Core of Evil

by Nigel McCrery

  Violet glanced over at Daisy. In the time since she had last looked, something mysterious and irrevocable had happened to the woman she had once called ‘dear’. What had once been loose flesh and jowls was now just a covering laid on top of an ancient skull. What had once been eyes that had looked out on eighty-odd years of history were now just dull buttons upon which dust was already beginning to settle. There was nothing there any more. The miracle had occurred once again: what had once been a woman named Daisy who had loved and lost and lived was now just … just nothing. Skin and bone and a hank of hair. And everything that she had owned now belonged to Violet. Soon it would just be money.

  It would have to be done carefully, of course. One step at a time. Nothing to cause suspicion. But given a few months, it would all be hers.

  Once she had cleaned the house.

  Because every journey started with a first step.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When Mark Lapslie’s mobile phone bleeped, the sound tasted to him like chocolate. Dark chocolate, bitter on his tongue and gritty between his teeth and on the inside of his cheeks.

  It was still dark outside his bedroom window, but birds were beginning to chirp and there was a freshness to the air that told him it was almost dawn. He had been drifting for some time, dreaming of the days when his house had been full of life and laughter, so the shock of the sudden noise – and the sudden flood of flavour in his mouth – hadn’t disturbed him too much. Part of him had been expecting a call. He’d been tasting strawberries very faintly all day – a sign that something unplanned was about to happen.

  The bleep was telling him that he had a message, rather than an actual incoming call. If it was a call the ring tone was an extract from Bruch’s 1st violin concerto and tasted more like mocha coffee. He gave himself a few minutes to wake up fully before he reached across and picked the mobile up from the bedside table.

  Pls call DS Bradbury, it said, followed by a mobile number.

  Before dialling Detective Sergeant Bradbury, whoever he was, Lapslie padded into the bathroom and turned the shower on full. Catching sight of himself in the mirror above the sink, he winced. In his mind, he was twenty-five years younger, his hair wasn’t grey and his stomach didn’t bulge. Reflections kept catching him by surprise; the only reason he didn’t take a screwdriver to the mirror and remove it for good was that shaving would be almost impossible.

  ‘Hello?’ The voice was female, tainted with lemon and lime, the accent pure Estuary.

  ‘DS Bradbury? This is DCI Lapslie.’ He walked back into the bedroom so the cauliflower hiss of the shower didn’t drown out her voice. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Car crash, sir,’ she said succinctly.

  ‘Car crash?’ He took a breath. ‘Sergeant, I’m on indefinite sick leave. I don’t get called out on investigations any more.’

  The voice was wary. ‘Understood, sir, but there’s something about the scene of the crash that, when it got called in, made your name jump up on the computer. When I tried to get a number for you I was told that you were on gardening leave, but it didn’t say why, and when I put a call in to Chief Superintendent Rouse, he gave me permission to ring you.’

  ‘Okay, what was it about the crash that made my name jump up on the computer?’

  ‘I’d rather not say, sir. It’s just … special.’

  ‘Give me a clue, at least.’

  ‘There was one person in the car, sir – the driver – and there was no other vehicle involved, but when the first responders got to the scene they found two bodies. One of them was the driver’s. The other had been there for some time.’

  Interesting. That was almost worth being woken up for. ‘And?’

  ‘And there’s something about the state of the second body that apparently links to some old case you were involved in.’

  ‘An old case of mine?’ He cast his mind back quickly, thinking of anything odd, anything out of the ordinary in his career, but he could come up with nothing. No serial killers still on the loose, no bizarre cults, nothing. ‘What was strange?’

  ‘Sir, I’d really rather not say. It would be easier if you came on down.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  There was a pause. Steam was drifting in from the bathroom, and Lapslie imagined the DS looking around her in the dark, trying to work out the local geography.

  ‘Out along the B1018, heading from Witham to Braintree, there’s a side road that cuts across to Faulkbourne – you know it?’

  ‘Cuts across the river?’ He cast his mind back to the last time he’d driven up that way, for a dinner date that had ended in an argument and yet another night sleeping alone, longer ago than he really cared to remember. ‘Near the Moorhen pub?’

  ‘That’s the one. We’re about five miles down the road from the pub.’

  ‘I’ll be there within the hour,’ he said.

  ‘You won’t have any problem spotting us,’ she replied. ‘Look for the chunk of metal that used to be a Porsche.’ And, Lapslie thought, there was genuine sadness in her voice at the thought of a deceased high-performance car.

  He showered quickly, his brain picking over the bones of his career, but finding nothing of any relevance. By the time he was dressed the sky was tinged with pink and the birds had gained confidence. He was in his car and pulling out of his drive barely twenty-five minutes from the time the message arrived.

  His car was almost silent as it slipped through the narrow country lanes that led away from his isolated cottage near Saffron Walden, guided by the satnav system toward Witham and an event that was already over apart from the inevitable clean-up. He didn’t bother putting on the radio, or a CD. He could never listen to music when he drove: there was no knowing what tastes and, occasionally, smells might suddenly distract him if a particular track was played. Before his medical condition had been diagnosed, back in the time when he thought everyone could taste sounds rather than just him and a handful of others in the entire world, he had once been almost fatally distracted whilst driving when a Beatles song suddenly flooded his mouth with rotting meat.

  Life was just a rollercoaster of unexpected sensations when you had synaesthesia.

  The sun rose above the horizon, casting long shadows across the fields. He drove fast but carefully, pacing himself on the long stretches of road that cut through town so that the traffic lights were all green when he reached them, then accelerating on the bypasses and ring roads to make up time. The minutes slid away, one after the other, as the houses fell away behind him and were replaced with woodland. He drifted into a trance as he drove, deliberately trying not to speculate about what awaited him at the scene of the crash.

  The fact that he’d been called in the first place was strange. Lapslie had been on special medical leave from the Essex Police for the past six months – ever since his synaesthesia had suddenly escalated and his wife and children had been forced to move out of the house because the constant noise was driving him insane. They still kept in contact, but Lapslie was becoming slowly used to the fact that they would never be a proper family again. He was between posts, in a kind of limbo, reading reports and keeping himself current on the ever-changing world of police practice, writing the occasional report or think-piece for the police hierarchy, popping into the Headquarters in Chelmsford every now and then but never actually attending a crime scene or leading an investigation. Until now.

  The case – whatever it was – obviously had something to do with his previous career, but what it was he couldn’t tell. It wasn’t as if he’d ever worked on anything particularly high-profile. After joining the police, with a degree in Psychology, he’d spent some time in the Met. in North London before moving on promotion up to Liverpool and then down again to Essex. He’d spent a few years assigned to the Association of Chief Police Officers, using his background to look at better ways of profiling major criminals, then taken two years out to complete a Masters Degree in Criminal Psychology. Looking back, there was nothing that partic
ularly stood out. Nothing that might have tied him in with any unsolved case more important than assault and battery, or low-level burglary.

  Shortly after crossing the Brain, and about an hour after leaving his cottage, Lapslie turned onto the road where the crash had apparently occurred. Trees laced their fingers together above the car, and the rising sun behind him cast a deep shadow along the road.

  Striped barriers blocked his way a hundred yards or so before a lazy curve in the road. Bright white light spilled through the trees. A uniformed constable with a clipboard self-consciously straightened up and walked towards him, silhouetted by the false white dawn, already shaking his head. Lapslie brought his car to a halt and rolled his window down.

  ‘DCI Lapslie,’ he said, holding his warrant card out.

  The policeman looked at the card and then back at Lapslie. He frowned. ‘You might want to get this renewed, sir,’ he said. ‘The photograph’s a bit … out of date.’

  Lapslie glanced down at the card in his hand. Okay, his hair wasn’t brown any more, and there was a little more of it in the photo than in real life, but apart from the size of the collar on his shirt he didn’t think he looked that different.

  But it had probably been taken while the policeman standing beside his car was running happily around a playground somewhere.

  ‘Happy the way it is,’ he said tersely.

  The policeman noted his name and car registration on the clipboard as he spoke. ‘Shall I move the barrier for you?’

  ‘Don’t bother. I’ll leave the car off the road and walk.’

  It wasn’t difficult to spot the crash site, just around the curve. The Crime Scene Investigators had set up arc-lamps on poles which bathed the scene with a harsh, unforgiving light, despite the encroaching day. Lapslie paused for a moment, taking in the sight.

  The smell of petrol and burnt rubber still hung in the air. Twin skid marks intertwined with each other along the road surface, showing where the car had braked, skidded and spun like some demented fairground ride. He could only imagine the horror in the driver’s mind, twisting the wheel back and forth in the sure and certain knowledge that it wasn’t going to do any good and he was probably going to die. Judging by the marks, the car had been hurtling along the country road before suddenly seeing the curve ahead. What had happened? Had the driver’s attention been distracted by a boiled sweet or a phone call? Had his headlights been dipped so that he couldn’t see the curve until it was too late? Or had he just been drunk? That was for forensics to determine, but Lapslie couldn’t help speculating. Alive one moment, dead the next. The facts could be explained, but the driver’s state of mind? That could only ever be guessed at.

  He’d made the mistake of saying to a colleague at another crash scene some time ago, ‘I wonder what the last thing that went through the driver’s mind was.’ The man had just looked at him blankly. ‘The windscreen,’ he had muttered, and walked off.

  The melted rubber marks ended at the point where the road curved away. A stone kerb marked the point where tarmac gave way to uneven ground covered in leaves, tiny fretted ferns and bushes. The car had obviously hit the kerb side-on and the impact had flipped it into the air, spinning again but now around its longest axis so that when it struck the trees it was almost exactly upside down. Two trunks had been splintered at a point some ten feet off the ground. The car – or what remained of it – sat beneath them, crumpled like a discarded chocolate wrapper.

  Another barrier had been set up fifty or so yards down the road. An ambulance was parked by it, beside a police Peugeot 406 – painted in the yellow and blue squares that had jokingly become known to police across the country as the Battenburg colour scheme – a dusty Mondeo and a van which had probably brought the CSI team to the area. Two paramedics were chatting to a uniformed policeman, their casual demeanour indicating that their work was done, if indeed they’d had any work in the first place apart from pronouncing the driver of the car dead at the scene.

  A plastic marquee had been set up just off the road, a few feet from the remains of the car. The arc-lamps behind it made it glow. Grotesque shadows of the people inside it were cast against its walls: bent figures with distended hands, moving together and apart again in some strange ritual dance.

  It was all so familiar and yet, after his time away from work, so alien. So strange.

  He pulled his mobile from his jacket pocket and, after a moment’s thought, dialled a number that for a moment he didn’t think he would remember.

  ‘Essex Constabulary, can I help you?’

  ‘Superintendent Rouse, please,’ he said.

  ‘Putting you through now.’

  Moments later, a new voice said: ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Rouse’s office.’

  ‘This is DCI Lapslie. Would it be possible to speak to the Superintendent?’

  ‘He’s not arrived yet. Can I ask what it’s about?’

  ‘I’ve apparently been pulled off leave of absence on the Superintendent’s orders. I was wondering why.’

  The voice on the other end of the line went muffled for a moment, as if Rouse’s PA had put her hand over the receiver while she sought instructions. After a few seconds, she was back. ‘I can get the Superintendent to call you later. Does he have your number?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Lapslie said grumpily, and broke the connection.

  Slipping the mobile back into his jacket, Lapslie headed for the marquee and pulled the entrance flap open. The interior was large enough to host a wedding reception or a giant vegetable competition. The CSI team – figures clad in papery yellow coveralls – were gathered in two groups, taking photographs and examining the ground for evidence. A woman was with them, chatting. Her hair was short and spiky; her make-up highlighted her sharp cheekbones. Her breath gusted like cigarette smoke in the cold morning air. When she saw Lapslie she broke away and walked towards him.

  ‘DS Bradbury?’ he asked.

  ‘Morning, sir,’ she said. Lemon, as on the mobile, but with a hint of grapefruit now. Her suit was a designer special, but it looked like she’d been sleeping in it when the call came in about the crash. ‘Sorry to get you out of bed this early.’

  ‘Not a problem. I’m just glad to be back in the saddle. Gardening leave gets very tedious after a while.’

  Bradbury was obviously dying to ask him why he was on gardening leave – that wonderful catch-all term that meant someone was being paid to sit around the house all day, without actually specifying why – but she was too polite, or too political, to try. Covering the momentary lapse in conversation, and remembering Bradbury’s comment on the mobile about the wreck of the performance car, Lapslie nodded back to where the car was located, outside the tent. ‘Sorry to hear about your loss,’ he joked.

  She sighed. ‘Porsche. Lovely machine. Complete bloody write-off. What a tosser.’

  ‘I presume from the tyre tracks that he lost control coming into the curve. Hitting the kerb knocked the car into the air and hitting the trees totalled the car.’

  ‘That’s the way I read it. Nothing to indicate that any other vehicles were involved. The car’ll be checked out, of course, but there’s no reason yet to assume mechanical failure.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Some people just don’t deserve to have nice cars.’

  Lapslie glanced across to where the CSIs were gathered in their two groups. ‘What happened to the driver?’

  ‘Pulled himself out of the near-side window and crawled into the trees, which is where we found him.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘As a Dover sole on a fishmonger’s slab.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Emma Bradbury smiled, revealing small white teeth. ‘He must be the unluckiest sod in history. Even at the speed he was going, his seatbelt and airbag should have saved his life, but a short branch on one of the trees punched through the driver’s-side window and went right through his neck. He bled out while he was crawling.’ She indicated the left-hand group of CSIs. ‘That�
��s him over there. We’re waiting for the forensic pathologist to turn up. Apparently she’s been delayed.’

  ‘Do we know who he was?’

  Emma fished in her pockets and pulled out a transparent evidence bag with a wallet inside. ‘Name of Sutherland. Businessman, apparently. Mid-forties, lives just outside Chelmsford. Looks like he might have been on his way home after a late meeting, or something. I’ve sent someone to notify his wife.’

  A late meeting. A snatched dinner at a Little Chef or a Beefeater before the long drive home, dazzled by oncoming headlights. Lapslie remembered it well. Once upon a time, there had been someone curled up in front of the TV in their dressing gown, waiting for him to turn up. Someone who would have cared if he’d been involved in a car accident. Once upon a time.

  He shook himself, and looked around. ‘If there was no other car involved, who called the police?’

  Emma grinned. ‘A couple who were parked up and at it like rabbits just down the road heard the impact and the sound of glass breaking.’

  ‘So the earth really did move for them,’ Lapslie murmured.

  ‘They motored down – after adjusting their clothing, of course – and when they saw what had happened they called it in. Uniform took statements and let them get back to their respective partners.’

  Lapslie turned his attention to the other group of CSIs, clustered around something on the ground. ‘And the real reason you woke me up and dragged me all the way here? The reason my name flagged up on the computer?’

  ‘The other body Uniform found near the driver when they were checking to see whether he was still alive.’

  ‘You said on the phone that there was something about the state of it?’

  ‘I think we’re dealing with Dawn of the Living Dead.’