by Iain Cameron
‘What happened when you got home?’
The sanitised version or the actual version? Kelly nagged him for being late, accused him of seeing someone as she swore she could smell perfume on his shirt and they fought like a couple of alley cats. As a result, he ate alone. She still wouldn’t let it drop and a rowdy argument developed and it was all he could do to hold back from smacking her one, so inevitably he spent the night in the spare room. He was lucky, her choice would’ve been the garage.
‘Nothing out of the ordinary. I came home, we ate tea and I helped clear up. Afterwards, I sat watching telly while she talked to her mother on the phone, and then we went to bed.’
‘Her mother mentioned the phone call. She said your wife sounded a little agitated. Do you think she was worried or anxious about something?’
He shook his head and threw his arms up in frustration. ‘She lives in a big house, she’s got two lovely kids who are getting the best education money can buy, and she spends all day swanning around her businesses and spending like there’s no tomorrow on her flexible friend. What the hell has she got to be worried about?’
‘Some people want and need different things, and women, in my experience can be quirkier in this department than men.’
What the fuck did he know about women? Tall and slim with untidy fair hair and a face shaved by a blunt razor, as he could see one or two nicks, he would bet he still counted himself lucky to be living with his first love from school. In Langton’s case, he’d been with dozens of women over the years and there wasn’t a man he knew who could tell him anything new about them.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said, ‘I defer to your richer experience.’
‘I’m sure you’ve asked yourself the same question many times sir, but is there anybody you can think of, man or woman, who might want to harm your wife, or who’s shown more than an average amount of interest in her?’
‘I can’t think of anyone and believe me matey, I’ve tried. She doesn’t have any enemies, there’s no one she talks to all the time, no silent phone calls, saucy birthday cards, blank valentine cards, nothing. I know it might sound strange for a former glamour model who once had thousands of admirers, but it’s true. ‘
‘Let’s talk about specific situations, as I think it helps focus the mind. We’ll start with the school your boys attend, Williamson College. Any problems there with, for example, teachers, the headmaster, other parents?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Yeah, once she had an argument with a woman who said Kelly cut her up in the car park and nearly ran over her daughter.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘About two months ago.’
‘The woman’s name?’
‘Angela something, I don’t remember as I don’t go there very often but it was nothing, mild car park rage I call it. She got over it.’
‘We can find out the details from the school secretary. Follow it up for me Khalid, ok?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Anything else?’
He shook his head. He could mention the ten or so of Kelly’s friends who are always bad-mouthing him behind his back, but no, there was no point in landing himself in another pile of shit.
‘What about her business interests?’
‘There are four businesses, clothes, swimwear, jewellery and fragrances and they’re all managed from the place she’s got in Burgess Hill.’
‘Any problems with staff or customers?’
‘Now you mention it, she did say she sacked her Accountant for stealing and he blew a gasket, threatened her, she said. Yeah, what about him? It might be him.’
‘We’ve interviewed Mr Hardacre and he regrets his outburst, saying he went out drinking at lunchtime and lost control.’
‘I’d go and see him again if I were you, Kelly got really upset about it.’
‘We’ll bear it in mind. This is perhaps a difficult subject to broach with you, Mr Langton, but there are strong rumours circulating among some of Kelly’s friends about you having an affair with your secretary, Melanie Knight and Kelly threatening divorce if she found any evidence to suggest they might be true.’
Good try copper but you won’t catch me out. Melanie went through all this with them and the press and without much coaching from him she denied any involvement. As he always said, if they couldn’t produce a picture or a video with his bare arse on view, primed and ready to make merry, they had bugger all.
‘I hear a lot of this stuff all the time but it doesn’t bother me anymore. These people are jealous and want to spoil what she’s got, and pissed off because someone like me, without a fancy education or a leg-up from Daddy, is making loads more money than any of the idiots they’re married to.’
There was a knock on the door and another copper appeared; shame, as he was enjoying his little game with Henderson. It was a woman, one too attractive to be a cop, perhaps they employed civilians to do this sort of work. She was younger than Melanie with a pretty face, blond hair, and a nice pair of legs on display.
‘We’re about to finish up, sir. The SOCOs are packing away their stuff.’
‘Right-oh Sally, we’re just about finished here too.’
She ducked back out and closed the door.
‘You see, Mr Langton. I told you it wouldn’t take long and you had nothing to worry about. I can tell by the look on her face, they didn’t find anything.’
SEVENTEEN
The car bumped up the uneven drive. He couldn’t be bothered getting the road surface fixed as it was almost a quarter of a mile long and it would cost loads of money and there were other things he would rather spend his cash on. At least it prevented casual visitors and the jolt it gave woke him up from the light meditation he always enjoyed whenever behind the wheel of a car.
He stopped at the top of the rise, switched off the engine and stepped out of the car. He waited a full minute to allow his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness and for his hearing to get used to the ambient noise. It was dark with no moonlight or stars as thick dark clouds were obscuring the new moon, but even though it would stop temperatures from dropping too much, it would still be a cold night.
He’d checked night time temperatures these last few days and they didn’t vary much between four to six degrees, and this evening appeared no different. Any lower and the ground would be like iron, making the job nigh on impossible.
Hearing nothing unusual, he strode across the courtyard to the barn and unlocked it. Inside, he walked to the far end, sat behind the desk and switched on the video monitor.
The bitch slept like a baby. He’d given her a larger dose than normal, secreted in a Sainsbury’s cottage pie, with a sharp, tangy sauce redolent of the rolling green hills of Tuscany, or so it said on the side of the carton. If the clean eating utensils were anything to go by, she’d scoffed the lot, unless of course a portion lay under the bed or had been flushed down the toilet, but Kelly Langton was too dumb to think of doing something like that.
He watched the motionless picture a little longer, his hand involuntary rubbing the front of his trousers, before unlocking the door and walking in. He stood looking at her body for several minutes. She’d lost a little weight since they’d been together and it suited her, as too many business lunches and coffee mornings were making her chubby.
She wore the jeans and jumper from the wardrobe, a ‘gift’ from her predecessor and even though she looked good in anything she wore, after all she once was a bloody model for Christ sakes, he preferred her in a dress or nothing at all.
He walked to the bed and removed a ligature from his pocket, a fine strip of twisted, coloured leather, his constant companion for many years, and in his experience unbreakable. He’d taken it from the neck of an Iraqi insurgent after beating him to death with his rifle butt, as the ignorant bastard had called him an infidel dog. The religion bit didn’t bother him as he was an atheist, but he hated being called a dog.
He lifted her head and wrapped the ligature around
her throat. In less than a minute she was dead. No little prayers were said, no doves were released into the heavens, and he didn’t regret her passing. She had served her purpose and it was time to move on.
He removed her clothes and rolled her up in the piece of carpet. With the aid of a steel wheelbarrow, he shifted her to the front door of the barn before switching off the lights and locking the door. Pausing to listen and look around, he walked over to the car and reversed it towards the front door.
With the package safely loaded, he closed the car door and started the engine, the metallic thud of the big diesel loud and intrusive amidst the still and quiet of the surrounding countryside; but comforting to him as it reminded him of the sound taxis made when they came to collect him and take him to a new foster home.
A mile or two later, he turned off the main road into a side road leading into a village. Beyond the cricket pitch, the clubhouse, the community hall, and houses around its perimeter, buildings became sparser and the houses grander, the homes of rich folk who wanted to experience village life but didn’t want their privately educated kids mixing with the local oiks and picking up any of their bad habits.
The road narrowed and the car bounced over potholes and puddles, ones he couldn’t see for overhanging trees and the dark shadows they cast. Ten minutes later, he slowed and with the headlights on full beam, spotted the track. He eased the car into the turn, the road surface changing instantly from smooth tarmac to a rutted farm track.
Tractors belonging to a farm about two miles distant used it but they never came here after dark. The track came to a halt at a five-bar gate. He stopped the car and got out to open it. The air felt cold and sharp like a smack in the face after the sanitised, air-conditioned heat of the car’s interior, but he gulped it down like a drowning man and stood for a moment, marvelling at the dark, moonless conditions, perfect for the job and better than he dared hope.
He guided the car inside the gate and rather than head straight across the field to his goal, a small knot of trees about half a mile distant, he drove along the perimeter of the field in the shadow of a dense canopy of trees and bushes. He didn’t do it out of caution as nothing in the surrounding area bothered him or made him suspicious, but years of experience taught him never to take the same route twice in a row.
He reached the point of the shortest distance to his goal, marked by a tall and broad oak tree which had probably stood there for the past five hundred years, and stopped the car and rolled down the window. He listened for the sound of a car or the rustle of footsteps close by, the smell of a man’s cigarette or the perfume and lust of a couple of midnight lovers, but there was nothing except owls and their strange, haunting hooting, as they repeatedly marked out their territories like a stuck record. He turned the car and headed straight across the open ground, towards the copse of trees.
He knew the territory and halfway across killed the lights and drove on instinct as the dark held no fears. He welcomed it as a shield for his activities and to offer an advantage over those more wary. A ‘gentleman farmer’ owned the land and lived with his wife and three children in a sprawling farmhouse, out of sight and over a ridge to the north. There were a few other farm buildings in the area and over time he’d reconnoitred them all, watching them for hours on end, learning their routines.
He stopped the car and got out. Using a night sight he scanned all around. Twelve-thirty on a sharp, cold Tuesday night in a remote part of the county, it was unlikely anyone would be around but it never ceased to surprise him what people got up to in their spare time. In the past he’d seen lovers looking for a quiet place to vent their lust, insomniacs walking their dogs, and lampers hunting foxes and badgers with bright lights and designer Army gear. Wankers the lot of them.
He opened the rear door and pulled the roll of carpet towards him. In a practiced movement, he took a deep breath, lifted the bundle and hoisted it over his left shoulder. He picked up the rifle and shovel and headed into the trees. A few minutes later he selected a spot beside a large bramble and after dumping everything close by, began to dig.
Sheltered by the trees, the ground was soft and emitting a strong smell of rotting vegetation and leaves. Half and hour later, a hole two metres long and a metre and a half deep, lay in front of him. He positioned the carpet at the side of the hole and like a conjurer exhibiting his latest trick to a rapt audience, gripped the edge of the carpet with both hands and in a single movement hoisted it high, and Kelly Langton tumbled into her new bed.
He stood with the lazy, insouciance of a graveyard digger, leaning on the spade to catch his breath, waiting while the excess heat escaped into the night from under his clothing. For a moment, he reached for his cigarettes to spark up but gave his face a slap for thinking such stupid thoughts. The light from a cigarette would act like a beacon to anyone within a two hundred yard radius, with or without a night sight, and the smell would carry even further. He didn’t want to shoot a couple of lampers if they dropped by to see what he was up to, but he would.
He picked up the spade and shovelled dirt into the hole. When it was filled, he covered it with twigs and leaves, a job he enjoyed. A few minutes later, he stood back and admired his work, knowing if he returned in two weeks time he wouldn’t have a clue where it was. He headed back to the car.
He put the rifle, shovel and carpet into the boot and closed the door. With the satisfaction of a mission completed on time and according to plan, he drove away, a fresh cigarette gripped between his fingers and wondering, who would be next?
EIGHTEEN
Henderson yawned while waiting for traffic to clear at a roundabout. It was nearing the end of the day and it felt like it, not helped by a boozy session the previous night when he joined Gerry Hobbs and the rest of the Ricky Wood murder squad in a celebration after the arrest of all the suspects. In the end, the refusal of Jason Roberts’s mates to speak, and when they did to deny any responsibility, were all for nothing as a search of one of their houses uncovered the murder weapon and following a bout of ‘let’s accuse the other guy’ by each of the four suspects, Hobbs charged them all with Ricky Wood’s murder.
The squad started out at the Pump House, and after a few beers, moved to the Royal Pavilion in North Street before decamping to a Mexican restaurant close to the Theatre Royal. Henderson stuck to beer in the restaurant, rather than switch to the Margaritas and High Balls, as some of the others did, and this morning his head was very grateful, but he couldn’t say the same for many of his fellow imbibers, as some of the faces he saw first thing this morning were not pretty sights.
‘Where did Gerry say they caught the last guy?’ Henderson said.
‘Holland.’
‘Yeah, Holland I remember now. Did he go there on holiday or did he find out the way the wind was blowing and scarpered?’
‘Like Jason Roberts, he’s an old hand at this stuff and as soon as he does a heist or in this case, a murder, he hops on the first ferry out of Hull.’
A song Walters liked came on the radio and, against his better judgement, he let her turn up the volume. It soon became irritating with endless repeated lines of, ‘I miss you, I miss you, baby,’ and he was about to turn it down and no doubt start an argument about free speech and women’s rights, when his phone rang and the car’s internal phone unit did the job for him and muted the awful noise.
‘Evening sir. Sally Graham here.’
‘Hi Sally.’
DC Sally Graham was normally a placid lass and a keen animal lover and bird fancier, but when excited, she made up for all the silences she suffered at work and in the pursuit of her hobbies by talking fast, and he couldn’t get a word in.
‘Dominic Green arrested, well I never,’ he said, when the phone call ended and the radio returned to playing music, albeit at a lower volume than before. They were approaching the roundabout at Waterhall and after completing the manoeuvre, he accelerated hard as the slow progress of the bunched-up traffic now behind him was getting on his wick.
He glanced over at Walters in the passenger seat.
‘You don’t seemed so stunned.’
‘I am, but don’t get me wrong, he’s a scumbag in my book, the worst kind as he masquerades as a respectable businessman, but he’ll wriggle out of it. He always does.’
‘Not this time, not with video evidence.’
‘What did Sally say, a woman waiting for her daughter to finish work, saw it going on and videoed it on her phone?’
‘Yep, great isn’t it? I imagine she was a distance away from the guy he and Lester were beating up so I don’t think there will be any audio but Sally seems to think there’s enough there to convict him.’
‘Yeah, but you know what he’s like, either the woman and her daughter will disappear on a long Caribbean cruise or something dreadful will happen to her cat.’
‘Well, a day which started out with me thinking I would never feel my tongue again or eat another Mexican meal, just got better.’
Henderson tried to keep Brian Langton’s arrest warrant quiet with no talk about it in the office and no calling of friends and journalists or Henderson would have someone’s head on a spit. When they arrived at Manor House Farm on the outskirts of Hurspierpoint, it became obvious the story was leaked, as a large crowd of television people, reporters, and photographers were gathered around the entrance to the house. Henderson couldn’t get anywhere near the place in the car, forcing him to park further down the lane but as soon as they stopped, a group of journalists lugging cameras, tripods, lenses, and digital recorders lurched towards them like extras from a zombie movie.
It was after eight at night and with no street lights in this rural place, it should have been dark but anyone wishing to look at the stars and galaxies on what looked like perfect viewing conditions would be disappointed because with temporary floodlights, cameras flashing, and the Langton house security lights ablaze, he could stand against the car and read the paper if he so wished. Providing, of course, he wasn’t surrounded by a large pack of baying dogs, once incongruously termed the ‘gentlemen of the press.’