by Adam Croft
The only thing that worried him was that he didn’t know when he would stop. How do you know when the world is rid of perverts and paedophiles? Would it ever be? He’d always told himself that he’d carry on until he was caught.
The prospect of being caught didn’t bother him in the slightest. It was one of the risks that came with the job. All jobs had their risks, and this was the one he took. What’s the worst that could happen? He’d be sent to prison and be lauded as a hero. Sure, murderers weren’t exactly up there with footballers and pop stars, but you’d be tough-pushed to find a bugger who wouldn’t prefer them to a kiddy fiddler.
Nah, he’d be alright. You hear the stories about paedophiles being beaten up and abused in prison, so what would they make of him, the man who made it his mission to kill paedophiles? Prison certainly wouldn’t be such a tough ride. Hell, it’d probably be easier than being on the outside. At least there he’d have respect. Extra dollop of mashed potato with his dinner. Lovely.
Whichever way you looked at it, he had only one option: Keep on keeping on.
5
The narrow road and tightly-packed Victorian houses gave Brunel Road a rather claustrophobic feel. It was the same as a number of roads in this area of Mildenheath, built before anyone could possibly have known how the motor car would impact on everyone’s lives.
There were no driveways in sight and the tall, narrow houses had barely five-feet of front garden, meaning that around three houses were packed into the space that just one new home would occupy nowadays. As a result, getting parked anywhere nearby was something of a nightmare for Culverhouse.
The house itself had been sealed off at the front wall with police tape, a young constable standing guard just outside the boundaries of the property and another on the front door to the house. A number of neighbours were standing out in their front gardens, peering across to see what was going on.
Wendy walked ahead of Culverhouse, showed the officers her ID and entered the house, making her way through to the living room, where most of the action seemed to be taking place. Janet Grey, the pathologist, was already on the scene and was removing a pair of synthetic gloves as the pair entered.
‘Seems there’s someone keen to keep you in business,’ the pathologist said. ‘You’ve certainly got plenty to work on, anyway. Where do you want me to start?’
‘Who found the body?’ Wendy asked.
‘Dog walker, believe it or not. She’s being comforted back at home. Walked her dog past around nine forty-five and saw the front door half open with the hall light on. When she came back about half an hour later it was still open so she knocked and called inside.’
‘There’s your thanks for being a helpful neighbour, eh? Got any ID on our stiff?’ Culverhouse asked, aiming his question at a uniformed officer stood over Janet Grey’s shoulder.
‘A Mr Jeff Brelsford, it seems. He’s the sole occupier, anyway, according to the neighbours. Their descriptions of him seem to match as well.’
‘Right. Which injury was the cause of death?’
‘Probably the laceration to the throat,’ the pathologist said. ‘Fairly deep and nasty. Definitely forceful and deliberate. We’re looking at someone who was pretty angry. Gone right through the trachea. I’d say from the blood splashes on his clothing he’s probably coughed his own blood back up through the hole in his neck.’
‘You know how to turn a man on, Dr Grey,’ Culverhouse replied.
‘The blood loss from the — well, the amputation — probably wouldn’t have helped either.’
‘I thought amputations were only limbs?’ he asked.
‘Doesn’t make much difference to him. Would’ve bloody hurt either way. Of course, it’s not for me to tell you how to do your job but I’d be wondering why the killer did that. You don’t normally see gratuitous stuff like that without a reason. If you wanted him dead, you’d just kill him wouldn’t you?’
‘Depends what you wanted him dead for,’ Wendy replied.
‘Exactly. That’d be my first port of call.’
‘So what, we’re looking for a jilted ex-lover? Her father, perhaps?’ Culverhouse asked.
‘Perhaps. Oh, and someone with access to a Taser, too.’
‘Was it definitely a Taser?’ Cuvlerhouse said.
‘I’d say so personally, but we can’t exactly narrow it down to a make and model like you can with gunshots. The lab monkeys might be able to identify it from the prong marks or determine a voltage from the burn pattern, but it’s too early to say. Should at least be able to tell us whether or not it was police issue.’
‘Police issue?’ Culverhouse spluttered.
‘Well, yeah. How many other people do you know who can just walk about with Tasers? Not exactly something you can just get from your local branch of Asda, is it?’
‘No, but neither are guns and we’ve got no bloody shortage of them on the streets.’
‘First steps, guv?’ Wendy asked, keen to move the conversation on.
‘Speak to the neighbours. We need to find out if anyone heard or saw anything. You can’t just walk up to someone’s front door and shoot them in the bollocks with a Taser without anyone noticing. Besides which, someone must’ve heard something. He’d’ve been kicking and screaming like no-one’s business.’
‘Ah, not necessarily,’ Dr Grey interrupted. ‘There’s a pretty juicy knock to the back of the head, here. I’d say he hit his head going down after the Taser shot. Not something that could be planned, but still handy for the killer. Probably knocked him out for long enough for the killer to subdue him properly.’
‘No signs of robbery at all? Nothing taken?’ Culverhouse asked the uniformed officer.
‘None, sir. Everything’s pretty neat and tidy, actually. Wallet on the side in the kitchen with cash in it, TV and stuff still left here. Then again, if the killer came on foot, which I imagine he must’ve done around here, then there wouldn’t be much chance for him to be taking stuff away with him.’
‘Which means his primary intention presumably wasn’t to rob the place,’ Culverhouse said.
‘They were my first thoughts, sir, I must admit,’ the officer said.
Culverhouse looked at him benevolently for a few moments; a look Wendy hadn’t seen from him in a long, long time.
‘You’ll go a long way, son,’ he said, before turning to look back at the corpse of Jeff Brelsford. ‘Right, Knight. Looks like I’ve got an incident room to set up. I’ll leave you to speak with the neighbours.’
As Wendy left Jeff Brelsford’s house and stood outside to survey the scene, a man from the house opposite crossed the road to speak to her.
‘You are a detective?’ he asked. Wendy sensed a strong Eastern European lilt to his voice. ‘My name is Marius, I live across road. I think I saw who killed him.’
6
Marius’s house was remarkably similar to Jeff Brelsford’s. She presumed most of the houses in the street and on the estate would be fairly identical, save for a few extensions or knocked-through interior walls.
Once Wendy had politely declined a cup of tea and managed to steer the conversation away from how much Marius had wanted to be a policeman in Romania but could never pass the exams, he began to tell her what he’d seen.
‘I went out to my bin, and I saw a man dressed in a black suit. He was just turning into Jeff’s garden, through gate and walked to door.’
‘Did you see his face?’
‘No, no face. Only back of his head.’
‘What did it look like? What colour hair?’
Marius grimaced slightly. ‘I am not sure. Dark hair, I think, and not long hair, but is dark outside and there is no... How you say?’ he replied, waving his hand in the air.
‘Streetlight?’
‘Yes, streetlight. Is not one outside his house, and I was not wearing my glasses.’
Wendy smiled, although inside she was a little frustrated. ‘Did you see him go inside the house?’
‘No, I went back ins
ide. I did not think was weird, just maybe a visitor or friend. Nothing special.’
‘What time was this?’ Wendy asked.
Marius narrowed his eyebrows. ‘About eight o’clock, I think.’
‘And did you see this man leave?’
Marius shook his head. ‘No, I did not think was strange, so I went inside. I did not hear anything.’ He seemed to be genuinely worried that Wendy would be angry, as if she’d arrest him for not being a more observant neighbour. It occurred to her that perhaps policing was done somewhat differently in Romania.
‘Don’t worry, it’s absolutely fine and understandable. Believe me, you’ve been a lot more helpful than most neighbours. You’d be amazed what people don’t see going on right outside their own homes. People just keep themselves to themselves. They don’t look out for each other any more.’
Marius just smiled, as if he didn’t quite know what to say.
As Wendy left Marius’s house, the uniformed officer stood outside the police cordon told her that Jeff Brelsford’s neighbours, Chloe Downie and Harry Kendrick, had just got home, having been out for the evening.
Wendy made her way over to their house and knocked on the door. A young man, surely no older than his late teens or early twenties at most, opened the door and pushed his fringe away from his eyes.
‘Harry Kendrick? My name’s Detective Sergeant Wendy Knight, from Mildenheath CID. My colleague said he spoke to you briefly.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Come in,’ Harry said, stepping aside to let Wendy through.
‘This is my girlfriend, Chloe,’ he said, gesturing to her as they entered the living room. Chloe smiled.
‘So, did you know Jeff Brelsford at all?’ Wendy asked.
‘Nah, not really,’ Harry replied. ‘I mean we saw him every now and again, what with living next door to him, but we’ve only rented the place four months so far and we’re mostly out working.’
‘Don’t often get to go out together, even in the evenings,’ Chloe said. ‘We went to see a film.’
Wendy smiled ruefully. It was such a shame that a young couple, clearly devoted enough to each other to want to set up home, were spending so much time working to keep that home that they barely got to spend any time with each other.
‘Did many people come and go from his house? Friends, girlfriends, anything like that?’
Harry and Chloe looked at each other momentarily. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Harry said. ‘To be honest, we never really heard much from him. No music or anything like that, even. That surprised me, actually, as you would’ve thought we’d hear something through these walls. We can even hear the old woman the other side of us coughing,’ he added, lowering his voice almost to a whisper just in case the woman next door could hear him, too.
‘Very thin walls,’ Chloe said. ‘To be honest, it’s a bit creepy, actually, knowing that people next door can hear everything. We have to be a bit... Well, careful, if you see what I mean. At night.’
‘Yes, I understand,’ Wendy said, trying to change the conversation. ‘And was there anything odd over the last few days and weeks at all? New cars on the street, people hanging round, Jeff acting differently perhaps?’
Harry shook his head. ‘Not that we’ve noticed. But then we’ve both hardly been around. We’ve been so preoccupied with work, I doubt we would’ve noticed if all of those things had happened. Sorry, we’re probably not being much help.’
Having left Harry and Chloe with her phone number should they remember anything and want to contact her, Wendy decided to try the neighbour on the other side of Jeff Brelsford’s house.
The elderly man who opened the door looked visibly upset at the news he’d received barely an hour earlier. He guided Wendy into his living room, where she found a woman sobbing into a handkerchief.
‘I’m afraid my wife is rather upset about it all. You see, she’s hard of hearing so we had the television on very loud, as we always do. Poor girl reckons it was her fault now and that if we’d had the telly down lower we might have heard the chap shouting or something. No use me trying to tell her that with her ears she wouldn’t have heard the telly or the bloke. She won’t have it.’
‘It’s the shock, I’m sure,’ Wendy said, sitting down on the sofa next to the man’s wife and putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘What did you say your names were?’ she said to the man.
‘I didn’t. I’m Des Forrester. My wife is Joy.’
Not much Joy about her at the moment, Wendy thought. ‘Did you know Jeff Brelsford personally?’ she asked.
Joy carried on crying as Des spoke. ‘No, not really. We went round and introduced ourselves when he moved in, but we’re old-fashioned like that. Other than a quick hello over the garden wall if we happened to be out at the same time, that was about it. Sad, isn’t it, how society’s changed?’
Wendy simply smiled. ‘Had anything different happened recently? Anything a little out of the ordinary, new people around, that sort of thing?’
‘Not that I can think of,’ Des replied. ‘What about you, love?’ he shouted towards his wife. ‘Did you notice anything odd happening around here recently?’
Joy shook her head between sobs.
‘Nothing at all?’ he yelled. ‘Anything?’
By now, Wendy’s ears were ringing and she wondered if perhaps she’d be the next one to go deaf if she had to take any more of this.
‘Perhaps I could leave my card and you could give me a call if either of you think of anything.’
‘Yes, good idea,’ Des said, looking at the card and seeming to read every word. ‘We’ll have a think and let you know.’
Wendy had to agree with Des Forrester. It was quite sad that no-one really spoke to or acknowledged their neighbours any more. It wasn’t just a case of lives getting busier and it being a shame, but the fact that this modern ignorance and style of insular living could quite possibly have cost a man his life.
Culverhouse had let her know that there’d be an incident room meeting in the morning and that there wasn’t much else they could do at that time of night. The forensics team would be working through the night to gather evidence, which would give them something to discuss in the morning.
Feeling reinvigorated yet apprehensive, and wanting to get back before midnight, Wendy decided to head for home. That bottle of wine was starting to look even more appealing.
7
Wendy had thought that perhaps a new morning would bring fresh hope, but a distinct lack of sleep had put paid to that.
She’d lain awake for most of the night thinking about the scene she’d witnessed at Jeff Brelsford’s house. No matter how many crime scenes she saw, she never quite managed to get over the sense of sorrow she felt. Every dead body was a brother, sister, mother, father, son or daughter. It was a friend, a neighbour, a colleague. Every one had a story to tell, but their final story was her job to uncover.
Her walk from the car park into the staff entrance of Mildenheath Police Station was one which had been tinged with sadness ever since Luke Baxter’s death. At the entrance was a brass plaque, which read In memory of PC Luke Baxter above his dates of birth and death. It was something which saddened her every time she saw it, yet she knew it was completely right that every officer should remember Luke, what he sacrificed and the potential dangers to their own lives every time they showed up for work.
Wendy felt she was coping. It was something that had become second nature in her life since her parents died and her brother became a drug addict and subsequently murdered her partner and tried to kill her. Her miscarriage not long after had been a huge hammer blow. Plus, of course, there was the career history of dealing with violent murders and crimes which left its unavoidable mark on her. Wendy had learnt to cope. There was no other way. She was a professional coper.
For Jack Culverhouse, though, things were different. Wendy had noticed some marked changes in his behaviour recently. The brash, macho exterior and jokey ways had continued, but she knew him well enou
gh to know that it was all bravado, a cover which hid the true feelings beneath. True enough, she suspected that had always been the case but she also knew that he was hurting far more deeply than he let on. After all, Luke had quite literally sacrificed his life for him by throwing himself in front of the bullet that was meant for his superior officer.
He’d been drinking heavily and there were whisperings that words had been had at higher levels. The problem was that Jack Culverhouse was more than functioning as a CID officer. He was the best around, there was no doubt about it, and as a result he got away with far, far more than anyone else in the same position would ever do.
The incident room was worryingly familiar to Wendy. Culverhouse would be running the shop as always, with her effectively being his second in command. Alongside them were DS Frank Vine, DS Steve Wing and DC Debbie Weston.
Luke’s death had left a hole in the team, and the negative ramifications ran much deeper for Mildenheath CID. For a while now, the county police headquarters at Milton House had been home to the regionalised CID department. Mildenheath was the only town that had managed to hold on to its own CID team, partially because of the high serious crime rate in the town but also largely due to the sheer stubbornness of Jack Culverhouse and the Chief Constable, Charles Hawes, who had come up through the ranks at Mildenheath. Hawes was quite happy to have an office at the station, well out of the way of the county’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Martin Cummings, with whom he didn’t enjoy a good relationship to say the least.
The fact of the matter was that Mildenheath CID was now one man smaller than it had been, and before long it would be impossible to argue against it being subsumed into Milton House — something that DCI Malcolm Pope, Culverhouse’s opposite number and nemesis, was waiting for with baited breath. Although Luke’s death wasn’t a situation anyone could have planned, no-one at Mildenheath CID would put it past Martin Cummings to use it to his political advantage. Regardless, Jack Culverhouse was ploughing on and was getting stuck into the morning briefing.