Separated at Death (The Lakeland Murders)

by Salkeld, J J

  ‘Nothing really’ said Ryan, trying to control his temper. ‘My girlfriend’s been found murdered, and I got nicked with a shed load of drugs in a car that you got me to drive down from Carlisle, remember?’

  ‘Your girlfriend? The girl who died was your girlfriend?’

  ‘Yeh, didn’t you know?’

  ‘Ryan; I know no more about you than you do about me, and that’s the best way for both of us. But you didn’t kill the kid did you?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about then, have you? They need forensic evidence and all sorts these days you know. They can’t just fit you up for it.’

  Ryan did know they’d need forensics, and that was one of the things that bothered him most. But that wasn’t what he wanted to talk to Adam about.

  ‘But what about the drugs? How come they stopped me? The bloody road was empty.’

  ‘No idea. Could be any one of a hundred reasons. Maybe a brake light was out, maybe you were going too fast, maybe the coppers just got bored. You know what they’re like, you don’t see one for ages then one turns up just when you don’t want them. But I didn’t grass on you, if that’s what you’re worrying about. Why would I? That was my gear they got. Anyway, what did you tell them?’

  ‘The truth’ admitted Ryan. ‘I was seriously pissed off when I saw the amount of gear in that car. If I go down for that I’m looking at some serious jail time, you know that.’

  When Adam spoke again he didn’t sound angry, just as calm and in control as always.

  ‘So you told them that I paid you to pick the car up, and that we contacted each other over the ‘net?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  Adam laughed. ‘So you’re worried that you’ve dropped me in the shit, is that why we’re talking now? You’re worried about me? Or maybe about what I’ll do to you for grassing on me?’

  That wasn’t what Ryan was worried about. Something told him that a boss who went to such lengths to keep his distance probably wasn’t the violent type. Because if he was he’d want Ryan to know it, and the best way would be by making their relationship personal.

  ‘Yes, of course, and I’m worried about myself too.’

  ‘Really? That’s nice, it really is. Well stop worrying about me. Just stick to what you’ve told the cops already and they won’t do you for anything much on the drugs. Trust me. They just haven’t got the people or the time to really try to break your story down, especially at the moment, so I expect you’ll get something trivial - maybe even a caution. I expect you’ve had a few of those in your time, eh? Shouldn’t hurt a lad like you one little bit. Anyway, what did your solicitor say?’

  ‘She said they might not charge me with possession with intent to supply if there was any real doubt that I knew what was in that car.’

  ‘There we are then. Nothing to worry about. Just stick to what you’ve told them and we’ll be fine.’

  ‘They’ve got my laptop and my phone. They’ll be trying to track you down that way.’

  Adam laughed again.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that either. It would take more than a couple of coppers who have been on a course in Manchester to find me.’

  Ryan had rather expected that.

  ‘So what should I do now?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ll be in touch when I need you again, and I’ll make sure that Wayne gives you a bit of holiday money. I like to look after my people. OK?’

  ‘OK’ said Ryan, and gave the phone back to Wayne.

  Ten minutes later he was cycling home, with £500 in his back pocket and a dozen pills and a decent bag of dope where his phone used to be. He signed on the next day too, so his holidays should be fun. He could even buy his younger brother something nice for Christmas, rather than risk shoplifting in town. Just a shame that Amy wouldn’t be there to enjoy it with him. Still, it could be worse.

  Thursday, December 9th

  Andy Hall woke at exactly four in the morning, as he had done every day for months. It was like a mind activated alarm clock. For a moment he was still on the edge his dream, running up a hill in torrential rain, and he knew that his wife had been there too. He could still feel the rain on his face, and he knew he’d had that dream before, even though he couldn’t exactly remember how it went. But he thought that there was a town down below, full of tiny little lanes too narrow to drive a car down, and a town hall with bells that rang out in the night.

  These days Carol often turned up in his dreams, especially on the nights that she ‘stayed with a friend’. He never remembered seeing her face in them, but something about her, the way she moved or stood, told him who it was with absolute certainty. His dad, who’d died the year before, was a regular visitor too, but dad and Carol never turned up in dreams together.

  Normally Hall would try to get back to sleep, and sometimes he managed it, but he knew that this morning would be different. In five minutes he’d get up, shower in the family bathroom, have a quick cup of tea and get in to work. But for now he thought back over the previous night, when he’d got home from work. He knew it would be his only chance, before he was utterly focussed on Amy’s murder.

  The kids had both been in their rooms, doing their homework with their TVs on as usual. He’d kicked his shoes off in the hall, and nipped up to say goodnight to both of them, although he knew he’d probably be asleep long before either of them. Alice, the eldest, was in the same year as Amy Hamilton, and Hall knew that she would have been questioned about Amy along with every other kid in the year.

  ‘It’s terrible dad. I didn’t know Amy very well, but I’ve known her since I was at primary school. Lots of my friends knew her really well. We’ve all been wandering around in a daze all day.’

  Hall didn’t offer to hug his daughter: he wanted to, but didn’t. He just stood there.

  His wife had shouted hello from the sitting room when he got in, and he found a portion of the pasta that the rest of the family had for tea on the worktop. He didn’t like pasta much, but he wasn’t very hungry. He poured a glass of red, already emptied to below the bottom of the label, and sipped it until the microwave beeped.

  He felt just a little bit nervous as he pushed the living room door open with his foot, but he needn’t have worried. His wife kept watching the news until the end of the item. It was something to do with the ice caps apparently.

  But Carol was more interested in him than usual that night, because Amy Hamilton’s death was the talk of the mums at the gym. Out of concern for her own daughters she wanted to know if it was a sex attack that had led to murder, and out of pure curiosity she wanted to hear if any member of the family was involved.

  Hall found himself being more non-committal than he would have been with his wife a few years before. But then, as he was pretty sure they both understood, he’d trusted her a great deal more back then.

  As had become usual over the last year or two Hall went to bed before his wife, and left her with the last glass in the bottle. He knew the routine, and that she’d be on the laptop for an hour or so now. When she did eventually come to bed at half past twelve, Hall was fast asleep. He hadn’t even tried to stay awake for her.

  It was a little after five when Hall walked in to his office. A couple of DCs were collating witness statements from the previous day - one told him that they were past 200 already - and if they were surprised to see him in so early both hid it well. Hall thought that perhaps they had him down as a rampant careerist, someone who saw Amy’s death as both a tragedy and an opportunity. He didn’t think that for one second, but even after so many years in Kendal he still felt like a bit of an outsider, and although he was pretty sure that his colleagues rated his abilities reasonably highly Ian Mann was the only one that he saw even half way regularly outside work.

  Maybe he wasn’t a ‘copper’s copper’ anyway, and in fact he wasn’t a joiner of things generally. Certainly not the Masons, not even the Round Table when he’d been younger. Hall liked his walking and cy
cling friends from outside the force, his music, films and his books. But best of all he just liked being with his family. They had been the epicentre of his world since the moment that Alice was born, and if anything that feeling had become even stronger as he’d got older.

  He walked into his office, which seemed so much bigger now that they’d taken the old filing cabinets away since the force had gone paperless, and booted up his computer. He typed a brief summary of where they’d got to, and what he expected to cover that day, and sent it to Robinson. Then he opened the email and looked at the time sent: 5.33am. He wondered what time Robinson would reply, but Hall was willing to bet almost anything that the moment Robinson opened his eyes he would check his email, and make sure that he sent a brief reply - widely copied - before he so much as took an early morning piss. It was the digital equivalent of leaving a jacket on the back of your chair when you went home.

  Hall spent the next hour reading statements and reports, and by the time he realised that he was hungry it was almost seven. So he left the building and drove to a cafe that opened early. He treated himself to a fry up, safe in the knowledge that he probably wouldn’t eat again for many hours, and was still back at his desk by the time the team started to come in.

  Ian Mann stuck his head round the office door before he’d even taken his padded jacket off. ‘Doc Beech is ready for us. I suppose there’s no point me taking my coat off?

  They were round at the hospital in ten minutes, mainly because the school run hadn’t started yet. Hall remembered that when he’d first moved to Kendal, newly married and living in a brand new house on a fresh-as-paint housing estate, that cyclists still poured over the bridges on the way to and from the shoe factory, the carpet factory and the dairy processing plant. But now they’d all either gone completely or down-sized their workforce radically. And, since the big new hospital had opened soon after Hall had arrived, the town had increasingly lived up to its ‘auld grey town’ tag in more ways than one. But fortunately for Mann and Hall all those retired accountants and local government workers from Manchester and Leeds, who had spent 40 years dreaming of a retirement in the Lakes, were still actually dreaming at that time of day.

  Hall didn’t like the mortuary, and since he’d been in Kendal he could count on the fingers of two hands the number of times that he’d been. He found himself thinking about his wife as Mann drove them carefully round town, and that just made Hall feel more uneasy.

  Mann didn’t seem remotely concerned about paying a visit to the mortuary. But Hall thought that he’d probably seen plenty of bodies, and had almost certainly killed people himself. It wasn’t something that they ever discussed. He knew that Mann had been married as a very young man, to a local girl Hall seemed to remember, but it hadn’t worked out. They never talked about that either, and even when they went walking together, usually up on to High Street from Patterdale and then right along the line of the old Roman Road, Mann never talked about about his life before he joined Cumbria Constabulary. He seemed determined to live in a perpetual present, and increasingly Hall found himself envious of that.

  Doctor Beech was waiting in his office. He’d already emailed over a copy of his initial findings, which Hall had just had time to skim-read through as they drove, and now he was ready to go through it, and to show them the body. Hall knew that Amy would be naked under the thin sheet on the slab, and that made him feel even more uneasy.

  Beech offered them both a coffee, pointing to the machine outside in the open office area adjoining the mortuary. Hall couldn’t think of anything he wanted less, but Mann said that he could go a cup.

  ‘Was everything clear in the report?’ asked Beech. ‘Manual strangulation, but we’ll do more work today on the neck. I’m pretty certain it’s going to be a man, wearing gloves, and he just had one go to get the job done. Exactly what I said when we first saw Amy in fact. Grabbed her from in front and just held on, so he was very certain about what he was doing. Very decisive in fact. Would you like to have a look, or are the pictures enough for you?’

  ‘The pictures are fine’ said Hall quickly. ‘So you’re very confident that we’re looking for a man?’

  ‘I’d say yes, you’re after a man. The chances of a woman having that large a span are very small, certainly under 10%. He was wearing thin gloves, leather perhaps, so we can be very clear about his span.’

  ‘Known to the victim?’ asked Mann.

  ‘Yes, certainly that’s likely too. The poor kid didn’t have a chance to put up much of a fight. We’ve been looking for DNA and fibres under the fingernails, and we have recovered some samples from under the fingers on the right hand, but as I said this wasn’t some sort of argument that turned into a scrap and then murder. There’s no other bruising, nothing. The killer just grabbed her and that was it. She didn’t have a chance to struggle. Otherwise Amy was in perfect health when she died.’

  The irony of that wasn’t lost on any of them, and there was silence for a moment. Somewhere nearby a tap was dripping onto stainless steel. Hall broke the silence. ‘So what you’re saying is that Amy very probably knew her killer, and that he probably met her with the intention of doing it, and that he never deviated from that intention?’

  ‘You’re the detective as they say, but yes, based on the evidence so far I think that’s a reasonable assumption.’

  ‘So we probably are looking at the dad then’ said Mann, a little gloomily.

  ‘Not necessarily’ said Hall quickly. ‘And you’re saying recent sexual activity, but no indication of a sexual assault?’

  ‘Exactly, I’d be astonished if we change our view on that. We did get some samples for DNA testing, so we’ll get a profile, and if you’re lucky a match, in another day or two. We know from her GP that she was on the pill incidentally. Had been for a few months.’

  ‘No chance of hurrying that lab work up I suppose?’ asked Hall.

  ‘No, that’s using the very latest equipment that they’ve got down in Manchester. One of your traffic boys took the DNA sample down to the lab just as soon as we recovered it. Toxicology will be sooner, probably today, but I’m not expecting much in the way of surprises. And I’m certain that she was killed right there, within feet of where she was found. She certainly wasn’t moved much after she died, and not at all beyond ten or twenty minutes after death. There’s more work to do on her clothes and shoes to confirm it, but everything physical points to that. I assume you’re still pursuing the theft angle as well?’

  Hall shrugged. ‘Only her mobile was taken as far as we know, and the killer didn’t even bother to take the cash from her purse. I know it was only twenty quid, but people have died for less, believe me. So while we certainly won’t ignore it I think it’s more likely that our killer took the phone because of the SIM. What do you think Ian?’

  ‘Agreed, though he’d have to be a total plank really. We’ll have a complete record of every number called, and the content of any texts, this morning. So that was a bit pointless really. Of course if the killer doesn’t understand the technology, then I suppose it is possible.’

  Mann sounded as if even a hint of technophobia came as a huge surprise to him. But Hall had been walking with him just a week before and Mann had complained loud and long about the complexity of his new TV and satellite combo.

  Hall nodded anyway, and asked Beech if that was it. Beech said he’d be in touch with an update before the end of the day. Hall was glad to be able to leave the mortuary without having to look at the body. He couldn’t see what earthly good that could possibly do.

  The two detectives walked back to the car in silence. Then, as Mann drove them back to the office, they talked through the resource plan for the day, and about which detective would be assigned which task. ‘Doesn’t sound like a random killing, does it?’ said Mann as he drove slowly round the one way system in town, ‘at least that’s something.’

  Hall had been thinking much the same, and he agreed. But he’d never believed that a teenage girl w
ould just decide to go for a walk in the woods, even if she was found just a couple of dozen yards or so from the nearest house, on a cold winter evening. She had to have been meeting someone already known to her. Her car had been parked outside her friend’s house, but they already knew that Amy hadn’t gone in, and she’d been due there at about 8pm. The CCTV from town was still being pieced together, but it already looked certain that she’d driven straight there from her dad’s house, with no stops or detours.

  So why had she gone to the woods? Hall had an idea. ‘Ian, do me a favour will you? When we get back to the nick would you remind me to get all the CCTV watched for a few minutes after Amy’s car goes through, and check all the registration numbers against everyone we’ve talked to. Any surnames that match, I want to know.’

  ‘You’re thinking the dad then? You think he followed her?’

  ‘No, I didn’t say that. Let’s not jump to any conclusions, but one possible explanation is that someone followed her in a vehicle, and persuaded her to go with them into Serpentine Woods when she stopped. Wouldn’t have to be the dad.’

  They were almost back at the station. ‘Do you want me to get someone to canvass the neighbours in the dad’s street then, see if any cars or people were hanging around?’ asked Mann.

  ‘Good idea, and not just the night before last. Anytime recently.’

  As they parked Hall felt calmer, and though optimism wasn’t his natural state of mind the initial PM findings were encouraging in a way. He’d have to brief the team, and of course Robinson would be perched on the edge of a table no doubt, but Hall felt in control. Without an immediate confession or a strong eye-witness there was never going to be an instant arrest, but everything pointed to the killer being already known to Amy. And that meant two things, both of brightened Hall’s mood. First, that the chances of rapid detection were much increased over a ‘stranger’ attack, and second that another killing was much less likely. Throw in the fact that a motive should turn up in due course and the situation looked more favourable still.