Jack-Knifed

by Wonny Lea

  ‘Better get your skates on, guv, there has been a particularly brutal murder in Penylan and you’re heading up the team. And before you tell me not to jump to conclusions, just consider how likely is it that someone would have committed suicide by chopping off all their own arms and legs.’

  ‘If that’s a joke, it’s in pretty poor taste, even for you,’ said Martin, looking at his sergeant and trying to guess what level of exaggeration he was currently registering at.

  ‘No joke at all, guv – it’s obviously shaken up poor Sergeant Evans and he was only willing to give a brief outline of the situation over the phone, but he did say that the SOC lot are there, as is old Professor Moore, who wants to push off but he’s been persuaded by Brains to wait until you get there.’

  Reaching for his jacket and pocketing his iPhone, Martin followed DS Pryor, who’d finally paused for breath, to the car park. He indicated that they would use his car, and zapped the lock of his five-year-old metallic blue Alfa Romeo 156jts. Martin was one of the least car-mad members of the South Wales police force, but when his favourite Aunt Pat had died back in 2003, she’d left him her end-of-terrace cottage in Llantwit Major, together with the £26,472 in her bank account. A couple of years later he had bought the car, and he knew that his aunt would have been delighted to see it standing in the drive of her home.

  Although Martin could not be considered a malicious person, he remembered feeling relieved at the time that his divorce had gone through before he got his inheritance, otherwise Bethan’s slick solicitor would have got his hands on half the money. Though Bethan could not be blamed for the breakdown of their marriage, as Martin readily agreed that the original problem had been his job – very few women would have survived the crazy hours, spoiled meals, and endless time alone that Bethan had been exposed to.

  Being eight years younger than Martin, Bethan had thought that marriage would mean a few years of fun with their friends before settling down to make a family of their own, but that just wasn’t how it worked out. The job had come first with Martin since the day he joined the force, and through the course of his career he had been used to working with women who were independent and unlikely to wait for a man to mend a fuse or, unlike in Bethan’s case, change a light bulb.

  It was her blonde hair and amazing pale blue eyes that had drawn him to her in the first place, and to begin with he found that her uncanny reliance on him flattered his male ego.

  Because she wanted, and indeed needed, to be dependent upon him, she was disproportionately distressed whenever his phone rang and immediately took him away from her prettily prepared dinner table to answer the call of duty against some of the lowlifes of South Wales.

  Her job prior to their marriage had been as a receptionist with the Cathays Medical Practice and when it had merged with a larger group she had been only too willing to opt for the small redundancy package that was on offer. She told Martin that it was kismet as it meant more time for her to look after him and prepare for babies, and on the money front Daddy would always give them anything they needed.

  Martin remembered his sheer relief a few minutes after that suffocating proposition, at the sound of the demanding ring of his mobile, and the need for his immediate presence at the scene of a potential arson attack in the middle of City Road. Although the fire investigation didn’t take long, it was way past midnight when he had returned home, and not before he was seriously drunk and his head was swimming as he crashed out in the living room.

  He had made a mistake, he knew that then, and the next two years in a stifling, cloying relationship were to prove that fact over and over. He had never blamed his wife, knowing that it was he who had accepted her servility and adulation and mistaken it for love, whereas he now knew that for him lasting love would have to be free and uncompromising.

  Martin had recently learned, through a mutual acquaintance, that Bethan was set to marry a quiet, unassuming middle-aged man who managed a small group of charity shops in and around the Roath area of Cardiff. That sounded like an ideal setup for Bethan, and Martin sincerely hoped she would find happiness and that they would be blessed with at least one child to take some of the pressure of constant devotion off her new husband. A smile tugged at the corner of Martin’s mouth as he envisaged the couple formally sitting down to an elegantly prepared dinner, and Bethan comparing their idyllic relationship with her former marriage from hell.

  Starting the car and moving out into the busy city traffic Martin reflected, as he had often done before, on whether or not it was possible to drive more than 50 yards without encountering a set of traffic lights. It was probably the same in all city centres, but he thought his own capital city seemed to be blessed with more than her fair share. Strange, he thought, how one’s mind is able to focus on the mundane aspects of life while encountering the awful side of it – such as driving to what he now had reason to suspect was a gruesome and horrendous affront on human life – but that was how he and others like him held on to their own sanity.

  As they drove, Matt Pryor filled him in on the little he knew about the crime. With the few pieces of information available to them, both men began to speculate on the possible motive for such a gross murder.

  ‘Hardly a chance robbery that got out of hand, and from what I have gathered from the team it’s more like a ritualistic planned assault. It looks like some kind of hate or vengeance attack, and certainly planned – but then this type of killing is unlikely to be just opportunistic, is it?’ enquired Matt.

  ‘Wouldn’t have thought so,’ replied Martin. ‘What do we know about the victim?’

  ‘Assuming the victim is the home owner, the checks I did while waiting for you to finish with Mrs Philips show the house as belonging to a Mark Wilson. I tried matching his name with police records and got nothing, but I did get a hit on the name with our shared Social Services records. If it’s the same Mark Wilson he is the son of Bob Wilson, currently inside for the savage murder of a neighbour some years ago on the Penrhys estate. But that wasn’t his first, as that murder was committed when he was out on licence after serving time for the manslaughter of his daughter.’

  ‘If he comes from that illustrious background, it’s a wonder he hasn’t accumulated a thick police file of his own. But you say we have nothing on him?’ asked Martin.

  ‘No, he drops out of the Social Services records at age sixteen, and so far I’ve been unable to fill in the gap between then and the purchase of this house in 2005. Our computer whiz-kids have identified that the house was bought for cash, so no mortgage, and it’s quite an expensive address. If it is the same Mark Wilson, it makes you wonder how someone with his start in life could come to be living in such relative luxury. My sister was looking to buy a house in Penylan last year, but she couldn’t find anything anywhere near the level of mortgage she could manage, even with a sizeable deposit.’

  Martin didn’t ask which sister Matt was talking about, as he knew that there were four of them, all older than Matt. Each had three daughters, whose birthdays covered every month of the year – so Uncle Matt was constantly buying birthday presents, or getting one of his girl friends to buy girly stuff, for his twelve nieces.

  Both men became demonstrably focused as Martin turned his car into the road that was obviously the location of the crime, even from some distance away. Alongside the police tape there were television cameras, journalists, and reporters waving microphones. There were also a number of noxious members of the public, who had nothing better to do with their lives than gawp at the misery of others.

  Sergeant Evans moved the cones he had put in place for Martin’s car and then lifted the blue and white tape to allow the two men access to the house. Microphones were thrust in Martin’s face as he set foot on the pavement. He recognised a few local media personalities in the pack that was already baying for news, and would continue to do so until something else took their attention.

  ‘As you can see, I have only just arrived on the scene, and there is nothin
g I can tell you at this moment,’ were words that Martin had heard himself speak on many previous occasions. ‘When there is anything to tell the public, you will be the first to know, but for now please just back off and let us get on with the investigation.’

  Hoping to get a bit more information one of the reporters shouted. ‘The neighbours say that this house belongs to Mark Wilson and that he is gay – has Mark been murdered and is it a homophobic killing? Surely you can tell us that much?’

  The careless remarks angered Martin, and he turned to the journalist in question and told him that whereas some people could speculate and be creative with the facts, it was the job of his profession to ascertain at least a modicum of actual information before labelling a crime in a totally random way. He decided against using some of the choice expletives that came to mind to emphasise his point.

  Over the years, and certainly since he had become a senior officer, Martin had developed a good working relationship with the media, especially some of the local hacks. Heaven knew he had been obliged to attend enough media training courses, and to be fair he knew that most of them were just doing an often difficult job. Still, there was always one who managed to raise his blood pressure by asking bloody stupid questions at inappropriate times, and by trying to put words into his mouth.

  Now was not the time to be irritated, though, and Martin quickly turned his mind back to the task in hand. He followed Sergeant Evans towards the house and into a scene that he had been trained to handle – a scene that would call on all the skills of detection he had learned together with his own congenital skills of intuition and judgement. Everything else could wait until tomorrow.

  Chapter Four

  The crime scene

  The first to speak to Martin as he passed the damaged front door was Professor Moore, who offered a brief acknowledgement before giving Martin a synopsis of the situation, concentrating only on that for which he was able to give an expert opinion.

  ‘Many of the facts speak for themselves, and things like temperature, state of muscle contraction, and the fresh and only partly congealed blood, all demonstrate that we were called to this scene within a very short time of the crime being committed. Ludicrously, this is supported by the condition of the cake-type things that had been put in the oven, and would probably have only taken about half an hour to cook before starting to burn. When we found them, they were still warm, completely frazzled but not so much that we couldn’t tell roughly what they were.’

  Martin nodded as he realised that the smell that still pervaded the house was a mixture of baking and burning – not a common feature at the scene of a murder, at least not one he had ever previously encountered.

  ‘You will see that the body has been dismembered and that brings me to the most significant factor, as far as my part of the investigation here tonight is concerned.’

  The Professor looked directly at Martin as he knew that the information he was about to convey would shock the DCI – the discovery had certainly stunned the Professor.

  ‘Each of the limbs has been removed from the torso by the use of a different weapon, so instead of your usual “murder weapon”, on this occasion you will be looking for murder weapons, and by that I mean four different types of cutting, sawing, or axing tools. I will be able to give you a more complete picture of the implements that were used and the order in which the limbs were removed when I have completed a full post-mortem, which is booked for 8 o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  Instantly Martin’s brain tried to picture a murder where four different weapons were used. It flashed up the idea of four killers, and considered this to be unlikely.

  He returned his attention to Professor Moore, who was now making his way towards the front door and who could obviously not wait to get out into the fresh evening air. Martin could see that the prof. was shaken by his findings, in spite of his many years of witnessing some of the worst crimes in the country. It was probably the sheer calculated brutality that had caused this level of disgust. Martin knew that they would be looking for some strong motives of hatred towards the victim, as this was certainly no random butchering, but something much deeper and complex.

  Making his way to see, first-hand, the atrocity in the kitchen, Martin tried to get his head around what sort of person – or persons – would mutilate another human being like this? For a start, was it one person or two, or maybe there were four of them, taking a limb each … Was the victim alive or dead when the massacre began? What could the victim possibly have done to deserve an ending of such unimaginable horror?

  In many respects it would be better if there were a number of people involved, making it more likely someone would have noticed that level of activity in and around the house. If so, he thought, someone may come forward tomorrow, when the appeal for witnesses would be made. That appeal could produce information that may be key to the solving of this crime, though Martin knew from experience that it was also likely to produce numerous false leads, sending his precious resources off on wild goose chases.

  Now standing at the entrance to the kitchen, Martin took in the surreal sight of a body, complete with head, lying in a central position on the grey granite worktop, with an arm and a leg on each side, at random angles on the floor. The imprint this scene made on his mind was less of an affront than it had been for those who had seen it before him, as the room now contained men and women in white scene-of-crime clothing, and this somehow made the spectacle more clinical than real. He had recognised, at previous grim crime scenes, that this white clothing not only protected the evidence from contamination, but also seemed to protect the wearers, in that it separated them from the monsters.

  Thinking of the original stark horror that Sergeant Evans and his colleagues must have witnessed, Martin gave himself a silent reminder to check that the uniformed staff were coping, and to offer any help if required.

  Matt Pryor was now at his side and let flow a few sentences that on any self-respecting daytime television programme would have had more bleeps than words – but this was one occasion when Martin shared his sentiments, and had no problem with the use of language Matt usually kept for the rugby field. He related to Matt, and loud enough for all members of the SOC team to hear, the information Prof. Moore had given him about the possible use of multiple weapons, and asked if anything had yet been found.

  Alex Griffiths, who had been supervising his team’s work in the lounge, came into the hall, greeted Martin, and offered to summarise the findings and so save him a bit of time.

  ‘The kitchen, as you can see, is where the crime was committed, or at least where the arms and legs were severed. It looks unlikely that the victim, who is Mark Wilson, the owner of this property, was killed elsewhere and mutilated here, because that scenario doesn’t fit with the prof’s findings. There is no evidence of a struggle, and the broken china and pieces of food strewn across one arm and leg are as the result of a neighbour knocking them off the edge when he witnessed the leg on the floor. Nothing else in the kitchen is damaged, and there’s no sign of a weapon, certainly not the multiple weapons that we are now looking for.’

  ‘My team have photographed everything and dusted the whole place for fingerprints, and unless the killer, or killers, wore gloves, we may be lucky on that front, because the victim was certainly house-proud and generally there are few prints around on these clean surfaces. When you have seen all you need to in the kitchen, the guys will bag up the evidence including the body-parts and get it all down to Goleudy, where Incident Room One has been allocated for this investigation.’

  Martin could see that Alex and his team had done their usual intensive scrutiny of the whole area, and he indicated to them that they were free to get on with the next part of the task, getting everything to the labs and making use of the innovative crime detection facilities back at base. He knew from past experience that by the time he and his team arrived in Incident Room One the following morning, there would be ready-developed pictures of everything
relevant, along with fingerprint analysis and much more.

  Once again Martin inwardly thanked the foresight of his predecessors in setting up Goleudy where the post mortem would be carried out and where all the agencies involved with the detection of this execrable crime could share information as quickly as each party discovered it. It was a far cry from the days of setting up incident rooms in local halls and waiting for outside agencies to do your lab work at a time convenient to them.

  Alex directed Martin to the lounge and explained the white blizzard effect, commenting that the sofa had once been an impressively expensive piece of furniture, hard to believe now it sagged with the absence of most of its filling, which had landed on practically every surface in the room.

  ‘It’s a bit like the kitchen, in that there seems to be only one thing that has been attacked, and whereas there it was the victim, in here it’s the sofa. Again, everything else is in place and there’s no sign of a struggle, and at first I thought it looked as if someone had gone crazy with a knife but it’s more deliberate than that.’

  Alex continued. ‘If you look at it closely, you will see that there are four clear sets of four deep cuts into the soft leather. Each one is at least a foot long, with one set on each of the two seat cushions, another set on the front, and the fourth on the back. I guess the filling would have been tightly packed initially, but it’s very soft and would have just flown out freely with each slash of the knife or whatever was used.’

  ‘Bloody mental’ remarked Matt, and nobody disagreed.

  ‘It’s going to be a hell of a job, but we have to assume that whoever did this had to walk over pieces of the filling to get out of the room, so each piece will have to be examined – but a piece that was trodden on may not still be on the floor – it could have subsequently floated on to the windowsill, or anywhere else. Don’t really know if we will be able to find anything, but we will make every effort.’