by Celina Grace
“Nice one. Can we have a quick word this morning when you’re back in the swing of things?”
“Um—yes.”
“Ta.” Theo turned to amble off.
“Theo,” said Chloe, in a scolding voice. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Theo turned around in a mild panic. “Am I? What?” He caught Kate’s eye and sagged with relief. “Oh, sorry, mate. Happy birthday.”
Kate guffawed. “It’s not my birthday, you idiot.”
“It’s not?” Theo clapped a hand to his stubbled jaw. “Oh my God. You’re getting married.”
Now it was Chloe’s turn to laugh, whilst Kate smiled over the jolt in her stomach induced by the thought. “Theo, you idiot. She’s just been made DI!”
“Oh.” Theo heaved a gusty sigh of relief. “Yeah, I knew that. Just didn’t—didn’t want you getting a big head about it, Kate, right?”
Kate was still laughing. “So, I’m afraid this means I’m back to bossing you around, Theo.”
“Ha, ha. Yeah right.” For a moment, Theo’s dark brows came down in a frown. Kate stopped laughing. Surely he wasn’t offended by the thought? A moment later, he was smiling and she felt herself relax again. “Well, congrats and all that.”
“Thanks—” Kate was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone on Chloe’s desk.
“I’ll get it.” Chloe picked up the receiver and spoke the usual words. There was the usual moment of stillness as she listened to whatever she was being conveyed by the person on the other end of the line. Kate and Theo, veterans of these types of calls, waited tensely.
Eventually Chloe put the phone down and blew out her cheeks.
“One for us?” Kate asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yep. Elderly man’s body found in his house over at Cudston Magna. Looks like a stabbing.”
Kate’s eyebrows went up. Stabbings were unusual when the victim was elderly. “What—” she began and then the soft voice of DCI Nicola Weaver spoke from behind her, almost in her ear. She jumped.
“Thank you, DS Redman. I’ll take it from here.”
Kate, recovering herself, sat back and let Chloe fill Nicola in on what they knew of the crime scene. It took her a moment to realise that Nicola had called her ‘Detective Sergeant’. Given Theo had genuinely forgotten her new title, Nicola’s oversight could have been an honest mistake, but then knowing Nicola, as she—unfortunately—did, Kate wondered if it were intentional.
As the two women spoke, and Theo perched himself on a nearby desk to await orders, Kate looked over at Olbeck’s corner office, expecting to see him at his desk. Then she caught herself. Her friend and colleague, DI Mark Olbeck, was now on paternal leave, having recently adopted a young boy and a younger girl, siblings, with his husband Jeff. It had only been a week, but Kate missed him being there. She made a mental note to call him later to see how things were going with his brand new family. She’d promised herself that she’d leave Olbeck and Jeff to it, for the first week at least, before turning up with cards and flowers and toys and chocolate.
She brought herself back to the present as the soft but curiously penetrating voice of Nicola Weaver called them all to order. It was time to start work.
Chapter Two
It was now Kate’s enviable position as a DI in being able to pick her subordinate for the visit to the latest crime scene. She plumped for Chloe over Theo, hoping her preference wasn’t too obvious. As it happened, DCI Weaver asked to see Theo in her office just as Kate was debating how to ask for Chloe without it seeming like a rejection to Theo. She breathed an inner sigh of relief as she watched DCI Weaver waft back to her office with Theo trailing in her wake, his hands in his pockets.
“Come on, bird. Let’s get going. You can fill me in on everything on the way.”
“I assume I’m driving?”
Kate’s smile wavered, unsure of whether Chloe was joking or not. “I don’t mind,” she said, a little awkwardly.
“I’ll do it. I don’t mind either.”
They gathered up their bags and coats in a slightly artificial silence. Kate was feeling a little bit…paranoid? Was that the right word? She’d worked so hard for this qualification, this step up in seniority, but right now, she was wondering whether she’d made the right decision. The idea of her being senior to him seemed to be putting Theo’s back up, and she wasn’t sure how Chloe felt about it either. Not really. It was hardly the kind of thing she could ask. Excuse me, bird, but do you mind taking orders from me, your former equal? She remembered when Olbeck had become a DI, years back now, when she’d remained a DS. In some ways, it was fascinating seeing it from the other side, as it were. Fascinating but not very comfortable.
She made an effort to dismiss the worries from her mind and, once in the car, with the music on and en route to their destination, the mood lightened. Lightened as much as attending a potential murder scene would allow, thought Kate with an inner grin.
“So, who’s the vic? Do we know yet?”
“Yep.” Chloe was a fast but efficient driver. She didn’t take her eyes from the road as she spoke. “He’s been identified already—his cleaning lady found him. He’s a retired teacher, some sort of academic, I think. Doctor Roland Barry.”
“So, what happened?”
“It’s pretty nasty, apparently. Multiple stab wounds. A lot of aggression, a lot of violence.”
“Right.” Kate thought for a moment. Such a crime was rare involving an elderly person. Not that it didn’t happen, but… She recalled a crime scene from a previous case, where a married father of three had been found trussed and bound in leather, his head caved in like a deflated football. Nasty. A sad case. Shaking off the memories, Kate asked a few more questions but Chloe had reached the limit of her current knowledge of the crime.
They were out in deep countryside now, surrounded on all sides by rolling green hills, wooded here and there, with fields of gently waving wheat on either side of the road. The wind stroked the stalks as they passed, as if an invisible hand were smoothing down the furry flanks of a giant golden animal. The sky was a pale blue, heaped with whipped-cream clouds.
“What a gorgeous day,” said Chloe. “Hope it keeps up for the weekend.”
Kate agreed. “Mind you, after the summer we’ve had, we’re due a bit of nice weather.”
“Wasn’t it sunny in the Isle of Wight—” Chloe stopped herself as she spotted the road sign for Cudston Magna. “Oh, here we are.” She glanced at the sat nav. “Only a mile to go.”
Roland Barry’s cottage stood at the end of a long lane, the tarmac now thickly plastered with dead leaves. It was a straight road, and Kate and Chloe could see the bustle of police activity from quite a distance as they approached. Crime scene tape had already been wound about the gateposts of the garden, and the white van of the Scene of Crime Officers was pulled up on the verge. Chloe parked her car behind it and switched off the engine.
She and Kate stood for a moment when they got out of the car, surveying the scene, getting a feel for the location.
“Remote,” Kate said, looking around and listening to the silence.
Chloe agreed. “Not really a place you’d stumble across, is it? Think the killer must have known where to come.”
“Come on.” Kate ducked under the crime scene tape, flashing her card to the uniformed officer guarding the door of the cottage. “DS Wapping and DS Redman—” She caught herself out and tried again. “DI Redman, from Abbeyford. Is Stephen Smithfield coordinating?”
They headed into the cottage in search of the senior crime officer, who was known to both of them through years of long service. The cottage was small and rather cosy, remarkable only in being unremarkable in its décor. Magnolia walls and beige carpeting throughout; indifferent watercolour landscapes framed on the walls. It had probably been built around the late 1800s, thought Kate, who was quite interested in architectural history. The usual layout: living room, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor. Three bedr
ooms upstairs, one of which would have been converted into the bathroom.
The crowd of SOCOs was thickest in the living room. Kate reached the door and braced herself. In some indefinable way, she could feel Chloe doing the same. It was as well that they did. As they entered the crowded room and saw the body, Kate sucked in her breath. They regarded the bloodstained mess on the carpet in silence.
“Nasty,” said Chloe, eventually.
“Mm.” There wasn’t anything that Kate could really say to that. She realised that the pathologist bending over the corpse was her friend Kirsten Telling, recently back at work from her second round of maternity leave. “Kirsten, hello. How are you?”
“Hello, Kate. Chloe. I’m fine, thanks.” Dr Telling looked up from what she was doing with a smile. She was an unusual looking person—a conventionally beautiful woman who looked as though she’d been stretched like rubber. Her recent pregnancy had given her a little more flesh on her bones, which suited her. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“Of course. No rush.” Kate could see for herself the probable cause of death. Someone had used a knife, or perhaps several knives. The carpet beneath the body was dyed scarlet, the edges of the pool already browning as the blood dried. Its coppery tang hung thick in the air; Kate could taste it.
Grimacing, she stepped carefully over to the sideboard, where ornaments and photographs were clustered. Kate paid particular attention to the photographs, of which there were few. One was very old, sepia-toned, with the two people featured in it, poised and stiff, dressed in the clothing of seventy years ago. Roland Barry’s parents, perhaps? There was a more recent photograph of the deceased himself, dressed in walking gear and posed in a landscape that Kate thought was probably the Lake District. The only other photograph was of a middle-aged woman, dressed in a fussy, flowery dress and smiling awkwardly for the camera at what looked like somebody’s wedding. His wife?
“Was he married?” Kate asked Chloe.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him, really, apart from what I’ve already told you.” Chloe glanced about the room and threw up her hands. “God, where are we even going to start? There’s no neighbours, no CCTV…”
“Well, let’s talk to his cleaner first, if she’s recovered from the shock.”
Chloe concurred. “She’s in the kitchen, I think.”
Making their way through the house, they ran into the senior investigator, Stephen Smithfield , who greeted them in his usual, absent-minded fashion; it was as if they’d come across one another at a dinner party, rather than a brutal crime scene. Stephen was well known for never, ever being fazed by any of the horrible deaths he encountered. It made him rather unnerving company, but it did at least mean he was very good at his job.
“Morning, ladies.” Stephen blinked at them amiably through his glasses. “See the body yet?”
“Yes, we have.” Kate thought back to the shocking sight in the living room. “Pretty brutal.”
“Indeed,” Stephen said cheerfully. “Judging from the blood loss, I imagine he died pretty quickly, though. Multiple stab wounds, immense blood loss. Unusual, isn’t it? In this kind of setting, I mean. Anyway, I must get on. Talk to you in a bit.”
Kate and Chloe exchanged glances and grins as Stephen bustled off down the corridor. “Come on, let’s see if we can find the cleaner,” murmured Kate, conscious of the fact that the kitchen door stood ajar.
Roland Barry’s cleaner was a large, middle-aged lady exhibiting the usual behaviour of a person unfortunate enough to find a body. She was pale and trembling and plaiting her chubby fingers together. A uniformed officer, one of the victim support officers, sat next to her and had draped a blanket around her shoulders. Kate recognised her face but couldn’t put a name to the officer. Victim support tended to be female. Kate suspected there was something inherently sexist about that, but this was not the time for a lengthy analysis of exactly why she felt that.
The officer looked up as Kate and Chloe approached. “Good morning. This is Sandra Cuckfield. She cleans for Mr Barry.”
“Hello, Mrs Cuckfield,” said Kate, as gently as she could. “Now I realise you’ve had a terrible shock, but I was wondering if you feel up to answering a few questions? You can take as much time as you need.”
Mrs Cuckfield gulped and held a disintegrating tissue up to her watering eyes. “Yes – I will, if I can.”
“Let me get you another tissue,” Chloe said, looking about the kitchen for a box. The uniformed officer pushed one towards her. “I’m DS Wapping and this is DI Redman.” Both Kate and she showed their identification. Mrs Cuckfield blinked at them in silence whilst they sat down.
“Now, could you just run through what happened this morning, Mrs Cuckfield?” asked Kate, unobtrusively taking out her notebook and pen. She was aware of Chloe doing the same.
Mrs Cuckfield gulped again. “I come weekly, every Tuesday. There’s never very much that needs to be done; it’s mostly just dusting and hoovering.” She wiped her eyes with the fresh tissue and took a deep breath. “I get here about ten o’clock—”
“Do you have a key?” Chloe asked. Mrs Cuckfield nodded.
“Would Doctor Barry normally be here when you come?” asked Kate.
“Not always. Sometimes he was, and sometimes he wasn’t. I always ring the bell before I come in, just to give him warning, like, that I’m about to come in. He was a very private man.”
Kate’s ears pricked up. “Would you say you knew him well, Mrs Cuckfield?”
She was disappointed a moment later when the woman shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t say that. I’ve cleaned for him for about two years but I didn’t really know him. He was friendly enough, like, but we didn’t really ever chat or anything.”
“Doctor Barry lived alone, then?”
“Yes, he wasn’t married. I think he has a sister, yes, he does—did.” She stumbled over the correct tense. “He did have a sister; he used to mention that he’d had lunch with her occasionally.”
“Any children?” asked Kate.
Sandra Cuckfield shook her head once more. “No, not that I know of. He was a proper bachelor.”
Kate nodded, thinking. Had Roland Barry been homosexual? And if so, did that have any bearing on the manner of his death? Had he picked someone up or had a date with a killer?
Total speculation, Kate. She listened as Sandra Cuckfield falteringly described her meagre relationship to the deceased. They would have to try and get hold of the sister she’d mentioned. The dead man seemed to have led a lonely life. Perhaps the secret to his death was somewhere here in this remote cottage. She began to feel impatient, wanting to get on with the search into cupboards and filing cabinets, but she forced the feeling down and stoically made notes as Mrs Cuckfield continued to talk.
Chapter Three
An hour later, Mrs Cuckfield had been carted off to Abbeyford Police Station to make an official statement. The body of the unfortunate Roland Barry had been removed and the scene of crime officers were busy measuring, collating and collecting forensic evidence and data. Kate and Chloe, released from their interview with the first witness, were able to begin the slow search of Roland Barry’s belongings in an effort to find out more about him.
The house was sparsely furnished, his bedroom almost austere. There were no more photographs in the house and only a few pictures dotted here and there. Two pictures showed the same lake, set against a mountain range. Kate unhooked one that hung in the hallway upstairs and carried it into the bedroom to compare it.
“That’s the same place, isn’t it?” she asked Chloe, inclining the other picture frame to show her friend.
“Looks like it. Looks like the Lake District to me.” Chloe glanced at Kate, her eyebrows raised. “Think it’s significant?”
“It could be. It might be a place he once lived or liked to holiday in. Not many people have more than one original watercolour of the same place unless it’s of some significance to them.” Kate gently propped t
he picture up against the wall. “Anyway, unless I’m much mistaken, that filing cabinet in the spare bedroom will tell us a lot of what we need to know.”
They headed to the spare room, and Kate pulled the top drawer of the cabinet open. “Luckily it’s not locked.”
The contents were neatly filed. Doctor Barry had seemingly been a methodical man. Kate knelt before the grey metal cabinet and flicked through the contents, noting the labels on the folders. Car, Insurance, Certificates. From this last, she withdrew a yellowing piece of paper—Roland Barry’s birth certificate. He’d been born in 1954, in Watford, London, putting him well into his sixties on the date of his death. Kate brought the entire folder out and opened it up on the dusty floorboards. There were certificates proving his qualification as a teacher, and then as a PhD. So, an academic doctor, not a medical one.
Chloe’s gloved hands were methodically going through the drawers of the only other significant piece of furniture in the room other than the single bed.
“Anything?” asked Kate.
Chloe shook her head in disappointment. “Nothing much. Junk, mostly.” She shut the final bottom drawer with a slam and got up from her knees. “We should really do the main bedroom first, hey?”
“You do that.” Kate wanted to sort through the paperwork more thoroughly. She looked up as a thought struck her. “We’ll have to get the sister to come in, do an official identification. She sounds as though she might be the only person able to give us a rundown of the victim.”
“I’ll ring Rav and get him to track her down. Also to just do a general search on Barry.” Chloe pulled her mobile from her handbag as she was speaking. She glanced around the sad little sparsely furnished room. “Maybe he’s not the harmless old duffer that he appears.”
“Are they ever?” Kate didn’t wait for an answer to her rhetorical question. She gathered up a bundle of cardboard folders in her arms and went to find a more comfortable seating position on the bed.