by Adam Croft
He straightened his tie, pulled the large winter jacket across his chest and opened the van door, stepping out into the bitter air. He crossed the quiet road and walked up the block-paved driveway of his target’s house without glancing round. He knew it was better to act normally and confidently rather than trying to be too careful, which could just make him look suspicious.
He raised his finger and pressed the doorbell, hearing the electronic chime ring out inside the house. A few seconds later, a light came on behind the frosted glass panelling in the door and he heard the privacy chain being removed. A nice bonus, he thought.
The door opened and he recognised his target immediately. How valuable a tool Facebook could be.
‘Terry Kendall?’ he asked, trying to sound as confident and authoritative as possible.
‘Yes,’ the man replied, a slight look of confusion on his face.
‘Detective Inspector Richard Thomson. Can I come in?’
‘Why? What’s it all about?’ the man inside the house asked.
‘I think it’s better if we discuss the matter indoors.’
The man nodded and stood aside. ‘Right, okay. Is something the matter?’
He said nothing and stepped inside the house, his right hand slipping inside his coat and removing the Taser from its holster. As the man closed the door and turned round to face him, he pulled the trigger, watching the man’s body contort as he yelped in pain before collapsing to the floor.
Barely three minutes later, he was finished. He knew he’d been a little gratuitous with the last one and that he wouldn’t always have as much time to get in and out. He certainly couldn’t risk being caught too soon and having the police make out he was the criminal for doing their job for them, especially as they seemed to be completely incapable of doing it themselves.
Just as he was preparing to leave, he heard a car stopping outside and the engine being switched off. With this being a small cul-de-sac of just eight houses, he felt he had reason to be worried.
Those worries intensified as he heard the increasing sound of footsteps on the front path, followed by the chiming of the doorbell which rang through the house.
He held his breath and looked at the dead body of Terry Kendall laying just inside the living room, as if expecting it to call out and betray him.
Moments later, the bell rang again.
A muffled voice came from outside the front door.
‘Terry, are you there? It’s Kim.’
There was silence for a few moments. It was then that he saw the shadow move across the front of the bay window, darkening the net curtains as the figure moved between the window and the streetlight outside, which peered over the top of the tall hedges surrounding the driveway.
He had no choice but to move. He ducked back into the hallway and crouched down, moving back along the hallway and through into the dark kitchen. Putting a light on wasn’t an option. He felt his way around and fumbled with the key in the back door, finally managing to get it open without making too much noise.
Within seconds he was clear of the fence and skirting around the side of a neighbour’s house, making his way silently back towards the road.
Judging by the lack of any kind of reaction from Terry Kendall’s visitor, he could only presume the body wasn’t visible from the front window. Thanking his lucky stars, he opened the door to his van, got in and drove away as calmly as he could.
18
Wendy had managed to hold off until the next morning. She didn’t want to appear too desperate or for it to look like Suzanne Corrigan had hit on something, so she’d bitten her tongue and held on. It hadn’t been easy, but often so much of policing was about biding your time and waiting for the right moment. Now, though, she needed answers so she picked up the phone and called Suzanne’s direct number at the Mildenheath Gazette.
Suzanne Corrigan had been through the mill herself in recent times, and had been the intended final victim of the Mildenheath Ripper, coming face to face with him in her own home before the tussle that had ultimately cost PC Luke Baxter his life. She had been determined to not only put that behind her, though, but to ensure that the details had never been made known — not even to her colleagues on the Gazette. The official story had been purely that the incident had happened at a ‘local address’. Saying any more would’ve either resulted in being catapulted to national fame — something Suzanne wasn’t interested in — or being signed off work for the next six months. Again, not something she wanted.
Wendy knew all this, but there was no time for niceties; Wendy knew Suzanne could become flustered fairly easily and decided to jump straight in, hoping to catch her on the back foot.
‘You made a comment at the memorial service yesterday about vigilantes. What did you mean?’ Wendy asked.
There was a pause and Wendy heard Suzanne swallow before speaking.
‘Just something we picked up on when we looked at the details surrounding the murder in Brunel Road the other day,’ the reporter said meekly.
‘What about it?’ Wendy replied. ‘We haven’t released details of the victim’s identity or anything to do with how he died. So what details are you talking about exactly?’
Suzanne seemed to gain some confidence from somewhere. ‘It’s our duty to investigate and report facts, Detective Sergeant. We weren’t told anything was embargoed so we looked into the story ourselves.’
‘Who did you speak to?’ Wendy asked firmly.
‘All sorts of people. Neighbours, friends, family—’
‘He had no family,’ Wendy interrupted.
‘I know, we discovered that. And we also found out that Jeff Brelsford had received a police caution for sexual harassment of a sixteen-year-old girl.’
‘And what led you to think that?’ Wendy asked, not committing either way to accepting or denying what Suzanne had said.
‘Is it true?’ the reporter asked.
‘Answer my question.’
’Mildenheath’s a small town. People know people. Someone in the office knows someone who worked at the company when it happened.’
‘Can you be a little more specific?’ Wendy asked.
‘I’m not going to reveal my sources, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Suzanne replied.
Wendy decided to change the subject slightly. ‘Has this “vigilante” nonsense been published anywhere?’
‘Not yet.’
‘And that’s how it’s going to remain. I don’t want anything about Jeff Brelsford’s caution published anywhere, alright? Because that’s exactly what it was: a caution. He wasn’t even tried, let alone convicted.’
‘But he was placed on the sex offenders register, wasn’t he?’ Suzanne asked.
‘The register is visible only to police and related law enforcement agencies. If you’re claiming to have information from it, that’s a very serious matter.’
‘Like I said, people know people. It’s a small town.’
Wendy had started to detect she was losing control of this conversation. ‘I’m not going to keep going round in circles, Suzanne. I’m asking you nicely. Do not publish any details of this. Once it’s all wrapped up, we’ll speak about what’s in the public interest.’
‘And is this order coming from you or your senior investigating officer?’ Suzanne asked. ‘Because, let’s face it, he has the final say.’
Wendy rubbed her temple and ground her teeth. ‘Like you said, Suzanne, Mildenheath’s a small town. If I were a crime reporter, I wouldn’t want to rub the police up the wrong way. I’ll call you when I have something for you.’
‘Should I presume you haven’t seen today’s papers then?’ Suzanne replied.
Without really listening, and before she could say anything else, Wendy had hung up the phone. She had tried not to sound rude, and she knew how valuable the press could be in helping to spread the word and gather information, but the last thing the investigation needed right now was for hysteria to break out on either side, either from sex of
fenders worried about vigilante attacks or local residents being up in arms about offenders being housed in their area.
Of course no-one wanted to live next to a sex offender out of choice, but the fact of the matter was that they had to live somewhere. The most serious offenders were monitored extremely closely, but from what Wendy could make out Jeff Brelsford was far from being one of the most serious offenders. His actions had been considered to constitute harassment, but it appeared to have been a one-off and had not resulted in prosecution or conviction. Why, then, had he been targeted? There were dozens of bigger targets in the local area if this truly was about vigilante action.
Every time that thought led Wendy towards the presumption that they could be wrong about Jeff Brelsford’s murder being a vigilante killing, she kept coming back to the cold, hard facts: the signs of torture, the Taser to the genitals and the removal of said apparatus. Not exactly the hallmarks of a burglary gone wrong. Nothing, as far as they could see, had been taken from the house and it seemed that Jeff Brelsford had been targeted deliberately. In the absence of any other reason for someone wanting him dead, and due to the way he was killed, the only clear motive was a sexual revenge of some sort.
As she mulled this over, the door opened and Malcolm Pope strode in with all the confidence of a Wild West gunslinger.
‘I’ve just had uniform on the phone,’ he said. ‘A district nurse called on one of her patients in Southbrook this morning. Alveston Close. She had no response last night or this morning, so she was worried and called the police. Uniform went in and found the owner dead in his living room.’
‘Unless this is just a nice little story, I presume you’re telling me because there’s more to it,’ Wendy said, her patience now running very thin.
‘Oh yes. There’s much more,’ Malcolm Pope said, smiling. ‘But how would Taser scarring and some detached genitals do for starters?’
19
Jack Culverhouse threw another newspaper on the coffee table and rested his head back against the sofa.
It was a hatchet job. The tabloids led with their pathetic RIPPER COPPER HITS ROCK BOTTOM and HERO COP LOSES THE PLOT headlines and the opinion pieces in the broadsheets ranged from CULVERHOUSE AFTERMATH LIFTS THE LID ON THE DARK SIDE OF POLICING to HARVEY RATBERGER ASKS: SHOULD WE INCREASE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPORT TO FRONTLINE POLICE?
The disparity between the two types of newspaper was extraordinary. Anything with a red top was primarily interested in dramatising the fact that he’d been placed on leave (or ‘sent home to sort his head out’, as one particularly sensitive publication put it) as well as speculating on whether his current situation was purely a reflection on what had happened or if he’d actually been unstable at the time and had somehow caused Luke Baxter’s death. Culverhouse had seen the extraordinary spin the press could put on non-stories a thousand times in his line of work, but this was something else.
The broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers seemed to be somewhat more sympathetic, sensibly looking at the causes and what could be done rather than trying to sensationalise a grown man’s health struggles. They referred to previous famous cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome, which all of the papers — all of the ones that could spell it, anyway — were in agreement was what had happened to Jack Culverhouse.
To him, though, it didn’t matter whether he had a medical condition or had ‘gone off the rails’ or ‘cracked up’; the fact was that he was a man lost. Fortunately for him, the newspapers had dropped all the blame at the door of what had happened that night at Suzanne Corrigan’s house. They had no inkling as to everything else that had affected his state of mind and he had no intention of telling them. It would only be a matter of time before they’d cotton on, though.
Every man had his limits. Even Jack Culverhouse. For years he’d enjoyed a reputation that involved being invincible, emotionless and able to take whatever shit his job and his life threw at him. As far as he was aware, the majority of his colleagues weren’t aware he’d even been married, never mind that his wife had left him out of the blue and taken their young daughter with her.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t Helen’s disappearance that hurt the most. Even he had to admit that he’d neglected her and his daughter, Emily, who he’d let down in favour of his job and had barely seen in her waking hours up until the day they upped and left. What had hurt the most was Helen returning without Emily and telling him in no uncertain terms that Emily didn’t want to see him.
There was no way she could have formed that opinion on her own. She was too young when they left. Any kind of animosity had to come, at best, through her not understanding what had been going on at that time or, at worst, through Helen poisoning her mind from an early age. He knew which one he thought was true. Helen was pure poison.
The only person who knew that Helen had recently — briefly — returned was Wendy Knight. He wasn’t a man who trusted easily, but he knew he could trust Wendy with things like that. Even so, he had no intention of telling her everything that was going through his mind. That would be far too dangerous.
Luke’s death had been the straw that had broken the camel’s back. He hadn’t known it at the time, but he had been perilously close to cracking for a while. Would he have stopped and taken a break even if he had known it? He very much doubted it. Taking time off wasn’t something Jack Culverhouse did, and even now he was quite sure it was making things worse instead of better. The amount of scotch he was drinking was testament to that. Besides which, there was only so much Judge Rinder a man could watch.
The truth was, if he wasn’t working he was lost. He’d quickly come to realise that Mildenheath CID was his raison d’etre. That could now all be lost to history, though. The thought of retirement had petrified him and it was something he’d never entertained as a plan. He knew that he’d be pensioned off at some point, but in his mind even planning for the event would be tantamount to wishing it into existence. It wasn’t a thought he could bear; just having been away from the job for a matter of days was already killing him.
If it had been a simple case of being signed off sick, he would’ve ignored it and gone straight back to work, dealing with it the only way he knew how. This time, though, it was different. This time he wasn’t in control. He had been placed on official leave and couldn’t go back to work if he wanted to. The only way back was to show that he was back to normal, or as normal as he’d ever been.
That was easier said than done. There was no way he could do it by himself, and there was no-one he could call on for help. The only person who had ever been able to deal with Jack Culverhouse was Jack Culverhouse.
20
The journey to Southbrook took them a shade under fifteen minutes. The village was a busy one, nestled by the side of the motorway and famous only for its service station as well as being on one of the main arterial routes through the county that didn’t involve motorways or dual carriageways.
Alveston Close was tucked away neatly on the quieter side of the village away from the main drag, and it seemed unlikely to Wendy that Terry Kendall and Jeff Brelsford would have had much in common. That said, they certainly had one thing in common: they were both dead. That and they’d both been killed in a remarkably similar manner, very possibly by the same person.
Wendy noticed the tall hedge that surrounded the front of the property, effectively masking it from prying eyes but also providing fantastic protection for burglars. And murderers. One notable absence was the gathering crowd of neighbours and passers-by that had been present outside Jeff Brelsford’s house. There was no such interest here. Probably all at work, she thought. Hardly the sort of place people would just be wandering past, either.
She spotted Janet Grey’s car parked a little further along the road. It always amazed her how the pathologist could manage to get to any scene of a crime quicker than she could. She thought she must have some sort of in-built radar. It made sense that you’d pick up some sort of nose for death after a few years.
&n
bsp; She smiled at the uniformed officer standing guard at the end of the driveway as she walked towards the door. The block paving looked lovely, she thought, but gravel might’ve been a little more effective at drawing attention to any unwanted visitors. Bit late for that now.
The front door was ajar and she let herself in, heading in the direction of the living room. It was the smell that hit her first. Any time a body had lain undiscovered for more than a few hours, the smell would be almost unbearable. No amount of experience in seeing dead bodies could desensitise you to that stench, but Janet Grey seemed to be coping admirably. Then again, Wendy thought, she was practically superhuman.
‘Ah, good morning,’ Dr Grey said in her usual chirpy manner. ‘Action Man not come with you?’
‘No, he’s decided to delegate,’ Wendy replied. ‘Apparently an eight hundred word report is just as good as coming out to see it for himself.’
‘Don’t tell Jack,’ the pathologist replied, pulling a few strands of hair out of Terry Kendall’s head with a pair of tweezers. ‘He’ll go spare.’
Wendy smiled. ‘I think he’s probably got a fair idea as to what’s going on in his absence. So what’s the lowdown?’
‘Seventy-three-year-old male, might as well be twice that. All sorts of medical conditions according to the district nurse who found him. She came last night to change a dressing and top up his medication but there was no answer. Not a rare occurrence, apparently, so she left it until the morning as there wasn’t anything urgent. When she got no response again this morning she rang the police.’