Joyce Sullivan’s body showed no signs of the torture nor of the dismemberment that her husband had so greedily practised on others. Whether from respect or from lack of arousal was unclear, but he had removed her trousers and underpants, which hardly manifested respect. She had been hung upside down from a heavy branch, a triple looped rope slung over the branch and then attached to one ankle. It appeared that she had been strangled, but her throat had also been partially cut, and blood had poured down over her face and hair to puddle on the muddy grass below.
“The body’s cold,” Morrison said, “and no longer in rigor. I believe she died some time ago, but the freezing weather makes calculations difficult.”
“But this one,” called Rita, “is still warm. Only recently dead.”
“What?” Morrison whirled around.
Harry and Rita knelt beside Mark Howard’s corpse lay face down in the first sprouting snowdrops.
Sylvia remained standing. “That one,” she pointed to the body swinging with the whistle of the wind, “is poor Joyce Sullivan. And this one,” she pointed to the ground, “is not Maurice Howard, so he must be the twin. It’s Mark Howard, the money launderer and maybe the chimney killer.”
“Be careful not to contaminate the scene.” Morrison sighed. “I need to get to that house as quickly as possible,” and he began to run back to the car. Harry raced after him. Sylvia stayed with Rita, looking down.
“Odd to meet someone for the first time when they’re dead.”
“Murder’s always odd,” said Rita, standing and moving back. “I’ve never understood why killers kill. Lust? Mental illness? Anger? But the rest of us have such a deep instinct against outright cruelty. They say everyone’s capable of murder under certain circumstances, but I don’t agree.”
“Self-defence perhaps?”
“Then it wouldn’t be murder.”
The SUV reached the back of the house, rushing with a screech of rubber to the side of the grand building in the valley. The back door was wide open, slamming backwards and forwards in the wind. At first, apart from the back door, it seemed the house was empty and quiet. Then Morrison and Harry heard a yell from upstairs. Morrison ran up the back staircase, and Harry ran into the main rooms, gazing around for clues. There still seemed nothing.
Uncarpeted, steep and extremely narrow, the stairs to the attic rooms were alive with echoes, and Morrison’s footsteps resounded both upwards and to the cellar. Harry lost himself in the luxury of the great old house and found nothing else.
Arriving at the locked door of the attic, Morrison had followed the calls coming from one small room tucked in the eves. With a determined shoulder, Morrison shoved in the door’s small cracked planks and bent his head beneath the roof beams.
“Oh, thank the Lord,” whispered Kate, running into his arms.
Morrison backed off, but he recognised her. “Mrs Howard? Where’s your husband, ma’am?”
Kate burst into tears. “Stone dead, I hope,” she mumbled through the sobs.
Looking considerably surprised, Morrison asked, “Were you locked in here, Mrs Howard? Who did this?”
“He did,” she wept. “Bloody Maurice. I might have expected Mark, but not my own husband. Mia’s father, for goodness sake. And I’ve put up with all his sneaking around for years. I tried to make friends with Milly. I tried and tried everything.”
Realising that the woman was clearly under considerable stress, Morrison pulled out his phone, looked at Kate, and nodded. “Rita? Is everything alright? Good. Get over to the house, and bring Sylvia with you. Then get some more of the team out here, report the two killings and call in the forensic squad. I also need an ambulance as soon as possible. Maurice Howard’s young wife is in considerable distress, having been forcibly locked up by her husband. Hurry. I need backup. But first, the ambulance.”
He held out a hand and Kate clasped and held on tight as he helped her up, and then downstairs step by step. Harry was standing at the bottom. “No sign of anyone else. The house is lived in, and very comfy at that. But no one’s here.”
Kate stared at him. “Yes there is,” she said. “Maurice may have run off, but Milton wouldn’t. And the girl couldn’t.”
“Shit.”
“Bloody hell. Where?”
Kate staggered to the cupboard under the staircase and pushed it open. It swung inwards, and another unlit precipice of steps led downwards. At the bottom was a small but comfortable room, which was empty apart from its furniture. A large well tucked bed stretched across one wall and a cushioned sofa against the other. In the centre was a round table and three dining chairs. A large trio of teddy bears sat meekly on the sofa, and several colouring books and packs of pencils lay on the table. A chest of drawers stood beside the unlocked door. The floor was covered in thick warm carpet, and a toy train wound its way along the edges.
Another door stood opposite where they had entered. Morrison turned the handle, but the door was locked. Then he heard the sounds from within. Someone was crying with guttural sniffs and gulps of misery. Thumping or stamping on the floor was now continuous. But someone else called, “Go away and leave us alone. If you want me dead, you’ll have to restrain Master first.”
It was a female voice, hoarse, and cracking in the middle. Morrison kicked at the door. “Police,” he roared.
Silence echoed from the other side of the door. Then the female voice whispered, “Truly? Real police? Then in God’s name, help me.”
60
Morrison kicked at the door again, but it didn’t open. He turned to Kate who stood shaking, still sobbing. “Where’s the key?”
She didn’t know. He began to rummage around the room, searching in the places he knew were often used for easy secrecy. He found a pair of keys on a fluffy bunny rabbit key ring snuggled beneath the pillow on the bed. He tested the first one, which didn’t fit. He tried the second, and the locked door slammed open.
The smell hit him first. It was an average sized room, but there were neither windows nor other doors, and the bare floorboards were unpleasantly stained with what appeared to be blood, faeces and other things less obvious. A narrow bed on wonky wooden legs was also badly stained. The mattress was thin foam which was wrapped in a filthy sheet. Fallen from the top to the floor were two dirty coverless pillows, a thin sepia blanket, and a white alpaca wool rug, which Morrison immediately recognised.
Two stools, one toppled over, were in the centre of the room and a large bucket overflowing with a stench of long collected urine stood back against one wall, where a large crack in the floorboards had clearly been widened for use. The broken edges were thickly grimed, and the whole area stank beyond description. Nearby was a small metal bowl, much like a dog’s bowl, which appeared to hold fairly clean water.
Before Morrison in the middle of the room were two people, both in appalling condition. A young woman held out her hands. Completely naked, she was unbelievably thin so that her bones sprang from every joint, and she appeared like a walking skeleton, Every part of her fleshless body was marked, grazed, cut and scarred. Her breasts had shrunk flat against her chest, the nipples both caught into tight metal clips. Her eyes were bruised, her lips split, and her hair had been partially removed in clumps, leaving a bleeding scalp. Two of her fingers were missing, and the stumps were uneven and red raw. Her nose had been broken, and holes in both cheeks gaped wide.
Morrison mumbled, “Eve Daish?” and the young woman nodded. She pulled at the blanket and wrapped it around herself. Morrison pulled himself back into decent understanding, quickly shrugged out of his warm jacket and wrapped it around her. She managed to wriggle her arms into place, although the jacket’s sleeves came down over her hands. Morrison zipped it up for her, and it came to her knees. She sighed with such utter gratitude, that Morrison realised this was the first blissful occasion that she had been warm in a very long time.
The man sat on the floor, rocking backwards and forwards, still crying. Snot rolled from his nostrils to his ope
n mouth, and he licked it off either with his tongue or wiped his nose and mouth with the back of his hand. He was, Morrison realised, badly misshapen, but had learned since his miserable youth to walk, talk, and manage many other things.
“Milton Howard?” Morrison asked. “You, Maurice and Mark were triplets?”
Milton sniffed again and looked through the blur of tears. “Yeh. Me. Master. Milton, that is. And this be my lady. But ‘tis all gone wrong. I were happy afore and I ain’t no more. Number One says he’s gonna wallop my lady. Number Two done gone.”
“Your brother,” Morrison assured him, “no longer has that intention. You are both quite safe.” He paused, unsure. Then said, “My name is – Darcey. I’m going to look after both of you. You both need hospital treatment immediately. The ambulance is on its way. We must go upstairs to the front door. Come with me. Can you both walk?”
“I ain’t allowed outside,” Milton spluttered.
“You are now,” said Morrison, and led the way. He held the open door wide, saying, “Welcome to the first room of freedom.”
Eve stared around. She had never seen Milton’s underground room so clearly before, nor the stairs. For the first time, she was able to understand how he lived. Compared to her own months of misery, this was comfortable. Yet it was still horribly restricted.
Milton struggled up the narrow stairs, holding frantically to the balustrade. His legs wobbled, finding no balance and unable to stretch. As Morrison looked back and down, Rita pushed past, extending one helpful arm. Milton grabbed hold. “Anovver good lady,” he told himself as she held him steady and then hoisted. Morrison shook his head and moved out of the way.
When they arrived at the ground floor, Eve hardly believed the sumptuous furnishings and extravagant comfort that had been over her head all the time she had lived in terror and squalor. Milton was still in tears and clung to Rita. her hand to Milton’s elbow and her other hand to his hand. She asked, “Mark was your brother?”
Milton’s short twisted legs failed him, and he had to stop for breath. He smiled at Rita. “You’s a cop? I reckons yous a nice lady cop. I’s Milton. Yeh, Number One be my best brovver.”
The ambulances were waiting, sirens blaring, paramedics rushing into the house. “What’s the urgency? Who needs help first?”
They saw Eve as she stared back at the running, shouting chaos. Her knees went to jelly, and she realised with utter relief, that she no longer had to keep alert and prepare for the worst. At the moment of acceptance as she surrendered the fervour of terror, she relaxed, her shoulders slumped, her knees seemed to melt and she fainted and collapsed on the wide red carpet. Two policewomen knelt beside her, but the para-medics moved between, lifting her to the cradle of the stretcher between them, then quickly into the ambulance. Its siren once more sprang into life, and with a roar of engines, it zoomed from the short drive and up to the road, while another bumped downwards towards the house.
Rita still held to Milton, who was looking wildly around. “Where be Number One?”
“We want you to accompany us,” Rita said, holding tightly to his arm. “You’ll be lovely and warm in a hospital bed, and all your family can visit. Your lady is going to hospital too. She’s not very well.”
Milton nodded. “She ain’t ate much. Tis a bit my fault. I wanna say sorry.”
“You can afterwards. You’ll be in the same hospital.”
“The same bed?”
He was bustled away, helped up the steps into the back of the ambulance. Two policemen followed him in and sat close. The second siren shrieked its warning. Three teams of police were searching the house. “Keep out of the cellar,” Morrison called. “That’s the principal crime scene.”
Chief Cooper Cramble glared at Morrison. “My men need immediate access to that cellar, Inspector Morrison.”
“Your business is Mark Howard,” Morrison shook his head, standing at the top of the steps leading down to the cellar. He was nursing his own glare. “Mark Howard lies outside the shed up there, and there’s a team of your men and two ambulances.”
“The whereabouts of Maurice Howard also comes under my jurisdiction,” Cramble insisted.
“Go find him then,” Morrison said. “He’s runoff. Now here’s the third ambulance. This will be taking Kate Howard to hospital. I’m sure you’ll be able to question her by tomorrow morning, though not before, I expect.” Cramble stomped into the driveway outside the house, and Morrison spoke briefly to Kate. “Your husband has absconded,” he told her. “I should inform you now that your brother-in-law Mark Howard, is deceased. Murdered. We believe by Lionel Sullivan since the murder of Sullivan’s wife appears to have happened in the same place and at a similar time. But naturally, Sullivan is no longer around. Absconded. Two dead,” he was now talking softly and more to himself, “two on the run, and three in hospital. A poor result, but a result at last.”
Rita joined Morrison at the doorway. “There’s plenty of evidence inside,” she told him. “Principally regarding the elder brother and the money laundering. As for any other bodies, that will take longer to uncover.”
“The chimney?”
“Not so far. Poor little Eve Daish may have been the first one in this building. I’ve sent three of my people to the parents’ house in two cars, and they’ll escort the family to the hospital. But I doubt they’ll be able to see her. She’ll need no end of transfusions and tests. Besides, once they do see the poor little thing, they’ll be so horrified they’ll need help and some sort of treatment themselves.”
“And what do we know of Sullivan?”
“Nothing,” she said, shrugging. “Because of Joyce Sullivan’s death, and the way she was found, we’re assuming he was the killer. So did he kill Mark Howard as well? But why? We haven’t any proof of anything yet, but the hay shed has a fair bit of stuff we can test for prints and DNA. Meanwhile, the bodies are still there, and the forensic team have arrived. There are tyre marks leading away, but then they disappear.”
“The story hasn’t finished yet.”
Harry and Sylvia now sat together on a high backed sofa in the expansive living room. Sylvia’s navy woollen coat merged into the navy woollen sofa covering and its cushions. The police, a flight of dark uniforms, dark suits and flapping white plastic whirled around them, taking no notice of the two wistful pensioners, recognised or otherwise.
“I need a holiday,” Sylvia said under her breath. “Perhaps permanently.”
“Lionel’s still free,” Harry agreed. “He got poor Joyce in the end. He might try for us next.”
“Did you see Eve?”
“Only under the blanket on the hospital stretcher.”
“She was unbelievable. And we didn’t help this time. I think we only got in the way.”
Abruptly Morrison leaned over the back of the navy sofa. “Untrue,” he said, almost cheerfully. “You came up with no end of clues. You helped several times, and those made this possible.”
He had moved away. Sylvia mumbled, “He’s just being kind.”
“Nice to think someone’s capable of being kind.” Harry exhaled as though drowning. “You saw Joyce. Yes, she’d been taking risks, leaving the house. But no one deserves something like that.”
Squashed together, they stayed still, hoping not to be chucked out. They listened to the information shared, and the answers to Morrison’s questions. “Blood spatter leads to the back of this house from the shed. Car tyres in the mud take off down the hill to the main road. Who knows what car was originally parked out here?”
The clamour of detectives gathered, each having conducted his own efficient search of the building. Walsh held an iPhone, not his own, having found this on a bedside table. Crabb appeared down another staircase, shaking his head.
Napper and Tammy moved to Morrison’s side. Someone looked up, saying, “Howard’s car? Would have been luxury.”
“Scarlet Delorean with a helicopter landing pad on the roof.”
“No. Subtle. Obscure. N
othing ostentatious.”
“Dark then. Black. Navy.”
“Every second car is white or silver these days.”
“Mrs Kate Howard will surely know the make and colour of her brother-in-law’s car. That’s what Sullivan must be driving now. So what is Maurice Howard driving? A teacher’s car – nondescript?“
“Has anyone any news of the activity by the shed? Bodies still there?”
“It’s all closed off. And the public haven’t noticed what’s going on yet. No press, no media. But the pathologist has arrived and he’s busy already.”
“Osteopolist?”
“And three assistants, all in their best white plastic.”
But by the time of Mark Howard’s funeral, which was attended by none of his family nor business partners, public interest had descended into the labyrinth, and the press came. Milton remained in hospital and was as yet unaware that his eldest brother had been killed. Maurice was hunted all over England and Scotland but remained undiscovered. It was fairly soon, however, that Mark and Maurice’s joint British bank account was emptied and closed.
It was almost a full month later that a new account, in M. Howard’s name, was opened in Dubai. The man who had opened it, however, remained undercover and the local authorities did not wish to discuss the matter.
Eve Daish, surrounded day and night by her mother, father, brother, and sometimes friends, remained in hospital in a private ward, refused to see any representative of the media, but spoke regularly to Detective Inspector Morrison, Detective Inspector Rita Ellis, and on one occasion Sylvia and Harry Joyce. Apart from the severe malnutrition, Eve was found to be suffering from numerous injuries and infections. She underwent a hysterectomy, a kidney transplant, disappeared into plaster casts for several bone fractures and breakages and was booked in for future plastic surgery. She had been near death but recovered quicker than had been expected. Milton asked to see his lady and was refused. He was assured that she needed ongoing treatment but was no longer in danger. She did not, however, agree to see him under any circumstances.
The Games People Play Box Set Page 55