A Body in the Bookshop

by Helen Cox

  She had forgotten how no-nonsense Charley looked in her work suit with her dark hair twisted back into a bun. There was something really enticing about the many things Charley was. Playful and serious as the situation called for it. Intelligent and kind. Strong, but tender. Not to mention beautiful in her own unique way. Evie had never given much thought to how sexy the Scottish accent was until she had listened to Banks whisper a few choice phrases the other night.

  ‘I told you not to come out here, didn’t I, pet? There’s nothing you can do,’ said Halloran.

  ‘I heard what you said. But I wanted to be sure. Are you sure? It’s Donald?’

  ‘You know we can identify him,’ said Halloran. ‘From the interviews we conducted about the burglary.’

  ‘I don’t know why I came. I . . . can I see him?’

  ‘Kitt,’ said Charley. ‘If he was a friend, that’s probably not a good idea. Might be better just to remember him as he was.’

  ‘I understand why you’re saying that, and thank you,’ said Kitt. ‘But, I need to see him.’

  Evie looked from Kitt to Charley, who at last caught her eye, but almost at once looked away. Was she trying to act casual to protect the privacy of what they’d shared? Or being cruel and ignoring her? Evie tried to push that last thought out of her mind. She was in a professional setting and her behaviour was probably a reflection of that and nothing more. Probably.

  Halloran studied Kitt’s face for a moment. ‘All right, but you can’t stay long and you mustn’t touch a thing,’ he said, lifting the tape to allow Kitt to slip over. Evie tried to follow but Halloran lowered the tape.

  ‘What about me?’ Evie wasn’t particularly convinced she wanted to see a dead body. But she also didn’t want to stand alone in the dark and cold on the other side of the cordon to everyone else.

  ‘Just Kitt,’ said the inspector.

  On hearing this Kitt stopped walking and turned back to Halloran.

  ‘You can’t make Evie wait on her own, Mal, she’s driven me all the way here.’

  Halloran sighed and then waved Evie under. ‘Come on then. You two are insistent on costing me my job, it seems.’

  ‘Just try and make this quick,’ said Charley, as Evie ducked under the tape. Together they approached the body. A small group of Humberside officers stood nearby, chatting and recording some details in their notebooks.

  ‘These two are with me,’ Halloran said to the officer who looked like a weasel. A pair of beady eyes fixed themselves first on Kitt and then on Evie.

  ‘Not exactly protocol, is it? We’ve got a crime scene to protect ’ere,’ said the weasel.

  ‘I’m perfectly capable of supervising two grown adults around a crime scene,’ said Halloran.

  The weasel looked Halloran up and down. ‘If you say so, sir.’

  ‘You’ve got a torch or two with you?’ Halloran asked.

  ‘Yeah, the tide is rising and with every inch evidence might be lost so we’ve got to get down there sooner rather than later.’

  ‘We’ll join you shortly, and do anything we can to help,’ said Halloran.

  The officer nodded and walked off.

  To the right of where they were standing, an orange stretcher lay in the grass. It was covered with a white waterproof sheet. Evie glanced at Kitt to see she was also looking at the stretcher.

  ‘Is that him?’ asked Kitt.

  ‘That’s him,’ Charley said in a gentle voice.

  Kitt stood a little straighter, and then began walking towards the stretcher.

  Evie followed on and could hear the officers’ boots crunching over wet shingle just behind them. As they approached the patch of shore where Donald was lying, Evie noticed Kitt’s steps start to slow. Halloran reached forward and put a hand on her shoulder. She patted it before taking the last few steps towards the body.

  Halloran stepped round the body then knelt next to it and gripped the sheet. He looked up one last time at Kitt and when she gave him a nod, he slowly revealed what lay beneath.

  Evie hadn’t known Donald the way Kitt had. But she had met him, talked to him just a few days ago, and thus when Halloran unveiled his corpse her gut reaction was to look beyond the body, into the shrubbery, before she glimpsed anything she couldn’t handle. But thinking about all the times Kitt had been strong for Evie over the time the pair had known each other, Evie realized it was now her turn to be the strong one. She stepped forward and joined her friend by Donald’s side, even though the sight of his pale face in the darkness was enough to make her shiver. His grey hair was slicked back against his head by the rain and river water and the brown trousers he had been wearing were torn around the cuffs from the body’s time in the water. Poor Donald’s shoes were missing and his socks were soaked right through.

  Evie took in a deep breath and let it out as slowly as she could. If Halloran hadn’t pulled her out of the river a few weeks back, this could have been her. Washed up on the banks of the Humber. Her face vacant, unfeeling. All this time, she had been fixated on her scars when in truth things could have been much, much worse for her.

  ‘Oh, Donald,’ Kitt said, setting down her holdall and crouching by his side. Kitt looked at the body for a minute and then out towards the water. ‘Did he drown?’

  ‘We can’t know for sure,’ said Halloran with a sigh. ‘We’re still waiting for the pathologist to arrive but there is a large gash on the back of his head. Whether he was dead when he went into the river or was unconscious, I can’t say yet.’

  Kitt looked again at Donald’s face. Evie couldn’t be sure what she was thinking, but it looked almost as though she expected him to wake up. After a few moments of silence, she spoke just to him, so quietly Evie could barely hear the words. ‘I don’t know who’s done this to you, but I am going to find out.’

  Twenty-Three

  Five minutes later, on the other side of the cordon, Evie and Kitt were still trying to recover after the shock of seeing Donald’s body. A man both of them had spoken to mere days ago.

  ‘What can I do to help track down Donald’s killer?’ Kitt said at last. ‘I don’t care how small or menial the task, I just need to do something.’

  ‘The most likely suspect is sitting in a cell back at the nick,’ said Charley.

  ‘Who? Holt?’

  Halloran nodded. ‘We were able to get a search warrant for his house and found the stolen books just sitting there in his study.’

  ‘All of them? Secret Seven included?’ asked Kitt.

  ‘No, the whereabouts of the less valuable items stolen remain a mystery but they’re not really the top priority at this second,’ said Halloran.

  ‘But making sure we’ve got every scrap of information out of Holt is,’ said Charley.

  ‘So . . . you were able to arrest Holt?’ Evie asked Halloran, unable to look at Charley directly.

  ‘Aye,’ Charley answered with some force. ‘After finding those books in his possession we were able to officially charge him. His lawyer is one of the snidest in the local area though, which frankly we could do without right now.’

  Kitt frowned. ‘So, you didn’t get anything out of him?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ said Halloran. ‘When me and Banks started the interrogation his story was that he bought the books off a local dealer. It sounded plausible enough given that there was a withdrawal on his account for £60,000 in cash. He could have used some of that to buy the books.’

  Charley folded her arms. ‘But, two of our officers, ­DS ­Redmond and DCS Percival were watching from behind the mirror and, like us, they thought something was off. When we interviewed the book dealer, he claimed he had bought the books as part of a much bigger job lot – which he paid a few hundred pounds for – and hadn’t realized the first editions were in there until the customer had long gone.’

  ‘So someone steals these books t
hat are worth a mint and then offloads them at the first opportunity as a job lot? For a small fraction of their true value?’ said Evie.

  ‘And are we supposed to believe this dealer hadn’t heard about the burglary at Bootham Bar Books? If he’s part of the book trade in the area there’s no way he could’ve missed that headline,’ said Kitt. ‘All logic dictates he should have handed over those first editions to the police as soon as he saw them.’

  ‘We asked him the same questions. We barely had to apply any pressure and he rolled. Explained that Holt had paid him to say he sold those books on to him,’ said Charley.

  Just then somebody behind the group cleared their throat. Evie’s heart jumped as she was sure when she turned she would see Superintendent Ricci standing there glowering at them. Instead, however, she turned to find a black woman wearing a blue protective suit that looked similar to the scrubs doctors wore on TV.

  ‘Ah, Candice, you’re here,’ said Halloran.

  ‘And all dolled up in your favourite outfit, DI Halloran.’ Candice gestured at the less-than-flattering forensic garment. ‘He says this colour brings out the amber in my eyes.’

  Kitt, who had been looking quite pensive, smiled softly and raised an eyebrow at Halloran.

  ‘Always nice to be reminded that working with the dead hasn’t dented your sense of humour, Candice.’

  Candice chuckled. ‘I shouldn’t embarrass you like this really, especially in front of civilians, but then, you shouldn’t really have civilians here in the first place. Anyway, winding you up is just so much fun.’

  Despite the macabre situation, Charley, Evie and Kitt joined in Candice’s chuckling.

  ‘All right, all right, if we can maintain some level of professionalism, the body will need to be moved soon because of the rising tide.’

  ‘You’re all business, you,’ Candice said, ducking under the yellow tape.

  Halloran looked at Kitt. ‘She’s joking, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I clocked that much,’ Kitt replied. ‘I’m much more interested in the identity of the bookseller Holt is paying off than some imaginary flirtation with the pathologist.’

  ‘Oh, right. A Mr Derek Prince,’ said Halloran.

  ‘Derek – owner of Tower Street Books?’ said Kitt.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Evie, her mouth dropping open at this revelation.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Charley, looking between Evie and Kitt. ‘Spill.’

  ‘Derek was the person who told us about the rumour that Donald and Shereen had orchestrated the burglary for their insurance fraud,’ Kitt explained.

  ‘Alongside Olivia,’ said Evie. ‘I wonder if Holt paid her off too?’

  ‘You’re not a million miles away with that theory,’ said Charley. For the first time since they had arrived at the crime scene, she cracked a smile.

  ‘Why? What did Holt have to say when Derek gave him up?’ asked Kitt.

  ‘We had to apply a bit of pressure. Remind him that there was a murder charge associated with those books and that was when he broke and told us,’ said Charley.

  ‘The whole thing at Bootham Bar Books was an inside job,’ said Halloran.

  ‘Olivia?’ said Kitt.

  ‘Bingo,’ said Halloran.

  ‘But why?’ asked Evie. ‘Was Olivia promised some of the money?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Charley. ‘Holt and Olivia were having a full-blown affair. Someone found out about it and was extorting Holt. He’s married, you know?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Kitt. ‘But I might have guessed.’

  ‘Holt is wealthy but he doesn’t have large sums of cash sitting in the bank because it’s all invested, most of it in property,’ said Halloran.

  ‘So Olivia suggested he steal the first editions from the bookshop, sell them and pay the blackmailers that way?’ said Evie.

  ‘And the large cash withdrawal from his bank account wasn’t to buy books,’ said Kitt, ‘it was presumably to go towards the blackmail money.’

  ‘Holt was instructed to pay the sum of £100,000 in two cash lump sums. He paid the first fifty grand and the burglary was going to help him with the second.’

  ‘But you said he withdrew £60,000,’ said Kitt. ‘What happened to the other ten grand?’

  ‘He used it to pay Alim Buruk to rob Bootham Bar Books,’ said Halloran.

  ‘But he didn’t kill Alim?’ said Evie.

  ‘That’s the story he’s telling,’ said Charley.

  ‘Does he have any idea who the blackmailer is?’ asked Kitt.

  Halloran shook his head. ‘The blackmailer hasn’t been seen or heard. He used old-school snail mail. Postmarked Helmsley.’

  ‘Well, surely that narrows it down?’ said Kitt. ‘Helmsley is tiny. Can’t be more than a couple of thousand people living there . . .’

  ‘In the town itself,’ said Halloran. ‘But there are quite a few other little places in the area, not to mention the farms in the outlying land.’

  Kitt sighed. ‘Well, is there anyone connected with the case that comes from there?’

  ‘Not that we know of yet,’ said Charley.

  ‘And Holt is really denying any involvement in Alim’s murder?’ Kitt pushed.

  ‘Holt eventually confessed to orchestrating the burglary and to staging Buruk’s beating, paid a woman of roughly Banks’s size to do his dirty work, of course, in the hope that it would make her evidence unreliable in court,’ said Halloran.

  ‘Will you be able to question this woman?’ asked Kitt.

  ‘We are trying to find her but she was a professional,’ said Banks. ‘Expert enough to disappear when it suits her, so we’re not holding our breaths on that one.’

  ‘In hiring her, Holt was hoping it would be more difficult to track the burglary and assault back to him. But he was adamant he would never kill anyone and that this whole situation was just a blackmail gone wrong.’

  Everyone was quiet for a moment, and in that time Candice returned from her examination.

  ‘Right,’ she said, pulling off her plastic gloves. ‘It won’t be news, given the depth of the wound, that the most likely cause of death is blunt force trauma to the back of the head. It’s possible he was just about alive before he went into the river and drowned.’

  ‘Either way, not an end you would wish on someone,’ Kitt said, her voice hollow.

  ‘No argument here,’ said Candice. ‘There aren’t any scratches or bruises on his body. I can’t see anything obvious under his fingernails so it doesn’t look like there was a struggle.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Evie.

  ‘It means he wasn’t expecting to be attacked,’ said Charley.

  ‘So, either the attacker was very sneaky, or he trusted the person he was with,’ said Halloran.

  ‘One imagines he trusted his wife,’ said Evie.

  ‘And Olivia,’ said Kitt.

  ‘Do you really think Olivia would be strong enough to cause that much damage to Donald?’ said Evie. ‘She’s tiny.’

  ‘An injury like that doesn’t happen with your bare hands,’ said Charley. ‘Whoever did it was using a weapon.’

  ‘I assume these are all potential suspects. There’s one obvious thing that might help you narrow it down,’ said Candice. ‘A mark on his hand, it looked like faded ink. I could definitely make out an “a” in lower case. But if there’s anything else there it’s too faded to read. I’d need to get the body back to the lab to take a closer look.’

  ‘The letter a . . .’ Halloran mused.

  ‘It might be nothing,’ said Candice. ‘Might just be a reminder he wrote on his hand himself.’

  ‘Even that kind of detail can tell us something about the victim’s last movements. It’s still worth a look,’ said Halloran. ‘Thank you for bringing it to our attention.’

  ‘Do you
believe Holt?’ said Kitt. ‘That he didn’t have anything to do with these deaths?’

  ‘I do, and he has an alibi for the hours during which we think Alim’s IV was tampered with,’ said Halloran. ‘But now that we have a second dead body on our hands connected with this case I wonder what else Holt did or paid someone else to do in the hope the trail would never lead back to him.’

  ‘He might have paid someone off,’ said Evie. ‘But I’ve been in that hospital room and spoken to Alim myself.’

  ‘Is there a reason you are reminding me you took the law into your own hands?’ said Halloran.

  ‘I know you think I was an absolute ninnyhammer for visiting Alim like that.’

  ‘A what?’ said Candice.

  ‘But, I did it with all the best intentions,’ Evie said, glancing at Charley. ‘And I can tell you that if a person went into that room they would be noticed by someone. It’s a small room with several other patients in there. If someone Alim didn’t recognize showed up, they’d likely overhear the conversation and know something was wrong. But they might go unnoticed if they seemed like a natural person to visit Alim.’

  ‘Like a friend, or a relative,’ said Halloran. ‘Someone who wouldn’t seem out of place, but who wasn’t his mother. I— Oh God.’ Halloran’s face drained of colour. ‘Ricci’s here,’ he almost hissed.

  Evie’s eyes widened but Kitt didn’t flinch. Instead, she turned towards Ricci as she approached and smiled as though the two were friends. Though if that were true it was news to Evie.

  ‘DI Halloran, DS Banks, are you running a crime scene or a circus?’

  ‘A crime scene, ma’am,’ Halloran replied.

  ‘Then would you mind telling me what these civilians are doing here?’ Ricci was wearing a long, dark, waterproof coat over her brown suit. At the collar, Evie could just make out a crimson silk scarf, much like the turquoise scarf she was wearing last time they had crossed paths with her.

  ‘I just came to drop off this,’ said Kitt, holding up the holdall.