The Third Rule (Eddie Collins Book 1)

by Andrew Barrett

  — Six —

  As the first tinges of light tickled the eastern sky, Jeffery had a rough handle on the scene.

  They had erected three tents. There was a normal tent over the grassed area, where they found a shiny 9mm Federal shell casing.

  The second and third tents were lean-to affairs designed to protect doorways and windows from the elements, one over a wide-open window into the hallway of the house, a possible entry point for the offenders, and the second over the French door that gave straight out onto the driveway and gardens from the bedroom.

  Jeffery had assigned jobs to his two Scenes of Crime Officers. Linda Wilkinson was on her knees right now, carefully digging away the grass on the banking, searching for the bullet, which had probably, barring deflections, penetrated to a depth of just over a metre – she would be there for some time, sifting each shovelful, looking for something dull and grey about the size of a pea.

  Initially, they had found what could have been the entry hole, carefully removed the grass from around it with a pair of scissors to get a better look, to judge more carefully if they were even in the right area. And then, using a trajectory rod, they were able to determine that yes, this was a straight and parallel hole directly into the earth that seemed to stop, or veer off to the side, about 100cm down. Linda had carefully photographed the X, Y, and Z axes of the rod, and had been able to determine that the firer had indeed fired directly into the grass banking. Luckily for Wiseman.

  Jessica Mulberry, the SOCO dragged across from Bradford to help out, had conducted photography from the conservatory right up to the grass banking, and onwards to the fence where some old rubber mats lay across the topmost wire. A fringe of weeds and a congregation of dead flora on both sides of the fence had prevented them getting any kind of useable footwear evidence – the ground beneath the plants had yielded nothing more than indentations, two pairs on either side of the fence.

  And the mats looked like abused mats from any junk car: a coating of cigarette ash covered most of the surface. They had worn smooth in their centres, but not smooth enough to proffer any visible ridge detail. Jessica had labelled and collected them, packaging them carefully for chemical treatment labs later that day. She had concluded the examination of the fence site by photographing the now naked fence, and by taping for fibres along the top of the fence to a yard either side of where the mats had rested.

  The Operational Support Unit searched the woodland during daylight hours, and now, Jeffery guessed, she had moved on to the next point of his instructions to her. She was to take samples of glass from the smashed conservatory windows, hoping to link fragments of that glass with any found later in the offender’s clothing, all adding to the proof that he was there when the glass exploded. On its own perhaps, it would not be conclusive proof, since glass in any modern frame is not unique, but it would add weight to the prosecution.

  And after she had done that, Jessica was to fingerprint the open window at the end of the long hallway.

  Jeffery stood at the opposite end of that hallway, just outside the kitchen. He was dressed in full scene suit and overshoes, DNA mask and hair net, Nikon dangling on a strap around his somewhat slumped shoulders, immobile, hands on hips, looking and thinking; the trait of a good examiner. The hallway was carpeted, so of no use for footwear impressions, but he made a mental note to have a control sample of it removed for any future comparison.

  Behind him, in the kitchen, a trail of checker-plate stepping plates led to where he now stood. The kitchen floor was smooth oak and would yield good footwear impressions. For now, he stood on the hall carpet, having photographed the entry to the house from the front door, into and out of the kitchen, and lounge, and now he found himself in the hallway, wondering at the course of events that had brought the whole team here.

  He swivelled left, facing the open bedroom door.

  Using the tip of a double-gloved finger, he pushed the door right at the very top, near the edge, until it opened another ten inches and then came to a halt. Jeffery sidled into the room, feeling the draught from the open French door cooling the sweat on his face. It brought with it the odour of urine from the dead body slumped half inside a wardrobe on the other side of the door. He entered the room fully, stopped after a couple of yards and turned to face the dead body of Henry Deacon.

  Henry’s face looked bloated, dark in the creases of his skin and pale on the cheeks and forehead. Blood and mucus had escaped his nostrils and made a trail down towards his mouth; another similar trail headed for his ear straight across the cheek. A sheer opaqueness covered his half-open eyes and killed the sparkle, the crystal quality of a living eye, turning it from a pathway into the soul into a barrier of utter emptiness.

  That wasn’t the first thing Jeffery noticed. Henry’s semi-nakedness was; the trousers and underwear abandoned further into the bedroom. And this image was closely linked to the next feature – that of the belt around his neck, puckering up the skin there like the drawstring on a bag.

  On the face of it, just another accidental autoerotic death.

  But, this was different for many reasons.

  The resting place of his body now certainly wasn’t the position in which he died. Lividity, the settling of blood in the body’s lowest points, yet not at the point of contact with the ground or with the wardrobe – where the blood cannot squeeze into – meant Henry moved after his death and while the early stages of lividity were still under way. The change of direction of the blood and mucus on Henry’s face confirmed it. An amazing feat.

  Jeffery reached into the camera bag and pulled out an infrared thermometer, removed its protective plastic sheath and took readings from several non-reflective surfaces in the room: the carpet, the curtains, the bed. They all reported a temperature of 14 degrees Celsius. Then he turned the thermometer onto Henry, in the abdomen, then the head. A healthy body operates around 37 degrees, and after death, in non-extreme surroundings, it will lose a degree or so per hour until it reaches the ambient temperature where it will then stabilise. The abdomen read 30 degrees, the head 29 – but that was to be expected because of the head’s larger surface area.

  He took hold of Henry’s left arm and tried to move it. He couldn’t; it was as though the entire body was made up of one piece of wax. “Rigor,” he whispered to no one.

  The magazines around Henry’s body appeared to have been placed there after death, rather than while Henry was alive and still enjoying them. And also curious was how new they all were. Not a crease or a tear anywhere on the glossy covers.

  He used a little aluminium powder on a new squirrel-hair brush, and immediately fingermarks became visible on the cover of the first magazine he examined. And that was good, until the next stroke of his brush, when a leather glove mark appeared. Same on the next magazine, and the next; also more glove marks on the pages that were open. Jeffery looked at Henry, and Henry’s hands were bare.

  Friday 26th June

  Chapter Forty Six

  — One —

  Eddie carried two mugs of coffee into the room, where he found Mick sitting in an old green leather and wooden office chair before a large desk that ran the length of the window wall. On the walls were, Eddie assumed, clippings from Mick’s published stories, pictures of news events before he became an old hack. And there were even silver-framed awards from newspapers and press agencies, handshakes at gala events, black-tie awards and prestigious dinners. Mick knew his stuff, and had been around long enough to know when he was on the verge of something big. Only this ‘something big’ was razor edged: one side would kill them both, and the other would see the collapse of a high-ranking British Minister and all the laws he supported.

  Mick had changed out of Eddie’s West Yorkshire Police polo shirt, and had replaced it with a red checked shirt over a t-shirt, and a pair of light blue jeans.

  “You look like James Dean.” Eddie set the coffee on the desk next to a computer screen that showed nothing more grand than a crossword puzzle.
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  Mick moved the mouse, concentrating on the screen, “You look like a prick,” he said absently.

  “Thanks.”

  “Welcome.”

  “That the thing you showed me in the flat?”

  “Yeah, this is what was in the envelope. Just a puzzle, a box full of letters.”

  “So what’re we supposed to do with it?”

  “And this,” Mick clicked his mouse, “was in the time-delay email that Henry sent me.”

  “Oh good,” Eddie said, confused. “I guess there’s a message in there somewhere.”

  “You’d think so, but I’m at a loss as to where it’s supposed to be.”

  “Can you overlay one on top of the other?”

  Mick did.

  “IDAE,” Eddie said. “What the hell’s that? Or backwards, “EADI.”

  “No, no, I get it now, I get it.” Mick pulled his chair forward, and Eddie leaned in over his shoulder. “Take just the letters in the blacked-out bits.” He reached for a pen, snatched an envelope and began writing. “Read them out to me; left to right, top to bottom.”

  When they’d finished, they had a string of letters that initially made no sense at all. “You can see why he went to such lengths, it still makes—”

  “Wait. It does, look.” Mick picked out the words from the string of letters, split them using a slash and suddenly it did made sense, suddenly it made perfect sense.

  Great/preston/Prince/Edward/road/Nob/Shite/Off/Mud/track/lookout/tower/stick

  “Well, it more or less makes sense. Great Preston, half an hour away. Prince Edward Road, that’s…”

  * * *

  “…no problem,” Mick said, trying to read the map by the car’s interior light.

  “We on Prince Edward Road now?”

  “Have been for half a mile or so.”

  “So what the hell’s Nob Shite Off?”

  “I was hoping we’d just come across it.”

  But they didn’t. They went as far as the next t-junction but hadn’t seen anything referring to Nob Shite. “Okay, let’s turn around and do it from this end.”

  It was twenty past one in the morning. Both had rumbling stomachs, both had a healthy growth of stubble and both were looking for something neither had any real hope of achieving: freedom from something they’d been sucked into, unlikely ever to be spat out of again.

  By half past one, the headlamps picked out the first drizzle of what promised to be a heavy rainfall, the glossy road shining back at them in between encroaching hedgerows and treacherous bends. Eddie slowed right down, finding his way cautiously. When Mick shouted, “There!” Eddie hit the brakes, locked the car up and the back end swung around and collided with the hedge.

  “Bollocks!” Eddie climbed out and slammed the door in frustration. He went to inspect the damage and Mick went to inspect the road sign.

  “I found it, we’re here.”

  Eddie stood upright, “Where the hell’s ‘here’?” He looked along the headlamp’s beam and saw nothing but green hedgerows and a thin strip of slippery asphalt.

  “Nob Shite Off,” Mick pointed to a faded rusty sign slowly being swallowed by the bushes. All he could actually see was OFF, but when he followed the hedge line there was a slight break. “Here,” he approached the gap and could see the ever decreasing arch of foliage that had tried to keep Henry Deacon’s secret a secret.

  “Jesus,” Eddie joined him, “we’ll never get the car up there.”

  “Have to, can’t leave it here. Either someone will slam into it, or if we’re being followed…”

  “Okay, come on.”

  Eddie swung the car round, thankful there was no apparent damage, and aimed for the centre of the archway. The car slipped into a claustrophobically dark tunnel, and branches, some freshly snapped, scratched down the sides of the car and long grass pulled at the underside as he gently edged forward.

  “I hope she’s got enough money for a spray job.”

  Eddie glanced at Mick, “Don’t. I feel bad enough as it is.”

  “What did she say to you? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  Eddie kept driving, and half a minute or so passed before the scraping and scratching receded, before he needed the wipers again, and they broke through into what appeared to be a wide featureless access lane.

  “She said we’re gonna die.” Eddie felt the wheels slip, felt the car being pulled along by deep ruts.

  “You two optimists were made for each other.”

  They were travelling a slight incline and it wasn’t long before the headlights picked out a building up ahead. Eddie stopped the car twenty yards before it and together they climbed out.

  All this tumult and danger, all this imminent death stuff, all this clandestine fighting against an unbeatable and murderous government was the source of a new-found enhancement of Eddie’s squalid life. The image of Ros nestling into his neck, the smell of her hair and the warmth he shared with her, it was all thanks to the Third Rule, and however short his life had become since Henry Deacon killed his son, then at least he was grateful that it now had a little colour around the monotone edges – Imminent Death had forced her hand, and even if they never saw each other again… well, maybe that was a thought not worth thinking.

  “We’re never going to find his bleeding lookout tower in this.” The rain came heavier as if listening to Eddie.

  Mick pulled out a torch from his jacket, and then pulled his jacket collar up. “This is no time for a countryside ramble.”

  “Didn’t pack any sandwiches when you packed the torch, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Coffee?”

  “No.”

  “Bugger.”

  They walked, over the dirt, past the dilapidated building and towards what they hoped would be a summit, somewhere high that could give them a clue as to where Henry’s tower may be.

  “Why couldn’t he have played in a fucking tree house like a normal kid?”

  It turned out there was a summit of sorts, and luckily for them, Mick happened to be shining his torch at the grey earth, marvelling at how it was turning from dusty dirt to slick mud before their eyes. And then the earth disappeared.

  Both men stood on the edge of the great opencast mine, and when Mick shone the torch straight down, the beam just disappeared.

  “Okay, we’re not high enough. I can’t see anything.”

  They scanned all around but the only thing coming back at them in the torchlight was the steadily falling rain. Mick turned it off, and surprisingly things improved; they could make out the dark valley they had just walked up, black embankments either side receding into various tones of dark grey. With their backs to the opencast, either side was different; to their left was the sheer face of a slag mound that travelled upwards almost forever until the slightly lighter sky showed them its silhouette. To their right however, was a lane that gave way to one of the valley sides and, without speaking, they elected to travel this way.

  “You know you’re on a Rule Three?”

  “I had forgotten, but appreciate the reminder, cheers.”

  “I could stop it,” Mick said.

  Eddie stood still for a moment. “How?”

  “I ask Rochester to bring forward the publishing schedule for the juicy bits that Henry gave me.”

  “Have it transcribed so the entire country will read that he fired the SOCO building?”

  Mick nodded through the rain.

  “I can see two problems with that.”

  “You really are a pessimistic bastard. I thought you’d be grateful.”

  Eddie walked on, his limp growing more pronounced.

  “So go on then, what problems? We already did a forensic match on the voice, it’s definitely Henry Deacon. We have independent corroboration that the recording hasn’t been tampered with—”

  “First,” Eddie shouted back over his shoulder, “it’s big of Henry to admit firing the building, but that doesn’t prove he killed Stuart.”


  “And they can’t prove that you killed him either.”

  “Seems to me that’s where convenient justice comes to life… they already got me on a Rule Three so I’m betting they’ll want proof not that I did it, but proof that I didn’t. I’m on a public death list, mate, won’t be easy to get me off it.”

  “But he said—”

  “I know what he said, Mick, but they reckon they already have the killer.”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  Eddie staggered onwards down the lane.

  “And what’s the second good reason I shouldn’t go public now?”

  Eddie stopped again and waited for Mick to catch up. “Having a headline claiming that Henry killed Archer and Sam is one thing, but if you claim he tried to evade justice by altering evidence, with government help, I guarantee you free admission to a very private death list.”

  — Two —

  The phone on Deacon’s desk buzzed. He stared at it, loosened his tie, then picked up. “Yes?”

  “Sir,” Justine said, “I have Thomas Gordon on the phone.”

  “I wanted him here—”

  “He’s in Scotland, sir.”

  Deacon closed his eyes for a moment, made an effort to take a deep breath and failed half way through. “Put him on.” The line clicked. “Thomas?” he said.

  “Sir George. How can I help you?”

  “I want an injunction taking out against a local newspaper in Yorkshire and its affiliated national edition.”

  “When?”

  “When? Now!”

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone long enough for Deacon to wonder if the line had been cut.

  “Three days. Minimum. Depending on—”

  “Don’t give me three days, Thomas, I want it doing before the morning edition hits the streets.”

  “Impossible! The morning editions will be printed by now, probably already in transit.”