Lethal Game, page 3
‘We need to make this cordon wider,’ Joel said. ‘And close this road from the other end.’
‘We’ve put a sign out at the other end. No one’s come past it since we’ve been here.’
‘It’s still early. Once people get an idea of what’s going on we’ll get the usual stream of murder tourists. I’d rather we made it a little more difficult. Can you call up on air and put a rocket up the early turn? Has it been tagged for CSI?’
‘First thing we did, sir. There’s no one in from CSI to speak to yet. There’s no night-turn cover anymore.’
‘Of course there isn’t!’ Joel smiled, he couldn’t help it. Sometimes the extent of police cuts was such that all you could do was smile and shake your head. He moved away, calling out his assurances that he would make some calls to the early-turn skipper himself, see if he could get him and his mate off-duty. The lack of resources was an issue for Joel too, although for different reasons. He actually had a budget to recruit more personnel to his team, but that meant DCs who were willing to move from another part of the business, who could be released by their current team and who were good enough to make Joel’s team better. This holy trinity of needs was making recruitment just about impossible – for everyone.
Superintendent Debbie Marsden had sold this role to him by telling him policing was changing and that he could be a part of that. Major Crime were part of the old guard and had a team on each of the three areas. They were viciously territorial: when a murder was reported in the northern part of the county, two of the three teams had remained sat on their hands, keeping their desks clear, waiting for something to happen on their ‘patch’. Joel’s team were a centralised investigative team out of Headquarters. They went where they were needed and took the lead, then pulled on the local resources as needed. This was the theory at least. The resistance to change had been stronger than he might have anticipated, but, standing out in the fresh air with a new investigation to get his teeth into, and buoyed by his conversation in the gym that morning, Joel dared to think that they might now be over the worst.
‘What time are CSI in?’ Joel knew the answer already; he was thinking out loud. DS Rose indulged him anyway.
‘Eight. Same time as the rest of our team.’ There didn’t seem to be any irony in her tone any longer when she said team. Nothing was getting done for an hour at least. At least it gave them time to survey the scene before CSI arrived and took over.
The phone box was in a poor state. Joel was a keen cyclist, a hobby that had him exploring villages and rural roads in the county. So he knew there were still red phone boxes hidden among small villages. Generally, however, they were extravagant garden features for the wealthy, or book-swap hubs in the community garden of some well-to-do village. This one seemed different: operational. It even had a handset, though it was hanging down, visible through a door that was wedged open by a protruding leg.
He focused on the victim, a young woman. She was lying on her side, her left leg tucked under her outstretched right. Joel stepped closer, snapping on a pair of disposable gloves to pull the door open as wide as it would go to get a better look. DS Rose stood just behind him.
‘Jesus,’ she uttered close to his ear. ‘Someone meant it.’
Joel could hardly disagree. He now had a clearer view of a young woman who had never stood a chance. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, pretty too, with an athletic build and long blonde hair that was loose, falling over part of her face. The leg that was pulled up under her was badly damaged by what looked like a blast injury. A chunk of flesh was black and ragged where it surrounded an exposed shin bone. The bone itself was splintered just above the ankle, and with a sizeable piece missing. Her bare foot was connected by just a flap of skin and bent back under the knee. Joel’s gaze moved higher up her body to where more injuries were visible. She was wearing a loose white dress that had rucked up enough to reveal a series of ugly puncture wounds in her abdomen. Joel leant in closer.
‘Do they look like they’re in a row to you?’
‘Yeah. I would say they do,’ DS Rose agreed.
‘Like a sausage on a barbecue,’ Joel said.
‘If you mean pricked with a fork, then yeah, that would make sense.’
‘Only in our world could a woman stabbed to death with a giant fork in a phone box make sense.’
‘So, a pitchfork then? Is that what we’re saying?’ DS Rose said.
Joel took a step away to study where the ground was freshly disturbed. The phone-box door opened out towards the road. The pavement that passed across its front was slim, while the incline looked far more slight than it had from the road. The grass was long enough to show a flattened trail that continued across the edge of the flower garden to snap a few Sweet Rockets and to reinforce the image of the young woman being dragged. The stems all had a uniform bend that gave a sense of the direction: from the road up the incline to the phone box. The thin layer of mud baked onto the road surface wasn’t the only substance here; there was blood too. A lot. Its first appearance was in the centre of the road and here the surface looked different. The baked-in mud was gone, removed by a method that had left a fresh looking white scar, like from a directed blast. More blood was stretched out across the road, towards the phone box, gluing strands of grass together as it continued across the bank. Joel and his DS looked at each other.
‘So a young woman dressed in a white dress and barefoot has her lower leg blown off by, what, a shotgun? Then she is dragged over a road and finished off in the phone box with a pitchfork in her chest. Is that what we’re saying?’
‘I don’t think so,’ DS Rose said. ‘Not quite, at least. Look at the blood.’ She pointed down at the road. ‘There’s a pattern, points where the blood’s pooled and then where it’s smeared in a line.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I think she dragged herself.’
‘With her foot hanging off?’ Joel said.
‘Adrenaline mixed with desperation – it’s possible, we’ve all seen what people can do. She must have seen the phone and she was trying to get help.’
Joel sighed, long and heavy. ‘She would have been slow, very slow. She only makes it to the phone box if the shooter lets her. There’s a risk to that, it’s a public road. What if a car came along?’
‘Look where we are. I don’t think that’s a problem. Not in the dead of night.’
There were lampposts – three of them – equidistant and jutting out of the grass bank. They seemed to cover this part of the road only. Joel knew that the fact the area would have been lit only mattered if there was someone here to see it. He pulled the phone-box door back open. ‘Would you mind holding this for me?’ DS Rose took the door, her hands also protected by forensic gloves. Neither detective had used the handle; DS Rose was squatting a little to hold the door near the bottom. Joel reached in for the woman’s chin and pushed his fingers into her neck for a pulse.
‘They already did that,’ DS Rose said.
‘Old habits,’ Joel replied. He changed his grip to try and lift her head up by her chin. A human head is a heavy item but he couldn’t move it. Joel didn’t want to force it and abandoned his attempt. Next, he moved on to her left arm, which lifted with no resistance. ‘What do you know about rigor mortis?’ he said.
DS Rose shrugged. ‘Takes a couple of hours, different for everyone and can vary massively depending on temperature, position of the body …’
‘Extremes of temperature, we don’t have that here. The way she’s sat it would start in the jaw and neck. Two to four hours is the normal time for it to take effect. Her neck feels pretty rigid, but her limbs still have flexibility. The extremities are the last to be affected.’
‘Someone’s been reading their murder manuals!’ DS Rose scoffed.
‘I considered I might have some catching up to do.’ Joel still studied the body. He was desperate to see what other injuries she had. She was filthy, her hands particularly, and Joel knew he could be staring at key evidence trapped under those nails. CSI would be here soon, but patience was not his strongest asset. ‘The handset,’ Joel said, standing back up to stop his thighs burning, ‘I can’t see a way she could have got that off the hook – adrenaline or not.’
‘So someone else did? The killer, you mean?’
‘Maybe … or maybe she got to the phone first to be dragged back out. But I think …’ Joel hesitated, his mind suddenly rushing with horrendous images that had no place on a picturesque country lane, ‘I think she was being toyed with at the end.’
Chapter 3
A few hours earlier
Margaret Marshall watched the beginnings of a new day from her kitchen window. It wasn’t so much a sunrise as a gradual brightening, the source seemingly a strip of light across the top of the opposite side of the valley. She had always felt so lucky to live here, with its sprawling views that, at this time of the year, were a patchwork of greens, browns and corn yellow. She could almost fool herself that the valley she could see, and all the nature contained within it, was the whole world. That she was all alone and completely safe.
But she had never felt more terrified.
Her phone was ringing.
At first, she just stared at it, her terror freezing her rigid while her screen showed a row of numbers that started with her local area code. She had been told that if a call was to come it would be a local call, it would be at first light and she would need to answer it. Those instructions were the reason she had spent the night sitting right there, watching the big, bright moon slowly glide across the valley, praying it would stop, never to give way to the dawn.
She took hold of the phone, almost dropping it, her hands were shaking so badly. She clamped her eyes shut.
‘Hello!’ Her voice came out shaky too. The reply was delayed, it needed another prompt and was delivered by a stranger who sounded out of breath.
‘I had to win!’
Instantly Margaret felt numb. The only feeling left was a sensation of ice starting in her chest and moving out to encompass her whole body. Then her own voice sounded like it was coming out through sound-deadening, like it was someone else doing the talking, someone else begging.
‘Oh God, no! Please! Please just don’t hurt her!’
There was a thumping sound from the other end. Margaret was so tense it made her jump, her lips making a whistling sound where she sucked in a breath so fast. ‘Please!’ she tried again but her throat was closing all the time and it came out as a squeak. She could hear a voice now, distant, low and shouted. A man’s voice. Then a creaking sound like a door in a horror movie. Another sound took over, dominating so it was all she could hear. It was a shriek, long and powerful until it fell away to a whine. Then came a shout, a woman’s voice this time; this one she recognised. It was Kelly. And she was begging for her life.
Margaret forced words out: ‘Kelly! KELLY!’ It was no use, Kelly sounded like she was some distance away from the phone, too far to hear. Then everything was drowned out by a BOOM! Margaret held her breath. There were more shouts, then Kelly’s voice again. This time there were no words, no begging, now it was just anguish. Shrieks of pain. The shrieks got closer. Slowly but surely, like Margaret herself was dragging a wounded animal towards her on a rope. She had the phone pressed so hard against her ear that the pain registered through her horror. She heard the same creaking door sound. Now Kelly’s cries were much closer, close enough that she might hear her.
‘Kelly! KELLY! KELLY, talk to me, Kelly … KELLY!’ The voice she heard wasn’t a reply, it was begging again, but now it was just one word repeated. ‘No’. Louder, quicker, each time with more fear. ‘No. No, NO! NOOOOOO!’
Then the voice stopped. Margaret took the phone away from her ear to check the display, to check the call was still live. When she pushed it back to her ear there was something. A sort of cough that she was still able to recognise as Kelly, like she was failing at clearing her throat. Then the sound changed again.
Now it was the sound of her drowning.
Margaret held the phone tight against her right ear, her left hand just as firm over her mouth, tight enough that she couldn’t breathe through it. Then a click that made her flinch and all sounds were gone.
The call had been cut.
Chapter 4
Joel, accompanied by DS Rose, swept past the two rows of empty desks that were closest to the door to make for the front of the office where there was some life at least. He had been promised a brand-new team in a brand-new office. So far, he had a stolen office space, two detectives and an intelligence-officer-cum-analyst who was brand new to policing. It was his intelligence analyst that he wanted to speak with and, as usual, she was the only person around.
‘Eileen … tell me you have something. I think we just found the only public spot in the whole country where someone can take their time committing the loudest murder possible and then disappear into the night.’
‘Loudest?’ Eileen Holmans sat back and shook her head with accompanying blinks. She had half-sized glasses. Joel was convinced that she didn’t need them at all; they were just something to peer over when she was looking at him, to make her seem more disapproving. She was doing it now. ‘Is that what you want me to put on the log? That DI Norris’s first impression of the scene was that it would have been loud?’
‘You can jazz it up a bit. Something like how the good-looking and charismatic detective noted scarred tarmac consistent with a shotgun discharge …’
Eileen still peered out over the top of her glasses for a deadpan response. ‘I think I’ll word the log if it’s all the same to you.’ And Joel laughed. He couldn’t say that the glasses didn’t fit with the rest of her. She habitually wore a long skirt and heavy cardigan: dowdy perhaps, comfortable for sure. It would have made it difficult for Joel to guess her age had he not seen on her application that she was only fifty-six. She had done nearly thirty years’ teaching before illness had come out of nowhere to claim her husband and tear up their plans for retirement. The reaction had been changes in many aspects of her life. One of those changes was her career, where, after doing what she needed to get her full pension from teaching, she switched to work for Kent County Council after applying for a role investigating and enforcing fly-tipping incidents. It seems the excitement of forcing the scum of Kent to clean up their own mess wasn’t enough to hold her and, as she described in her interview, she was desperate to take the thrill of the chase up a level. Working for the police was the obvious choice, but the carpet slippers in her bag for her to change into on her first day suggested, to Joel at least, that she was still keen to tightly control the excitement. No one else on the interview panel had picked her out as a candidate but Joel had adored her immediately. He spotted someone with an incredible attention to detail, computer and analytical skills that belied her background and a natural ability to get what she wanted. It didn’t matter to him if she was wearing carpet slippers when she did it. It also suited Joel to have someone on his team he could rely on to be sat at a computer screen with access to all police systems whenever that was required. The job as his intel analyst was hers the moment she first held him in that glare over the top of those glasses.
‘Fair enough,’ Joel said.
‘Definitely a shotgun?’ Eileen asked.
‘That’s how it looked to me. Close range, possibly adapted or sawn-off due to the size of spread, fired downwards at her ankle.’
‘I’ll put early signs suggest the use of a shotgun. And she was on the ground when she suffered this wound?’ Eileen asked.
‘Early signs suggest it.’ Joel couldn’t hold back his grin, but it fell away as he continued. ‘She had plenty of bruises and marks on her arms, face and upper body. CSI will give us a fuller picture when they’ve done a body map, but I would say she was beaten to the ground.’
‘Beaten to the ground, her foot just about blown off and then she dragged herself into a phone box where she was stabbed with a pitchfork.’ DS Rose gave her first input, the shock in her voice thickening with every word.
‘OK, all presumption at this stage, of course,’ Eileen said, without breaking stride. Joel spoke next.
‘A horrific end, whatever happened. That’s why we need you to tell us all about the breakthrough you got when you looked at the phone records, so we can pop out and nail this bastard.’
Eileen stopped her typing to peer up and over at him again. ‘Not sure you’ll be popping out to nail anyone, nor am I sure that sort of language is necessary. We don’t know for sure that our offender is from a broken home, after all. Unless you would like to me to insert that description on the log, also as a presumption?’
‘And the phone records?’ Joel said, ignoring his telling-off.
‘I’m afraid I may not be able to offer much at this stage. I got onto BT. They confirmed that the phone box is functioning, though earmarked to be decommissioned once a new mobile phone mast goes live nearby to extend the network coverage. They were quite happy to provide records of its use. That phone box has ten phone calls listed in the last three months. I am in the process of acquiring the details. My focus however is looking at the call that was made today at 5.10 a.m.’
‘Go on?’
‘I don’t want to get your hopes up, Inspector. Someone dialled out to a mobile phone, but it is what is known as a burner. As a stroke of luck the SIM for the burner was provided by BT too – a different department but they were able to fast-track me through to the person who could help me the most. They matched the number with an IMEI and—’
‘Is there a short answer in there somewhere?’ Joel cut in, well aware that Eileen was incredibly thorough in all aspects of her work – perhaps more than she needed to be when it came to updates. She huffed.
‘As I was saying, it’s a burner phone. Not shop bought. Probably eBay or a market stall – and old enough to have been in circulation a while.’
‘So, untraceable.’
‘Yes.’
