“There’s a chill come to the air I reckon.” Alfred spoke with the tone of a weather reporter; no response required.
“Just here will be fine.” They were at the end of a long track, with the range in the distance. There was no more effective a conduit for gossip than a village taxi driver, and Dan wanted to make sure Alfred didn’t get a better view. He tipped Alfred heavily and climbed out.
A five hundred yard walk lay ahead. Innumerable potholes along the track confronted him like landmines in the dark, moonlight winking weakly from the rainwater they’d protected since yesterday’s downpour. Floodlights reflecting in the forensics van’s window marked his destination.
His phone’s torchlight assured his footing, as he zigzagged his way up the lane, with the go-kart circuit to his left. Behind him the taxi’s steering column moaned its way through a tight three-point turn. The slushing of its tyres through potholes faded as Daniel ignored his footing for a moment to glance towards the range.
A tent sat underneath the floodlights where the midsection of bays should have been. It looked like some golf addict had decided to camp out for the night, in anticipation of smashing balls towards the rising sun.
Five minutes of trudging and dodging later, he was at the range’s entrance: a heavily hinged door made of recycled wood chippings. Above the door’s frame, illuminated weakly by a single, uncovered bulb, the flaking paint of a sign boasted, ‘The best range this side of the M1.’ A tasteless sticker, the size of a dinner plate, accompanied the sign: a large-breasted woman, simultaneously spilling from her blouse and swinging a golf club.
There was something about the solid door, not offering a hint of what was beyond, which unnerved him. He dragged a lungful of air through his nostrils and pushed the door open.
A pale-faced man Daniel presumed to be the only witness, sat in silence (bar some sporadic sniffing) with a police constable. They sat at a desk, its Formica chipped and cracked. He was shivering, covered in a tartan picnic blanket with tasselled edges. His gut was substantial, a mug of tea he clutched against it slopped a little with his shaking.
The young, clean-skinned officer wore a bulletproof vest over her long-sleeved white shirt, her hair - such a deep brown it was almost black - was tied back in a ponytail. She looked up at Daniel and walked over to him with authoritative strides. Her deep hazel eyes owned a hint of circumspection. One hand rested on the radio, which was clipped to her lapel.
“DC Aitken. I believe you have my ID?” Aitken reached inside her trouser pocket and pulled out a lanyard, looking at its ID card with pinched eyes. “I know. I’ve gained twenty pounds and lost a hair or two since then. You’ll notice its recent issue date. DCI Edwards asked me to pick up this case as SIO.” Aitken’s face softened. She nodded and handed the ID to Daniel, who, for a second, couldn’t quite remember if the protocol was to wear it, or pocket it. He slipped it over his neck.
“Will he be okay for a minute whilst you show me the crime scene?” Daniel tilted his ear towards the distressed witness.
“I think so … Mr Phillips please wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Phillip’s eyes were glazed. Perhaps he’d registered DC Aitken’s words, perhaps not. Either way, Mr Phillips wasn’t going anywhere. Daniel and Aitken walked side by side towards the door through to the bays. Aitken hung back for Daniel to go first.
“Has the coroner been notified?” asked Daniel.
“On her way.”
“How many victims?”
“Bodies? Two.”
“I’m taking it from the state of Mr Phillips … first name…?”
“Harold.”
“… that he found them?”
“I’ve not got much out of him yet - just that he witnessed the attack. And he’s given us an informal identification of the victim.”
“Is it victim or victi … What’s that?”
Daniel was looking to his left, out over the half-mown range. Two hundred yards out, just to the right of the floodlights’ reach, was another white tent. An internal light made it glow like a paper lantern.
“Our second body.”
They approached the nearest tent, which was erected over the flattened partitions. It had an octagonal frame with white walls and a blue roof. Its zipped entrance was closed but for a triangular section peeled back for ventilation. Outside, to Daniel’s right, on a table which looked like it was designed for pasting wallpaper, a thick briefcase was open, with layers of trays inside. It looked, from its innards, more like a toolbox than a briefcase. Besides an array of other equipment, its shelves held fine soft brushes. Daniel spotted a fan of neatly filed sharp scissors and breathed deeply, preparing himself to witness his first murder scene in over three years. He’d once become hardened to death’s brutality and suspected he’d have to go through that numbing process all over again.
Daniel unzipped the tent’s entrance a little further and announced his presence. Powerful lights hung from the tent’s frame. Inside, a woman and a man (scenes of crime officers - SOCOs) dressed from head to toe in pale blue overalls, were on their knees, poring over a man whose upper body was obscured from view by their presence. Their subject’s legs wore sharply pressed pinstriped trousers, his shoes had ‘Barker’ written across their soles; gold lettering barely worn.
The woman, kneeling to the left of the body, stood up and nodded at Daniel from behind her white felt-textured mask. She was tall and had to duck under the mini lighting rig. Her emerald eyes were as intense as the task at hand. She stepped out of the tent, and pulled down her mask over a striking Roman nose. Daniel didn’t recognise her. He placed her in her late thirties. She introduced herself as Chase Meadows and invited Daniel to cover up, passing him a buttoned plastic packet from her tool-kit it containing head to toe overalls.
Daniel suggested that DC Aitken return to check if Mr Phillips was up to giving a statement yet, which she did readily. As he pulled the overalls over his trousers he asked, “So what have we got so far?”
“Can’t say anything official yet…” the familiar caveat he would soon get tired of hearing. “…until the post-mortem, but it looks like cause of death was multiple cranial blows, concentrating mainly around the nose and mouth, there’s severe skeletal damage: multiple fractures to the nasal spine and a compound fracture to the frontal bone. Probably finally died of a traumatic brain injury, but could equally have been either a circulatory or respiratory failure, given the damage to his airwaves and loss of blood.”
“Murder weapon?”
“You’ll see for yourself, a golf club is most likely. We haven’t examined or photographed our second body yet but he’s still gripping a golf club with blood covering its head and handle, which is bizarre.”
Daniel was securing his mask and his voice became muffled, “Bizarre? Surely you’ve seen stranger murder weapons.” He regretted his tone instantly as it sounded like he was questioning Chase’s experience.
“Drills, paperweights, a fountain pen … even a vibrator … you name it. It’s not the weapon that’s weird. It’s that the second body was found with a thirty-eight-calibre pistol. I’m guessing we’ll find at least one round discharged.”
“How so?”
“From an initial glance, I’d say a bullet entered our second body’s chin, passed through the parietal lobe, and exited the skull at the crown. Like I say, we haven’t looked closely. But if you wanted to murder someone, why take the time, never mind the effort, of clubbing him when you’re carrying a gun? Anyway …” she looked like she’d said too much, “…that’s not for me to worry about.”
“Of course, but I value your view.” She tipped her head in recognition, slipped her mask back over her make-up free face, and headed back inside the tent. Daniel followed.
They say a picture paints a thousand words; never more so than at a crime scene. Chase’s colleague’s camera flashed away, -despite the already clinically powerful light - taking exhaustive photos of the victim and surrounding area.
Daniel stood up, his boots flush against the side of the fallen partitions, and leant over to examine the fatal wound from above. Below the cave of gore where his face had been, was a broken silver chain around his neck. Daniel asked if either of them had found what had been snapped from it. Chase, who was dusting the top of the golf bag, shook her head and her colleague confirmed, “Not yet.”
Daniel stared intensely into the mass of bone and sinew, “Does anyone have a torch?”
“Hold on,” Chase stepped out of the tent to fetch him one.
As she handed it to him, he said, “Thanks, I left in a bit of a rush, sorry.”
He knelt, but this time with his knee on the partition, next to the victim’s arm and too close to a pool of blood. “DI Sheppard! I don’t want the scene disturbing before we’ve completed our work.”
“Sure, sorry, just taking a quick look.” Something with a slight glint amongst the gore had piqued his interest.
“Chase, I think there’s something in here. Could you remove it?”
“I’d rather wait ’til we’ve moved the body. It’s not on a stable surface … I don’t want to disturb anything in the process. I’d have to get permission from the forensics science provider.”
“I get that, but let’s face it, the cause of death is pretty obvious.”
“Sorry. I’m afraid I’m not prepared to.”
“Looks like you’re going to have to make a call then. There’s something wedged in there, and I’m betting it’s whatever was on the end of that chain.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
On the surface, Blaine was static. The Sunday morning peel of church bells called worshippers to do God’s will: to remain still, to rest. The village’s compliance wasn’t absolute. There was quiet defiance: below ground the sewage irreverently surged, and in the treetops, birds tweeted in desultory chorus, telling of their comrades who had already fled, and making their own plans to escape. On the ground too, there were those - though not in numbers - who, with sudsy wrists and rolled sleeves, scrubbed stubborn grey-white marks from their cars; the purge of those treacherous birds. But, mostly, the defiance of God’s command to rest went on indoors.
Blaine spoke of the known and unknown in equal measure. The hacks hacked, the tweeters tweeted, and the speculation slicked its way through underground fibres. Often words reached friends within two miles of the sender, yet arrived having travelled thousands of miles via Silicon Valley, stopping there momentarily to make a drop in the ocean of big data. Few worried themselves about this; who opens a letter thinking of the journey it’s been on and who else might have had sight of the contents? But they did worry about what Blaine was becoming.
Hewitt’s neighbour Sally Albright tweeted:
#Blainemurders WTF is happening to this place? Four dead in the space of nine months.
This was favourited forty seven times, and retweeted six, mostly with tags like: Good question #realmysteries.
Sally Albright’s cousin, Fran Wilson, posted on Facebook a picture of the Louth Herald headline from the time of Fallon’s murder. Her status update was, ‘Awful news about Mallory Hewitt. I wonder what Monday’s headline will be. Anyone else scared to be in this village right now?’
Within five hours it had attracted eighty-three likes and a string of comments:
Mark Endless: Hey, lightening’s got to strike twice sometimes. Statistically, it’s not that unusual.
Lisa Downing: Typical Mark :) I for one think it’s weird. Hope the police are investigating a connection. Too similar to Fallon’s murder for sure.
Mark Endless: Why, what have you heard?
Lisa Downing: The person who killed Hewitt topped themselves. Lisa T says her sister was driving past the range and saw the police taking down someone from a noose, hanging from the range’s lighting rig.
Sally Albright: OMG. Did she see who?
Lisa Downing: Apparently not - too far away to see clearly. More likely a man than a woman, but couldn’t be certain.
Mark Endless: She said, he said, tittle tattle. Dangerous speculation.
Lisa Downing: Mark Endless don’t be such a downer :(
And so it went on, as shiny Volvos and Fords parked up outside St Hughs, and their owners marched in single file along a path flanked by visible gravestones and the invisible bones of the dead, Blaine was shrouded in an atmosphere similar to that evoked by the 9/11 attacks: the balance between fleeting, stunned exhilaration and terror was still tipped in the favour of exhilaration. But the balance would surely soon shift in terror’s favour.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Daniel attempted to fasten the jacket of his navy uniform but the silver buttons wouldn’t quite reach their holes. He sighed, discarded his jacket on the bed, and pulled out a dark charcoal V-necked jumper. He always had this internal dialogue about work-wear. Why the hell should it matter what you wear? Surely the more comfortable you are, the better you’re going to perform. He liked V-necked Kashmir-cotton blend sweaters, which grew and shrunk with his waistline from year to year. He knew he was going to get some barbed comment about his appearance from Edwards, who over-privileged the public’s view of the people in his charge. A minor bust up with Edwards to start his first official day back, c’est la vie.
Daniel straightened his white collars, regarding himself in the mirrored wardrobe. His peripheral view caught the square patch of wallpaper where the ‘Daniel and the Lions’ watercolour had once hung. He resolved to strip the wallpaper at the weekend. It was about time he got his house in order.
He walked down the hall, stopping to do a last check in the mirror, and ruffled his overly neat black hair a little, sighing at how thin it had become. The lanyard tethered to his security card sat on a small table next to his wedding photo. He kissed his fingers, reached for Alison and deposited the kiss on her cheek.
“Wish me luck.”
He scooped up his lanyard and was gone.
Daniel shut the door of his Hyundai SUV and looked up at Ryvita house in Lincoln. It was a beige sixties-built monstrous edifice, its external walls attracting larger patches of damp-looking dirt as the years rolled on. The plentiful windows were narrow, uniform rectangles with brown fascias.
It’s no wonder we can’t retain staff. This place is the pits.
He swiped himself through the rear entrance and made his way down a cream corridor, a series of racing green radiators to his right. He half expected to bump into familiar faces, but the corridor was eerily quiet. At the end, to his right, just before the door to the stairs, overlapping A4 laminated sheets were pinned to a cork staff notice board. One notice was a sponsorship request for the Great North Run. This briefly took his interest before he realised it was for last year’s event.
DCI Edwards’s office was on the third floor, and by the time he’d climbed two flights, Daniel was out of breath. DC Aitken passed him on the stairs in her uniform minus the bulletproof vest. They said a polite, ‘good morning’ before Daniel, struggling to speak, stopped and shouted down after her, “You’re not heading out are you? I could do with a chat.”
She flashed a mouthful of perfectly white teeth, “I’m not going anywhere. See you shortly.”
Daniel knocked and entered DCI Edwards’s office without awaiting a response; through the door’s narrow strip of reinforced glass he saw his friend sitting alone. Edwards said, “Take a seat Dan,” without looking up from the neat sheaf of cream papers he was meticulously working through. He took a page at a time, once satisfied, deposi
ting each facedown on the growing pile to his right. No uniform today, though his navy suit was just as pressed, just as polished. A Dell laptop, lid shut, sat neatly in the desk’s corner. There wasn’t a stray Post-it note or piece of scrap paper in sight.
Daniel glanced round to see what had changed in the office, self-consciously pinching his shirt collars to make sure they didn’t gape too much. Nothing much had changed, a couple of certificates had been added to the line on the wall to Daniel’s left, but that was it.
Edwards’s papers were now all facedown to his right. He picked up the pile and rapped it against the desk to straighten its edge’s insignificant imperfections, before laying it down. He took a moment to regard Daniel, with a half smile and a silent nod of recognition. Daniel read his old friend’s thoughts: Okay, smart-ish, I guess. Don’t beat him up about his appearance on his first day back.
“Anything interesting?” asked Daniel, nodding towards the paper stack.
“National report on police resourcing. More of the same, lower budgets, bigger push for community support officers. A plea to all to reduce costs wherever possible. New weighting system for rural budgets shifting the balance in favour of urban centres.” Having the report on his desk whilst meeting Daniel was no co-incidence. Nothing ever was with DCI Edwards.
Here comes the so what.
“So I hope you appreciate the context when I lay out what resources you’ve got for the Mallory Hewitt case.”
“Break it to me Ted.”
“You’ve got Robinson, and Aitken can support, and that’s it. And probably only for a few weeks. See if you can wrap it up as quickly as Robinson wrapped up the Fallon case. Similar case, similar timescales.”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“It’s not been that long since we’ve worked together has it? What did you expect … that I’d bang my fists on the table and shout, ‘that’s not good enough chief’, before spending the next three weeks breaking every rule in the book, working through the night - no time to shave - in a desperate attempt to chase a line of enquiry that only I believe to be valid? Unlike Robinson, I don’t have Luther and Bosch as role models. I’ll do what I can with the timescales and resources I have. No more no less. I’m not going to cloud my thinking by getting stressed to the eyeballs about stretched resources.
Prepared to Die Page 8