by Adam Croft
‘Mmmm. Maybe. Only one problem with that.’
Caroline looked at him, waiting for his explanation.
‘It’s not technically a church. Hasn’t been for decades. It was deconsecrated years back.’
‘Deconsecrated?’
‘Long story. I’ll fill you in on the details when we get back to the office.’
Caroline smiled. ‘Quite the fount of local knowledge, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, sometimes. Not exactly the busiest job, being a detective in Rutland, so I like to familiarise myself with the area and its history, yeah.’
‘Good. Well, hopefully that’ll come in useful. We’ll need to look more into the history of this place. Doesn’t look to me as if it’s been picked at random. Do we have ID on him yet?’
‘Not at the moment. Waiting on the SOCOs before we start going through pockets. Don’t much fancy chancing those rocks, either. Uniform leant over to check for a pulse, and even she nearly lost her footing a couple of times.’
‘Who found the body?’
‘Two old boys over there,’ Dexter said, nodding his head in the direction of a bench near the main footpath. ‘They were out on a boat. Must’ve been a shock.’
Caroline looked down at the body on the rocks and thought about the family who were about to find out they’d just lost a loved one. ‘Yes. Yes, I imagine it was.’
4
With the area secured and handed over to the scenes of crime and forensics officers, Caroline and Dexter took Bob and Geoff along the path to the main car park by the fishing lodge. They sat down at a table in the glass-fronted Waterside Cafe, overlooking the water.
‘DS Antoine is going to take some notes, as well as recording this on his phone. Is that okay with you both?’ Caroline asked.
Bob and Geoff nodded, neither of them having said a word since she’d suggested they sit down somewhere warm to chat.
On any other day, their position would’ve given them a superb view of the fishing boats going out, one every few seconds, as the vast expanse of Rutland Water opened up in front of them. Now, though, there was nothing. The boats remained moored up against the jetty, the water off limits for the foreseeable future.
‘Can you talk me through what happened this morning, please?’ Caroline asked, directing her question at Bob. ‘From the beginning.’
‘Well, we arrived here just before eight. That’s when it opens, see. We like to try and get a full day of it if we can. Not much else doing. Geoff picks me up about half seven and we come straight here.’
‘Did you come by car?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where did you park?’
‘Right outside here, in the car park we just walked through.’
‘So you didn’t get a view of the church until you were out on the water?’
‘No, love. Not really. In any case, you’re hardly on the look out for dead bodies, are you? See the odd fish that’s carked it, if the birds haven’t already had it. That’s about it. Never a human.’
This struck Caroline as an odd way to describe the situation, but she let it fly. ‘So whereabouts were you when you first saw the body?’
‘Well, when we first saw it were a body, we was pretty much on top of it. But Geoff spotted there were something there.’
‘Where were you?’ Caroline asked again.
‘Out on the water.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Well, I dunno. Not many signposts out there, you know what I mean?’
Geoff cut in. ‘Probably about a third of the way to the Hambleton peninsula. In line with the fishing lodge, I’d say. We hadn’t headed in either direction at that point.’
‘So that’s, what, about three or four hundred metres from the church?’
Geoff shrugged. ‘If you say so. Close enough to see something out the ordinary, but far enough away not to know what it was.’
Caroline felt like she was spinning round in circles. ‘And you say you only realised it was a body when you were quite close?’
‘Yeah. Close as we could get without worrying about beaching it, anyway. Don’t tend to bother wearing our glasses out on the water, see. Not really a whole lot of point. Not unless we’re bird watching.’
‘And you didn’t recognise the person?’
‘Not from the back of his head, no.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I phoned you lot. Bob steered us over to the bank by the main footpath, ‘cos we didn’t know how shallow the rocks got. Figured we had to moor up quick, and soil seemed a better bet than rocks.’
‘Tenner says they charge us for that at the lodge,’ Bob said, interjecting. ‘Not meant to do that, you’re not.’
Caroline forced a smile. ‘I think they’ve probably got bigger things to worry about at the moment. Did either of you see anyone else by the church, or on that area of the water? Either before or after?’
The pair shook their heads. ‘No, no-one,’ Bob said. ‘We was the first ones out on the water. We like to be, see. Didn’t see no-one else over that way. Occasionally see the odd dog walker or jogger on the footpath, but very quiet this morning. Probably the mist. Don’t get many people out until that clears, usually.’
It struck Caroline that there wasn’t a whole lot she was going to get out of Bob and Geoff. She gave Dexter a knowing look, took their contact details and thanked them for their time.
As they stood to leave, a man — who Caroline estimated was in his mid to late sixties and who was wearing a knitted jumper with a bizarre frog pattern — approached them with a polystyrene mug of tea in his hand.
‘Terrible business, that. You’re the police, I presume?’
‘We are, yes,’ Dexter said. ‘And you are?’
‘Oh, sorry,’ the man replied, shuffling the tea into his left hand and extending his right. ‘Howard Smallwood. I’ve lived round here all my life and I’ve never seen anything like this before. Makes you wonder what the world’s coming to, doesn’t it?’
‘Indeed,’ Caroline said, smiling and starting to walk away.
‘If you need anything, by the way, I might be able to help. I’m the president of the local history society. I know all the little nooks and crannies, not to mention most of the people round here. If I can help you join any dots, just give me a shout!’
The man handed each of them a cheap business card with his details on. Caroline gave another smile, inwardly pleased that even in the midst of a violent murder, Rutland still had its eccentric characters to offer.
The air was already warming by the time she and Dexter stepped back outside and into the car park. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day. For one family, though, things were about to get a whole lot darker.
5
Caroline was thankful she’d managed to get this far without any serious pressure to hand the case over to EMSOU, the East Midlands Special Operations Unit. She knew that time would come, so for now her priority was to get her investigation up and running as quickly and smoothly as possible. She was determined to show she was up to the task, and that her tiny CID unit was capable of handling more than the odd case of fraud or burglary.
There was one thing she couldn’t change, though. Resources. Rutland had by far the smallest police force in the country, by virtue of being the smallest ceremonial county and it enjoyed an historically low crime rate. Even with their tiny numbers, they were rarely swamped with work. It was usual for a murder investigation to consist of dozens of specially trained officers at EMSOU. So when such an event came along in Rutland, it was extraordinarily rare for it to be dealt with ‘in house’. That made Caroline even more determined to prove her worth.
Although she was a Detective Inspector, her day-to-day duties tended to cross over quite substantially with uniform. It was an odd setup, but one she’d come to respect and enjoy in her short time in the job. There was something safe in the mundanity of ensuring resources were deployed properly, setting and assessing key performance indicators or ident
ifying and managing local threats. But she couldn’t deny it lacked the excitement and exhilaration of a murder case. And this would be her first since leaving the Met.
She’d always intended to take full control when — if — that first murder case crossed her desk. Although convention dictated handing it over to EMSOU, it was far from a written rule. It was more a recommendation for reasons of expediency, and because it was deemed impossible for her small team to deal with something that big. Caroline, though, knew that the size of a team rarely mattered. From her experience in the Met, bloated teams often moved more slowly. There was a certain diligence in smaller units — a sense of deep personal responsibility. Besides which, the decisive breakthrough in any case tended to come from a discovery made by one sharp-eyed officer, and was not usually dictated by the size of the team.
They’d all be working long hours. Annual leave would be a distant memory. But Caroline was determined to lead from the front. She needed to — even if the thought gave her a flicker of doubt and a twinge of nausea.
With her team assembled in front of her, she opened the first of her morning briefings on Operation Forelock — the name that had been chosen by the Police National Computer from a pre-approved list of ‘neutral’ words. She watched the officers as she reeled off the familiar pre-amble — familiar to her, at least — and noticed an atmosphere of keen anxiety that seemed to be shared by everyone. They recognised the magnitude of the situation and were keen to do all they could to manage it to the best of their abilities. Caroline knew major cases were what tended to show either the strength in a team or expose its cracks, and she hoped Operation Forelock would provide her with the former rather than the latter.
‘First things first, I believe we have an identity on the victim. DS Antoine?’
‘That’s right. His name’s Roger Clifton, sixty years old. He’s a local businessman. Lived in Rutland all his life. He’s been on and off the local council for years.’
‘He’s well-known locally, then?’ Caroline asked.
‘Enough for one of the forensics boys to have recognised him as soon as he turned up to the scene.’
Caroline smiled inwardly. How very Rutland, she thought. ‘So what’s the situation? Is he popular?’
Dexter shuffled awkwardly. ‘Like I say, he’s been on and off the council for years.’
A ripple of laughter rumbled around the room.
‘Alright, I think I get it,’ Caroline said. ‘What line of business is he in?’
‘Construction,’ Dexter replied, the hint of a smile on his face.
‘Ah. I think I see the connection here. Would I be right in presuming there’s a correlation between his spells on the council and his involvement in local construction projects?’
‘Not for me to say, boss. Got to be worth looking into, though.’
‘I’d say so. We’ll need to speak to his colleagues, too. Let’s have a look into the setup of his company, see what’s going on there. We might struggle today with it being a Sunday, but let’s see what we can do. What else is there?’
‘The company’s based in Burley. Arthur Clifton Construction, it’s called.’
‘Arthur?’
‘His grandad, according to the company’s website. He was the original owner, and it’s since been passed down to Roger.’
‘If Roger’s sixty, Arthur must be long gone by now. There’s a good chance his dad, Arthur’s son, will be too. Any living family that we know of?’
‘His wife and daughter live in Empingham. On paper, so does he, but what we’re hearing is they’re not exactly a conventional couple. He “works away a lot”, apparently.’
‘Lovely. Nice and simple from the outset, then.’
‘I’ll put a few feelers out, see if we can get to the bottom of what’s going on there,’ Sara Henshaw said. Sara was a young DC who’d initially made her mark as the community liaison officer for Oakham. She’d lived in the town her whole life, and her innovative and engaging use of the Oakham Community Policing Team’s social media account had drawn plaudits both locally and beyond. Caroline knew Sara would be key to getting under the fabric of what had led to Roger Clifton’s death.
‘Actually, Sara, can you put out a call for witnesses? Social media, local radio, the lot. There’s no way we’ve got the staff numbers for door-to-door just yet, so we need to get whatever we can.’
Sara nodded and wrote something down on her notepad. ‘To be honest, no-one lives round Normanton anyway, so door-to-door enquiries wouldn’t be much use. I’ll speak to the staff at the Normanton Park Hotel — that’s just next door. Other than that, by the time you see a residential property you’re in Edith Weston.’
‘Alright. See if there’s any registered CCTV in the area, too. The hotel’s probably a good bet. Try the fishing lodge as well, and any other business premises round there. If that doesn’t bring anything up, look at residential. Might be worth a wander down the main road in Edith Weston. Might be someone who’s got a camera pointing at the street and recording in higher resolution than a postage stamp. Unlikely, but worth a shot.’
‘Boss, I think we’ve probably got to assume it was dark when the body was put there,’ Dexter said. ‘It’s wide open down there. The church can be seen from the North Shore pretty easily. If you’ve got a pair of binoculars, you can even get a clear view from Egleton. And then there’s pretty much the entire of the Hambleton peninsula.’
Rutland Water was more than three thousand acres in size and shaped like a horseshoe, the village of Upper Hambleton standing proudly on the peninsula, accessible only from the west, along a service road which met the A606 on the outskirts of Oakham. Although the tip of the Hambleton peninsula was barely five hundred metres from Normanton Church, getting there via dry land meant an almost eleven-mile, twenty-minute drive back along the peninsula and around the outside of Rutland Water.
‘If it was dark,’ Dexter continued, ‘someone in the know could drive pretty much right up to the church. It’s pitch black down there at night.’
‘If that’s the case, we’re looking at someone involved with the church or the upkeep of the area, because I’m told the gates are locked up at night.’
‘Is it possible the body wasn’t dumped there, but was washed up from elsewhere? It could’ve been put in the water at a far more remote spot,’ Sara Henshaw said.
Caroline shook her head. ‘No chance. I saw the body. It was too fresh. It would’ve sunk before it reached Normanton, and only floated later. And from the way it was laid out on the rocks, I just can’t see it. It was almost perfectly arranged. Not to mention bone dry. Tell me it’s a coincidence that a body just happened to be left on the rocks outside the church on a Sunday morning, in full crucifixion pose, facing the altar.’
Much to Caroline’s expectation, no-one challenged that point.
‘So,’ she said, changing the subject, ‘we need to see who we can speak to. Find out who his fellow councillors are. See if there were any disagreements on that front, who his enemies were, who would’ve wanted him dead. Get onto his phone records. Aidan, can you get phone triangulation on his last known movements, please? We need to find out where he went and how he got there. Let’s get a list of those colleagues at the construction company, too.’ Aidan Chilcott was quiet, but diligent. Ever since she’d arrived in Rutland, Caroline had strongly suspected Aidan had a thing for Sara, but that was something everyone else seemed completely oblivious to.
‘Sara, find out the wife’s plans,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to speak to her, too.’
‘Alright,’ Dexter said. ‘We’ll get right onto it.’
‘No you won’t,’ Caroline replied, picking up her notebook. ‘You’re coming with me.’
6
Caroline led Dexter through to her office — in reality, a poorly-partitioned corner of the room, whose door rattled every time anyone walked past or opened the main CID suite door — and sat down at her desk.
‘Something the matter?’ he asked he
r, confused by her brusque tone at the end of the morning briefing.
‘No, why?’
‘Just wondered. You wanted to see me?’
‘Yes, take a seat. You’re making the place look untidy. I wanted to find out a bit more about the local area. You mentioned it was a bit of a hobby of yours, local history and whatnot.’
‘Got a bit of a passion brewing for local history, boss?’ Dexter said, smiling.
‘Not in the slightest,’ Caroline said, laughing. ‘But there could be a link with our man, and I want all angles covered. You said the church had been deconsecrated?’
‘Yeah. Early seventies, I think.’
‘I see. Tell me more.’
‘Well, you know about how Rutland Water was formed, right?’
She’d heard one or two people mention it in the time she’d lived in the area, but the details had been lost on her.
‘I think so. Remind me.’
‘Well, up until the early seventies, it wasn’t there. It was a valley with a few villages and hamlets in it. Then the water company came along and said they wanted to dam it and fill it up to create a new reservoir. There was a massive hoo-hah at the time, but it all went ahead. A lot of people lost their homes. To this day there are still two villages under Rutland Water. The Hambletons.’
‘Isn’t that on the peninsula?’
‘Upper Hambleton is. Most people just call it Hambleton now because it’s the only one left. Nether Hambleton and most of Middle Hambleton are under the water.’
‘And what’s that got to do with Normanton Church?’
‘Ah, see that was meant to go as well. They cleared the valley for the reservoir, and the church was on the list. It was deconsecrated and marked for demolition, but there was a public outcry and they managed to save it. Only problem was, when the water was at its highest, it’d be halfway up the church walls and it’d be pretty much constantly flooded, so the rock barrier was built around it to keep the water away. They even filled the lower half of the church with concrete and made a new, higher floor. If you go in there now, it’s weird. The windows are all really low and the ceiling’s nowhere near the height of a normal church. From the outside it looks like it’s sunk or is floating on the water, and when you’re inside it’s like being in Lilliput.’