Death and Deception

by B. A. Steadman

  It was then that she heard a noise outside the door, a groan or sigh. Was somebody there? She put her ear close to the door, but there was nothing else to hear. She couldn’t wait any longer, even if there was someone out there. The need to get out superseded all other worries. She shouldered her bag, dropping the keys into their compartment and grabbed the poker from beside the fireplace. The sound from outside the room came again.

  Claire held her breath and prised the door open a crack. Jamie May was lying across the threshold, covered in a blanket. His arm, which had been resting against the door, fell onto the floor in front of her foot. He was asleep, lost in a mumbling, flailing dream. Reassured, she stepped over him and made for the front door, risking a glance back over her shoulder. The temptation to hit him with the poker was huge. He had hurt her, he had imprisoned her, he may well have killed Carly. Her hand tightened round the blackened metal. She held it out in front of her, like a sword.

  She didn’t do it. He was just a kid, after all. Someone had to be the adult in all of this madness. He looked so young lying there, asleep.

  Leaving the front door ajar, Claire limped as quickly as she could towards the gate and the relative safety of her car.

  She felt his approach rather than heard it. Half turning, she saw Jamie bearing down on her, his face contorted into a grimace, his teeth chattering, his arms stretching out to grab her like some parody of a zombie in ‘Night of the Living Dead’. Claire did the only thing she could think of - she hit him as hard as she could in the solar plexus with the iron poker. Jamie stared at her for a second, his eyes wide with shock, then collapsed onto the path, winded. He lay rigid, panic freezing him as he waited for his lungs to recover enough for him to grab a breath.

  Claire stared around her wildly, expecting attack on all sides. But the street was still deserted. Birds twittered. A striped cat slunk by, keeping to the protection of the low wall. It was all so normal. She felt the nervous energy which had propelled her out of the house begin to fail, her legs wobbled and a sob began to work its way up her throat.

  She fumbled her car keys back out of the bag. She knew it was stupid. She had concussion. But it would be quicker to drive herself to the hospital than wait for a police car to come for her. And she needed to get away now, before Jamie came round.

  Chapter 13

  Date: Tuesday 25th April Time: 10:00 Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital

  Carly Braithwaite lay on the examination table in the Pathology department. Her body was covered by a faded green surgical sheet that emphasized the pallor of her face and neck. Dan nodded at the others, Sally Ellis, Bill Larcombe, Campbell Fox and his three assistants. They were also gowned in green, linked to the dead girl and each other by a shade he guessed none of them would have chosen. The post-mortem room was small, without windows or decoration and lit by a powerful light which bleached all other colour from the watchers. Carly, both eyes closed now, lolling eyeball returned to its rightful socket, looked palely perfect apart from the faint bruising on her face and neck.

  In silence, the assistants removed the girl’s clothing and passed it to Bill Larcombe, who, with methodical precision, bagged and labelled each item. Dan watched the items go into the bag. There was so little, jeans, tee-shirt, underwear. No coat. Now that was odd. She would have worn a coat, surely, in April? And the scarf they had found at the scene wasn’t there. Not hers then.

  Fox spoke first, once he had started the recorder. ‘On my preliminary examination of the body yesterday I could find no obvious cause of death. Things are a bit clearer today as the bruising has come out. Can you see the faint marking at one side of her throat, and the finger marks on the right cheek?’ He gestured to an assistant. ‘Take a picture of those, will you?’

  The young woman moved in close with her camera, and so did Dan and Sally, but there was little to see with the naked eye. Fox continued his walk around the girl’s body, lifting, moving and turning her until he was satisfied that he had recorded all that there was to see.

  ‘External examination shows that she has a tattoo on her left bicep, of a rose and a dagger, but no other distinguishing features.’

  His assistant moved the covering over the girl’s body as Fox worked, exposing only the part he was examining. Fox glanced over at the police officers.

  ‘You may be thinking that I am preserving the wee girl’s modesty, and you would be right.’ He took a vaginal swab and handed it to an assistant who took it straight to the lab for analysis.

  ‘She was not a virgin,’ he said, ‘and she had intercourse very recently, but there are no signs of childbirth or disease.’

  He paused the recording and looked round at Dan Hellier, as another assistant took scrapings from under the dead girl’s fingernails and went off to process them. Fox removed the onyx and silver ring from Carly’s shredded finger and passed it to Bill Larcombe to bag.

  ‘I’m not planning to do a full PM today as it is clear from medical records that she was in good health, unless you have a particular need to see the internal organs?’

  Dan gave a quick shake of the head. ‘We just need cause and best estimate of time of death please, Doctor. Thanks for sending those samples off to be done straightaway, too.’

  Fox nodded. ‘I hate to see a young girl at the start of her life lying on a slab in here. I’ve told my team to prioritise the case.’ He resumed the recording, ‘She has bruising to the front of her right shin.’ He moved up to her arms, gesturing at his assistant to hold a light closer to Carly’s right hand. ‘She has fragments of glass embedded in her palm and fingers. She was holding something that broke in her hand, or tried to pick up a broken object. Anything found at the scene?’

  Dan shook his head. The copse where she had been found was a nightmare to analyse. Too many people used it. But as she wasn’t killed there, he couldn’t add anything useful.

  ‘I’ll carry on, then. There are bruises around the biceps above both elbows, indicative of her being held by the arms. A thumb and four fingers clear on each arm.’

  Dan interrupted, ‘Was she being held from the front or the rear?’

  ‘From the front at this point. A bruise on her shin may be a kick from her assailant.’ He turned the body over, exposing a thin back and slim buttocks. ‘Interesting. She appears to have two almost circular bruises on either side of her ribs.’ He looked up again, peering over the lenses of rimless glasses. ‘What does that suggest, Inspector?’

  Sally had seen the signs before. ‘She was in a fight. The assailant got her face down and knelt on her back. That’s how he managed to strangle her without making so many marks on her neck - she was probably finding it hard to breathe anyway.’

  Dan nodded, it seemed plausible. ‘So the assailant should have some bruising or scratch marks, too.’

  Fox completed his external examination. ‘I need to look at her trachea and thyroid area closely, so that is what we shall do now. I’ll make the first cut vertically down the centre of her neck.’

  Dan swallowed. He was never very good at this sort of thing. He sneaked a quick look at Sally. She looked a bit green too, although it could have been the light reflecting off the gowns. Dr Fox was opening the girl’s neck and he watched, fascinated, as he used a scalpel to open the trachea. He swallowed again, and saw Sally concentrate on counting the number of individual bulbs in the arc light above their heads. Only Bill Larcombe seemed unaffected by the scene, as he bagged evidence in the corner.

  Fox sliced through the neck cartilage and brought bloodied fingers out from her neck, lifting the trachea and thyroid glands onto a dish. The room was silent then, as Fox examined the trachea. He searched for the small, horseshoe-shaped hyoid bone.

  ‘In an adult this little bone would be broken in most types of strangulation, which makes the diagnosis simple. It’s harder to see in a teenager as the bone doesn’t fuse across the larynx until adulthood, but you never know, it could help.’ His assistant took photographs of the orga
n, as Fox dissected the individual rings of the trachea.

  They waited. Dan could feel a terrible need to run around the room shouting. The quiet, the concentration, the waiting was killing him.

  Eventually, Fox spoke again, ‘The condition of the trachea and larynx suggests that the victim was asphyxiated from behind. I have found damage to several sections of the thyroid cartilage and the hyoid bone.’

  Dan nodded. It was what he expected. He saw Sally nod, too. It confirmed her idea that the girl had been turned over, or that she had been caught trying to run away. There was no doubt now, if anybody had harboured one, Carly Braithwaite had been murdered.

  The doctor continued, ‘Her assailant was right handed. The damage to the thyroid cartilage is worse on the left side of the neck where he or she could exert most pressure. The hand imprint across her mouth was from the left hand. Likely the assailant was wearing something soft on his or her arms which lessened the imprint on the girl’s skin but maximised the area of suffocation.’

  Dan interrupted, ‘Like a hoody or a fleece?’

  ‘That is a possibility. Something that would not leave much of an impression. In order for asphyxiation to occur, the assailant would either have needed to hold on for at least five minutes, which is a long time, or to have struck lucky and stopped blood flow through the carotid artery or the jugular vein at the same time as preventing air getting in through the throat. In those circumstances death can happen in seconds.’

  ‘Could it have been an accident?’ asked Sally.

  ‘Aye, that is also possible.’ The pathologist scratched his beard. ‘But the girl was killed from behind, rather than face to face, which would make it a rather unlikely accident.’

  He washed the blood from his gloves in the porcelain sink and leant his bulk against it as he concluded his examination.

  ‘I estimate the time of death as somewhere between 4.00 pm and midnight. I’ll be able to tell you more when I have been able to study the results. Ye’ll have my report and the sample results by the end of the day if we can manage it.’

  Dan thanked him. They left the pathologist to complete his work, they had what they needed for now. Bill Larcombe collected his evidence and followed them out of the room.

  ‘Coffee?’

  Bill shook his head. ‘No thanks, sir, I’ll get this lot back and process it. See you later.’

  Dan looked at his DS. She was paler than usual. They both needed a few minutes to catch their breath.

  ‘Sally?’

  She nodded and they headed for the Costa Coffee shop at the entrance. ‘At least we only had to see the minor version of a Post-Mortem,’ he said as Sally downed half her coffee in one gulp and came up coughing because it was too hot.

  ‘Yes, not the best part of the job,’ she gasped.

  ‘How did the father cope with identifying the body yesterday?’

  Sally sighed. ‘He was awful. Shouting and angry at everybody. But Foxy calmed him down. I think it’s his wonderful Scots accent that does it. He’s like a Glaswegian teddy bear.’ She laughed and then looked thoughtful. ‘It’s Jenna I’m worried about. She doesn’t really exist for her Dad at the moment. Losing a child is always terrible, but he can’t seem to comfort her and she doesn’t have anyone else to support her, as far as I can see. I’ll try to locate a gran or someone. Might even have a go at contacting the estranged mother, though that could be a waste of time after five years.’ She took a more careful sip of coffee. ‘How can a mother leave her kids like that? If Paul and I ever split up, I’d take the kids whatever happened. Poor little Jenna. And poor little Carly.’

  Dan shook his head in sympathy. Grief took people in different ways, and it was hard to know what to do for the best when there was an awkward character like Alan Braithwaite to deal with, and no mother or close adult to offer support.

  ‘At least we have a cause of death and we should have a closer time of death later this afternoon. So, it seems like the girl was in a fight, but somehow her assailant got behind her to strangle her. We need to check out the suspects for any marks or bruising and find out what she was holding that broke in her hand.’

  He thought for a minute, stirring the froth on his drink.

  ‘Will you go and tell the father what the post-mortem has shown so far?’ He had a feeling it would come better from Sally rather than him, and a visit was always better than a phone call.

  They spent another few minutes in the coffee bar, and Dan realised that this was the first time he had been able to spend a few quiet minutes with calm, competent Sergeant Ellis. It was hard to get a conversation going other than about work, though. He’d had no idea that she had children, nor that she had a husband called Paul. He knew so little about his colleagues, and he had to admit, that was his own fault. He’d been grieving too, in his own way, so he hadn’t gone for a drink after work, even when they had asked him. He had asked no personal questions of anyone on the team and answered none. In short, he’d been a dick. And the fact that he was able to admit this to himself was the best sign yet that he might be getting over his broken heart.

  Dan dropped Sally off back at the station to collect her own car and headed for the main office to catch up with Gould and Knowles. He hoped they’d been able to bring Jed Abrams in as requested and had tracked down Jamie May. He squeezed the Audi in next to a patrol car and sent up a prayer that they didn’t scratch it.

  He allowed himself a little wince at the way last night had played out with Chas Lloyd, and the all-too-familiar flush crept up his neck as he thought about her. He trotted up the stairs, burying it to be processed later under “To be dealt with when I stop feeling like a total jerk”. He needed to be clear-headed. Jed Abrams was hiding something and he was going to give it up today.

  Chapter 14

  Date: Tuesday 25th April Time: 12:37 Sally Ellis, the Braithwaite home

  Sally rang home as she walked towards her car, wedged into too small a space in the corner of the staff car park. It was her punishment for getting to work late. Her mother answered the phone and told her that the twins were in fine form destroying the Lego castle she had been building with them, and that she would stay with them until Paul got home from work. Sally laughed, Her family were what kept her sane. She was glad they had waited until she was in her late thirties to have her kids.

  Scrambling in through the passenger door, Sally swung her legs over the gear stick and bunny-hopped into the driver’s seat - not her most dignified entrance. She didn’t want to spend too long at the Braithwaites, conscious that Dan was doing a lot of the leg work on his own and, after all, it was a murder inquiry. They needed another body on the ground to do more of the family liaison stuff. She knew she was good at it, but she had taken the Sergeant’s post with the hope that she could move on to real police work. An extra PC on the team would do, someone looking for the next promotion. She’d have a word with Dan later.

  As she cut the engine outside the house, Sally could hear shouting coming from inside. She leapt from the car, skirted the bunches of flowers and messages that had begun to appear at the gate and ran down the path, straight into a black-haired, Gothic looking lad. He pushed her aside and jumped over the hedge, heading for the main road.

  Sally yanked herself out of the hedge and shouted for him to stop. Alan Braithwaite came out onto the front step, staring after the boy, giving little away with his eyes but clenching and unclenching his fists.

  ‘Who was that?’ she asked, brushing herself down.

  Braithwaite looked down at her. ‘Jamie bloody May. I’m not having him round here anymore. He’s caused enough trouble in this house.’ He turned around to walk back inside.

  ‘I need a word, Mr Braithwaite, please,’ Sally said and followed him in, eyebrows raised.

  In the hallway, she rang through to the station and discovered that Jamie May had been reported missing by his mother at 9.00 p.m. on Monday. An officer had been round to the house and logged it, bu
t not made the connection with the Braithwaite case. Sally tutted. As usual, poor communication was the sword on which they would all fall. She rang Dan’s mobile and left a message, then got the call out to Beat officers that Jamie was in the area and should be apprehended if possible and brought into the station. She had a bad feeling about that boy. He had looked dreadful.

  Alan Braithwaite was standing in the kitchen, staring at an empty box of tea bags. Jenna had only just got out of bed, She was in her pyjamas and a fluffy pink dressing gown standing on the opposite side of the worktop. She looked scared and upset.

  ‘What was all that about, then?’ Sally said into the charged silence. Jenna looked to her Dad, but he refused to meet her eye. He opened a cupboard and spoke to it instead of to them as he rooted for tea bags.

  ‘Poking his nose in - asking questions. I reckon he knows more than he’s saying. I’m not having him round here anymore.’ He slammed the cupboard door and faced Jenna. ‘He’s not coming back here. Now you, go and put some clothes on. You’re a disgrace, with your sister lying dead in a morgue and you can’t even get your arse off the bed.’

  Jenna’s eyes, already puffy, flashed with anger, but she held her tongue and pushed past Sally on her way upstairs, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Mr Braithwaite?’ Sally risked touching him on the arm. ‘Alan? Just go and sit down in the living room. I’ll make us a coffee and bring it through. Go on, it’ll be alright.’