by Will North
Terry Bates arrived a half hour later but remained at the door with the rest of West’s SOCO team. She knew better than to enter the house. For now, this was West’s territory. His job was critical: preserve the integrity of scene and evidence, protect against contamination. As soon as West and Duncan were finished examining the body, West’s people would examine every inch of the house: dusting for fingerprints, using tape to lift fibers from furniture and doorjambs, shining special lights to illuminate possible bloodstains, and searching every drawer, cabinet, and armoire in every room until they were satisfied they were done. Terry would follow after every chance of her contaminating the scene was cleared. Her job was investigation, analysis. In the meantime, part of West’s team was already scouring the grounds around the house. His people were experts in a range of technical fields: etymology, geology and soils, archaeology, botany, and more. If there was something to be discovered, they’d find it. Like Duncan and West, all were dressed in sterile white Tyvek coveralls. Roaming the property, bent toward the ground, they looked like a marauding band of semi-upright polar bears.
Inside the house, Duncan finally rose, stretched her back muscles, and broke the stillness that had enveloped the two of them as she worked.
“The thing most people don’t know, Calum, is that homicidal asphyxiation does actually leave a trace. Of course, if you garrote someone, there will be that wire or other ligature lesion around the throat. And manual strangulation will leave bruises and often a broken hyoid bone at the base of the neck.”
“I love it when you talk dirty…”
“Oh stop,” she said, but she was smiling. Black humor was how they got through their often gruesome tasks.
“Come here,” she ordered. “Look at this woman’s eyes.”
West did. “Okay, they’re bloodshot.”
“Most people would think that simply pressing a cushion over someone’s nose and mouth until they stopped breathing, which appears to be the case here, would be traceless. But it will always result in bloodshot eyes, like this victim’s. I’ll spare you the science, but that’s the tell-tale. This death was not of natural causes. The lady was snuffed.”
CALUM AND DUNCAN wrapped the body in a sterile white plastic sheet to protect what evidence might adhere and then slid it into a black body bag, sealing and labeling it.
“This is a first for me, Jenn: suffocation.”
“And one hopes the last, Calum,” she said touching his arm and gathering her kit.
“How do you do this, Jennifer? How do you go on up to the mortuary at Treliske now and take this person apart, piece by piece, having been right here with her, in her own home, surrounded by the things that comprised her life?”
“Same reason you’re here, Calum: to find answers. To me, it’s an honor: honor the victim by finding the answers. It’s my job, yes, but”—she looked at the black plastic bag—“I owe it to her and to everyone I examine.”
“Yeah, me too,” Calum said, his voice soft, as if trying not to wake the body resting on the floor in the bag.
“And if I were you, Calum, I’d collect every cushion in this room and take it into evidence.”
West lifted an eyebrow: “I didn’t know you’d also become a detective, Jenn.”
“Of course I haven’t. But suffocating someone is not easy; it takes determination. Anger, too, I suspect. I’m just trying to fill you in. There may be hair, fibers, even sweat or spit on whatever cushion was used.”
“Time of death?”
“Rigor’s only beginning to go off. Body’s already at room temperature. Sometime last night, I suspect, and less than twenty-four hours, but I’ll get back to you and Morgan on that. I’ll try to get blood and tox results as soon as the lab can do them. I’ll begin the autopsy as soon as I get up to the mortuary. You’ll be there?”
“Can’t this time, Jennifer. My daughters. Can someone else take record photos while you work? I’ve already ordered Roger Morris, my exhibits manager, to be there to take your samples.”
“No problem. Scotty Thomas can do the photos. Though, as mortuary manager, he doesn’t have much fun unless you are there so he can give you a hard time. Penwarren will no doubt call an MCIT meeting at Bodmin for the morning. I’ll see you there. Now, why don’t you stand aside and let these chaps do their job…”
Two men in dark suits had slipped in silently behind him: undertakers. They’d been so quiet it was like they’d appeared out of thin air. Maybe that was a skill they needed for the job. West had placed a trail of grated aluminum plates from the door to the body so no one would disturb possible evidence on the floor. The undertakers stepped carefully, lifted the body bag, and took it out to their waiting van.
“Anything else to report?” West asked Duncan as he watched them leave.
“Yes. She’d had sex. Possibly just before she died. Check the sofa cushions for semen, and the bed upstairs, though I doubt that’s where it happened. I’ve already taken a swab. I’ll have that checked too, but DNA analysis takes time.”
“Thank you, Jennifer.”
She looked at him and her shoulders sagged. “There’s something primitive, almost animalistic about this murder, Calum: copulate, then kill? Like praying mantises.”
“Except in that case the female kills the male…”
“Yes.”
TERRY BATES STEPPED through the door of the farmhouse after Duncan and the body had gone.
West looked up from the hall. “Detective Bates! What a pleasant change from my usual CID companion.”
“Morgan’s at a community relations course up at Exeter.”
“I wish them luck, whoever they are; she’s untrainable.”
Terry tried not to laugh. “Penwarren sent me here. I have some questions.”
“So do I, but you go first.”
“The door, Calum. Was it locked?”
“It was. Uniformed constables from Penzance—both women, by the way—forced it. I suspect they thought the victim was still alive and it was a rescue operation. Thankfully, they backed right out when they discovered it wasn’t and called DS Ralph Pendennis straightaway. He’s CID at the basic command unit at Penzance. Used to work for Morgan. Somehow, they’re still friends. He was here in under a half hour; raced over the moortop lanes, apparently. Immediately reported it as suspicious and Comms took it from there. St. Ives Community Support Officers have been keeping watch.”
“Other doors?”
“Just one other, also locked.”
“So, locked by whom is the question, yes? If the victim locked the doors, how did the killer get in? If the killer walked in, either a door was unlocked or he or she was let in. If the killer locked the place up again afterward, how did he or she get the key to close up the house? Where is that key? Looks like the killer knew her and was someone whom she trusted, at least to admit to her house.”
“Whoa, slow down there young lady! Put a few pounds on you, spike your hair, bleach it platinum, and I’d swear you were Morgan Davies!”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”
“Good. She’d smack me.”
“So would I, except that I know how you really feel about her.”
“Excuse me?
“Oh go on, Calum…”
West blinked. “You’re an observant woman, aren’t you?”
“I’m a woman. We observe. I’m also a detective.”
“Then I plead guilty, for what choice do I have against such an onslaught of feminine instinct?”
“Get over it. You said you had questions, too. Give.”
“I have many questions, but one especially big one: the young couple who reported that Mary Trevean appeared to be unconscious had rented one of her cottages for the weekend. Before St. Ives took them in for questioning they explained there were three properties the victim had for holiday lets. They’d chosen the one with the best view. I took a quick look around Trevean’s house for just one thing, which I did not find. My people found nothing either. But it s
hould have been somewhere obvious.”
“And that would be…?”
West smiled, but Terry blinked once and beat him to it.
“A reservations book! Of course! The record of her renters…It’s gone?”
West shrugged. “All I can say is that we have not found it. There’s a counter in the kitchen with a tall seat by the phone where I should think she’d have kept it, but the surface is empty. Wiped clean, in fact. Let’s just have my people continue to take the place apart looking for the book, her personal papers, and whatever else and then the scene will be all yours.”
“The phone?”
“Wall-mounted land line. No mobile evident. Old fashioned, she was, I guess.”
“Who’s her phone service provider?”
“British Telecom, according to bills in a kitchen drawer: they say she had cable and Internet, too.”
“Computer, then?
“That’s not been found either.”
“I wish Morgan were here.”
“You’re doing fine, Terry. All the right questions. I’m just short of answers.”
Sixteen
DURING THE FRIDAY training workshop’s afternoon coffee break, Morgan Davies checked in both with Comms and the Bodmin Hub. She didn’t need coffee, she needed a vodka tonic just to make it to the end of this tiresome day she thought as she paced outside in the car park.
But after she received her messages she did not return to the workshop.
Keeping to the posted speed limit, the average driving time south on the A30 from Exeter, in Devon, to St. Ives, in Cornwall, over ninety miles, was just under an hour and a half. Hammering her unmarked white Ford Escort estate wagon at well over ninety miles per hour most of the way and cursing herself for not having Calum West’s turbocharged Volvo Estate with the hidden flashers, she shot down the A30 and turned into the lane to Treen Farm in Boswednack in a bit more than an hour. She’d deal with the speed camera citations later. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Terry or Calum; she just wanted to be at the scene.
Calum and his SOCO team were just packing up.
“Where’s Terry?” she barked as she climbed from her car, trying to uncurl her steering wheel fingers. She was beginning to suffer from arthritis, one more insult of aging she did not suffer kindly.
“And a fine good afternoon to you, too, Detective Inspector Davies.” Calum said.
“Where is she, dammit?”
“Been here and gone and a first-rate job she did investigating, too.”
But there was something in his voice, an uncharacteristically missing note of playfulness. She looked at him and realized he was exhausted; he was pale as limestone and his shoulders sagged forward as if boneless. In a very private part of her soul she worried for him. He should be taking care, pacing himself, but he wasn’t—he hadn’t last night and apparently hadn’t today, either. How could a man so smart be so stupid? She decided it was a male thing: he could not let go. He had to get it right; he had to excel. That part she understood. She was made of the same stuff. They were both driven to seek answers and solve puzzles. And murder was the toughest puzzle of all. Neither of them could walk away, no matter how knackered.
“Let’s sit here,” she said, pointing to the granite step by the front door, her voice somehow both gentle and commanding. “Why don’t you bring me up to speed?”
Calum sat, rested his forearms on his knees, caught his breath, and looked up at the naked tors in the distance. “Some murders are such mysteries…”
“Well, yes.”
He ignored this. “So, here’s this almost certainly blameless middle aged woman,” he said, as if talking to himself, “well-liked by her neighbors—we checked. And a widow. Former husband, a successful farmer, died young a while back. She’s been running a popular cottage rental business here ever since. Three cottages. Busy the rentals are, even in winter we’re told by a neighbor, partly because of her genuine hospitality. Not a soul who’d wish her ill. Then she’s killed.”
“What about her holiday renters?”
“It was renters, a couple arriving this afternoon, who called 999. And before you jump on them, they’re clear. The victim was dead long before they’d left home in Bristol.
“Who else was renting?”
“That’s the problem, like I told Terry. We don’t know: there’s no reservation book and the cottages are empty.”
“Computer then?”
“No, and no modem anywhere, either, though she was paying for Internet service according to her bills. Reckon she took reservations over the phone.”
“So, she doesn’t have a website?”
“Not that we know of. She’s probably listed in one of the holiday letting agencies’ websites, maybe only with a phone contact number. Terry’s gone back to Bodmin to research the agency and Internet stuff.”
Davies smiled. “The girl’s already ahead of me. I think I actually like that.”
“She’s first rate, Morgan. Thanks to you.”
“No, she had it to begin with. That was so clear in the Chynoweth case. What about the basics: Fingerprints? Fibers?”
“In the house all prints seem to be her own; there’s one outside on a sill that isn’t. If she had a visitor, he or she was very careful. Though I suspect it’s a ‘he.’ Duncan says she’d just had intercourse.”
“Jesus. Forced?”
“No evidence of that, according to Duncan, but who knows?”
“She did.”
“Yes, well…of course.”
“These holiday cottages: you’ve searched them?”
“Come on, Morgan…”
“Sorry, of course you did.”
West sighed and shook his head. “It’s been a long day, Morgan. And then you showed up…”
She softened. “I’m just trying to catch up.”
“I know. I understand. My team searched all three of her properties, okay? They’re quite charming rentals, classy even, and she was a good housekeeper: Like her own house, everything is spotless. Fingerprints here and there, naturally, but yet to be analyzed. But in one of the cottages, called the ‘Chicken Coop’ according to a neighboring farmer who walked us around, the cleaning was recent and rigorous. With our lights, we picked up bleach in a number of spots. But nothing else, and no prints. Not even hers.”
“There was no sign of cleaning bleach in the other cottages? It’s a common disinfectant.”
“None, except here in her own house. Our lights picked it out. We found a red plastic carrier tray with spray bottles of the usual household cleaning brands, each arranged neatly in compartments that I reckon she took around when preparing her cottages for the next guests. But no bleach.”
“Trash bins?”
“Nothing. It looks like she had no guests this past week; there is some fine dust on the surfaces of two of the cottage bin lids, salt dust from the sea, I reckon. The bin outside the back door of the Chicken Coop though was empty, almost sterile.”
“Your people have been busy…”
“We do our best.”
“No, Calum, you are the best. And have my greatest respect…”
“And affection?”
Morgan grinned. “A bit of that, too, but don’t get any ideas.”
“I am too tired for ideas.”
Morgan looked at him. “Calum, you’re tired because your heart isn’t working properly and you know it: heart irregular, less oxygen to that marvelous brain of yours. Thus, you tire. This is obvious and basic. When are you going to admit it? A few more health absences and the brass in Exeter are going to push you out.”
“They can’t. I’m too good.”
“You are, and you’re not; there’s always some young vulture circling to replace you. So, make sure you get all this new data entered in the HOLMES II file. I’ll do the same. Okay? And rest.”
Calum looked at the ground. “Okay. I hear you. Thank you.”
“I should slap you silly, you idiot.”
He turned and
grinned: “That would be lovely.”
“Oh shit…” Morgan said.
West looked up as another car, an aging and dented VW diesel sedan, slipped down the lane and stopped near their cars. The driver’s door opened, releasing a small cloud of cigarette smoke and a wiry man in his early forties.
“Just what we need right now: bloody Lance MacLeod from The Cornishman. Stay here, Calum. I’ll handle this.”
MacLeod, his head bald enough to look nearly shaved, knew enough to stop in front of the crime scene tape. He wore a greasy old Barbour jacket, perhaps to make him look like a fellow countryman, but it had not recently been waxed and now it drooped limply from his narrow shoulders. He had a shiny new digital recorder in one hand. He grinned at the same time that she saw his thumb activate it.
“Who the hell invited you to the party, MacLeod?”
“And good afternoon to you, too, Detective Sergeant Davies…”
“That’s Detective Inspector, you leech.”
MacLeod lifted his hands as if in surrender.
“Inspector Davies; my congratulations and apologies. But you have your job and I have mine. A crime, a murder I hear, has occurred on my beat and it is my responsibility to my employer to ferret out the facts.”
“Ferret. Yes. That’s how I always have seen you: low, relentless, digging into dark holes.”
“You are unkind, but that’s to be expected. Can’t tell you how much we’ve missed you since you left Penzance.”
She wanted to smack him, but that, too, would be “news.” “What do you want? We have nothing to report as yet.”
“Ah, but I’ve done my research. The person living here is a Mrs. Mary Trevean, according to the property records. Runs a cottage letting business, I gather. May I assume she is your victim?”
“You may not. Someone did, indeed, die here, but your use of the term ‘victim’ is premature. There is no evidence yet that any crime has occurred, MacLeod. People die all the time.”
The reporter shook his head and nodded toward West, who still sat on the cottage steps, taking in the show: “Then why is Cornwall’s best Scene of Crimes expert here if no crime has been committed?” He waved at West. West did not respond.