[Kitt Hartley 04] - Death Awaits in Durham

by Helen Cox

  ‘Oh, hang on. This is it,’ Kitt said, looking around and then checking her surroundings against a hand-drawn map she’d asked Patrick to sketch for them. ‘According to Patrick, this is the spot the police tracked Jodie to. It makes sense, look: the weir is a little further downstream from here. That’s where her phone was found. Now, what story played out here the night Jodie disappeared?’

  Five

  The pair spent the next few minutes not speaking but searching. Kitt circled a couple of nearby trees, looking at the ground and beating back overgrown bushes. Grace, in the meantime, trudged through the longer grass at the edge of the river; kicking aside long blades that would soon shrivel as the November frosts took hold. After a few minutes, the pair looked at each other, shaking their heads. It had been too much to ask that any evidence would have survived and remained in place for over a year while exposed to the elements.

  Grace’s heart started to sink.

  Maybe she had watched too much Line of Duty but, despite knowing it was a long shot, deep down she had got her hopes up that she might catch something unusual the police had missed the first time round. Or even uncover something that proved without any doubt that Patrick wasn’t behind his fiancée’s disappearance. If she had, she could have taunted Kitt about being a better judge of character until the end of time. But no such luck. Even if it hadn’t rained heavily on the night of Jodie’s disappearance, like Kitt said, too much time had passed, and even though Patrick felt the police investigation had been lacking in some respects, they would undoubtedly have combed this stretch of the river.

  ‘All right, worth a shot, but let’s focus on formulating a theory about where Jodie went after that phone call with the station ended,’ Kitt said.

  Grace shivered, imagining this stretch of the river in the eerie light of the early hours. ‘If she had been running from whoever made her disappear, she must have been petrified when they caught up with her.’

  ‘I imagine so,’ said Kitt. ‘Which means she might have tried to scream, or call out or otherwise draw attention. Possibly putting up a struggle. So how did her attacker make her disappear so seamlessly?’

  ‘This spot is quite sheltered by the trees,’ said Grace. ‘More sheltered than in other parts of the path. The attacker probably chose this stretch on purpose. Maybe they took her off guard, approaching from behind with some kind of weapon? A knife, maybe?’

  ‘I agree that the element of surprise would be an advantage to an attacker, but we know from the audio that they didn’t have that. Jodie saw and seemed to recognize her attacker which is unlikely if they approached from behind.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Grace nodded. ‘Yes. You’re right. OK, but if they approached her head-on, which they must have done, why didn’t she run or something?’

  ‘If it was someone she knew, and it seemed to be, she may not have known how much danger she was in until it was too late.’

  ‘What could have made her scream out like that other than a weapon of some sort coming towards her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kitt admitted. ‘But whatever took place down here I doubt Jodie was conscious for long. Sheltered or not, this is a public place and even in the early hours of the morning, anyone could have come walking along and witnessed it all.’

  ‘Couldn’t the attacker have just held a knife to her back or something? To make her comply and walk wherever they wanted to take her?’

  ‘It’s a possibility but it feels a bit too neat for that. No witnesses have come forward but the attacker couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure they wouldn’t meet anyone along the way. All Jodie would have had to do was scream for help as a stranger passed and the attacker would have more on their plate than they probably wanted to deal with.’

  ‘So . . . when you say she wasn’t conscious for long . . . you mean you think she was killed down here?’ A sudden chill came over Grace at that thought.

  ‘There are three obvious possibilities. Firstly, the attacker killed her on the spot and threw her body in the river. But there is lack of forensic evidence for that. Besides anything else, dead bodies may sink in water at first but more often than not post mortem changes eventually cause them to float. Even when they’re weighed down they usually wash up somewhere. Jodie’s body has had a year to wash up and nothing’s been reported. At least, not according to the searches I ran last night.’

  ‘So we can rule that out?’

  ‘Not quite. Not everybody floats. It depends on many variables but I would say it makes it less likely.’

  ‘What are the other two possibilities?’

  ‘That Jodie was killed down here and her body was then transported once it was safe to do so and otherwise disposed of. Or Jodie was knocked unconscious, possibly with a hard blow, and was taken somewhere else alive. Given that the attacker knew she was on the phone at the time and they would be expecting the police to show up sooner rather than later, the odds are they didn’t kill her here.’

  ‘Because if they rushed to kill her they might make a mistake that got them caught?’

  ‘Exactly. You suggested the attacker chose this place because it was more sheltered but in fact they didn’t get to choose when they attacked Jodie.’

  ‘Because of the phone call,’ Grace said.

  ‘Yes, Jodie putting that call in would have forced their hand. They had to attack then or it would be too late. It was just lucky for them and unlucky for Jodie that this stretch of the river is more sheltered.’

  ‘But the phone call would have limited their options about what they could do next.’

  ‘Right. They could have killed her on the spot but making a body disappear without a trace isn’t easy, especially when there’s a time limit attached to the task. Many a serial killer has given it a good go but sooner or later evidence comes to light and a body – or parts of it – are discovered.’

  ‘But Jodie really did disappear.’

  ‘Which means either the person or people who attacked her did a very, very good job of disposing of the body, or she is still alive somewhere.’

  ‘I really hope it’s that last one,’ said Grace, remembering the look in Patrick’s eyes as he’d talked about his lost fiancée. Wouldn’t it be amazing if she and Kitt found Jodie alive after all this time? Sure, there was a chance she had her reasons for not getting in touch with Patrick – other than being held under duress – but either way at least he would know she was safe and he could draw a line under that part of his life, move on.

  Kitt opened her mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it. She squinted and fell silent for a moment before starting on another track. ‘If the attacker did transport Jodie somewhere else, dead or alive, they’d need to be very strong or have an accomplice working with them to lift the body.’

  ‘I don’t know; I’ve seen pictures of Jodie on the appeal website, she was tiny.’

  ‘You’re one to talk,’ said Kitt.

  Grace smiled. ‘Anyroad, it probably wouldn’t take too much to lift her – assuming the attacker was male.’

  ‘Not necessarily. It’s harder to lift a person if they’re unconscious, due to the poor distribution of weight. But if they’d left her here the police would have found her, so, where did they take her?’

  Grace looked along the river back to the stone arches of Framwellgate Bridge. ‘Maybe they had a vehicle waiting up on the road.’

  ‘Maybe, and certainly that’s one area of exploration. The problem is, CCTV footage a year after the incident is unlikely so we might be reliant on whatever eye witnesses can remember about that morning. Besides, regardless of what Patrick thought of the police investigation, I’m sure they would have at least checked that.’ Kitt craned her neck, looking up and down the slight curve of the river. ‘The only other thing I can think is that they could have found somewhere to temporarily stash Jodie along here.’

  ‘Why would they bother doing that? They’d have to come out of hiding at some point, even if they did find somewhere.’
>
  ‘They would know the police would be on their way and would spend the next couple of days at least scouring that stretch of the river. They had two choices: make a run for it or hide somewhere nearby until the police had moved their investigation on.’

  ‘Well, there’s nowhere round here, except for the bushes. And it was a wet night so I doubt that would have seemed like a master plan. There’d be no way of sheltering under the bridges without the risk of being seen either.’

  Kitt’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re right.’ She pulled her phone out and started tapping away at the screen. ‘Hmm.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What’s this building here?’ Kitt turned her phone so Grace could take a look at the map she’d brought up. She’d zoomed in and was pointing at a small rectangular building on the other side of the river between Prebends Bridge and Kingsgate Bridge. ‘All the other buildings are labelled but not that one. I don’t remember any significant buildings along that stretch from my time studying here but of course that’s going back ten years now.’

  ‘Er, I’m not sure but there is an old outhouse that sits on that side of the river. It could be that. But that’s a good twenty minute walk at least. They couldn’t have carried Jodie all that way, surely?’

  ‘Oh yes, you’re right, I remember now. There is an outhouse down there. They might well have hidden there, you know? Even if it’s a bit of a walk. You’d be surprised what people will do in moments of desperation. If it was a wet night, it would beat standing outside in the cold northern rain.’

  ‘Anything does,’ Grace said with a nod. ‘Take it from a lass who grew up in Leeds.’

  ‘Well, until I can enquire about CCTV footage along the main roads that night, it’s our most promising prospect,’ Kitt said. ‘So there’s only one thing for it.’ Without another word she set off along the river path at a pace Grace could only just keep up with.

  *

  No less than twenty minutes later, Kitt and Grace approached an old ramshackle outhouse made of weathered brick that had become part of the scenery for Grace even in the short time she’d been living in Durham. She couldn’t count how many times she’d already walked between campus and town. Although not the quickest route, the riverside walk was without a doubt more picturesque and was a good opportunity for a bit of brisk exercise – something to offset all the pizza she’d been comfort eating during her first few weeks at Venerable Bede’s. Her stomach clenched at the idea that she had walked past this building on so many occasions and now it seemed there was a chance it could have some link with Jodie’s disappearance.

  Kitt gave the wooden door, that looked to be rotten in places, a hard yank. When it didn’t at once give, she tried a couple more times. ‘It’s locked,’ she said with a sigh.

  Grace looked around the side to see if there was another way in but Kitt had already tried the only door and the windows were too high up to see through.

  Grace took a couple of steps backward. ‘You . . . you don’t think Jodie’s body could still be in there, do you?’ She had seen her fair share of horror films in her time and this was exactly the kind of structure where something creepy was likely to happen.

  ‘Highly unlikely. The odds are someone has accessed this building between now and last October. Besides, if there was a body in there anyone who walked past would probably have been able to smell it, and without a doubt we’d be able to smell it right now. Dead bodies tend to give themselves away like that. But that doesn’t mean the attacker didn’t use it and leave behind some more subtle clues that only a trained eye could single out. If the attacker – or more likely attackers – wanted to hide out this would be the perfect place to do it, and given how open a space this is, it’s hard to know where else they could have gone without being noticed – unless, like you suggested earlier, they did make their getaway in a car.’

  ‘The thing is, it’s a bit of a walk from where Jodie’s phone was last tracked to.’

  ‘So is the road. In fact I’d say getting the body up on the road where there are more likely to be witnesses would have been riskier. The fact that this is a bit more isolated and a little way from where Jodie was last seen probably made it even more perfect for the attackers. Remember, her phone was found in the river. The attackers knew they would be tracked and went to certain lengths to make sure that didn’t happen. This place is far enough away from where Jodie disappeared that the police probably didn’t think to check it.’

  Despite Kitt’s reassurances that there wasn’t a dead body behind the outhouse door, Grace stared warily at the rusted lock. She knew it was daft, but she still had to try with all her might not to imagine Jodie wide-eyed, alone and decomposing on the other side. She had a dark, nagging feeling that she just couldn’t shift. Perhaps it was because it took cunning to make a person disappear – assuming they didn’t disappear of their own accord. There was something about this case that suggested cold calculation and if Jodie had met her end that night, Grace wondered if the killers had found a way to stash the body here without anyone noticing, right under everybody’s noses.

  Six

  After what seemed like an eternity of watching Ms Polly Smyth, Dean Regina Berkeley’s secretary, alternate between sending an email, filing her nails and checking text messages on her phone, Kitt and Grace were at last waved through a heavy oak door into their meeting.

  ‘Ms Hartley?’ Berkeley said as Kitt and Grace walked into her office. Grace had seen Berkeley’s photograph in the prospectus but had never crossed paths with her in person. When she had glanced at her picture, Grace had been struck by Berkeley’s over-powdered aesthetic and it was no less striking in the flesh. She was clarted up with heavy foundation that not only emphasized every wrinkle on her long, thin face but also seemed a bit too dark for her skin tone. A line ran along her neck where the make-up stopped. Clearly the contouring craze had passed her by.

  Berkeley’s fondness for slapping on a lot of foundation was however the only flaw in an otherwise prim appearance. Her grey hair was tied back in a tight bun with a neat, if unflattering, Austenesque centre parting and her clothes looked well-tailored so it seemed she was paid well for her services here at Venerable Bede’s. The lines on her tartan cardigan, on which she wore a silver brooch shaped like a peacock, were particularly sharp. Despite the fact that the dean must have weighed all of seven stone, this gave her a somewhat severe, intimidating appearance. Kitt had better watch her step with this one, she didn’t look like anybody’s fool.

  Berkeley was sitting behind a large oak desk and when it became clear that she had no intention of rising to greet them, Kitt stepped forward to address her.

  ‘Yes, I’m Kitt Hartley, and you may be aware of Grace Edwards who is enrolled here with you currently on the library studies course – just as I once was.’

  ‘Yes,’ Berkeley said, indicating two chairs in front of her desk which Kitt and Grace promptly took. ‘I’ve already done my homework on you, Ms Hartley.’

  ‘H-homework?’ Kitt replied.

  ‘I took the liberty of pulling your file. I thought it might make for some nostalgic reading. Can’t have you travel all the way from York to Durham without giving you a chance to relive the good old days at Venerable Bede’s, can we?’

  ‘Oh, well, I . . .’ Kitt began, flustered.

  Berkeley flicked open a manila folder sitting on her desk with a single fingertip. ‘Hartley, Katherine Anne. Exemplary first-year grades – top of your cohort, in fact.’

  Kitt’s slightly panicked look fell away and she raised her chin with pride. ‘I did work very hard to achieve that position.’

  Unable to resist, given her phone was in her hand and Berkeley was engrossed in Kitt’s file, Grace quickly tapped the word ‘Geek!’ into a text message and sent it to Kitt. Kitt’s phone buzzed. On looking at the screen she gave Grace a suspicious glance out of the corner of her eye followed swiftly by a glare when she read the message.

  ‘Let’s see, what else do we have? You wer
e captain of the debate team, I see, and won the academy a trophy or two.’

  ‘Seventeen, actually,’ Kitt corrected. ‘During my reign as captain, that is. Twenty-two if you count the months I spent learning the ropes. There are probably one or two of them still lying around in a display cabinet somewhere on campus.’

  Twenty-two trophies for debating? Conveniently this factoid had never come up during the many back and forths Grace had had with Kitt over the time they’d known each other. Now Grace understood why winning an argument with Kitt was almost impossible.

  ‘A bit of a lull in your grades in the second year,’ Berkeley continued, not paying any attention whatsoever to Kitt’s interjections. Licking her finger, she flicked to a page marked by a blue tab. ‘And you seem to have been disciplined for . . . running across the football field in your underwear.’

  ‘Wh-wh-what?’ Grace sputtered out before exploding into laughter. Kitt was so prim and proper, the image of her streaking across a football pitch was just too much for her. Kitt could be quite private so extracting information to use as part of a prank or material for future wind-ups was always difficult. A penetrating warmth spread through every inch of Grace as she realized she was going to be able to dine off this nugget of intelligence for the rest of time.

  ‘This is not a laughing matter,’ Berkeley snapped and rapped her knuckles on the desk to sober Grace up. Grace at once straightened her face. The last thing she needed was to make an enemy out of the dean after just five weeks at the academy. It pained her to admit it but all teasing related to Kitt’s public displays of indecency would have to be postponed to a future date. ‘And if you’re studying with us at this institution I’ll thank you for not getting any ideas. We will not tolerate this kind of lewdness. I’m amazed they let you graduate after that.’

  ‘There was nothing lewd about that incident,’ Kitt said quickly, a blush rising in her cheeks. ‘It was a deliberate and important protest about body shaming.’