Behind the Walls: A British Crime Thriller (A DCI Pilgrim Thriller Book 4)

by A L Fraine

  “The property is an old, quirky cottage, and some of the walls are usually thick,” Jon replied. “We think the wall in question was originally an outside wall, but an extra room was built on the back, turning it into an internal wall.”

  “The Woods bought the house roughly a year and a half ago,” Kate continued, “and from what we know so far, the bodies look at least that age. We’ll know more once the pathologist has had a look at them.”

  “So, who owned the house before them?” Rachel asked.

  “That’s one of our first lines of enquiry. The Woods apparently bought it off a man called Duncan, who inherited it from his mother, and who then rented it out. But this is all based on their memories so far, so we need to look into that and see what we can confirm. We need to know who owned it before the Woods, and if it was rented out, who was it rented to.”

  “Also,” Jon added. “A neighbour called Evan, who seems to have an interest in the property, we need to know a little more about him too. He seems to have clashed with the Woods a few times and I think he has a link to the property.”

  “We’ll get onto it,” Nathan replied.

  “Good,” Jon said, as his phone vibrated. He checked the message. “Looks like the pathologist is ready for a chat.”

  “Great,” Kate replied.

  “I need to check in with the Super before we leave the station, though. Is he around?”

  “I think he’s in his office,” Nathan said.

  “Okay, thanks,” Jon replied. “Don’t want to give him any excuse to stick his nose in. Right, you all know what to do. Let’s get going.”

  Leaving the incident room, Jon marched over to the Detective Superintendent’s office and knocked on the door. He could see DSupt Ray Johnston inside, sitting at his desk.

  “Come in,” he called out.

  Jon stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Sir.”

  “Aaah, Jon. Sorry to call you in on your day off, but this case came in, and I thought it was right up your street.”

  “Of course, sir. Happy to help.”

  “Good to hear it,” Ray replied with a smile, and Jon got the impression that he’d done this on more than just a whim. It felt to him like Ray was testing him, maybe checking his dedication to the job and the team. He’d done this on purpose, though, whatever the reason.

  “So, some bodies were found in the walls of a house,” he stated.

  “That’s right sir. We’re looking into it now. We’ve interviewed the current owners of the house; it was the husband who found them. But I don’t believe they had anything to do with the bodies.”

  “And you’re sure about that, are you?”

  Jon nodded. He felt it was important to look confident about this. “I am.”

  “Okay, good, then I’ll leave it in your capable hands.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “See that you bring this one to a close like you did the last one.”

  “We’ll do our best, sir,” he answered. It felt like the DSupt was looking for any excuse to shut this unit down and didn’t like that Jon and his team had a good record so far. Well, he wasn’t about to make it easy on Ray, if that’s what he wanted.

  “Oh, Jon,” the Super said before he could make it out the door. “Any news on that escapee?”

  “Terry Sims? No, nothing. He’s gone to ground. We’re keeping an eye out for him, and we have his picture circulating, but we have no leads on him right now.” Admitting this grated on him. After having three successful cases on the unit, it annoyed him that there was nothing to report on Terry Sims. But he wouldn’t give up, and felt sure that Kate wouldn’t either.

  “Okay. Thank you, Pilgrim.”

  Leaving the office behind, Jon found Kate waiting at her desk, and wandered over.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Alright. I think he just wants to make sure we know that he’s watching us.”

  “Hmm. Yeah. He’s making his presence felt. He doesn’t like this unit, that’s for sure.”

  “No, he does not. He’d shut us down in a hot minute if he could justify it.”

  “You think he’d go that far?”

  “Why not? I’m fairly sure that’s what the ACC has put him here for.”

  “Well, let’s hope we can do a good job on this one too. Maybe we can show him what we can do and get him on our side.”

  “If we can turn him into an advocate for the unit, then that would certainly help.”

  “It might get the ACC off the unit’s back, that’s for sure.”

  “The Assistant Chief Constable only did this because we stepped on the toes of someone he looks up to.”

  “I think we did more than step on his toes,” Kate said. She was right. Russell Hodges came out of that case poorer and with his reputation tarnished. Part of that was Sydney’s, no… Ariadne’s doing, but Russell might not see it quite that way, and ACC Ward almost certainly did not. To him, he and Kate had threatened someone Ward looked up to, and taken him down a peg or two.

  “Yeah,” Jon remarked, his mind returning to Ariadne’s appearance on his doorstep this morning. The memory tied his stomach in knots, and he wondered if she’d show up again soon.

  The chances were high, he reasoned. She was up to something. He wasn’t sure what, but it would probably be wise for him to be on his guard.

  For a moment, he considered telling Kate about it, but he wasn’t sure the time was right, and he didn’t really know how to start.

  “So, we’re off to see Aileen, right?” Kate asked, and at that, the moment was gone. He decided to see how this Ariadne thing played out before he started telling anyone.

  “Right,” Jon replied as Kate gathered her things.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking, and I’ve heard of this kind of thing before, you know? Bodies in walls, it’s a gang thing. A way of disposing of their victims.”

  “You think there might be an organised crime element to this?”

  “It would fit the evidence.”

  “Alright,” Kate replied, as they made their way out. “I’d not thought about that. I thought it would be a serial killer.”

  “Might still be,” Jon remarked. “I’m just spitballing here.”

  “Alright, well, we’ll see, I suppose.”

  “We certainly will.”

  9

  “So, have you come across this kind of thing before?” Kate asked as they approached the Mortuary. “Bodies in walls, I mean? Have you any experience with it?”

  “No, not directly. But I’ve heard of it being used all over the world. Violent organised crime tends to leave a trail of bodies, and they need to be dealt with. I think they’ve just had to become inventive about how they hide them.”

  “How lovely,” Kate muttered.

  “I know. It’s pretty grim stuff.”

  “Do you think this might be that then? You think there’s a gang element to this?”

  “Honestly, I’ve no idea. We just need to keep our options open, I think. We’ve skirted the edges of gang activity before, with the Russian Bratva and the Millers.”

  “Yeah,” Kate mused. “Me too, with the cases I took on with Nathan, before you joined. Terry Sims was part of that.”

  “Yeah, I remember you saying. Ray asked about Terry when I went to see him.”

  “Did he now, okay,” Kate said. “If we don’t get anything on him soon, that could become an issue.”

  “I know. But he’s just disappeared, and no one’s talking.”

  “Someone will, and I can’t believe that Terry will stay in hiding for too long. Someone knows something, and when they come forward, we need to be ready for it.”

  “We will be,” Jon replied, confident.

  “Did you have any plans for later, other than some more unpacking?”

  “No, just that. I’ve got loads to do around the house.”

  “I thought so,” Kate said.

  “You?” Jon wondered if she’d been leading to something with h
er comment.

  “Not much, no. I need to go shopping, I guess. I need to get some food in. But, part of me just wants to get a takeaway and worry about the food later.”

  “Hmm,” Jon mused. The idea of a takeaway sounded divine. He could just go for something like that. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”

  “I know, right,” she said, opening the door to the Mortuary. Moving inside, they found a thin, bespectacled man standing behind the desk with a clipboard. He was scribbling something down and looked up as they walked in.

  “Uh, hello?”

  “Hiya,” Jon replied.

  “Hello,” Kate said. “We’re here to see Aileen?”

  “On what business?” the young man asked, pushing his glasses up on his nose. Jon guessed he was new and checked his name badge. Ben Hall, it read.

  “Police business,” Jon offered.

  “Oh,” Ben replied, looking a little surprised. “Oh, right. Jon and, um, Kate, right?”

  “Got it in one, son.”

  “DCI Pilgrim, and DS O’Connell, actually,” Kate said, sounding like a disapproving school teacher.

  “Of course, yes. Sorry. She’s, um, through here,” he said, and led them through to the main examination room, where Aileen stood near one of the slabs. Jon counted eight occupied slabs, with bodies in a wide range of states, from just a collection of bones, to a couple of well preserved, but mummified ones.

  “Busy day?” Jon asked.

  “Aye, something like that,” Aileen replied in her Scottish brogue.

  “How many cases are you dealing with today? Looks like a few,” Jon remarked, looking over the various remains.

  “Just one,” Aileen replied. “These all came from your house of horrors.”

  Jon felt his stomach drop as he realised what he was looking at and how many bodies had been stuffed into the walls at the Woods house.

  “Oh, shite,” Kate blurted out.

  “You took the words right out of my mouth,” Jon said. “So, there were eight bodies in that wall?”

  “That’s right,” Aileen replied. “All of them had been bagged up, like the first.” She pointed to the closest mummified one. “But not all of them were airtight, and some of them had already started to decay before they were sealed up.”

  “Okay, let’s go from the top. What do we have?”

  “Alright,” Aileen replied. “Two of the eight were almost perfectly mummified. They were bagged very shortly after their deaths, and the bags were airtight. But these others are all in advanced states of decomposition. I think, based on the cursory examination I’ve been able to do so far, they were killed and left to decompose for a while before they were bagged and hidden.”

  “Okay,” Jon replied. “You said they were killed. So, if they were murdered, do we know how?”

  “I think I have a pretty good idea of that too. These remains, these bones are in good condition. There’s one that has what looks like scrapes, most likely caused by a knife, though.”

  “So they were stabbed?”

  “Actually, I think that was an anomaly. Maybe that one struggled more and took more subduing. The one commonality I found amongst almost all of them was a broken Hyoid bone. It’s a small bone in the neck that often breaks from strangulation.”

  “They were strangled,” Kate said.

  “Do we know the genders of them? Ages?” Jon asked.

  “I can make some estimates on age at this point, but nothing too precise. What I can say is that we have a mix of men and women in here. Three women and five men, actually, and I think they were mostly young adults.”

  “Anything else?”

  “We have a few items that were found in the bags, which I’ve sent to forensics, and I’ve also sent some samples for DNA sequencing to see what we can get.”

  “Excellent, let’s keep our fingers crossed,” Jon replied. “Alright, so we have eight victims, men and women, all adults and all strangled.”

  “That sounds more like the work of a serial killer than organised crime,” Kate remarked.

  Jon shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. You said one looked like it had been stabbed, right?”

  “That’s right,” Aileen confirmed. “It’s possible the others were too. Some of them, at least. If the knife didn’t hit a bone on the six decomposed ones, we’d never know if they were stabbed or not.”

  “Fair point,” Jon replied. “What about timeline? When were they killed?”

  “Based on rate of decay between the mummified ones and the others, I think we’re looking at around two to three years. One or two might be a touch longer, but it’s hard to say at this point. I’ll probably know more later.”

  “Thanks. That’s a good start though, I can work with that.” He looked back at Kate. “I still think there could be a gang angle to this. Strangulation doesn’t rule that out for me.”

  “Alright,” Kate answered. “I guess we’ll see.”

  “I’m not taking bets on it, though.”

  “So not that confident in your theory then.”

  “I’m yet to plant my flag on either side,” Jon explained. He was keeping his options open until he had more information at his disposal. It was just too early to know. As he thought through the new information, and what it meant for the investigation, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

  Noting it was from the station, he turned away and took the call.

  “Pilgrim.”

  “Jon,” Rachel said on the other end of the line. “We’ve been doing some digging, and the man who owned the house before the Woods was Duncan Reid. He rented it out for a while, but we don’t have a name on that front yet. Anyway, we’ve confirmed that Duncan inherited the house from his mother when she passed. Not only that, but it turns out that Duncan is the brother of Evan, the man the Woods have been having a little trouble with.”

  “Aaah, interesting, that explains his interest in the property then if he grew up in it.”

  “That was my conclusion too. Anyway, we have an address for him, which I’m emailing over now.”

  “Good work. I think Kate and I will pay him a little visit, see what he has to say for himself.”

  “Sounds good, boss,” Rachel said and ended the call.

  “Anything good?” Kate asked.

  10

  From Guildford, Jon drove south and made for Shackleford and a house just outside the village.

  The weather had been good. It was nearing summer, and the temperatures had been increasing. It was pushing well into the mid-twenties, and as Jon drove out of the city, into the surrounding countryside with the windows down and the sun on his arm, it was easy to forget the horrors they were investigating.

  Jon wasn’t the biggest fan of hot weather and had never been one for soaking up the sun, but he’d begun to notice that things were, generally speaking, a lot warmer down here than they were back up in Nottingham.

  He often found himself checking the difference between the weather down here and how many degrees cooler it was back up north. The difference was surprising.

  Beside him, Kate had already removed her jacket and sat slumped in the car.

  “Do you like the sun?”

  “Me? Well, I have a kind of love-hate relationship with it, really. On the one hand, I always prefer the warmer weather. I like it hot. I much prefer that to the cold. But, my skin generally doesn’t agree with me. I’ve always been pale, which is probably the Irish in me, and I tend to burn easily.”

  “Suncream it is then.”

  “Yeah. Factor fifty all the way, when I remember. I usually just end up looking like a lobster before I get into the habit of putting it on in the morning.”

  “Mmm, sexy.”

  Kate raised an eyebrow at him. “What are you, Spongebob or something?”

  Jon went to speak, but then closed his mouth as he frowned at Kate’s comment before he finally spoke. “I’m not sure that makes sense.”

  “Whatever, you big freak.”

  Jon turned in
to the address he’d been sent from the station. The house itself was a modest but nice detached affair, with a couple of outbuildings dotted around the good-sized garden. There were a few vehicles parked on the grounds, several cars, a van, and even an older motorcycle that looked like it had seen better days. The grass looked like it needed a cut around a couple of the cars, too. It looked like it was slowly consuming them.

  “Someone isn’t a gardener,” Jon remarked as he saw a man wander out of what looked like a garage. He was wiping his hands on a rag and watched their unmarked car as Jon turned off the engine.

  “Let’s go and introduce ourselves, shall we?”

  “I think that’s a good idea. It might look weird if we just sit here staring at him.”

  “Good point, well made, Barry.”

  Kate smiled, as they both climbed out. Jon pulled his warrant card from his pocket as he approached.

  “Can I help you?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” Jon replied, and held his card up. “I’m DCI Pilgrim. We’re looking for Duncan Reid.”

  “You’re speaking to him.”

  “Oh good. Can we have a moment of your time?”

  “Yeah, sure. I guess. What’s this about?”

  “We need to ask you some questions, that’s all,” Kate said.

  “Fair enough. Why don’t we take a seat.” He waved towards a set of metal garden chairs around a similar metal table and took one for himself. Jon followed suit, with Kate moving a chair to sit closer to him. “How can I help?”

  “Well, firstly, I hope we’re not interrupting anything?” Kate asked.

  “Nothing of vital importance, no.”

  “Do you live alone here?”

  “I do.”

  “And this is your house?” Jon asked.

  “It is. I’ve lived here for years.”

  “Okay. We understand you used to own a house in Newdigate, is that right?”

  “Yeah, Hill View, just off Rusper Road. My childhood home, actually.”

  “I see. And when did you own it from?”

  “Well, I sold it about a year and a half ago, and I think I owned it for maybe a couple of years before that? Something like that, anyway. I didn’t live there though, I just rented it out. I mean, I used to live there, when I was a child, like. It was my mother's house. But I’d moved out here, and when I inherited it, I didn’t really want to live there, you know? So I thought it might be a good way to make a bit of money.”