Needless to say, Hesketh-Brown and his team had no intention of obeying the notice and keeping out. In fact, the minute he saw the sad little place the DC’s pulse quickened. If he had had a couple of bodies to dump this would be just the sort of place he’d choose.
They knew to whom Summerland belonged. Shannon was a Staffordshire farmer. And while no one was beyond suspicion, Shannon was about as far away from a killer as could be imagined. He was as stolid as a Staffordshire potato and about as unimaginative too. His family had farmed the few acres just the other side of Horton for generations. He had been married and had one son who, true to form, also farmed the land. The son was unmarried, and Shannon was himself a widower, his wife succumbing to a cruel from of breast cancer when the boy had been a teenager. Father and son farmed together and, on occasion, kept sheep in the neglected cottage and garden, the sheep using the garage for shelter. It was, like Summerland, also made of asbestos. Maybe sheep just weren’t as affected. Or maybe they just didn’t live long enough for them to develop mesotheliomas. Or maybe no one really cared. Currently, with the sheep being back out in the fields the place was so obviously deserted that Danny wondered when it had last been used. Once it must have been a pretty, idyllic little cottage. Now, like a woman ruined of her beauty, it stared defiantly back through panes cataract-milky with age and neglect. One could date it from the green and cream décor which was around in the forties. It hadn’t been touched since.
Only a local would know this place, tucked away behind the trees, and there was no sign of recent habitation or visitation. It certainly didn’t invite attention. In fact, it didn’t invite anything – it repelled. DC Hesketh-Brown pushed open the gate, letting it sink off the hinges set into wood so rotten it was as soft as sponge. The front door was locked and the back door too, but underneath a flower pot, unimaginative and common, was a large rusting key.
A bit of WD40 and it turned the lock. Inside was cobwebbed and fusty. Nobody except the Adams Family would consider coming here for a holiday. If a killer wanted to conceal a body he would be safe from attention. It couldn’t have been used as a holiday let for years. In fact, Hesketh-Brown reflected, looking at the respectable size of the plot, when farmer Shannon finally made up his mind and sold it, if it wasn’t to the caravan park prospector it would probably be knocked down and an idyllic, modern, eco-friendly little cottage would be built here instead. Actually, he thought, as he and his team moved from room to room, he wouldn’t mind living here himself. Lovely location. Spot of fishing in the lake, barbecues in the summer, log fire through the winter – could grow a few vegetables too. The kids would love it. He could buy a dinghy and teach Tom to sail. And Betsy? Ah. Thereby hung his problem. Betsy, Mrs Hesketh-Brown, was a teacher in Tunstall, and somehow he couldn’t imagine her getting to work each day from here.
Hesketh-Brown tucked away the happy little dream. He stood on the doorstep. Whatever his instincts the house inside was clean – at least, in the police sense. There was nothing here. Certainly no bodies. No smell.
The lock on the garage did not respond to his can of WD40 and none of his skeleton keys fitted it. There was only one thing for it: break the padlock, or at least the fastenings on the door. It wasn’t hugely secure anyway, he reasoned, and gave the door a mighty kick.
The minute he was inside, he knew.
DC King and Joanna were just on their way back from Birmingham. Their visit hadn’t really told them anything but it had made the girls more real than Madame Bellange could ever have done. Mothers never quite see their daughters realistically for one reason or another. They invariably typecast them, either seeing them in their own image – a sort of mini-me, or as sweet, innocent little girls who never hit puberty. And then there is the mother who perceives her daughter as a siren – a temptress. A rival. None of these images is quite the real thing because the female of the species is far too complex to typecast.
But the image of the two girls sheltering in the cave with the Stuart brothers, drinking their coffee and gently flirting while sheltering from the rain, was a pleasant one. Poignant when you speculated on their fate but still pleasant for all that. And talking to the brothers again, Joanna had almost seen them, the elusive Annabelle Bellange and Dorothée Caron. Two young girls with a sense of adventure strong enough to carry them to the land of a poet they had been studying at school.
‘I don’t think it was them,’ Joanna commented as she pulled out into the fast lane and zipped past a couple of mid-laners. ‘But they did lie. They did know the girls.’
King grunted. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘They knew them all right, but what motive could they have had for killing them, for hiding their bodies then coming back. Why would they do that?’
‘Why would anyone?’ Joanna responded grumpily. This case was not going smoothly. Irrational or not, she was beginning to see the two French girls as something of a tease. Peeping from behind trees or boats or even peeping through the eye of a painting, giggling to themselves.
Danny was in the garage, which wasn’t really big enough to be a garage anyway – only a SMART car would have fitted in it. At the back was a large chest freezer. Rusting, dirty, dusty. And unplugged. Hesketh-Brown looked at it balefully. Then he slipped on a pair of gloves and a face mask, and lifted the lid.
‘Oh, shit.’ He was beyond the stage of vomiting. He’d half expected something like this anyway. He dropped the lid and met his colleague’s eyes. He had no mobile signal down here and the phone wasn’t connected, so he left Hannah Beardmore to stand guard while he took the path which climbed the small hill. As soon as he got a couple of bars on his mobile he rang the station.
In less than half an hour, the wheels were in motion. Matthew Levin, Rush and Joanna had all been contacted. She took the call on the car phone just as they passed junction fourteen – the Eccleshall/Stafford north turnoff – and she felt a strange mixture of exhilaration and depression. No mystery here. They would find no teasing, giggling, sheepish girls ready to be scolded by their mothers and returned, tail between their legs, to France. Nothing but a couple of corpses to be identified, too rotten for that to be done by their loving parents, but by dental records and belongings. And DNA. There would be no kiss goodbye.
Yet at the same time, now they had their bodies, Joanna’s blood was up. They could begin to find their killer. King glanced across and she filled him in, and saw her emotions mirrored in the DC’s grey eyes. He knew who would be setting up the cross referencing, the computer links, searching databases. Joanna drew in a deep breath.
Now the work could really begin.
While she covered the miles between herself and the crime scene, the first rule of order was already being carried out. Isolate the area and clear a forensic corridor to gain access without compromising the scene.
The home office pathologist, i.e. her very own Matthew Levin, had an important job. Stupid as it might seem when two girls were so obviously dead and just as obviously had been dead for a number of weeks, it was still mandatory for them to be certified officially dead by a doctor and the coroner contacted before removal from the crime scene could be permitted.
Rush rang her just as they were passing Lime Kiln Bank on the Leek road through Hanley. There was no blue light on this squad car and its use wouldn’t have been justified anyway. There was no hurry – not now. Even so, Joanna, inside, was in a tearing hurry. There was no time to lose, she felt. And no car, helicopter or police motorbike could be fast enough to satisfy her impatience.
‘Sir.’
‘I’m sure you’re heading straight for Rudyard.’ It was a statement. He obviously also knew of her impatient streak.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’d like to meet up with you – perhaps tomorrow?’ Now that was a question.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘In the morning.’ And that was an order. ‘I take it these are the missing girls?’
‘Almost certainly, sir, but of course we’ll be making sure.’
; ‘And an arrest?’
Again something warned her, but she spoke the words anyway. ‘We’ll be bringing Barker in for questioning shortly,’ she said.
He rung off.
No one within a mile of Rudyard Lake could possibly mistake the fact that something dramatic was happening. There was almost a traffic jam at the far end of the lake as cars, vans and lorries jostled for access along the narrow track. And that, Joanna thought gloomily, was before the press homed in on their little drama.
The entire area was now taped off with only police personnel and people associated with the case allowed access. She was donning her forensic suit when Matthew’s BMW swung in next to her squad car. There is always an added dimension to seeing someone in your personal life arrive in your work mode. She smirked at him, enjoying the sight of the long legs threading into a similar suit and the blond hair disappearing in the J-cloth headgear.
‘Shall we?’ he said as though inviting her for a dance rather than to view a couple of rotting corpses in a seedy garage.
Her response would have justified an invitation to a Viennese Waltz. ‘Why not?’ And they walked inside.
The scene was already well lit and a health and safety check carried out in view of the asbestos. As long as no one cut into it they were safe – for now.
The lid was still down on the freezer. Matthew lifted it and peered inside, the pair of them trying to ignore the stink of putrefaction, a stench strong enough to draw predators from miles around. In this case the freezer lid had provided an effective seal until raised.
The girls had been thrown in. In death, their limbs were tangled. They were wearing shorts and T-shirts. The shorts were damp, growing some fungus. Putrefaction begins at the caecum and progresses through the body, and the leakage had stained their clothes. Because they had been sealed inside the freezer there was no insect degradation. Joanna studied not the girls but her husband’s face. Matthew’s face was a mixture. Gentle, strong and determined. As he lifted the girls’ limbs he seemed oblivious to the smell and seemed to see only what he needed to. Finally he closed the lid of the freezer and looked at her. ‘They’ve been dead a few weeks,’ he said. ‘Probably around the day they went missing.’ Then he addressed the watching officers. ‘We need to get them out of the freezer and down to the mortuary so I can establish the cause of death.’ Then he looked back at her and his green eyes initially softened. He addressed his next words to her very softly. ‘And will you be attending the post-mortem, Inspector?’
She nodded, still tasting the putrefaction in her mouth, sensing it in her nose, feeling it crawl along her skin like an invasion of worms.
‘It’ll have to be in the afternoon,’ he said. ‘I’m lecturing in the morning.’
Again she nodded. The police photographer was busy recording the scene and an hour later the mortuary van arrived to take the two girls, separate now for the first time in weeks.
Now the real work began. The area would be scrutinized, combed and re-combed. And somewhere they would surely find something that would help them find the killer.
Now it was no longer a missing person’s investigation but a murder hunt. And someone needed to inform the families.
Joanna glanced at King and he nodded. He knew what was expected of him.
‘I’ll go and make the call now,’ he said.
The forensic van moved to the top of the lane and connected with the phone lines and broadband. King disappeared inside and she heard the sound of his fluent French, clipped yet sympathetic. She caught a few words. Je regrette, non, madame. We are investigating. Mais oui. He put down the phone, picked it up again and presumably spoke to the other mother. Joanna heard almost the same phrases being spoken and then King emerged from the van. ‘They’re coming over,’ he said glumly.
Joanna’s response was brisk. ‘Well, we expected that. We’d better find somewhere for them to stay,’ she said. ‘And not Mandalay.’
Mandalay.
TWENTY-THREE
She filled Rush in as best she could.
‘The post-mortem’s later this afternoon,’ she said. ‘We’ll be checking the DNA and dental records to be absolutely sure they are the missing girls but they fit the description as far as age and appearance goes. There’s little doubt that they are Annabelle and Dorothée.’ She met his eyes boldly. What other two young women are missing in this area?
Rush’s mouth tightened and his eyes seem to shrink and bore into hers. She flinched from the gingery lashes, noted the receding hairline and weak chin which reminded her of President Assad of Syria, who was also not her favourite man. His voice, when he spoke, was clipped and uncompromising. ‘I take it you’ll be attending the PM.’
She nodded. It wasn’t something she looked forward to, but she had a duty.
Rush nodded his head. In approval? ‘I’ll speak to you later.’
She was dismissed.
She spent the morning with Mike at Rudyard Lake, sifting through the mass of evidence that had been raked in: everything from ice-cream wrappers to a grubby thong which had been found under a bush. Some story there. Between ninety-eight and a hundred per cent of their trophies would prove to have no bearing on the case at all. But one had to try everything. One crucial piece of evidence, no matter how small, could be the one that solved their case.
After a couple of hours deciding which articles were for DNA testing and which could simply be stored under Evidence, she recorded an appeal for help from the general public. She’d drafted her statement out very carefully. The points to emphasize in this were the time frames, the descriptions, clothing and general appearance. What they couldn’t cope with were thousands of rogue calls that led them in the wrong direction, or sightings of girls other than their two. Irrelevancies and red herrings which, like the assortment of bits and pieces in their bin bags, would still have to be sifted through. She made the appeal as clear and concise as she could, for local and national broadcast, and hoped that the post-mortem would guide them towards some answers. Then she drove into Newcastle-under-Lyme and the mortuary.
Matthew was already garbed up in green scrubs, waiting for her, a slight smile on his face. However much she might deny it, she could not hide her squeamishness from him, and he knew it. She handed him the two photographs. ‘This is Annabelle Bellange. And this,’ she said, handing him the second one, ‘is Dorothée Caron.’
He took a cursory glance at the two pictures and then, without sentiment, crossed the room and pinned them to a board. The two girls, still in the clothes they had been found in – shorts and T-shirts, were lying on the mortuary slabs no more than four feet apart. Matthew looked from one to the other. He would treat these two as a single performance.
Joanna noticed that Annabelle was wearing one sneaker, while the other foot was bare. She indicated to the police photographer, who was faithfully recording the entire procedure to take a close up of the shoe, and indicated that this should be bagged up. If they found its partner it might help them discover where the two girls had died. Frequently X-rays or even CT scans were taken to record in minutiae the severity and extent of any assault.
‘OK,’ Matthew said, more to Paul, his assistant, than to her, ‘let’s get going.’ He pulled his mask up over his nose and mouth.
Once the initial weights and measurements were done they began the serious stuff. Joanna had never been able to watch the initial stages of a PM when the Stryker saw carved through the cranium and the face was peeled down to expose the brain and underlying facial injuries. Still a little squeamish even after so many years’ experience, she kept her eyes firmly fixed on a mark on the wall instead of on Matthew and the mortuary assistant’s busy little hands, probing here and there. But even she, with her weak stomach and lack of medical knowledge, could see that that when he pressed on the lungs a certain amount of frothing appeared at the mouth. She knew the significance of this too. As he worked he muttered to himself, occasionally recording his comments and methodically taking samples. She watched h
im, her husband, in his own world.
An hour later he finally looked up. ‘Annabelle drowned,’ he said, confirming her suspicion. ‘There’s no sign of any other injury. I’ve got some samples to look for diatoms but my guess is that she drowned in the lake. It would make sense.’
She shook her head. No, it wouldn’t. How could a drowning in the lake fit in with a body concealed in the deep freeze of a derelict house at least four hundred yards from the shore?
She looked sharply at him. ‘There’s no sign of any other injury, you say?’
Slowly Matthew shook his head. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘She drowned.’
Joanna was thoughtful. If both girls had simply drowned, why hide the bodies? And who had? Was it the same person who had hidden the rucksacks so ineffectually – Barker? ‘Matthew,’ she said hesitantly, ‘are you able to tell me whether she was placed in the freezer soon after drowning, or did someone find her body and hide it at a later date?’ For God knows what reason, she puzzled silently.
‘She was placed in the freezer within a couple of hours of her dying,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go into detail, though I will in court – either the coroner’s or crown court. But in general it’s to do with lividity or blood pooling.’
Joanna nodded. She knew enough about post-mortem changes to understand what Matthew was talking about.
She gestured towards the second girl, Dorothée. While her friend’s face looked as though it had melted, discoloured flesh fallen away from facial bones, Dorothée’s was almost unrecognizable as a face at all. Misshapen.
Guilty Waters Page 18