The Fifth Grave, page 15
part #1 of DCI Jacob Series
CHAPTER 20
Friday, 28th December
With his morning coffee in hand, Jacob walked through the abandoned kitchen garden but paused when he saw a ghost in his peripheral vision. The ghost was him, as a child, playing in the garden. He was hiding from his younger sister around the back of one of the greenhouses. Back then, the garden was still partly in use, cultivated by a local gardener his parents had employed for many years.
All long gone now, all except for the ghosts. What had been a busy, noisy family home full of fun and laughter, was now a cold, dead house in disrepair surrounded by wild, overgrown grounds. His parents were living out their retirement in Australia and his sister was building an exciting career in New York City. It was just him now. He turned his eyes to the overcast sky and watched the low cloud shifting from east to west.
A rare smile danced on his lips. Last night had been good for him and he was starting to enjoy the company of Dr Sophie Anderson more than he would like to admit, even to himself. With luck, she would be able to make progress with the archived CDs he had given her, and the meantime he hoped no one else would go looking for them.
A crow cried out from the canopy of a nearby oak tree and shook him from his thoughts. He saw a robin with a snail gripped in its beak, mercilessly smashing it against the side of a broken cold-frame in a bid to crack its shell.
Time to get back to work.
Inside the empty watermill, he made himself another strong coffee from the can he had dug out of the back of the larder and walked through the house to the sitting room. Sipping from the cup, he approached his improvised white murder board and stared at the progress they had made so far.
Not encouraging, but there had to be something he was missing.
He finished the coffee, set the cup down and pulled up a chair. Spinning it around so he could lean his crossed arms on the back, he continued to stare at the board. The frustration grew. He turned and looked at the case files scattered on the desk under the bay window. Leafing through the countless statements they had collected from so many witnesses was even more frustrating. Mia’s forensic reports were reassuringly neat and tidy, but none of it was advancing the case very much.
He heard a car pull up outside on the gravel drive. When he got to the hall, Morgan and Anna were already halfway to the front door. “Morning, boss,” said the welsh Inspector. He removed an unlit cigar from his mouth, rocked back on his heels and glanced up at the façade of the old mill. “I take it you passed a pleasant night?”
Jacob said nothing. It was good to see friendly faces after such a long, sleepless night. He looked at his watch and then made a big show of sighing. “You’re both late.”
“You can bugger off,” Morgan said, clamping the cold, half-smoked cigar between his teeth. “RTA in town. Took an hour to get out of the place. You’re lucky we’re here at all.”
“If you say so,” Jacob said, and swung the door wide open. “The work’s this way. You do remember work?”
They made their way back to the sitting room and gathered around the murder board. “I couldn’t sleep last night...” he said.
“We can see that just from the looking, guv,” Anna said.
Jacob raised an eyebrow but continued without comment. “Anyway, I spent the night going through everything we’ve collected so far on both murders, both Emma Russell and Kieran Messenger and one big gap is Emma’s social circle when she was studying for her medicine degree at uni. Did you manage to speak with them again?”
Anna nodded. “Only one of them so far, but here’s where it gets weird.”
Jacob and Morgan looked at one another. “Oh no.”
“I managed to track down Emma’s best friend at uni, Lavinia Hobbes. She gave me her phone number and we spoke last night. She’s a fashion photographer now, living and working in Milan.”
Morgan sighed wistfully. “I remember when I had that dream.”
Jacob gave him a look. “Thanks for that, Bill.”
“Welcome.”
“Did she give us anything?”
“She was upset at first, and reluctant to talk about it, but when she calmed down she was able to speak quite lucidly about her university days. She says their group of friends used to meet up every now and again and drive out to the woods and watch the moon rise.”
“Sounds a bit nuts to me,” Morgan said, chewing on the cold, unlit Robusto.
“And?” Jacob asked.
“She says they would stop off at an off-licence in Jericho to buy beer and cider and then drive up into Wytham Woods to look for ghouls, but she was very clear that after university it all stopped completely and that they never even kept in touch.”
“What was her alibi at the time?”
“Family party, and it still stands.”
“What about for Messenger’s death this week? Is she alibied?”
“Fashion show in Milan,” she said. “At least five hundred people saw her accepting an award.”
“Excellent,” Morgan sighed.
“How many others in this group of university ghost hunters?” Jacob asked.
“There were five of them, including Emma and Lavinia. She gave me the others’ names. They are...” she referred down to her notepad. “Jake Razey, Bradley Mitchell and Ross Hendry.”
“Track them down. I want solid, confirmed alibis for all three or I want them brought in and questioned.”
“Guv.”
“And Bill, any news on Jim Latimer, our poacher?”
Morgan shook his head. “No sign of him at all. He was of no fixed abode during the original investigation and they had a terrible time tracking him down. Witnesses placed him in the woods on the night of Emma’s disappearance, but in another coppice, and he always claimed he saw or heard nothing. After he was released no one ever heard from him again.”
“Great.”
Morgan moved over to the window and looked out at the river. Turning, he said, “So, want to tell us what’s going on with Sophie Anderson?”
Jacob had already decided to tell his old friend about it, but he made a snap decision to include Anna as well. “Yesterday after the discovery of Messenger’s body I decided to bring Dr Anderson onto the case. She’s already provided me with some interesting information regarding the SIO on the original Russell case, and last night I took her some of the interviews and other items from archives. I’m confident she will find something to help us.”
“You left police property at her house?” Morgan asked, astonished.
“Yes.”
“Christ,” Anna said.
“If Kent finds out your feet won’t touch the floor.”
Jacob glared at him. “Well he’s not going to find it, is he?”
Anna said, “Wait, who was the SIO on the original case?”
“DI Miranda Dunn,” Jacob said. “You don't know her.”
“But I’ve a feeling I’m about to get to her know.”
Jacob’s jaw tensed. “If Dunn was involved in any way, then we could be moving from a murder enquiry to conspiracy and cover up at the highest levels. What I have told you in here stays between the three of us, right?”
“Of course,” Morgan said.
“Anna?”
“You know you can trust me.”
“Good.”
“So what’s next, boss?” Morgan asked, helping himself to a piece of toast from the toaster.
Jacob checked his watch. “We need to get down to the MIU and get back on the case. You get going and I’ll follow you in the Alvis.”
*
By the time Jacob pulled up, there was already a large group of press and TV journalists gathered at the entrance to the wood. The discovery of the cold case remains had triggered a larger than expected reaction in the nation’s media, but the brutal murder of Kieran Messenger just one day later had sent them into a frenzy.
Morgan and Anna had already run the gauntlet and survived, but now it was his turn. He slowed his car and sighed. He recognised several of the faces from the main national news programmes – the BBC, ITV and Sky were all waiting impatiently for a word from the man leading what they were still calling the Witch Hunt Murders. Looking at the reverse gear with something approaching despair, he knew he had no choice but to drive past them.
But slowing down to pass them, then banged on the window and called out to him. Winding down the window, he answered a few of their questions.
“Is there any progress in the investigation?”
“The investigation is proceeding in the normal way.”
“Are the murders linked?”
“One of the purposes of the investigation is to establish exactly that and we’ll know in good time.”
Jacob leaned his head out of the window and honked on the horn. “Can you clear the way? It’s a very narrow lane and I don’t want to break any toes.”
“Local legend has it that the ghost of a poacher stalks those woods and some people are suggesting that’s how these people met their deaths,” asked an unknown woman from the back. “Can you comment on that?”
“I can,” he said with a smile. “But you wouldn’t be able to print it or play it before the watershed.”
Some of the press laughed, others rolled their eyes, but Jacob couldn’t have cared less what any of them did. He put his car into first gear and drove slowly up to the woods.
Climbing out of his car, Anna leaned out of the MIU’s side door and shook her head. “No point turning your car off, guv,” she called out. “Ethan just called. He finished Messenger’s PM first thing this morning and he’s ready to report.”
“Great,” Jacob said. “Why the bloody hell couldn’t he have told us that earlier?”
“Welcome to Ethan.”
He cursed and swung himself back down into the car. Turning the engine back on again, he gave it a hearty rev and reversed out of the parking space in a cloud of dead leaves.
*
The man with the pagan tattoo sucked on his cigarette and watched Jacob on the television. He was chatting with the press at the bottom of the hill and looked like he was having a high old time. Was he enjoying the publicity? Yes, it looked like it. The famous detective was honing his public profile in the way a landscape gardener clipped away at a topiary peacock. A snip here and a clip there and then everything was perfect.
The hot smoke filled his lungs. He held it there for a few seconds until feeling the kick of the nicotine seeping into his system. Exhaling it, he watched the detective navigate his way through his adoring fan club and then drive up the hill to the scene of the crime.
You shouldn’t have come back here.
He collapsed into a chair and unscrewed the lid from the whisky bottle. He did it with one hand and when the job was done, he casually flicked the aluminium cap to the floor. The only light was provided by the television set balanced on an old chair in the corner of the room. The news was on, and now he reached for the remote and muted the TV as he stubbed out the cigarette.
The discovery of the second corpse truly was an unfortunate development. A sign from the gods, maybe. A punishment. His mind whirred with panic as he thought about the discovery from every angle. Could it be tracked back to him? Could he be traced in any way? Never. He had been too careful, and the others would never dare to speak.
Before he’d taken her life, all those years ago, he’d wondered how it would feel. He had felt nothing. It surprised him, but it would make things easier from now on. He pulled another cigarette from a crumpled pack on the windowsill and fired it up. Stretching his neck, he breathed the blue smoke out into the room’s subdued lighting.
His thoughts were once again distracted by the gentle blue and white strobing of the TV. He turned to see the news was still on and so was the imposing and serious figure of Tom Jacob. The BBC was re-running a clip from the interview at the bottom of the hill. In the background among the trees he saw the the Major Incident Unit in the woods. As he appealed for witnesses, a graphic on the bottom of the screen appeared: GROVELY WOOD MURDER: POLICE NOT RULING OUT RITUAL KILLING.
His mouth formed into something approaching a smile, but his eyes were somewhere else, cold and distant and focussed on something far beyond the plasma screen on his wall. He would never let Jacob hunt him down, no matter how much blood had to be spilled.
CHAPTER 21
When Ethan Spargo turned and greeted Jacob in the county mortuary, he was disappointed to see he had switched the Father Christmas bowtie for one covered in tiny elves and reindeers. He supposed this passed for high-humour down here in the gloomy world of post-mortems and medical reports so fixing his eye on the tie he kept his face deadpan and said, “Ho ho ho.”
“You don’t think I actually want to be in here, do you?”
“Maybe.” Jacob thrust his hands into his coat pockets. “Who’s to say?”
“I’m to bloody well say,” he said. “It’s Christmas, for heaven’s sake. I do have a family life outside of these stainless steel walls, you know.” He paused a beat and chewed his lip for a second. “Sorry, that was insensitive of me.”
Jacob waved it away. Over a year since his fiancée’s death and people still spoke without thinking, but they never meant anything by it.
“What’s the story on this one, Ethan?”
Spargo raised his eyebrows and gave a short sigh. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Right parietal bone completely caved in just as before and with about the same degree of force.”
“Same killer?”
He wobbled his head for a moment, a study of indecision. “I wouldn’t conclude that, no. The injury is far too common and besides, the first one was probably done with something more rounded like a rock but this one was definitely done with a heavy, cylindrical object.”
“A walking stick?”
“I doubt that would be heavy enough, same goes for a camera tripod before you ask.”
“Why would I ask that?”
“They’re very pretty woods, Jacob. It’s not out of the realms of possibility someone was up there with a camera taking some nice frosty pictures for the Christmas album.”
“So what then?”
“You’re looking more along the lines of a crow bar or a spanner. Something with some serious weight.”
Jacob gave a long sigh. “Perfect.”
“Problems?”
“I can see how a walking stick or a camera tripod gets to the woods, but if it’s a spanner then it was taken up there deliberately. It complicates things.”
“That, Jacob, is entirely your problem.”
Jacob had to agree, and he took his new problem out of the mortuary with a cheery wave and headed back to the MIU. He and DC Innes had some interviews to get done.
*
Anna Mazurek heard Sophie before she saw her. Someone was calling out her name as she walked along the High Street, and when she turned, the psychologist was waving to her as she crossed the road. Her hair was down and she was wearing a winter jacket, casual jeans and what looked like brand new snow boots.
“Anna, hi.”
“Hi.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve just been to the bank. There was an unauthorised debit so I just tore them a new one.”
Sophie winced. “Oh. I was wondering if you had time for a coffee?”
Anna checked her watch. “Sure.”
They walked to a café and ordered two lattes. After a short silence, Anna broke the ice. “I hear you and Jacob have been seeing one another.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that. We’re working together on the case.”
“You realise he’ll probably lose his job if this gets out.”
“It’s his decision.”
“You pressured him… sorry, we seem to be getting off on the wrong foot here. He’s had a difficult year and I’m looking out for him, that’s all.”
“I understand, she said. “And I know something’s hurting him, but he won’t share it with me.”
“That is entirely up to him.”
“He started to talk about it but stopped. If I knew then maybe I could help.”
Anna sighed and stirred her coffee while she stared outside at the passing traffic. She saw no harm in telling Sophie what she wanted to know. A simple internet search would have given her the information she needed, but she had obviously chosen not to do that and speak with one of his friends instead. “All right, last year at Christmas there was a fire at his old house in Oxford. It burnt to the ground, and he nearly died.”
“I had no idea,” she said quietly. “That’s terrible.”
“It gets worse. His fiancée died in the fire.”
“Oh my God.”
“Right. He woke in the night, choking on the smoke. He turned to check if Jess was okay but she wasn’t in the bed.”
“Why not?”
“She’d fallen asleep downstairs on the sofa watching the TV. He searched for her but passed out in the smoke. When he regained consciousness he was outside on an ambulance gurney surrounded by flashing lights and total chaos. The fire guys worked hard to contain the blaze and they told him they had managed to get her out of the house but it was too late.”
“That’s just terrible.”
Anna took a sip of her coffee and felt her phone buzz, alerting her to an incoming call. “He blames himself for her death. Says he should have looked harder.”
She looked at the phone, silent.
“Are you okay?”
Anna stared down at her phone, unsure what to say. The caller ID on the screen had shocked her so much she had almost forgotten to breathe. “Um, sure,” she said. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
*
Morgan and Holloway ate their lunch in the car on their way out to Tithe Cottage. The Welshman had opted for a crispy bacon and avocado baguette and Holloway was already halfway through a sweet chilli and lime wrap. Above them the sky was still fairly clear and there had been no serious snow fall for nearly twenty-four hours. The main roads had been salted but some of the B roads and lanes were still covered in a thick black slush as they weaved their way towards the rural property.
