by Graham Smith
‘Again.’ This time, O’Dowd tucked each of Beth’s ankles under her arms and gripped her calves.
Even with all the other aches and pains, she could feel the DI’s fingernails digging into her soft flesh.
‘Three.’
O’Dowd’s screamed grunt echoed round the cellar as she dragged Beth free.
As she was pulled along the floor, Beth could feel her jacket and shirt rucking up and scooping earth and other substances from the floor as her paper oversuit was now in tatters. It didn’t matter. Neither did the scrapes the rocks left on her back. O’Dowd stopped pulling and buckled over, hands on knees gasping for breath.
With only her head left beneath the beam, Beth eased first one arm to her side, then the other. She put both hands on the beam and pushed herself free.
When she clambered to her feet, O’Dowd enveloped her in a crushing hug. ‘Thank God you’re okay.’
Beth understood the older woman’s relief. They’d catch merry hell from the brass when word of this got out. O’Dowd as the senior officer would get the worst of it, but Beth knew that wasn’t the major reason for her relief. It was bad enough the DI had led her down here, but the knowledge she’d been the cause of the accident would have eaten at her had Beth suffered any significant injury. Yes, the DI could be a grumpy sod at times, but the more Beth was getting to know her boss, the more she was seeing that, as well as being an excellent detective, Zoe O’Dowd was a good woman with a decent heart.
When she was released, Beth leaned forward and untied her ponytail. Her fingers weren’t exactly clean, but after dusting them on her thighs, she used them as a comb to brush out all the rubbish that had lodged itself in her hair.
O’Dowd lifted her torch and pointed it towards the door. ‘C’mon, let’s get out of here.’
‘Wait. I’m not going through all that without getting a look at what we came for.’ Beth put her hand on the torch and pointed it around the cellar.
‘You stay right there, lady.’
Beth smiled in the darkness. O’Dowd’s authoritative tone was underpinned with a parental concern.
The torch swept the cellar and when it reached the far side, it illuminated a section of the partition that had remained upright after the collapse of the ceiling. Bound to the partition was a skeletal frame with the tiny folded yellow wings of a canary attached to its shoulder blades.
There wasn’t enough flesh on the bones to guess whether the victim was male or female. It was a moot point. All that mattered was that there was another victim. What flesh there was lay inside the skeleton’s ribcage and looked to have rotted to the point where not even carrion feeders would eat it.
Beth completed her sweep of the cellar, fearful there would be a fourth victim, but to her relief, found no more bodies.
‘Let’s go.’
Beth took a handful of O’Dowd’s jacket and trailed her, elephant-style, back towards the stairs.
Thirty-Seven
When they emerged from the cellar, Beth drank huge breaths of the sweet, fresh air into her lungs. Beside her, O’Dowd was lighting a cigarette and dusting down her suit. Beth’s glance at her own clothes told her they were beyond repair. There were myriad minor tears in the fabric of her suit and when she looked at her blouse she saw the bottom two buttons had been torn off.
The CSI team’s manager, a short man with an intense manner, came running over. ‘What the hell happened? I told you it wasn’t safe in there.’
‘I tripped and we went down in a heap.’ Beth gave a dismissive gesture. ‘Just my luck to land on top of a pile of timber which had nails sticking out.’
She heard a muttered, ‘Bloody women’, as the CSI manager turned away.
‘Yeah well, sorry about that, but us bloody women have just done something you haven’t had the guts to do. And we’ve found a third body.’
The CSI man didn’t turn round at Beth’s rebuke but that didn’t matter to her. She’d spotted the stiffening of his shoulders, and that was enough. She hadn’t meant to vent at him, but after the scare she’d just had, it wasn’t a surprise that she’d spoken out the way she had. A bigger surprise was that it was her and not O’Dowd who’d delivered the admonishment.
‘Thank you.’
O’Dowd’s words were no louder than a whisper, but Beth heard the gratitude in the DI’s voice. Time would tell whether she’d just played an ace, or if she’d folded on a good hand. Still, she reasoned to herself, it was the right thing to do. The cave-in was an accident and Beth wasn’t the kind of person to hold a grudge.
A uniformed officer approached them. ‘Ma’am. I’ve taken a statement from Mr Cooper, the house’s owner.’
‘What does he say?’
‘Just that he returned from holiday yesterday. He picked up his dogs from his brother this morning and was walking them around the house when one of the dogs took off. He went after it and found the two bodies in the cellar. After that he came out and called us.’
Beth noticed that there was no mention of the third body. She nudged O’Dowd’s elbow. ‘Ma’am, we need to speak to him.’
The uniformed officer’s report told them nothing they didn’t already know, and Beth was sure that Cooper would have more information, provided he was asked the right questions.
A flash of irritation crossed O’Dowd’s eyes before she reined it back. ‘We do indeed.’
The uniformed officer took them across and made the introductions before sloping off.
‘Mr Cooper, we’ve heard the gist of your statement, but there are a few details we’d like to clarify.’ O’Dowd shifted her gaze to Beth.
It was obvious to Beth that O’Dowd was still reeling from the events in the cellar. She knew she should be too, but after a moment of panic when trapped, she now felt imbued with an icy coldness. Following the horror of coming to and not knowing where she was or why she couldn’t move, this was normal, everyday stuff, and it kept her on an even keel. The pain and bruising would no doubt kick in soon, but for now, she had a job to do.
‘You said you were on holiday, Mr Cooper. From what we saw, those bodies have been in there some time.’ Beth was thinking of the skeletal frame with the canary wings and the woman whose back sported the parrot wings. ‘How long were you away?’
Cooper ran a hand through his unruly mane of white hair. ‘Call me Max. We were away for six months. It was our silver wedding anniversary and we went on a tour of the world to celebrate.’ He gave a self-deprecating shrug. ‘It was my wife’s idea. I wanted to get on with the house. We did a deal, she wanted to go on holiday, so we did the holiday first, and now I’m going to rebuild this house.’
‘You’re a builder?’
‘An architect.’ Another shrug. ‘I made some decent money on a few projects and I’m now semi-retired. Restoring Highstead Castle is going to be a real labour of love for me. I’ve always wanted to restore somewhere like this to its former glory.’
Everything he was saying made sense to Beth. Doing up a place as decrepit as Highstead Castle would cost a fortune, yet he seemed to have money. There would be few better people than an architect to evaluate the costs and work to the specified budget.
The six months Cooper had been away would explain why the bodies hadn’t been found sooner. The body with the canary wings had been there for quite some time but in any case, left to their own devices, the rats and other creatures which inhabited the house would have soon stripped the body of its flesh.
The woman with the parrot wings had obviously been there for less time, but more than the man with brown wings.
Beth felt a lurch in her stomach as she realised that she was thinking of the victims by their wings rather than any other factor. She supposed it was because they didn’t yet have names for them, but she knew there would have to be some other kind of assignation to identify their individuality.
That there were three new victims of what seemed undoubtedly the same killer meant the investigation had escalated rapidly. Beth tried lo
oking at it with objectivity. There was a definite sequence. Canary Wings. Parrot Wings. Angus Keane and, finally, if her assumptions were right, Brown Wings. What she now wondered was whether there were more bodies at other derelict country houses they were yet to find.
She tossed a look at O’Dowd and didn’t like what she was seeing. The DI was floundering. She was casting her eyes around watching what was happening, but Beth could tell none of it was sinking in. The irascible mood, the rash move of going into the cellar others deemed unsafe, and then the impatient push which sent Beth sprawling were all out of character for her. Beth didn’t know if O’Dowd was cracking under the strain of the case, or if it was something else, but whatever was ailing the older woman, it had to be dealt with as they had a vicious, twisted killer to catch.
Beth didn’t know where to start. Should it be the missing persons’ files to see if she could identify any of the victims? Or should they locate all the derelict country houses in the county and have them searched to see just how many more contained dragon corpses? She thought checking the misper files would be the best use of her time, but it would be O’Dowd’s call.
Forensics may get some clues from the man and the woman, but she didn’t hold out a lot of hope. If the scene at Arthuret Hall was anything to go by, the killer seemed to be forensically aware and would have taken steps to eliminate the possibility of leaving trace evidence. The skeletal figure wouldn’t offer many clues due to the fact it had decomposed so thoroughly, but the person would still need to be identified. Relatives for all would have to be told their loved one had been murdered. The hardest part of those conversations would be telling the grieving brother, sister, child or parent just how they had been found.
Two fire engines rumbled into view followed by a support truck. Both engines disgorged a team of firefighters. None wore flameproof clothing but they all had their helmets on.
As a matter of habit, Beth’s eyes scoured the left sides of their necks looking for tattoos of kisses. It was something she never failed to do as she sought to find the man who’d deflected the bottle her way.
The support truck reversed as close as possible to the front door of the house and the firefighters got to work unloading it. Beth watched as they stacked up tubular supports of varying lengths beside the cellar door. Next to them a pile of adjustable props grew.
Once the truck was unloaded, the firefighters each attached a small lamp to their helmets and started to move towards the cellar. Like a team of ants, all knew their jobs and they worked with the minimum of fuss and direction. Two lifted a support and made for the door while another picked up two of the adjustable props. A minute later, three more replicated the task and then a third group followed. After a minute or two, a human chain was formed and they fed a support then two props into the cellar in regular succession until both piles were gone.
A generator was placed to one side of the cellar door and Beth saw a man carrying an extension cable and some portable lights down the stairs. One of the firefighters pulled the generator’s starter cord, and there was a roar as it jumped into life. He bent over and fiddled with a lever until the generator settled into a quiet hum.
The firefighters all came out of the building and were approached by the CSI team, O’Dowd and Dr Hewson. When she looked at the firefighters she saw they all wore grim expressions. One or two cast a glance her way, but looked away again before eye contact was made.
Beth heard the crew manager say that it was now safe to go into the cellar, which started a row between Dr Hewson and the CSI manager as both vied for superiority, until O’Dowd stepped in and told Hewson to wait until the CSI manager had done his first sweep. He retreated to the edge of the lawn and stood beside Beth.
‘I’m guessing from the state of your clothes you’ve been in there.’
His tone had lost all of the aggression he’d just shown. It only took Beth a fraction of a second to realise the pathologist had played O’Dowd and the CSI manager. Preserving the scene always took precedence over examining the bodies when there was no hope of preserving life. What O’Dowd had done was get himself access earlier in proceedings than he’d normally be afforded.
‘You’re not wrong.’
‘What did you find?’
‘Three bodies, though one was little more than a skeleton, all three with pairs of wings. Both the bodies showed signs of burning at the mouths.’
‘I see.’ Hewson lifted a bushy eyebrow. ‘And what did Dowdy have to say about them?’
‘Swear words mostly.’
‘I can imagine.’ He picked at something on the back of his hand then looked at her. ‘You haven’t mentioned the report I emailed you, so I’m presuming that you haven’t read it yet.’
Beth’s pulse quickened. ‘No, we’ve been out of the office all day. What did it say?’
‘A few things. The keys points are that Angus Keane died of heart failure that was brought on by the trauma of the burns he received. The insides of the mouth and the top of his trachea showed the greatest amount of fire damage, but there was also substantial burning to the lung tissue which indicates that our victim breathed the fire into his lungs.’
‘What about his blood, did you find any evidence of drugs in there?’
‘None. Not so much as a painkiller.’
While she didn’t doubt Hewson’s expertise, Beth couldn’t believe that Angus had lain still while the squares were cut from his back. ‘Surely he wouldn’t have knowingly let someone carve lumps out of his back without trying to break free?’
‘Absolutely not. But a lot of drugs don’t show up in bloods. I’d guess that he was doped up with something for his compliance. Rohypnol would make a lot of sense; it would make him compliant to the killer’s commands and if enough is taken it acts as a painkiller. However, it doesn’t leave a trace in the blood after twenty-four hours or the urine after seventy-two. Because we obviously missed both of those windows by a couple of days, I sent off a hair sample to the lab. It’s the most conclusive test, although it can take a bit longer.’
‘Not that this isn’t enough, but was there anything else significant?’
‘Just that the wings were attached with surgical glue, and that they showed a multitude of holes when I opened them to their full extension. If pressed I’d say they belonged to a crow that had been shot with a shotgun.’
Beth was trying to assimilate this knowledge and work out what she should be asking when O’Dowd called Hewson over.
With the opportunity for further questioning lost, Beth looked to O’Dowd for instruction. Not getting any, she turned on her heel and walked over to a uniformed sergeant who had just arrived along with two constables.
‘There are a couple of houses and a farm over there.’ Beth pointed to the sole access road to Highstead Castle as she addressed the sergeant. ‘Can you get someone on with door-to-doors, please?’
The sergeant harrumphed and made Beth wonder if she would need to get O’Dowd to make the request official, when he passed on the instruction to the constables. With nothing left to achieve, Beth walked back over to O’Dowd. The DI held an unlit cigarette between trembling fingers.
‘Ma’am, we need to talk.’
‘Not now, Beth.’
O’Dowd stuffed the cigarette into her mouth and thumbed the wheel of her lighter. Once the cigarette was lit she pulled her phone out and wandered off towards the farm steading at the far side of Highstead Castle.
Thirty-Eight
Beth gave up waiting for O’Dowd to return to the crime scene and went looking for her. Hewson and the CSI man had made a couple of barbed comments about her whereabouts. It had been a full half hour since she’d last spoken to the DI, and considering O’Dowd was the most senior officer on site, it was unthinkable that she wasn’t at the centre of things.
She marched her way to the area where she’d seen O’Dowd walking towards the old farm steading. A tractor rumbled in the distance and there was the unmistakable smell of fresh manure in the ai
r.
It was one thing nipping off somewhere to make a call, but not for this length of time.
Beth rounded a corner and found O’Dowd. The DI was sitting on a hay bale with her head in her hands and there was no mistaking the fact that she was crying. O’Dowd’s shoulders heaved as sobs wracked her body and whimpers escaped her mouth.
Unsure what to do, Beth stood frozen to the spot. But a minute later, with O’Dowd still absorbed in her sorrow, Beth knew she had to act. She took the last five steps across to where the DI sat.
‘Ma’am. Are you okay?’ Beth laid a hand on O’Dowd’s shoulder.
O’Dowd brushed the hand away, but she did at least turn her head to look at Beth.
‘C’mon, ma’am. It can’t be that bad. Whatever the problem is, I’m sure you’ll find a way to deal with it.’
The DI didn’t answer; she pulled her cigarettes from her pocket and fed one into her mouth. The glimpse Beth got of her boss’s face showed red puffy eyes and tear-streaked cheeks.
Beth allowed O’Dowd a few drags on the cigarette before crouching down so she could look her in the eye. She knew the next few minutes may well define the rest of her police career, but this was a conversation that she had to have.
The victims needed a police team firing on all cylinders. A team led by someone with their eye on the ball and a complete focus on delivering their killer to the justice system. Beth knew O’Dowd was this person, but right now, she seemed to have fallen to pieces.
Summoning her courage, she opened her mouth. ‘With the greatest of respect, ma’am, you need to pull yourself together. What happened in that cellar scared the crap out of me, but all’s well that ends well. Yes, we could have been killed, but we weren’t. Three people were killed in that cellar, and it’s our job to find out who killed them and Angus Keane.’