by Adam Croft
‘Then I fail to see what relevance it has to your investigation,’ came the curt response.
‘The relevance,’ Wendy replied, leaning forward, ‘is that we’re investigating potential murders at Hilltop Farm. The same Hilltop Farm where we have just discovered a large quantity of cyanide, a compound which can kill people in extremely small doses. That is the relevance.’
The solicitor piped up again. ‘With respect, Detective Sergeant Knight, that is circumstantial at best and you know it. Cyanide has many legitimate uses beyond the realms of second-rate crime fiction. And you don’t need me to remind you that, even on the extremely unlikely off-chance that you were to find victims of cyanide poisoning, the cyanide itself would still be purely circumstantial. You still have nothing to tie my client to any crime whatsoever.’
Wendy decided to throw Father Joseph a curveball. She ignored the solicitor and went straight for the jugular.
‘Father Joseph, perhaps you could enlighten us by letting us know what legal and legitimate uses you have for cyanide at Hilltop Farm.’
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table, a small smile appearing across his face. ‘Pest control. Medical uses. Sculpture.’
‘Sculpture?’ Wendy asked.
‘It’s often used to give a dark blue tint to cast bronze when painted on. It’s a quite striking and desirable look.’
‘Funny. We don’t recall seeing many bronze statues at Hilltop Farm. Do you remember seeing any, sir?’ Wendy asked Culverhouse.
‘Can’t say I do.’
‘That is because we haven’t started yet. We are planning for our future,’ Father Joseph said. ‘I feel it’s always important to plan ahead.’
‘I see,’ Wendy said, smiling to humour him. ‘And what medical uses do you have for cyanide?’
‘We use it for testing ketone body levels in the urine of diabetic parishioners,’ he replied, with a tone that made it sound as though it was a question he was asked all the time.
‘Have many diabetics coming to you for help, do you?’ Culverhouse chimed in.
‘We have a small handful in the church. Nowhere near the percentage you’d see in the outside world, though. We tend not to force sugars and fats on our children. We promote a balanced, healthy, natural diet. But yes, of course there are a small number of people with diabetes.’
‘Do you not think they’d be better off being treated in a hospital, by doctors?’ Wendy asked.
‘I don’t think you quite grasp the idea of a closed community, Detective Sergeant. We have our own doctors. They are perfectly capable of treating most illnesses.’
Somehow, Wendy doubted this. She wondered how many people had died over the years through medical neglect.
‘Detective Sergeant Knight, are you going to charge my client or are you going to finally admit that you have not one shred of evidence to hold against him?’ the solicitor asked.
Wendy wished she could answer that question.
49
By nine-thirty, Culverhouse was starting to worry. He’d spent enough time in and around the custody suite over the past few hours to have known if Ethan Turner had been booked in. There were free cells, and Mildenheath was by far the closest station, so he’d definitely be brought here. But an hour after the time the deal had been arranged for, there was still no sign of him having been arrested. That meant he could only assume one thing: it hadn’t happened.
He knew he was skating on thin ice, trying to manage all this at the same time as his team were trying to pin evidence on Father Joseph Kümmel and Hilltop Farm, but he had no choice. He’d found out what Ethan Turner was all about and there was no way he was going to allow his daughter to get involved with pondlife like that. How would he ever forgive himself if he came home and found her gone, lying dead on a park bench somewhere, having been injected with some street shit? He couldn’t. And, not for the first time, the constraints of the law had failed him and he was going to have to take measures into his own hands.
Back at the Allerdale Road phone box, he called Ethan again, taking the same precautions as last time in terms of fingerprints.
‘Yeah?’ Ethan said, answering the phone.
‘What the fuck was that all about?’ Culverhouse asked, in his disguised voice.
‘Dunno what you mean. Who’s this?’
‘Where the fuck were you?’ Culverhouse asked, immediately regretting it. What if Ethan or one of his contacts had been there, and had seen the police presence? Culverhouse would’ve just given himself away immediately, proving he hadn’t been there.
‘Nowhere. I got delayed. It ain’t fuckin’ easy to get hold of fifty G that quick, you know?’
It seemed plausible. He might have a second chance. ‘Right. How long?’
‘Like ten minutes. Literally. My boy’s coming over with it now. I woulda rung to let you know, but you didn’t leave no number.’
‘Half an hour. Ten o’clock, behind the shops on Allerdale Road in Mildenheath. Got it?’
‘Fuck’s sake, man. That’s gonna be tight on time.’
‘Your problem. Not mine. Get your boy to hurry the fuck up.’
Culverhouse put the phone down, wiped his prints from the door handle and walked the short distance to the parade of shops near the phone box. Down the side of the parade was an access staircase for the flats above. The concrete faced the back of the shops, allowing him to see anyone walking from the road to behind the parade, whilst remaining in the shadows himself. He sat down four or five steps up — just enough to be out of sight but able to reach the ground quickly enough — and waited.
Ethan was, surprisingly, on time. Culverhouse dreaded to think of the speeds he must’ve been doing to have got here that quickly, but he didn’t really care right now. He had only one thing on his mind.
He watched as Ethan walked past the bottom of the staircase, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, before disappearing behind the side wall and behind the shops. Jack stood, tiptoed down the steps, and picked up a snapped wooden broom handle he’d found amongst the general detritus behind the shops earlier. He stepped up behind Ethan, before wrapping the broom handle in front of his neck and pulling it back with his free hand.
Ethan was now pressed up against him, wriggling his legs. Jack lifted the broom handle higher, taking Ethan off his feet as he struggled with his hands to release the pressure on his throat.
Jack walked him the few feet to his right and pressed him against the wall, releasing the broken broom handle. He pushed his forearm into the back of Ethan’s head, watching his face contort as it scraped against the brick wall.
‘Now, you’re going to listen to me and you’re going to listen to me good,’ Jack said, feeling the adrenaline coursing through his body. ‘Fifty grams of amphet is enough to send you down for a good few months, if not more. I know what you and your friends are up to. And you know what? Frankly I don’t give a shit. I spend my days locking up bigger people than you. Now, tell me. Does Emily know what you’re like?’
‘Emily who?’ Ethan said, his voice muffled as he tried to speak.
‘Don’t fucking give me that,’ Culverhouse said, pushing Ethan’s face even harder into the wall, adding a bit of lateral force to make sure he lost another layer of skin. ‘I know who you are. I know your number. I know where you live. And I know what you do. I know what you are. And if you want your contacts knowing that you hang around with young girls, that’s fine with me. I can let them know that. And when you’re sick and tired of having your tyres let down and your house firebombed, I can give you a helping hand by having you banged up for dealing. That’ll be nice, won’t it? You’ll have a break for a few months, or maybe a year or two. At least inside you won’t have to worry about the firebombings. It’ll be razor blades in your porridge and big black cocks up your arse instead. That sound like a step up, does it? Because on the other hand you could just cut off all contact with Emily and it’ll all go away until the next time you try speaking to her. Do I make
myself understood?’
Ethan seemed to be trying to nod. ‘Yeah. Yeah I got it.’
Culverhouse could sense that he meant it. He’d learnt to identify the smell of pure fear as easily as he could smell the piss running down the inside of Ethan Turner’s leg.
‘Good. Now I’m going to let go of you and you’re going to stay exactly where you are. You’re going to count to a hundred, then you’re going to go home, stick Question Time on and enjoy a nice cup of Horlicks. Alright?’
‘Yeah,’ Ethan squeaked.
Culverhouse gave his face one last shove into the wall, then turned and made his way back towards his car.
50
Wendy had been almost completely unable to get any sleep that night. She hadn’t gone home, and had instead opted to bed down in the office with a sleeping bag. It wasn’t technically the done thing any more, with overtime pay being cut and occupational health practices being more forced on officers than encouraged. But going home and coming back would be completely futile. Not only would she waste time making the journey each way, but the likelihood was that she’d be woken by a phone call almost immediately and have to come back anyway. At least this way she was already here.
There was, by now, almost nothing she could do. They’d drawn a blank in terms of being able to pin the information they had on Father Joseph, and they were now completely reliant on some physical evidence turning up at Hilltop Farm. But time was very quickly ticking away.
She’d tried to force herself to sleep, knowing fate was now largely out of her hands. She knew her phone would ring as soon as anything was found, but the more she willed herself to sleep the more frustrated she got, and the harder she found it to relax. She wondered if she’d be better off just getting up and doing something. She knew she wouldn’t be functioning as well as she would be after sleep, though. After a while, she’d managed to nod off and had woken up with a stiff neck and a throat that felt like she’d swallowed razors.
Shortly before midday, Culverhouse returned from Hilltop Farm, where he’d gone earlier that morning to go through any potential evidence that had been found. Officers with ground-penetrating radar had been out first thing, but had found nothing of interest. If there were any dead bodies at Hilltop Farm, they certainly weren’t buried in the fields.
Documentation had been severely limited, too. Jack knew that even the most reclusive and closed community would still have some sort of paperwork, even if it was something internal. He suspected that it had all been burnt long ago, or perhaps that nothing was kept. No paper trail, no evidence. The whole case was now starting to look worryingly thin.
Wendy was also worried about what she’d revealed to Father Joseph about Ben Gallagher. If Ben was actually alive and well on the farm, what would Father Joseph do to him if they had to release him? She didn’t know if she could live with that guilt. She had to hope they’d find something before the custody deadline.
‘Anything?’ she asked Culverhouse when he returned, although she could see from the look of thunder on his face that the answer would be negative.
‘No. Nothing.’
‘What about Ben Gallagher?’ she asked.
‘No sign of him,’ Culverhouse replied quietly, almost whispering.
‘Do you think he could’ve escaped somehow?’
‘Don’t see how. The only way out is the main gate, and that’s manned by us.’
Wendy couldn’t see how this could be possible. ‘But people can’t just go missing like that. They can’t disappear into thin air. He’s got to be on that farm somewhere and there’ve got to be others.’
‘We’ve searched the whole fucking place, Knight. They’ve had GPR scanning the fields to see if anything was buried there, the buildings have been checked. There’s nothing.’
‘What about incineration? What if they’ve been burnt, or put in an acid bath or something?’
Culverhouse shook his head. ‘Burning would still leave something. Human bodies don’t burn brilliantly. And if they’d used chemicals there’d be some sort of sign of it. There’s nothing. No drums, nothing like that. And before you ask, no, I don’t think they’ve been fed to the bloody pigs. Even they’d leave a trace of some sort. Problem is, we’re very fucking short on time now.’
‘What about an extension?’ Wendy asked. A judge would be able to grant a custody extension to ninety-six hours. She knew it could well be their only hope.
‘It’s crossed my mind. It’s all we’ve got. I was hoping we’d have something more concrete by now, though.’
Wendy looked at her watch. ‘We haven’t got long. If we’re going to apply for an extension we’ll need to inform the custody sergeant.’
Culverhouse nodded as he fished into his trouser pocket to pull out his ringing mobile phone. ‘I’ll get onto it,’ he said before answering. ‘Culverhouse.’ His face looked stoic as he listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. ‘Right. I see. Thanks. And have there been any other sightings since? Right. Thanks.’ He pursed his lips as he locked his phone and put it back in his pocket.
‘Trouble?’ Wendy asked.
‘Could be. Sandra Kaporsky’s car was spotted by ANPR cameras on the A354, heading towards the south coast. It was last spotted just after Blandford Forum, and hasn’t been picked up since. They’re going to send some local officers down to keep an eye out.’
‘Lulworth Cove,’ Wendy said. ‘Sandra said she often visited the area. She’s got friends there. That’s where she’ll be.’
‘Strange time for a fucking holiday,’ Culverhouse replied.
Even stranger that she chose to leave in the dead of night and not take her mobile phone, Wendy thought.
51
There were some aspects of policing that were truly horrendous. Many people assumed these to be things like seeing dead bodies and coming face to face with murderers. True, they weren’t nice parts of the job, but the truth was you became somewhat desensitised to them.
Then there were other things which never grew old. The thrill of the chase, the excitement when an arrest was finally carried out. But one of the most nerve-wracking experiences for Wendy was waiting for the CPS’s recommendation to charge or release. It was on a par with waiting to find out whether the magistrate had given them permission for a custody extension.
It wasn’t something Jack relished either. But he had the added advantage of being Mildenheath Police’s representative at the hearing, which was, as per usual, short and informal. The magistrate would only be able to grant a detention extension for a further 36 hours at a time, with a maximum of 96 hours in total. But Jack knew that any extension at all was far from guaranteed.
‘First of all, can you explain the circumstances as to why you believe the detainee should remain in police custody, as opposed to being released on bail?’ the magistrate asked.
Culverhouse straightened his tie and gave his well-rehearsed response. ‘We believe the detainee poses a considerable threat to the residents at Hilltop Farm. Furthermore, we believe that releasing him will give him the opportunity to destroy or otherwise tamper with potential evidence.’
The magistrate nodded and looked down at the papers in front of her. ‘And what evidence do you believe is in existence, which could potentially be destroyed or tampered with?’
‘We’re unsure at this stage, ma’am,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘It seems that record-keeping at the address has been scant, to say the least.’
‘I understand you have a dozen officers at the scene, and that they’ve been there for almost thirty-six hours,’ the magistrate said.
‘That’s correct, ma’am.’
‘Yet you have uncovered no evidence, and there are areas of the farm that you still need to search?’
‘In part, ma’am. We found a large quantity of cyanide at the farm, which in itself isn’t illegal but could be an indicator of nefarious use.’
‘But it could also be an indicator of legitimate, legal and responsible use?’
C
ulverhouse shuffled in his seat. ‘That’s correct, ma’am.’
‘And is there anything that could even be considered circumstantial, evidentially, that points to the detainee having committed a crime that would warrant an extended detention?’
‘We have some witness reports, ma’am.’
‘Ah yes. Witness reports,’ she said, rifling through the papers in front of her. ‘I had a brief look at those. No dates, no times, no names of victims. A distinct lack of detail, in fact. Is that detail that you’re going to be able to flesh out inside the next thirty-six hours?’
‘We hope so, ma’am,’ Culverhouse replied.
‘You hope so?’ The grey-haired magistrate raised her eyebrows and peered at Culverhouse across the table, over the top of her glasses. ‘Detective Chief Inspector, as you well know, the extension of detention is a serious matter and a decision which must not be taken lightly. The option is not there to be taken on a whim, lest every officer leading a case applies for it and makes the whole twenty-four hour limit futile. It’d make a mockery of the system.’
‘I understand that, ma’am, but in this particular case we really do need more time. Questioning of the suspect hasn’t yet proved successful. But in recent interviews we’ve seen a considerable improvement in—’
‘Detective Chief Inspector, I am not interested in considerable improvements. I’m interested in lawful detention. You have not provided me with any indication that the detainee constitutes a threat to himself, to anyone else or to the preservation of evidence. Your witnesses — as useful as they may or may not have been — have not been named, could not possibly be identified due to the paucity of information they’ve provided and in any case do not live in the vicinity of Hilltop Farm. I’m afraid I fail to see any plausible reason for extending the detention limit in this case.’
Culverhouse felt his jaw tighten and the anger rise up inside him, but he knew this was not the place for him to channel it. He couldn’t overturn a magistrate’s decision. The decision had been made. Father Joseph Kümmel would have to be released.