Gone to Ground

by Rachel Amphlett

  She exhaled as some of the tension she’d been bottling up left her body.

  Barnes was right, of course. He’d known exactly what she’d been thinking, and she had been mulling over calling off the dinner invitation since she’d walked through the door that morning. She simply hadn’t known how to broach it with her colleagues, knowing they’d be disappointed.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good.’ Barnes slapped his hands on his thighs, then stood up and took a sip of tea. ‘Don’t worry about food – me and Pia have that covered. I’d imagine Gavin and Sharp will bring beer, so if you want to pick up some wine on the way over, that should do us.’

  They turned as Debbie approached, waving a sheaf of paperwork at them.

  ‘Harriet emailed through the preliminary results from the paddock over at Marchant’s property,’ she said, handing them each a set. ‘No fingerprints – she suggests the suspect wore gloves – but there was evidence of a partial footprint in the mud near the gate post. The ground is quite soft there despite the warm weather we’ve been having. She says she thinks it’s a tread she’s seen in a brand of tennis shoes, but she’ll have to check into it. She’ll let us know as soon as she can.’

  ‘Thanks, Debs,’ said Kay, and ran her eyes down the report as the police officer returned to her desk. ‘This doesn’t give us much to work on, Ian.’

  ‘Guv!’

  The shout silenced the room, and she looked up to see Phillip Parker standing at the far end, a telephone in his hand. ‘I’ve got Robert Wilson from Maidstone Borough Council on the phone. They’ve found the pickup truck – it’s been burned out and left in a disused yard outside Headcorn.’

  Kay pushed her chair back and whipped her jacket off the back of it, signalling to Barnes as she hurried towards the door.

  ‘Tell him we’re on our way.’

  Kay bit back a groan as she climbed from the car and made her way over to where a group of crime scene investigators were already processing the burned-out hulk of the pickup truck.

  When she had first got the details from Parker, her first thought was one of surprise that her colleagues in the fire service hadn’t contacted her to tell her about the blaze. Arriving at the scene, she realised why.

  Despite the years since the recession, there were still sites around the county that remained abandoned – the salvage yard where the vehicle had been dumped being one of them.

  Graffiti tags covered the brickwork of a concrete building that might have once been the office for the last owners and amongst the decrepit and rusting metal hulks of machinery, the pickup truck had been set alight.

  She ran her eyes over what was left.

  The heat from the blaze had cracked the windscreen, and it had popped out of its frame on the left-hand side. A black congealed mess pooled around what had been the tyres, the remnants of rubber tread glued to the concrete apron outside the building.

  Her senses were overwhelmed by the stench of spent fuel, melted plastic, and the chemical undertones of obliterated upholstery.

  Scorch marks clung to what was left of the headlight sockets, giving the impression of unseeing eyes, while what was left of the original paintwork had bubbled before cooling, leaving a mottled effect across the metalwork.

  The vehicle sat at a precarious angle, and she guessed that at some point during the blaze the heat had become so intense, the shock absorbers on one side had melted.

  The door to the driver’s side of the pickup truck was open, and a suited crime scene investigator crouched at the foot well as he tried to collect specimens for analysis. The inside of the door had been completely incinerated, with gaping holes where plastic handles and armrests had once been.

  Barnes was talking to Robert Wilson from the Borough Council and she wandered over as Harriet joined them.

  ‘Who told you the vehicle was here, Mr Wilson?’

  ‘The company that has been appointed administrators for the business,’ he said. ‘The double mesh gates you drove through are normally locked, but when one of their security people conducted his monthly check, he found the padlock broken and decided to take a look inside. It’s lucky the flames didn’t spread to the weeds that are growing around here. With the dry weather we’ve been having, it might have taken hold and destroyed what was left of the building.’

  Kay wrinkled her nose. ‘I think whoever did this was careful to ensure that’s exactly what didn’t happen. He couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself.’

  ‘I’m inclined to agree,’ said Harriet. ‘We’ll know more once we’ve run some tests, but my feeling is that he used just enough petrol to destroy any evidence of his being in the vehicle, and no more.’

  ‘You think he’s an expert at this sort of thing?’ said Wilson, his eyes wide.

  ‘No. All he’d have to do is watch television,’ said Barnes. ‘Doesn’t take a genius to set fire to a vehicle.’

  ‘It does take someone with enough brains not to set fire to themselves, though,’ said Harriet, before heading back to where her team worked meticulously through the wreckage.

  ‘I’m presuming there are no security cameras around here,’ said Barnes.

  ‘You’d be right. Given the state of the place, I’m surprised they even bother with a security guard,’ said Wilson.

  Kay crossed to where Harriet had set a perimeter around the vehicle while her team worked. She watched the slow progress of the investigators as they collated what scant evidence could be found.

  Barnes joined her a moment later. ‘Mr Wilson has agreed to replace the padlock once Harriet is finished. Doesn’t look like we’re going to get much, does it?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. Makes you wonder whether he set fire to it straight after disposing of the bodies at the landfill, or whether he kept it somewhere for a few days and then did this.’

  ‘What you want to do next?’

  ‘I think we speak to Sharp. I’ll ask him to work with the media office to release a statement this afternoon seeking information from the general public about this vehicle.’ Kay sighed. ‘It’s not much, but maybe someone saw something.’

  Forty-Four

  Six hours later, Pia McLeod opened the door to Barnes’s house, a wide smile on her face.

  ‘Thought it might be you two. Come on through – Carys and Gavin are already here.’

  ‘What about Devon and Rebecca?’ said Kay, following Pia along the hallway.

  ‘On their way. Shouldn’t be too long.’

  ‘Whatever Ian’s got on that barbecue, it smells good.’

  ‘He bought some meat from an organic butcher – says he wants to try it out.’

  ‘Not—’

  ‘No,’ said Pia, smiling. ‘Not the guy you arrested. Someone over at Linton.’

  A knock at the door interrupted their laughter, and Adam held up his hand. ‘I’ll get it; you two carry on. It’ll probably be the others.’

  As he left the kitchen, Kay turned to Pia. ‘Thanks for doing this, I’ve been looking forward to it.’

  Pia reached out and patted her arm. ‘Ian feels the same way – he was so disappointed when he came home last night. For what it’s worth, I think you all need a break from the case, even if it’s only for a little while.’

  ‘You’re right. We could all do with recharging our batteries.’

  They finished talking as Devon Sharp and his wife, Rebecca entered the kitchen.

  Kay was so used to his normal workday wear of suits ironed with military precision that the sight of him in shorts and t-shirt was a shock.

  ‘Right – everyone outside,’ said Pia, and corralled them towards the back door. ‘I know what you lot are like – you’ll be in here talking work otherwise. Go on, shoo.’

  They made their way outside to where Barnes, Gavin and Carys were laughing and joking.

  Carys turned from a large stainless steel pot as Kay approached the table and held up a bottle of red wine before grinning and tipping it all into the mixture she stirred. ‘Gavin had
the brilliant idea of making sangria.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Carys – you’ll have us all recovering from hangovers at that rate.’

  ‘You’ll be fine. I haven’t made it too strong. Looks worse than it is.’

  Kay eyed the row of empty bottles on the corner of the table. ‘Who’s driving?’

  ‘Gavin said he’s getting a taxi home, so I’ll get dropped off on the way. Late start tomorrow, right?’

  ‘Cheeky. All right. Eight o’clock, not seven.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘What are you two plotting?’ said Sharp as he approached.

  ‘Nothing, guv.’ Carys grinned, handed Kay the wooden spoon she’d been using, then collected up the empty bottles and headed off in the direction of the recycling bin.

  Sharp eyed the spoon in Kay’s hand suspiciously. ‘She does know you don’t do cooking, right?’

  ‘I’m hardly going to stuff up making sangria, am I?’

  He smirked. ‘Think I’ll have a beer.’

  ‘That’s harsh.’

  ‘How are you holding up?’

  Kay gave the cocktail mixture a final stir, then placed the spoon on a plate next to the pot. ‘Okay. Frustrated, but that’s to be expected.’

  ‘Sensible answer. Rehearsed it, did you?’

  She grinned.

  Sharp checked over his shoulder, then turned back to her, his face serious. ‘When this is over, we need to have a talk about your promotion.’

  Kay took a step back, her heart lurching. ‘Is there a problem?’

  He held up a hand. ‘No, so don’t panic. It’s only that if you want to maintain a hands-on role with investigations, we’re going to have to come up with a plan to manage that. Headquarters won’t like it.’

  Her brow furrowed. ‘True.’

  He winked. ‘Have a think about it. Help me come up with a strategy, and I’ll help you avoid some of the more tedious meetings.’

  ‘Deal.’

  She smiled and peered over his shoulder as Adam approached and handed a beer to Sharp.

  ‘Enough talking. Drink.’

  Carys joined them with Rebecca and served the potent contents from the pot with a ladle she’d found in the kitchen, scooping up fruit into their wine glasses before they all made their way back to the paved area outside the back door.

  ‘Good timing,’ said Gavin, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder to where Barnes stood next to the barbecue turning over a selection of meat. ‘Almost ready.’

  Kay watched as Barnes used the elongated tongs to shuffle the charcoal pieces under the grill, the conversation around her ignored as she tried to clutch at the thought that had swept through her head. ‘Wait.’

  She strode towards him and snatched the steel tongs from his grasp.

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  She didn’t respond, and instead thrust the tongs into the coals under the metal grille. She turned them, mesmerised for a moment, then spun on her heel to face Barnes.

  ‘Where did you get the charcoal from?’

  ‘I popped over to the petrol station near work and bought it earlier today – managed to get the last bag. Why?’

  ‘That’s how he’s doing it.’

  Adam frowned. ‘Who? What?’

  ‘The killer. How he’s getting rid of the bodies. He’s turning them into charcoal.’

  A shocked silence followed her words.

  Finally, Carys cleared her throat. ‘Care to explain, guv?’

  Kay blinked. ‘It’s perfect. All he has to do is get the body to the site, light the fire and let it burn. That’s why the remains at the landfill site were scorched.’

  ‘And then he mixed the remains in with real charcoal to disperse it,’ said Gavin, his hand hovering over his wine glass. ‘Genius. He can dump it, or even sell it. No-one would ever find them.’

  Barnes took the tongs from Kay, glanced at the others, then back to the sausages and steaks sizzling above the smoking fuel. He wrinkled his nose.

  ‘I don’t suppose anyone fancies a Chinese takeaway instead?’

  Forty-Five

  Kay spread the evidence reports from the landfill site across the table, lined up the photographs that had been taken by Harriet’s team and Barnes while she had been speaking with the excavator operator, then turned her attention to the rapt faces of her colleagues.

  Their evening meal cut short, they now congregated under the bright lights of the incident room, the upbeat music from a nearby pub streaming through the panes, a stark contrast to the dark crimes they were investigating.

  ‘Okay, so this is what I’m thinking. For some reason, the two victims draw the attention of our killer. In order to dispose of the bodies, he’s dismembering them and then burning the remains. I’m working on the basis he has nowhere to bury or hide them. Barnes – what do we know about Travis Stevens, the blacksmith? Where does he live?’

  ‘Lives alone. After we took his statement at the weekend, admin put his details into the system. His driving licence is registered to an address near Warmlake – I put it through a search engine, and the satellite photo shows it’s a small cottage. Not much of a garden at the rear, and pretty isolated from the main road.’

  ‘That works in with the theory, then. So, he probably heard from Alan Marchant that he had an old pickup truck on his property. He sees an opportunity to steal it in order to move the bodies.’

  ‘Why burn them like this?’ said Sharp. ‘I see where you’re going with the method of disposal – that makes sense – but why murder someone then go to all the trouble of dismembering his body and turning it to charcoal?’

  Kay took a deep breath before she waved her hand over the photographs from the landfill site showing the scorched remains. ‘I think it’s symbolic to him. He’s doing this for a reason. I can’t figure out what the motive for killing Clive Wallis and Rupert Blacklock is, but to do this? He’s making a point.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not yet.’

  She leaned forward and tapped the plans of the hotel expansion she’d obtained from Kevin Tavistock. ‘The hotel expansion involved tearing down some old outbuildings here. It’s too late now to investigate that area, as any evidence of other victims being kept there will have been destroyed. Stevens kills again – but he has nowhere to dispose of Wallis’s body. So, he panics. He steals the vehicle and uses it to move the body to somewhere where he can burn the remains.’

  Kay paused and ran her eyes over the map spread out on the table.

  Carys cleared her throat. ‘But surely he needs land on which he can do that? You can’t just go around setting fires in the middle of nowhere, can you?’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ said Gavin. ‘Around here, people have been chopping their own wood and making charcoal for centuries. All you need is permission from the landowner and off you go. A lot of the farmers around here that own woodland like people to do it – it encourages new growth and keeps all the old trees from becoming a hazard for walkers and animals.’

  Barnes held up a finger. ‘Hang on. If you’re saying Stevens is burning the victim’s bodies to get rid of the evidence, where’s all their stuff? You know – clothes and things. Makes sense if he burned the bodies that he’d burn all the other evidence as well.’

  Kay turned her attention to Carys. ‘Did Harriet’s report from the landfill site mention chemical traces for acrylics, cotton, leather, anything like that?’

  ‘No.’ The younger detective’s brow furrowed. ‘She said the – erm – pieces were too small to extract anything. We were lucky to get the results from the teeth.’

  ‘Damn.’ Kay took a step back from the table and surveyed the documents and images in front of her.

  She knew when she’d ventured her theory that it was a long shot, but the fact that she had no new evidence to support it frustrated her.

  They were so close – she could feel it.

  She cast her mind back to the conversation she and Barnes had had with him at the craf
t centre.

  Travis Stevens was in the immediate vicinity of both victims prior to their deaths, and he had the means to dispose of the bodies.

  But why kill them?

  What did the two men do to him that warranted their deaths?

  ‘All right,’ said Sharp. ‘Based on what you’ve got here, I agree we should get Travis Stevens in for questioning.’

  ‘Thanks, guv. Do you want to observe?’

  ‘Yes. If you’re right about him and he’s done this before, then I want to make sure I’m in a position to brief the powers that be at headquarters that this investigation might be bigger than we envisaged. We’ll have to handle the media accordingly.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Okay. Go and get your man first thing in the morning.’

  Forty-Six

  Wendy Gibson put two fingers to her mouth and then gave a piercing whistle that sent a speckled woodpecker fleeing from a nearby chestnut tree in shock.

  ‘Bailey!’

  An excited yip reached her ears.

  She swore under her breath. ‘Bloody dog.’

  She checked her watch – she was already late, and the man from the plumbing company had made it quite clear that if she wasn’t at home when he called around at seven o’clock that morning, he wasn’t going to hang about.

  ‘I’m booked solid for the next three weeks,’ he’d said without a hint of an apology. ‘It’s now or never, love.’

  Wendy sighed and called the dog once more. She hated being called “love” by a complete stranger, but suspected the infuriating tradesman probably called all his female customers that, and his male customers “mate”. It saved remembering all their names, she supposed.

  Luckily, her boss had been understanding when she’d called him to let him know she’d be in late, even going so far as to suggest she work from home the rest of the day.

  ‘We all know what plumbers can be like,’ he’d said. ‘He could be there for a while, let’s face it.’

  She smiled. Working for a family-owned marketing consultancy had its benefits, and she loved the flexibility of her role. No doubt she’d have to work a Saturday before long anyway, given the number of commissioned projects they were taking on, but she didn’t mind.