Cold Blood

by Jane Heafield

  ‘So, like you say, it’s possible that Overeem’s use of “Alt F4 this joint” was an offered deal: Talk to me and I’ll be gone. But I don’t think so. I think it was a threat. As in, talk to me, because if you don’t, I’ll have no problem shutting down this village of yours.’

  Turner said nothing.

  The final piece of media was an audio file. This wasn’t from the rehearsal at the Crabtree ranch. It had been recorded, Bennet now knew, in a basement living room at the home of Sandra Gingham, where the Keys held their addendum gatherings. The recording was from the 0245 Monday meeting, at which Lampton’s finest chose to hide a quadruple murder from the world.

  Turner heard his own voice:

  ‘The film crew said it themselves. Their slang term, what was it? When they were done, they’d “Alt F4 this joint”. Exit, in other words. So we pretend they did that. They exited.’

  ‘Mr Turner, you never saw the ranch rehearsal video. I think we established that. So when exactly did you hear the film crew say “Alt F4 this joint”?’

  The councillor took a long time before answering. And his obvious disdain for the room around him and all its occupants was gone, replaced by worry. ‘I can’t remember. Maybe they said it to someone else and that person said it to me. Maybe I misspoke. I don’t know.’

  Bennet put his phone on the table. ‘This is what I think happened. When the film crew couldn’t find you at the Lion, Overeem called you and wanted to meet. Perhaps he asked, or perhaps he threatened. You agreed to meet. Perhaps you were curious, perhaps you were scared. But the meet would not happen at the Panorama. Perhaps it was too busy, too open, too centre of your world; perhaps you knew there might be a call for carnage. So Overeem got his camera and folder and checked out of the hotel, and he went to the only other place they could use for the live show. The ranch. That’s how you knew where the film crew was staying.

  ‘You were led into the kitchen, and it was there that Overeem threatened to destroy your life. Maybe he told you he planned to wait until morning to expose you. Maybe he gave you a deadline for admitting your crime to the world. Either way, you left that ranch angry and scared and knowing you needed a plan. A few hours later, you had that plan. You got a weapon, you went back to that ranch a few hours later, and you broke in. Four beating hearts in that ranch had become five.

  ‘Francis Overeem, possibly working late, had fallen asleep at the kitchen table. John Crickmer was asleep on the living-room sofa. Betty Crute and Lorraine Cross were asleep in separate bedrooms. Four people, four separate rooms, all of them dead to the world. Perfect. With your weapon, you went from room to room. Five beating hearts became four, three, two, and one. And then you left. No beating hearts left. Your secret was safe.’

  Turner said nothing. Bennet almost couldn’t, so thick was the anger in his throat.

  ‘Three of them never woke up. Maybe they never knew what hit them. One certainly did. Lorraine Cross. She woke and she fought back, but it did her no good.’

  The only sound Turner made was the cracking of his fingers. His eyes were on the table.

  ‘But now you had four bodies, and your village was doomed anyway. Unless you could hide the crime. But you couldn’t clean the ranch and dispose of four bodies by yourself. So you call the Keys, and you convened for that 0147 meeting. Your plan was to arrange for people to visit that ranch under the pretence of evicting the crew. When the bodies were found, you called another meeting, at 0245, this time with the intent of getting help to hide the crime. Crabtree had to be part of it, of course, because it was his ranch and he had that big loader, perfect for digging holes.’

  Still Turner didn’t speak.

  ‘But what of the accusation against you, councillor? What could this little film crew possibly have on you? This bunch of amateurs that was in town to tell the story of a ten-year-old tragedy? You were right after all.’

  Turner looked up. ‘Right about what?’

  ‘About your people not lying to you. They all said they didn’t kill little Sally Jenkins. You knew that to be true.’

  66

  After a break for Turner to consult with his solicitor, they went again. This time, the solicitor sat by his client’s side in the interview room. Both men had worked on a prepared statement from Turner. The usual format was: suspect learns of damning new evidence, suspect retires to prepare a new statement, suspect’s edited statement conveniently gives innocent explanation for new evidence.

  Bennet was eager to see how Turner would try to explain away everything that pointed to him as a five-time killer, but the new statement tried no such magic trick. It was simply a more bloated and flashy repeat of the alibi Turner had offered ten years ago when the Sally Jenkins case was hot. At a function at the time Sally vanished, called home to sick son, stayed home all night. The alibi was good, undisputed. But prepared-statement-aware detectives always held a little back for the next round.

  Bennet said, ‘At first glance, there was no external sign of how Sally Jenkins died. No damage. Until the post-mortem. Sometimes, you see, a blow hard enough to smash bone doesn’t even lacerate the skin or flesh. There’s a springiness to the skin. Sally Jenkins had no damage to the flesh and skin on the top of her head. No visible clue anything was out of the ordinary. But underneath, her skull was broken.’

  He showed Turner a photo, but the councillor didn’t want to look. The bone showed two clear breaks connected by a fracture in a semicircle.

  ‘The pathologist was quite certain about what broke the bone and pushed fragments deep into her brain. Look at the shape. Isn’t it clear? It was a horseshoe. She was killed by a massive kick to the head from a horse. And you owned the only horses in the village back in March 2010.’

  Turner looked horrified, but it wasn’t the look of a man who’d been caught. He stood up. His hands were shaking. He was ordered back into his seat, but instead he snatched Bennet’s phone from the table. The DC next to Bennet stood up and got two words into an objection, but Bennet grabbed his arm. Bennet wasn’t outraged, simply curious. He doubted the councillor was about to call in a rescue team or instruct a disciple to burn evidence.

  Turner dialled a number and paced in the small area between the table and the back wall as it rang. He was furious. Bennet was nervous with anticipation. He knew this phone call, whoever it was to, was about to change everything.

  ‘Lucas? It’s me. I’m with the police,’ Turner virtually screamed into the phone. Both detectives raised an eyebrow – so, Turner had known how to contact his son after all: at the end of a phone nobody knew about. The councillor then gave the address of the police station. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do. Get your arse down here, right now.’

  67

  Bennet and Sutton agreed that they were going to see fireworks if Turner and his son were together, so they arranged for both men to sit in the same interview room. And this time Sutton wanted in, even though he hadn’t attended the interview of a suspect since he was a detective sergeant. The wait was agonising, probably more so for Turner, who was left alone with a uniformed officer, instructed not to say a word. The detectives wanted Turner to stew in his own thoughts.

  When Lucas turned up, in a car nobody recognised, uniforms raced across the car park to intercept him. The young man wore trousers and a shirt, neatly ironed, and his face was smooth. Wherever he’d been since fleeing his home and his village, it clearly hadn’t been a box in a cardboard city. Lucas walked towards the officers as if to meet old friends. The officers surrounded him, but nobody made contact other than to snap on handcuffs. Lucas looked terrified, but the cause of it wasn’t his new location. Outside the door of the interview room, he stopped and took deep breaths. His own father scared him more than the police.

  Bennet opened the door and ushered Lucas inside. Lucas was brought into the interview room where his dad sat. He came in like a man to the gibbet, and his father leaped to his feet upon seeing him.

  ‘You lied to me, Lucas,’ Turner yelled. ‘To
me, of all people. And you’re burned with me now. Sit down. Sit down and tell them what you did. Now.’

  Mesmerised, the detectives standing nearby watched the young man sit across from his father, but his eyes were anywhere but on the older man. Yet it was to his father he spoke, as if both men were alone in the room.

  ‘You would be out all evening at your function. The babysitter would be stuck in front of the TV again. I crept out of the back door, across the yard, and scaled the wall. I was at the playpark soon afterwards, watching the entrances for Sally…’

  And the reason for this secrecy? Lucas’s father had always been in the house when Sally rode Reeve, making it impossible to have a sly go with B’fly, the giant Clydesdale she was determined to master. But now there was a chance! The day before the party, he and Sally had hatched a plan. Sally would leave the party one hour earlier, so they could have some secret time together. With his father away and the babysitter locked into her TV drama, Sally would get her ride, and Lucas would get his kiss.

  ‘Deal done,’ Lucas said. ‘I guess her fate was sealed in that moment.’

  Across from him, Turner watched with anger on his face. When his son paused, the councillor said, ‘So that was the first lie. You told me she came to ours to borrow your bike. Continue.’

  Lucas needed no time to consider. So, together he and Sally sneaked out of the park and along the streets. They knew who had cameras, who liked to watch out the windows, and puddles of darkness and cars helped them find hiding spots as they made their way to Turner’s home. They hopped the wall and approached the stables. Sally was virtually jumping for joy as B’fly was brought out. Using a stool, she tried to climb aboard.

  ‘I smacked him. He moved as she was climbing up. He knew she’d fall, and she did. So I smacked him for it. But she was on her knees in the mud, behind him. My smack made him kick. I didn’t see the impact, but I saw her fly through the air. There was no blood, but she wasn’t moving.’

  Richard Turner leaned forward, shaking his head. ‘And that’s when you strangled her to death.’

  It wasn’t stated as a question, or even a fact. It was a line loaded with sarcasm. Another lie exposed. Bennet wanted to sit, but feared a single movement might break the spell entrancing the two Turners. Still, the young man could not look up at his father.

  ‘No. But I thought you’d believe that. No blood. I didn’t even see an injury.’

  ‘But there was one. Her skull was smashed.’

  The files were still on the table. Turner slapped the sheet of paper aside, seeking the one he wanted. Neither detective moved a muscle as paperwork skimmed off the table and onto the floor, in case it broke whatever spell father and son were under. Turner snatched up the sheet he wanted – the photo of the break in Sally Jenkins’ skull – and stopped little short of ramming it into his son’s nose.

  Lucas leaned back so his eyes could focus. Even when Turner dropped the photo and it hit the table and glided to the floor, those eyes followed it. It was face down, but still the young man stared as he said, ‘I knew you’d be angry. Angry because I went behind your back to let Sally ride B’fly. So, yes, I lied. I’m sorry.’

  Bennet was shocked. To cover the fact that he’d disobeyed his father’s wishes not to let Sally near the Clydesdale called B’fly, ten-year-old Lucas had instead claimed he’d killed her. And Turner seemed more upset that his son was a liar than a killer. How messed up was that? If only Turner had also warned his son never to pretend to kill little girls.

  ‘Continue,’ Turner ordered his son.

  Ten-year-old Lucas Turner dragged Sally’s body into the stable, put B’fly away, and sneaked back into the house, into his bed, and there he yelled for the babysitter. He was ill, in pain, and needed his father. She got on the phone, and within minutes Richard Turner was driving home from his bash. Lucas was waiting in his room, crying. Turner sent the babysitter home. Alone now with his father, Lucas’s story poured out: Sally had come to borrow a bike, but she tried to open the stables to see B’fly. He said no. She insisted. They fell out. They fought. He was stronger. She couldn’t unsnap his hands from around her neck. Neither could he. Turner left his son in the bedroom and went out to see the body for himself.

  And here, a twist that shocked both detectives. Lucas looked up at his father, and in his voice was such rage the councillor jerked back in his chair.

  ‘And then she got up, now suddenly alive, and ran away from home, right?’

  The councillor found it hard to speak at first. Their roles seemed to have reversed, with Lucas now the accuser and his father weak and nervous. ‘What else could I do, son? You were ten. You wouldn’t have understood.’

  Lucas stabbed a finger at the hypnotised detectives. ‘So tell them. Tell them what you told me.’

  Turner looked at the policemen, one at a time, then back to his son. He folded his arms and visibly relaxed. An hour earlier, Bennet would have assumed the councillor had suddenly renewed a belief that he could lie or parry and escape the anvil hanging over his head. But everything was different now. This, he knew, was the calm that filtered through those unwilling to fight any longer.

  ‘I told you she was alive,’ Turner said. With his skills as a vet, he’d brought her round. She had only been choked unconscious and, revived, Sally had run away. Lucas feared she would tell her mother and he’d get in trouble, but Turner had told him not to worry. Sally hadn’t run home. She’d told Turner she was leaving the village, running away forever. ‘And off she ran.’

  ‘I believed you,’ Lucas said. ‘We all did. But I didn’t believe you for long. Nobody saw her, nobody heard from her. When I was older, I knew. She wasn’t living a new life somewhere. She’d been dead all along. And you fed that theory of her running away to the whole world. You lied to everyone, and you have the nerve to sit there and scold me for a lie? So tell it. I know what happened, because it’s obvious now. But I want to hear something truthful from your face.’

  Turner nodded and began telling it. Sally had been quite dead when he found her and he’d dragged her behind the stables until he could think what to do. That night, after Lucas had fallen asleep, Turner loaded Sally’s body into the boot of his car and left her there until daylight. In the morning, as the village was becoming increasingly panicked about the little girl’s disappearance, he drove out of Lampton to dump the body. He knew about Lake Stanton, a place he and friends had swam in as kids. He also knew a body could lay at its deep bottom for years. A decade later, the location had proved its worth and once more received the dead.

  From a charity shop in Castleton, a few miles north of Lampton, he bought an old steamer trunk. By Lake Stanton, he loaded Sally’s body into the trunk and inserted rocks in the spaces around her to cut down on the amount of air that would be trapped, so it would sink. He dragged the trunk to the water, slid it in, and kicked it over the submerged edge. Once the rippling lake had calmed, he turned his back. The easy part was done. Now it was time for the real test.

  In his car, Turner lifted an item he’d bought from the charity shop along with the steamer trunk. It was a black dress for Sally’s mother. He’d planned to get his car serviced as a reason for leaving the village that morning, but had worried that such a selfish action would invite scorn, perhaps even suspicion. The purchase of the dress, so Anika could present well before the media, would make an honourable cover story instead. Might win him some brownie points with the watching world. Might even impress Anika enough to allow him to slide that dress off her body one night.

  When his story was told, Lucas was a wreck, hunched over so far his chin was on his chest and he looked ready to tumble off the chair. But Turner was sitting up, alert, and he straightened his tie. He looked at Bennet and gave a smile. ‘Make that two things I was right about. Didn’t I promise you Sally had no murderer?’

  68

  When it was over, Lucas Turner was taken away to be arrested and processed for his part in disposing of the bodies of the film crew. Char
ges for his actions ten years ago would follow. His father was rearrested for his own part in the Sally Jenkins tragedy and returned to his cell. Although the conversation between him and his son had seemed genuine, no good detective would accept it at face value. Later, a pair of interrogators would reinterview both men and try to chip away at their story. It wasn’t impossible that the councillor and his son had invented the whole thing, knowing they’d fare better if a ten-year-old kid rather than an adult was charged with disposing of a corpse. Lucas’s anger at his father could have been part of the charade. Turner was certainly the sort to let his son take the blame, and Lucas was awestruck enough by his dad to go along with it.

  Bennet, though, believed what he had heard. Without a further role to play, and doubtful any new revelations were on the cards, he had no reason to stay. But he got permission for a final chat with Turner. He didn’t have any questions; he just wanted the last word, although he was unsure what it would be. Turner unwittingly helped him with that.

  Bennet flipped the hatch on Turner’s cell door and was pleased to see the man tearful on his bunk. Bennet had learned to suppress the hate he felt towards this man, just feet away, who’d hammered a spike into Joe’s heart. And his own.

  The councillor looked at him. ‘You heard the last thing my son said to me. He was grateful. I saved him. That’s what this was all about, Bennet. And that pleases me. I’ll take that to prison and it will keep me warm.’