The Reckless Engineer

by Jac Wright

  Harry warned Jack with a touch on his arm again.

  ‘I’d like to return to the timeline at Michelle Williams’ house again. Mr. Smith, what happened after Mr. Skull let himself into the victim’s house a few minutes after 7 a.m.? Did he have anything that looked like a box of chocolates with him?’

  ‘Well, Mr. Stavers, the skull & scorpion guy let himself into Williams’ house closing the door behind him, but leaving the key in the lock. He wasn’t carrying anything in his hands, but he was wearing a black leather bomber jacket half zipped up. A box could have easily been under it. I wasn’t specially looking out for such a “weapon”, you see. What I did notice, however, was the hand gun stuck into the back of his jeans.’

  Everybody nodded. It was a shame that McAllen had warned Smith off Skull after the first photographs. Save for the one photo of Cossack, he had proceeded to photograph only Jack and Michelle after that.

  ‘Chocolates or no chocolates, Mr. Skull and Scorpion did not stay inside the Williams house for more than ten or fifteen minutes. He rushed out of the house, banging the door behind him. He locked the door, put the key back under the rug, and ran to his van that he had parked a few houses down the road—right about here—and drove off. No one has seen him after that. As you know the police are looking for him, but he has vanished after that sighting.’

  ‘Or no one has admitted to having seen him,’ Jeremy suggested.

  Smith shrugged.

  ‘He could have gone into the house, killed the girl by force-feeding her chocolates at gunpoint, arranged the chocolates around the house, and run. Or he could have gone in looking for Michelle, found the girl dead, and done a runner, vanishing with whatever money he had. Or he could have gone in and been told to leave by a Michelle very much alive and well,’ Harry deduced.

  ‘I’ve got nothing that indicates which one.’ Smith pushed out his lower lip and shook his head.

  ‘Well, the next person to appear on the scene was you, Mr. Connor. You pulled up in front of Michelle Williams’ house and let yourself in.’

  ‘Like I said, when I could not get Michelle on the phone, I drove over to pick her up in person,’ Jack explained, undeterred by Harry’s warnings. ‘When she didn’t answer the doorbell, I let myself in. I had a key. I thought she might have stepped out for something and I was going to wait for her—she often steps out to buy fresh almond croissants and milk for breakfast. I had missed breakfast myself that day. So I went straight into the kitchen and made myself a bacon sandwich and coffee. I then went into the living room, nibbling on my sandwich, and that’s when I found her on the couch in front of the TV. The TV wasn’t on. She was in the leftmost seat of the three-seat sofa, with the box of chocolates on the middle seat, her head rolled over and fallen over to her right as if she had fallen asleep. When I tried to wake her, her head snapped forward and her upper body fell over.’

  Jack paused and drank a full glass of water. This was much the same story that Jack had told Jeremy during the drive down to Blackgold.

  ‘I was horrified when I realized she was dead. I panicked and felt nauseous. There was a big houseplant near the window. I stumbled over to it and threw up into the pot. I ran out and was sick all over the garden again. Somehow I got my car started and drove around in a daze until I found myself in front of The Mermaid. I’d been under unbelievable pressure for months and months. All I could think was that I needed to get out of there.’

  Harry put a hand on Jack’s arm to calm him down.

  ‘It’s hard to know what to do when faced with such a shock, Jack. Everybody reacts differently.’

  ‘Well, you were not at that house alone that morning, Mr. Connor. You had Mr. Cigar arriving right behind you.’

  They all looked back at him expectantly.

  ‘Our Mr. Cigar parked his car out of sight down the road and got there behind Mr. Connor on foot. He watched Mr. Connor at the door from behind the neighbour’s front hedge. When Mr. Connor went in he crouched behind the bushes and moved to the living room window to look in. He would have clearly seen whatever you were doing in the living room. You have a witness who can help clear or convict you, Mr. Connor. You just have to find this guy, which I say will not be easy. This guy is good.’

  He had to be, Jeremy reckoned. Cossack was a former US marine.

  ‘He would be a witness to whatever Mr. Connor was doing in the living room around Michelle Williams’ body, true,’ Harry chose his words carefully. ‘But we have to assess his credibility as a witness, know who hired him and what he was doing there. What is the reason that he hasn’t come forward to the police requests?’

  Smith shrugged at Harry’s question.

  ‘Well, to continue, he was looking in through the living room window and ducked back behind the bushes as Mr. Connor ran out. Mr. Connor forgot to close the front door behind him. He could not make it to the gates before he had to throw up, holding onto the apple tree in the garden. As soon as Mr. Connor was out of sight Mr. Cigar rushed in like a panther on the hunt. I myself then decided to follow our friend’s techniques to see what was happening inside the house. So I left my watch point, ran across the street over to the window myself, and peered in. Mr. Cigar was on his mobile phone, a cheap disposable one, and he was cleaning up after Mr. Connor! He had latex gloves on. He put the sandwich away into a shopping bag. He came back out into the garden, dug out the vomit in the garden into a black bin bag, and covered the spot with soil. He must have missed the vomit in the pot of the house plant because Mr. Cigar had to duck back under the bushes when Mr. Connor came up to the window. He didn’t see it.’

  Smith took a sip of water from his glass while they listened.

  ‘I wasn’t sure why he was doing what he was doing because I could not see Michelle from where I was; the couch she was on had its back to me. By this time her body must have doubled over. Well anyway, back inside, Cigar started going through the papers around the living room carefully and methodically. He first went through the papers on the cabinet against the right wall, and then the papers on the dining table by the window. He seemed to have found what he wanted, a letter inside an envelope neatly ripped open at the top, and a few other sheets of paper, all of which he stuffed into his jacket pocket. Then he tried to break into her laptop and, having failed, set the laptop aside by his bags. He then carefully wiped all traces of his fingerprints off the surfaces. He came out, locked the front door, took the key and exited, taking the laptop, the letters, and the bin bags with him.’

  He paused. ‘So he does have Mr. Connor’s interest at heart to some extent. If he had managed to spot the vomit on the house plant and had I not been there, he would have managed to erase Mr. Connor’s presence there that morning entirely.’

  Caitlin, keeping an eye out for Gavin or Jack, or both, Jeremy thought.

  ‘We have to smoke him out, Harry. He was there looking in when Jack first spotted the body and he is a witness. We have to get him to testify.’

  ‘We have to be careful what he will say as a witness. If he does testify in Jack’s favour, we have the credibility issue. The prosecution will argue he was hired to cover for Jack and that his testimony is merely a continuance of this cover-up. Besides, it does not preclude Jack, or anyone else at the scene of the crime for that matter, from leaving the chocolates at the premises the night before for Michelle to eat and die from.’

  ‘I think his testimony would show that Michelle’s death took Jack by surprise that morning and greatly distressed him,’ Jeremy argued stubbornly.

  ‘This is exhausting.’

  Jack looked white and drained as they exited Blackmoon down the narrow stairs carrying stacks of copy notebooks, papers, files, and photos.

  ‘First Harry’s interview and now this. I have a thundering headache.’

  They had driven over in two cars.

  ‘Why don’t you drive over to my flat where you can have a bath and a nap? I shall drop Harry and be there soon.’

  Jeremy’s flat wasn’t a
long drive from where Blackmoon offices were in Acton. He tossed Jack a spare key to it.

  Back in the car Jeremy said to Harry, ‘I hope that we let nothing slip to Blackmoon that you and I know about Cossack and Skull; and that we didn’t let anything slip to both Jack and Blackmoon about Gavin Hunter.’

  ‘McAllen turned the screws on Michelle, getting Skull to twist her arm, just like he did with Gavin and Marianne. I get the picture that this Skull is a clumsy brute who could have easily turned the screws too far, letting himself in with a gun when she, in her typical stupidity, had laughed at his offer.’

  ‘Don’t forget Gavin, the jealous lover, who has come to free and claim the love of his life and his child,’ Jeremy added.

  ‘Not to mention Cossack doing a clean-up job of a possible attack he had delivered the previous night for Caitlin,’ Harry chimed in. ‘Blackmoon has refused to make any comments to half the questions from the police so far. I wonder how much of this Edwards knows from his searches.’

  A little while later Jeremy pulled up at the entrance to their offices on Fleet Street.

  ‘Looks like I’m going to be spending the next couple of nights at The Royal Atlantic again starting tomorrow. I shall try to see Cossack while I’m there.’

  He unlocked the doors for Harry.

  ‘Don’t forget we are at the scene of the crime tomorrow morning with my forensics team,’ Harry reminded him as he got out of the car.

  CHAPTER 29

  Wednesday, October 27 — Twelve Days Later

  The semi-detached house that featured as the backdrop to the Blackmoon photographs came alive as they approached the crime scene on foot, having parked several blocks down the street. Harry’s forensics van was parked by the house. Two weeks on from the discovery of Michelle’s body, the scene of the crime was still marked off by a wide cordon of blue and white crime scene tape decorated on the outer perimeter with wreaths and bouquets of flowers, tributes to an outwardly gorgeous girl they had failed to see past the skin-deep beauty of, or they had known the faults of and loved anyway.

  Jeremy liked to think of them as being for Jack’s baby who had died, innocent and untouched by evil.

  ‘By the way, I have an appointment with Kevin Cossack for next Tuesday morning. He thinks it is to retain him and set him after Maggie,’ Jeremy announced in Harry’s ear.

  Harry nodded as they entered the crime scene past the blue tape.

  ‘My investigator took a flight up to Aberdeen this morning to look for Skull. He’s got the list of pubs Jack gave me. The white van he was driving was a rental, paid for in cash, I’m afraid. I ran the license plate through the DMV database. And I’m hoping to pick up his shoeprint today, either his or Gavin Hunter’s. Look.’

  The patch of dried mud in the soil between the paving stone and the grass that Harry was pointing to had a clear print of a shoe about Size 13 or 14 preserved by the fact that it had drizzled heavily the night before the murder, but had been dry ever since.

  They found no other footprints in the garden. Jeremy could see the patch in the grass by the foot of the miniature apple tree, where Jack had thrown up and Cossack had subsequently dug out carefully and re-filled with soil.

  Harry gathered his team next to the forensics van parked outside the blue taped perimeter and gave instructions. Since only three of them were allowed in at a time the cameraman, Harry, and Jeremy would first review the crime scene; then Jeremy and Harry would come out and Harry would direct others to the work that needed to be done. Harry detailed his photographer to photograph the whole of the crime scene and anything in the background from many angles.

  ‘You never know when something might turn up. You’d be amazed how often something innocuous in the background of a photograph has later turned a case on its head,’ he explained.

  ‘Let’s go in.’ Harry gestured the photographer and Jeremy to follow and headed back into the garden.

  They stopped at the entrance where two cement steps led up to the front door. From here, Jeremy could see that the house was the right end-of-terrace of a block of Victorian terraced houses. Michelle had had her house painted a light pastel pink on the outside. A short white picket fence demarcated the front of the property and bushes of flowers lined the perimeter of the garden. Except a lining of a foot wide soil on either side of the cement stone path that led from the gate to the front door steps on which the muddy footprint was set, a meticulously manicured lawn lay over the garden, through the middle of which the young miniature apple tree broke through.

  To Jeremy’s right was the window through which he could look into the living room, standing behind the patches of flowers and waist high bushes beneath it. In his immediate view was an eight-person dining table and chairs, the side to his left cleared for dining for up to three people. The other side was used like a work desk, cluttered with magazines, papers, and letters neatly piled and a laptop with a yellow cross set at the head of the table. To the left of the table stood a houseplant right by the window, trying to put its leaves out to catch the sunlight. Beyond the tree he could see a high-backed print fabric couch facing the back garden out the French patio doors.

  Jeremy took out a small laboratory sketchbook and a pencil to sketch the layout, which he could later verify with Jack.

  ‘The house is a large two bedroom end-of-terrace bought three years ago. Michelle had been paying off a big 92 per cent of a 25 year mortgage on it,’ Harry announced as they stepped through the front door into a wide hallway.

  To their left was a small downstairs loo. The stairs started next to it and ran up parallel to the hallway. The hallway led directly into the kitchen. Following the path Jack had taken the last time he was here they avoided the inviting door into the living room on their right and went straight through to the kitchen.

  The kitchen had, at one time, been the small arm of an L-shaped open plan extension from the living room. It had been cleverly partitioned off with a thin wood-panelled wall leaving a doorway through to the living room in the middle. The bottom half of the door could be closed separately from the top half and, when closed, a wooden panel could be dropped over it to form a continuous counter in the kitchen, which doubled as a hatchway into the living room. Now only the bottom half of the door was closed with the wooden bar latched over it in the exact configuration it had been in on the day Michelle’s body was found. Anybody accessing the fridge freezer to their left had a view into the back garden through the glass French patio doors, but one could not see the couch.

  Harry was now giving instructions to his photographer following them through the house, pointing out particular close-up and zoom-out shots he wanted. It felt claustrophobic in the kitchen with the three of them and Edwards’ man in it. Jeremy walked back out to the hallway and entered the living room through the doorway in the hall, exactly the way Jack had done, his sandwich in hand, the day Michelle had been found dead.

  Jack had set his bacon sandwich and coffee down on the clear part of the dining table on his right. There were a small empty plate and a mug where they were deemed to be.

  ‘We have reconstructed the scene of the crime, replacing any items that might have been removed, whether by our teams or by other people entering the house, with dummies. The replacements have been placed in the exact locations they were found or deemed to have been before they were removed, and are marked with yellow crosses,’ Edward’s officer explained.

  Jeremy had not seen him coming in and his voice had made him jump. Actually whether it was the officer or the spooky aura in the room, he wasn’t sure.

  To Jeremy’s left stood the three-seat sofa that Michelle had been found dead on. It was a high back fabric sofa with a feminine floral pattern. It was clear how one would not immediately see anybody seated in its leftmost seat (when viewed from behind) with her head and possibly part of the upper body fallen over forward and to the right. A dummy had been set up where the body had been. An empty wine-coloured chocolate box lay on the seat next to it with a r
ibbon and a small square card on embossed paper fallen on the floor, all dummies.

  Carved into the wall between the TV and an armchair was a Victorian chimney place, with an electric fire where the real fire should have been. A luxurious off-white rug lay on the floor before it. The wall to the right of the window was adorned with a pleasantly worked mahogany and glass cabinet unit with drinks, crystal glass, books, trophies and other items that the dead girl had loved and displayed for her visitors.

  Jeremy shuddered as Harry entered the room behind him. Harry took everything in in one glance and continued his instructions to his photographer.

  ‘Might we look through the papers on the table, on that wall unit, and in its drawers, officer? We shall be very careful’ Harry enquired from one of Edwards’ men.

  ‘Yes, but without disturbing their order. We have searched them and whatever we have removed has been replaced by a yellow sheet, copies of which will be provided to you with discovery.’

  ‘The drawers that our Mr. Cigar searched through,’ Harry whispered in a low voice, taking Jeremy to the cabinet unit by the elbow and pointing to a row of drawers in the bottom half. ‘These, and the papers on the mantelpiece, those on the bottom shelf of the coffee table, and finally, those neat piles of letters and papers on the dining table.’

  I can sense the pungent stink of death in here, Jeremy thought, suddenly feeling sick and unable to focus. He could see Michelle in here, walking around on her killer heels and laughing, full of life only a few weeks ago. The crime scene photos he had seen in the prosecution bundle flashed through his mind and he could see the girl slumped on this sofa, her head lolled over, drooling, and saliva frothing at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘I, er, I think I have seen enough now, Harry,’ he said, feeling nauseous. ‘I don’t feel useful in here. Since you and your team is better at this than I am, might I go?’