The Rules of Murder

by The Rules of Murder (epub)

  ‘Davenport Associates,’ he said. ‘An accountancy firm. They’re the shirt sponsors for Walsall FC. I think he owns the club now. He’s loaded.’

  Of course, if it was football related, Easton would know.

  ‘Here we go,’ Constable said, grabbing Dani’s attention back.

  She looked to the screen again and in the top corner, from behind Sophie, the legs of Oscar Redfearne appeared. He stopped, his shoulders at the top of the screen, his neck and face out of view.

  ‘That’s definitely Oscar, isn’t it?’ Dani asked.

  ‘Unless someone else with the same frame and clothing was in that corridor at the exact same time,’ Constable said.

  Davenport’s demeanour changed with Oscar’s arrival, and not long after, the older man finally turned and wobbled away, something of an angry sneer on his face once he was turned from Sophie and Oscar.

  ‘This is it,’ Constable said. ‘Just a few seconds before we picked up Sophie and Oscar heading outside.’

  ‘Pause it,’ Dani said.

  Constable did so, and Dani froze as she stared at Sophie’s image on the screen as the young woman went to turn around.

  ‘Can you zoom in?’

  ‘I think so, give me a sec.’

  ‘It’s not even ringing?’ Matilda said.

  Dani turned to her. Matilda was staring at her phone quizzically. ‘I’ve got full bars, it’s not the signal.’

  ‘Sophie?’ Dani asked.

  Matilda nodded. ‘Her phone’s going straight to voicemail.’

  ‘Boss?’ Constable said. ‘What did you see?’

  Dani looked back to the screen. Her heart was beating several notches more quickly now than a few seconds before. She didn’t like this at all.

  ‘Is that as far as you can go?’ Dani said, as she stared unblinking at Sophie’s face.

  ‘I think so.’

  It was enough anyway, she realised. The image was clear and crisp.

  ‘What do you think, Aaron?’ Dani asked.

  Easton said nothing, just nodded.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Pamela said.

  ‘Please, could we have a moment?’ Dani said, to her and Matilda.

  They looked at each other questioningly before Pamela nodded and she and Matilda shuffled confusedly towards the door. Once they were outside Dani shut the door and turned back to her officers.

  ‘Boss?’ Constable said once again.

  ‘Those earrings.’ Dani pointed to the image on the screen. ‘One of them was found at the crime scene. Yanked out of her ear, by the looks of it.’

  ‘And now no one can get hold of her,’ Easton added.

  ‘She killed Oscar?’ Constable said.

  ‘Whether she did or didn’t, whether she’s alive or dead, we need to find her, and fast.’

  Easton nodded. ‘On it.’

  Dani’s eyes narrowed as she thought, ‘And make a priority on tracking down Arnold Davenport too. Right now, he’s one of the last people to have seen Oscar and Sophie alive.’

  Chapter Six

  Thick drops of rain had already started falling by the time Dani and Easton made it back outside, though the air remained stifling hot and even more sticky than before, making Dani’s head spin within just a few seconds as they traipsed away from the house.

  With the help of others from the homicide team, initial statements had now been taken, or were in the process of being taken, from the various staff within Drifford House. Plans were also being drawn up to get in touch with each and every one of the guests who’d been present at the party the previous night, with the Redfearnes now having furnished the police with a full guest list. A guest list which was eye-opening to say the least.

  Perhaps most strange to Dani, was the disparate nature of the party’s attendees, from Michael Whyte, a twenty-something England international footballer who now played for Atletico Madrid, through to Jasper Patrick, a sixty-something billionaire investor from South Africa who, after a bit of highly publicised short selling of stocks, was now one of the richest people in the world. Admittedly, plenty of names on the list Dani had never heard of, but the one and only similarity that she could see between them was that all of the guests were universally loaded, one way or another.

  Or did they share common interests that Dani simply wasn’t seeing?

  The idea of getting to the bottom of that, to the truth that sat behind the lives of the wealthy and privileged, was already making Dani’s head spin. Whether any of the guests were involved in the murder, or any other nefarious activities, their prominent nature only heaped added pressure on Dani to solve the case, and quickly, before the press and top brass started breathing down her neck.

  Regardless, her immediate focus was on Sophie Blackwood. Was she a victim or a suspect? If the former, was she still alive and in need of help? Either way, Dani would make tracking her whereabouts a priority, and had already arranged for two officers to go and speak to Sophie’s parents at their home, a little under two miles away from Drifford House, where Sophie still lived.

  ‘Do you know what’s bugging me?’ Easton said, as he and Dani walked along the gravel drive, and onwards towards the side of the house where Sophie and Oscar had come from to take them to the woods.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Wait a sec.’

  Dani paused in her step, thinking, as she looked off into the near distance.

  ‘Go and get Pamela for me.’

  Easton raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Please?’ Dani said.

  ‘Sure.’

  Easton trudged off leaving Dani in the rain as the bubbling thoughts continued. When the rain ratcheted up a couple of notches she finally decided to pull out her umbrella. Easton was back within two minutes with a curious-looking Pamela by his side, huddled down into her suit jacket.

  ‘Detective?’ she said when they reached Dani.

  ‘How does Sophie Blackwood get here?’

  Pamela looked at her as if to say, that’s all you wanted?

  ‘On her bike usually,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t live that far away.’

  ‘Where does she leave it?’

  The look on Pamela’s face changed as though she’d just had a eureka moment.

  ‘Follow me.’

  Pamela led them around the house, past the patio doors by the library and onwards to a much grubbier side of the building, where there were industrial bins, large chrome pipes sticking out of walls, and the constant whir of extractor fans from the kitchen and from the building’s air conditioning. This side of the house reminded Dani more of a hotel, than a family home.

  ‘This is the main service entrance,’ Pamela said. ‘We don’t really have a bike park as such, and I told her more than once not to just leave that thing lying about, but…’

  She trailed off as she stared over to the closed service door in front of them. Dani realised what she’d seen. Tucked to the side of the door, wedged between the house and a hedge, a shiny handlebar was visible. Dani walked over.

  ‘This is hers?’ she asked Pamela.

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘OK, thank you.’

  Pamela paused for a moment, as if unsure whether she should say or do anything more, before she half nodded and turned and headed back the way they’d just come.

  ‘We could get Constable to confirm she definitely did arrive on this thing and what time,’ Easton said.

  ‘Yes, we should,’ Dani said. ‘But the most important thing is that she definitely didn’t leave on it.’

  ‘Which was kind of the point I was about to make before.’

  ‘It was?’

  ‘How did the killer get inside in the first place? We’ve got nothing on the cameras of anyone sneaking around. It can’t be random that they got onto and off the property and avoided every camera in the process.’

  ‘But we do still need to get the cameras mapped out to determine any black spots.’

  ‘Even so. If the killer kne
w the exact position of black spots, doesn’t that tell you something?’

  ‘It tells me that they were well prepared.’

  ‘Well prepared. And possibly…’ Easton’s face changed to a look of concern as he looked back to Drifford House, ‘possibly they were already on the property.’

  ‘Already on the property when?’

  ‘As in, this was someone who came into the house through the front door, and they left the exact same way. You saw yourself on the CCTV that people were milling outside at the back of the house all through the night. It wouldn’t have been too hard for someone to slip by the cameras. We can’t rule out that Oscar was killed by someone from the house.’

  It was certainly possible, as that had already crossed Dani’s mind much earlier.

  ‘I agree this wasn’t random,’ Dani said. ‘It was planned, not just in terms of location, but timing too. Last night was the perfect opportunity. So the big question is why Oscar?’

  ‘And Sophie.’

  ‘There is one hitch to all of that, though.’

  ‘There’s more than one, to be honest,’ Easton said. ‘That’s why I said it’s bugging me.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Dani said as a thought hit her.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Come on, you’ll see.’

  Dani headed off back towards the crime scene. As they moved off the grass and into the wood, the ground underfoot, bone dry before, was now covered by a surface layer of sloppy water, the dusty liquid unable to penetrate the hard surface, and her feet splashed away as she traipsed along, soaking through her shoes and the bottom of her trousers.

  * * *

  The tent over Oscar’s body was now fully closed up. Several bodies moved about around it, all dressed in white, most of them on their haunches, searching, recording. One of the figures bobbed up, sensing Dani and Easton’s arrival. Tariq.

  ‘Detectives, you’re back.’

  ‘Is Ledford inside?’ Dani asked.

  ‘He is. You want to speak?’

  ‘Please. With you too.’

  The four of them were soon assembled inside the tent, out of the rain at least, though not exactly comfortable with the corpse among them. The smell in the tent was far more noxious than earlier.

  ‘I have to say, DI Stephens, this really is a mess,’ Ledford said.

  She assumed he was referring to the state of Oscar Redfearne, rather than to the fledgling investigation into his death.

  ‘These are just my preliminary observations, but our victim has suffered horrendous injuries, internal and external, together with what look like obvious defensive wounds to his arms and torso; I imagine this was a brutal and frenzied attack.’

  Dani said nothing as she took it all in. Ledford crouched down and with a gloved hand he gently pushed Oscar’s head up.

  ‘And there’s this,’ he said.

  Dani frowned. ‘A bite?’

  ‘Definitely teeth marks. And human teeth at that. Cut right into the skin.’

  Everything she’d seen so far had indicated that this killer was well rehearsed and clever. But if the killer had bitten Oscar, that potentially left a clear route to identification.

  ‘I’m guessing you’ve already swabbed for saliva?’

  ‘We have. Fingers crossed we’ll be able to get a DNA trace. And, of course, the bite marks could be matched to a dental profile later down the line.’

  Dani didn’t know what to say. Had the killer really been so careless?

  ‘Any idea on the weapon we’re looking for?’ she said.

  ‘My first impression is an axe, possibly combined with a machete or a katana, something that’s made for slicing.’

  ‘So more than one weapon?’

  ‘Almost certainly, given the variety of wounds.’

  ‘Carried out at the same time?’

  ‘Hard to say which wounds came first.’

  ‘Are you saying it’s possible there was more than one attacker?’ Easton said.

  ‘Possible? Of course, DS Easton. There are many possibilities.’

  ‘Sorry, Jack,’ Dani said, ‘but I was actually more interested in discussing the wider scene, rather than the body.’

  He looked a little put out. ‘I’ve not been here long, and it’s the body that I’ve concentrated on so far. I am a pathologist, not an FSI.’

  ‘Of course, Jack. I understand.’ She turned to Tariq. ‘Did you find the rest of him?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ Tariq said. ‘We’ve found most of what’s been hacked off, but unfortunately it’s… a bit chewed up. Foxes most likely. They’re all over the place around here. Apparently.’

  Dani tried not to wince at the thought.

  ‘Does that suggest anything about time of death?’ she asked Ledford.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Foxes will generally hunt at night, of course, but I think we knew the window of death was during the night anyway, didn’t we?’

  ‘And no murder weapon?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Tariq said. ‘We’ve plenty of fibres around the body and a few around the wider scene. There was a blood trail, which is more or less gone now because of the rain; it suggests he was possibly first attacked a few yards from here.’

  ‘Does it?’ Dani asked.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Couldn’t a blood trail indicate the killer getting away?’

  Tariq looked to Ledford who nodded.

  ‘Of course it could, depending on what you mean by trail,’ Tariq said. ‘By which I mean, how much blood there is at either end; is there an explanation for termination? Where does each direction lead? Plus, in some cases, you can tell the direction of travel from the spatter pattern.’

  ‘In this case?’ Dani asked.

  ‘We’ll have to show you on camera now, due to the weather, but the pattern of blood, and the amount of it, suggested to me, at least, that that was the initial point of attack, as opposed to the killer fleeing to that point, blood dripping.’

  ‘Of course, there’s no indication the killer was bleeding, is there?’ Ledford said.

  ‘Actually there possibly is. That earring you found earlier?’ Dani said, catching Tariq’s eye. ‘It belonged to a young woman who was captured on CCTV heading down here with Oscar, a little past six p.m. last night.’

  Ledford looked to Tariq as though the earring was something he wasn’t aware of.

  ‘You’re telling me this young woman is your suspect?’ Ledford asked.

  ‘That’s possible, yes. Regardless, she was bleeding. And now she’s missing. So whether she’s the killer or another victim, I would expect a trail of where she went, because it definitely wasn’t back to the house.’

  Ledford stared, or more like glared, at Tariq for a few seconds.

  ‘Let’s take a walk,’ he said. ‘I think we all need to get on the same page here.’

  They all headed back outside, where the rain was in a momentary lull. Tariq moved off along the edge of the water before coming to a stop not far from the tent, just past a young cherry tree whose fruit was traipsed into the mud around its trunk.

  ‘You can still see some of the red here,’ Tariq said, pointing to the now-increasingly muddy ground.

  ‘But what about the rest of the area?’ Dani asked. ‘Have your team finished scouring yet?’

  ‘We’ve done a first pass,’ Tariq said. ‘We found no other obvious signs of blood, if that’s what you’re asking. We’ve bagged plenty of items which may be relevant, or may be completely useless; rubbish, small bits of fabric and hair. Certainly, nothing that represents a viable trail though.’

  ‘But we have a young woman, bleeding, who managed to get away from here,’ Ledford said.

  ‘What about the other side of the water?’ Dani asked.

  ‘We checked there too,’ Tariq said, sounding defensive now. ‘I already said, we didn’t find any obvious trail.’

  ‘But where does it lead, over that side?’ Easton asked.

  ‘You can’t see from
this spot because of the undergrowth but there’s a redbrick wall about ten yards back from the water. It leads onto a private lane which connects the closest neighbouring property about a mile away, I’ve been told. We checked all along the inside of the wall too. We found nothing to indicate the girl or anyone else went that way.’

  The foursome fell into an awkward silence. Dani’s mind rumbled away. She looked down to the spot on the ground where Tariq had indicated before. Sure enough, among the expanding puddles of rain, it was still possible to make out the thin swirls of red. Dani followed one of the swirls as the water drained away into…

  ‘The stream,’ she said.

  The three all looked to her. ‘The killer used the water to mask their movements.’

  Before anyone said a word Dani was striding along by the water’s edge. At a narrow point she hopped over, just managing to reach the other side as she stumbled forward. She carried on, taking a few scratches and scrapes to her legs from the overgrown verge. Pushing her way through the undergrowth she soon came to the ancient-looking but handsome seven foot tall redbrick wall, capped with Staffordshire blue apex stones. The stream passed through an archway at the bottom of the wall that was covered by a metal grate, where twigs and other debris was gathered.

  ‘Bag it all,’ Dani said to Tariq when he reached her. She turned to Easton. ‘Give me a leg up.’

  Easton nodded and crouched down by the wall and laced his fingers together at waist height. Dani put a hand to his shoulder and pushed her foot into his hands then hauled herself up and grasped the top of the blue stones. Easton pushed and Dani clambered to the top. She glanced over, satisfying herself there was no danger on the other side, then swivelled and dropped down.

  She landed in a cluster of nettles but with her trousers on she wasn’t stung at all. She stepped out from the verge and onto a shoddy-looking single-track tarmac road. She looked up and down it. The lane curved off out of sight in both directions, and she was unable to see either the main road or the house the private road connected to from where she was. Twenty yards in the distance though, there was a small bare verge where no nettles or weeds or grass grew – a passing point on the narrow lane? Was that where the killer had parked? They surely had to have had a vehicle?