Sophie looked at Goodall as he stood in the liquid ooze, his wellington boots caked in mud. He had a lively gleam in his eye.
‘I hope you didn’t say anything like that within earshot of the family, Benny. They’ll be shocked enough as it is. I wouldn’t want them going over the edge.’
‘No, no, no. Only the proper official manner to members of the public. Now, do you want to take a closer look? I can’t do any more until we free the rest of the skeleton and get it back to my place.’
Sophie nodded to the SOCO unit who started to clear the soil from the stump of the buddleia and dig around the damp and malodorous rug. The butterfly bush was cut off at ground level, and soil was carefully removed from its roots and deposited in bins for later examination. There were frequent pauses while photographs were taken.
Soon the disintegrating remains of the rug were exposed, revealing a skeleton, complete apart from a missing hand. Roots from the shrub grew down through the ribcage. The skeleton was small.
‘Young boy. Probably about six or seven years old,’ Benny said, watching the progress of the forensic unit with interest.
Sophie merely nodded. She was concentrating, trying to fix the image so that she could recall it later. There was little smell, none of the putrefying odours associated with a more recently decayed corpse.
‘How long do you think he’s been there?’ she asked finally.
Dave Nash, the senior forensic officer, replied. ‘A long time, I’d guess. Possibly twenty years or more.’
‘What?’
‘Not much doubt about it. That bush has been pruned back hard several times, but its stump and root system are undisturbed. I’d guess that it was planted here as a young shrub, placed deliberately on top of the body. You can count the growth rings yourself. It’s got to be about that long, give or take a few years.’
Sophie looked again at the stump. Nash was right. The top section of the bush, which lay off to one side, had obviously been cut back on several occasions. ‘Is there any other evidence to support that length of time? Other than the growth rings?’
‘Just circumstantial at present. The state of decay of the rug. The consistency of the surrounding soil. We can’t confirm until we get everything back to the lab. As you can see, we’re keeping all of the soil for examination. Once we’ve removed the body, we’ll take the soil from directly beneath it. It may have residues from the body.’
‘Was he clothed do you think?’ asked Sophie.
‘Almost impossible to say at the moment. Any clothes he was wearing would have decayed along with the rug. But there might be trace residues of clothing along with the rug debris. If so, we’ll be able to spot them in the lab analysis.’
‘How do you plan to get him out?’
‘We’ll cut through the rest of the roots and clear the stump away. The rug looks fairly complete underneath him, even though it is half rotten. We’ll try to get a plastic sheet below it, then lift everything out in one go. If it works.’
Sophie stood looking down at the sparse remains for some time. Then she said, ‘okay, Dave. I’ll leave it to you.’ She turned to Goodall, who was just about to leave the shelter of the awning. ‘When will we know more?’
‘There’s not much to examine, so you’ll get the initial report in a few days. I may call in my friendly local bone specialist for some help. She might spot something that I’d have missed, although it could add a couple of days. But you’re in no immediate hurry for this one, are you? No one is going to be breathing down your neck after twenty years.’
Sophie stared coolly at him. ‘You know me better than that, Benny. Whoever he is, however long he’s been lying here, he’ll get my full attention. He deserves nothing less.’ She left the tent.
***
Sophie turned her back on the section of the garden that had hidden the corpse for almost a quarter of a century. Her young, ginger-haired detective sergeant stood waiting for her outside the awning.
‘So this is where we start thinking, Barry,’ she said. ‘Why would someone bury the body of a young child in such a way?’
‘Manslaughter? Murder? It’s got to be something like that, ma’am,’ Marsh answered. ‘If he’d died of natural causes he wouldn’t have been wrapped in a rug and dropped into a hole in the garden. And my guess is that the bush was deliberately planted over the body to prevent it being disturbed. Whoever did it had a strong reason for keeping it secret. I wouldn’t have thought that poverty would have been a problem either, not in a house this size. The owners must have been pretty well-off by any standards.’
Sophie was silent. Then she said, ‘I don’t like cases like this. They don’t fit the normal patterns — you know, husband, wife or jealous lover. But when it’s a youngster I get this creeping sensation that seems to warn me to be doubly careful. I’m getting it now. But there’s little we can do until we get the full details back from forensics. Once we know more precisely when he was put there, we can start looking through the missing-persons records.’
‘What are you going to tell the press?’
‘Just the bare facts at present. I’ll release more as and when required, once we have the forensic and pathology reports.’
Barry Marsh looked at his boss as they stood in the rain. Her eyes looked dark, almost black. Several droplets of water trickled slowly down her pale cheeks.
‘You look worried, ma’am.’
‘It’s unusual, Barry. There are no set procedures for a body that’s been undiscovered for this long. We’ll follow the usual procedures as far as seems sensible, but after twenty years it’s almost an historical crime. The chances of getting witnesses, clues or any useful statements are pretty remote.’ She paused. ‘But that’s not what bothers me. I just hope that it’s a one-off and that there aren’t any more.’
She turned on her heel and walked back towards the house, with Barry Marsh following.
* * *
Sophie nursed the mug of tea in her hands before taking another sip. She looked at Jill and Philip Freeman, who were sitting together opposite her on a sofa. Both looked pale and drawn. The afternoon light was beginning to fade and Jill reached out to switch on a table lamp beside her. The soft light seemed to help them relax a little.
‘The body will undergo further pathology procedures and all of the soil will be sent for complete forensic examination. They’ll sift it thoroughly for clues and analyse anything they find.’
‘Twenty years, you say? That’s unbelievable,’ whispered Jill.
‘But likely, from what we know at present. We counted the rings on the stump. It didn’t look as though it had ever been disturbed, in which case the body has been there as long as the bush.’ She took another sip of tea. ‘I know you’ve only been in the house a few months. What do you know of its previous history?’
‘Not a great deal,’ responded Philip. ‘We bought it at Easter. It had been empty for some time. We decided not to move in until we’d refitted the kitchen, rewired all of the electrics and got the plumbing done.’
‘Did you do all of that yourself?’ asked Sophie.
‘No, just the kitchen, and I did that with a friend who’s a builder. We had the wiring and plumbing done professionally. And we’ve just finished this room. We plan to work our way slowly through the house, room by room.’
‘What kind of state was it in?’
‘Poor. It was very run down. The roof and exterior walls were fine, though all the timbers needed a lick of paint. But nothing had been done to the inside for years. As far as I know there was an absentee owner who rented it out. It was put on the market when she died.’
‘You don’t know who inherited it? The person who decided to put it on the market?’
‘No. It was all handled by a solicitor.’
‘It was a local solicitor,’ said Jill. We’ve probably got the name somewhere if you need it.’
‘Yes, that would be useful. DS Marsh here will get it from you. How is your daughter now?’
‘She’s asleep at the moment. She was in shock, so the doctor gave her a sedative. You don’t need to speak to her, do you?’
‘I would like to, if you agree. I don’t mean just now, I wouldn’t dream of disturbing her sleep. But she may want some reassurance and, once she recovers, she might want to know what we are doing. It will help her come to terms with it. I’ll call round in a couple of days, once I have some news. Would that be alright? We’d really like to have a quick look round your house, if you’ll let us. We need to get a feel for the place, to see the rooms and their positions in relation to each other. It won’t take long, I’m sure.’
They started in the large, south-facing kitchen. Its window looked out onto the back garden and the forensic team still at work. The kitchen had a walk-in pantry and a utility room. The two doors were set beside each other in a wall to one side. Sophie glanced inside the pantry and Barry looked into the utility room. He called to her.
‘Ma’am! There’s a door at the far end.’
‘Steps to the cellar,’ explained Philip Freeman, who was standing behind the DCI. ‘The only thing we keep there are some storage boxes that we haven’t got around to opening yet. The door’s locked but there’s a key in it. The light switch is on your left just on the other side of the door.’
Marsh led the way down the wooden steps and flipped the switch. A dim bulb shed a poor light on a grubby-looking room. The three of them stood on an area paved with plain concrete slabs. The far half of the cellar was not floored and consisted of hard-packed earth. Several sealed packing cases stood beside them, set against the wall. The rest of the cellar was empty, its brick walls showing remnants of a pale, possibly white paint. The air smelled musty and old.
‘It doesn’t seem damp in here at all,’ the owner volunteered. ‘The boxes are as dry as when we first moved in.’
Sophie nodded. She looked around her, then indicated that she had seen enough.
The rest of the ground floor, a dining room and study, was spacious and well furnished. After a quick look in each room, the trio moved to the upper floor where they had a peek inside each of the four bedrooms, including the one in which Karen was sleeping. A pull-down loft ladder at the far end of the landing allowed them easy access to a sizable attic, floored and neatly stacked with boxes.
‘They’re all ours,’ Philip explained. ‘It was empty when we moved in. In fact the whole house was empty. There was nothing left in any of the rooms. One of the neighbours told us that the owners used a house-clearing agency, and they’d been told to either sell or dump everything.’
Sophie turned to Marsh. ‘It might be worth following that up, Barry. We’ll talk about it later.’ They returned to the kitchen, where Jill Freeman joined them. Sophie was about to ask her for more details about the house when her mobile phone rang. It was Dave Nash, the forensic team leader, still outside. She listened, keeping her expression blank and her eyes fixed on her sergeant’s face. She nodded to the Freemans and went quickly out of the house into the garden. Barry Marsh struggled to keep up with her. There was no doubt now. It had to be murder, surely? She entered the tent to a line of grim faces.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked.
Dave Nash was standing at the bottom of the pit, to one side of it. He nodded. Sophie moved to the edge, peering at the place Nash was indicating. There lay the unmistakable shape, now partly uncovered, of another decayed rug, similar to the previous one. Nash flipped it aside to reveal a small set of arm bones, neatly folded across a child’s ribcage. A second body, lying hidden under the first one.
‘This one’s a young girl, Sophie.’ Benny Goodall’s normally cheerful face was pale and set. He said nothing else. What else was there to say?
Chapter 2: Local History
Monday morning
For once, the police investigation proceeded smoothly. It was purposeful, but there was none of the tense urgency that usually accompanied the discovery of a murder victim. In this case there was no need for rapid action to prevent the perpetrator from slipping away. Sophie had decided she had three avenues open to her: tracing the ownership history of the property, sifting the forensic evidence, and examining old missing-persons’ files, once the year of death was confirmed, assuming that records went back that far. She stayed in overall control and, as usual, liaised with Benny Goodall, allocating the missing person trace to Barry Marsh, her second-in-command, and the property investigation to Rae Gregson. She also had access to some local Dorchester detectives and clerical staff to aid with immediate investigations. Police resources would not stretch to a larger team until a lead opened up. The twenty-year-old crime was not high profile. Local Dorset newspapers would probably carry the story on their front pages, but the nationals would tuck it away inside, if they bothered to report it at all. Sophie presumed that would change as further details came to light.
Sophie gave the local background research to Rae Gregson, the most recent addition to her violent crime unit. Rae was a keen and thorough investigator, willing to put in the extra effort that often yielded the clue that would crack a problem. Sophie knew that Rae loved digging in records and documents, fleshing out the bare bones of an investigation, exactly what would be needed in this case, with its lack of witnesses and current evidence.
Rae set to work immediately. She visited the Estate Agency that had handled the sale of the property. The young receptionist at the office was cheerful and helpful, but Rae thought the manager’s surliness was due to more than just a Monday morning hangover. He kept her waiting for almost ten minutes before seeing her, despite having no other visitors, and his answers to her questions were monosyllabic. She forced herself to restrain her impatience, and was finally rewarded with a look at the file on the Freemans’ property. She noted the address of the vendor. It confirmed what Jill had told them two days before. The house had been sold on behalf of a solicitor’s practice in Salisbury.
‘Now, Mr Adams, I’d like to pick your brains if I may,’ she said lightly. ‘I’d expect someone in your position, as the manager of a local estate agent’s, to know a little about the history of properties in the local area. You might be able to save me a great deal of work. I need to identify the occupants of that house for some time back. I suspect that, in recent years at least, it saw a rapid turnover of tenants. Can you help?’
‘We didn’t handle the lets on that property,’ he said.
‘Fine. In that case can you tell me who did?’
‘No. I don’t know. Its recent sale is the only time we’ve had to deal with it. I can’t help you.’ He clasped his fingers and rested his chin on them, looking at her coldly.
So that’s it, thought Rae. He’s probably read me. Prejudiced bastard. She realised she wouldn’t get any more from him, thanked him politely and left his office.
On her way out she spoke to the young receptionist. ‘Is he always like that?’
‘Oh yes,’ came the reply. ‘Don’t think it’s you. I’m only temping here. No one lasts more than a few weeks in the job, as far as I can tell. He used to own this business, but was forced to sell to one of the big chains during the property crash. He’s resented it ever since. I don’t think he’ll last much longer.’
Rae was annoyed with herself. It was a problem she shared with many other transgender people. She assumed that any rudeness and friction directed her way was due to prejudice against her trans nature. Yet, more often than not, it was just some grumpy person who was rude and unpleasant to everyone.
‘Is there anyone else whose brains I can pick about the history of the houses in the area? There’s no other estate agent, is there?’
The receptionist thought for a while. ‘There’s a lady who worked here for a long time. I can remember chatting to her when I worked here once before. She retired a couple of months ago. She’ll be as good as anyone. I don’t know exactly where she lives, somewhere behind the High Street I think, but her name is Margaret Court.’
‘Like the tennis player?’ asked Rae.
‘Yes. And she played tennis herself as a youngster. She’d even won some cups at the local club, so she told me.’
Rae borrowed the local telephone directory, and quickly found an address for a John Court in Honeywell Lane. This was a side street running at right angles to the High Street. There was a good chance that this was the correct address. She thanked the young girl for her time and left. She walked the hundred yards or so to the junction with Honeywell Lane. The rain had eased, so she left her umbrella rolled up in her shoulder bag. Number forty-seven was at the end of a smart terrace. An elderly man was working in the well-tended garden, putting out some summer bedding plants. Rae halted at the gate. He looked up as she approached and smiled.
‘Mr Court?’ she asked.
‘Yes. How can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for a Mrs Margaret Court who used to work in the estate agent’s office. Have I got the right address?’
‘Yes. That’s my wife. I’ll get her for you if you’d like to come in. Who shall I say is calling?’
‘DC Rae Gregson, Dorset police. I’d like to pick her brains if she’ll let me.’
The man opened the gate. ‘She’ll enjoy that. She’s a fount of local knowledge. I’ll take you round the back if you don’t mind. My feet are a bit muddy.’
Rae followed him around the side of the house to the back door, where he ushered her in ahead of him.
‘Margaret!’ he called. ‘Someone from the police to see you.’
She heard a woman’s voice, and the man turned back to her. ‘She’ll be through in a minute. She’s tidying up. We had a visit from our grandchildren over the weekend. Would you like a coffee? I’m about to put the kettle on.’
‘That would be great, thank you.’
He pulled a chair out for her at the table, and put down a plate of biscuits. Margaret Court came into the kitchen just as he finished pouring three mugs of coffee. She was a tall, slim woman with an alert expression. She looked a little worried. Rae introduced herself and began to explain why she had called.
BURIED CRIMES: a gripping detective thriller full of twists and turns Page 2