‘At a girlfriend’s? A sleepover, watch a few movies, but instead finding a quiet spot with Brad and settling down for a spot of romance, is that it?’
‘We’re old enough,’ Brad said, remembering his mother’s lectures on the subject when he’d been younger, not that she could talk. What with the unfamiliar face at breakfast occasionally, his mother insisting that he was a friend of his father’s and he had spent the night in the spare room.
‘Before your father gets here, Rose. Legally you’re underage, and Brad would have been guilty of a crime. Not the most serious, seeing that he’s young too, but he would have had to answer for it.’
‘We didn’t do anything.’
Wendy removed the bottle of wine from Brad’s bag and put it inside the large bag that she always carried.
‘You two are in enough trouble already. It might be better if neither of you mentions the wine,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ Brad said. ‘Rose’s father?’
‘Wait here. I’ll go and talk to him.’
Wendy moved away from them and walked over to the crime scene tape and the irate father. She told the constable to let him through.
‘Rose is helping us with our enquiries,’ she said.
‘She should have been at her friend’s house, not here,’ Rose Winston’s father, Tim, said. He had obviously been in bed when he had received the phone call, and under the tee shirt and an old pair of jeans Wendy could see his pyjama top.
‘There’s been a murder in the cemetery. Rose and her friend are witnesses,’ Wendy said, conscious of the man’s concern and undoubted anger. The crime would take precedence, but she could be sensitive as to the situation.
‘I know who he is. He’s no friend, just another rampant male, wanting to brag about it in school the next day, put it on social media. I’ve seen it all before.’
Wendy knew he probably had. The man was in his mid-forties, and his teen years were before social media and instant communication. He was, however, a good-looking man, hair greying at the temples, and judging by his physique, he was an active sportsman, and in his youth, another Brad Robinson. The man’s memory was selective because it was his daughter. How many daughters of equally concerned men had Winston in his youth tempted and succeeded with? Wendy knew the answer, also thought that he wasn’t the sort of man to talk about it afterwards. And if she was a judge of character, she suspected that Brad Robinson wasn’t either.
‘Mr Winston, your concerns aside, I need to interview them first. How you deal with it afterwards is up to you, but we may need to speak to your daughter after tonight. She’s had a fright, and there may be delayed shock. I would advise against you and your wife talking to her tonight. Get her home, put her to bed and let her sleep it off.’
‘I’ll take your advice, Sergeant. As long as she’s at home. She’s a good girl, but she’s still young, and the Robinsons are known in the area. You’re aware of his brother and sister?’
‘I am, but young Brad seems decent enough.’
‘A difficult age,’ Winston said.
Wendy walked the man over to his daughter; neither spoke, only hugged tightly. Brad tried to talk, only to receive a look of disgust from Rose’s father.
‘Now, Mr Winston, if you don’t mind, could you please leave me alone with the two of them,’ Wendy said.
Winston took Wendy’s advice and walked over to a shop across the road; he purchased a bar of chocolate and a hot drink out of a machine.
‘My father, he’s angry, isn’t he?’ Rose said as Wendy sat down beside them again.
Wendy, her two sons now grown up and married with children, could sympathise with the father and with Brad and Rose. She had been young once, and she had done what these two had; and then, older and not necessarily wiser, she had had to be what her parents had been, doting and concerned, attempting to instil wisdom and experience into teenagers, with their hormones, their peers, their belief that the older generation was out of touch.
‘He has every right to be, and you’re likely to get an ear-bashing.’
‘Not from Dad, he’s a softy really, but he doesn’t like Brad, not any boy.’
‘You’re both finding your way in the world. You’ll both make mistakes, tonight for instance. Let’s start at the beginning, and what you were doing in Kensal Green Cemetery.’
Brad told how they had been going out for a few weeks; how the two of them felt about each other. Wendy thought it was sweet that the young man had intended to take her to Hyde Park and to find a secluded spot. She wasn’t about to tell them that you didn’t buy the cheapest bottle of wine if you intended to wake up the next morning without a throbbing headache and a parched throat.
‘You’re outside the cemetery, on Harrow Road,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s a shortcut, I know that, but what else?’
‘I didn’t want to, not at night,’ Rose said. ‘All those gravestones.’
‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
‘It was Steph; she wanted to watch a zombie movie, I didn’t, but it was her house, and she was covering for me.’
‘I watched The Exorcist when I was your age. I slept with my light on for two nights after that. I know how you felt.’
‘I’ve walked through there before late at night,’ Brad said, calmer now that Rose’s father had been appeased for the moment.
‘I’d agree with you,’ Wendy said. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, only your imagination. You’re through the gates, then what?’
‘We walked through. It’s dark and eerily quiet. I’m frightened, holding on to Brad. We can see the gate out onto Kilburn Lane, the lights, the sound of the traffic.’
‘You’re less frightened now?’
‘A little.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘A man rushed past us.’
‘You got a good look?’
‘He had a hat, a coat, his face concealed,’ Brad said. ‘We were more interested in catching the next bus.’
‘And then?’
‘I looked over to my left. That’s when I saw a body on the grave,’ Rose said.
‘But it was dark.’
‘The street light was shining onto it from over the wall. I don’t know why I looked; maybe I relaxed a bit, seeing that we were nearly out of the place. I screamed, but Brad couldn’t see it at first. After he looked again, he could see it and the knife in the person’s back.’
‘It’s a woman,’ Wendy said. ‘Any idea who she is?’
‘We didn’t look that closely, but no,’ Brad said.
‘The man rushing by? Do you think he was the murderer?’
‘We wouldn’t know. How could we?’
‘You can’t. However, a man who concealed his face, dressed for a cold night, is suspicious,’ Wendy said. ‘Or don’t you think so?’
‘He could be,’ Brad admitted.
Wendy realised that asking for the opinion of a sixteen-year-old youth who had more on his mind than murder, or at least he had had earlier, did not seem the wisest thing to do, but the consensus from the crime scene investigators and the attending police was that the man they had seen was probably the murderer. Not only had the impression of a man’s size 9 shoe been found near to the body, but there had also been scuffing on the gravel path where the man had left the grass and moved away.
According to the dead woman’s body temperature and the state of rigor, death had been ascertained as being five to ten minutes before Brad and Rose had walked past, which meant that the murderer may have been startled by them and that he could possibly see them as a threat.
‘Your descriptions are vague,’ Wendy said. ‘Any more you can give us?’
‘It was dark. It was only on the grave that the light shone, and he wasn’t there.’
Wendy left the two bewildered would-be lovers and walked over to Rose’s father.
‘Take it easy,’ she said. ‘They’ve had a fright. It’s not every day you see a dead body; see a murderer.’
‘She�
��s doing well at school, is our Rose. It’s not like her to do something like this,’ Tim Winston said.
‘The first flush of womanhood? What did you expect? A vestal virgin?’ Wendy realised that she was being harsh with the man, but she didn’t need either Brad or Rose intimidated by her father, or nervous of the police. In time, they would remember small fragments of what they had seen, but it wasn’t to happen that night.
‘My wife and I, we’re liberal people. We understand the modern generation, been there ourselves, but when it's your daughter…’
‘We all react to type, isn’t that the truth? Anyway, take it easy for a couple of days, and I’ll be in touch again. The eyes see, but the mind doesn’t always register.’
‘I’ll not do anything. Brad Robinson?’
‘He’s not been in trouble, not according to us.’
‘His family?’
‘The sins of the parent, or in his case his brother and sister, are not visited on the youngest member of the family.’
‘If she had waited, chosen someone more suitable…’
‘She’s chosen him, and from what I can see, he’s a normal teenage male. We can’t blame him for his older brother.’
‘His sister?’
‘Nor her. She’s been at the police station for soliciting, but that’s all.’
‘Is she…?’
‘Is your daughter still pure and chaste, is that what you’re about to say?’
‘It was.’
‘According to her, she is, but you’ll not stop her, just hope that she exercises good judgement.’
‘We know, but Brad Robinson. She’s such a timid soul, forever reading mushy romance novels.’
Wendy left the father and walked over to where DCI Cook and DI Hill were standing.
‘Any luck?’ Isaac said.
‘Two young kids getting up to mischief, nothing more.’
‘But they saw the murderer?’
‘It looks that way. We’ll get what we can from them tonight, but it’s dark in there. At least it was till the CSIs set up their lights. They wouldn’t have seen a lot, and besides, murder wasn’t part of their plan for tonight.’
‘We’ve all been there,’ Larry said.
‘Not with a fifteen-year-old, I hope,’ Wendy said.
Larry thought back to his youth. ‘I might have.’
Wendy had to admit it was an honest answer.
Gordon Windsor came over. ‘You’ll want a brief report,’ he said.
To Isaac, Windor’s verbal report was as good as a detailed one from the pathologist. The salient facts would be given, enough to commence the murder investigation, to start to bring the perpetrator to justice.
‘We would,’ Isaac said.
‘Very well. Female, Caucasian, brunette, between thirty-five and forty-four years of age. Pathology can confirm that better than me.’
‘Identification?’
‘Nothing that we’ve found, and apart from the knife in the back, no other sign of violence.’
‘A random killing?’ Wendy asked.
‘No sign of a struggle would indicate that the woman was there voluntarily, which means she would have known her killer.’
‘A romantic tryst?’ Isaac asked.
‘In a graveyard?’ Windsor’s response.
‘A sense of the macabre.’
‘If it is, then you’ll need to prove it. We can’t see any signs of recent sexual activity, certainly not rape. Yet again, I’ll defer to Pathology on that. Whatever the reason, the only identification is an inscription tattooed on the woman’s right leg.’
‘What does it say?’ Wendy asked.
‘I’ll send you a photo. You can figure it out. We’ll remove the body in the next hour and take it for autopsy. I’ll need the area secured, and we’ll be back tomorrow morning to look through the place, see if we can follow the shoeprint, not confident that we can.’
It was close to two in the morning, and the traffic on Kilburn Lane had reduced. Across the road, Wendy saw Rose getting into the front seat of her father’s Jaguar, Brad getting into the back seat. Rose was correct that her father was a good man. The folly of youth, she thought, only to be thrust front and centre into a murder investigation. Whoever it was that they had seen, he had to be regarded as dangerous, and she hoped the two young lovers weren’t to become more inextricably involved.
Wendy remembered a time long ago in Yorkshire, up on the moors. She had been fourteen at the time, well developed for her age, and precocious. It had been her and a fifteen-year-old boy from the next farm and a haystack. They’d only been heavy petting, not that her father understood when he caught the two of them. She didn’t sit down for two days afterwards; the boy, she couldn’t remember his name now, had taken his punishment like a man, attempted to defend her honour. However, it didn’t stop her father laying him out cold with a punch in the stomach and a fist, hardened by manual farm labour, in the face.
Times had changed for the better. Tim Winston, upset and disappointed by his daughter, angry with the young Brad, could at least act rationally and treat the two teenagers with the civility and sensitivity required.
Chapter 3
The crime scene yielded little more. The CSIs went through the place extensively, and even though the shoeprints found alongside the body were confirmed with a high degree of probability as those of the murderer, no more were found on the footpath that cut across from Harrow Road to Kilburn Lane.
Pathology confirmed certain facts about the dead woman, including agreeing with Gordon Windsor about her age. It was also confirmed that she was not a drug addict and in good health. No sign of sexual activity at the time of her death, which precluded sex as a motive. A notice had been placed at both entrances of the path that Brad and Rose had traversed, with officers questioning those passing by – the cemetery was closed to pedestrian traffic – as to whether they had walked through in the last couple of days, and if they had seen anything suspicious, anyone loitering, in particular in the vicinity of the grave that the woman had died on.
The only piece of luck to come from the questioning was that one man confirmed he had walked through at 9.36 p.m. and had seen nothing. The time had been checked against the bus he had alighted from, found from the bus company to be on schedule, and confirmed that the bus stop was next to the Kilburn Lane entrance. The man, a salesman in a menswear shop on Oxford Street, had admitted to having had a few drinks after work and feeling slightly tipsy, but was adamant he had seen nothing, although he would have if there had been any noise, or anyone hanging back in the shadows. A timid man, Larry thought, when he was interviewed at Challis Street later in the day, the sort of man who’d jump out of his skin if someone said boo to him. However, his testimony was regarded as sound, which narrowed the stabbing of the woman to between 9.38 p.m. and 10.14 p.m., the latter time based on Rose arriving two minutes late at Harrow Road, and the time it took to walk through the park.
Pathology agreed with the time of death, more accurate than usual, but it did not help with who had murdered the woman. She was marginally overweight, with poor muscle tone which indicated little exercise, white, presumed to be English, but with the recent wave of new arrivals in the country, that couldn’t be stated with more than a ninety per cent accuracy. The clothes she wore, a blue skirt, a white top, sandals on her feet, could all have been bought in a hundred high street stores in London, as well as on the continent. It was an avenue of enquiry to follow up on, and a couple of uniforms were given the task: an eager policewoman in her early twenties and an unattractive policeman in his thirties who Wendy didn’t like, believing the man had a chip on his shoulder and an unhealthy attitude to women, on account of his condescending manner when she had instructed the two police constables on what they were looking for, and how to go about the questioning.
‘We might get a quicker result if we go online,’ Constable Kate Baxter suggested before she and Constable Barry Ecclestone walked out of the door. Ecclestone, judging by his
face, Wendy could see, was not pleased to be held back in the office for any longer than necessary. He was a slovenly man who would just do his duty, Wendy surmised, never rising above the melee, not amounting to much in life and in the London Metropolitan Police; definitely not a man for Homicide.
Wendy left the two of them to it, and they went to the back of the office, found themselves a couple of desks. Kate Baxter opened up a laptop, Ecclestone checked out the coffee machine and what he could buy from a vending machine in the hallway outside.
What was of more interest than the clothing was the inscription on the dead woman’s leg, found to be a Buddhist chant in Sanskrit that translated to ‘Strength through adversity’, which meant that the woman had experienced hardship, or she adhered to a belief in Buddhism, or she just liked the inscription. It had been professionally tattooed, which would help in identifying the tattoo shops that were capable of such detail and quality. Yet again, pounding the streets, but Wendy would undertake that herself.
Bridget Halloran stayed in the office; she dealt with the paperwork, prepared the prosecution cases, coordinated the support staff who dealt with the collecting of evidence, the filing of it, the documentation, the peripheral activities. She was a great friend of Wendy’s, and they shared a house now, since the death of Wendy’s husband, and after Bridget had kicked out her last live-in lover, although Bridget, younger by seven years than Wendy at forty-eight, still had the occasional man to the house; not that Wendy was concerned, as she was always discreet. The only consternation to her was that she didn’t have the success that Bridget had, although at fifty-five and suffering from arthritis and now high blood pressure, she knew that she had not maintained the same vitality as her friend, the spark that men found attractive.
And besides, Wendy had to admit that it didn’t worry her either way, not that much, not anymore, but still…
***
Apart from the clothing and the inscription, no further indications as to the woman’s identity were found. As Isaac Cook saw it, that was the primary focus, and if the man had killed once, a seemingly premeditated crime as the woman had apparently been at the graveside willingly, he could kill again.
Grave Passion Page 2