by Adam Croft
‘How long’s he been dead?’ Wendy asked.
‘Difficult to say exactly until I’m back at the lab, but it’s at least eleven hours if that thermometer on the wall’s right.’
Wendy looked at the thermometer. 21 degrees celsius. She knew from past experience that a dead body would cool from 37.5 degrees at a rate of 1.5 degrees an hour until it reached ambient temperature.
‘No longer than twenty-four hours, though, as rigor’s not worn off yet, even in the small joints. Besides which, the nurse saw him alive and well this time yesterday. Best I can say is that it was probably, possibly, between four o’clock yesterday afternoon and eleven last night.’
‘Brilliant, thanks Janet. Where’s the nurse who found him?’
‘She’s outside in the van taking advantage of the obligatory mug of sweet tea. More than I get, and I’ve got to sit here poking the thing.’
‘Always good to see someone who loves their job,’ Wendy said, trying to play the pathologist at her own cynical game. ‘What do we know about the IP?’ she asked the uniformed constable.
‘His name was Terry Kendall according to the nurse. She confirmed it was him. Retired schoolteacher, apparently.’
‘What about family?’ Wendy asked.
‘None to speak of. He was an only child, never married and his parents are long gone, obviously.’
‘I’d guessed that bit,’ Wendy replied. ‘How often does the nurse come?’
‘Every morning and evening between nine and ten,’ the officer replied. ‘He’s got an open wound on his back from some surgery that didn’t heal properly, so she came to change the dressing twice a day and update his medication.’
‘And everything was fine yesterday morning?’
‘Well he wasn’t dead, if that’s what you mean,’ Janet Grey interrupted.
‘The nurse said she didn’t spot anything wrong,’ the officer said. ‘Think that’s why it came as a bit of a shock when she found him this morning. She’s used to patients dying between visits, but Mr Kendall wasn’t exactly at death’s door. He just didn’t have anyone around who could change his dressing and he couldn’t get to his GP twice a day.’
Wendy nodded and let the officer leave.
Janet Grey shook her head. ’Got to say, Wendy, I’d be looking a bit deeper into this. Especially considering the patterns and connection with the way that Brelsford chap went. You know I’m not one to theorise,’ she said, a moment before Wendy raised her eyebrow, ‘but it looks to me like you might be after the same person here too.’
‘Yes,’ Wendy said, swallowing. ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’
21
He hammered his fist into the side of his own head. How could he be so fucking stupid? Having to go out the back door and vault the fence was one thing, but even so he shouldn’t have got flustered and left the laptop.
He had no option; he couldn’t go back. Rule number one, that: Never return to the scene of the crime. He knew, though, that one of the first things the police would do would be to look through Terry Kendall’s laptop. And then what? It was entirely — very — possible that they’d find something that led back to him.
He’d been extraordinarily careful to hide his own identity, emailing only when connected to a VPN and via TOR where possible. Even so, he wasn’t fully confident. You never knew these days how much the police could do, whether they’d be able to somehow get the data they needed to trace him. He was willing to bet that if he’d been the victim of a crime they’d very quickly hold their hands up and say there was nothing they could do because the other person had connected via a proxy server. It was sod’s law, though, that they’d throw their biggest tech geeks at this one.
No, he had to think calmly and rationally. Why would they? They’d have to be pretty damn sure that there was something worth looking for. He tried to rack his brains to think what would be there. Terry Kendall had come unstuck after clicking on one of his links without being behind his usual cover of a VPN. It was possible that the page would still be in his browser history, but he doubted it. Someone with the perverted mind that he had would’ve cleared his browser history pretty frequently. In any case, the page couldn’t be linked to him even if he hadn’t.
Terry Kendall was one of those people who’d read a web page or two about computer security but really didn’t have a clue about it. He thought he knew more than he actually did. That was a godsend when it came to trying to find out his identity while he was known only as JackRabbit12, but could cause a problem now. The only hope was that the police wouldn’t look too deeply and wouldn’t think anything of finding the TOR browser on Terry Kendall’s laptop.
He had to remind himself that they’d have no real reason to go through his laptop in such detail. Why would they prioritise it as a clue? They’d be looking at his emails to see if he’d mentioned arguments or disagreements with anyone, and that could possibly lead them to the link he’d sent Terry which eventually divulged his IP address. He figured it was unlikely Terry would’ve kept that, though.
It was also pretty unlikely that that email account would’ve been his main or only account. Surely he wouldn’t have been that stupid, would he? No. It was unthinkable.
Fortunately for him, the TOR browser didn’t store users’ browsing histories, so he was fairly confident that the police wouldn’t be led to the forum. In the meantime, he had only one option.
Hands shaking as he did so, he entered the administration panel on the forum and locked it down to be accessible only to the user accounts he’d invited, making sure he also disabled JackRabbit12’s account, just on the off-chance the police did make a connection and try accessing the forum through Terry Kendall’s laptop.
As of now, the only people who’d be able to access the forum were him and his remaining targets.
22
The back of a police van wasn’t the most comfortable place to conduct an interview, but Wendy had been in worse places. Kim Kelliher, the district nurse, seemed visibly shocked despite having seen her fair share of dead bodies in her time.
‘It was the way he was lying there. I’ve never seen a murdered body before. Most people just die in their sleep or something,’ she said, her voice quivering.
‘Do you know any of his friends or family at all? Did he mention anybody else?’ Wendy asked.
‘No, no-one. He never married, I know that much. And he mentioned a while back that he had no brothers or sisters. He used to be a teacher, he said. On the coast somewhere. He did say where, but I can’t remember.’
It struck Wendy as a little odd that someone would spend their life working near the coast and choose to retire to Southbrook. It was usually the other way round.
‘Did he seem agitated at all recently? Like he might have known he was under some sort of threat? Or that someone wanted him dead?’
‘No, not at all. He was always really cheery considering the amount of pain he was in. The hospital really made a mess of his operation and it’s never healed properly. That’s the problem with back surgery sometimes.’
‘There was no indication at all that anything was wrong?’ Wendy asked, leaning in towards Kim. ‘Only the injuries that killed him were pretty brutal. Whoever did this was pretty hell-bent on killing him.’
‘No, nothing. Couldn’t it have been a burglar or something? Perhaps he disturbed them.’
‘I doubt it,’ Wendy said. ‘Nothing seems to have been taken, plus Terry was seventy-three. You wouldn’t need that level of violence to subdue him. Whoever did it wanted to inflict real pain.’
Kim looked away, as if doing so would make everything stop. As Wendy went to speak again, the constable she’d been speaking to earlier knocked on the door of the van.
’Sarge, have you got a sec? We’ve found something.’
Wendy put a placating hand on Kim’s shoulder and hopped out of the van.
‘What is it?’
‘The back door from the kitchen was unlocked, which isn’t all th
at strange, but there are footprints in the flower bed. The mud was pretty damp and soft, fortunately for us, so forensics should be able to get a decent cast. They say it looks like whoever did it was running, based on the pressure points and the one that’s scuffed up next to the fence. Speaking of which, there’s mud stuck to the top of the fence. Looks as though our man was disturbed and bolted across the flower bed and over the fence.’
‘Right. See if you can trace that mud any further,’ Wendy said. She worked out the timings in her head. Janet Grey said that Terry Kendall had probably died between four in the afternoon and eleven at night. Kim Kelliher, the district nurse, had rung the doorbell at about nine-thirty in the evening. It could well be possible that it was her who disturbed the killer. She decided she wouldn’t tell her that just yet.
When she got back to the van, she poked her head round the door and tried not to show too much excitement or concern.
‘Kim, I don’t suppose you remember what cars or vehicles were parked up around here when you came last night do you?’
Kim paused for a moment before shaking her head. ‘No. No, I don’t, I’m afraid. Why?’
Wendy smiled as best she could. ‘No matter.’
23
Blatant rudeness wasn’t something Wendy handled well, so when she heard the door to the incident room open, only to look up and see Malcolm Pope beckoning her with his finger to follow him, she wasn’t put in the cheeriest frame of mind.
Pope stood in the corridor with his hands on his hips.
‘What’s the latest on this second body?’ he asked, without even so much as saying hello.
Wendy tried not to let her annoyance show.
‘You’ll have all the necessary information in the end-of-day report, sir.’
‘I’d like an update now, please,’ Pope replied firmly.
‘As well as a report at the end of the day?’ Wendy asked, folding her arms.
Pope narrowed his eyes. ‘Do I detect a slight hint of animosity, Detective Sergeant Knight?’
Wendy stood and looked at him for a couple of seconds before changing the subject. ‘A man was found dead in his house in Southbrook. Similar MO to the Jeff Brelsford killing. We’re speaking to neighbours and assessing the evidence as we speak.’
‘How similar?’
‘Similar enough for us to be concerned,’ Wendy replied.
‘Taser?’
‘Yes. And throat lacerations.’
‘Do we have a positive ID on the deceased?’ Pope asked.
Wendy thought for a moment. ‘No, not yet,’ she lied. She needed to keep some things to herself, especially considering the delicate political situation at Mildenheath CID.
Pope looked at her and nodded. She thought for a moment that perhaps he had already spoken to someone else and been given the details, but she thought it unlikely. ‘And what leads are you following up?’ he asked.
Wendy clenched her teeth. ‘Sir, with respect, if you want a report on your desk at the end of the day from each of us and you want us to be able to dedicate enough time to investigating these cases, I really can’t stand around giving you the same information verbally as well. Unless, of course, I’m going to be excused from having to write the report if you’ve already been told verbally.’ She quickly realised that hadn’t sounded half as professional as she’d hoped it would. Although she’d been feeling more confident in her role recently, she knew that a pasting from Pope right now would put her firmly on the back foot.
Malcolm Pope straightened his back. ‘DS Knight, I know you had a cushy little number while DCI Culverhouse was leading this unit, but you have to accept that things have to be done a certain way. These aren’t my rules. I think I should remind you of that. This is the way policing is done across the country, and I don’t appreciate you using that tone with me.’
Wendy had never considered herself one to defend Jack Culverhouse, but right now she wished he was back running the team instead of Malcolm Pope. She’d been espousing the same style of policing as Malcolm Pope for years, but was quickly starting to realise that it was going to end up placing more restrictions on the investigation than Culverhouse’s lassez-faire approach to things. At Milton House, it might be feasible, but then again their investigation teams were much, much larger. She was now starting to see that this was probably because at least half of them were dedicated purely to paperwork. The considerably smaller CID team at Mildenheath had managed to cope admirably over the years owing to its efficiency and focus on pure policing.
‘You do realise, don’t you, that there are plans afoot to amalgamate Mildenheath CID into Milton House?’ Pope said, a wry smile breaking across his face.
‘I think a few of us had guessed that may be the case,’ Wendy said, giving him her own sarcastic smirk.
‘And when that happens you’re going to be working for me permanently, so you’re going to have to get used to this.’
Wendy decided she was going to stand her ground. ‘You seem to be assuming that it’s actually going to happen,’ she said. ‘You do know this isn’t anything new, right? They’ve been trying to move us up there for years. The PCC’s been getting his knickers in a twist about it ever since he got elected, but you know what he said after the Ripper case. We’re going nowhere.’
Pope smiled again. ‘He didn’t say that, though, did he? He said the move was on hold. Holds are temporary.’
‘Are we getting into semantics now?’ Wendy said, laughing. ‘We both know what it meant. There’s no way he’d get away with upsetting the apple cart after a result like that.’
‘A result like what? Letting four innocent people get murdered, then putting the local news reporter in mortal danger and having a serving police officer killed in the process of saving her life? Oh yes, what a result.’
‘The killer was caught,’ Wendy said firmly. ‘In my book, that’s a result.’
Pope shook his head. ‘But at what cost? If you think that investigation was a success, you’re barking. It was a failure and you know it.’
‘Not according to the Chief Constable, it wasn’t. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s all that matters. As long as he’s around, there’s no way in hell you’ll get away with speaking to people the way you do and there’s about as much chance of us being shipped off to Milton House to fill in paperwork with you and your pen-pushing chums.’ Even as she spoke, Wendy was shocked at how much she sounded like Jack Culverhouse.
Pope laughed. ‘You’re right, yes. As long as he’s around, DS Knight. As long as he’s around.’ He shook his head, laughed again and headed off in the direction of the lift.
24
Frank Vine looked proud as punch as he plonked his notebook down on Wendy’s desk.
‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘What do you make of that?’
Wendy squinted and cocked her head sideways as she looked at the notepad. ‘Uh, I’m not sure. My years of experience as a detective would probably say that a spider got into your ink pot then walked around on your notepad for a bit.’
‘Cheeky bitch,’ Frank said, snatching the notepad back. ‘Do you want me to decipher for you?’
‘I wouldn’t mind.’
‘Right, well basically I’ve just heard back from Liz Prior in forensics. They’ve taken casts of the footprints found in Terry Kendall’s back garden. They’re pretty sure there was only one person, and he was running pretty quickly from the back door in the kitchen to the fence. They reckon he jumped up at the fence mid-stride as there are some scuff marks on the wood. He then clambered up onto the top of it, leaving some mud from the flowerbed on the top, landed on the other side and made his way back round the neighbours’ garden to the road.’
‘Where did he go from there?’ Wendy asked.
‘They’re not sure. There were traces of mud as far as the road, but the roadsweepers were round about half an hour before the district nurse found him dead. Sod’s bloody law.’
‘And nothing on the pavement on the other side of
the road?’ Wendy asked.
‘Nope, nothing. Which is a bit weird in itself. They reckon he either ran up the road itself or got into a car that was parked outside.’
Wendy fancied the latter to be more likely. ‘And what about the prints? Did they identify the shoes?’
‘Not yet, and they don’t fancy their chances. The chap wasn’t wearing trainers, by all accounts. Flat bottomed, leather soles. Could be absolutely anything. They’re doing their best, though. But get this. We’ve reviewed the CCTV from the streets near Jeff Brelsford’s and Terry Kendall’s homes. A neighbour’s private CCTV shows a small white van heading in the direction of Terry Kendall’s house and parking up nearby on the night he was killed. It’s there for about five minutes. Looks almost identical to another van seen passing a camera on Mildenheath High Street in the direction of Jeff Brelsford’s house a few minutes before the bloke across the road says he saw a guy in a suit. Quarter of an hour later, the same van heads back in the other direction past the same camera. We lose it on the south side of town, heading out towards the motorway, but the motorway cameras didn’t pick it up, so it’s probably gone off into the country lanes somewhere.’
‘Christ. Did you get a registration?’
‘Yep. And it matches a white Vauxhall Combo registered to a van hire company in Birmingham called Bower & Sons. Only problem is, that van’s sat on their forecourt and has been for the past week and a half. No-one’s hired it in that time and they say it’s not left the West Midlands in the last couple of months, so it wasn’t that van that was seen in town.’
‘What, so someone’s cloned the number plate?’
‘Seems like it. Someone who managed to find out that there was a van of exactly the same type somewhere in the country with this number plate on it.’