Ruthless Crimes

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

  ‘The pathologist’s doing a quick examination right now but we’re pretty certain he’s been there for hours,’ Barry said.

  ‘It is a he, then? It’s not a woman?’

  ‘It’s a man,’ Rae said. ‘But that’s all we can tell you at present. Did you spot anyone you wouldn’t normally see on the platform this morning?’

  Jason shook his head. ‘Can’t be sure. I only get this train on Saturdays. I recognise two of the others but the couple with the suitcases, I haven’t noticed them before.’

  Barry frowned. Neither he nor Rae had been told about a couple. The only other people waiting to be seen by them were in the adjoining office, just two as far as they knew. Had the facts become confused?

  ‘I’ll go,’ Rae said.

  She poked her head around the neighbouring door. Sure enough there were only two people inside, other than a uniformed constable. They were sitting on a bench seat looking bored.

  ‘We’ll be with you in a minute,’ she said, and hurried away to find Stu Blackman.

  He was munching on a pasty, watching the forensic team working.

  ‘Stu, the guy who found the body said there was a couple with suitcases on the platform, waiting at the same time as him. Where are they?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know anything about that. They weren’t here when I arrived. Just the three in those offices. Is he sure?’

  ‘Yes, he is. So, does that mean they slipped away after the body was found? We’ll need to speak to the staff. Someone else must have seen them, surely? Can we work our way through the station staff together? Take half each? It’ll be quicker that way.’

  ‘Sure.’ Stu swallowed the rest of the pasty, brushed the crumbs from his clothes and belched. ‘Pardon me,’ he said, grinning slyly.

  With some difficulty, Rae restrained her anger at this inept detective. If they were to work together there was no point in causing unnecessary friction. ‘We’re looking for a man and a woman, probably middle-aged or thereabouts, each with a small wheelie suitcase. I’ll get a couple of the uniformed guys to search the station and surrounding area. Maybe you could start talking to all the station staff who were on duty at the time? I’ll move onto the ticket office staff. That okay with you?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ he replied.

  Was he really so lacking in gumption? He was the supposedly experienced sergeant, for goodness sake, and here she was, taking the lead. Of course, he’d spent years partnering the odious Phil McCluskey, who’d totally dominated him, despite Stu’s more senior rank. Stu had recently told Barry that he was a reformed character, willing to work hard to improve his poor reputation in the force. Evidently that ambition had been pretty short-lived, judging by his lacklustre attitude this morning. The adage about leopards and spots came to mind. Rae turned away and hurried across to a group of uniformed officers, giving them a description of the missing couple. They scattered across the station, looking for them, so she made her way to the ticket office.

  Fifteen minutes later she was reporting her findings to Barry. Several staff members had seen the couple in the few minutes before the discovery of the body. They hadn’t bought tickets, either from the desk or at any of the machines. They hadn’t been found anywhere on the station or in the vicinity. They must have left quickly because soon after the first police squad car had arrived, all travellers were asked to remain on site until they’d given the police a short statement and their contact details. They weren’t on that list.

  ‘Do you think there’s anything in it, boss?’ Rae asked.

  Barry grimaced and ran his fingers through his ginger hair, a sure sign that he was worried. ‘It could be relevant. But they could have been innocent travellers in a hurry who realised they’d be delayed for some time if they hung around here and went to find another means of travel. We need much more detailed descriptions if we’re going to try and track their movements. Let’s get busy.’

  * * *

  By the time the early afternoon came around and they were back in the station incident room, the three detectives had largely pieced together a coherent account of the chain of events, although the couple seen on the station concourse that morning had still not been traced. The forensic sweep of the area outside the station had yielded one important conclusion: the victim, local resident Robert Bunting, had been stabbed in a corner of the station car park. The bloodstains there left little doubt. The knife wound had been intended to kill him, early indications from the pathologist indicated that the blade had only missed the heart by a millimetre or two. Somehow, Robert had survived the initial attack and managed to make his way towards the station buildings but had then veered away from the main entrance towards the van parked against the wall. He’d managed to climb across and into the train but had succumbed to blood loss once inside.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Rae said. ‘Why didn’t he just go inside the entrance lobby? There were still staff about. Wouldn’t he have been safer there? They’d have phoned for an ambulance. There’s a chance he might have survived.’

  ‘He could have been trying to escape from his killers,’ Barry said. ‘Some witness reports from the last train to arrive last night suggest that there were two or three people scanning the car park as if they were looking for someone.’

  Barry’s phone rang. He listened, and then looked at Rae. ‘There’s a bike still chained to a rack, close to where the stabbing took place. It’s been there since yesterday morning. It could be his, so I’ve asked for forensics on it.’

  Rae frowned, thinking. ‘So, do you think he came in on that train? Came out of the station on his way to his bike, was stabbed and then escaped somehow? If there were two or three of them, they’d try to cut him off when he went to get help. Maybe he made for that fence and back into the station to get away from them. His fall onto the platform the other side would have opened up his wound and he started to lose blood fast. He crawled onto the train and blacked out. How does that all sound?’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Barry said. ‘We need to get some statements from people who came in on that train last night, to confirm that he was on it and see if anyone spotted anything suspicious going on.’

  ‘And the missing couple from this morning?’ Rae prompted.

  ‘Them too. They could only have been on that platform for five minutes, by all accounts.’

  ‘How did they get onto the platform without a ticket, boss? You need one to pass through the barrier.’

  ‘Well, that’s the interesting bit. The barriers recorded five entries this morning — Jason Lamb, our two other witnesses and two other unknowns. That train was London bound. So, who were they and where were they going?’

  ‘And how did they get off the platform?’ Rae asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can’t just walk out, can you? The barrier works both ways — it won’t let you in or out without a ticket. They couldn’t have vaulted the barrier with a wheelie case each, surely? The thing is though, there were only two staff on duty that early, and according to them they both went onto the platform to see what the fuss was about. So, maybe the missing two did clamber across somehow. It might be worth checking to see if a car left the car park at about that time.’

  ‘I can do that,’ Stu Blackman suggested.

  ‘Okay,’ Barry said. ‘Rae and I can pay a visit to the victim’s home now we have the address. By the way, the knife hasn’t turned up yet, despite a fingertip search of the station area. Can you organise a search of the town centre, Stu? Start with the main roads that radiate out from the station, then the side roads. You know the drill. Litter bins, skips, waste ground. There’s something about all this that’s making me uneasy, but I can’t put my finger on it.’

  Chapter 2: Bicycle

  Saturday afternoon

  Robert Bunting’s home was a two-up two-down house in the middle of a town centre terrace. The front door opened directly to the street but there was also rear access from an alley that ran along the back of the
row of houses. Each property had a gate leading into a garden or yard. Some had well-tended flower or vegetable beds, others were left in a semi-derelict state of weed-infested gravel. Robert’s was somewhere in between, showing neither great care nor total disregard. Characterless — that was the feeling Barry had about both the garden and the house. Of course, Robert may have rented the property and was reluctant to invest time or money in it, leaving the place as it was when he moved in: tidy and plain.

  Barry looked out from the rear upstairs window. His feeling of unease hadn’t dissipated. Even in the house, something didn’t seem quite right. It was comfortably furnished but revealed nothing of his personal life, not even the random untidiness often seen in the homes of single men. Was he a single man? He clearly lived in this house alone, but that meant very little. Maybe he had a partner or family elsewhere? Maybe the neighbours would know. Rae was speaking to them now, while he probed the cupboards, shelves and drawers inside. There had been very little to find. Now he thought about it, the place had all the hallmarks of a convenient short-term let. Maybe Robert hadn’t even owned the furnishings and fittings. That would explain its lack of character. It was almost as if the house had been fitted out from a mail order catalogue, and a cheap one at that. There were few magazines and even fewer books. The bedroom wardrobe was largely empty, and the clothes drawers didn’t have much in them.

  The detective team was also finding it hard to flesh out the details of Robert’s life. They’d found no clue about his work or any idea as to why he’d been singled out to be killed in such a brutal way. Barry couldn’t shake off the notion that their victim had chosen to keep a low profile and that finding anything about his life would prove to be a difficult task. He hoped that Rae was making better progress with the neighbours. He hadn’t even found a passport. Did that mean Robert had never been abroad, or was it held elsewhere? If so, why?

  Barry went downstairs and had another look around. This time he went around each room in turn, just standing and looking. Was he missing something? He heard the front door open and turned to see Rae coming into the hallway. She shook her head at him.

  ‘Sorry, boss. Not much to report. According to three sets of neighbours, he kept himself to himself. He’s only been living here for two months and it was clear he wanted a quiet life. All of them said they offered their help when he first moved in, but he didn’t respond. He wasn’t an unpleasant man, but they all came to the same conclusion, that he was a bit of a recluse. Apparently, he rented the place as a ready furnished let but no one could tell me who the letting agent is. I’ve got nowhere. Anything inside?’

  Barry shook his head. ‘Nothing. It’s a Teflon house. Nothing of him has stuck.’

  Rae shrugged. ‘Maybe he wanted it that way.’

  He shook his head. ‘There was a flat I went into, years ago, on my first job with the boss. She was suspicious right away. She said it had no personality, it had picked up nothing from the occupant. She predicted we’d find another home, somewhere else. And we did. The dead woman was a call girl, and it was her work flat. In some ways, this place reminds me of it.’

  ‘What, you think he was a rent boy or something?’ Rae was laughing.

  Barry felt offended. ‘Of course not. But it makes me wonder if this was just some kind of temporary place. We’ll need to trace the landlord and find out more. Let’s do one more walk through and then go. You take downstairs, I’ll go up.’

  He didn’t really know the purpose behind this final look. Maybe he still felt that the small house had a clue concealed somewhere, some tiny thing that they’d overlooked. It was a false hope, though. Nothing new declared itself to his careful gaze. He took one last glance out of the rear window. He could see across the top of the fence into the narrow alley that ran along the backs of the houses. A dark blue bicycle was leaning against the fence on the other side of the alley. It looked relatively new and expensive. Moreover, it didn’t look as though it was secured in any way. Barry moved to the side of the window where he was partly hidden by a curtain and looked more carefully. Had it been there earlier? He couldn’t be sure one way or the other. He recognised the make and model of the bicycle. His partner Gwen’s younger brother, Tom, was a keen off-road cyclist and had suggested that Barry should take it up. Wasn’t that bike the very model Tom had recommended? He could remember his reaction upon hearing the price — a combination of a snort and a gasp. Three thousand pounds. For a bike. If this was the same machine, what was it doing casually leaning against a fence, unlocked? Unless, of course, the owner was nearby.

  Barry looked more closely at the right-hand corner of the garden, where a shrub overhung the corner fencepost. Someone was standing there, watching the house, hidden behind the greenery. It was difficult to make out any features through the thin foliage. Barry backed away from the window and rejoined Rae on the ground floor.

  ‘The place is being watched at the back,’ he said, leading her to the front door. ‘Stay here but watch the street. I’m taking a closer look.’

  It was some fifteen yards to the street corner and then he turned up the side street to the alley entrance. It was wider than it had looked from the upstairs window, broad enough for a vehicle to get along it. He guessed this was probably for coal deliveries in years gone by. There was the bicycle ahead of him, and a dark-clad youth standing against the fence. A look of fear appeared on his face as he spotted Barry’s approach, he grabbed the bike and made off in the opposite direction. Barry considered giving chase but gave up after a couple of steps. It was a waste of time, given the speed with which the fast-receding figure was progressing towards the far exit some forty yards away. Barry stopped by the bush and looked around. Cigarette butts, sweet wrappers, marks in a patch of dirt. A forensic examination might yield something useful. He turned and made his way back to the house.

  ‘Anything, boss?’ Rae asked.

  ‘We might have something to go on.’

  ‘One of the neighbours has just passed by, someone who was out when I called earlier. Said he’s seen a car hanging around in the last few days. A black BMW with someone in it reading a newspaper. He’s seen it twice.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they took the number?’

  Rae grinned. ‘You must be joking. What are you looking for? Miracles?’

  * * *

  It was mid-afternoon by the time the two detectives made it back to the local police station, where the county headquarters support team was busy setting up an incident room. It was the same room they’d used the previous winter when they’d been involved in a frantic, but ultimately unsuccessful, hunt for a missing CID officer, Andrea Ford. She’d been found dead several days later. Once the computer systems were ready to use, Rae got busy with some basic fact-finding. They needed to flesh out the rather sparse details they had on the victim. She didn’t find it easy. The man seemed to have no online presence.

  Robert Bunting’s neighbour had told Rae that, as far as she knew, he’d once worked on the fishing boats. Another had said that he might have tried his hand at lorry driving. The company name Rae had been given failed to show up on any searches. Rae wondered if she’d been given the wrong name, so she phoned the neighbour to check, but she stuck doggedly to the original information. That’s what Bunting had told her. She was adamant about it. Rae then did what she could to trace other haulage concerns, but none seemed to employ anyone by the name of Robert Bunting, although a Saturday afternoon was not the best time to be contacting businesses with a query of this type. Maybe if she tried on Monday morning, she would get more productive results.

  Rae tried the voters roll and other council-based systems. The name Robert Bunting failed to appear on any of them. How strange was that? Maybe he hadn’t yet registered his address with the council, although if his previous residence had been in Dorset, something should have shown up. The surname Bunting wasn’t a common one, after all. This was getting weird. Time for the last resort. She tapped the name Robert Bunting into several other da
tabases open only to the police. None of the identified individuals in the short list that was generated seemed to be their victim.

  How could someone live so far below the radar? It was as if the victim didn’t exist. A niggling thought lodged itself in a dark recess of her mind.

  * * *

  Sophie Allen and Barry Marsh were standing by the window, looking out. The yellowing early evening light illuminated the nearby buildings, and gulls squawked noisily, their keening cries echoing among Weymouth’s rooftops. Sophie had just arrived after dropping her husband at home following the drive south from Oxford. Both detectives were holding mugs of coffee. Sophie, now in her late forties, was the commander of the Violent Crime Unit, though the wider responsibilities that had come with her recent promotion to detective superintendent meant that she was less hands-on than in previous years. In practice, Barry was now in day-to-day control. They were talking about the urgent need for another junior detective to join them, now that Rae’s promotion to detective sergeant was imminent.

  ‘Things never work out quite as I hope. The trouble is, I always expect situations to develop in a neat linear way and they rarely do. Every time, I underestimate the ways that people can botch up my best-laid plans. The world is just too complicated for a simple soul like me.’ Sophie sighed and took a sip of her drink.

  Barry said nothing. He had a vague idea of what she might be talking about but he’d discovered a long time ago that when she started on one of these formless ramblings, it was better to let her get to the point in her own good time. He took a sip of coffee and murmured something unintelligible, meant to signify agreement.

  ‘I mean, how was I to know my daughter would get in the bloody way and cock things up?’