The Body in the Marsh

by Nick Louth

  Cropper looked across at the selection of forensic evidence now laid out across plastic-covered tables inside the house. ‘I know it’s not my job to theorize on what happened. But the somewhat brutal modus operandi here would normally suggest to me that we are more likely to find that the perpetrator was a third person, someone habituated to what inevitably would have been a gory process.’

  ‘That doesn’t quite square with Knight doing the research, unless it was a conspiracy to murder that went wrong,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Did they have any enemies?’ Cropper asked. ‘I presume you have checked for debt?’

  ‘Yes. There’s no hint that either of them had enemies, certainly not the type who would be prepared to do this,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Well, whether it’s Professor Knight or someone else, whoever did this was determined, quite careful and forensically aware. Apart from the waste pipe oversight, he tied it up pretty well here.’

  ‘Yeah, the crime scene in Surrey was much messier,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Not surprising,’ Cropper said, with a grim smile. ‘A live person is much harder to deal with than a dead one.’

  * * *

  When a body is discovered a missing person case becomes something else: an accident, a suicide or a murder investigation. The timing of breaking the grim news of the death of a loved one to a family is usually clearly determined by events. But in a few cases, where there isn’t a complete body, merely evidence of one, there is a grey line. This was just one of those cases. Detective Chief Inspector Gillard was pretty sure he knew what had happened to Liz Knight the moment he’d found the spade. But that’s not enough for a family. Families need closure, they need certainties, not probabilities. They need answers, not more scope for questions. The discovery of human teeth didn’t eliminate those questions, merely narrowed down the range of possibilities. Though getting the identification might take a while, Oliver and Chloe Knight should be told to prepare themselves for bad news. Gillard put in a call to DC Claire Mulholland and briefed her on the discovery. She and liaison officer Gabby Underwood would arrange to go and visit the family at Oliver’s home. The part of the job every copper hates.

  Mulholland and Underwood arrived in an unmarked car, but the door of Oliver’s home was opened to them before they had knocked. He and Chloe were standing together in the hall. Their faces were ashen, and the fact that Claire had refused to give details over the phone confirmed all their worst fears. ‘You’ve found Mum, haven’t you?’ Chloe said.

  That was not a question that could be answered yes or no, so Claire ignored it. She stepped inside, wiped her feet, and Gabby carefully closed the door behind them as they made small talk about the weather. Only when they were all sitting down in the lounge did Claire say: ‘I’m sorry to have to say we’ve found human remains at the house in Dungeness. Only part has been tested so far, but we have a DNA match with your mother.’

  Chloe buried her face in her hands and began to silently shudder. Oliver put an arm around her and then turned his face accusingly to the policewomen. ‘I don’t understand what you mean. You’ve either found her or you haven’t.’

  Gabby’s thin-lipped smile of sympathy broadened even further, until it looked like her face would slip off her jaw. ‘We’re really so sorry,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you let me make you a cuppa? I’ll be able to find where everything is.’

  Oliver nodded, and patted his sister on the back. She continued to make a low wailing sound.

  ‘The details, I’m afraid are not very pleasant,’ Claire said. ‘But all I can really say at the moment is that there is evidence that a dismemberment took place in the kitchen of that house.’

  Oliver’s face froze in horror, but tears welled up and rolled down his face. Then a moment later he began to emit huge whooshing sounds, and his solid solicitor’s face crumpled into that of a distraught teenager.

  Chloe looked up, her make-up streaked and her eyes moist. ‘Where’s my dad? We need him. Why isn’t he here for us?’

  ‘I’m sorry. We just don’t know,’ Claire said, as Gabby came in with two mugs of strong tea. ‘But based on what I’ve just told you, this is now going to be a murder inquiry. And your father is someone we urgently want to speak to in connection with that.’

  After tea and biscuits, and the gradual regaining of composure, Claire began a new subject. ‘There is going to be a news conference this afternoon. This isn’t like the missing person’s conference. We don’t need you there, unless you think appealing to your father to give himself up would help. It usually doesn’t in cases like this, and I can see that it would add a lot of stress while you are still upset. But what you have to prepare yourself for is the attention of the press. This is going to get a lot worse and more intrusive from now on. They’ll be peddling their own theories, and will try anything to dig up details of the history of your family, talking to neighbours, old school friends, that kind of thing. Gabby will be here to help, and you can call her at any time. But I would strongly advise you not to talk to the press, at least not yet. You might find it’s easier to unplug the landline, and buy a new mobile to call friends and family. Always use the withheld number facility. Gabby can fill you in on the details.’

  Claire finally eased herself away from this pit of misery, grateful that Gabby, with her ever-present smile and bottomless well of sympathy, would be there to take the strain.

  * * *

  On his return, Gillard gathered his investigative team together to brief them on the day’s discoveries. Claire Mulholland, Rob Townsend, Hoskins and Hodges were joined by the final two detective constables, Shireen Corey-Williams, a 40-year-old qualified accountant and financial specialist, and newly qualified DC Michelle Tsu. Liaison officer Gabby Underwood was there, along with Surrey Police’s press officer Christina McCafferty, a brunette with prominent teeth, whose phone seemed to vibrate every minute or so.

  Hodges, who was known to adore Christina, offered her a home-made chocolate brownie. The giant plastic box he brought contained dozens. He, at least, was never put off his appetite by crime scene pictures. Unfortunately that was also true of Carl Hoskins, who could detect a chocolate brownie at 50 paces. Christina was the only person in the room who declined Hodges’s culinary gambit.

  ‘Let’s get on, shall we?’ Gillard said. The room was buzzing with the excitement that a flow of fresh evidence always brings. There was plenty to tell, and Gillard went through it carefully: the discovery of human remains in Dungeness, the match of the blood from the spade with Liz’s DNA, the recovered search history from Professor Knight’s absent laptop.

  ‘So it’s got to be him, then,’ said Carl Hoskins, while munching his second brownie. ‘It can’t be anyone else, can it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite that strongly, but it’s powerful evidence that he was planning the crime, even if someone else committed it,’ Gillard replied. ‘But let me emphasize this. We’re not going public with any of this at the moment. The news conference will be confined to the bare minimum: that following the discovery of human remains at two addresses, this is now a murder investigation and we are urgently seeking the professor.’

  ‘We’ve had enough calls already,’ said Christina, waving her phone. ‘Once this gets out it’s going to be insane…’

  The door swung open and Paddy Kincaid stood there, looking pleased with himself. ‘Sorry to interrupt.’ He looked anything but. ‘I’m delighted to say we got some more resources. Five more call handlers at Mount Browne, who will screen the calls before passing them on here. Plus some more specialist resources as and when required.’

  There was a general murmur of approval as Kincaid hauled himself onto the desk behind which Christina McCafferty had been sitting. ‘Carry on, don’t mind me,’ he announced, kicking his feet backwards and forwards.

  ‘Back to fundamentals,’ said Gillard. ‘The one thing we have no clear idea about is motive. Michelle, I know you’ve made a start on the LSE emails. I’m going to need you to dig
further back too. Knight was appointed to the LSE in 2012, and was at Oxford for the previous five years. We’re going to need warrants to get those, I suspect. The legal department can get you the correct applications. We need to do this by the book. Full warrants, not production orders. I don’t want anything that will come back and bite us on the bum.’

  ‘Yes, especially if he turns out to be innocent,’ Michelle said.

  Kincaid chuckled heartily. ‘I’ve had 30 years’ experience, darling,’ he said tapping the side of his nose. ‘If it turns out he didn’t kill her, I’ll eat my desk. And we’re talking best MFI do-it-yourself assembly chipboard.’

  The wave of laughter swept past a stony-faced Michelle. Gillard gave her a slight nod in recognition of Kincaid’s patronizing comment. ‘Well, while the boss chews the furniture, there’s a chance that money played a part. Shireen, what have you found?’

  ‘I’ve just spent most of the last day with Oliver Knight to make sense of the family’s finances. There are certainly some surprises,’ she said, standing up and walking to the whiteboard. ‘The Knights are a wealthy family. Martin Knight’s father bought a fourth-floor flat in a bomb-damaged London house in 1947 for £1,400. After Martin’s mother died in 2013 it was sold for just under five million.’ She wrote the sum on the board.

  Jaws dropped around the room. ‘Five million, for a two-bedroom flat?’ Kincaid gasped.

  ‘It’s in Grosvenor Crescent, Belgravia,’ Shireen said.

  ‘I think it’s safe to say that was a good investment,’ said Gillard.

  ‘Well, five million is a good motive for a murder,’ Kincaid said, then turned round to his left where Christina McCafferty was struggling to see past him. ‘I’d bump off my missus for that,’ he whispered, with a wink. Everyone who had worked with Kincaid was familiar with his frequent disparaging comments about Muriel, his wife of 25 years and mother of his three children.

  Shireen raised one delicate dark eyebrow, then continued. ‘Martin is an only child, and had been gifted the flat ten years previously, so didn’t pay any inheritance tax when his mother died. Liz Knight had been a small-scale landlord around Croydon for a few years, and the next step was when she and Martin jointly purchased a large villa near Marbella in June, which has several hectares of development land attached. The whole family went to see it in May, and according to Oliver were very excited by it. She and Martin were due to go over to start renovation work.’

  ‘How much did they spend?’ Kincaid asked.

  ‘Five and a half million euros, so just over four million pounds. It’s got a huge pool, a spa, various mod cons.’ She flicked through a glossy brochure, before handing it to Kincaid. ‘It does seems legit. The deal was notarized in Spain, and Oliver said his mother went to the Spanish land registry in person to get it verified. She speaks fluent Spanish.’

  ‘Looks tasty, might go there myself,’ said Kincaid, flicking through the brochure.

  ‘And the rest of the inheritance?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘Still there. Over a million spread between three accounts, one of them joint.’

  ‘No debts, then?’ Gillard asked. ‘No reason to disappear?’

  ‘Not that we can see. There are no bank or credit card debts. They seem to have about £300,000 in stocks, bonds, National Savings and private pensions, in addition to the occupational pensions they have accumulated. They both have life insurance, but it’s not big in the context of their assets, certainly no motive for murder there. Professor Knight has just one current and one savings account. We had Martin Knight’s banks run their suspicious transaction software over them and nothing got flagged up, apart from the property deal, which is of course because of its size. Otherwise a normal pattern. Oliver has copies of their wills, and is registered as the executor. Each has the other as prime beneficiary, then the two kids. It’s all very conventional. The bottom line is that most of what the Knights have is in bricks and mortar, either here or abroad, and that is hard to steal.’

  ‘Doesn’t that give the son a strong motive to kill them both?’ asked Michelle Tsu. ‘He’s the executor, first in line to inherit?’

  ‘That’s why I had his computers and phones seized yesterday,’ Gillard said. ‘He didn’t like it. Did you find anything on them, Rob?’

  ‘The messages and emails are just what you would expect,’ said Townsend. ‘He’s tried hard to reach his father by phone and email, on the same addresses and numbers that we have. I passed on the financial data to Shireen.’ He turned to her.

  ‘I only had the chance for a cursory look,’ she added. ‘No significant sums have come into any of his accounts in the past three months. If we do suspect him, it’s going to be worth taking a deeper look, of course.’

  ‘Well, I’d like you to make that your project over the weekend, Shireen. Can you put up a motive, means and opportunity for Oliver Knight to kill one or both of his parents? We’ll then meet on Monday morning and see if we can knock it down.’

  ‘Okay.’ She returned to her notebook. ‘Mrs Knight’s own finances are straightforward. She has current accounts with Barclays and RBS, plus a savings account with the Nationwide, pretty much all run online. She runs her local property rental business, two flats and a terraced house from the RBS account. Oliver does the legal work.

  ‘Could someone have been threatening the Knights?’ asked Carl Hoskins. ‘If they disappear here, they could go and stay at the Spanish villa and start a new life.’

  ‘It’s a line of inquiry,’ Gillard said, simultaneously managing to convey that he didn’t think it likely. ‘We’ve got her passport, so it would only be Professor Knight. If Knight was a scrap metal dealer from Bermondsey, Marbella would be the first place I’d expect him to pop up. I don’t buy the idea of them being threatened. I think they would have told somebody, even if not us. Neither Oliver nor Kathy Parkinson mentioned anything like that. As they don’t appear to owe money that’s the biggest potential source of trouble removed. Besides, if you want to escape some villain and start a new life the last place you would choose is somewhere just half a day’s drive from the Costa Crime.’ He looked to Shireen Corey-Williams and she continued.

  ‘So to sum up, I can’t find an obvious financial motive either for the husband to kill the wife, or for anyone else to kill them both.’

  Gillard shrugged and said. ‘Okay. We’ve actually got lots more witnesses to interview. We’re going to go back into the history of Mr and Mrs Knight. Their interests, their friends, their enemies, and their lovers…’ He caught Claire Mulholland’s arched and quizzical eyebrow at this point. ‘We’re going to dig down until we find out exactly what happened here. Why a wealthy, privileged, well-educated and well-thought-of couple could have ended up embroiled in death and dismemberment.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Going through Martin’s trousers prior to the wash, I found a credit card receipt. Lunch for two, with wine. A business lunch? Or a meal with ‘her’, whoever she may be this time. It could of course be perfectly innocent. I promised myself I would learn to trust again, and I will, as I must – otherwise why bother with reconciliation? But if this is Natalie Krugman again, I won’t stand for it.

  Liz’s diary, July 2013

  Just as Gillard had predicted, the news conference was rough: rough on the family, rough on the police, and riding roughshod over the facts. Fortunately, Alison Rigby was there, and totally unflappable.

  ‘So let’s get this straight,’ said a reporter from the Daily Mirror. ‘You’ve found traces of Mrs Knight’s body, but no traces of the husband’s. This couldn’t be someone having killed them both?’

  ‘We’ve not actually ruled anything out,’ Rigby said. ‘I don’t want to speculate at this point, but we are trying to be helpful when we say that we are looking at this in a domestic context. That’s our current line of inquiry.’

  A grubby-looking man with a leather jacket put his hand up. ‘Jez Collins, the Sun. How come it took Surrey Police more than a week to realize this
was murder? Wasn’t it all really a refusal to believe that anything could go so wrong in such a prominent, successful family?’

  ‘No, not correct,’ Rigby said. ‘We took this very seriously from the first report. We followed our missing person’s policy to the letter. You have to realize that adults go missing all the time. Many more are notified missing than ever are the subject of press conferences like this. The majority turn up again at some point. As you know, and as our policy makes clear, we have to prioritize cases where vulnerability is a key issue: children, confused adults, suicidal teenagers…’

  A man standing at the back held up his pencil. ‘Mrs Knight had been a mental patient. Why wasn’t she classed as vulnerable, then?’

  Over the next 15 minutes, ACC Rigby made a firm but embattled defence of the decision to wait for forensic evidence before increasing the size of the team involved in the case. Then she left, leaving Craig Gillard to deal with the remaining questions. He was soon surrounded by a scrum of jostling reporters, wanting to know about every aspect of the case. Right at the back, a young female reporter shouted for attention: ‘Excuse me, Detective Chief Inspector!’ Gillard saw her, a petite brunette, little more than a schoolgirl, with her badge on upside down.

  ‘Emily Tye, Dungeness and Lydd Observer. Can I just double-check the make and type of the car you are looking for?’ she said, trying to make herself heard above the babble.

  ‘Silly cow.’ Jez Collins, standing at the front, rolled his eyes at Gillard conspiratorially, but the detective refused to acknowledge the jibe.

  ‘It’s like the one in the picture in your press pack. The registration number is in there too.’

  ‘Then I’ve seen that car. I know where it’s parked,’ she said.

  There was immediate silence. A burly Daily Mail reporter who had been pressing himself against Gillard’s desk for the last five minutes did an about-face. ‘I’ve got my Merc outside, darling,’ he said. ‘You show me where it is, and we’ll share the credits, oright?’