The Playground Murders

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘You’re getting on my nerves, Sarah.’ Lee parroted the phrase his stepfather used on him.

  The door juddered open as if jammed by something. A woman in a paisley apron, straggly hair pinned back and so thin that her bones seemed close to the surface of her skin, rubbed her nose with a hanky. To the children she looked impossibly old.

  ‘I ain’t giving you no bob a job so you lot can scram!’

  ‘We came to ask—’ Nicola began.

  ‘Is this yours?’ Danielle pushed Nicky and Lee aside. She thrust the cat at the woman. This was her case.

  ‘I… I…’ The woman gripped the door. ‘Bingo! Where did you find her?’

  ‘On the road. He’s been run over. He’s dead.’ Danielle decided saying this was less trouble.

  ‘Where Bingo’s gone she can’t feel pain,’ Nicola soothed.

  ‘He made noises and coughing.’ Danielle was informative. ‘He died from blood loss like Robbie. If we’d found him sooner he might be alive. He’d be a vegetable though.’ Her imagination ran free.

  ‘I had her tea ready for him! Salmon from the market. Bingo.’ The woman wailed into her hankie.

  ‘He’s dead so he can’t swallow,’ Danielle explained.

  ‘My cat Spiderman likes salmon,’ Nicola told the woman.

  ‘What is salmon?’ Sarah asked Lee.

  ‘Here you are.’ Danielle pushed the cat at the apron. ‘I’m a detective. I can do a post-mortem on him for you.’

  ‘Thank you, dear.’ Dumbly the woman accepted her pet.

  ‘Is there any money?’ Jason asked. ‘We brought your cat back.’

  ‘Shut up, Jason.’ Danielle hauled him back to the street.

  The children clustered around the memorial stone.

  ‘She’ll be so sad.’ Nicola was crying.

  Thinking to console her, Lee gave Nicola his Bic lighter.

  ‘She’s lost her cat at Christmas!’ Nicola shook as sobs took over.

  ‘It’s not Christmas yet.’ A thought occurred. ‘It’ll be your first Christmas without Robbie.’ Danielle was pleased by the coincidence.

  ‘I better get indoors, we’re meant to be decorating the tree.’ Nicola looked suddenly confused. This year they hadn’t bought a tree. Had her dad forgotten to get it from the market?

  ‘We do ours on Christmas Eve,’ Danielle asserted, although the timing varied and often didn’t happen at all.

  ‘Only if Dad’s gone burgling,’ Jason corrected her.

  ‘Shut up!’ Danielle dragged him off down the street.

  *

  A figure flitted between light spilling onto the pavement. From one house came a fairground rendering of Away in a Manger.

  Danielle Hindle shone her torch where she’d shown them the dead cat. She traced drops of blood to another stain in the gutter. The Christmas tree in the window of the cat’s house cast coloured light onto the street. Danielle went up to the door. She was shorter than Nicola so had to reach up to ring the bell. She heard shuffling. The door opened.

  ‘Yes?’ It was the lady again.

  ‘Please can I see your cat?’ Danielle asked nicely. Really she didn’t have to ask at all. It was her job.

  ‘Bingo?’

  ‘Yes, that one.’

  ‘She’s died, dear.’ The woman might have been consoling the child. ‘Wasn’t it you who brought her to me?’

  ‘It was, but I was made to by my friends. I need to see him.’

  ‘Her. Bingo was female. I wish I’d kept one from her litters. All those kittens…’

  ‘I need to see her. To confirm how she died.’

  ‘My husband’s buried her in our garden.’ The woman looked confused.

  ‘He shouldn’t of.’ Danielle was properly cross.

  ‘Why not?’ The woman put a hand to her chest, the girl’s official tone had made her feel guilty.

  ‘I need to see what’s inside. Rules are rules.’ Like a man in the dole office had told Joy Hindle when she’d asked for a sub. Her daughter watching closely, missing nothing.

  ‘Now, you stop that this instant. That’s rude. Do you hear?’ The woman gathered her wits.

  ‘He died from a brick being pressed on him,’ the girl asserted.

  ‘He was run over.’ The woman shook her head. Who told her that?

  ‘June, what’s going on?’ a man called from inside the house.

  ‘Not with his neck all squashed. Blood spurted out. If he’d been run over by a car there’d be marks. From the tyres. He would have been in the road.’

  The girl was standing on her head.

  ‘I’ll get the police on you!’ June was properly frightened.

  ‘I am the police.’ Danielle put her hands in her front pockets.

  ‘Leave us alone.’ June slammed the door.

  ‘Police,’ Danielle called through the letter box. ‘Open up!’

  The door swung away. Danielle’s knuckles were grazed as the flap dragged over them. A man burst out. He grabbed her arm. ‘Get lost, kid. You upset my wife and you’ve upset me.’

  ‘I’ll get my dad on you!’ Danielle struggled. The dad of her imagination upheld the law.

  ‘You tell your dad to come here. I’ll sort him!’ The man put up a fist. He got a look at the kid. ‘Holy shit! Eddie Hindle’s girl!’ He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. Calmly, ‘Tell Eddie, it’s disgusting sending you to play jokes. And at Christmas.’

  ‘It’s not a joke.’ Danielle was properly cross. ‘I’m investigating the murder of your cat.’

  ‘What the hell…’ Later, Norman Barton would link Sarah Ferris’s killing with the death of their beloved Bingo; the child had as good as confessed that she’d murdered her. The Bartons would have been a gift to the prosecution, enabling them to present a pattern of behaviour. They said nothing. No one told on the Hindles.

  Danielle climbed the park gate. She ran up the steps to the bandstand and did a dance from Fame in imitation of Maxine. She finished with a handstand and continued on to the playground.

  She felt thwarted. They should have let her see what the cat looked like after it was more dead. They shouldn’t have put it in a garden, that was for flowers.

  In the dark of the playground Danielle Hindle came to a conclusion that changed her life for ever. Murder was easy. She’d already crossed that line. Her mum’s voice in her head, the girl told herself that there were No two ways about it, you better sort out that tell-tale Sarah Ferris.

  *

  Lee prayed that his mum and Alan were down the pub. Seven years ago was when his mum had met Alan Ferris. They never missed an anniversary.

  ‘Robbie didn’t have an accident.’ Sarah pronounced each syllable.

  ‘Yeah, he did, Sarah.’ Lee was searching in the cupboard for something for supper. He took out a tin of alphabet spaghetti. It was a half tin, but he wasn’t hungry.

  ‘He went off the slide onto the floor.’ Sarah watched as Lee scooped out the tin into a non-stick pan. ‘I won’t eat it. It’s blood.’

  ‘It’s tomato.’ Silently agreeing with her, Lee returned to the larder. Baked beans, tinned sausages both in tomato sauce, raspberry jam, everything was murder.

  ‘Why did you give Nicola your cigarette lighter?’

  ‘Don’t tell that to your dad either. About me having a lighter.’

  ‘Now you don’t have it.’ Sarah giggled. ‘Why did you? You like it.’

  The little kitchen receded as everything became clear. Lee confided in his little sister, ‘It was a present. One day, me and Nicky will be married.’

  ‘Will you have children?’ Sarah settled in for a story.

  ‘We’ll have a little girl just like you.’

  Chapter Three

  April 2019

  ‘In all my years in the force, this was one of the worst murders I’ve seen.’ Chief Superintendent Martin Cashman marvelled at a section of bare floorboards. To the naked eye it was spotless. To Stella it needed a deep clean.

  ‘What are you doi
ng here?’ Her speech was muffled through her safety mask. She pulled it off. The last person needed at a cleaning scene was the investigation’s SIO. Besides, Cashman was a Met officer, he surely had no jurisdiction in Gloucestershire.

  ‘Nice to see you too, Stella!’ Cashman grinned.

  When Trudy had given Stella the brief, she’d jumped at the chance to clean a crime and trauma scene outside London. It meant that Clean Slate’s reputation was spreading, but what she’d really liked was that it was in Winchcombe. A village where, a few years ago, she and Jack had solved a double murder. Despite the grim circumstances, it was a good memory. A confirmed Londoner, Stella had yet grown to appreciate the peace of the countryside. Despite the association with death, Winchcombe retained for her a tranquillity more in keeping with Jane Austen than Agatha Christie. Not that – preferring cleaning manuals – Stella had read either.

  Two o’clock in the afternoon. It had rained from dawn, a relentless drizzle that slicked the pavements with a sheen of water and soaked those out in it within seconds.

  Donette and Shelley, two long-trusted operatives, had come in the Transit with Darren, Clean Slate’s latest recruit and an experienced crime scene cleaner. Stella had followed in her Peugeot Partner. In spacewalker protective garb, they had begun unpacking equipment and lugging it into the palatial house by the war memorial. When Cashman had turned up.

  The detective dashed at his forehead with a sleeve as if he’d been hefting cleaning equipment. He was used to gruesome scenarios, but still Stella noticed he seemed tense. Not that this scene was particularly gruesome. The body was gone, the blood would have had dried.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she repeated. Since Cashman’s promotion, he was generally desk-bound or, as her mum reckoned, preening himself for Chief Constable in front of cameras.

  ‘I could say the same to you. Don’t you have minions for this?’

  ‘I don’t have minions for anything,’ Stella snapped. Years ago, she and Cashman had had a fling, then he’d gone back to his wife. Martin had started out in the police as her dad’s mentee and ended up his best friend. In his mid-fifties, it seemed to Stella he looked more and more like her dad every day. He wore the same M&S suit and had the same burly stature (unlike Terry, Martin wasn’t putting on weight).

  Actually, today his suit looked more upmarket. Bar plastic overshoes covering his brogues, Martin was groomed and immaculate. Lucie May had told Stella (unwanted information) that Karen Cashman, tired of his relentless hours and of him, had finished with her husband. Stella suspected that the style refresh meant Martin was up for dating. Please not.

  ‘Obviously you know what happened here.’ With a sweep of his hand Cashman took in the spacious hallway, curving staircase and, through a doorway, a vast lounge. ‘Antiques shop owner murdered his mistress last May because she’d threatened to tell his wife and daughter about them and put all this in jeopardy.’

  Stella nodded assent. Yes she did know. What she didn’t know was what a murder in Gloucestershire had to do with Cashman, a Met detective.‘The area of origin was on the threshold of the living room. Brutal attack. From behind. Stabbing. Victim caught unawares, back to her killer. He made a decent job of cleaning up the walls and furniture. The carpet. Shame for him, it wasn’t to your standard.’ He shot her a look. ‘SOCO revealed a fluorescence show, spatter, clots, globules.’ Cashman paused. ‘Even without him finally confessing, forensics were overwhelming.’ His tone implied disappointment that the solve had been easy.

  Stella knew that it hadn’t been easy. The murder had occupied headlines on and off over the previous Spring and then again last month. Rachel Cater, thirty-one, was a secretary at Christopher Philips’ auctioneers in Cheltenham. At four-thirty on the 13th May 2018 Cater had been stabbed fifteen times in the back with a knife that the killer had taken with them. She was reported missing that evening. Philips had put up a reward for Rachel. Agnes Cater made a television appeal asking for whoever had her daughter to show her mercy and release her in time for her birthday at the end of May. Two months into the investigation, Mrs Cater told detectives that her daughter had been having an affair with Philips and the case broke open. Steeped in motive, Penelope Philips and the couple’s daughter Carrie were interviewed. They had alibis. Penny Philips had been caught on CCTV in Hammersmith on the afternoon of the murder. Her twenty-six-year-old daughter was also in London being a barrister. Or barista. Stella was vague on detail.

  Chris Philips had no alibi. But the police had no body. Philips was released without charge. Outside the police station in Cheltenham he told the media that he’d been stupid but he was a lucky man, his family – until then ignorant of his affair – had forgiven him. Philips appealed to Rachel to come home and put her mother out of her misery. The resulting coverage garnered Philips no sympathy. His using the word lucky was, Lucie had said, ‘frigging idiotic’.

  Then police got a signal from Rachel’s phone. It led them to to her body in a drain shaft and Philips confessed.

  Hit by staff sickness, Stella hadn’t paid attention to the week-long trial at the Old Bailey last month. Although she did remember the murder. Three days ago, the brutal killing had entered into sharp focus when, after the trial, Clean Slate was hired to clean the crime scene. Once Stella’s company had finished, the property would be released to the Philips family.

  ‘There are similarities with a case in London. Turns out it means nothing.’ Martin was vague.

  On her last visit to the village, while using an ATM outside the Lloyds bank, Stella had noticed the house. Double-fronted, steps to the front door bracketed by ornate balustrades, tall windows facing Abbey Terrace, she’d supposed that it would be a pleasure to clean. She was about to find out.

  ‘I got you the job.’ Cashman rubbed his chin as if uttering wisdom.

  ‘Oh. Right. Thank you.’ Trudy had said it was a ‘word of mouth’ recommendation from the Met. Stella might have guessed that the ‘mouth’ was Martin Cashman. Trudy had tried to stop Stella coming. As Stella’s PA she was taking a leaf out of Jackie’s book and trying to steer Stella away from being hands-on. Time was better spent building the business. But when Stella realized it was in Winchcombe there was no stopping her.

  ‘Stella, I do not need to emphasize to you that neither you nor your team will discuss what you see here. With anyone.’ Suddenly a copper, Cashman was stilted, arms folded. ‘Clean and go. That includes the Engine Driver and Lucie bloody May.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’ Stella bridled. Jack said Cashman was jealous of him. She’d put that down to Jack not liking Cashman. Tending to accept feelings at face value, Stella rarely felt emotions akin to jealousy. She operated on the binary simplicity of dirty/clean. Her approach, be they germs or crimes, was stain by stain.

  ‘Stick to cleaning and leave detecting to me and my guys.’ Cashman was referring to the cold cases – two were her father’s – that Stella and Jack had solved. ‘Whatever anyone might say, Chris Philips was found guilty. He’s got a long sentence and I hope that, should any Home Secretary let him out, he’s too gaga to make sense of freedom.’

  ‘I’m here to clean.’ Stella pulled on her mask. At her first crime and trauma scene she’d promised herself to treat it as a cleaning job. She would consider the event that had occurred there in the context of hygienic restoration. Detection shared much with cleaning – chaotic situations requiring a return to order – she would not confuse the two. Today her concern was remedial. To establish the nature of a substance to be eradicated and apply the right chemical. Stain by stain. ‘I signed a confidentiality agreement.’

  Her dad said a detective saw a scene as a collection of previous actions to be interrogated. How did that chair get there? When was it moved? By whom? Why? Her job was to eliminate evidence of those actions. She’d expanded her business to include the cleaning of crime and trauma scenes (from a trashed hotel room to the site of a murder) because as Jackie had pointed out, it was the obvious link between Clean Slate’s cleaning
services and Stella and Jack’s detective work.

  ‘You and I know that any contract is fish and chip paper. I’m serious, Stella.’ Cashman did a serious face.

  ‘So am I,’ Stella snapped.

  Actually this case – violent and brutal – had lingered in her mind. Rachel Cater had died during a terrible attack. However, the pathologist who had examined her remains hadn’t been able to confirm that Rachel was dead when Philips had put her into the shaft. Stella had been shocked by the violence of Rachel’s murder and the callous disposal. ‘Why are you here now? Do you need us to delay?’

  ‘No! Like I said, I was just checking on… in case we missed anything. Not that we did.’ He added hastily, ‘Plus I thought I’d say hi.’

  Here it was. ‘Unless there’s anything else…’ Stella moved past him to the lounge.

  The room resembled a computer-generated image of a cross-section intended to show elements of a building. The floorboards had been cut away to reveal the joists. Walking gingerly along an access plank, Stella saw holes in the lath and plaster to the basement far below.

  It didn’t take forensic wizardry to detect blood. The woodwork was brown where blood had seeped through the carpet and dripped between the boards. Apparently confident that he’d never be suspected, Philips had cleaned only what could be seen. Her dad used to say that arrogance and carelessness were a seasoned criminal’s true enemy.

  Out of the window she saw that kids were coming home from school; the butcher, in a bloodstained apron, hurried along the pavement with a delivery; a young man and woman in matching yellow anoraks were taking selfies by the war memorial. Metres away from where a murder had been committed, Winchcombe was going about its business.

  The room smelled fusty. Apart from the coppery odour of blood, Stella smelled decades of dust overlaid with the admixture of chemicals used by the killer. And something else. A perfume by Carolina Herrara. Trudy wore it. Disturbed by the crime Stella, usually able to pinpoint scents right to the name, hit a blank. She liked it which was lucky since it filled the office.