The Third Breath

by Malcolm Hollingdrake

  He emptied the sachet into a glass and then topped it up with cloudy lemonade. Checking his pocket to ensure the key fob was there and secure, he pressed it again just to be on the safe side. He moved through to the garden.

  “So you like my view?”

  Claire turned and smiled. “It’s beautiful and I bet it has a certain attraction during all the seasons.” She returned to the patio.

  He handed her a glass. “Cheers. Thank you for coming to see me at such short notice.” He drank over half the glass. “I do like lemonade when it’s home-made. Drink up and I’ll get us another and then I’ll give you a tour around the garden. We can chat and I can thank you properly.” He emptied his glass and Claire followed suit.

  “Stuart!” Cyril turned to DC Stuart Park who was flicking through the file whilst waggling his pen in his fingers. “Get onto Mrs Stephens. I want to look at all the logbooks for the two aircraft. I need to know when they were used and by whom and their destinations. The logbooks may well be stored at the hangar. Then get onto the club where his plane’s kept. Usual stuff; when it flies and with whom. Talk to his son…” Cyril paused trying to recall the name.

  “Jonathan,” proffered Owen.

  “To be honest, I really don’t know if you’ll detect anything apart from what you find in the journey log. The aircraft records give few details other than the hours flown but you could cross reference for anomalies. I just need to close down all potential avenues of investigation. I was concerned when I heard he’d given the Jag an internal valet.”

  “He also brought in the glass so he may have nothing to hide, sir.”

  Cyril smiled. “That may well be, Stuart, but in my experience, when someone comes forward with one hand open their other might well be closed. Who knows what might be concealed there?”

  “Can Forensics procedures now be done on the contents of Baines’s car?” Owen asked as he fumbled through the file.

  “Yes, and I also want the Jag in for a thorough vetting too. We’re doing a full search of Baines’s home office and his place of work on Victoria Avenue.”

  Claire sipped the second glass of lemonade as they stood before moving further out into the garden. The sun was warm.

  “You like it?”

  “The lemonade is lovely, thank you.”

  “I meant the view, my dear.”

  “It looks beautiful and the lake or reservoir view from the tree is stunning. The sky is huge. At night the stars must be so beautiful.” She looked again. “But the garden also looks like hard work.”

  “That’s not my worry I’m delighted to say, comes with being rented.” He smiled. “The reservoir, it reflects the sky like a tiny jewel. If you look in that direction you can see the wind turbines just over the hill. Why I was angry when they planned to erect them there, I’ll never understand knowing fully their true benefits. I enjoy watching their blades’ monotonous rotations. There’s something soporific about their speed and gentleness, they’re not like machines at all.” He then pointed to a stone outbuilding. “I’ll show you what’s in there later. You’ll be surprised. However, Claire, that’s not why I asked you here. I’m sure you’re not fully aware of just how grateful we are for your co-operation, your help and shall we say, your persuasive words in the right direction. It made a huge difference to us. I know David was very taken with you and as a sign of our gratitude, I have a generous gift for you. It’s on the table under the antique glass cloche.”

  Claire felt her face flush and as she walked towards the table, a sudden desperate need to urinate seemed to overpower her.

  “I’m sorry but may I use your bathroom?” She placed her glass next to the cloche and moved towards the French windows.

  “Just up the corridor on the left.” He pointed with his free hand. Time had passed so quickly.

  Claire walked briskly through the conservatory.

  “Claire!” he called, making her pause momentarily halfway along the corridor. “The light if you need it is outside on the left. Everyone struggles to find it.”

  “Thanks.” Her voice trailed to nothing the further she dashed up the corridor.

  “Three potatoes… mort,” he whispered in a French accent.

  The concentrated Furosemide, a strong diuretic he had added to her first drink had worked more quickly that he had anticipated. He heard the door open quickly and then close. Listening to ascertain if the lock would be turned, he heard nothing until after a few seconds a dull thud sounded and then a clatter, not dissimilar to that of a body collapsing against a wall. The sound of loose-standing objects being knocked over echoed down the corridor. He looked at his watch again. His timing had been perfect. He would simply move her car away, leave it in a remote location and set fire to it.

  He looked at Claire’s bag. Unusual for a lady not to take her worldly goods to the loo with her but then, he thought, she was in a hurry. He put on a pair of gloves before opening the bag. Amazed by the number of items confined in such a small space and by how many zip compartments there were, he methodically searched for the specific items. “How you locate your phone when it rings in this bag of junk is anyone’s guess,” he said out loud. He removed the phone and her car keys before walking along the corridor to the toilet.

  Knowing that the pressure must have built up behind the toilet door, he pushed it open a fraction feeling the cold air escape rapidly. Wisps of dry ice curled catlike around his legs. She had obviously seen the telltale mist but had been so desperate that she had ignored it, he surmised. He opened the door as widely as possible to allow nitrogen-rich air to flood out of the confined space and to be replaced by the surrounding air.

  Even with the extractor fan working, he knew the danger. From the cupboard at the top of the corridor he collected and fitted a self-contained breathing mask. One could never be too careful. Leaning down, he lifted her dominant hand before using her index finger to activate the security device on her phone. Once unlocked, he would then change the passcode numbers. He bent across her slumped body in order to close and lock down the lid on the flask just to be on the safe side. Experience told him that there would be a quantity of liquid nitrogen still evaporating within the Dewar. All he needed to do was to dispose of her car. He removed the mask and propped open the door to the toilet before collecting her car keys.

  16

  DC Stuart Park sat at David Stephens’s desk; the office was small but organised. A number of photographs dotted the walls depicting either cars or aircraft. There was even an aerial photograph of the house, probably taken by Stephens. Two models, one a Piper Archer and the other a small blue Robinson helicopter, were positioned directly in front of him and it made him realise the extent of Stephens’s wealth.

  He carefully thumbed through the first of the logbooks. At this stage he had little idea what he was looking for but he had performed similar operations many times and knew that something would grab his attention. He made the occasional jotting adding a post-it note to the relevant pages. He was particularly interested in the landing airfield noted in a specific column for every log entry. The majority of flights were out and back to Yeadon without touching down at an away airfield but on occasion there were a number of stops, some overnight.

  There was a knock on the study door and Jonathan Stephens popped his face tentatively round. “Sorry to interrupt, but Mum says you might need me.”

  Stuart pointed to the chair opposite and smiled. “It won’t take long, just a few questions.”

  “Has my father done something wrong?”

  Park shook his head. “No. As you may know we’re investigating another death. You’ve probably heard about it, similar to that of your dad’s, so we check, it’s what we do.” He could not believe he had said that but it was the first thing that came into his head. “Did your dad use his aircraft for business?”

  “When he could. Helps to set the cost against tax he used to say. To France mostly, but we’ve flown to Italy and Spain. He bought wine for the business. He lik
ed exclusive vineyards, something different. He told me there was more profit in that. Also he could visit the smaller Champagne houses. Many had the facilities to accommodate the landing of light aircraft.”

  “So he’d fly into France, clear customs at a specific airfield, and then be free to fly and land anywhere?”

  “In a nutshell, sir, yes.”

  Park was rather taken aback by his sudden formality. “Did you go?”

  “On occasion. He let me do the flying. Loved it, especially the challenge of landing at the shorter farm strips. I see you’re checking logs. Those flights will be classed as P1 in my logbook. I think he stopped adding P2 to his a while back."

  “P1 and P2? Can you explain?”

  “Sorry, yes. If two private pilots fly they elect who is lead pilot, pilot-in-command. He signs P1. The second pilot is exercising the privileges of his licence as a required member of the crew and is allowed to record the hours as P2. It means nothing really and these days you’ll not see many pilots doing this. There’s a description in the front of the logbook. May I?” He leaned across the desk, opening one of the books to the relevant page.

  Stuart Park nodded as he quickly scanned the details.

  “I see the majority of times you landed back at Yeadon, even when coming from abroad.”

  “By law, you land at a customs airfield. You clear customs and then either fly on to your home field or as we do, hangar the plane. We’d then use the helicopter back to here. Again, sometimes customs would be waiting and at other times not. You never really knew. The same when flying to France. You complete a flight plan notifying Special Branch and customs of your intended destination and route but whether you see anyone is pot luck!”

  “Were there occasions where he’d take other passengers?”

  Jonathan frowned a little giving the impression that he was reflecting on the type of answer he should give. “Dad would take the staff from the businesses, as a gift, presents, rewards, like. It could just be a flight around Yorkshire or a helicopter trip to a restaurant. He liked flying in to land at a hotel near Bolton Bridge. Always impressed them. He’d also take managers with him when he went abroad, buy the wines and other products.”

  Hearing the word products made Stuart Park sit up but he said nothing, just made a mental note.

  “Did he ever take Paul Ashton on one of these trips? You said managers but not partner.”

  “Paul wouldn’t fly, he had some kind of phobia.”

  Stuart made a note before asking. “Do we have names and dates?”

  “Dates are in the flight log. Maybe the names will be in Dad’s diary. They were always kept on his computer and his phone.”

  “They were returned to you, the phone and laptop found in the car?”

  “Yes, that was his business phone but his personal phone we haven’t been able to find. We did ask your lot but that wasn’t on the list of items found in his car that morning.”

  “Are these passcode protected?”

  “Probably, I don’t know them.”

  Stuart picked up the phone and it requested a touch ID or passcode.

  “My father used his print, he found it magical. That’s what he said every time he did it. Same with the laptop.”

  “What about the logs?”

  “They’re kept with the plane at the service hangar. They are never in the aircraft for obvious reasons.”

  Park thanked Jonathan and watched him leave. He rang Cyril. “Sir, think it might be wise for Stephens’s IT equipment to be checked either here or at the lab. Would suggest back with us.”

  “I’ll clear it.”

  “There’s a mobile phone missing too… Stephens’s personal one.”

  The line went quiet.

  “Another coincidence, sir?”

  Once the wide top of the flask was opened, the evaporating nitrogen gas from the liquid nitrogen flooded out of the vessel forcing the oxygen from the enclosed confines of the room. The fan had been rigged to help extract the air and ensure that oxygen, normally twenty-one per cent of the air we breathe, fell swiftly below five per cent, as the increasing pressure building within the small space forced the oxygen through the fan and any gaps in the window frame and the door. Anyone entering this oxygen-starved space at this stage, as Claire had, would be rendered unconscious by the third breath and dead in less than a minute. She would neither have felt alarmed nor anxious. She would simply die.

  Claire had collapsed behind the door. She was folded like a crumpled marionette; arms and legs seemed to be arranged at the most impossible angles. Her head had collided with either the towel rail or radiator, peeling a deep, triangular flap of flesh from her forehead, but as her heart had stopped pumping, there was little by way of blood loss, a weep, a streaked tear of red and that was all.

  It had been three hours since she had entered the house. Her car had been disposed of and fortunately, the recent spell of dry weather had made leaving the dumpsite relatively simple. There would be few clues left and by the time the fire brigade had extinguished the fire, any tracks that were made would be awash. The incendiary device, dropped into the fuel tank, had been programmed to delay the incineration process, allowing adequate time to move well away from the site before the burning car attracted attention, yet not long enough to have it discovered and reported. Like all his work, it was based on accurate timing. He was aware that the man-made electronic fuse might be located after the event, but the heat of the burning fuel would, he thought, destroy most of it. Cars are stolen so regularly, and what with the recent spate of vehicle vandalism he had read about in the local paper, it might simply be a statistic; that is, of course, until they discovered that the owner was missing too.

  Having first brought her to a sitting position on the toilet seat, it was less difficult to move the body. The dead weight of a cadaver, no matter how slight, can never be overstated. Once the door was fully opened he could stand, lift her vertically and manoeuvre her through the opening. The next step would be a simple fireman’s lift.

  He carried Claire’s flaccid body through the conservatory. He glanced at the half empty glass, the cloche and then towards the stone outbuilding.

  “I told you I’d show you what was in here. Do you remember?” he gasped, breathing heavily under the load before turning so that he could push open the wooden door with Claire’s head. “Good to see you using your noddle, if you’d used it before you would have realised that we’d know just when you put your pretty fingers into the sweetie jar and all of this could have been avoided. Never mind, nothing we can’t cope with. Stiff upper lip, my girl… or you will have when rigor mortis begins to set in. Starts in the face, I believe, but they also say that moving a body can change the time it sets in. Fascinating isn’t it? However, once you’re in here it’ll make absolutely no difference.”

  With his free hand he opened the chest freezer.

  A frozen face stared up at him; a potato lodged in the open mouth, making it resemble a wild boar dressed as a centrepiece at a medieval banquet.

  “I’ve brought you a woman. This is Claire. You’ll recognise one another as you’ve recently met.”

  He let the body roll from his shoulder so that the corpses lay head to toe. It flopped heavily into the cavity with a dull thud, a noise that brought a smile to his lips. He witnessed a layer of ice particles fly upwards like fine rainbow crystals from the frozen, rigid figure that was half covered beneath the body of Claire Baldwin.

  “I don’t think you’ll get up to any hanky-panky, Arthur, do you? You’re a tad frigid, I see. Besides, it would be so wrong for you two, so very wrong.”

  Claire’s head was at an angle and her milky blue eyes stared back. He noticed the one earring that was visible. “Match your eyes them, love.” He stood for a moment taking in the scene before he stretched over to a shelf and collected a small potato. He leaned in and placed it partly into her gaping mouth before moving her hands to the side of her face thus mirroring the other corpse trapped within
the freezer. He scattered a tendril of ivy across her neck. “Just like brother and sister. What do we say? One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes, four… you know the rest, your rhyme may well be the same but end with a different connotation. You’ve been chosen. Well, my dear, you chose yourself really.”

  Removing a phone from his pocket, he took a photograph of the face of the frozen corpse with which Claire had just been placed. He moved close enough to capture the whole upper torso and the frosted tendril of ivy.

  “A picture of you literally frozen in time, Arthur. No smile? Perhaps not. We’ll have one of you later too, Claire, but only when the ice crystals form.”

  Slowly he put his hand onto her face and straightened it before looking at her other ear. Furious, he realised that the earring was missing. “Shit! It could be just about anywhere.” He tried to recall if she had been wearing both on her arrival or during the conversation but he could not. “Bloody clip earrings. Jesus!” Slamming the lid, he quickly slid the steel retaining bar through the hoops before adding three padlocks onto the steel hasps. Only then did he allow his eyes to scour the steps he had taken. There was nothing.

  Even in the toilet there was no trace. The car, was it in there? He felt nausea rise from the pit of his stomach. “Shit! Bitch!” He crashed his fist against the wall.

  17

  Jonathan Stephens looked across the kitchen table at his mother and sister, his hand cupped around a mug of coffee.

  “There’s something not right, I know it and I’ve had a feeling about it for some time.”

  “Jonathan, I know what you’re about to say but don’t, change the record, just stop it. He was a sick man, he drove himself too hard, drank too much and goodness knows what else. The business always came first. We’ve tried to get him to slow down, get a proper business partner to share the load but he was stubborn. He just couldn’t let go. He wouldn’t trust anyone, either that or he didn’t want people to get a glimpse of what was going on. Don’t you dare say that! We’re family and we look after each other, more so now!” His mother started screaming. “Don’t you bloody well dare!”