Cold Blood

by Jane Heafield

  Bennet was required to go ‘straight home and stay there’, compassionate leave beginning immediately. Eager to get out of the hotel ASAP, Bennet promised to obey this order. And he would. But he intended to be a little fuzzy on the definition of straight home.

  He entered Lampton via the north end and immediately noted that the village had changed. Police officers were everywhere, and the few locals he saw on the main road looked like shell-shocked war survivors. Four dead bodies as opposed to one missing girl this time: the village might not survive its new infamy.

  Doubtless there would be a village-wide canvass for information now that four bodies had been found. As he turned down a side street deeper in, he found evidence of this. From his elevated angle he saw a number of police cars and their officers knocking on doors.

  He drove past. At one house, a female officer was talking to a woman on her doorstep, and the homeowner was crying. A little further on, a suspicious constable stepped into the road to block him. Bennet showed his warrant card and was waved on. The officer didn’t seem to recognise him as the man who’d found the bodies and who was supposed to be on the motorway by now.

  He turned off the street, onto another, and parked outside a semi-detached house with a pond in the garden and a stack of cuddly teddies in the living-room window. A single police car here, but no officers in sight. They would be in another house, asking the resident if he or she knew of a raving lunatic in town. Bennet wanted this task done and dusted before he was spotted by a fellow blue.

  The gateposts were house-brick towers with stone lions the size of cats atop. One, at least. The other was a jagged shard where the lion was missing.

  The door opened. A craggy old lady appeared on a tiny three-wheeled mobility scooter. She had curly grey hair with red tips, as if long-ago dyed, and eyes sunken and cloudy. Combined with a droop to one side of her face, as if from a stroke, she looked little better than a zombie. He’d never met her before, but had heard from Lorraine that the lady had been a professional diver who’d nearly gotten a medal at the ’56 Summer Olympics.

  ‘Lorraine Taylor,’ he called to the old lady. ‘She was once a resident here. You never met her. But she’s very sorry. She was coming home a bit drunk one night and fell into your stone lion, and broke it. She was always very sorry about it. She just never got the courage to come here and apologise.’

  His words didn’t seem to register. She just stared.

  ‘She was a very nice person. I think I loved her. I might still do. It’s all very weird for me at the moment. She’s dead now.’

  Knowing the lady wouldn’t really understand had made it easier to say those words aloud. But voicing them made it more real for Bennet. He had loved Lorraine, he realised. Because she had given him Joe, he still did. He had not once been in her company in the last decade, having followed her life via digital words and pictures, but he would miss her immensely.

  ‘I want to kill the person who killed her,’ he told the old lady. Thankfully, those words didn’t seem to register, either.

  42

  Partway down the hill into the main road into the Well at Lampton’s centre was a terrace of convenience stores converted from houses, including Hughes’ News. Hughes and his wife had run the little newsagent’s since 29th July 1981, the day Prince Charles married Lady Diana. The last Bennet knew, ten years ago, the old pair had been saving for relocation to the Isle of Man, where they had family. When he saw a young woman behind the counter, he knew they’d achieved that dream. She put down her newspaper and stood with a smile.

  ‘Janine, isn’t it?’

  She lost the smile. ‘I’m not supposed to talk to reporters. Are you one?’

  ‘No. So, is it Janine?’

  She seemed to take a moment, looking him up and down, before speaking again. Clearly, she’d decided he didn’t look like a reporter. ‘How do you know my name? I don’t recognise you.’

  ‘You’re the Hughes’ daughter, right? You lived on the Isle of Man.’

  She nodded. ‘My parents emigrated over there, about two months ago now. They gave me the shop to run. I’d just got divorced, so I thought, why not have a change of scenery? But I thought I’d met everyone who lives here. They like to introduce themselves. I don’t remember you.’

  ‘We never met. I left Lampton ten years ago. I lived with a local girl called Lorraine Taylor. She used to come in on Thursday mornings to collect the Buxton Advertiser for her dad. She taught your mother a knee-strengthening routine.’

  ‘Oh, wow, yes, Mother told me about some knee exercises. She said they worked so well she could get up the stairs without the handrail. I don’t think she mentioned anyone called Lorraine, though. I’m sorry. So, that’s why you’re here? To visit? You picked a strange old day. Have you heard what’s happened up at Lake Stanton?’

  ‘I sure did. I bet the rumours are flying already.’

  ‘No one knows anything yet. The police are interviewing everyone. God, what a thing. And then we had that missing little girl that other time. People won’t like that being brought up after so long.’

  ‘Out of respect to the mother, right?’

  ‘Yes. Best if she is just allowed to move on, in her own time. Poor woman. Every time I see her in here, I just want to hug her and ask if she’s all right.’

  ‘But it would open old wounds, break her healing process, right?’

  ‘Yes. Poor woman. I don’t mention it.’

  So it wasn’t just visitors who got sold a line. Even residents who hadn’t been part of the world back then had been brainwashed by Turner’s bullshit about respect and compassion and doing the right thing. ‘Are people talking to the police?’

  ‘Sure, why wouldn’t they? Look.’ She picked up a leaflet from the counter. It announced a meeting tomorrow at 9.30am at the village hall, which everyone was invited to and expected to attend.

  ‘The police say they’ll give us updates then. God, this is so shocking. Too much for such a little place. To think we might have a killer in the village.’

  ‘Yes, it is. And Councillor Turner hasn’t tried to veto the meeting yet? Or called his own?’

  ‘Richard? Oh, he’s meeting some high-ranking police today, I heard. He rushed off to do it. He’s going to try to get the journalists kicked out. He’s warned us they’ll be all over the town once they’ve finished taking photos up at the lake. There’s a few hanging round. I thought you were one.’

  Liam put a pound coin on the counter. ‘About Lorraine. Your dad undercharged her one time, years ago. A bag of Maltesers missed off the bill. I’d like to pay it. Lorraine always wanted to pay it, but never got round to it.’

  Janine looked puzzled, then amused. ‘You mean ten years ago?’ She laughed and pushed the coin away, but he shifted it right back towards her.

  ‘She felt bad about it. Please take it. You’re going to hear her name a lot over the coming days. I just don’t want people to… please just take it.’

  He left her looking a little shocked. Missing young girl, quadruple murder, and now shoplifting. Welcome to Lampton.

  43

  All the village centre shops had shut early and few people were around. Of that scattering, most were police, but Bennet also saw journalists and tourists. Locals were by far the minority. The police had parked a large white van near the green, with a stall next to it, and this was where most of the activity took place. The stall had a police officer behind it and it was loaded with personal panic alarms, which a sign claimed were free to all residents. Two teenaged females were being shown how the alarms worked, while other folk queued or talked to other officers or the reporters.

  If the free alarms didn’t make it obvious the police were worried that a madman was still about, nobody could fail to get that message from a display stand near the van:

  HELP US HELP YOU. LOOK AT YOUR FRIENDS, AT YOUR NEIGHBOURS. DO YOU KNOW OF ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN UNCOMMONLY ABSENT RECENTLY, OR ACTING STRANGE? HAVE YOU SEEN ANYONE WITH BLOOD ON THEIR CLOTHING?
REPORT ANYTHING SUSPICIOUS IN CONFIDENCE TO THE POLICE.

  Bravo. No pussyfooting around this time. A young girl had gone missing, and ten years later a film crew documenting the crime had been murdered. Only a fool would connect both events by coincidence, or believe that the same criminal had snatched a girl, left town, and then returned to murder a team that might expose him. Bennet had overheard detectives at the Arrow saying the very same thing he thought, and which that sign effectively announced: Lampton was home to a vicious killer. A decade ago, mass-autohypnosis had convinced these folk their little enclave was safe and secure despite a child-snatching. No magic trick would bury the truth this time. Councillor Turner was going to have his work cut out sweeping this one under the carpet.

  Bennet found a space amongst the police and media vehicles to park. Nobody saw him exit and run down an alley beside the library.

  The first time he’d visited Lampton, on his third date with Lorraine, she had shown him the village centre and led him round the back of the library, where there was a small garden and the town’s only actual well. The well hadn’t been active in years and now was nothing but a circular rock wall with a rusty grate. But it provided a handy step for Bennet to climb into one of the two winter-naked small ash trees. A curved bough created a handy seat and there, hidden by thick green leaves, Lorraine had sat on his lap, and they’d done the sweet nothings thing new couples practised.

  But there was one thing couples did that they hadn’t: carved their names, at least in entirety. Lorraine had scoured hers into the wood, above a heart, but the old proprietor of the library, on a cigarette break, had ordered them down and out before Liam could immortalise his own name. They had planned to return and finish the job another day, but it never happened.

  Now, over three thousand days later, Bennet stared at a blank space beneath that heart shape, and prepared to slice his name into the bark with his car key. But he couldn’t do it. En route here, the idea had appealed as a reminder of their history, of their creation of Joe, and a way to honour Lorraine’s death. But now, sitting here, it seemed silly. She was dead, and they hadn’t been a couple for a decade, and she had had a new family, and what kind of grown man did that anyway?

  He moved on. A path out of the garden snaked its way to the village hall, which had been built as a free church school a century and a half ago. There was a small graveyard behind it. Here he found the mossy, cracked grave of a man called Dunn, part of the Durham Light Infantry in the Great War. Lampton had ceased burying people here decades ago, but the families of those already in the ground had objected to the removal of any remains. They got their wish; however, as the village transformed around the boneyard and the surviving kin left or died, the dead were abandoned.

  The gravestone he sought was down on the ground, flat, hidden from a distance by unloved, long grass. Liam was annoyed that nobody had picked it up in the fifteen or so years since it had fallen. Now, he dug his fingers beneath and pulled and pushed and lifted it. He got it upright in the rent it had opened when toppling, and stamped grassy soil down to lodge it in place. A stiff breeze might undo his work, but intent and action were what mattered to him.

  ‘Lorraine is deeply sorry, Mr Dunn,’ he told the air.

  As a teenager larking about, Lorraine and a friend had stumbled into the gravestone and sent it crashing to the earth. When she’d shared the story with Bennet, he had suggested they right her wrong, but their promise to never materialised. Now, with the task completed, he felt a sense of finality.

  The people of Lampton had mostly forgotten him, but he didn’t want that for Lorraine, who’d been born and bred in this corner of the planet, and then hounded out of it, and then slaughtered by one or more of its citizens. And because she’d been part of that reviled film crew, no one would care. He knew he couldn’t make the village folk honour her death, but he could make sure she got, if not respect, then zero disrespect. Amends had been made to all those Lorraine had slighted in her time here. It wasn’t much, but he hoped it was enough.

  And it was done, so now he was done with this damn hellhole.

  Actually, no. There was one more job to do.

  44

  No answer at Turner’s front door, so Bennet looked around the back, as any copper would. In the dusk, he saw light emanating from the former stable across the field. He started across the cold-hardened mud.

  Without knocking, Bennet put his face to the glass in one of the stable doors. Just like Turner had said, the building was now a workspace, with carpet and wallpaper, but the stalls remained. Above the first was a sign that said REEVE – former home of the filly Sally Jenkins liked to ride. It was now an office.

  But Turner was sitting at a desk in the other stall, formerly for B’fly, the Clydesdale Sally had dreamed of riding, and what Bennet saw there made him forget all about knocking. Turner’s back was to Bennet, so he turned the door handle quietly. The door was well oiled and opened without a sound. As he cautiously stepped inside, he heard the councillor speak.

  ‘Lana, stop right there.’

  Bennet stepped closer. Turner’s desk was before a laptop and a curving bank of monitors, five columns of three, each with two camera feeds minimum, some with as many as eight. Atop the bank was a larger screen displaying the view from CAMERA 85. Bennet had seen streets he recognised, and the exterior of the Panorama, and the interior of Jenny’s sandwich shop, and so much more. The sirens scattered about the village weren’t just for audio: they had hidden cameras.

  Camera 85 showed a typical street and a woman on the pavement with her dog, both staring up at the lens. The dog wore a coat and she wore a woollen hat. Turner spoke into a microphone by his laptop.

  ‘You left a stain, Lana. Get it up.’

  As Bennet watched over Turner’s shoulder, the woman called Lana turned away and squatted on the pavement before a brown stain. In one hand she held a small plastic bag that she put down. Dog poo. She pulled disposable tissues from a pocket.

  ‘No, Lana,’ Turner said. ‘Use your hat.’

  She obeyed without question. Bennet watched the middle-aged woman yank off the hat, spit on it, and scrub at a dog-poo stain on the concrete. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This was worse than just spying on people.

  Bennet took another step closer, but his foot creaked on a floorboard. He froze, but Turner hadn’t heard. Below him was a barely visible trapdoor. Another step put him two feet behind the councillor.

  ‘Hitler had a secret bunker too. He would have loved this bit of kit at the Wolf’s Lair.’

  Turner almost jumped out of his seat at Bennet’s voice. ‘Bennet. How dare you just walk in here?’ he snapped as he hit a kill switch somewhere and the screens went black.

  ‘Now I know why certain people don’t want their CCTV fixed. You really do run this place, don’t you? Like your own little toy.’

  Turner’s shock became outrage. His fists clenched as he stood. ‘You shouldn’t be here, Bennet. You were told to stay away. Get off my property and out of my village.’

  So, Turner knew that DCS Sutton had ordered Bennet to go nowhere near the village during the investigation.

  ‘I’m going, Turner, right after I leave here. But I had to come. As you well know, my son’s mother was one of the four found dead in that lake. Tell your people whatever fantasy you want, blame aliens, blame the Illuminati, whatever. But you need to treat these victims with respect. Lorraine Cross once lived here. Don’t pretend she didn’t mean anything to the people who knew her.’

  Turner gave him a long look, as if unsure there wasn’t a trick afoot. And he relaxed. ‘Okay. Whatever. Is that it? You can go now.’

  ‘No, one more thing,’ Bennet said as he turned to leave. ‘Let Sally Jenkins’ mother plant a goddamn tree for her daughter.’

  45

  On the way home, Bennet made a call to Hooper for an update on the Buttery Park stabbing. It had only been a couple of days, but it felt as if he’d been away from that investigation fo
r weeks. Hooper at first was reluctant to talk. DCS Hunter had taken over the investigation and warned the team that they weren’t to contact Bennet while he was on leave. Bennet had to remind Hooper that he was still the man’s boss and the investigation was hardly eyes-only, top-secret. And when that didn’t work, he had to promise he’d not say a word to Hunter. After the call, Bennet sent a mass text to the main members of his team to explain that he was still available at the end of a phone if they needed advice.

  From Hooper he learned of only one new development: the Turtons, parents of the murdered boy, Mick, had called the station to complain. Some thugs had been causing trouble: revving their car outside the parents’ house way past midnight, posting trash through the letterbox, and egging the windows. The Turtons wondered if it was to do with their son’s murder, as if they had done something wrong by seeking justice. They wanted to know if there were any suspects yet.

  Bennet knew no one had told the parents that the police had indeed found a suspect, and arrested him, and then released him due to lack of evidence. He had no doubt Don The Man and his teenaged crew of thugs were behind the harassment of the Turtons, and it upset him deeply. Those vicious idiots had killed the couple’s son and were now causing them strife, and the police would do nothing about it because Don The Man was officially still innocent and egged windows weren’t a priority.

  Bennet arrived home in time to take Joe swimming, but made an excuse why they couldn’t go. Instead, he told Joe he could have the new UFC game, and son and father could play it all evening. He could barely meet his son’s eyes, knowing the secret he held from the boy. The quadruple murder in Lampton was already a big story across the internet, but the media had scant details thus far and Bennet hadn’t found Lorraine’s name mentioned. Or his own. The major news outlets would save it for their scheduled programmes and publications later today and tomorrow morning. At the moment Bennet had time to work out the best way to tell Joe about his mother’s murder. But he would have to keep the boy in a bubble until then.