by Helen Phifer
‘I know, it’s all they had.’
Gingerly he held the bag in her direction, hoping she said no. She shook her head.
‘You sure?’
‘Yes, I’m good. Thanks.’
He didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. Ripping the wrapper off, he took a huge bite and half of the ginormous muffin disappeared into his mouth. He knew she was staring at him in horror and he didn’t care. Swallowing it down with a swig of coffee, he pushed the rest of it in.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, I’m impressed.’
‘Guy’s got to eat, I’m starving. You must be hungry; it’s been a long day.’
‘I don’t know what I am, ready for a large glass of wine or a shot of vodka perhaps. Not food though. I’m not ready for that. So where are we going, back to the station?’
He didn’t usually care what anyone thought of him, whether he was heartless or worked them too hard. But for some reason it bothered him if she thought he wasn’t being fair to her, and the fact that he hadn’t told her his plans to take her to Olivia Potter’s post-mortem was making him feel bad.
‘I need to go back to the RLI.’
Morgan perked up. ‘Are we going to see Bronte? Has she woken up?’
The look of joyous expectation on her face made him feel even worse.
‘Unfortunately, no. I have to go see the pathologist. He wants me present at the post-mortem for Olivia Potter, which kind of means you’re going to have to be there too.’
He focused on the road ahead, forcing himself not to steal another glance at her face. He didn’t know what effect she was having on him; he couldn’t decide if he was treating her as if she was his daughter or whether he was ready for a new friendship like he had with Amy.
‘Oh, I haven’t been to one of those yet.’ Her voice was quieter than before, and he realised she was probably feeling a little daunted at the thought of it.
‘To be fair, there’s not much call for it. Back in the day when I first joined it was a standard thing, everyone had to attend one. Now it tends to be only for suspicious deaths and murders. I’d let you wait it out in the car, but it can take a few hours—’
She cut him off. ‘I don’t need to wait in the car; before we continue can we get one thing straight?’
He nodded.
‘I might be new, young, inexperienced or whatever you want to call me. But, I’m not some delicate flower. I’m here to learn. You said I could work alongside your team. I only want to do that if you treat me like a part of it, not some outsider who’s along for the ride to only do the easy jobs.’
He’d just taken the biggest gulp of coffee he could while driving and began to choke on it as he tried not to laugh. When he’d finished coughing, and was sure he wasn’t about to crash the car, he turned to her.
‘Sorry. From now on you get the shit jobs like the rest of them without so much as a care whether you’re happy or not. I can be an utter bastard; ask Amy, she’ll vouch for me. That’s good, I’m glad we’ve cleared that up; in that case you can scribe for me at the post-mortem.’
‘Thanks.’ Her reply was curt.
The drive took a while because the traffic in Lancaster was getting busy, but at last the hospital came into view.
‘I’ve hardly been here before in my life, now it’s my third visit since yesterday. Don’t we have a hospital a little bit closer than this?’
‘Yes, we do, but it doesn’t perform post-mortems. Our hands are kind of tied.’
He drove around to the rear of the nondescript building with a small blue sign that read ‘Mortuary’.
‘You know I always thought a mortuary would be a bit scarier than this.’
‘It’s not scary at all, more sad than anything else.’
Parking in one of the two spaces, they got out of the car. Ben pushed the doorbell and they waited for someone to come and let them in.
The door was opened by the same woman who’d let Morgan in with Olivia yesterday. She was in blue scrubs, her pink hair tied back in a tight ponytail. Ben flashed his warrant card. ‘Declan is expecting me.’
‘He is; just so you know he’s in a bit of an arsy mood.’
She turned and led them inside. Ben looked at Morgan and shrugged his shoulders. He’d never seen her before and never in the years he’d worked with Declan had anyone described him that way. He guessed this was who Declan had been complaining about on the phone. She didn’t look much older than Morgan; maybe they’d both acquired new protégés at the same time.
His phone began to vibrate, and he recognised Amy’s number.
‘Amy.’
‘Good news, a patrol located the missing car. It was parked in a lay-by on Fell Road.’
‘Brilliant, I want a full forensic lift.’
‘I already told them that.’ She ended the call.
He smiled at Morgan. ‘Saul’s car has been found; hopefully there might be something of evidential value inside it.’
Twenty
Greg Barker sat in his office scrolling through the newsfeeds on his phone. He needed to know what was happening at the Potters’ house on Easdale Road. He felt bad; the police would no doubt want to talk to him once they discovered that until a few months ago he and Saul had almost been business partners on a new housing development on the outskirts of Rydal. It never took off and hadn’t ended particularly well; there had been an argument more than once, over the money needed to get it off the ground, planning delays and Olivia. Greg had got a little too close to her, been a shoulder to cry on when things had been tough between her and Saul. And now they were all dead. The girls too. How did that even happen? What was certain, though, was that once Jamie Stone learned the connection, he would make sure fingers were pointing towards him. It was ridiculous. Had he put too much strain on Saul with the stress of starting this new project and he’d flipped, killing them all? He hoped not. That would be an unfortunate chain of events. But at the end of the day not his problem, until the police came knocking and decided that it was. Considering an entire family had been wiped out, there was very little information about it. He picked up the phone. It rang for some time before the voice on the other end answered.
‘Hello.’ The voice was curt.
‘It’s me, I need a favour.’
‘Like what? I’m busy now; in fact I’m up to my neck in it to be precise.’
‘What happened on Easdale Road?’
‘You know I can’t tell you anything.’
‘Yes, I think that you can. I don’t want all the details, just what’s happening with the investigation. Where’s it going?’
There was a slight pause. ‘It’s nothing to do with me, I’m not working it. They gave the student I trained the placement in CID. I’ve been waiting a couple of years for that opportunity and I was passed over for an inexperienced woman whose face must be a better fit than mine.’
Greg could almost taste the bitterness it was so palpable.
‘You have access to the logs though, and must know people who are.’
‘Why are you bothered anyway?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be, I knew them.’
‘I’ll see what I can find out and get back to you. Don’t phone again.’
The line went dead. He swore under his breath. That arsehole Dan needed to be a bit nicer; he knew Greg could make his life a misery if he decided to.
The door opened and in walked Mary Jane with five women who looked even older than her, and she was ancient. Mary Jane stopped when she saw him.
‘Sorry, Mayor, I didn’t realise you were in. Just giving the newest recruits to the Friends of Rydal Falls a tour of the building before our meeting.’
He didn’t tell her that, if she’d bothered to look, the sliding sign on the door said ‘engaged’. Instead he pushed the feeling of heaviness in his stomach caused by the Potters’ deaths to the bottom and stood up. Crossing the room towards the group, he held out his hand and shook each of theirs in turn. Except for Jamie, he
never failed at winning someone over; usually women and men fell at his feet eager to please. And judging by the pink cheeks and huge smiles, his track record wasn’t going to be broken today.
Greg began his usual spiel about his role as mayor and they listened intently, hanging on to his every word. He liked it when his audience was this interested in what he had to say. When he’d finished he asked, ‘Any questions?’
‘Yes, what are you going to do about that terrible murder on Easdale Road? It’s terrifying to think that an entire family have been killed in their beds.’
He looked at the woman who spoke. It seemed she knew more about it than he did.
‘I’m afraid that’s not my problem to sort out.’
Her eyes narrowed and he realised that he’d been a bit abrupt.
‘What I mean is, I have no jurisdiction over that terrible tragedy. It’s the police who are dealing with it. It has nothing to do with my role as mayor.’
‘We’re not safe in our own houses though, are we?’
Mary Jane looked aghast. ‘Bertha, come on, this is hardly the time or place, is it? That awful mess is not the mayor’s concern.’
Bertha’s eyes narrowed to thin slits as she stared at him. ‘Well it should be. This concerns everyone. I don’t want to wake up with a killer standing at the bottom of my bed ready to knock my block off and steal my family jewels.’
The other women turned to look at her and began whispering amongst themselves. Greg wanted to tell Bertha to get the fuck out of his office; instead he smiled at her.
‘I’ll be working with the police to ensure there are more patrols. I don’t think there’s some madman breaking into houses and killing people. I mean we live in rural Cumbria. The worst crimes around here are sheep rustling and thefts from farm outbuildings. There’s very little violent crime, especially against strangers.’
‘Well that makes it even worse then, because it could have been someone they knew, someone we all know.’
A burning sensation began to rise up his throat and he wanted to grab hold of Bertha and throw her out of his office before she said another word.
Mary Jane had gently taken hold of the woman’s arm and was tugging her out into the corridor.
‘Come on, ladies, the mayor is a very busy man. I think it’s time for coffee and cake.’
A murmur of excitement went around the small group and they all began to push to get out of the door.
As she left Bertha turned to him. ‘Well I hope they catch whoever did this before anyone else dies.’
Then they were gone, and he flopped back into the ancient chair, loosening his tie. What the hell had just happened? He’d be damned if he knew, but whatever it was it had left him with a bitter taste in his mouth and a strong desire to throttle Bertha if he ever set eyes on her again.
Twenty-One
Even in death, Olivia Potter was hauntingly beautiful. Her sun-kissed skin and perfectly shaded silver-blonde hair made her look much younger than her age of forty-six. Morgan stared at her body, knowing it would be hard to ever shake the image of her lying on the cold steel table with the huge Y-shaped incision running from her collarbones to her pubic bone. Butterflies filled her stomach and she focused on the dead woman’s face. She looked healthy, almost like she was in a deep sleep and not dead. Morgan would bet that she was the type of woman to go running and do yoga. She tried to wrap her head around the fact that just yesterday, this woman had been a living, breathing person with a beautiful family and home. She would have woken up and eaten breakfast. Morgan hoped she had enjoyed it; she’d probably had a better breakfast than Morgan usually made.
She didn’t want to watch as Declan worked fast on the autopsy, his assistant following his orders, but at the same time, she couldn’t look away. He began to fold the skin, fat and muscles away, exposing Olivia’s internal organs. As he began to explain that he was cutting into the sac surrounding the heart, Morgan looked away. In between taking notes she focused back on Olivia Potter’s face and began counting the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, anything to keep her mind busy and not thinking about what Declan was doing.
When Declan walked Ben and Morgan out of the pathology lab, after he’d finally completed the post-mortem, the churning of her stomach finally began to subside. Fingernail scrapings had been taken along with other forensic samples, to send off for analysis. Morgan was feeling a bit out of it; thankfully she hadn’t been sick or fainted, though, which had been her biggest fear. She wanted to prove to Ben that she could hack everything he threw at her, and then some. She was, however, exhausted, and wanted to go home for a long soak in the bath with a very large alcoholic beverage of some kind.
‘I messed up big time yesterday, Declan.’
This statement from Ben brought her back to the present; he sounded disappointed with himself.
‘I took it on face value it was a straightforward suicide.’
‘And usually they are, Ben. How often have you come across something of this calibre? In Grasmere no less.’
Ben let out a heavy sigh. ‘Never.’
‘Exactly. You weren’t to know about the bruising around the neck. It was hidden by the rope. You had no way of knowing that the trauma to the back of the tongue had been caused until we did the PM, or even that the rest of her family were dead.’
Morgan kept quiet; none of this was anything to do with her. She wanted to say that not all of her family were dead, but she didn’t. Declan let them out and they walked to Ben’s car.
‘Should we go and check on Bronte while we’re here?’
He shook his head. ‘Not now, it’s been a long day and Amy texted me before the post-mortem to remind me about speaking to Harrison. I need to go back and see what he has to say for himself. He’s had a good few hours to stew now.’
‘Are you allowed to keep him that long when he’s not under arrest?’
‘Yes, because he hasn’t been detained. He’s free to go whenever he wants. For all I know he might have already walked out.’
‘But you don’t think he has.’
He shook his head. ‘Not if he’s got any common sense. His girlfriend is on life support and her family are dead. He discovered her mum’s body, so I should think he’ll want to cooperate fully unless he has something to hide.’
‘And do you think he does? I don’t know how I feel about him. He was so distraught yesterday when I arrived on scene. He looked genuinely shocked at discovering Olivia’s body. He’s an excellent actor if he is.’
‘I don’t know, usually there’s some connection between the victims and the killer. The way their faces were covered suggests it was someone who knew them, someone who didn’t want to look at them after they were dead. But if that’s the case, I just don’t know why they staged Olivia’s murder to look like a suicide.’
‘Maybe she came back later than the others and he panicked? Perhaps by hanging her the killer was trying to throw us off-guard, give themselves enough time to get their act together. Sort out an alibi, get rid of any evidence that could be linked to them?’
He nodded. ‘You’re pretty good for a rookie, you know. I think you’ll be okay at this.’
‘Cheers, I appreciate that vote of confidence, Sarge.’
By the time they arrived back at the station it was hours after Morgan’s shift had finished for the day. As they went inside, Ben looked at his watch: it was almost nine. It was also a good few hours after the end of his shift.
‘There’s not much for you to do now, so it’s up to you. If you want to go home you can, or you can see how the CCTV enquiries are going.’
Morgan wanted to go home; she was tired and every now and again she caught the awful, lingering smell of death, which seemed to have attached itself to her. She wanted a hot bath, but wasn’t sure if they’d think she was wimping out by leaving.
‘I’m okay for now. How long a shift do you normally work under these circumstances?’
‘Twenty-four, thirty-six,
sometimes forty-eight hours with the odd kip and shower in between.’
‘Oh, then I’m good.’
He nodded. ‘You crack on with viewing CCTV then. There was an expensive camera around the Potters’ property. The hard drive should have been seized by the search team and booked in by now. If you go and see John in the video-imaging unit he’ll show you how to access them. For starters, I want to know everyone who came in and out of the property in the last forty-eight hours before they died. Then we’ll go back further.’
‘Fine.’
She left him and went in search of the video-imaging unit. She could do this.
John showed her to a small room with a monitor inside and how to work the equipment. Realising she needed something to eat first, she went to the canteen and got herself a coffee from the vending machine along with a couple of bars of chocolate and a flapjack. Stopping off to grab a notebook from the stationery cupboard, she went back to settle in to watch the hours of footage.
There was no recording from the external camera the day Olivia Potter’s body had been found; it was all fuzzy. She made a note to get someone to check the outside camera and see if it had been tampered with. Dan was on shift tomorrow; she would email him and ask him to check for her. There was footage of the day before, though, and Morgan sat through it, her eyes brimming with tears as she watched the beautiful, seemingly happy family go about their business.