‘I guess it might be as simple as that,’ said Banton.
‘Except that the pearls don’t make sense then,’ said Shunter.
‘The pearls?’ said Jaine.
‘She’s wearing a string of pearls but her hand is clutching another broken string of pearls,’ said Shunter. He bent to look more closely at her clenched fist. ‘Cadaveric spasm, I presume.’
‘Eh?’
‘It’s too early for rigor mortis to have set in, but her hand is locked around those pearls. There is a condition called cadaveric spasm or instantaneous rigor. It’s not terribly common but I’ve seen it a few times. At the moment of death, most people go limp, but occasionally a person can suffer sudden muscular stiffening. If that’s what’s happened in this case, it’s likely that she was grabbing those pearls at the exact time she died.’
‘So she might have snatched them off the killer?’ said Jaine.
‘And loan sharks don’t usually wear pearls,’ said Banton. ‘Which means that the suspect was possibly dressed as Miss Cutter.’
‘Great. There’s only about eight hundred of them in the village right now,’ said Jaine.
‘It does add some weight to the Handibode theory, I guess.’
‘There’s also the question of what the victim was doing in here before the doors were opened,’ said Shunter.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Jaine.
‘This afternoon’s event was supposed to be one of the festival highlights. Andrew Tremens was going to reveal some big news; the most popular theory was that a previously unknown and unpublished Agnes Crabbe novel had been found. The place was locked down tight and surrounded by secrecy to avoid spoilers. So the victim, whoever she is, was either part of Tremens’s event, or she was a fan and should have been queuing outside with the rest of us. If it’s the latter, how did she get in here?’
‘She could have broken in,’ said Jaine.
‘Or Tremens let her in,’ said Banton.
‘Why would he do that?’
‘That’s the other big unanswered question of course,’ said Shunter. ‘Where is Andrew Tremens?’
‘Look, all I’m asking you to do is to carry on with business as usual,’ explained Blount. ‘The last thing we want is panic and a mass exodus of potential witnesses.’
‘A mass exodus? After a murder?’ said Mr Stendish, Leader of the Village Council. ‘You don’t know Agnes Crabbe fans.’
DI Blount had arrived in Nasely to take over the investigation and, as one of his first actions, had summoned the three members of the Festival Committee to meet him at the library where he was doing his best to convince them to carry on with events as if nothing had happened. The committee was having none of it.
‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if visitor numbers increase,’ added Stendish.
‘Glen’s right. They’ve never been so happy,’ said a sharp-suited woman in a beret. Miss Imogen Olivia Clark was Head of Arts and Culture for Bowcester Borough Council.
‘Our problem is that we’re struggling to fill seats,’ said Glen Stendish. ‘All of this afternoon’s scheduled events were sold out but no one has bothered to turn up to any of them so far. Everyone is hanging around outside the village hall like flies around a . . . well, you know . . . like bees around a honeypot.’
‘Can’t you issue a statement or something to make them disperse?’ asked Miss Clark. ‘I mean, just look at them. They’re like ghouls.’
She pointed out of the window to the village hall next door where a large crowd was rubbernecking outside the police-tape perimeter in the hope of catching a glimpse of the activity within. Many were huddling in small fan-club groups, discussing possible theories. Others were actively interviewing potential witnesses and recording their findings in notebooks and on their mobile phones. Local newspaper and radio reporters, who had expected to turn in the usual sedate coverage of the event, couldn’t believe their luck and wandered among the crowds getting vox pops and interviews before the nationals arrived. Rumour had it that several outside broadcast vans were en route.
‘I have speakers due to take the stage tomorrow who are threatening to go home if we can’t guarantee them bums on seats,’ said Miss Clark. ‘So if you want us to carry on with business as usual, you need to get people away from the murder scene and back to the scheduled events.’
‘The one saving grace we did have was Helen Greeley’s talk this evening,’ interjected Mr Horningtop, Community Projects. ‘She’s always a big draw. But the village hall is the only space large enough to accommodate everyone who bought a ticket.’
‘We can’t use the Masonic Hall because it’s too small and, anyway, it’s being set up for a dance at 8 p.m.,’ said Miss Clark. ‘You can see our dilemma, Inspector.’
‘So if you can see your way clear to letting us have the village hall back for this evening that will help us immensely,’ said Mr Stendish.
‘But it’s a crime scene!’ said Blount. ‘Don’t you realise what that means?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘I can’t release the hall until all of the forensic work is done,’ said Blount. ‘You can’t disturb a crime scene. You’ll just have to do the best you can with what you have.’
‘We’re trying to,’ said Mr Horningtop. ‘And we’re keen to cooperate with you, but if we can’t put on the events that people have paid to see, then some of them are bound to leave the festival and go home. Which is what you’re telling us you don’t want to happen.’
‘It doesn’t help that you’ve commandeered the library for your incident room,’ said Mr Stendish. ‘That’s another venue we can’t use now.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ muttered Blount.
The committee seemed less than satisfied with this answer but they realised that it was all that they were going to get and left. Blount watched them walk off through the crowds and wondered why people seemed to be going out of their way to make his investigation more difficult. He was sure that he had, in his hands, the makings of a career-defining case and, with selection interviews for promotion to chief inspector just three months away, it couldn’t be timelier. But this wasn’t turning out to be the simple open-and-shut case he’d hoped for.
He ran over the facts in his head once again. A homicide had taken place on the first day of one of the UK’s largest murder-mystery festivals where almost everyone – the victim, all of the witnesses and, very possibly, the offender – was dressed as the fictional detective Miss Millicent Cutter. The victim hadn’t yet been officially identified, and the witnesses he’d banked on were all frustratingly unreliable and given to wild flights of fancy. And, to add to his troubles, it was a gift of a story for any reporter to cover; a murder to die for, you might say. With so many microphones and cameras coming into the area, Blount knew that his leadership would be under the microscope. He could not afford to have anything go wrong. And yet, so far, nothing was going right.
‘We need to make some progress on this case,’ he barked. ‘Do we have a positive ID on the victim yet?’
‘Not yet. The general consensus is that it’s probably Brenda Tradescant,’ said Jaine. ‘But it might also be a lady called Esme Handibode. Apparently, neither lady has been seen since just before the body was discovered. I’ve issued a media statement that we want to speak to both of them as a matter of some urgency.’
‘So one is the victim and the other might have done a runner?’ said Blount.
‘Maybe,’ said Jaine. ‘We found Tradescant’s handbag next to the body, so she’s one or the other. Mrs Dallimore was pretty sure that she’s the victim but couldn’t confirm it though. And nor could DS Shunter.’
‘Who?’
‘Mrs Dallimore?’ said Jaine. ‘She was on the door when the fans were let in. She’s been acting as the Festival Committee’s Agnes Crabbe expert because she wrote a biogra—’
‘Yes, yes, I know that,’ said Blount who, in fact, didn’t. ‘Who is DS Shunter?’
‘Local bloke. Retired. Us
ed to be in the Met,’ explained Jaine. ‘He lives in the village now.’
‘Why was there an unauthorised DS at our crime scene?’ said Blount. His voice had noticeably risen by several keys.
‘Retired DS,’ corrected Banton. ‘He was queuing up to see the talk along with everyone else. And it’s not like he was just some random member of the public that we let in. He’s one of us, after all.’
‘No, he isn’t,’ said Blount. ‘Retired. That’s the operative term. He used to be a police officer. But he isn’t any more and he had no right to be at our crime scene. A closed crime scene.’
‘But he specialised in homicide,’ said Jaine. ‘So we thought his input might be helpful.’
‘And he did point out some very useful features of the crime scene,’ added Banton.
‘So you’ll just let any unauthorised person trample all over our crime scene just because they say that they’re an ex-homicide detective, will you?’ snapped Blount.
‘But—’ began Jaine.
‘Don’t be so naive. These city cops all say that they were homicide detectives to show off,’ said Blount. ‘He was probably traffic or admin or something. So how much does this Shunter know?’
‘As much as anyone does at this time, guv,’ said Jaine.
‘Which is not very much,’ said Banton.
‘Good. Let’s keep it that way. From now on, he’s not to be allowed back in there. Closed crime scene means closed. Authorised personnel only. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Guv?’
‘City cops like him think we’re all country bumpkins and village idiots,’ said Blount. ‘If we give him an inch, he’ll muscle in and try to take over just to “show us how it’s done”. They can’t help themselves. Look at Quisty.’
‘DCI Quisty from Uttercombe?’ said Banton.
‘Yes, Quisty,’ said Blount. ‘Just because he had a bit of success in Birmingham, he thinks he can just transfer into this force and then presume to tell us all how to do our jobs.’
‘A bit of success?’ said Banton incredulously. ‘He solved a series of cold cases that everybody claimed were unsolvable. And he caught that guy they called “the invisible man” who committed all of those seemingly impossible burglaries. He’s a bloody genius.’
‘He’s like some kind of Sherlock Holmes, he is,’ said Jaine.
‘No detective is as good as he appears to be,’ said Blount. ‘He just got lucky. Or he’s bent.’
‘You don’t really think that, do you?’ said Banton.
‘All I know is that he turned up at HQ, brown-nosed the Chief Constable and baffled her with his city bullshit, and suddenly he made Chief Inspector instead of me even though I had more service as a DI,’ said Blount, bitterly. ‘Trust me, city cops all think that they’re better than us. But this is my case. It’s not Quisty’s, and it’s not this Shunter bloke’s either. He is not to set foot in the village hall and you will not share information with him. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, guv,’ Banton and Jaine replied in unison.
‘Good. Now, do we know what the victim was doing in the hall?’
‘No,’ said Banton. ‘She might have been part of the event. But only Andrew Tremens knows that and he’s vanished.’
‘So who was the last person to see Andrew Tremens?’
‘Mrs Dallimore I think,’ said Jaine.
‘And where is she now?’
‘She was here,’ said Jaine. ‘She went back to her bed and breakfast quarter of an hour ago. To get changed, I think.’
‘Then go and get her,’ said Blount. ‘And where is Shunter now?’
‘I think he went to the pub.’
‘Right. Go and get Dallimore. I’ll be back shortly,’ said Blount and he left.
‘What was that all about?’ said Jaine.
‘Rampant male insecurity?’ said Banton.
*
In his hospital bed, Savidge napped fitfully, twitching like a dreaming dog. His limbs jerked spasmodically, his face was red and his lip curled back into an occasional snarl. He muttered angry gibberish in which the only comprehensible word was ‘Cutter’. In his confused half-sleeping fantasies, he was a highly trained combat specialist being hunted down by his ruthless arch-enemy and her army of zombie look-alikes. There were hundreds of them, possibly thousands, stumbling and shambling after him like in a scene from every shoot-’em-up video game he’d ever played. Every turn, every potential hiding place, revealed yet more Cutters whose only aim was to either kill him or drag him before their leader. He strafed them with machine-gun fire. He lobbed grenades at them. Blood spurted in fountains, heads exploded like dropped watermelons and severed limbs flew about like obscene fleshy boomerangs. But still they came. Relentless. Untiring. The wrong side of fifty. His way was suddenly blocked by a barricade of burning fast-food vans and a wall of murder-mystery novels stacked vertiginously high. Tall flames licked up the wall and crisped the leaves. Hot black embers of burning prose filled the air like dirty snowflakes, their edges glowing a bright orange. Bottles and cans of fizzy drink exploded noisily inside the burning vehicles and, at the very summit of the high wall, stood the Queen of the Cutters. She looked remarkably like Helen Greeley and she was laughing demoniacally. There was no way to get to her and there was no chance of breaking through the wall. He was trapped and the Cutter hordes would soon be upon him. Savidge took a grenade from his belt and pulled the pin with his teeth. At least he’d take some of the cloche-hatted bitches with him . . .
He woke up with a start. His head didn’t hurt quite so much and some of the dizziness seemed to have gone. He was now aware, however, of pains elsewhere. He sat up slowly and saw that his knees were bloodied and bandaged and so were his elbows. He tried to gather his chaotic thoughts but clarity was hard to find. A bullied childhood, an abusive father figure, a naturally combative nature and many years of trying to suppress his anger had all conspired to leave him teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. But now the destruction of his van, his fight with the big man in drag and a good hard blow to the head had kicked him over, and his imagination had responded by constructing a mostly imaginary world to explain all of the terrible things that seemed to be happening to him. Elements of all the action films he’d ever seen merged and blended together. He was James Bond, he was John Rambo, he was someone dangerous played by a gravel-voiced Liam Neeson. He was a secret agent, a special forces commando, a lone wolf in a dystopian world ruled by Miss Cutter and her army of doppelgängers. They were alien body-snatchers, or evil clones, or androids, or mind-slaves or something like that, and they were all hell-bent on capturing or killing him. But he would not give them the satisfaction. Twice they had tried to kill him – first with fire and then between the powerful thighs of a murderous transvestite – and twice they had failed. They would try again, of that he had no doubt, unless he stopped them first. But there were too many of them for him to fight alone. He needed to take out their leader, the evil mastermind – or was it mistressmind? – who controlled them. ‘Kill the head and the body will die,’ someone wise had once said. Savidge didn’t know who had said it, but he did know where the ‘head’ was hiding, and without her guidance, her army would be directionless and impotent.
He swung his legs off the bed and, finding his clothes in a locker, he considered getting dressed. Escape was imperative. It was time to take the fight to Millicent Cutter herself. But after a bit of a lie-down maybe. He was still feeling a little too dizzy to save the world.
Shunter sat in the Happy Onion and nursed his pint, wondering if he could have done more at the crime scene and concluding that the answer was probably no. All of the authority and power that went with the job of being a cop had been handed in, along with his warrant card, over eighteen months ago. But that didn’t mean that he’d lost the urge to do the right thing.
He’d left the police service for a number of reasons. Firstly, because he’d felt like some kind of lumbering dinosaur alongside the younger, more progress
ive cops with their tablets, mobiles and other technological aids. He didn’t even understand his own smartphone. Secondly, because cases were regularly being thrown out of court, not for lack of evidence, but because pettifogging lawyers picked holes in police adherence to ridiculously complex rules and regulations. Plainly guilty villains were walking free, while police officers were being made to look like the bad guys because they’d incorrectly labelled an exhibit or hadn’t used the correct forms. And thirdly, it was his frustration with budget cuts, staff shortages and the political point-scoring that went on at command level. As soon as he’d completed his thirty years’ service, he’d jumped at the offer to retire rather than stay on for an extra few frustrating years. But none of that meant that he no longer felt the need to fight injustice. It was Shunter’s personal belief that any good and decent society had to be built upon a solid bedrock of justice. Truth formed the foundations; fairness, integrity, compassion and respect the building blocks. The structure was further shored up by good manners, professionalism and empathy. It was patently obvious to him that an erosion of these values was responsible for all the troubles of the world. Greedy expenses-claiming politicians and bent bankers had no part to play in his ideal democratic society. Nor did postcode-lottery NHS treatments, a so-called free press controlled by a handful of right-wing billionaires, and huge multinational companies employing staff at slave-labour rates while refusing to pay millions in business taxes. Shunter understood the nature of good and evil and felt morally obliged to fight bad people on behalf of those who couldn’t fight for themselves. During his career, he’d surrendered any prospects he might have had for promotion to do just that.
He sipped at his pint and tumbled the curious events of the day over in his head in an attempt to make some sense of things.
‘Penny for them?’ said Vic.
‘I was just thinking . . . three deaths and a missing person. Possibly several missing persons,’ said Shunter. ‘And all leading lights in the Agnes Crabbe industry.’
A Murder to Die For Page 9