by Lisa Cutts
Chapter 5
With the few resources he had available, Josh set about first securing the crime scene, and then finding out what the neighbours had to say about the person who used to occupy the corpse staring at him. He found out the deceased’s name from paperwork and photo identification he’d glanced through on the coffee table, but left everything else undisturbed. He would wait until the crime scene investigators and the detective inspector arrived.
It looked like a straightforward crime scene to him: dead body in suspicious circumstances with boot marks on the front door of the otherwise empty flat. The foot imprints were likely to be key and on occasion had proved to be as unique as a fingerprint.
Josh knew how important boot marks could be, but it threw up a very practical problem when it came to preserving them: he needed to keep the door half-closed because the face of Albie Woodville stared at anyone as they reached the top of the stairs. He only had two officers and now one was with the initial police informant, while the other was rummaging around in the boot of her car trying to find scene tape and a scene log to record details of everyone within the crime scene.
Josh stood in the doorway, blocking anyone’s view, and busied himself making sure a CSI was on their way, as well as trying to find out as much as he could about Albie Woodville. As with any Friday night, the police operators were busy asking for available patrols to deal with domestic assaults, pub fights, traffic collisions, abandoned 999 calls. It never stopped and it never would. The only difference was that modern-day policing meant that Josh now only had eleven response officers for a population of half a million.
Even though he knew the control room would make direct contact with the local area on-call detective inspector for a suspicious death, Josh was also aware that a last-minute Crown Court appearance by the person supposed to be on duty meant that all cover was being handled directly by Major Crime. He had already looked up on the roster who it was. He dialled DI Harry Powell’s mobile.
‘Josh,’ said Harry. ‘How’re you doing, mate?’
‘Not so bad, Harry, not so bad. Where are you?’
He heard a sigh from his plain-clothes counterpart. ‘Almost made it out of the door for home, though just at the moment, there’s not much to rush back to. So right now, I’m still at the nick, about to make my way over to you.’
‘Things haven’t improved with your missus then since we last spoke?’ asked Josh, listening out for sounds of any other patrols arriving from anywhere in the county that could spare them.
‘You could say that. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was having an affair. I don’t think it’s that: at least it would cheer her the fuck up. I’m making my way over, but based on what you’ve seen so far, what have we got?’
Josh lowered his voice and stepped back inside the flat, glancing down at Albie’s body as he did so, mindful of where he was treading.
‘I’m satisfied that we have the body of the flat’s occupant. It’s a male called Albie or Albert Woodville. Seems that someone broke in, tied his hands behind his back with cable-ties and then put one around his throat. Poor sod probably suffered for a couple of minutes and then knew no more.’
‘Yeah, well,’ said Harry. ‘You may want to hold up on that “poor sod” attitude. Control room have already been on to me about this. It’s why I haven’t left here yet. I’ve spent a couple of minutes taking a look at his warning signs and he’s on the Sex Offenders’ Register. Albie Woodville had a thing for children, especially those he looked after in children’s homes, plus he hasn’t long come out of prison.’
‘Well that narrows it down to only about three-quarters of the country’s population wanting to kill him,’ said Josh. ‘I’ll take a quick look around his place to make sure there’s nothing obvious jumping out at me at the moment and then wait for you to get here. I’ll have to go soon. I think that firearms have arrived. As usual, I’ve got fuck-all patrols and I’ve had to call them here, even though they were about fifty miles away propping up another department stripped bare in the cuts.’
Josh moved to the far side of the room to make way for the CSI who had just arrived. Conscious that he wasn’t supposed to touch anything, despite the rubber gloves he wore, he pushed open the thin living-room curtains with the back of his hand.
‘Give me a few minutes,’ said Harry on the other end of the line. ‘I’m on my way.’
‘You can’t miss the address,’ answered Josh, shaking his head at the sight that greeted him from the other side of the window. It was weirdly comforting to know that even after all the things he had seen and the calls he had been to over the years, he could still be disgusted by the behaviour of others. It meant his job hadn’t yet torn his soul out. He could make out the outline in the glow given off by the street lights of the neighbouring infant school, its playground running the length of the block of flats.
Something on the windowsill caught his eye. He was a father of three, a police officer and a man with no sexual interest in children: the large tub of K-Y Jelly pushed behind the curtain did little to change his attitude towards the dead man. Especially as the top was unscrewed and what looked like a collection of pubic hairs rested around the rim.
Josh still had a job to do but he was only human. He muttered something into the phone before he hung up that sounded very much to Harry Powell like the words, ‘You dirty, dirty bastard.’
Chapter 6
Harry Powell grabbed his electronic notebook and made his way to the main door of the incident room that led to the rest of the police station. Being the last person in the office, he was about to set the internal burglar alarm when a familiar face greeted him at the entrance to the Major Crime Department.
‘Detective Constable Laura Ward,’ he said to her as he shook her hand. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. What can I do for you?’
‘That’s a very formal greeting, boss. I think you’ll find it’s a case of what I can do for you.’
‘I’d love to stay and chat, ask about your baby. What is she – six months? A year? But I’ve got to rush out.’
Laura smiled at him. ‘I doubt you’re the slightest bit interested in how she’s doing but thanks for asking and she’s now thirteen months. I guess you’re on your way out to Albie Woodville’s?’
The remark stopped Harry in his tracks. It wasn’t that he was surprised that the news had travelled so fast, but rather that it now dawned on him exactly what role Laura had chosen to take on at the end of her maternity leave. She was now a ViSOR officer, which meant spending large parts of her day visiting those on the Sex Offenders’ Register.
It was one of the few times that Harry was reluctant to say what he really felt about someone else’s choice of career.
‘I hope you’re not another of those who thought I shouldn’t be doing a job like that after having a baby,’ she said, leaning against the door frame, arms now crossed.
He winked at her and said, ‘It’s up to you what you want to do, Laura. I’m not about to warn you of the perils of bringing up a baby and working with nonces day in, day out.’
She laughed and uncrossed her arms. ‘I always had you down as a bit of a dinosaur. It’s refreshing to hear.’
‘There’s no place in the modern police service for antiquated or misogynist views.’
‘I’m impressed, Harry. About both your views and the fact that you used a couple of long words there.’
‘So,’ he said, ‘I’ll ignore that if you’ve dropped by to tell me all about Albert Woodville and his perverted ways.’
‘Now you’re in danger of flirting,’ she said. ‘Want me to come out to the scene with you and I’ll fill you in as we go?’
‘That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.’
Once in Harry’s car, Laura said, ‘I’ll tell you everything I can about Woodville but I don’t think it’s going to really help you narrow the search down all that much. He wasn’t very well liked by quite a number of people.’
‘Most s
ex offenders aren’t though, are they?’ said Harry as he looked across at her, taking in the dark circles under her eyes, probably accentuated by her fair skin and blonde hair. It crossed his mind how difficult she might be finding the combination of being a single parent and working full-time, especially in such a responsible position. For a second, he almost asked her but wondered if he’d come across as a little creepy: older man, detective inspector, with a younger, very attractive woman in his car, late at night, all alone. He thought better of it, and of his pension, so he waited for her reply to his work-related question as he drove up to the security barrier of the police station rear yard.
‘No, they’re not on most people’s Christmas card lists,’ she agreed and paused before she added, ‘Some of them don’t continue to reoffend, but out of the sixty-six sex offenders I manage, Woodville was one of the most worrying.’
‘You fucking what?’ said Harry, hitting the brake as he drove through the exit. He stared across at her. ‘Did you just say that you manage sixty-fucking-six sex offenders?’
‘Oh yeah. We’ve got one hundred and thirty-three of them living in our district. Myself and the other DC split them down the middle. The odd one fell to him because we flipped a coin to see who’d end up with the extra one. He lost so I’ve only got sixty-six and he’s got sixty-seven.’
‘And how often do you see them?’
‘Woodville was considered high risk so I visited him every three months, kept an eye on him when I could, but with dozens more I did my best to stop him reoffending.’
Harry approached a junction and once again glanced across at his colleague. ‘You make it sound like you failed. He didn’t reoffend. He was murdered.’
She moved in her seat and said, ‘Perhaps you’re right but I was keeping a particular eye on him because all the warning signs were there.’ She let out a sigh.
‘And?’ said Harry.
‘He’d only been out of prison for ten months. In that time, he’d moved to a flat with a school near by. There weren’t many places in the area that he could afford to rent and were available. Unfortunately, this one came up and even though we didn’t like the idea of him living so close to a school, he had to live somewhere. I was on maternity leave at the time but know that we managed that by giving him licence conditions not to go to the roads around the schools.’
‘That’s a start, a bloody poor one, but a start.’
From the corner of his eye, Harry saw Laura’s head snap in his direction.
‘We do the best we can, you know,’ she said quietly.
‘It wasn’t a go at you.’
‘They kept promising us another member of staff,’ Laura said. ‘It didn’t happen. In the meantime, Woodville befriended a younger woman, a widow. She’s got two children, an eight-year-old girl and a ten-year-old boy. He probably played on her vulnerability. Paedophiles are usually very manipulative, as you know.’
Harry pulled up outside Albie Woodville’s block of flats. In the harsh lighting now coming from the many police and CSI vehicles in the car park, he could see Laura was biting her lip and her face was almost white.
‘There’s something else?’ he said.
‘I only told Woodville’s girlfriend about his sex offending two weeks ago and she took the news very badly. It’s not only that. There’s something else, too. Woodville came into the nick to see me one day. He’d had death threats.’
‘And you think it was the girlfriend or something to do with her?’
‘I think that’s highly unlikely. You see, at the time Woodville brought the threatening notes to me, saying that he was going to be strung up by his privates, that sort of thing, his girlfriend hadn’t been told about his previous sexual offending.’
‘Any chance she could have known before you told her?’ said Harry.
‘From her reaction, I would say it’s only possible if she’s a superb actor. I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance for her.’
‘So we’re narrowing this down nicely to his girlfriend, her family, any of Woodville’s many victims of sexual offending, and complete strangers who are vigilantes but like to warn their victims by post. This should be a piece of piss.’
‘There’s one more thing,’ said Laura as Harry was about to open the car door.
‘Of course there is. What’s that?’
‘Woodville also joined an amateur dramatic society. He was sorting out costumes apparently. We thought for a very long time about whether we should disclose to them his previous convictions and left the decision with the assistant chief constable. Something tipped the balance and I told the society’s chairman.’
‘I know I’m not going to like the answer, but what was the tipping point?’
‘Their next production was Annie, with cast from the local primary school.’
Chapter 7
For the third time since putting her two children to bed, Millie Hanson climbed the stairs to check on them. She padded along the hallway and peeked around the door of first Sian’s room and then Max’s, listening to them breathe.
Her children were the most important part of her life: they were the reason she got up in the morning and made the best of the situation she had found herself in. As she stood watching her son sleep, lying on his back, mouth wide open, Spider-Man bed covers half kicked off the bed, she felt despair rising in her. How she could have been so stupid, she couldn’t fathom.
She backed away from her son’s bedroom, the sight of the Spider-Man covers enough to bring tears to her eyes. Max now hated them, saying he was too old for something so childish. She couldn’t afford new ones and knew that was the least of her worries.
Without turning on the light, she went into her bedroom and lay on the bed. It was easier lying there in the dark: she could pretend that she wasn’t on her own, wasn’t so lonely and scared for herself and the children, missing her husband so much it felt like a physical pain, her chest constricting every time she breathed in, crushing the life out of her. She could so easily succumb to it but that wasn’t something she usually allowed herself the luxury of. It had been six years since Clive had died, but if she concentrated, if she closed her eyes and kept very still, Millie was sure that he was there right beside her. He was there, head resting on the pillow, waiting for her to wake up so he could stroke her hair and say, ‘Morning, you. Think we’ve got half an hour before the kids wake up?’
She could play the scene over and over in her mind. How she’d loved those stolen early mornings with him before anyone else was awake. She couldn’t believe she had everything she had ever wanted – a husband, family and home.
Now the scene was gone and the same wretched feelings returned to her. She felt a sob rise in her throat but refused to allow herself to fall apart. There had been a few moments over the years where she had almost given in. For the sake of her children, she held it together and had been foolish enough to think that she could move on and put what had happened behind her, build a new life for them all.
Millie knew that she was still reasonably attractive. She had kept her slim figure, even after two children, and even she admitted to herself that her jet black hair and deep blue eyes had turned a few heads in their time. Still, she hadn’t gone looking for someone for her and the children to share their lives with. Then she met Albert Woodville. An older man, but a steady influence, someone with his own flat, even if he was only renting. He hadn’t even wanted to rush her into sex.
When she thought about it now, he’d seemed more interested in befriending her children. Something at the time she had found charming.
She put her hands up to her head in an unconscious effort to stop the thoughts that were now tramping through her mind. The first time she had met Albie, she’d been in the park with her children. Sian still loved to go to the pond and see the ducks and swans; Max was more reluctant these days but as long as he got to take his football, he had usually forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to be enjoying himself by the time they got there.
School holidays and the warmth of the day meant that many people had brought their children out and the park was busy. She had taken drinks and snacks along in a rucksack, hoping for a picnic but knowing that neither Sian nor Max would sit still for long enough for that to happen.
Despite her awareness of people around her, she had felt perfectly safe in the park, oblivious to the horrors the world could bring to her door. There was no reason for her to be concerned. She thought that the worst had already happened to them.
Even when Albie had approached the three of them, Max sulking because he’d been told to leave his ball for five minutes and cool off with a drink, and Sian scanning the trees for squirrels, Millie squinting into the sun as she watched him puff over the hill in their direction, he’d appeared to be normal. Reassuringly normal.
He waved at her and shouted, ‘Excuse me. Have you seen a Jack Russell come this way?’
She sat up straighter and shielded her eyes with her hand, saw the dog lead in his hand. ‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t. We’ve been here about ten minutes.’
He stood with his hands on his hips and glanced into the trees behind them. ‘The dog’s not even mine,’ he said, a frown creasing his forehead. ‘I was looking after him for my elderly next-door neighbour.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Millie.
‘What’s his name?’ said Sian.
‘Charlie,’ said Albie. ‘I’m going to have some explaining to do when I get back. Well, thanks anyway.’
As he turned to go, Max called out, ‘We’ll help you look.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Albie, ‘but carry on having your picnic. I’m sure he’ll turn up somewhere. It’s that now I think of it, he wasn’t wearing a name tag or contact details.’