Читать книгу A Violent End - Emma Page - Страница 9

Detective Chief Inspector Kelsey, a big, solid rock of a man with a freckled face and shrewd green eyes, a head of thickly-springing carroty hair, left the woodland clearing and made his way towards his car, followed by Detective Sergeant Lambert. A minute search of the area was already under way.

It was plain from the scatter of books on the grass verge that the dead girl was Karen Boland, a student at the Cannonbridge College of Further Education. A library ticket in an inside pocket of her jacket supplied her address.

The police doctor had made a preliminary estimate of the time of death, setting it at between five and eight on the previous evening, Friday, November 13th. The body was fully clothed and there was no sign of any sexual assault.

Karen’s right ankle had been violently wrenched, possibly broken, some minutes before her death. The wrench had in all probability happened in the course of her headlong flight from her attacker over the uneven ground. She could have caught her foot and been sent flying, pitching heavily down, unable to rise, with her assailant crashing along behind her.

As she lay prostrate, shaken and winded, in considerable pain from the injured ankle, her attacker had knelt on her back, producing severe and deep contusions, pressing her head down with force into the mud and leafmould. Her face had been massively bruised, abraded and lacerated, her left cheekbone fractured by counter-pressure from a tree root. She had been held down for some time; she had died from asphyxia.

But to make assurance doubly sure her assailant had then viciously bludgeoned her, striking several savage blows on the back of her head, shattering the skull. A few feet from the body lay a heavy billet of wood, a piece of broken bough, clearly the weapon used in the clubbing. Caught up in the bark were strands of yellow wool, long gold-brown hairs, fragments of tissue, tiny embedded splinters of bone.

If Karen had at any stage been able to strike out at her killer her hands could give no evidence of it. She had worn woollen gloves, soaked and filthy now, ripped and snagged. The skin of her killer’s hands, Kelsey pondered, must surely–unless similarly protected by gloves – be scratched and marked, possibly deeply, from a swift passage through the wood.

The nylon material of Karen’s quilted jacket, the dark stuff of her slacks, showed rents and tears from thorns and spines, projecting boughs. Her ankle boots were caked in thick yellow mud. The clothes and footwear of her killer must also bear this kind of witness. And the thorns and spines, the projecting boughs, carried threads and fibres, ripped from the clothing of pursued and pursuer.

The two men reached the car and Sergeant Lambert opened the door. ‘Jubilee Cottage,’ Kelsey directed as he got in. They approached the dwelling a few minutes later. The gates were standing open and Lambert turned the car into the neatly gravelled driveway.

A car was drawn up at one side of the house. A ladder with a bucket suspended from a rung had been set up against the guttering at the front of the house. At the foot of the ladder stood a wheelbarrow half full of garden refuse. On the ground close by lay a pair of stout work gloves, a hand brush and trowel, a pair of secateurs.

At the sound of the car the front door on the left jerked open and Christine Wilmot came flying out, her face puckered in alarm. At the sight of the two men she halted abruptly, knowing them instantly for policemen. ‘Karen!’ she cried. ‘What’s happened to her?’

‘Mrs Boland?’ Kelsey asked. Though she looked scarcely old enough to be the girl’s mother.

She gave her head an impatient shake. ‘I’m Mrs Wilmot,’ she said rapidly. ‘Christine Wilmot, Karen’s cousin. She lives here. What’s happened to her? Has there been an accident?’

Ian Wilmot came running out through the same open door, looking from one to the other, his face full of concern. ‘Is it Karen?’ he blurted out. ‘Has something happened to her?’

‘Mr Wilmot?’ Kelsey asked.

He gave a nod. ‘Ian Wilmot.’ He gestured at Christine. ‘My wife.’ He thrust his hands together. ‘What’s happened to Karen?’

Kelsey disclosed his identity. ‘I think we’d better go inside.’ At his words the other two fell silent, then Christine began to utter little trembling sobs, her head drooping. Ian put an arm round her shoulders and steered her into the house.

He led the way into a sitting room on the right of the hall. They all sat down, Ian on the arm of his wife’s chair, his hand resting on her shoulder. She had by now fallen silent. She sat on the edge of her seat, clasping her hands tightly together.

‘I’m afraid I bring bad news,’ Kelsey said gently. ‘Very bad news.’ Christine set up a tiny whimpering sound. Ian stared at the Chief.

‘I’m very sorry to have to tell you,’ Kelsey said, ‘that Karen is dead.’

Christine gave a loud cry and put both hands up to her face.

‘Was it an accident?’ Ian asked. ‘A road accident?’

The Chief shook his head. ‘Her body has been found in Overmead Wood. I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it: she’s been murdered.’

Christine broke into unrestrained sobs.

‘Murdered?’ Ian echoed with incredulous horror. ‘Was it a sex attack?’

‘Not on the face of it,’ Kelsey told him. ‘We’ll know more about it after the post-mortem.’

‘When did it happen?’

But the Chief wasn’t prepared at this juncture to give an answer, however approximate, to that question. ‘We’ll know more after the post-mortem,’ he repeated. He glanced at Christine, rocking and sobbing. ‘I think some tea—’

‘Yes, of course.’ Ian got to his feet but the Chief waved him down again. ‘Sergeant Lambert will see to it.’

Lambert went across the hall and through an open door into the kitchen. A woman’s outdoor jacket had been thrown carelessly over the back of a chair, with a shoulder-bag, a headscarf, a pair of woollen gloves, lying close by on the table. He filled the kettle and put it on to boil.

In the sitting room Christine had regained some degree of composure. She sat up and took a handkerchief from her pocket, she dabbed at her eyes.

‘I was trying to ring Karen’s foster parents, over in Wych­ford, just now, when you arrived,’ Ian told the Chief, ‘but I couldn’t get any reply. Karen lived with them until fairly recently. When she didn’t turn up this morning, or phone, I suddenly thought she might have taken it into her head for some reason to go over there to see them.’

The Chief asked him how long Karen had been living at Jubilee Cottage.

‘It was getting on for the end of July when she came here,’ Ian told him. ‘She came to us from a children’s home in Wychford, but she’d only been back there a short time. Before that she’d been living with the foster parents in Wychford, the people I was trying to phone just now.’ He supplied their name and address.

‘Why did she leave the foster parents?’ Kelsey asked.

‘There was some trouble with a neighbour and the Social Services thought it best if she was moved from there.’

‘How did she come to be living here with you?’

‘It was Karen’s own idea,’ Christine put in. She seemed a good deal steadier now. ‘I hadn’t seen her since she was a child, our families were never close. But I was the only living relative she knew of, so she wrote to me–entirely off her own bat–and asked if we’d be willing to have her live here. She’d already made inquiries and discovered there was a course at the Cannonbridge college that she could take. She seemed very anxious to be part of a family again, to live with someone she was related to.

‘So we met her, we had her over here for a weekend once or twice.’ She drew a shivering breath. ‘We liked her, we felt sorry for her. We talked it over and agreed to take her. It was settled that she would finish the school year where she was, and then come to us.’

‘We were very pleased at the way it was working out,’ Ian added. ‘She was settling down, working hard, doing well at the college.’

‘What was the trouble with the neighbour over in Wych­ford?’

‘He’s a married man, his name’s Paul Clayton. We’ve never met him. It seems the Claytons know Karen’s foster parents and Karen used to go to the Claytons sometimes to keep an eye on their children when the parents were out in the evening. The parents wouldn’t always be out together, he’d be working late–he has his own business in Wychford, something to do with electronics–and his wife would be out on some interest of her own. Mrs Clayton came home unexpectedly early one evening and found her husband and Karen together.’ He grimaced. The balloon went up.’

‘Was there any contact between Clayton and Karen while she was living here with you?’

‘Not that we know of,’ Christine answered. ‘I asked her once or twice if Clayton had been in touch with her but she was most emphatic that there’d been no contact of any kind. This morning, when we discovered she hadn’t been here all night, my first thought was that she might have met him yesterday, spent the night with him somewhere. I wanted to phone him but Ian wouldn’t let me.’

‘I couldn’t believe she was with Clayton,’ Ian explained. ‘I couldn’t believe she’d be such a fool, not after the sensible way she’d behaved all the time she’d been living here. I was sure she was with some girlfriend from the college, that she’d walk in or phone at any moment. I thought it would be madness to ring the Claytons. It could start up all kinds of trouble for them again, very probably all for nothing.’

‘Why was Karen in care in the first place?’ Kelsey wanted to know. ‘What happened to her parents?’

‘They’re both dead,’ Christine told him. Her face began to dissolve again. ‘I’m sorry.’ She put her handkerchief to her eyes. ‘It’s been such a shock.’

Sergeant Lambert came in with a tray of tea. ‘I can give you the bare bones of Karen’s history,’ Ian told Kelsey as Lambert handed round the cups. ‘Christine doesn’t know any more than I do, we only know what the Social Services told us. We never talked about the past with Karen. We thought it best if she put it all behind her and made a fresh start.’

‘What kind of past was it?’

‘Her parents lived in Okeshot, that was where Karen was born.’ Okeshot was a prosperous market town roughly the same size as Cannonbridge, eighteen miles to the south-west. ‘Her mother died when Karen was a small child, and her father didn’t remarry for some years. He died not long after the second marriage. That left Karen with her stepmother.’ He recited the string of facts in a flat monotone.

‘After a time the stepmother remarried, a man called Lorimer. Lorimer abused Karen and she became pregnant. The whole thing came out and Karen was taken into care. She had an abortion. There was a court case and Lorimer went to prison. He’s still there, as far as I know.’

Christine appeared by now to have recovered complete control. She sat sipping her tea, her face wiped clear of expression.

Ian took up the story again. ‘The stepmother stood by Lorimer. What it came down to was that she had to choose between him and Karen. The Social Services wouldn’t allow Karen to live in the same house as Lorimer again and the stepmother told them she intended to take Lorimer back when he’d served his sentence. So Karen had to remain in care.’

‘To get back to yesterday,’ Kelsey said. ‘When did you first miss Karen?’

‘We didn’t miss her till this morning, Ian told him. ‘When we saw that her bed hadn’t been slept in. We were both out yesterday evening.’ He explained about Christine’s catalogue round, the sales parties, the action-group meeting he had attended, the refreshments afterwards at the Chair­man’s house. ‘It was late by the time I got back here, getting on for one o’clock. Christine was already in bed, asleep. I never gave a thought to Karen. I took it for granted she was here, safe and sound, in her bed.’

‘I got home at about a quarter to twelve,’ Christine put in. ‘I assumed Karen was in bed, she was always in bed long before that. I went straight to bed myself.’

‘Had you expected Karen to spend yesterday evening here?’ Kelsey asked her.

‘I asked her at breakfast what she would be doing after college but she said she wasn’t sure, she might go along to the public library. There’s a girl at college she was friendly with, a girl called Lynn Musgrove, she’s the only friend Karen ever mentioned. I tried to ring Lynn this morning to see if Karen was there or if she had any idea where Karen might be. Lynn wasn’t in, she’d gone out early, running, she belongs to an athletics club. I spoke to Mrs Musgrove. She told me Karen hadn’t been there at all yesterday eve­ning. Ian was sure Karen was perfectly all right, that she’d turn up at any moment, so I went off on my rounds as usual. But I couldn’t get Karen out of my head, I was so worried about her. I decided to come back here to see if she’d come home, and if not, try to decide what to do. I’d only been back a few minutes when you arrived.’

Kelsey asked what the Musgrove household consisted of.

‘We haven’t met either Lynn or her mother,’ Ian explained. ‘All we know is what Karen told us. Mrs Musgrove’s a widow, they’re not well off. Mrs Musgrove works an evening shift at a plastics factory. There’s a younger child and Lynn has to keep an eye on her while the mother’s at work–that’s why Lynn was never able to come over here in the evenings, it was always Karen who went there.’

‘Is there any man around?’

‘Karen never mentioned any man. From all she said, Mrs Musgrove seems to be a quiet, hard-working, respectable woman, struggling to bring up her family. I didn’t get the impression she’d have the time or the money for much social life. And Lynn sounds a sensible, steady girl, not in the least flighty.’

‘Did Karen have any boyfriends at the college?’

‘Not as far as we know.’

Kelsey looked at Ian. ‘What about friends or colleagues of your own? Is there anyone who might have met her here, taken a fancy to her? Is there anything you can recall? Anything you noticed?’

Both Ian and Christine shook their heads.

‘Did she ever mention anyone from the college? Someone who was a nuisance perhaps, pestering her, making a pass, trying it on? Some male member of staff, maybe, or a mature student? Or maybe someone she came across on her way to or from the college?’

Again they shook their heads. Karen had never mentioned anything like that.

‘What was her relationship with you?’ Kelsey asked Ian.

‘She was always pleasant and friendly, always coop­erative, wanting to do anything she could to help round the house. There was never any problem. She treated me like a brother, or a friend.’

‘Did she have a crush on you?’

‘No, not in the least.’

‘Did you find her attractive?’

He looked steadily back at the Chief. ‘She was a very pretty girl, but I never regarded her in that way. I looked on her as someone in our care, like a daughter or a younger sister.’

Kelsey asked how Karen usually made her way to and from the college.

‘I took her in the car in the mornings,’ Ian told him. ‘She came home on the bus.’ The time of the bus she caught varied according to the day of the week, the time of her last class, if she was staying on at the college for a club or a meeting, if she was going to the library or to Lynn’s house. Karen always got off the bus by Overmead Wood, a few yards from the junction of the main road with the side road.

‘Did you ever give her a lift home?’ Kelsey asked Ian.

‘No, never.’

‘Did she ever get a lift home from anyone else?’

She had never mentioned a lift to either of them.

‘What would she normally do if she missed her bus? Would she set off to walk home?’

Ian shook his head. ‘It’s a fair distance, especially when you’re carrying books. There’s a good hour between buses, so she couldn’t expect the next one to come along and pick her up on the way. And she’d think walking home would be a waste of time–especially on a cold, wet evening like yesterday–when she could be getting on with her homework in comfort, at the college or in the public library.’

‘I’m positive she wouldn’t try to thumb a lift,’ Christine said with energy. ‘She was well aware of the dangers, we’d warned her about it more than once, and she always agreed it would be a very foolish thing to do.’

‘If she did miss her bus,’ Kelsey persisted, ‘and she did decide to set off walking home, and someone she knew, or knew slightly, pulled up beside her and offered her a lift, someone living in Overmead, perhaps, maybe someone she knew only by sight, do you think she’d be likely to accept the lift?’

‘Yes, I think she probably would,’ Christine answered after a moment.

‘Then again,’ Kelsey said to Ian in an easy tone, ‘if she’d set off walking and you happened to come along, on your way home, and you pulled up beside her, she’d naturally get in.’

Ian frowned. ‘Yes, of course she would, but that never happened. I never gave her a lift home, ever, and I certainly didn’t give her a lift home yesterday.’

‘How did you spend yesterday afternoon?’ Kelsey asked.

‘I was out on site visits all afternoon–that’s how I normally spend Friday afternoon. I drove home from the last site. I had a bath, changed, had something to eat and then went along to the meeting. It started at seven-thirty.’

‘Is that your car outside?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Did you use it yesterday to go to work?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘We’d like to take a look at it.’

‘Certainly.’ Ian led the way outside. Christine followed the Chief and Sergeant Lambert. ‘My wife used the car this morning when she went out on her rounds,’ Ian told them.

Kelsey surveyed the vehicle, a smallish family saloon, claret-red in colour, some four years old. He opened the door and glanced round, opened the boot and looked inside. He returned to the interior of the car and scrutinized it with greater care, being particularly scrupulous in his examin­ation of the pedals, the carpet by the driver’s seat.

‘The sites you visited yesterday,’ he said to Ian. ‘Were they muddy?’

‘Yes. One or two were very muddy.’

The chief peered down again. ‘There’s no sign of any mud here.’

‘I cleaned the car this morning, ready for Christine to take it out.’

‘You gave it a pretty good going over.’

‘It needs a good going over after I’ve been out on the sites, that’s why I clean it on a Saturday morning. I’ve got one of those cordless electric dustettes I use on it, they’re very thorough. I always give the pedals a scrub when I wash the car.’

The Chief straightened up. ‘I’d like to see the shoes you were wearing yesterday when you drove home.’

Ian stuck out one foot. ‘I was wearing these.’ Brown leather slip-ons, bearing evidence now of his morning stint in the garden. ‘I never wear good shoes on a Friday because of going over the sites. These are old but they’re still fairly reasonable. They’re strong and waterproof, they clean up well enough.’

‘The clothes you wore yesterday on your way home, I’d like to see those too. Not just the outdoor garments, everything: socks, underwear, handkerchief, tie, gloves, the lot.’

‘Yes, certainly.’ Ian led them back into the house, taking them first into the front hall. He opened the door of a wardrobe and showed them a jacket, oldish but still respect­able, made of close-woven, proofed gaberdine, medium grey, with a hood, a quilted lining. ‘That’s my Friday jacket,’ he said. ‘It keeps the wind out.’ He took a pair of leather driving gloves from a shelf in the wardrobe. Newish, in good condition.

‘May I see your hands?’ Kelsey asked.

Ian held them out, turned them over. Very well cared for, the skin smooth, the nails neatly trimmed. ‘You look after your hands,’ the Chief observed.

Ian moved his shoulders. ‘I have to, in my job. Can’t go to the office looking like a navvy.’

He took them upstairs into a large double bedroom. He opened a wardrobe and took out a hanger with a pair of dark grey trousers, spotlessly clean, undamaged, carefully pressed. He pulled open drawers in a chest and showed them a set of underwear, socks, a shirt, a polo-necked sweater, all immaculately laundered. From a pile of handkerchiefs, carefully ironed, folded in four, he picked up the top handkerchief. ‘That’s everything,’ he said. ‘Bar the tie.’ He crossed again to the wardrobe and lifted a tie from a rack inside the door. ‘That’s the one I wore yesterday to the office, but I took it off and put it in my pocket when I got into the car to go round the sites. I slipped the sweater on over my shirt. I usually take a sweater to wear on the sites, it can be pretty chilly. I can’t wear it in the office, of course, it’s always a collar and tie in there.’

‘Everything’s been washed,’ Kelsey pointed out.

‘That’s right, everything except the tie. I put it all in the machine this morning, as soon as I got up. It’s no bother, it’s all automatic, it looks after itself while I get on with other jobs.’

‘Do you usually do a load of washing on a Saturday morning?’

‘Yes, I do. Not just my own things, Christine’s, or any household stuff that’s in the basket.’ He raised no objection when the Chief looked carefully through all the rest of his outdoor clothing: suits, jackets, trousers, shoes.

Kelsey then asked if he could see Karen’s room and Ian took them across the landing. He stood in the doorway, beside Christine, watching as the two policemen made a rapid search. Within a short time they came across the snapshot inside the back cover of the maths textbook.

The Chief studied it in silence. It showed a tall, lean, good-looking man in early middle age, standing beside a small saloon car in a deserted country lay-by. He held himself in a relaxed stance, smiling out at the camera.

The Chief held out the snapshot for the Wilmots to see. Neither of them had seen it before, neither could identify the man, or the car.

On top of a chest of drawers stood two framed photo­graphs; Christine identified them for Kelsey. One showed Karen as a child of three or four, with her parents, a loving, happy, family group. The second had been taken a few years later. Karen stood beside her father, he had his arm round her shoulders. He smiled down at her with fond pride and she gazed out at the camera with a confident, open, trusting look.

The Chief asked if there were any recent likenesses of Karen, for use in the investigation. Christine produced a school photograph taken at the end of Karen’s last term in Wychford, together with some snapshots from a trip the three of them had made to the sea one Sunday in late September.

‘One other thing,’ Kelsey told Ian, ‘and I’m afraid not a very pleasant one. I have to ask you to identify the body.’

Ian made no reply but gave a couple of nods. His face was calm and controlled.

But some little time later, as he came out into the mortuary corridor, white-faced, shaken and trembling, all calm had forsaken him and he was desperately struggling to retain the last vestiges of control.