ said Ned.
Dylan twiddled his pen through his fingers. ‘We need to find out who called it in. I’m sure Vicky said a man’s name but maybe it was her son-in-law. She was going to follow it up and get a list of things that were thought to be missing,’ he said.
‘Anything happening here we should know about?’ said Andy.
‘Forensic have lifted some fingerprints from the back seat area of the taxi cab and we’ve had some people ring in to say they had been in his cab on the night he died. They’ve all volunteered their fingerprints for elimination purposes but if the killer had targeted Bell, as we believe he did, I don’t think he would be careless enough to leave his fingerprints, do you?’
‘I guess it�
�s best not to leave anything to chance though,’ said Andy.
‘Exactly, that’s why we aren’t,’ said Dylan. ‘Believe it or not the camera in Alan Bell’s taxi hadn’t been switched on that night for whatever reason, so we’ve no recording. It’s disappointing. What a bloody opportunity to nail our killer? However, we do have a recording of a person passing the doctor’s surgery at the end of the road at a fast pace the night he was killed. The quality isn’t magnificent and it’s dark, but the team have secured a working copy of the tape.’
‘Are you having the imaged enhanced?’ said Ned.
‘I don’t know whether it’s worth it to be completely honest. I’m awaiting advice from the force photographic department. If they can’t help they might be able to recommend a company who can. But we have to consider the cost implication. Truth is, if you blink you’d miss it.’
‘Do you think the person knew the camera was there?’
‘I don’t know. We’ve played it over and over. The person’s hood is up so we can only see his face from his nose and below. Could be anyone if I’m honest.’
***
Dylan walked into the front office. It was half past nine and the night shift were starting to arrive for duty.
A middle-aged man stood at the desk, in front of the Desk Sergeant.
‘A nice wood trunk came into the charity shop where my wife volunteers today,’ he said. ‘When I looked inside it’s full of dynamite. It looks old,’ he said.
‘Where is it now?’ said the Sergeant.
‘It’s in the boot of my car.’
‘Okay, and where’s your car,’ he said looking slightly unnerved at Dylan.
‘Just outside there,’ he said pointing to the door of the police station.
***
It was one thirty a.m. when Dylan arrived home.
‘What on earth did you do?’ said Jen on hearing his news.
‘Evacuated the station. You would have laughed though he’d only parked next to Hugo-Watkins’ new Rover.’
Killer Smile Page 18