Shadow of the Beast: A DS Hunter Kerr Novel
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Many of them displayed signs of concentration – just what she expected at first briefing. It meant that they were already focussed on the work ahead. Taking a deep breath, she moved on. ‘There is still some work to do at the scene. Forensics are looking to see if anything has been left at the scene, tool-wise, by the perpetrators, which would indicate how she was buried. Except for her clothing, we haven’t found her shoes or any other personal effects, such as jewellery, handbag, purse, etcetera, which you would expect to find, so they are also looking to see if there is anything in the grave which might help us identify her.’ She clasped her hands and interlocked her fingers, ‘One last thing I want to raise and I want following up. I’ve passed this location over the past twelve months on almost a daily basis and, before it was knocked down, the chapel looked to me as though it had been set on fire at some stage. I want to know when that was. I know the building’s been derelict a long time so it might just be kids who did it, but now we’ve found this body it could also have been started to cover up the crime. I also want to know a lot more about that area, what kind of community it was and the people who lived there. Especially anyone of significance who we might want to look at as a suspect. And also, are there any reports of satanic or ritualistic events ever taking place there?’ She unlocked her hands. ‘Okay everyone there’s a lot to do. The DI will allocate you your tasks.’ She gave a last look around the room, hopping her gaze from detective to detective. ‘We have a female who was murdered some thirty odd years ago, buried in extraordinary circumstances and so far very little to go on. We also have a crime scene that has been severely compromised because of the digging, so our work is really cut out. Let’s make every enquiry count. We owe it to our victim.’
CHAPTER FIVE
DAY TWO
Hunter had just got off the phone and was gazing around the office tapping the handset against his chin. There was lots of frantic activity. Many of the detectives had phones pressed close to their ears, deep in conversation, and he knew they would be making appointments with potential witnesses or following up enquiries they had been allocated the previous day. A couple were hammering away at their keyboards. Hunter’s thoughts drifted to yesterday’s discovery. He still couldn’t get the vision of the cow’s skull covering the corpse out of his head. It had stayed with him all of last night, even lodging in his brain into sleep. Then it had strangely interspersed with images from The Blair-witch Project, resulting in a sleepless night. Now he was knackered and he still had at least another twelve hours of work ahead. The sudden movement of Detective Inspector Gerald Scaife roving into his sightline brought back his focus. The office manager was going from desk to desk with a handful of papers. He watched him place a couple of sheets in front of a detective and then move on. Hunter knew that each of these would be a Line of Enquiry. He had already received his LOE when he’d been first through the door that morning. He brought back his gaze. It was always like this during the early stages of a case and especially after morning briefing. In another half an hour the office would be empty as detectives chased up their assignments. He and his partner, Grace Marshall, would be among them. Last night’s television appeal had brought over two dozen new enquiries. Though typically there had been the usual crackpots amongst them – callers declaring they were psychics or clairvoyants, who had received a vision of the killing and would like to help – many of the callers had phoned in because they thought they knew who the victim might be. Although well intentioned he knew from experience that the majority of the calls would be fruitless. Nevertheless, they all had to be followed up.
The job he’d been tasked with was to get as much detail he could about the community, especially how the location looked during the 1980s. Not an easy assignment given the time-span, but he did have a head start. In his teenage years the fields, woods, and canal around that area had been somewhere he had regularly roamed and played with his mates, and even though he had never strayed directly into the streets around Chapel Lane, as it was seen as a place to be avoided for fear of getting a good hiding, he did have an impression in his head of what that neighbourhood once looked like and some of the people who lived there. He had tried to remember what his recollections had been of the place when he had joined the police eighteen years ago. It had been an area he had patrolled frequently, but only to chase away vandals or search for the occasional Missing from Home, because by then the commune was virtually derelict, the majority of the terraced houses boarded up, with its inhabitants moved to council homes in the Wood Estate less than a mile away. He had also been given the job of looking into whether the chapel had been used at any time by any cult or sect practising non-conformist religion. Immediately after briefing he had started his assignments and, thanks to his contacts, he had managed to track down the secretary of Barnwell Heritage Group. He had just got off the phone with him, having had to spend the first twenty minutes listening to him moaning on about the local councillors who he felt had been derelict in their duties with regards the protection of Barnwell’s industrial history, even suggesting that some of them were in the pockets of the builders and that is was nothing to do with regeneration. Some of what he had said had prompted a flash-back. He recalled that the local media had headlined the campaigns and demonstrations the Heritage Group had been involved in over the past eighteen months. And there had been a public enquiry – the secretary refreshed his memory that the Ombudsman had ruled in favour of the supermarket chain, much to his disgust. Although he’d had to suffer the man droning on, he did have sympathy for him, despite the fact he hadn’t the same passion about the destruction of the estate. To Hunter it had been run-down for as long as he could remember and as a police officer he had only seen the estate as a magnet for thieves and vandals. Toward the end of their phone call he had placated him frequently, reinforcing how vitally important it was to their enquiry they should meet, so he could pick his brains about the estate – to get on record what he knew about the neighbourhood and its inhabitants and give their murder investigation a sense of place. Hunter’s words had eventually struck a chord and he had managed to persuade him to meet that afternoon at the construction site.
Returning the handset, he glanced across to his partner sat at her desk opposite. He saw that Grace was talking on her BlackBerry, twisting loose strands of her hair around a finger. Hunter noticed that she’d got rid of the blonde highlights in her shoulder length tight curls, returning it back to its natural black colour. He thought it looked better. The vision of her spiralled him back to when he’d first set eyes on her at training school in 1991. Back then she had been fresh faced and, like him, had stood out because of her youthfulness. He and Grace were the youngest probationers of that intake and within days found themselves teaming up. Hunter quickly latched onto how quick on the uptake she was and it set in motion a healthy competitiveness between them to be the best, which, whilst challenging, was also fun. At the end of the course she outperformed him in the final exam earning her the accolade of Best Recruit much to his consternation. She still ribbed him about it, particularly when she felt he needed putting in his place. Upon completing the 14 week course they had been posted to the same division, albeit at different stations, and he’d come across her regularly. They had done their CID aide-ship at the same time and worked together on some enquiries. It was during those investigations he had witnessed first-hand that in spite of her turning up for work looking as if she was ready for a night on the town, she was not afraid to roll up her sleeves and muck-in. Since then she’d had two career breaks to raise her two daughters, though that had not dented her enthusiasm and passion for the job. In fact, just the opposite, and her effectiveness in detecting crime had helped her beat a path to the door of CID. When he had been appointed Detective Sergeant in the newly formed MIT unit two-and-a-half years back, and been asked to form his team, he hadn’t hesitated in contacting Grace. Since then they had forged a formidable partnership, wrapping up a number of murder enquiries between them.
In exaggerated fashion Hunter tapped his watch, and she responded by holding up a finger and mouthing that she would be one minute. He scribbled the name and phone number of the heritage group secretary onto a piece of paper and dragged his coat off the back of his chair.
Grace ended her call with a heavy sigh and pushed back her seat.
‘All done and sorted?’ enquired Hunter. He knew she had been allocated the task of finding out when the chapel had been set afire and to see if anyone had been arrested.
Shaking her head, Grace picked up her bag, dumped her phone in it and slung it onto her shoulder. ‘Not a chance. I’ve been passed from Communications to the Crime Bureau and they’re both telling me the same thing. That it’s too long ago. The paperwork will have been destroyed, and one supervisor, who’s a retired cop, told me that it might not have even been recorded anywhere given the era. It would more than likely have been a message on a slip of paper given to the community Bobby. And because the chapel was derelict it wouldn’t have been recorded formally unless it had been detected to keep the crime figures down. And after all that, even if someone had been arrested for it I can only link it if I know the name of the offender and then I can run their name through PNC.’ Letting out a huff she finished indignantly, ‘My only chance, I’m told, is to contact the Chronicle newspaper and see if it’s in their archives. Can you believe that?’
Hunter smiled, ‘I can actually.’ Then, he said, ‘I’ve been giving it some thought this morning because I used to play around that area in the mid-eighties when I was a teenager. From what I remember of the place it was a real rough-hole. A lot of the homes were boarded and empty and even back then I can recall seeing the chapel after it had been set on fire, but to be honest Grace it’s such a long time back I can’t pinpoint exactly when that was. I’ve got a feeling I would’ve been roughly fourteen or fifteen, so you’re looking at nineteen-eighty-six or seven if that’s any help.’
She pulled her overcoat off her chair and draped it over her arm. ‘I’ve been given a right monkey with this enquiry. Come on I need a decent coffee.’
* * *
They had almost an hour to kill before they met with the secretary of Barnwell Heritage Group and so they called off at a coffee place and got two lattes. Over the milky drinks, after sharing their current domestic situations, which usually got around to how the job impacted on their lives, they made a natural transition of switching the conversation to the investigation.
Continuing on a low-note, checking no one was in ear-shot, Grace said, ‘Not our usual blood and guts murder is it? This is one of the weirdest I’ve been involved in. It must have been a right shock for the digger driver. Just imagine, one minute there you are thinking about what you’ve got for lunch and the next there’s this skull grinning up at you.’
‘I have to confess I was really cursing the boss yesterday when I was freezing my bollocks off and getting piss wet through, thinking it was a waste of time, and that the pile of bones was some old fart who’d been buried there as a thank you for stumping up the money to pay for the chapel. I couldn’t believe it when the doc showed me that body. Especially with the cow’s head and the eighties clothes. I never expected that. The cheeky bugger eh? Burying a body beneath the floor of an old chapel? If it hadn’t been demolished, we might never have found her.’
‘It reminds me a bit of that case last year. Remember? The skeleton we dug up in the woods? She was murdered and buried in the eighties.’
Hunter did remember. They had almost lost their colleague Mike Chapman on that case. He had been stabbed while staking out the killer. He shook away the memory. ‘I’ll give you the skeleton in the shallow grave bit Grace, but she was different. We knew she’d been murdered and buried, we just didn’t know where her body had been put. This person, and the job itself, is a puzzle. We have no idea who she is, or why she was killed and left like that.’
‘Not at the moment we don’t but once we start checking the mispers we might get lucky as to who she is and what’s behind her murder.’
‘Fingers crossed,’ Hunter replied, finishing the dregs of his latte. Putting down his cup he snatched up the car keys, ‘Come on we’ve got a local historian to see.’
* * *
Hunter pulled off the main road onto the rutted dirt track leading to the construction site. There were still a few puddles in places but the going was nowhere near as bad as yesterday. Within a couple of seconds, he spotted the grey estate car he’d been told to look out for. It was parked in front of the entranceway. As Hunter pulled up behind it the driver’s door opened and a portly, squat man wearing a blue quilted coat alighted. Ratcheting the handbrake and killing the engine Hunter thought that the dishevelled looking historian with the straggly grey hair and beard ambling towards them looked to be in his late sixties. Hunter got out and greeted him with, ‘David Simmons?’
The man nodded, held out a hand and shook Hunter’s. His grip was firm. Hunter introduced Grace, then said, ‘Thank you for agreeing to meet.’
‘Only too glad to be of help. I’ve bought you quite a bit of stuff.’ David replied and turned back to his car. He opened the back door.
Hunter joined him and shot a glimpse inside the historian’s car. He couldn’t help but think that it was as untidy as its owner as he set his eyes on dozens of yellowing newspapers, bundles of stapled and ribbon bound documents, plus at least six rolled up maps scattered across the back seats. As he brought back his gaze he prayed he wasn’t going to have to stand around going through all this lot, having his ears bent again. All he wanted was a short account of how the Chapel Lane community used to be during the 70s and 80s, view a few old photographs and then be on his way.
Releasing Hunter’s hand and shaking Grace’s, David Simmons beamed them a broad smile. Facing Hunter, he said, ‘You said on the phone you’re local and you know this place?’
‘I know it, but not that well. I used to play around here as a kid and I did patrol it from time to time when I was in uniform but I only remember it as a bit of a dump. I can remember some of my older colleagues talking about what this place used to be like, especially some of the people who lived here. Some real hard cases by all accounts.’
David Simmons let out a short laugh. ‘An understatement. If the place was still thriving today I think it would be labelled a no-go zone! This was a hellish place to live. It was originally built to house the hundreds of destitute Irish who came across to work down the mines and build the canal. Very quickly the houses were crammed beyond capacity and many of the families were living in squalid conditions. There were no bathrooms and only outside toilets. Sometimes there were up to twenty people living in one house. Can you just imagine what it must have been like – all those people living on top of one another? Stereotypical of an area like this making many of the men hardened drinkers. Squabbles and fights broke out. In fact, there were a couple of murders back in Victorian times through family feuds, and a police officer was killed by two brothers during the eighteen-nineties. After that it was seen as a place with a reputation. No one with any sense chose to live here. You were bottom of the pile if you had to.’ Grinning he added, ‘Even the police used to avoid this place – only came when they had to. Though there was one policeman I recall who could hold his own here – Bobby Scot they used to call him. Have you heard of him? He was the community bobby around here in the sixties and seventies. He might have even been here in the eighties. He was a six-foot-seven ex-Scots Guardsman who was hard as nails. I’m guessing he was hand-picked for this area. I know nobody messed him about, or woe betide them.’