by M K Farrar
Ryan agreed. “I assume a search has already been done of the surrounding area and no one was found? Whoever was driving didn’t manage to climb out of the car and then crawl into the woods?”
“My officers have done an initial search of the area, in case the driver was in a daze and wandered off and collapsed nearby, but we haven’t found anything yet. There was a blood trail heading out towards the road, but then it stopped. I’ve requested the helicopter and a dog unit, but as you can see, they’re not here yet.”
“The doors were shut.” Erica nodded to the car.
PS Fortum offered her a tight smile. “That’s right. When the boys found the car, all the doors were already shut, so whoever was driving not only sustained the kind of injury to create that much blood, but also managed to climb out of the car and then bothered to shut the door behind them again. There was also significant damage to the steering column, but the key was missing from the ignition.”
“There’s the possibility more than one person was in the car,” Ryan said. “If they weren’t hurt so badly, they might have helped the driver out, took out the key, and then shut the car door.”
“And not called an ambulance?” Erica frowned, her lips twisted. “The only reason they’d do that is if they didn’t want to be caught driving the car.”
Fortum raised her eyebrows. “Or didn’t want to be caught at all.”
Erica turned in the direction of the road. “If they got back to the road, someone might have picked them up.”
“Considering the amount of blood inside the vehicle,” Fortum said, “the driver would have been in a hell of a state. I find it hard to imagine someone would have picked them up without insisting on taking them to hospital, and I’ve had one of my officers call around, and no one matching the description of possible injuries has been brought in.”
Ryan tightened his lips. “Unless it was someone they already knew. Someone who knew taking them to hospital would cause problems.”
All of this was just speculation, of course. Until they had a report back from SOCO, they wouldn’t know for sure how many people had been in the vehicle. There was blood spatter on both seats, but that could have happened after the accident and while they were trying to get out. Until forensics ran it, they wouldn’t know if all the blood belonged to the same person.
Ryan considered the weather being a factor, but there wasn’t any wind that might have blown the door shut, and the car was well sheltered in its current position. “Maybe one of the boys shut the door.”
Fortum shook her head. “They said they didn’t. They said they cupped their hands to the glass to look inside and when they saw all the blood, they called triple-nine.”
“How did they call triple-nine?” Erica asked.
“The older one had a mobile phone.”
Ryan rolled his eyes. “They’ll be getting mobile phones at birth at this rate.”
Fortum shrugged. “Well, in this case it was handy that he had it on him. They waited right here until the responding officers showed up. Their parents have been informed and are on their way.”
“I’ll want to talk to the boys, too,” Ryan said.
“Of course. They’ve been separated and placed into the backs of two of the squad cars. I have my officers watching over them.”
“Good. Any other witnesses?”
“Not so far. But we’ll put out a social media request to see if anyone saw the accident or perhaps the car right before the accident.”
Ryan furrowed his brow. “Surely someone would have called it in if they’d seen anything.”
“Maybe, but you never know.”
“I assume we’re going to be all out of luck as far as CCTV goes all the way out here as well.”
Fortum gave him an apologetic smile. “Nothing on the road, and definitely nothing here.”
“There’s a pub farther down the road,” Erica said, “and the villages we came through have a couple of speed cameras as well. One of the houses might have CCTV cameras, or the pub. We should check the speed camera footage as it might have caught something.”
The rumble of car engines approached and then cut off again.
A female voice called out, “Sarge, the boys’ mothers are here.”
Fortum threw Ryan a smile. “Best you go and hear their side of the story for yourselves.”
Chapter Three
ERICA SWIFT FOLLOWED her boss back out to the road where two civilian vehicles had been blocked by the marked police car. Two women had been stopped by the uniformed officer, but they both had the same stance of craned necks and worried expressions as they tried to see past him.
“I want to talk to the boys before we let their mothers anywhere near them,” Ryan said. “You take one, and I’ll speak to the other. Make sure they don’t give us any reason to suspect them of foul play. If their stories match up, we can let them go with their parents for the night and speak to them again tomorrow.”
“Yes, boss.”
They separated. Erica went to one of the police vehicles while Ryan took the other.
She reached the car and showed her ID to the uniformed officer standing nearby. He nodded at her and opened the back door. Right away, the boy inside swung his legs out of the car as though he thought he was going to get out, but Erica put out her hand to stop him, so he ended up sitting on the back seat with his feet on the road.
“Hi,” she said, and dropped to a crouch to bring them both to a more equal level. “I’m DS Swift. What’s your name?”
The boy eyed her mistrustfully. “Conner Lowry.”
“How old are you Conner?”
“Eleven.”
“The same age as your friend? Liam, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but I’m older.”
He had a sulky way about him, as though her mere presence was an irritation. He didn’t seem to want to meet her eye, but she had the feeling he would have been like that with any adult, and it wasn’t just that she was a detective and he’d been a witness to a crime.
“The two of you are at school together?” she asked.
His gaze flicked to hers and shifted away again. “That’s right.”
“Can you tell me what you were doing before you found the car?”
She had to remind herself that he was just a child, though the length of his legs hinted at him being as tall as she was. She made sure she kept a light tone to her voice, imagining she was talking to her daughter, rather than this sullen boy.
He shrugged. “We were just hanging out. Walking and stuff.”
“Do you often take this route? It’s quite a long way from home, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes. Liam wanted to turn back and go home, but I told him I’d buy some sweets at the shop if he kept going, so he did.”
“What time do you think you saw the car?”
He blinked rapidly and twisted his hands in his lap “Not sure. Sometime after five. Maybe five thirty. Dunno. I wasn’t really paying attention to the time.”
Erica raised an eyebrow. “Even though your parents would have wanted you home?”
“Yeah, I s’pose. Didn’t really think about it.”
Typical of kids his age. Some of them didn’t seem to have the part of their brain developed yet that allowed them to consider how others—namely their parents—would feel when they were late.
“So, you came across the car,” Erica continued. “Which of you saw it first?”
“I did, I think.”
She shifted her weight from one side to the other. “And then what did you do?”
“I went over and checked through the window.”
“Which window?”
“The passenger side ’cause that’s what we were closest to. I thought I was going to see the driver lying there, and figured he might need help or something, but there was no one there.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I had my phone with me, so I called nine-nine-nine.”
“You did a really good jo
b by doing that,” she said, and the boy sat up straighter, his chest puffing out.
“What about other people. Did you hear or see anyone else hanging around?”
He shook his head. “No, it was just us.”
“And there was no sign of the driver?”
“No.”
Her thighs were starting to ache from being crouched for so long. “Okay, thank you for your help, Conner. It looks like your mum is here to collect you, but we’re probably going to need to speak to you again tomorrow. We’ll let you get some rest first. I know you’ve had a big day.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything else. Erica stood and glanced over to where it looked as though DI Chase was done with the other boy. She walked back to join him, and they compared notes.
“Okay,” Ryan said with a nod, “it looks as though they’re both telling the same story.
The two mothers were both waiting anxiously, clearly worried about their children.
“It’s okay, let them through,” Ryan called out.
The uniformed officer stepped out of the way, and the two women hurried past.
“We got a call,” the one with blonde hair said as they approached. “Our boys found a crashed car.”
“That’s right, but don’t worry,” he assured them. “They’re both safe.”
“Oh, thank God.” The brunette clutched her hand to her chest. “Can we see them?”
“Sorry, what was your name?” Erica asked, needing to make sure they had the right people.
“I’m Philippa Lowry,” the blonde said, “and this is Marie Gilbert.”
“Liam’s mum,” Marie Gilbert added.
Erica nodded. “Of course. Come this way.”
The boys’ long legs and lanky torsos emerged from each of the vehicles.
Philippa Lowry rushed up to her son. “Oh my God, are you all right?”
The slightly taller of the two boys, with dark-blond hair and blue eyes, shrugged his mother away. “Yeah, Mum. I’m fine. Jeez, don’t make a fuss.”
The second boy allowed his mother to hug him, but his gaze shifted to his friend, as though checking he hadn’t been seen.
“Thank you for coming,” Erica said. “I’m DS Swift. We’ll need to speak to both of the boys again in more detail. It’s probably best we do it down at the station tomorrow since it’s already getting late.”
The lack of daylight wasn’t going to help them when it came to the Scenes of Crime Officers checking over the car and surrounding area, or in them finding the missing driver. They’d bring in floodlights, but nothing beat regular daylight.
“Yes, of course,” Philippa Lowry said, her face taut with worry. “Whatever we can do to help. I hope no one was hurt.”
Her son glanced over at her—he was as tall as she was. “Mum, there’s blood everywhere. Someone was definitely hurt.”
Erica didn’t miss the hint of pleasure and excitement in the boy’s tone. “Unfortunately, it does look that way, which is why it’s really important that you make sure you tell us everything you know, no matter how small or unimportant it might seem to you. Even the tiniest detail might help us.”
It wasn’t that she thought they had anything to do with the car or the missing driver, but there was always the chance an inquisitive boy might have done something to alter the crime scene before they’d arrived.
“So, we’re okay to take them home?” Marie Gilbert asked.
Erica handed both the women her card. “Yes, but we’ll need to question the boys soon, so expect a call.”
Ryan stepped in, clearing his throat. “Actually, if I can just ask one more question before you go.”
Both boys nodded obediently. The two women took notice of DI Chase, suddenly standing straighter and touching their hair. The blonde mother threw him an appreciative glance. It was something Erica had seen on many occasions. The combination of a suit, dark hair, and blue eyes that creased at the corners when he smiled—not that he smiled often—caught a little attention from the women he encountered.
“Are you sure you didn’t do anything to the car after you found it?” he asked the boys. “You didn’t open or close any doors for example?”
Conner Lowry shook his head. “We didn’t touch the doors. We just looked through the window, I swear.”
Their prints would be found on the door handle, if they did, assuming they didn’t think to wipe them down.
Ryan nodded. “Okay, well, we’ll speak to you again in more detail very soon.”
With arms around their sons’ shoulders, the two women thanked the detectives and hurried away with the boys.
“DI Chase,” Sergeant Fortum called from the direction of the crime scene. “I’ve just had a call from one of the officers I sent to the registered keeper’s house. You’re going to want to get down there.”
Ryan frowned. “What’s happened?”
“They found two bodies at the address. A woman and a child. There hasn’t been an official identification made yet, but we believe them to be Elizabeth Lloyd and her six-year-old daughter, Kiera Lloyd.”
Erica’s stomach twisted. She always struggled with cases that involved children. “Jesus.”
“No sign of the husband?” Ryan asked.
Erica glanced at him. “You think he might have been driving the car?”
He shrugged. “It’s certainly possible. He could have been making a getaway.” Ryan addressed Fortum. “Do we have a name for the husband.”
“Yes,” she said. “Douglas Paul Lloyd, forty-two years old, same address.”
“Let’s get a PCN check on that name. Find out if he’s already known to us.”
Erica couldn’t help wondering if the amount of blood found in the car was because the husband had been hurt in the attack. Had he been hurt by the wife and child, perhaps defending themselves? Or had he been hurt by whoever killed the wife and child, and he took the car and ran?
There was a third possibility.
“The husband might have been forced to drive,” Erica said. “If there was someone in the passenger seat, it might have been the attacker making him drive and he swung the car off the road, perhaps hoping to injure the attacker and then escape.”
Ryan’s lips thinned. “Shit, we need CCTV footage. We need to know how many people were in the car when it crashed.”
She followed her boss’s train of thought with relative ease and picked up where he’d left off. “If it was only the husband driving, he was most likely responsible for killing his family, but if there was someone else in the car, then the husband was also a victim.”
“Potentially.”
“Or else he had a cohort, but either way, we don’t know where he is. Has he been abducted or is he in hiding?”
Ryan grimaced. “I want to see that house so we can get a better idea of what happened in the time leading up to the crash.”
As they headed back to the car, the Police Dog Unit showed up. If anyone was going to track down the missing driver, it would be them.
Overhead came the familiar thwack of helicopter blades approaching.
Douglas Lloyd, wherever he was, wouldn’t get far.
Chapter Four
THE TENSION IN THE car was palpable as they left the outskirts of Bristol and drove across the city to the address of the registered keeper, Elizabeth Lloyd. The worst of the rush-hour traffic that they’d encountered on the way to the scene of the car accident had dispersed, so they made good time.
When he’d got up that morning, Ryan hadn’t been expecting to deal with not one, but two new interlinked crimes. That was one thing he enjoyed about the job—no two days were ever the same. He doubted he’d be the only detective at the scene—a double murder was a big deal—but he wanted to see the second crime scene for himself so he could try to get an idea about how it had evolved from the crashed car and the missing driver.
Not that he took any pleasure in there having been a double murder, and attending the scene of a death of a child was always harder
than that of an adult.
Beside him, in the passenger seat, Swift was quiet, too, her face angled away from him to look out of the passenger window as he drove. Her strawberry-blonde hair was pulled back from her face and tied in a no-nonsense bun at her nape. She wore little makeup, not that makeup was something she even needed.
The Scenes of Crime van had arrived quickly—Ryan assumed they were already inside the house, photographing and tagging any evidence—and uniformed officers were working to keep people away from the house. Squad cars blocked the road at either end, preventing anyone from driving through. Even people who lived here would be made to park their cars on a different street, and an officer would walk them home.
Just as he’d done at the scene of the crash, Ryan slowed the car and put down his window to show his ID to the officer running the blockade. The officer nodded his greeting, though his expression was grim, and waved the car through.
The house had been cordoned off, as had the part of the street directly in front of the property.
Ryan parked the car and climbed out, Swift getting out of the passenger side. He checked for who was co-ordinating the scene.
A different police sergeant was already on the scene—an older man Ryan had worked with several times before. Charles Pixello.
His thin lips pressed so tightly together, they almost vanished. Pixello was nearly bald, just a few strands sticking up comically from an otherwise bare head. Ryan didn’t know why he didn’t just have done with it and shave them off, but perhaps Pixello simply didn’t care.
“DI Chase,” Pixello said, greeting them. “Fucking awful business. I hear you were already on scene where the car was found when we discovered the bodies.”
“That’s right. No sign of the driver, though, or if there were any passengers.”
“You think it was the husband who was driving?”
“Until we get forensics from inside the car, it’s impossible to tell, though if it wasn’t him, we haven’t been able to locate him to notify him.” He nodded towards the house. “Tell me about this one.”
“Two bodies, mother and daughter, we believe. Thirty-five-year-old Elizabeth Lloyd and six-year-old Keira Lloyd. The mother had been stabbed, but as of yet, there’s no sign of the murder weapon, and it would appear the girl was smothered or possibly strangled, but obviously we’ll know more after a post-mortem.”