The Winter Killings, page 4
Barnett had always liked Riddick, more so than Rice, anyway, although that really said little. Most people liked Chief Constable Rebecca ‘Harsh’ Marsh more than Rice and that was bloody saying something! Rumour had it that Marsh kept a box hidden in her office, which contained countless police IDs – memorabilia from all the careers she’d ended.
‘Like a serial killer’s trophy cabinet,’ Riddick had said to her when they’d first met.
Utter bullshit, of course, but it gave you the flavour of her popularity.
So, even though Rice was less popular than Marsh, which beggared belief, Gardner persisted. She just couldn’t let go of the feeling that there was a decent officer in there waiting to break free from the chains of his masculinity and shackles of narrow-mindedness.
There’d been glimpses.
Although, when it was cold, and the snow was coming down hard, as it was doing now, positivity and optimism often took a back seat…
After Barnett had given a potted background on Cassandra Thwaites, which included the illustrious career path with Avon, Gardner heard her name being called. She turned to see Robin Morton, the forensic pathologist, coming towards her from the front of Blind Jack’s. The swirling snow immediately went to work on her paper suit, and she was shivering by the time she got to them. She’d obviously peeled off her outdoor jacket and left it indoors.
Gardner unzipped her jacket, intending to offer it, but Barnett had already beaten her to it and was draping his own over Robin’s shoulders. Robin smiled up at Barnett. ‘Thanks.’
Gardner glanced at Rice, who’d certainly not unzipped his own jacket. He’d a sneer on his face. No doubt considering Barnett’s act of kindness an act of flirtation.
It was rather concerning to Gardner how well she could read him now, and yet, even though she knew what she was up against, she persisted in trying to chisel something out of him.
‘Good news, Robin?’ Gardner asked, knowing already that there wouldn’t be. Earlier, Robin had informed her about this. Old remains were fiddly and often took a long time.
‘I can’t confirm much without a forensic anthropologist,’ Robin said. ‘Only that it’s adult.’
‘We work well with gut feelings,’ Barnett said and smiled.
She grinned up at Barnett.
God… they were bloody flirting!
Well, at least it may loosen her lips…
‘Probably male,’ Robin said, and touched the back of her head. ‘The external occipital protuberance is very large.’
‘The what?’ Rice asked.
‘That bump at the lower rear of your head. It tends to be more prominent in males. There are other markers like that – the angled forehead, the lower cheekbones… but please… I can’t offer a guarantee.’
‘Age?’ Rice asked.
Barnett flashed Rice a look which clearly said: did you not just hear what she said?
Don’t start defending her, Ray… Gardner thought. You must know that Rice wouldn’t have any hesitation in calling you out on a crush. Could be very embarrassing.
‘Not old, but I’m guessing some way past middle age. There’s been some teeth loss, and some resorption of the jawbone, but again, this is purely conjecture right now. You’re only likely to get an age range from the forensic anthropologist. Best guess on my limited expertise would be fifty-plus, male. The post-mortem interval is a nightmare from skulls, though. It’s better with the rest of the body. Even with the best in the business, this one is going to be frustrating.’
Gardner nodded.
‘Fiona would like to speak to you,’ Robin said, smiling.
Gardner looked up at the entrance to Blind Jack’s. She’d already greeted Chief Forensic Officer Fiona Lane tonight, but their last meeting two weeks ago had been awkward.
Fiona and Gardner had become friends in the eighteen months following Gardner’s secondment up north. Gardner had, under the influence of red wine, confided in Fiona about her growing affection towards O’Brien, hoping for some light advice. What she’d received had verged on outrage and a firm warning that this couldn’t possibly end well for Gardner.
Over the weeks since, Gardner, feeling irritated, had avoided Fiona like the plague. She was only now realising that she was being grossly unfair. Fiona had been right and had simply fallen victim to a projection of Gardner’s own messed-up emotions.
Still, Gardner was in no mood for it right now. ‘What’s it about?’ Gardner asked, hoping she could bypass the awkwardness.
‘I found a folded note in the skull’s jaw…’
‘A what?’ Gardner said, stunned she was only just learning about this. This wasn’t something that was going to be bypassed. ‘What did it say?’
Robin shrugged; Barnett’s large coat slipped from one shoulder. Barnett, himself, reached over to slip it back up for her. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t open it. Fiona took it and told me to get you.’
Bloody hell. In I go then.
Gardner looked between her colleagues’ intrigued faces. ‘Wait here.’
Rice groaned in disappointment.
‘Phil, I need you to get the car ready to drive us to the Thwaites’. Robert has had enough time to settle his nerves.’
She looked back at Barnett who, despite looking disappointed, at least didn’t groan. ‘Ray, please press on with the CCTV.’
She went back into Blind Jack’s and over to O’Brien. She’d volunteered to log everyone in. Unnecessary, because someone of lower rank could have taken the job, but she’d been first on the scene, literally, and felt some responsibility for it. Professionally, but coldly, O’Brien logged Gardner in and handed her a suit.
‘Are you okay?’ Gardner asked.
‘Yes, boss, of course,’ O’Brien said, without looking up from the logbook and meeting her eyes.
Gardner looked both ways, checking she could whisper without it entering someone’s earshot. She leaned in. ‘We need to talk. Properly. I think there have been… some… well… some misunderstandings?’
‘Everything seems clear enough,’ O’Brien said, looking up now.
Shit. If this was a bowling alley, she’d just missed the pins for the umpteenth time.
It always surprised Gardner that for someone who ran an incident room so effectively, she could turn her own personal life into such a circus.
Maybe she should try to be open and honest for a change. ‘I was shocked before, when I got that message because… he’s been found.’ Gardner shook her head.
‘Who?’
‘Paul.’
O’Brien’s eyes widened. ‘Alive?’
‘Yes.’
O’Brien reached out and took Gardner’s arm. ‘Why didn’t you say?’
The physical contact immediately brought a tear to the DCI’s eye. ‘I still don’t know enough about it.’
‘Are you okay, Emma?’ O’Brien said, all attitude gone. ‘Do you need me—’
‘DCI Gardner?’
Gardner slipped her arm away from O’Brien who, fortunately, had already loosened her grip. She turned to look at her estranged close friend, Fiona Lane. She could tell from her darkened expression that the intimate moment between a superior and a younger officer hadn’t gone unnoticed. ‘Yes… sorry, Fiona. I believe there’s a note?’
Fiona looked at O’Brien and then back at Gardner. Gardner wasn’t sure if she was making a point that she needed some privacy or was simply reinforcing her view that this whole scenario was ludicrous and a train about to go off the rails.
‘Lucy is okay to hear. What did the note say, please?’
‘It was a printed note. It said: Why don’t you tell a true story, Robert?’
Gardner took a deep breath.
‘We’ll get the note tested for DNA,’ Fiona added.
‘Thanks.’
‘What do you think it means, boss?’ O’Brien asked.
Gardner looked between her two colleagues, thinking. ‘Well, the true story is not Valentina’s curse… so, we’d best ask the great storyteller himself, hadn’t we?’
10
‘Staring at a phone screen doesn’t make it ring,’ Rice said from the driver’s seat.
Gardner, who was desperate to hear from Cecile regarding Riddick, ignored her assistant SIO’s sarcasm, and slipped her phone back into her jacket pocket. ‘Don’t want to miss a beat,’ she lied. ‘You know how fast Ray can be. He’ll have that CCTV before we know it.’
‘Yes… about that…’
‘Go on.’
‘Doesn’t it sound far-fetched to you?’ Rice indicated to turn off Bond End onto the Waterside. ‘Someone smashing a car window and then replacing a plastic skull with a real one?’
She stared out of the window at the River Nidd, the mystical ribbon which wound its way through medieval Knaresborough. During the day, a scenic destination as it flowed serenely beneath the arches of the venerable viaduct; late at night, in the nocturnal stillness, a timeless guardian of Knaresborough’s centuries of secrets.
‘What’s your working theory?’ Gardner asked, eyes hypnotised by the moonlit river. ‘That Robert did this to himself? Pulled out the skull of his victim for everyone to see?’
Doesn’t sound plausible either, does it?
‘Maybe his wife put it there? The remains of the person he was having an affair with?’
Gardner snorted. ‘You writing a book now, Phil? Besides, you heard Robin, it was probably a male.’
‘So,’ Rice said. ‘Why can’t he be having an affair with a man?’ Rice looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
Fair point. ‘I’m glad you called me out on that assumption. Shows I’m getting somewhere with you at last.’
It was his turn to snort.
‘But, no, she didn’t know either. I saw her eyes… her expression… Cassandra Thwaites was as stunned as her husband was.’
Rice swore and suddenly slowed. He moved to one side for two staggering idiots. ‘Get some bloody hi-vis jackets, you dickheads.’
Gardner enquired about the reason behind his constant anger.
He grunted indignantly, turned left up a steep driveway and parked alongside the police vehicle that had brought the couple home.
‘Always wondered who lived here,’ Rice said, eyeing the large house, perching high on the Waterside. ‘Never guessed it’d be an oral storyteller and the Avon lady.’
Gardner gazed over the fusion of modern and traditional, impressed with the multi-paned sash windows, and the staggering views it must surely offer. She pulled out her notebook and scribbled in a reminder to get a comprehensive list of all the businesses Robert had acted on behalf of during his days as a commercial solicitor.
Gardner caught Rice smiling at her out of the corner of her eye. It was unusual to see him smile and she felt momentarily uncomfortable. ‘What?’
‘Just that you brush up nice…’
She raised an eyebrow.
‘Can I say that?’ His smile waned slightly.
‘No, you can’t. Piss off.’ She cracked the door and stepped out.
‘Jesus. Can’t win. Just trying to be nice,’ he mumbled. ‘You told me to stop being so angry all the time.’
‘Yes,’ she said to him over the roof of the car. ‘But I never told you to be creepy.’
He looked irritated. ‘You know, there was a time when saying someone brushed up—’
‘Not now, Phil. There’s only one story I want to hear from a bygone era…’ She pointed at the house. ‘The one referred to in that note.’
Problem is with any good storyteller, Gardner thought, approaching the house. They’re bloody great at spinning a yarn.
11
DC Doug Banks welcomed Gardner and Rice into an entrance hall framed with potted topiaries. After he’d shown them into a living area, warmed by a blazing fire, Gardner told him he could get off home.
Cassandra Thwaites, who still hadn’t changed from her glamourous attire, was nursing a glass of red wine on the sofa closest to the fire. A half-empty bottle was standing on the rug at her feet.
The storyteller himself, sat on the sofa opposite her, head lowered. He’d put an end to the earlier pantomime by changing out of his pirate costume into loungewear and had relinquished the ridiculous tarnished tankard for a crystal whisky glass, which he sipped from regularly.
‘Can I get you anything to drink, DCI Gardner?’ Cassandra asked.
‘No thank you, Mrs Thwaites.’ Gardner moved closer, so she could see Robert in profile. The transformation from the man she’d watched perform earlier was rather startling.
Gone was the bluster, the grandiose gestures, the ruddy skin and booming voice, replaced instead with a pale complexion, and a jittery demeanour.
Maybe this storyteller would be more transparent than she’d initially feared? After all, he didn’t look like he was capable of much right now, never mind crafting another fanciful fable like Valentina’s curse.
Cassandra stood. ‘Please sit here.’ She moved to the sofa opposite and sat alongside her agitated husband.
They hadn’t met Rice earlier, so Gardner introduced him before they sat. ‘How are you feeling now, Mr Thwaites?’
He took another mouthful of whisky, swallowed, looked up and gestured down at his glass. ‘Better now, I guess.’
It’s a bad guess, Gardner thought. You look worse.
‘It was the weight of it,’ Robert said. ‘That’s what I can’t get out of my head.’
‘The skull?’ Rice said.
Robert nodded. ‘Yes. It’s heavier than my fake one. It felt more dense… more solid. Not as smooth as the other either.’ While holding the whisky glass with one hand, he made a curving gesture with the other as if stroking the skull. ‘Rough. The cold, too. I’ll never forget the cold.’ He wasn’t making eye contact with anyone and looked deep in thought. ‘Within seconds, I knew I was clutching on to someone who was dead.’ He shook his head, dropped his empty hand and took another drink. ‘I’m sorry for the state of me.’
‘Don’t apologise,’ Gardner said. ‘Anyone would feel the same.’
He looked up at her with a raised eyebrow and his top lip quivering. ‘A skull is going to be bloody old, right? So, I guess that this isn’t a murder victim, is it? Maybe it’s from a science lab, or someone dug it up as a prank?’
‘There are a lot of questions right now,’ Gardner said, thinking, You’re the storyteller, you tell me! ‘And we know very little.’ Apart from that very incriminating message in the jaw, but I’ll get to that momentarily. ‘But a skull doesn’t have to be old… no. Decomposition can be fast, quick, dependent on certain factors.’
‘Still, it must take years and years, surely?’
‘Not necessarily. Dependent on humidity and insects, it can be surprisingly rapid.’ Robin had said that in optimal conditions, the bone could be exposed in a matter of weeks. Not discounting the possibility of someone treating the remains with chemicals. ‘We really can’t say yet.’
Robert looked at Cassandra, who was making quick work of her wine. She didn’t return his gaze. ‘So, I’m under suspicion for murder?’ He looked back at Gardner.
‘No one has said that. We—’
‘But if he’s been murdered recently… well, how does that look?’
‘Yes,’ Cassandra said, nodding. ‘I mean, what’s everyone going to think?’
Their responses felt nonsensical, almost farcical, but shock was known to have such an effect.
Guilt, too, occasionally, Gardner thought.
Rice sighed.
She was stunned he’d lasted this long, and his following comments came as no surprise. ‘People are going to think exactly the same thing as if they’d been murdered ten years ago… one year, ten years, twenty years… one bloody day… why do you consider time so relevant a factor if someone is murdered?’
Robert and Cassandra stared at Rice wide-eyed as if he’d just delivered an unthinkable revelation, rather than the plain obvious.
‘And what makes you think it was a man, anyway?’ Rice pressed.
Robert shook his head. ‘Sorry… I didn’t—’
‘You just said he.’
Well-spotted, Phil, Gardner thought, glad you’re on the ball. My head has still not settled from the beer and the emotion of the evening.
‘Did I?’ Robert’s face melted into panic. ‘I meant nothing… I just thought… assumed that…’
‘Assumed that he was a man. But why?’ Rice pressed. ‘Our pathologist can’t even bloody confirm that.’
‘Do you have to swear so much?’ Cassandra asked.
Gardner touched Rice’s leg to suggest that he cool it. She saw the frustration on his face, but he parked the verbalisation.
‘We’re as passionate about getting to the bottom of this as you are,’ Gardner said, regarding Cassandra. ‘My colleague’s questions are fair. He’ll moderate his choice of words though.’
She didn’t need to look at Rice to know his blood would now boil. Instead, she regarded the woman who’d just called out Rice.
Cassandra Thwaites didn’t seem as flustered and anxious as she’d done earlier when her husband had discovered the skull. Her eyes were narrower, and she looked deep in thought.
Calculating?
Maybe Rice had been onto something earlier in the car when he suggested her involvement?
‘It’s obvious why my husband thought it was a male skull,’ Cassandra said, her confidence growing by the second. ‘In the narrative of Valentina’s curse, he’s pulling out the captain’s head. I guess, in my husband’s mind, the skull remains male.’
Robert nodded. ‘Yes.’
Good answer, Gardner thought, and jumped into her next question before her irritated partner could flare again. ‘You mentioned the possibility of it being a prank before? What makes you think that?’
