The Murder House

by Simon Beaufort

  ‘Why do you mention drugs?’ asked Oakley. ‘Did Kovac ever cause you to believe that he was involved in anything like that?’

  ‘No, but it’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it? Fred West had neighbours who thought he was normal. I read it in the Daily Mail.’

  ‘We’ve found a body,’ said Oakley, knowing she would soon see it carried out. ‘We think this person died in suspicious circumstances, so anything you can tell us would be very helpful.’

  ‘Doctor Kovac is dead?’ she cried. ‘Oh, the poor man! He had children. His poor children!’

  ‘We don’t know who it is yet,’ said Oakley, aiming to calm her by keeping his voice gentle. ‘What can you tell me about the last time you saw Doctor Kovac? Take your time, now. Don’t rush.’

  She sank to a frayed red sofa and began to gnaw a fingernail. ‘I think it was about two weeks ago. It was a Monday. Yes! A Monday! July the thirtieth. I know, because Kevin was listening to Clare in the Community on the radio, and that’s on Mondays. I saw Doctor Kovac and called out to him. He told me he was off in the morning, but that he’d be back in December. He was a physicist. Something to do with partings.’

  ‘A particle physicist?’

  ‘That sounds right.’ She smiled. ‘You must be clever, to know that. My Kevin would’ve known, too, before his accident. He doesn’t know much now.’

  ‘Your husband?’

  She stared down at her feet. ‘My son. He was in a car crash two years ago and … well, he doesn’t know much these days.’

  ‘What was Kovac doing?’

  ‘Throwing stuff in the bin, tidying up. You know, like you do when you’re leaving a place. He was a nice man, very clean. He said he liked our English baths, if you can believe it! He said he liked to fill them right to the top and lie in them.’

  ‘What about your husband?’ asked Oakley. ‘Would he have noticed anything?’

  ‘Not unless he could’ve seen down from Middlesborough,’ she said bitterly. ‘We’re divorced, and I haven’t set eyes on him for six years. He doesn’t even visit Kevin.’

  ‘I’m sorry to keep pressing you, Mrs Greaves, but you may be the only person who can help us. Are you sure you didn’t see Kovac after that Monday?’

  She nodded. ‘But I imagine he left on Tuesday morning. It’s not easy getting Kevin up and dressed, so I never notice much outside, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Would Kevin?’ asked Oakley hopefully.

  ‘He’s blind,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It was the glass, you see. From the accident. It went into his eyes.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Mister Smith was going to have a barbecue tomorrow, and he’d invited me and Kevin. He won’t be able to do it now, will he?’

  ‘It might be best to postpone it.’

  ‘Kevin was really looking forward to it. He hasn’t been to one since the accident, and—’

  She burst into tears, leaving Oakley patting her shoulder in inadequate sympathy.

  I heard everything on my radio – Oakley calling for SOCO, photographers, the police surgeon, the works. Wright was quiet, though. I suppose he was looking around the house, satisfying his ghoulish curiosity while Oakley did all the work.

  I went to my burglary calls and took down the information, trusting the complainants were giving me all the details I needed because I barely heard what they said. All my attention was on the radio. What had Oakley found? Did he know yet that the body was James Paxton? If not, when would he? Hours? By morning, I was sure. There couldn’t be that many missing men in their late twenties wearing expensive suits.

  And then what would I do? Carry on as normal, I told myself. The hardest part had to be the actual killing, and I was way past that. All I had to do was sit tight, act as though the body in Orchard Street was nothing to do with me, and everything would be fine. The only things to worry about were the phone call and the purple stone.

  I took a deep breath. I’d already decided that the rock wouldn’t be good for fingerprints, so I should stop fretting about that. And the phone call? That was easy too – time of death was notoriously difficult to pinpoint, and it became harder the longer a person was dead, so no one could prove that I was the last person to speak to him. But what should I say if anyone asked why he’d called me? That it was a wrong number? That I’d been out, and he must’ve got my answer machine?

  I decided to go home and think everything out really carefully. I wouldn’t make the mistake I’d made with Colin, when I should have denied that I’d slept with James. I’d be cautious and precise and, if there was any justice in the world, it would work out right. After all, James had been blackmailing me – he was the one who deserved to die. I was not going to do time for him.

  Saturday, 11 August

  The previous winter, a man had been stabbed on Park Street in a brawl between rival football gangs. An incident room had been set up while the squad had tracked down the culprit. The case meant that New Bridewell had recent experience of murder enquiries, and the system that swung into operation was smooth and efficient. Superintendent Taylor was to head a mix of local officers and imported experts. Inevitably, uniform was to help with some of the routine house-to-house enquiries.

  The first man Taylor chose was Oakley. He needed competent, meticulous officers, and Oakley was probably the most painstaking detective Taylor had ever met. He wanted Clare Davis, too, and a new man named Dave Merrick, who had valuable computer skills. He took Evans because he and Oakley seemed to work well together.

  At seven thirty on Saturday morning, Taylor assembled his team in the basement, which was now the Orchard Street Incident Room. He had already heard it called the Kovac Incident Room, and was quick to correct it – he didn’t want his investigation to start with shaky assumptions.

  He looked around at the men and women he had gathered, and nodded his satisfaction. A good mix of young and keen, and older and experienced. Many had worked on the Park Street stabbing, and knew exactly what was expected.

  ‘I won’t speak for long,’ he began, ‘because we’ve got a lot to do today. I just want to fill you in on a few details. First, we have a body in a house, wrapped in plastic. The cause of death was a single blow to the head. The pathologist has confirmed the death as suspicious. The house was leased short term to overseas scholars and, as far as we know, the last was one Doctor Marko Kovac from Albania.’

  He nodded to Oakley, who took up the tale. ‘According to the neighbours, Kovac was due to leave at the end of July, but none of them saw him go. DI Davis and DC Johns will visit Academic Accommodations today, to get a home address for him and to find out who, if anyone, was supposed to move in next. Kovac was in his early thirties, and could be the body in the kitchen. We need to wait for the full post mortem and the DNA results to be sure.’

  ‘You and DS Evans can look for the murder weapon,’ said Taylor. ‘Start with the P.M. Obviously, you’ll need some idea of what we’re looking for, and the only way to get that is from the pathologist. The rest of you will be on door-to-door enquiries in Orchard Street and at the university. It’s the weekend, so people are more likely to be at home than during the week. We’ve contacted the physics department, and they’ll give us a list of Kovac’s colleagues later today.’

  ‘So we do think the body is Kovac?’ asked Evans.

  ‘It’s a working assumption,’ said the superintendent. ‘Unfortunately, lying in a hot room for two weeks – the pathologist’s rough guess – means facial identification is out. As Neel said, we need to wait for DNA and the P.M. However, Dave Merrick can contact Interpol and the Albanian police, so we’ll have a head start if it does turn out to be Kovac. Questions?’

  Clare Davis raised her hand. ‘The body was found in the kitchen. Is that room overlooked?’

  It was Oakley who answered. ‘There are no curtains on the window, but the garden is enclosed by a five-foot wall that’s difficult to see over from the neighbours on either side – and there’s a garage between number nine and number eleven. The people who live in
the house at the back would be able to see into Kovac’s kitchen from their bathroom if their windows weren’t frosted and unopenable.’

  ‘Were any blunt instruments of suitable size and shape retrieved from the kitchen?’ asked Evans. ‘Rolling pins or a domestic fire extinguisher, for example?’

  ‘That’s what you and I’ll be doing today. I didn’t see anything obvious last night.’

  ‘I heard the body was wrapped in bin liners,’ said Merrick, a morose man who’d recently transferred from the Lancashire Police to be closer to his ageing mother. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Black plastic sheeting,’ corrected Taylor. ‘The body was rolled in it, like Cleopatra in a carpet. Perhaps it was a prelude to taking it somewhere and dumping it. Any more questions?’

  Dave Merrick raised his hand again. ‘Did Barry Wright throw up all over the crime scene?’

  The room erupted with a chorus of noises – derisive laughter, expressions of disgust and gratuitous requests for more detailed information.

  ‘Come on, man,’ said Taylor irritably. ‘That sort of thing isn’t going to help.’

  Merrick looked indignant. ‘I wasn’t trying to be funny, sir. I want to know whether samples were sent to FSS – the vomit might have been the killer’s.’

  From anyone else, the remark would have been made to make sure word of Wright’s mishap spread around the station, but Merrick was too dour for malice. The tale had seeped out via the SOCOs, who had fallen foul of the obnoxious sergeant before and had been delighted with the opportunity to hit back. But Taylor did not want trouble between Wright and the murder squad. He dealt with the question briskly.

  ‘Of course. However, I doubt it will lead anywhere, so I advise you to put it out of your minds. Any more questions?’

  ‘What if the body isn’t Kovac?’ asked DC Johns. ‘What if he really did go back to Albania and this is someone else? How do we proceed then?’

  ‘It’s possible that Academic Accommodations leased the house to someone after Kovac,’ said Oakley. ‘We need to find out before we start to speculate.’

  ‘Right,’ said Taylor loudly, cutting across the buzz of speculation that followed. ‘Thank you, lads and lasses. All I ask is that you keep up the paperwork. Give it to Dave, who’ll be running HOLMES 2 – the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. However, remember: crap in, crap out. It won’t help us unless we help it. And be careful of the anonymous rubbish.’

  ‘Sir?’ asked Merrick, bemused.

  ‘Unsigned letters, anonymous phone calls or mysterious emails,’ elaborated Taylor. ‘I don’t like them, and I don’t want us wasting time on them. If anyone has good information they can damn well tell us about it upfront, not skulk behind a veil of secrecy.’

  ‘I don’t think we should ignore them altogether, sir,’ said Davis uneasily. ‘Sometimes such tip-offs give us our best leads.’

  ‘Ask West Yorkshire Police what they think of anonymous tips,’ said Taylor harshly. ‘The hoaxer who made those “Geordie accent” tapes left the Yorkshire Ripper free to kill again. If the tip is genuine then whoever gives it should have the guts to put his name to it.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Now, go out and catch me a murderer.’

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked Merrick after Taylor had left. ‘I thought we were supposed to take any information seriously.’

  ‘Taylor was caught out badly by a hoaxer once,’ said Oakley, ‘and he’s been wary of anonymous tip-offs ever since. He has a point: there are a lot of people who like to see us waste time and resources.’

  ‘And others who get pleasure from seeing us blunder along in the direction they point us,’ added Davis. ‘I suppose it gives them a sense of power.’

  ‘So we ignore these tip-offs?’ asked Merrick.

  ‘Yes, if they’re delivered by a youthful voice with a lot of sniggering in the background,’ said Oakley eventually. ‘No, if it sounds like someone genuinely afraid to give his or her name.’

  ‘Who knows?’ asked Davis with a shrug. ‘If this investigation starts to flounder – and it might, considering that we have a victim who no one’s missed for two weeks – then anonymous tip-offs might be a godsend.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve all heard about the Orchard Street murder,’ said Wright as he briefed his shift that morning. ‘The victim’s some foreign geezer named Marko Kovac, who had his head smashed in. Very nasty. Obviously, we’ve got a lunatic on the loose, so I imagine there’ll be plenty of overtime for those who want it.’

  I listened in disbelief. Kovac? Who the hell was he? What had happened to James? Had they gone to a different house, and there’d been two murders in Orchard Street? Or had they just got it wrong? I was confused, but forced myself to listen.

  ‘It was horrible,’ Wright was saying, shaking his head. ‘One of the worst cases I’ve come across – blood all over the floor, trailing under the sink …’

  ‘The sink?’ I blurted. What was this? James had died in the sitting room. There was no sink in the sitting room, and there hadn’t been any blood, either.

  Wright smiled, pleased someone was giving him an opportunity to elaborate. ‘The stiff was in the kitchen, wrapped in black plastic. Well, you can imagine what the heat and black plastic do to a stiff.’

  What was going on? Black plastic? I hadn’t done anything with black plastic! Had someone come along and tried to clear up after me? But why? And what was I going to do? Tell Superintendent Taylor that the crime scene wasn’t the one the killer had left? Or was I right with my first thought – that this was a murder in a different house?

  ‘I heard someone was sick,’ Paul Franklin said innocently.

  ‘Bloody Oakley!’ muttered Wright venomously.

  ‘Oakley was sick?’ asked Franklin, startled. ‘I thought it was—’

  ‘What number in Orchard Street?’ I blurted, loudly enough for people to turn and look at me. I hastened to explain. ‘I walk to work that way, and—’

  ‘Then go and suck up to Oakley by telling him so,’ snarled Wright unpleasantly. ‘He wants a uniform to guard the house, so you can tell him you’re it. I’m sure we can manage without our graduate today.’

  ‘Bastard,’ I heard Paul whisper behind me. ‘Ignore him, Helen. He’s just riled because it was him who threw up over the crime scene, so he’s taking it out on you.’

  I didn’t give a toss about Wright’s gastric inadequacies, or, for once, the fact that he always took his bad temper out on me. I just wanted to find out what the hell was going on with my murder.

  Oakley was at the post mortem, so DI Davis took Anderson to guard the crime scene. Feeling a certain empathy with a fellow female officer, she asked how Anderson liked the job, but Anderson wasn’t particularly forthcoming. Davis had seen her around the station, and had been with her during the Noble operation, but this was their first real conversation.

  Davis was a pleasant woman in her forties, who had reached her exulted rank without becoming bitter, angry or jaded. She had three teenage daughters who kept her feet firmly on the ground, and a large yellow dog that demanded daily walks, which kept her fit while also letting her mind wander to aspects of life unrelated to criminal investigations.

  She glanced at the quiet, unassuming woman next to her and tried again. Oakley, whose judgement she respected, liked Anderson, so she clearly had something to offer.

  ‘I heard you passed your sergeant’s exams.’ Anderson smiled politely, but still didn’t speak, so Davis continued. ‘You’ve been in the job for, what, five or six years? How come you’re not on the graduate entry scheme?’

  ‘I didn’t want to be in charge of situations I’d no experience of,’ replied Anderson in a way that suggested it wasn’t the first time she had fielded that particular question. ‘It’s better to work your way up through the ranks on merit, not because you’ve got a degree.’

  Davis nodded approvingly. ‘So why has Barry Wright got it in for you?’ she asked bluntly.

  ‘I was born a woman and I went to
university,’ replied Anderson. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘You don’t have to put up with his crap, you know. You can do something about it.’

  ‘I don’t want to be branded as a whiner. Besides, he’d deny any accusations I made and things would be worse than ever. He’s been in the job for twenty years, so I don’t see my word being taken over his.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ conceded Davis. ‘But you shouldn’t let him get away with it if it bothers you.’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ said Anderson defiantly and a little unsteadily, so that Davis knew that it did. ‘And who knows? Maybe I’ll apply for a transfer soon. Anything going in CID?’ She gave the DI a quick smile, to let her know the question wasn’t serious.

  Davis laughed. ‘Well, you’ll come with plenty of experience at guarding crime scenes,’ she said, pulling up outside the house that was surrounded by fluttering blue and white tape, and where marked and unmarked police cars deprived the residents of their usual parking spots.

  ‘It’s number nine,’ said Anderson in a low voice.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Davis, climbing out of the car. ‘Number nine.’

  I couldn’t believe it! It was the same house. I recognized the unkempt garden and the unruly hedge. And, of course, there was the number. James had invited me to number nine, and I had murdered him in number nine.

  I forced myself to get out of the car and walk up the short path to the door, remembering the last time I’d made that trip. It’d been dark then. It was light now, with the golden sun of August beginning to blaze.

  The front door was open, like a sinister black slit that led to hell. DI Davis went in through it while I hovered in the garden, not sure what to do. I’d been trained to keep off crime scenes, and warned countless times about evidence lost under curious feet. My instincts were contradictory – to run inside and try to find out what was going on, or to race away from the garden, Bristol and my life in general while I still could. Then Davis beckoned.

  ‘If you’re going to join CID, you should take the opportunity to get a bit of experience of the way major crimes are investigated,’ she said. ‘SOCO worked all night, and they’re just finishing. Put these on and don’t touch anything. You don’t want to do a Wright.’