PC Lizzie Singh came down the field to meet them. She gave her report as they walked towards the wood.
By 8.44 a.m., after the phone call had come in from the school, Lizzie had been first on the scene. (Author’s own words): Disregarding the trouble they might be in, the boys had legged it back to the school as fast as they could to report their horrific find. The eldest, Ryan Carr, had led Lizzie back to the body.
‘I knew Carly, sir,’ she said to Hellier. ‘I identified the body. She was a member of our Youth Matters group. She won ‘Exeter’s Got Talent’ at Christmas.’
Dan glanced at her. ‘What’s that? Local talent show?’
Singh snorted. ‘Bit more than that. The winner gets a recording session and the last two have gone on to get a contract. It’s quite well-thought of in the music industry.’
‘So she was that good?’
‘Yes, she was a good kid all round, really. Bit loud, bit opinionated, but a fantastic singer.’ She grimaced, close to tears. ‘It’s so sad, a young girl dead when she had so much to live for.’ She sniffed and blew her nose on a tissue.
‘ Sorry. I’ve asked the school nurse to sit with Jenna until her Dad comes to collect her. He’s a builder so he’s got to get back from Newton Abbot.’
‘Does she know what’s happened?’ asked Dan.
‘No, only that we have news about her sister, and she’s to wait until her father arrives.’
‘Right, good move, PC Singh,’ said Dan. ‘Could you ask Mr Braithwaite to drive Jenna home and tell him we’ll be round to talk to them as soon as possible?’
‘Yes, sir, of course.’
Lizzie led them over a broken barbed wire fence towards a clearing where the Forensics team had set up shop.
‘It’s not great in the woods, sir,’ she said. ‘Someone’s been shooting crows and there are half a dozen dead ones on the ground. The maggots have been busy. The floor is mainly pine needles so no footprints to speak of. There’s loads of rubbish everywhere, too. Typical kids’ mess - fag ends, tobacco pouches, sandwich wrappers. Forensics are all over it, and the pathologist is waiting for you.’
Gould winked at her. ‘Good job, Lizzie.’
Dan stared at the DCI. He’d winked … at a female PC. Jesus! What century did he come from? He shook his head as PC Singh handed them their protective clothing.
Gould complained through the entire process, irritating Dan, who had got into his suit with ease. He felt obliged to wait for Gould to make yet another attempt to close the zip before they could head into the crime scene.
They followed the path through the trees, pulling on latex gloves. Campbell Fox, the pathologist, was sitting on a log, writing up his notes. ‘Aha! It’s the cavalry at last. I was ready to lie doon next to the wee lassie myself.’ He stopped and did an obvious double take. ‘Ian Gould! I thought you’d retired to Budleigh Salterton or another one of God’s waiting rooms.’
Gould laughed and shook Fox’s hand.
‘It’s been way too long Cam, you old bear. Still fly-fishing? Still not managed to catch yourself a wife?’
Dan studied the clearing and the position of the tent that protected the body. He wouldn’t approach until the pathologist gave him the nod, so he was trying to work out how the girl might have arrived at the wood. It was a nightmare of a crime scene, as PC Singh had said. He picked out a path through to the school playing fields, and one that seemed to lead to a narrow lane that ran alongside the school grounds. It was unlikely she would have entered via the school, too public. They were bound to have CCTV on the main gates, though, so he could check.
The DCI and his mate were still standing there joking with a dead girl lying just a couple of feet away. Dan shook his head for the second time that day. He wanted to shout at Gould, Get your priorities right, man, but common sense compressed his lips into a flat line. He ignored their banter until he heard his name.
‘This is Detective Inspector Hellier,’ said Gould, ‘Dan Hellier. He’s leading on this case – his first and my last. Dan, this is Dr Campbell Fox, the best, well, probably the only, leading pathologist to come out of the Gorbals. He is the expert. Be glad we’ve got him.’
Dan turned, took in the vast girth, height and beard for the first time, and felt a bit overwhelmed. Standing at just less than six feet, Dan felt short compared to this giant.
‘Pleasure to meet you, sir.’ He put out a hand and felt it disappear into the moist softness of Fox’s paw. Together they ducked under the flap of the tent and Dan experienced the familiar feeling of cold, of quiet stillness, that being in the presence of death always brought. Even Gould was quiet.
Fox turned the girl onto her back. Dan knelt and studied her face, close enough to see each eyelash on the good eye, far enough away to ignore the gaping darkness where her other eye should have been. She had dark hair and pale skin, just like him. She was slender, and tall, just like him. She could be his sister.
He breathed rapidly through his nose. It had been the substance of his nightmares for years, that one day he would be called to a crime scene and it would be Alison lying there, white and silent instead of this girl. Although, in Alison’s case, the cause of death would be only too easy to read in the mad dance of tracks that would, by now, be pocking every available vein in her body.
He pushed back a lock of hair from Carly Braithwaite’s face. There was so little damage, it was hard to see how she had died. Would it have been better for everybody if Alison had died, he thought, early on in her chosen career of addict, thief and prostitute, before she’d become welded into the life? He and his parents could have grieved then, and shared good memories. As it was, the only time they heard from her was when she was begging for money, or had broken into the house and taken it.
He often wondered if it was the regular police visits when he was a boy, bringing Alison home drunk, or high on Christ knew what, the tension and relief mingling with his mother’s tears, and the calmness and kindness of the officers, that had made him join up.
Fox winked at Gould over Dan’s head.
‘Straight to work, eh? Nice to see them keen. Well, you already know who she is. All the personal stuff can be read in my report at your leisure. No obvious cause of death, but there are marks on her neck and face which may indicate asphyxiation.’
Fox bent a knee and used Dan’s shoulder to steady himself as he knelt next to the body. With some delicacy and precision, he pulled back the top of Carly Braithwaite’s hoody to expose her white neck.
‘I draw your attention to the faint bruise marks on the front of the neck. Such marks may indicate pressure from a forearm, perhaps. She wasn’t strangled in the way you would understand such a term, with fingers round the throat. No ligature used.’ He pulled up the sleeve of her t-shirt. ‘There are bruises on the upper arms, consistent with being held around the biceps. The eye appears to have been dislodged by a crow or magpie post-mortem. I don’t think it relates to her death. She was fully clothed except for one shoe, and there is no bag, phone, purse or anything else personal in the immediate area.’
Dan noticed that Fox lost his strong Glasgow accent when he was in professional mode. Seven years at medical school in Edinburgh would do that to a man. He’d lost his own Devon burr after three years with the Met. It didn’t do to give people too much ammunition.
‘Any idea what time she might have died?’
Fox pushed himself up and sat on the log to gather his notes.
‘Rigor Mortis has set in, so at least twelve hours ago, but I’ll know more when we get her back to the hospital. She has got some pooling of the blood suggesting she was either carried here and dumped, or moved within the copse to hide her. That’s what Forensics are doing now, trying to work out if she was brought here post-mortem, and if so, how.’
Dan stood up and stepped back outside to join Gould.
‘D’you know what I hated most about working Vice?’
‘I didn’t know you had,
’ said Gould.
‘It was finding girls like this. I could cope with the whores and the druggies, but young kids like this, wrong place, wrong time…makes me angry.’
Gould sighed, ‘Yeah, and this one doesn’t even look used, does she? No needle marks, no smell of alcohol.’
‘No obvious cause of death. Obvious result, though.’ Dan stared off into the trees.
‘You alright?’
Dan shrugged. ‘Yeah, sorry, thinking about something else.’ Thinking about my stupid, fucked-up sister. But he couldn’t say that, not to this stranger. Gould had been around so long he’d probably arrested her on more than one occasion, and Dan didn’t want to be associated with her through work. Not yet, anyway.
Fox tore off his gloves, ‘Too soon to tell what time she died, but I can say that there are signs of some kind of altercation. Now, if ye’ll back away nicely, boys, I’ll get the lassie back to my nice cool hospital and we can find out what else she wants to tell us.’ He finished stuffing his papers into his bag. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Post-Mortem will begin at 10.00am.’
He nodded at the waiting undertakers, who zipped Carly Braithwaite into a bag and lifted her onto a stretcher, ready for the long walk across the field to the waiting black van.
‘She must have been killed somewhere else,’ said Dan, eyeing the debris around their feet. ‘Forensics aren’t going to find anything useful amongst all this rubbish, and there’s no sign of a bag or a coat or anything, just an old school scarf that could be hers.’ They watched as the scarf was bundled into a bag and labelled.
Dan poked an empty tobacco pouch with his toe. ‘If you killed her elsewhere, why bring her to this copse? It’s hardly a safe place to dump a body with a thousand kids on site. Anybody could have come up here.’
‘Maybe that’s what the murderer wanted, for the body to be found,’ offered Gould.
‘Hmm, maybe. Or maybe he had to stash her somewhere quickly and was planning to come back the next night and move her, but three snot-nosed kids discovered her first?’
They watched the Forensic team tracing a third possible route through the trees to the quiet road beyond. One of them turned and gave them a thumbs up, indicating fresh tyre marks on the soft mud at the side of the road. ‘Guess we were right about her being brought here,’ said Dan. ‘I’ll bet you a tenner she was killed Saturday or Sunday and moved here in the dark.’
Gould thought about the bet for a moment.
‘Nah, easy money for you.’
Dan shrugged. ‘It’ll be good if they can identify the tyre prints, it may help to identify the vehicle that brought her here.’
‘And a set of footprints would be handy. At least we’ve got an idea when she died now.’ Gould looked up at Dan from under bushy eyebrows,‘and it looks like you’ve got your murder.’
Dan fought the treacherous worm of excitement in his belly. First case, first murder, all his. He almost rubbed his hands together.
‘We’ve got a lot of people to talk to, and there’s no point hanging round here. If I go over and see the family once they’re home, will you supervise the school interviews?’
‘Sure,’ replied Gould, unzipping the front of his suit with an audible sigh, and stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket. His earlier antagonism appeared to have been softened by the encounter with Fox. ‘I’m quite looking forward to interviewing someone on a murder case for the first time in four years.’
‘Right. I’ll get Sally Ellis to meet me at the Braithwaite house, sir. She can act as family liaison for the next few days.’
‘Good idea. By the way, you can call me Ian,’ he said, ‘as we’ll be working together.’
Dan smiled, one small battle won.
‘I won’t mess up, you know, Ian. We’ll get to the bottom of this and you can bow out in a blaze of glory.’
Gould snorted. ‘Right, I’ll look forward to that, then.’
They walked back to the small broken gate at the edge of the wood and handed their used coveralls, overshoes and gloves to the PC on guard duty. ‘Another slog down the bloody field,’ Gould grumbled. ‘Come and meet the Head teacher on your way out. He needs a bit of reassurance that we’re not turning his school into an episode of “Midsomer Murders”.’
Chapter 3
Date: Monday 24th April Time:11:37 Alan and Jenna Braithwaite’s home
Alan Braithwaite, father of Carly, sat in the worn armchair by the fire-place, staring at the empty grate and clutching the photocopy of Carly’s white face that the woman police officer had passed to him. Jenna, his younger daughter, was squashed next to him. She held his hand and cried, letting the tears run down her face and soak into her school shirt.
Dan looked across at Sergeant Ellis. She had folded her hands in her lap and was looking at the floor, projecting calm and waiting for him to start. So far, they’d had to force Mr Braithwaite to even let them over the threshold and into the living room. Braithwaite had the look of an angry man, a man used to thinking with his fists.
‘Mr Braithwaite, we have good reason to believe that the girl we found this morning is your daughter, Carly. I know this isn’t a very good image.’ Dan paused. ‘So I’ll need you to go down to the hospital later today to make the formal identification of the body for us.’
‘Body?’ Braithwaite stared at Dan, his face quivering. ‘Who the hell are you to come into my house like you own the place?’ His voice rose, thick with distress, ‘That “body” you’re talking about is my daughter, and she’s a good girl, not some little tart who had it coming to her.’ He clutched at his hair, shaking off his daughter’s hand.
Dan watched the flush rise from Braithwaite’s chest, rush up his throat and into his face and heard his breathing flatten into a rapid rattle of phlegm at the back of his throat. He had no time to react before, with a roar, Braithwaite raised his fists and lurched for him. He grabbed Dan’s jacket in his left hand and lifted him off the chair so that their faces were level, foreheads touching.
Dan felt anger flood his body. There was no way, bereaved or not, that he was going to let this character threaten him. He brought his arms up under Braithwaite’s and forced them apart, breaking the taller man’s hold. Before Braithwaite got his balance back, Dan placed an open palm on the centre of his chest.
‘Just sit down, now, sir,’ he growled, struggling to control his own anger. He pushed Braithwaite backwards, slowly towards his chair. ‘Just take a seat, please.’
‘Dad!’ Jenna leapt up behind her father and tugged at his arm, forcing her way in between the two men. Her voice was shrill with fear, ‘Dad, you don’t want to do this. Stop it. Stop!’
Braithwaite tried to shove her out of the way, but the act of pushing his daughter and her yelp of shock brought him back into the room. He lowered his fist and stared at it. He looked dazed. Jenna spun round to glare at Dan. ‘Can’t you just leave us alone? My sister’s just died. Can’t you see what you’re doing?’ She swivelled once more and pushed her father back into his chair, and perched next to him, pink spots of anger gilding her cheeks.
Dan let go of the breath he’d been holding. In his most truthful moments, he’d admit to hating having to deal with grieving parents. They were unpredictable and even the most docile of them could get angry... and this one was not docile. He glanced over towards Sally. She stared back at him wide-eyed and slid her baton back into her bag.
‘I really didn’t mean to cause offence, Mr Braithwaite,’ he began, ‘I apologise if I upset you. What I meant to say was, please would you go down to the hospital with Detective Sergeant Ellis later this afternoon? She’ll transport you there and back.’
Ellis nodded faint approval.
Braithwaite sank back into the chair, bewilderment blurring his sharp features.
‘Was she…was she murdered?’ he mumbled through hands clasped over his mouth.
‘We don’t know that yet.’ Dan lowered the tone of his voice, and the pace o
f his speech. ‘That’s what we need to find out. When we get Carly to the hospital, our pathologist will find that out, and then we’ll let you know as soon as possible.’
Sally Ellis cleared her throat, indicating to Dan that she would take over.
‘Jenna, love, will you put the kettle on and make us all a nice cup of tea?’ The girl left her father’s side with obvious reluctance and headed for the kitchen. Sally turned in her seat, ‘Mr Braithwaite, we do need to know when you last saw Carly.’
Braithwaite was quiet for a few seconds, gathering his thoughts, chest still heaving.
‘Yesterday afternoon, about four o’clock. She was going to that studio place to record some of her songs after tea.’
‘Studio?’ Dan asked.
‘Illusion Studios. Bloke called Jed Abrams. It’s on Sidwell Street in town.’ A dawning realisation twisted his face into a snarl and he sat up, hands forming into fists again. ‘If he touched her… if it was him…’ His voice was harsh, choked with emotions he could not have put a name to.
‘Then we will catch him and prosecute him, sir,’ interrupted Dan, voice as firm as he dared. The last thing he needed was some vigilante nutcase running around Exeter avenging the death of his daughter. Alan Braithwaite was tall and wiry, and a lifetime of working in the building trade had made him hard and muscular. He wasn’t sure who’d come off best in a fight, but he wouldn’t put money on it being him.
Sally continued her gentle questioning, ‘Did Carly have a good voice, Mr Braithwaite?’
Her soft West Country vowels and calm delivery settled Braithwaite. Dan watched his chest relax as he began to speak.
‘She’s a bloody good singer, would give that Adele a run for her money. That’s why she got the recording session, won a singing competition last month.’ He looked away, close to tears again.
Jenna came back from the kitchen with four mugs of tea. ‘I put milk and sugar in all of them, Miss, 'cos I didn’t know what you took.’
Death and Deception Page 2