by T J Harris
He turned to Angela. “When do you think we can have the post-mortem?”
“I called Pathology at Gloucester Royal on our way here, they have a slot we can use tomorrow morning. If you join me at about 11, we should have most of it by then. The report will have to wait for toxicology but it should be all through 24 hours after that.”
“Thanks Angela, I’ll see you then.” Pulling off his gloves, Carver strode purposely back to the tape, Moss following in his wake.
Chapter 2
It was just gone 1:30 when Carver and Moss left the crime scene to carry out the sorry task of informing the victim’s husband of her death. He wanted to do it face to face rather than send someone else. “Always worth watching their reactions.” He said to Moss as they drove towards Ross-on-Wye. He was driving this time. It had become their way, she would drive if they were in a hurry, otherwise Carver liked to drive, he claimed it helped him to think.
“Statistics would say he’s our man.” Moss agreed, turning the pages of the map to find the home address. “My old DI in Manchester reckoned he could tell within 30 seconds if the next of kin was guilty.”
“Probably right, let’s not get too hasty though.” He preferred to go in with an open mind. “That said, the way she was killed and then positioned in the seat does suggest a personal involvement. A more casual killer would have left her where she’d died.”
“Looks like the house is off the Ledbury Road, just north of Ross. Turn right and head for Drybrook first.” Carver smiled, even when navigating, Moss’ enthusiasm was undiminished.
They found Hillview Cottage in Perrystone Hill half an hour later. The large white house was set back from a quiet lane and further protected by a five bar gate which formed the only gap in the high evergreen hedges surrounding the property. Moss jumped out and opened the wooden gate. Carver parked just inside and joined her.
The large gardens at the front of the house were very well maintained and dotted with tastefully planted and immaculately maintained shrubs. The drive led to a double garage and a brick path wound through flowerbeds to the oak front door. Carver pressed the doorbell, he could hear it chiming inside but there was no response. There was a knocker in the form of a brass wellington boot. He gave it a solid kick against the back plate with the same outcome.
“We’d better take a look around, just in case.” They set off round the side of the house, carefully looking through each window. “Keep an eye out for any signs of a struggle, or anything that looks wrong.” Carver reminded his colleague.
“It looks way to neat and tidy, does that count?”
“Obviously don’t have kids.” Carver was looking into the kitchen window, where two breakfast bowls were washed and carefully stacked on the draining board.
“I don’t have kids, but my flat looks lived in.”
They worked their way round to the back garden. It was as well maintained as the front, with a large teak patio table positioned to provide a view down the sloping garden and across a green valley to the hills in the distance. Everything appeared to be in order.
They headed back to the car and set off towards Hereford, arriving at SEMSoft a little after 3pm. Carver was starving even though he’d eaten all the biscuits they had found in the police car’s glove box. They parked in a spot reserved for visitors and then had to be buzzed into the reception area, following a brief intercom discussion with the young receptionist they could see through the double glass doors.
“We’d like to speak to a Mr Brooks please.” Carver put on his best neutral face.
“Is he expecting you?” enquired the receptionist.
“No, it’s a personal matter. But we really do need to see him.” Carver gave Moss an exasperated look.
The receptionist pressed some buttons on her terminal, and then started to talk again. Carver had not noticed the small headset she was wearing. “Mr Brooks please.” He repeated.
She held a finger in the air to silence him. “Yes please, they say it’s a personal matter.” She pressed another button and then lowered her finger. “Dr Brooks will be right down. Please take a seat.” The two police officers shared another look and then sat on the couch set against the opposite wall. On the low coffee table in front of the couch were a collection of scientific magazines, some company flyers and a copy of the days Daily Telegraph. It was a few weeks since the EU Referendum but the headlines were still full of gloom and political fallout. Moss picked up a company flyer and put it in her inside jacket pocket.
They had only been waiting a few minutes when in walked a tall middle-aged man with short grey hair and a matching beard. He was large but looked fit rather than fat. He wore a well fitting light grey suit with an open necked pale yellow shirt. The receptionist nodded towards the two policemen. “Thanks Nancy.” “Hello I’m Tony Brooks, how can I help you?”
“Is there somewhere private we could talk?” asked Carver.
Brooks looked back to the receptionist, “Is the meeting room free?”
“Yes I think so, Clive has just finished in there,” she glanced at her screen, “and nobody else has it booked this afternoon.”
“Follow me then.” He smiled and opened a smoked glass and oak door which led into a smallish room, made smaller by the large conference table and 12 chairs it contained. There was not much room to walk around it, but the three settled quickly into the nearest chairs. There were framed posters on the wall showing complex looking scientific instruments and what looked like a massively magnified ant’s head with long antennae and compound eyes. It seemed to be staring at them threateningly. “Would you like a coffee?” Brooks was already leaning forward and pressing buttons on the desk phone. “Nancy, can we get,” he paused looking up. With a nod from both his guests, he continued, “three coffees please.” He killed the call with a further button press then sat back. “So, what can I do for you?” he asked with a pleasant smile on his face.
“Mr Brooks, I’m afraid we have some bad news.” Carver paused. No matter how many of these he did, he’d never got used to it. He pressed on. “We’ve found your wife’s car, it contained the body of a woman matching your wife’s description.” He paused again watching Brooks.
The smile had vanished. “What do you mean, has there been an accident, did she come off the road or something?”
“We don’t know exactly what happened yet, but the car was undamaged, it was parked in the Forest of Dean. Her body was found in the car.”
“It can’t be Helen, she’s at work, someone must have borrowed the car or something.” Brooks was sitting forward now, his face was anxious and was turning white. “It can’t be…”
“We’ll need a formal identification, but I’m sorry to have to say it, we’ve got her bag, purse and driving licence. We believe it is your wife we have found. I’m terribly sorry sir.”
Brooks put his hand to his mouth and shook his head. “But what was she doing in the forest? She should be in Gloucester. When did this happen?”
“A dog walker found her at 10:15 this morning” Moss spoke for the first time. “When did you last see her?”
Brooks was staring into space, “Sorry, uh, when she left the house this morning. She left early to go to the gym before work. I was still in bed, it must have been about 6:30 or thereabouts.” He paused, “Can I see her?”
“We’ll arrange something soon, there’s going to be a post-mortem tomorrow, so we can…” Carver was cut off.
“Post-mortem?” Brooks looked up, shocked.
“I’m afraid so,” replied Carver. “We need to establish the cause of death. I have to tell you that we are treating her death as suspicious.”
Brooks looked horrified and baffled at the same time. His rosy complexion had turned very pale and he seemed to have shrunk in size. There was a light tap on the door and the Receptionist let herself in bearing a coffee tray. In addition to the three cups, there was a matching jug of milk, a sugar bowl and a plate of biscuits, but in the circumstances, even Carver had
lost his appetite.
Nancy smiled as she placed the tray down, then noticing Brooks’s expression, she frowned and asked if he was all right. He didn’t respond. “Bad news I’m afraid, if you could leave us to it?” Carver asked politely.
She let herself out looking concerned. Moss heaped three sugars into one of the cups and handed it to Brooks. “Here, have some of this.” But he ignored it.
Carver continued. “We’ll need to have a longer talk later, but it would be helpful if we could take a few more details while we are here. Is that OK?” Brooks nodded.
“If you could take us through what happened this morning, when you last saw your wife.” Moss took out her pad from her handbag and clicked the cap on her ballpoint.
“Like I said, I was still in bed when she left. She had set her alarm for 6:00 so she could go to the gym. She goes about twice a week. She showered, dressed for work. She kissed me…” He paused, his eyes welling up, “Sorry, uh, then she left.”
“Does she normally dress for work to go to the gym?” Moss asked, looking up from her notebook.
“She says its easier, she takes her gym stuff in a kitbag and changes into it when she gets there.” He looked up, “She used to go in her gym stuff then change into her work cloths afterwards, but she’s not done that since she forgot her skirt one time. I had to drive it over for her. My boss is more understanding than hers.” He smiled at the memory then, as if recalling what they were talking about, put his head into his hands once more.
“Have you heard from her at all today? Any calls, texts, emails, anything?” Moss enquired.
“No nothing, that’s not unusual though. We text each other if we were going to be late home or something, but I’ve not heard from her today.”
“So what happened after she left?” continued Moss.
“I stayed in bed for a bit, watched the news and the weather. Then got up, had a quick breakfast and set off to work. I left at about eight and got in here just after half past as usual.”
“You don’t go the gym together then?”
“No, I hate those places. She uses one in Gloucester near her offices. The garden keeps me in shape.”
There was another tap on the door and a smartly dress middle-aged woman stuck her head round the door looking concerned. “Is everything OK Tony?”
“It’s Helen”, Brooks replied. “They think she’s dead.”
The woman came into the room, “Oh my God” she exclaimed, walking over to Brooks and placing an arm around his shoulder. “What happened?”
“They don’t know, she was found in her car in the forest this morning apparently.” He looked across to Carver for confirmation.
“I’m sorry, Mrs?” Moss was not pleased with the interruption.
“Margaret Frost, Managing Director.” She replied, not looking up. Clear that she considered herself to be the highest rank in the room.
“If we could…” Moss started, but Carver placed a hand on her arm. “That’s OK Mr Brooks. We’ll need to have another chat very soon. Would you like us to take you home, call someone for you?”
“I’ll take care of him.” Frost assured them. Brooks seemed dazed but didn’t object.
“Can we get your mobile and home numbers then before we go. We’ll need to talk some more.” Carver stood up. They exchanged cards with Brooks and Frost both writing their home numbers on the backs of their SEMSoft business cards. Brooks’s described him as Director of Product Development, Carver noticed.
Back in the car and heading back to Gloucester, Carver asked “So, what did you make of him?”
“I’m not sure, he seemed genuine enough. Kept using the present tense, ‘she uses a gym in Gloucester’, ‘we text each other if were going to be late’, but he could be acting. No real tears.” She frowned. “It did look like a genuine shock, but he wasn’t concerned when we first arrived. Most people go pale at the sight of us lot turning up unexpectedly.”
“True, but I believe him for now.” Carver said and settled back into the driving seat.
“Soft touch.” replied Moss.
“Call the team together for a briefing” he looked at his watch, “at 5. I want to see what the others found out at her workplace and if CSI turned up anything else. We’ll have some lunch on the way back, there’s a pub on the A40 that’s open all afternoon. I fancy a pie.”
“If you’re buying.” said Moss as he pulled out of the car park. She started dialling.
Chapter 3
Carver’s first job when they got back to the station was to check on the incident room. Their new office block had five rooms of varying sizes that were allocated to investigations depending on their complexity and the number of officers involved. This being a murder case, it justified taking the largest, Room 1. Room 4 was the only other available but was too small for the team he already had, and that was before Operation Brunel kicked in and his team was swelled by additional resources from the Wiltshire and Somerset & Avon forces.
The room was state of the art. It had teleconferencing, computer terminals and monitors linked to the interrogation suite. Three walls were completely covered in magnetic white boards from floor to ceiling. A glass partition, that could be misted out at the click of a button, separated it from the main office space. A large conference table sat in the middle of the room. DS Goldberg was sat at the far end, typing up his scene notes on a laptop. All the data collected and entered by any of his team would be stored on a secure partition on the station’s network. They could all get to it from their desk terminals or laptops.
Carver sat at the opposite end of the table. Goldberg looked up. “OK Boss?”
Carver did not have time to respond as the door swung open again and in came the rest of his team, each clutching a fresh coffee. Moss brought in a tin of biscuits and slid it into the middle of the table as she sat down.
Once they had all settled and the fight for the last bourbon had been resolved, Carver started the briefing.
“OK guys,” he stood up, “Summing up, we’ve got a female strangulation victim, yet to be formally identified but we believe her to be a Mrs Helen Brooks of Hillview Cottage, Perrystone Hill, Ross. Anything further on the identification?” He looked up at the room.
“We spoke to a Dr Guy Philips,” DC Reid started. Carver liked Reid, he was old school, approaching fifty and always wore a suit and tie. He was slightly overweight and balding but with more street smarts and local knowledge than anyone he had met. He continued “he’s her boss at Engineering Analytics Ltd. They’re based on the Barnwood estate here in Gloucester. He confirmed that the car was hers and that she had not turned up for work this morning.” He checked his notebook. “He’d not seen or heard from her since she left the office at about 6pm last night. He was expecting her to arrive at 8:30 this morning for a management meeting. He tried her mobile a few times, but said it just went to voicemail.”
“Did Angela give us anything more from the scene?” Carver asked.
Goldberg answered: “She stayed for a couple of hours after you left Boss.” He was a serious man, but had been in the force long enough to have the old culture burned into him. No first name nonsense for him, and Carver liked to be called Boss, it reminded him of his time in the Met. “The car has been taken to the lab for forensic analysis but she found only the victim’s prints on the steering wheel and door handles. That is apart from those of Mrs Wilkes who found the body. Her prints were on the rear door handle, nowhere else. They took her prints and DNA at the scene.” He checked his notes. “The trip computer on the car gave a distance travelled today of 18.5 miles, which according to Google Maps is the direct distance from the home address to the car park, assuming she took the A40 then crossed the river at Kerne Bridge.” He toggled some keys on his laptop and a full screen image of the mapping software was projected onto the wall from a projector mounted on the ceiling. The route was looping but the twisting curls of the River Wye prevented anything more direct.
Goldberg changed the
display to show a photo of the victim sat in the rear of the bright red SUV and continued. “Angela and the Home Office pathologist are doing the PM tomorrow morning but the likely cause of death is strangulation. There was a lack of defensive injuries, which may indicate she was drugged. If so, it will show up in the toxicology, we’ll know more when that comes through.”
“Anything else in the car of interest?” Moss enquired.
“The briefcase contained a laptop. They brushed it for prints, just the victim’s. I’ve passed that to Hunter to take a look at.” Steve Hunter was part of Angela’s CSI team and the office’s resident geek, he specialised in digital forensics. Carver groaned knowing he could expect at least a two-hour seminar on the laptop and its contents.
“They also think they may have recovered the murder weapon.” Carver’s attention snapped back to the meeting. “They found a 1m length of black rope on the rear car seat. It was underneath the victim. It’s being examined by forensics.” Goldberg clicked to another photo showing a coil of black rope camouflaged against the black leather of the car seat.
“OK thanks.” replied Carver, “Actions:” he continued. “Reid and Hughes, I’d like you to do some house to house around the home address this evening. See if you can get any confirmation of the couple’s movements this morning. The husband claims she left at about 6:30am and he stayed at home until he left for work at about 8am.” They nodded. “Moss and I will go back to the house later, we’ll take a formal statement and have a good look around.”
“Goldberg, can you get back to the local uniform and ask them to get to the car park at 6am tomorrow morning. Ask them to interview anyone that turns up that might have been there today. We don’t know who else might have seen something before our Mrs Wilkes discovered the body. Ask them to put out an information request board.” The DS nodded.
“Which brings us to the press. Any noise at the scene?” Goldberg shook his head. “OK, Moss, can you work on a statement we can get out including an appeal for witnesses and take it down to the crèche, thanks.” She gave him a look, he’d got in trouble for calling it that on their last case. True, the average age of the communications team was about 22, but who better to keep the force’s social media profile up to date. “Get an incident number allocated that we can give them.”