by Sarah Flint
‘Bri, is that you?’
He bent down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. The room was muggy and he had the sudden urge to mop her brow with a cool flannel. She was heavily pregnant with their first baby and recent antenatal classes had taught him that this was the thing the man was expected to do. He hadn’t gone to classes the first time round with Lorna, his ex. He’d been young and impetuous then. Tina was a calming influence. She grounded him. She also spent his wages – every penny of them. Tina, the new baby, her existing children and the maintenance he paid monthly for Max ensured that every penny of his meagre wages was accounted for, even before they hit his bank account. He didn’t mind though, even if it was a struggle sometimes. His family was his life. Everything he did was for them, good or bad.
‘Yes babe, it’s me. I’ll just take Casper for a quick walk and then I’ll join you. Go back to sleep.’
He squeezed her hand, pulling the sheet carefully over her, before returning downstairs, grabbing a can of beer from the fridge and heading for the door. Casper had his lead in his mouth ready to go. He knew the routine. Out of the house, left, right, left again, along past the parade of shops and on to Tooting Bec Common; then through the footpath that ran across the centre and off on to the right-hand trail to skirt around the small lake under the railway bridge. This end of the common was deserted; any illicit activities occurring around the car parks and toilets on the other side. Brian couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen anyone on this particular track, in fact he chose it for this reason. It was his time to be on his own; just him, Casper and nature, or at least as close to it as he could get in a London borough.
As he walked, he felt all the tensions from the day drain away. Casper ran to and fro, stopping to sniff at each tree, bench, item of interest, before catching up again, his tail wagging in excitement as if seeing Brian for the first time, over and over. Although into his senior years, what Casper lacked in speed he more than made up for in enthusiasm. Creaking joints and the usual aches and pains of age were not going to prevent the dog’s enjoyment of each and every walk.
It was dark by the railway bridge; a row of trees having been planted to shield the common from the noise and sight of the intercity trains that trundled up and down the line at regular intervals throughout the day and into the night. The trains had stopped for a few hours now and the only sounds were the rustle of the summer leaves and Casper’s panting as he scampered about. Brian lifted the can to his mouth and took another gulp of beer, stopping briefly to wait for Casper to catch up. It was all quiet. He waited for a few seconds, expecting to hear the thud of the dog’s paws on the footpath running towards him. Nothing. He called out his name. Still nothing. The dog had obviously found something of interest under the railway bridge.
He heard a slight whimper. Retracing his route, he saw a shape on the pathway, lying in the feeble light of an ancient street lamp. It hadn’t been there a few seconds before. He blinked as he recognised the shape as Casper. The dog lay still. Brian called his name as he ran towards his pet, noticing now a dark pool spreading out from underneath his body.
It was only as he was bending down that he noticed the other shape standing to one side, but by then it was too late. A jet of foul-smelling liquid hit him in the eyes and the pain shot straight through his head, as his corneas and the skin on his face began to burn and sizzle. He opened his mouth to scream, but as he inhaled the burning fluid, the fumes caught in his throat, taking the breath from his lungs and the cry from his larynx.
He lurched forward blinded and mute, falling down on to the pathway next to Casper, his arms spread out in front of him to cushion the impact, the palms of his hands, now covered in his pet’s warm blood, scraping the stony ground. For the briefest of seconds, he visualised a tiny new baby, each finger and toe curling and stretching freely, its perfectly formed face locked on to his own… and a wave of pure regret ran through him. As the screams in his head dulled into silence and his mind became blank, the last thing he heard was the sound of his own bones splintering as the axe came down on his wrist.
Chapter 3
Tuesday 20th June 2017
It was getting towards 04.00, the time of the morning when DC Charlie Stafford started to relax. The frenzy of the first few hours had petered out; prisoners were bedded down, and with only a couple of hours left before they were due to finish, it was time to write up the night duty occurrence book. Tonight was her last night shift.
She started to type the date and time when their duty had commenced, on to the screen in front of her. They always finished their week on a Monday night; the new team starting on the Tuesday, that way their bodies had time to acclimatise to being awake all night and asleep all day before the weekend spike in crime.
It had been a long, tiring week of duty, but Charlie always relished her nights. Every three months every detective in each London borough had to complete a set of nights, whether based in the main CID office, the Community Support Unit, intelligence units or any of the myriad departments that dealt with serious crime. While others moaned, for her and her boss, Detective Inspector Geoffrey Hunter, their week couldn’t come round quick enough. Nights were their favourite shift, the time when they got to deal with crime as it actually happened, rather than hours later as it appeared on the computer screen. She and Hunter would cruise the streets of South London in an unmarked police car, searching for the robbers and drug dealers who terrorised their communities and initiating the start of investigations into the various pub fights, rapes, GBHs and shootings so prevalent in the inner suburbs of the capital.
Her bread-and-butter work was in the Community Support Unit, at Lambeth HQ, dealing with every kind of hate crime, whether domestically or racially motivated, or relating to faith, sexual orientation or disability. She loved the thrill of getting a racist, homophobic or domestic thug incarcerated for a long time, but for Charlie, the streets were where her heart was. While the CSU provided the usual platter of crimes, the streets provided the à la carte menu.
As she typed, Charlie felt a slight sense of anticlimax. Although it had been a busy week, nothing particularly memorable had occurred and while she realised this was good for the borough, it had provided no real challenge to sink her teeth into. She glanced down at the keyboard as she wrote, her eyes focussing on the small red scar on the finger of her left hand. It was fading now, but the case it had resulted from had been memorable for many reasons. She would be dealing with the mental and physical fallout from it for some time to come.
A loud snore brought her back from her reverie. One of the other detectives seconded to the night shift had fallen asleep, his head lolling backwards in his chair. The noise was accompanied by a shout as his mate threw a pen at him, chuckling at his confusion when he woke, trying sleepily to place where he was. Charlie grinned to herself, refocusing on the report. Her night shift colleagues had been a laugh, but she was looking forward to returning to her usual team in the CSU. They were a close, loyal group and they’d been through a lot together. She couldn’t wait to hear Bet’s report on the workload of new cases, as well as the up-to-date précis of Paul’s, Naz’s and Sabira’s ongoing social escapades.
A phone rang in the adjoining room. It was picked up immediately. Hunter never slept… nor did he ever, seemingly, want to retire. At fifty-eight years old he was a seasoned professional, much to his wife’s dismay. Charlie, 28 years his junior didn’t know how he did it as his age, but she hoped to follow in his footsteps. Even in the quietest, deadest hour of the night he would be alert. Where others much younger than he were flagging, Hunter would be full of energy… and expected everyone else to be the same.
She heard his voice, low and authoritative, followed by the sound of his chair scraping as he pulled himself to his feet. She glanced at her watch again as he strode through to the main office, his expression alive with anticipation.
‘A body’s just been found, believed suspicious.’
With only two hours left before they were d
ue to head to their beds, it didn’t take a detective to realise that night duty would roll into day shift and the memorable case for which Charlie yearned was now a distinct possibility.
*
‘All I know so far is it’s a male, found by an old drunk who stumbled across the scene on his way back from a mate’s house. It sounds pretty brutal. Uniform are starting to cordon off the area as we speak and have the informant with them.’
Charlie nodded at Hunter. She’d heard as much herself from the radio and was keeping half an ear on what was going on as she drove.
The crime scene was not too far off. It was situated on Tooting Bec Common, on the borders of Wandsworth and Lambeth boroughs. The common was well known, the southerly end having historically been used by prostitutes and rent boys to ply their trade. It was bordered by Ambleside Avenue, at the Streatham side, the street made famous by Cynthia Payne, aka Madame Cyn, the brothel keeper who sold sex for luncheon vouchers in the 1970s and 80s. Various purges on the area by the local councils over the last few decades had failed to solve the problem, just serving to move it from the Bedford Hill side on to the residential streets. More latterly the sex workers had been shifted up on to the High Road and were now spreading out towards Brixton.
The area where the body had been found was further north, towards the Balham and Clapham end, and was set in a part of the common that was mainly woodland, crisscrossed by railway lines. It was the remotest part, but still, at this time of the year with the temperature remaining balmy and the hours of darkness short, the killer would have to have acted swiftly. No time to hang around. Kill and be gone.
Little over ten minutes later they arrived to a sea of blue lights. All Lambeth’s uniform teams were scattered about the common, along with officers from Wandsworth; blue and white cordon tape being wound around trees in ever-expanding circles. It was a large area and it was already plain to see how difficult it would be to contain the scene adequately. A crime scene log was being started and the uniformed Duty Officer was briefing a constable on what was required.
Hunter strode straight across to join her, closely followed by Charlie.
‘Morning, Glenys. Just when we were about to finish our week of nights… What have we got then?’
Inspector Glenys Chapel turned towards the voice, smiling broadly as she recognised its owner. She had almost as many years in the job as he and also, like Hunter, had never slowed her pace. She remained sharp, smart and quick-witted. Any young constable who presumed she might be happy to coast into middle age and turn a blind eye to laziness would find their backside kicked straight out on to the streets with a list of competencies to achieve. Inspector Glenys Chapel led by example and even now, in the wee small hours, was smart to the point of looking almost ceremonial.
‘Ah, good morning, Hunter.’ She held out her hand and he shook it warmly. ‘You’re lucky to be nearly finished. I’m covering for someone’s annual leave, so it’s my first night and I was just beginning to look forward to my bed. I knew I was tempting fate thinking of the B word with a few hours still to go.’
Charlie watched the pair of them. It always amused her that everyone within the job called Hunter by his surname. He and Inspector Chapel had been friends for years, having worked on and off together on various squads and different stations, both reaching the rank of inspector before staying put… yet still Inspector Chapel didn’t call him Geoffrey. Hunter was just Hunter to everyone.
Inspector Chapel instructed the scene loggist to note down their names and indicated to them both to follow her, walking straight along a designated pathway across the grass towards a wooded area and the railway line. She nodded towards Charlie as they started.
‘Charlie, nice to see you too. Right, all we know so far is the body is a male. It was found by a Mr Eddie Pritchard, our informant who is a little worse for wear and who is waiting in the back of one of our cars for you. He wasn’t a witness to what happened though. He just called it in. It appears the victim has had some sort of acid thrown into his eyes and face. His features are so badly burnt it’ll be impossible to get a facial identification. He’s also been mutilated and, with the amount of blood around, my guess is he probably died from blood loss. Or shock. Curiously, a red rose was left by the body.’
She pursed her lips at the words, continuing to walk.
‘Because of the presence of the acid, no one has touched the body other than to check for signs of life. The first officer on scene assessed that there was no pulse and it appears that our victim may have been there for a while as the body was cool. A paramedic has confirmed this too.
‘On first appearance it looks like he was probably out for a late night dog walk as there was a black Labrador lying next to him and a lead on the ground. The dog was attacked too with what appears to be the same sharp implement, but amazingly is still alive, just. He’s been taken to an emergency vet. Luckily for us the dog was wearing a collar with his name, Casper, and a phone number. I’ve got the control room running checks on the number now and we’ll get a subscriber’s check done ASAP. Hopefully it’ll come up on our system. If not, we’re going to ask the vet to check him for a microchip to see who he’s registered to. As he’s got a collar, the chances are he has a responsible owner who has had him chipped.’
Hunter nodded. ‘Good stuff. With any luck we’ll have a provisional ID pretty quickly.’
‘Other than that, we have nothing. No known witnesses and no suspects as yet.’
They continued to walk, falling into silence as they neared the woods. Sunrise wasn’t due for half an hour but the night seemed lighter than usual; the moon and stars shining brightly in the cloudless skies. The air was warm and a soft wind stirred the tops of the long grass at the edge of the trees, sending a flurry of spores up into the atmosphere.
They weaved their way through a small thicket of trees, their footsteps disturbing a family of coots who plunged, panic-stricken, into the safety of a small pond, making its surface rear up, sending a tsunami of ripples to its opposite bank. The sounds of the fleeing birds and the splashing of the water relieved the tension of the moment.
‘We’re nearly there. It’s not a pretty sight,’ Inspector Chapel commented, turning towards a path under a red-brick railway bridge.
An inner cordon had been set up. Inspector Chapel ushered Hunter and Charlie through and within a few yards they were there. The scene was as grisly as any Charlie had seen before. The thin light of an ancient lamp post lit up the footpath leading to the bridge. The whole area was splattered with blood, with several scrape marks highlighting the path where the victim’s body had been dragged. The dead man was now propped up in a sitting position against the wall of the bridge, his legs splayed out in a V-shape, his head lolling back against the brickwork. His arms had been positioned to lie towards each other, across the front of his torso and his hands had been severed. They lay neatly placed between his legs in a large crimson pool of blood that had clearly flowed out from the jagged stumps at his wrists and down the slope of the pathway under the bridge. A single red rose lay between his legs, diagonally across his detached hands.
‘Shit,’ Charlie couldn’t help herself. The sight of the rose on top of the two severed hands was gruesomely captivating. ‘He must have lost a good few pints.’
She forced her eyes up towards his face, but there was little left of it. Where his nose, cheeks and eyes should have been, all that remained of his skin was a yellowy-red mass of tissue with the odd remnant of hair from a beard or moustache sticking out in small wispy clumps. His lips were blistered and burnt, along with any part of his hair and scalp that had come into contact with the caustic liquid. What she was looking at was unrecognisable as a face.
Without features it was hard to determine his age. His hairstyle looked modern, dark and clipped short, his physique toned but with a slight paunch and the skin on his arms brown, not lined with age or smooth as with youth. His clothing too looked up-to-date, jeans, trainers and a T-shirt with wo
rding that struck Charlie to the core – ‘World’s Best Dad’. One child at least, would now be fatherless, but who knew how many more would have their lives irrevocably changed forever?
She tore her gaze away from the man’s body and scanned the immediate area. There was little more to see other than a dog’s lead lying desolately halfway across the path, an empty can of beer on its side with its contents glistening around it and another pool of dried blood circling a dry spot where the dog had obviously lain. Looking at the brutality meted out on the man, it was amazing the dog had survived.
As if on cue Hunter’s phone started to buzz. He answered it immediately, his expression becoming yet more serious as he pressed the handset to his ear and listened.
Glenys Chapel was staring directly at him as he thanked the caller and sombrely ended the call.
‘What’s up?’ she queried, asking the question that was on Charlie’s lips.
Hunter grimaced before he spoke, taking a handkerchief out from his pocket and wiping it across his forehead.
‘That was the control room. They’ve got the results on the enquiries you asked for. The dog’s owner is registered as a Brian Ashton, living just around the corner in Havering Road. His name rang a bell with one of the female staff members and she checked his details against Book 1.’
Charlie felt the colour draining from her face as he spoke. Book 1 was where the personal details of all Metropolitan police officers were kept.
‘She made a few more phone calls to confirm what she thought before she said anything, but she was right. Brian Ashton is one of ours. He’s a police officer who works at Southwark police station on team. He only finished his late shift a few hours ago, talking down a suicidal woman from Waterloo Bridge. He has a young family, but the worst thing is his wife is due to give birth imminently. In a fortnight’s time she’s going to have a baby that will never now know the World’s Best Dad.’