The Edge: A Superintendent Mike Yeadings Mystery (Superintendent Mike Yeadings Mysteries)

by Clare Curzon

  Without touching them she read the titles on two of the magazines. One dealt with Information Technology. The other, more fingered, was a catalogue for camping equipment.

  If he’d spent the previous night under canvas as intended he’d have had little sleep because of the storm. Maybe he was catching up with it now and would eventually return in a bedraggled state.

  But, camping, he’d surely have been with others in an organised group. There would be friends with him. A scout troop or boys from his school. Enquiries the Boss had already set in motion should turn up the necessary information.

  She bypassed the bookshelves. That would require longer examination. On first sight they appeared to cover two interests: schoolwork and adventure fiction. She turned to look at the bed. There was an impression where a weight had stood on the feather duvet. Almost circular; perhaps a long, draw-top bag like the sort service men stowed their kit in?

  The double doors of the wardrobe stood ajar. When she pushed at them they resisted closure. Inside there was a gap in the row of hangers on a rail and a confusion of shoes and boots on the floor. From a shelf above her head a leather travel case projected with a strap hanging down as if pulled forward when some other object was dragged from on top.

  It all pointed to the boy, Daniel, having packed hand luggage before he left. But there was nothing to show whether his departure had been as previously planned, or if it was some spur-of-the-moment decision. In the three drawers of a tallboy clean clothes appeared undisturbed. She slid her hands in underneath but encountered no surprises, no papers or stash of cash.

  He’d have needed both money and food, Z thought. A clue to what he’d taken must be looked for downstairs. She went down again, carefully keeping to the same side and not touching the banister rail. In the kitchen she put a tea towel over her fingers to open the refrigerator, not trusting the latex gloves to leave traces undisturbed. It was amply stocked, giving no indication of what could have been removed.

  Somewhere in the house there would be a safe. She followed the sounds of Ken Bates’s movements and found him in a smaller room furnished as an office. ‘Have you come across a safe yet?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Not all the walls have been checked yet. But it may be one of those under-floor ones. We’re not touching the carpets until the rest of the team’s arrived. So far there’s just us finalising photo shots and bagging. Fingerprints are on hold until we’re done. Your boss is a devil for preserving the scene.’

  She went through to the long, low-ceilinged drawing-room. The keyboard of a Broadwood grand piano stood open for playing: no display of photos on the top. And none on the walls. But inside the boxy piano stool was a photograph album. She turned to the latest full page and removed a studio portrait of a blond, fine-featured young man she’d have taken for twenty years old. This, she guessed, was the son, almost sixteen, said to look older than his years. The slender, pale face and light eyes were the same as those in earlier photographs from toddler years on. His longish fair hair flopped over one eyebrow like a matinee idol’s.

  She slid the card into her shoulder bag. This was all she’d been asked for. The rest of the tour was a bonus.

  And still she hadn’t seen where the little girls had been stabbed to death in their sleep. Stoically she went back upstairs, observed the room, the bloodied sheets; then returned sombrely to her car.

  At the Area nick she passed the boy’s portrait in for photocopying and made her way to where Acting-DCI Salmon was still holding the floor, summing up Beaumont’s presentation.

  ‘Right then: approach and entry. Due to torrential rain overnight and the presence of our own vehicles, it’s not been possible to identify any form of transport for the killer. But an approach on foot’s unlikely, since the property is a quarter of a mile from the road, whether by driveway or through fenced fields and spinney. Both Hoad cars, BMW & Vauxhall Zafira, were found in a double garage, radiators cold. An elderly Jeep 4x4 in a converted stable had its rear fully loaded with fencing stakes, reels of wire, tools etc. According to the stockman, Ned Barton, whose cottage is nearby on the estate, it was ready for starting boundary work on Monday.

  ‘Entry was not forced. The night caller either had a key or was let in by a member of the family.’

  A hand shot up. ‘Couldn’t he have hidden inside during the day while the house was left open?’

  Salmon looked to Beaumont for a lead. ‘The building has plenty of rooms not normally in use,’ the DS offered, ‘particularly on the top, servants’ floor. There’s a live-in housekeeper, who was away for the weekend. Other servants, cleaners and so on, come in daily as required.’

  He advanced on the easel covered in sheets of newsprint and drew an oblong in black felt pen. ‘The original house is three hundred years old, facing south-west, with three Dutch gables at the front and later extensions at each end. There are three floors.’

  He drew in the rooms for each, naming them as he did so. Several officers in the elbow-to-elbow crowded room juggled with paper and pen, trying to keep up.

  FORDHAM MANOR

  A) Ground floor

  B) First floor

  C) Top floor

  Two unused staff dormitories, housekeeper’s suite, bathroom, darkroom, laundry, box room

  Yeadings nodded. Beaumont had acquitted himself well, now scowling impatiently while his audience’s muttering covered efforts to reproduce his freehand sketch. In retrieving a dropped pencil one constable slid off the edge of a shared seat. A muted cheer from others at the back faltered and was covered by the shuffling of heavy patrol boots.

  Yeadings shared their sense of awkwardness. Even for the most case-hardened this investigation was nearly off the known scale. Little wonder the newer elements weren’t at ease. He had trouble himself in confronting the callous and wholesale nature of the crime. For the present, emphasis would be on material evidence. Later, pressure must get worse as, with probing, the victims began to emerge as living, breathing souls. Some of the younger officers would resort to graveyard humour to get them through it.

  ‘A restricted number of copies of this plan are for internal circulation only. Any leak to the press will be dealt with seriously,’ Beaumont continued, grinding away.

  M’m, Yeadings observed: a new ring of authority there. Did the DS have the energising scent of promotion in his nostrils? With Salmon’s temporary shift to DCI, the need to replace a DI in Serious Crimes was more pressing. And overdue. So, would it fall to Beaumont or Rosemary Zyczynski? Both sergeants deserved it, were equally qualified, but he’d never get to keep either in his team once promoted to inspector.

  He looked across to the door where Z had squeezed in as a latecomer. She caught his raised eyebrows and nodded back. Good, he thought. If the boy stayed missing, and nothing came of enquiries already under way, that photograph would have to be publicised. Risky, though, if the boy’s survival left him at risk of a similar fate. Also tabloid press zest for the horrific could suggest guilty involvement, and only God knew what trouble that could bring on. Best wait a few hours more. Whether he proved a suspect or under threat himself, Daniel Hoad’s whereabouts would be safer handled discreetly.

  Salmon left the room, leaving Beaumont penned in by volunteers eager for plain-clothes secondment. Yeadings cut a swathe through and found Z waiting outside. ‘Daniel Hoad’s photo is being copied,’ she told him.

  He nodded. ‘Let’s go and see if it’s hit my desk yet.’

  It hadn’t, but he didn’t appear put out, making straight for the coffee machine on his windowsill and spooning in sufficient grounds for four. It had barely begun its gentle burbling when a civilian clerk arrived with a box file of 8x10s.

  Yeadings studied the shot. In seven-eighths view, Daniel appeared relaxed, eyes slightly amused, his maize-coloured hair longish but well-cut, falling in softly waved wings beside sculpted cheekbones. ‘Arty pose,’ he gave as his opinion. ‘What do you make of him, Z?’

  ‘As they said, h
e looks older than sixteen. Good-looking. Quite the golden boy. Nice smile.’

  ‘A charmer’s smile, and he knows it’s a winner. He’s going to need all that assurance when he learns what’s happened at home.’

  He turned back to the window. ‘We’ve heard only one opinion on him as yet. Ned Barton wrote him off as a “milksop” – perhaps because he doesn’t soil his hands like a farm worker. I guess at this lad’s age Ned was earning a third of a grown man’s wage and helping support his parents. There’s more than a generation’s gap between them. Also the difference of wealth and education. This young man could be more complex than Ned gives him credit for.’

  ‘Is there news of him yet?’

  ‘Only negative. The planned scout camp was wisely cancelled in advance of the storm, and the lads all dismissed an hour after they assembled. The scoutmaster interviewed suggested Daniel had gone home early with one of the other Explorer Scouts. He certainly wasn’t there for roll-call. We’re following up some addresses, to find out where he might have gone.’

  Zyczynski slumped into a chair. ‘But it’s possible he did make for home. In which case, just what did he walk into? And where is he now?’

  Chapter Four

  Even without police cases, Professor Littlejohn was accustomed to multiple post-mortems, due to the proximity of three motorways with the densest traffic flow in the South East. But this tragedy, a family group savagely slaughtered in their home, must give him special cause for pity. Yet the grey-bearded face bent over the first body showed no more than a frown of concentration, swiftly lightened by a gleam of curiosity.

  He was taking them in order of age, the man first.

  His assistant had shaved back the black, matted thatch of chest hair to reveal the long white scar of an incision for open heart surgery. ‘He had that several years back,’ Littlejohn decided. ‘The pacemaker’s a more recent job, quite a neat little Lucy Locket.’

  Looking up, he caught Salmon’s frown. ‘Pocket, man! Use a little imagination.’

  He wouldn’t have been so brusque if the Boss had been there, Beaumont reflected. So Littlejohn, like Z and himself, wasn’t particularly enamoured of the Acting DCI.

  After the formal description of the body, he turned to the recent injuries.

  ‘Aha! As suspected, we have the entry wound for a bullet under all that stabbing.’ He inserted a fine steel tube into the wound.

  ‘A single shot aimed at an angle, upwards through the ribcage to above the heart, then deflected and …’ He probed. ‘ …and finally lodged in the right clavicle.’

  He removed a small bullet. Z recognised a .22.

  Littlejohn was muttering into his beard. ‘Interesting, that. One acknowledges, of course, the usual function of a pacemaker. But as a marksman’s bull’s eye, this is surely something else.’

  ‘Dead, just the same,’ Beaumont murmured.

  ‘As you say. Certainly dead.’ The pathologist’s keen hearing had picked up the aside. ‘The pacemaker’s destruction would cause an immediate myocardial infarction. Since the single .22 bullet had been sufficient to kill him, the stabbings were mere ornamentation. Yes, comparatively little blood loss after the initial spurt, but sufficient to disguise the bullet’s entry point.’

  He squinted over his half-moon spectacles in Salmon’s direction. ‘As well as the number of knife wounds, you will be wanting the precise angle of the lethal trajectory. And that will be interesting, because the victim is by no means a tall man. Five feet five inches, as my assistant has informed us.’

  He beamed at the group of CID officers. ‘It may make your task easier if among your suspects is a pygmy.’

  ‘Couch potatoes are commoner,’ Beaumont suggested. ‘Though murder’s not a job to take on lying down.’

  Zyczynski transferred her weight from one foot to the other. She could do without these tasteless quips. For distraction she moved a few paces away and turned her attention to the next body awaiting examination.

  Jennifer Hoad, some three or four inches taller than her husband, had been of a slim build and long-boned; a classic fashion-model type. Agony had cruelly distorted a once-lovely face. She had long, shapely limbs and shoulder-length gold-blonde hair. Over torso and abdomen the network of blood had congealed in rivulets and pools in the hollows of clavicles and waist. She had been stabbed several times, probably while still standing, and again as she continued to bleed, lying on the straw bales, still alive. Not granted a quick death.

  Z studied her face, the single vertical line chiselled between straight brows, the strong chin and jaw-line. This was a woman who had known her own mind and stood by it, authoritative and challenging. So what had drawn her into marriage with the small, dried-out, almost reptilian man who, more than anything, had reminded Z of a crouched brown toad? Yes, ‘Toad’, not Hoad, was probably the name other boys had called him at school.

  Perhaps, alive, he’d had some special magnetism. A mellifluous voice? Great kindness? Whatever it had been, it was gone now and had left no record behind on his face. Not humour, she decided. Those heavy, dark-skinned features were never built for mirth. And Jennifer – what had made her smile? What sort of things could these two have laughed over together? In death it was unimaginable.

  Z moved slowly on to the two smaller figures, but she found them less disturbing than she’d feared, so peacefully asleep, a white sheet drawn up to their shoulders, covering any injuries. Two school-friends as unalike as the two adults had been. The smaller one, Angela Hoad, was dark like her father, but had none of his heaviness. Instead she was elfin, in death the fine triangular face seeming almost to wear a puckish smile. The other child was harder to read, physically more developed but perhaps less aware of the world. In the way that children were drawn to each other at that age, she could have been the follower, a little slower, allowing the other to lead, perhaps cautioning when the Hoad child dared too far.

  All of which supposition could be utterly wrong, Z warned herself; and went back to check on Littlejohn’s progress.

  The flesh had been given the Y-shaped main incision, the sternum was sawn through and the ribs opened out. Littlejohn removed the pacemaker in pieces, like a dismantled watch. There followed the ritual removal, examination, description and weighing of body parts, of little interest to the CID officers present, once the cause of death was established. But Salmon was impatient to know an estimated time of death.

  He should have known better.

  ‘That will be revealed in the written report, after due consideration of all aspects,’ Littlejohn was pleased to pontificate. ‘If you find your presence here wearisome, Acting-Detective-Chief-Inspector, do feel at liberty to return to more germane matters, or at least release your minions for that purpose. An initial exploration of the four cadavers will require at least a further two hours of my time.’

  Salmon’s down-turned mouth tightened. Z watched a scarlet flush spread up his bull-like neck. ‘Beaumont, we can spare you,’ he barked. ‘Get back and see what’s turned up.’

  ‘Sir,’ said the released DS with a nice balance of relief and distance.

  Z watched him go with envy. For her the worst was surely yet to come.

  Beaumont returned to base to catch Superintendent Yeadings, guiltily again at his coffeemaker. ‘Should really stick to decaff,’ he admitted, ‘but who’s to know?’

  ‘Like the expert I’ve just come from?’ his DS dared warn.

  ‘God forbid …’

  The internal phone on his desk interrupted them.

  ‘Get that,’ Yeadings ordered, waving a spoon in its direction.

  ‘They’re connecting me with Swindon,’ Beaumont murmured, the phone hugged between chin and chest while he reached across for a pen and paper. ‘Yes, got that. Hang on, I’ll ask him.

  ‘Sir, they’ve traced the absent housekeeper, staying at her aunt’s. Are they to break the news to her?’

  ‘No. I warned them no action. This needs careful handling. I’ll send Z down. You�
�d better get back to the post-mortem and relieve her. If Salmon objects, simply say “Women’s work.” He’ll like that.’

  My, my, Beaumont told himself, preparing to leave, our Acting DCI seems to have needled everyone.

  Rosemary Zyczynski accepted her release without a flicker of expression. Out in the car park she punched a joyous fist in the air, remembered she was almost out of gas and pulled into the nearest service station for a refill.

  The M4 was already buzzing with early rush-hour traffic, including heavy goods vehicles returning west and holding up streams of cars at the inevitable road works which that motorway seemed to spawn. Automatically she timed the journey and noted the trip-reading on arrival. Ninety-seven miles in an hour and forty-three minutes: not bad, considering.

  Alma Pavitt’s widowed aunt, Nora Bellinger, lived in a narrow, terraced house on the north side of the town centre. It was a typical Victorian development with a square, low-walled front garden barely large enough to hold an ancient bicycle, four slabs of paving stones and a few shrivelled survivals of autumn’s chrysanthemums. The bike was a woman’s, with a worn velvet pad to cushion the seat. A padlock and chain, attaching the machine to a staple fixed under the outer windowsill, was modest warning of the neighbourhood crime statistic.

  It was the niece who opened to Z’s knock. She leaned out to get the message with the door held close behind her, but failing to muffle the wailing of an older female voice from an inner room: ‘Who is it, dear? I don’t buy from travelling salesmen. You can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Sorry; what’s that again? Did you say police?’

  ‘Maybe I could come in and talk,’ Z suggested, showing her warrant card.

  Alma Pavitt examined it, appeared satisfied it was genuine, but looked slightly puzzled. ‘Is something wrong? I hope there’s not a gas leak and you’re wanting Auntie to move out. She’s got a badly broken leg.’