CHAPTER NINE
25th April – Friday
It was only nine-thirty in the morning, but Jane felt as if she had been in the office for a full shift already. She had left the house early, but not before having some breakfast with Peter and her mother, who had stayed over again. She was just waiting for a phone call from her father, requesting his wife back. Peter had chattered away while she ate her toast. He didn’t want to go to school. Would the teacher let him outside at break-time? He always found it hard being back after a holiday. She had tried to reassure him, but he kept spooning his cereal up and tipping it back into the bowl over and over again. The anxiety rippled off him like a heatwave, ageing his young face. She sighed, tipped her head back and eased it from side to side, her fringe brushing against her forehead. She could smell the burning oil from the takeaway shops that lined Lewisham High Street. It turned her stomach. She couldn’t fathom how anyone could eat a kebab and chips at this time of the morning.
She was waiting for a call from MISPER. A photograph and a description of the girl in the tomb had been emailed over to their office last night. Jane hoped that at least this part of the investigation would be straightforward. She needed a name. The girl hadn’t looked like a vagrant or someone invisible to the system. The post-mortem was scheduled for later on today or early tomorrow, depending on the ID and Dave’s workload. The Exhibits team was detailing and examining evidence gathered from the site. A headache was taking up residence in her left temple. She massaged the spot with the tips of her fingers and closed her eyes. An image of the air-hose and camera poking into the tomb came into her mind. Such benign objects in themselves, although their purpose felt anything but. She couldn’t stop thinking about the girl: about her final hours, trapped in the dark, terrified, screaming. Jane ran her fingers over her eyebrows, pushing the thoughts away. She pulled her chair back to her desk and began checking through her emails.
There were several from the Exhibits team; two from Roger, her SIO; one from Despatch and a couple from the lab. There were at least a hundred more, but she didn’t have time to deal with them right now. She had to focus all of her attention on the girl in the tomb. Each piece of evidence filtered out, expanding the investigation into different departments, involving more and more officers. The speed at which a case moved in the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours could be intimidating: a lot of plates spinning or balls in the air, whichever analogy you preferred. Jane had to keep a tight grip if she was going to avoid mistakes. Of course as soon as there was a name to go with the young girl’s face, the investigation would explode, but for now she was in control. Her eyes were drawn to an email from Lockyer. She had already read it. Read it more than once, in fact. He was having a ‘day off’. He had emailed Roger, copying in Jane and saying, ‘I won’t be in the office today. On my mobile, if you need me.’ That was it. No reason or apology. She ran her fingers through her hair, her fringe crackling with static. He had chosen to take a day off now?
The DNA results on the blood found in Mark and Sue’s utility room still weren’t back. Sue had provided a sample of Mark’s hair for analysis, but everything seemed to be on a go-slow. The discovery of the girl’s body in the tomb had overshadowed the fact that the original call-outs had pointed towards Mark. Jane had managed to speak to Sue late last night, to reassure her that everything that could be done was being done. In reality she couldn’t do much until the blood results came back and Roger, and the officer in charge over at MISPER, decided which department should run the case. Given the trainer found in Elmstead, she thought the discussion should have happened yesterday, but that decision was above her rank. She could still hear the tremor in Sue’s voice. The poor woman was trying to hold it together for her children, but that couldn’t last. Whatever department ended up with Mark’s case, the reality was that he had been missing for three days.
Her mobile started to ring. She reached over a stack of files and answered it. ‘Bennett speaking,’ she said.
‘Hi Jane,’ a familiar voice said. ‘It’s Alan. I’ve got good news for you,’ he continued, clearing his throat.
Jane pulled her notepad towards her and uncapped her pen. ‘Okay,’ she said. This was the call from MISPER that she had been waiting for.
‘I’ve got two files for you. I’m emailing then over to you now,’ he said. He sounded as if he had a cold, the ends of his words muffled by phlegm. ‘The first one is a Margaret Hungerford, goes by “Maggie”. Twenty-six years old, five foot six, Caucasian, shoulder-length hair, dark brown, hundred-and-twenty pounds, reported missing on Monday 21st April by her mother, Elizabeth Hungerford, fifty-five years old. The mother provided a photograph, which I’ve attached to the email. Looks like your tomb-girl,’ he said.
‘And the second?’ Jane asked. Two possible IDs meant a delay in the post-mortem but, more than that, it meant two possible families. The last thing she wanted to do was have to put two terrified sets of parents through the ordeal of identifying the body.
‘Joanna Bailey, twenty years old, five foot five, Caucasian, short red hair, dyed, hundred-and-seventy pounds . . . ’
‘Hang on, Alan,’ she said, her pen hovering over the new description. ‘I thought these were both IDs for my tomb-girl,’ she went on, feeling appalled by the ease at which she had adopted Alan’s terminology.
‘No, sorry,’ Alan said with an audible sniff that made her wince. ‘Didn’t I say? My brain’s shot today. Hungerford relates to your tomb-girl; the second, Bailey, is the last missing girl on the Stevens case. A friend of hers saw the appeal and recognized her from the photograph. Joanna Bailey visited the station last night to confirm her identity. My team has done the necessary regarding support for her and her family, et cetera, but I’ve told her that your department will be in touch, as you’ll need to question her in relation to the prosecution.’
Jane hadn’t thought about the Stevens case in days. With Mark’s disappearance and the burial site in Elmstead, the girl in the second photograph had dropped off her radar. The fact that Joanna Bailey had been found was a huge relief, but it wasn’t down to her. It was dumb luck. Luck that benefited Jane: one less thing to juggle. She shook her head. She was trained to move on, tick it off the list and begin the next task, in order of priority. Her whole life was a list of priorities, but it was in a constant state of flux. She couldn’t avoid the inevitable feeling that she was always on the verge of letting something slip, or letting someone down.
‘You still there?’ Alan asked as he stifled a bout of coughing.
‘Yes, sorry. That’s great news, thanks, Alan,’ she said, writing and underlining Joanna Bailey’s name on her notepad. ‘What was she like?’
‘Er, she was sweet, quiet. She was shocked, as you’d expect. Why?’ Alan asked.
‘No reason. Just curious, I guess,’ Jane said. She couldn’t help wondering how Bailey had taken the news that she was a potential target for south-east London’s first-ever serial killer. The truth was that she didn’t have the time or the head-space to find out. She was already onto the next case, the next victim. She put a tick next to Joanna Bailey’s name and pushed her personal feelings aside.
‘Files should be with you now,’ Alan said, sniffing. ‘I’ll talk to you later?’
‘Yes, sure,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Alan. Hope you feel better.’
‘Me too, because right now I feel like death warmed up.’
She managed to smile, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She had a name to go with the face in the tomb. She now had a dozen things to action, and a dozen more after that. ‘Cheers, Alan,’ she said, pushing ‘End’ on her phone. The emails were already sitting in her in-box. She clicked on the first one, opened it and double-clicked on the attached photograph. Maggie Hungerford. It was her – the girl from the tomb. It meant the post-mortem would have to wait. The girl’s parents would have to come into the station to formally identify the body. But first Jane had to tell them that their daughter had been murdered.
; CHAPTER TEN
25th April – Friday
Jane climbed into the squad car, put on her seatbelt and started the engine. ‘You ready?’ she asked, turning to look at Penny, a senior detective constable on the murder squad from Lockyer’s team. Penny had volunteered to accompany Jane when she informed Maggie Hungerford’s next of kin. Roger had provisionally signed off on five officers for the investigation. Jane didn’t have full authorization to choose Penny as one of them, but with Lockyer out of the office, what choice did she have? Her investigation couldn’t be put on hold, and he hadn’t bothered to reply to any of her emails.
As Penny clicked her seatbelt into place and put on a pair of large round sunglasses, she turned to Jane. ‘I hate this part.’
‘You and me both,’ Jane said, putting the car into reverse and slipping on her own Ray-Ban sunglasses, an extravagant treat for her thirty-fifth birthday. She put the Hungerfords’ postcode into the satnav, pulled up to the exit of the car park and out into Lewisham’s mid-morning traffic. Rain or shine, day or night, Lewisham High Street was busy. However, today’s volume of traffic and the lack of blaring horns seemed to suggest that everyone who wasn’t at work had decided on a jolly to a park or a pub, or both, starting their weekends early. No one appeared to be in a hurry.
Maggie’s parents, William and Elizabeth Hungerford, fifty-six and fifty-five respectively, lived over in Greenwich. It was a straight shot down Lewisham Road – three miles and six minutes, according to the satnav.
It would take longer than that. Jane pulled up behind a Mazda Bongo displaying a Hot Tuna sticker in the rear window. Two surfboards were strapped to the roof. It was a strange sight. The nearest coast was an hour away. ‘Have you got the list of questions handy, Penny?’ she asked, flicking on the car’s air-conditioning.
‘Yes, I’ve got them on my iPad. Do you want to run through them on the way over?’ Penny asked, pulling her handbag up onto her lap.
‘Yes, if you don’t mind. You don’t get car sick, do you?’
‘Not so far,’ Penny said, opening up her iPad and navigating to the right page. ‘Okay. I’ve got the standard questions: confirming the victim’s age, description, where she lived, worked, marital status, income, activity in the last month and last-known whereabouts.’
‘Good. When it comes to the last-known whereabouts, we need to ask when Elizabeth Hungerford last saw her daughter, and for what reasons she reported her missing. Had she noticed any changes in Maggie’s behaviour in recent weeks?’ She paused to allow Penny time to type the new question into her list.
‘Got it,’ Penny said.
‘Did Maggie appear depressed, anxious, nervous – that kind of thing?’
‘Yes,’ Penny said, tapping away.
‘Okay,’ she said, pulling away from some roadworks and avoiding a bus, before settling back into the line of traffic. ‘We need to prepare them for the photograph of Maggie, and arrange for one or both of them to come in and formally identify the body. Would you be able to be present for that, Pen?’
‘Of course. When do you think they’ll want to come in?’
‘Today,’ Jane said without hesitation. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if they followed us back to the station with the Family Liaison Officer.’ In her experience, viewing the body was the first step in processing what had happened. Despite the shock of being told that a loved one had been murdered, the bereaved needed to see the body for themselves, to know what was happening to them was real. The longer the gap between being told and seeing the body, the harder the family seemed to find it.
‘Is the FLO meeting us there then?’ Penny asked, pushing up her sleeves. Even with the air-con on, it was getting warm inside the squad car.
‘Yes, Anne Phillips is coming over. I spoke to her earlier. She was in Blackheath, finishing up with another family. Depending on how the A2 is looking today, we should arrive at the Hungerfords’ at about the same time. Anne will be on hand for the family, going forward,’ she said, swerving to avoid a cyclist.
‘She’s fantastic,’ Penny said, putting her hand out and holding onto the dashboard. ‘I worked with her on the Stevens case. She worked with the Stevens family.’
Jane nodded. She couldn’t help thinking about Joanna Bailey, and how lucky she was that her family had never needed Anne’s services. Jane had no doubt that the Stevens case would haunt Anne. It had been a difficult case for everyone. In fact, today’s job felt like a walk in the park by comparison. The banality of her thoughts made her grip the steering wheel tighter. Nothing about this morning was going to be easy for Maggie Hungerford’s family. In less than an hour their lives would change beyond all recognition.
‘How much are you planning on telling them?’ Penny asked.
‘Only the essentials. For now, anyway. The less they have to process, the better. Besides, until I’ve spoken to the forensic psychologist I really don’t know what we’re dealing with here.’ And she didn’t. All Jane knew was that Maggie Hungerford had received a blow to the head before being put in a tomb to die. There was also the possibility that whoever had done this had filmed her while she died of asphyxiation. It was a lot of information to deal with, and it raised a lot of questions. Without answers, Jane was feeling around in the dark, just like Maggie.
She looked out of her window at the people walking up and down Lewisham Road: groups of lads, groups of girls, families. Everyone seemed to be out this morning. The sunshine had affected people’s choice of clothing. All the women, old and young, were sporting strappy tops – their bras, if they were wearing one, on show. The pavements were awash with flesh of every colour. The fairer-skinned were already pinking up, burned by too long in the sun without sunscreen. The men weren’t faring much better. At least 50 per cent were shirtless, their biceps adorned with weird and wonderful tattoos. Other than men she had slept with, and the girl who had done a spray tan for a wedding she had been to last year, no one knew that Jane had her own tattoo. It had been another thirty-fifth birthday present to herself, like her sunglasses, though slightly less pricey. It was at the base of her spine. Her birthday in Roman numerals. It was meant to be semi-permanent. The tattoo artist who had done it for her said it would only last for five to eight years. She was two years into the timeframe, and it showed no sign of fading at all. It was the only real evidence that she could be crazy and devil-may-care when she wanted to be. It represented a wild side that rarely got an airing. Lockyer had seen her tattoo.
The woman’s voice on the satnav intruded on her thoughts. ‘In two hundred yards turn left, then turn left . . . ’
‘Almost there,’ Penny said, pointing at the screen. ‘Ashburnham Place, number seventy-three.’
‘Right,’ she replied, waiting for a scantily dressed pedestrian to cross in front of her. She turned left into Ashburnham Place, looking for a door number to let her know which end of the street she was aiming for. The woman on the satnav was telling them they had reached their destination.
‘There’s number fourteen,’ Penny said.
Jane continued up the road to a row of Victorian town houses. ‘Nice area,’ she said, listening as Penny called out house numbers.
As she looked at the trees lining the street, framing each house, it occurred to her that she would forget Ashburnham Place. She had never driven up here before and, once this case was over, she probably wouldn’t drive up it again. She would forget Elizabeth and William Hungerford. Not immediately, but in time their names would fade. But what she would never forget was their faces. In a few minutes she would have to inflict the kind of pain that most people only had nightmares about. The faces of all the bereaved families she had ever met were burned into her memory. The faces of Elizabeth and William Hungerford were about to join her picture library of grief.
‘Let’s get this done,’ she said, pulling into a space. Anne, the FLO, was standing at the Hungerfords’ front door waving back at them.
Jane couldn’t help but be impressed by the Hungerfords’ living ro
om. It was a far cry from the kind of houses she spent the majority of her time in. The room was light and spacious. It looked like something out of House & Garden. Two large cream sofas faced each other, with an oak coffee table in the centre. There was an open fire, the grate immaculate, and a large gilded mirror taking centre-stage over the mantelpiece. Colourful oil paintings and watercolours adorned the off-white walls, complemented by the room’s high ceilings, cornices and a rose in the centre, showing off an ornate but tasteful chandelier. Rays of sunshine shone into the room, bouncing off the hundreds of tiny pieces of hand-crafted glass. It was beautiful and serene, but she was about to tarnish all of it with her presence.
‘Would you like to sit down, Mr and Mrs Hungerford?’ she asked, directing them to the sofa nearest the window.
‘I’ve made a pot of tea,’ Elizabeth Hungerford said in a whisper.
Anne seemed to move with the stealth and grace of a ninja. She was at Mrs Hungerford’s side in a second, taking her arm and leading her over to the sofa. ‘I’ll get the tea, Elizabeth,’ she said, in a soothing but confident voice. ‘DS Bennett and DC Groves have some questions for you and your husband. It won’t take long.’
As instructed, Elizabeth Hungerford sat down on the sofa with a bump, her husband mute beside her.
‘I won’t be a minute.’ Anne disappeared from the room as quickly and as quietly as she had entered. Jane had worked with her before, but she had never actually been present for Anne’s first visit with the family. She was good. Quiet, controlled, in charge, sympathetic without being patronizing. It was an amazing balancing act, which it must have taken years of experience to master. As the door to the lounge clicked shut, Jane took a seat opposite the ashen-faced couple and cleared her throat. She waited for the Hungerfords to look up, to engage. They knew what was coming. She nodded for Penny to take over.
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