Bloody Reckoning

by Rafe McGregor

  Taking the credit for himself obviously wasn’t one of Lawson’s many faults, but I didn’t think his sudden honesty epidemic was in my best interests. “Alex is being far too kind,” I mumbled, being careful rather than modest.

  “I doubt that,” Marie replied. “I’ve appointed you as a consultant to the MIT, and your contributions have been noted.”

  This was going from bad to worse. I glared at Lawson and said to Marie: “Excuse me, but I’m...this is difficult to explain, but I’ve not had any leave for a long time and I’m not allowed to do any work for the next six weeks.”

  “Don’t worry, you won’t be disobeying your orders. You’re working for us as a consultant, not the Army. I was going to send your CO a letter of commendation, but I don’t have to.”

  “That’s very kind, Marie, but I’d prefer not. If you can keep my involvement quiet, though, I’d be happy to do whatever else I can. I’ve got six – well, five – weeks to kill.”

  She smiled again. “There is one thing I must make clear, even though you’ll already have worked it out for yourself. Confidentiality. I don’t want you discussing this with anyone except for Alex, and that includes your colleagues in the SIB. So far we’ve managed to keep the connection to the murders of Gordon, Keogh, and Marillier quiet. The media believe Operation Claymore is the inquiry into Haywood’s homicide alone. I want to keep it that way until it’s in our interests to inform the public of the serial aspect. All right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Mint. Now that you’ve been introduced, do you mind if I take Hutt to meet all three players tomorrow?” Lawson asked.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’ll use the excuse of returning the boots we took for testing. None of them have any unique pollen or minerals we can link to Bishop Wood, so we’ve no reason to keep them.”

  “As expected. The killer wasn’t likely to have given us the pair of boots he or she was wearing at the crime scene, assuming that he or she was in fact in uniform. That’s fine, but make sure you don’t interrogate any of the suspects while you’re doing it. In fact, no questions at all from you, and no talking from Garth. All right?”

  “Yes, fine,” Lawson replied.

  Marie had a sip of her drink and then turned back to me. “I’m not ruling out the possibility of more bodies and other suspects, and I have officers working on that, but the bulk of the squad is concentrating on Bavister, Vaughan, and Cowan, and their connections – or lack thereof – to the four soldiers killed between October 2007 and May 2013. I assume you’ve not met any of the suspects before?”

  “No.”

  “Alex sets a lot of store by your opinion and I’m guessing he thinks that seeing the suspects in person might be useful to you. I agree. Do you have any ideas you’d like to share with me before you meet them?”

  I was caught by surprise for the umpteenth time that evening. “No, not right now. Also, I don’t think I’m up to date with the trace evidence, witness statements, and alibis.”

  “No, of course not.” She glanced at her watch, swallowed the last of her wine, and placed the empty goblet on the side table. “I’ll leave you to do that now, Alex. I have to go.”

  “I’ll see you out.”

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Marie,” I said as she stood.

  “And you. Thank you again for your assistance.”

  Lawson escorted her to the door, returned, and resumed his seat.

  “She’s a bit of a looker,” I said.

  “No tits,” he replied, much more like the Lawson I thought I knew. “She really took to you, the silly mare.”

  “I was pretty pissed off that you’d mentioned me to her, but it seems to have worked out okay.”

  “You thought I’d take the credit myself?”

  “You were welcome to it.”

  “What kind of a prick do you take me for?” I wasn’t quite sure. “You up for that, tomorrow? Good. I’ve already checked where they’ll all be. We’ll start with Bavister, move on to Cowan, and come back for Vaughan.” He leant forward in his chair and clapped his big hands together loudly. “Right, where are we?”

  “I do have a few ideas, but you’d better fill me in on the footprints and any other developments.”

  “Fair enough. We’ll start at the beginning: Marillier’s murder in Winchester in 2007. Nobody has alibis that far back, but Vaughan and Cowan were both based there and both knew him. Bavister was also with a training regiment at the time, but in Bassingbourn, in Cambridgeshire. There’s no evidence to suggest he was in or near Winchester, or that he knew Marillier. Gordon, two years later. No alibis either, because we never established the exact time or even date of death. Bavister and Vaughan both knew Gordon, and were both based in Colchester. Gordon may or may not have known or been screwing Cowan – who was in Bassingbourn – but we have nothing other than his word for it. Clear?”

  “Crystal.”

  “The ballistic comparison came through, by the way. Same gun killed Gordon and Haywood. Keogh next, last year. Bavister and Cowan were both in the same camp in Germany, but neither were questioned as suspects. Once again, the exact time and date of death aren’t certain, so we couldn’t pin them down for alibis. Fucking bollocks. Vaughan appears to be in the clear; he was already up here, in his current job. He said he was on a week’s holiday in the Lake District over the weekend in question. I checked. He was on leave. We’re busy chasing up the addresses where he stayed to confirm. Clear?”

  “Go on.”

  “Haywood and our big break; a fresh crime scene. Where were our three players at the time of death? Bavister and Vaughan were allegedly with their wives. Cowan was with her grandfather in Norfolk, but we can’t confirm because he was murdered on Tuesday – bad luck, or what?”

  I sat up, all ears. “Cowan’s grandfather was murdered?”

  “Someone knocked on his door, and blew his face off with a shotgun when he opened it. I’ve been too busy to check the exact details, but the local coppers think it might be a revenge killing dating back to his service in Northern Ireland. If only they’d waited a week before bumping him off, we could’ve confirmed her alibi. But we can’t, so we’ve ended up with a full house of either no alibis, or useless ones. I wouldn’t –”

  “Just hold on, can we stay with Cowan’s grandfather for a minute?”

  Lawson knocked back the rest of his wine and put the empty glass next to Marie’s. “What about him?”

  “Well, what do you know?”

  “Not much more than I’ve told you. David Adamson-Woods was Cowan’s mother’s father, a retired colonel, and widower. Lived alone in some sleepy village in Norfolk; someone wasted him first thing on Tuesday, possibly IRA. End-of. If you’d been a copper as long as I have you’d know that coincidences happen every day, and the vast majority of them aren’t important.”

  “But it is a coincidence, isn’t it? Haywood is killed on Sunday, Adamson-Woods on Tuesday, and we make Cowan a suspect on Wednesday.”

  “If he’d been found naked in the woods, I’d think twice. Or even killed with a .25 calibre pistol, or beaten to death with an entrenching tool. He wasn’t. We’ve got plenty of work to do without wild goose chases.”

  I leant back into the sofa again. “You might be right. Go on.”

  “We have no alibis worth the paper they’re written on for Haywood, and all three players admitted to knowing him. Very popular boy, our young gigolo. I said we had a break with a crime scene, but it hasn’t done us much good. All we have is one footprint and one tyre print. Vaughan and Cowan are both size sevens.”

  “What about Bavister?”

  “Ten, no way it could be his footprint, and I’m not convinced it belongs to either of the others. We’ve got a forensic podiatrist coming down from Edinburgh this week, but I doubt he’ll be able to tell us more. Place’ll be a circus by Tuesday: the podiatrist, a team of profilers, some expert from the Met Homicide Command, and reinforcements. Be fifty of
us working the inquiry. Never mind. The tyre has been confirmed as a type typically used on a Land Rover Discovery –”

  I snapped my fingers. “Bavister has one!” I remembered him climbing into a silver SUV on Thursday night.

  “He does and we’ve taken one of his tyres to check for the usual pollens and minerals. Nothing, but I’m not taking that back tomorrow. Bastard can wait. There are Land Rover Defenders at both Imphal Barracks and the Army Foundation College, but none of them were signed out by either of our players for the duration of the weekend. There’s even less chance that the tyre track is actual trace evidence than the footprint. But let’s pretend both of them are, just so I don’t go completely fucking mad. What do we have? Half the evidence points to either Vaughan or Cowan; the other half to Bavister.”

  “You mean the tyre isn’t worth taking into account?” I asked.

  “Exactly. If you have any suggestions, now would be a good time.”

  I had a couple of ideas, despite what I’d said to Marie. I hadn’t had long enough to evaluate them, and didn’t want embarrass myself in front of the head of the MIT – especially after the praise she’d lavished on me. I was less self-conscious when it came to Lawson, and needed a sounding board anyway.

  “Okay. The first thing that occurs to me is there’s another body out there somewhere. Why? Because your profilers will tell you that the murders are like an addiction for this type of killer. They develop tolerance to the drug and they need it more often to find the same satisfaction. The intervals should have decreased, not increased.”

  “You think there’s one in between Gordon and Keogh?”

  “Yeah. The numbers are wrong: two years between Marillier and Gordon; three years between Gordon and Keogh; a year between Keogh and Haywood. The three-year gap is too long, so we should be looking for another body or disappearance sometime from the end of 2009 to the end of 2011. I’m not sure if it will be worth the effort, but I’d scour the police and Army databases for murders and AWOLs in or near where our three suspects were at the time. The murders, definitely.”

  “The governor put a team on it on Tuesday. They’ve already covered all deaths on PNC and at the Service Police Crime Bureau.”

  “What about the AWOLs?”

  “What are the chances? Still working through them, anyway.”

  Lawson was right. It was very unlikely an AWOL could be connected to one of the suspects, but it was still worth pursuing. “So, if there is another body out there, we haven’t found it yet?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then let’s move on to the suspects. Bavister was the only witness to a fatal skiing accident in Norway in December 2006. I’d like to find out more about it because of the timing, ten months before what we believe is the first murder. Aside from that, my initial thought was that it was just too obvious. With all the attention on him at present, Bavister would have to be a lunatic to murder Haywood. That was my thinking until I saw him walk out of the O Club in the early hours of Friday morning.”

  Lawson shuddered with revulsion. “You were at the O Club.”

  “I wasn’t at the O Club, I was staking it out.”

  “And?”

  “Bavister’s still running it, in spite of the fact that he’s being court-martialled for sex offences. If I hadn’t actually seen him, I wouldn’t have believed it. But I did see him, and if he’s arrogant enough to continue with the O Club, he’s arrogant enough to continue murdering – assuming he’s murdered before. For me there’s only one thing that points to his innocence.”

  “What?”

  “Who. Keogh. Our killer may be deficient or defective in some areas, but planning isn’t one of them, or we wouldn’t still be chasing him six years later. I don’t think Bavister would have chosen someone from his own battalion. It’s too…” I realised what I was about to say. “Fuck, it’s too obvious.”

  “You’ve just talked yourself out of it all on your own,” he said.

  “I know. What do you think?”

  “I think he’s cocky enough for the lot, myself. After what you said about the O Club, and the way he’s done his best to keep in the papers, I bet he wouldn’t let either the coincidence of the battalion or a court martial interfere with his plans, homicidal or otherwise. Next?”

  “I don’t have much to say about the other two. Vaughan seems unlikely, if only because of Keogh again. If he was in the Lake District when Keogh was murdered, that’s him out of it. As for our celebrity athlete and soldier, I felt like I was grasping for straws at the time, but less so now. A friend of mine told me Cowan has a reputation as a real nymph. I don’t just mean an easy lay, I mean like Haywood on Viagra. I wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t come from someone I trust implicitly. But if it is true, then it doesn’t seem any more of an outrageous jump from nymphomaniac to serial killer than it does from Army celebrity to nymphomaniac. I’m probably not making any sense, but I’m thinking about the sexual element to the murders.”

  “Bavister runs a sex club.”

  “Yeah, true.”

  “And I happen to think it’s him.”

  “Why?”

  Lawson’s face lit up and he rubbed his palms together. “Because, as you should know, ninety per cent of murders are committed by the most obvious player. You’ve just pointed out that Bavister’s the most obvious, and I agree. Is it possible that Marillier and Keogh were poofs, or swung both ways?”

  I nodded. “Homosexuality has been legal in the Forces since January 2000, but many gay soldiers – especially men – still keep their sexuality private. First, we are talking about people’s private lives, even if there isn’t much privacy in the Army. Second, a lot of people still frown on it, and don’t like working with gays. Look at you. If I was a gay cop and we were working together, I wouldn’t let you know.”

  Lawson bridled. “At least I’m honest enough to admit I don’t like queers. There’s plenty that agree with me, but don’t have the bollocks to say it. And that doesn’t mean I’d treat you differently either.”

  “It doesn’t matter; you’ve already made my point for me. There’s still enough hostility for Keogh to have kept it to himself.”

  “Sounds kosher. Maybe I am onto something.”

  I shrugged. “Perhaps I’ll have more to say once I’ve met the suspects. Are you driving tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I’ll pick you up outside your flat at seven sharp.”

  “That’s a bit early for a visit, isn’t it?”

  “Not if we want to catch Bavister before he leaves for Catterick.”

  “I forgot about that. I think tomorrow is the day of the verdict.”

  Lawson smiled. “Yes.”

  “He won’t be pleased to see us.”

  Bigger smile. “No, he won’t.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I was grateful for the early start on Monday as it gave me less time to worry about my rendezvous with Bell. Even the new, improved Lawson wasn’t an ideal companion, but Operation Claymore would help keep me physically occupied for the next thirteen hours. I waited outside and heard Lawson before I saw him; the inevitable sound of rubber on tarmac heralding his arrival. I’d dressed for work, which meant we were both wearing dark suits with ties. He had little to say and I’m not usually chatty first thing in the morning, so the journey passed quickly and quietly, with the exception of a single motorist who took his life in his hands by reprimanding Lawson with his hooter.

  “It’s a fucking warning not a calling,” Lawson muttered, surprisingly subdued.

  I knew Askham Bryan fairly well from using it as a base for my circular runs, and directed Lawson to North Field Lane. He parked the Audi opposite a cottage with a beautiful little garden, creeper plants climbing the walls, and wooden shutters in the continental style. There was no garage, so the silver Discovery and matching Mercedes Benz were squeezed into the gravelled yard next to the garden. I followed Lawson to the rear of his car. He opened the boot to reveal three pairs of Army boots separate
ly bagged and tagged. He removed the largest, banged the boot shut, and marched across the road. I closed the wooden gate while Lawson rapped on the door in the manner of police officers the world over. I checked my watch as I joined him: thirteen minutes past seven.

  Lawson waited thirty seconds, then let rip again.

  An instant later we heard a woman’s voice: “Who is it?”

  “Police. Detective Sergeant Lawson.”

  The door was opened by a tall, plump woman in her mid-thirties whom I took to be Bavister’s wife. Her hair needed brushing and she looked as if we’d interrupted her halfway through putting on her make-up. Lawson held up his warrant card, which she scrutinised. “Yes?” Her accent was upper crust, her tone unpleasant.

  He lowered the card and raised the boots. “I’m returning Mr Bavister’s boots.”

  “What time do you call this?” she tutted, reaching for the bag.

  Lawson drew it back. “Can’t give them to you, ma’am.”

  “Then leave them on the steps, for God’s sake!”

  “Can’t do that either.”

  “Chas! Chas, it’s the bloody police!” She slammed the door in our faces.

  Lawson turned to me and winked. He waited another thirty seconds, then hammered away a third time.

  “Bloody hell, man, is this really necessary!” Bavister was also in his mid-thirties, an inch taller than me with short, blond hair and a slight paunch. He had a fat, decadent face with an aristocratic nose, rosy cheeks, and a cruel slit of a mouth. He was wearing his No.2 uniform order, parade khaki, without the tunic and cap. Almost every infantryman I’ve ever met has two easily identifiable characteristics. The first is a latent energy which manifests itself in a variety of ways; the second is self-confidence, which often comes across as arrogance in officers and aggression in other ranks. Bavister had none of the energy about him, but more than his share of the arrogance. “Do you know what day it is?”

  “Yes, thanks. I’ve brought your boots back.”