Читать книгу No Smoke Without Fire - Paul Gitsham, Paul Gitsham - Страница 14

Chapter 2

The strident ring of a mobile phone sang out in the silenced hall. Three hundred pairs of eyes swivelled immediately towards the back row and Susan Jones cringed in embarrassment, trying to disappear from view. Beside her, her husband, Detective Chief Inspector Warren Jones, fumbled frantically for the offending gadget, trying in vain to silence it. On stage, the earnest fourteen-year-old girl started to sing the opening notes of ‘Silent Night’, before stumbling and losing her place as the phone rang for a second time. The teacher accompanying her on the piano stopped playing and turned around, glaring at the audience.

A chorus of tuts and hisses sounded from around the auditorium as Jones got to his feet and tried to leave the darkened room as unobtrusively as a six-foot man holding a ringing, glowing mobile phone, seated in the middle of a row of interlocked school chairs, could manage.

Mumbling his apologies, Warren stumbled into the centre aisle, knocking over at least two handbags and a pair of precariously balanced crutches. Resisting the urge to break into a run, he strode with as much dignity as he could muster to the rear exit. As he slipped through the double doors into the hallway outside he heard the piano start up again and the opening notes of the young soloist. The phone continued to ring. Giving up on trying to silence the damned thing using its touchscreen, Warren simply answered it.

“One moment, Tony, I can’t talk now.” Although he had whispered into the handset, his voice seemed to echo down the hallway. The two white-haired ladies setting up the coffee urn and interval biscuits scowled at him. As he hurried towards the front of the school he prayed that nobody had recognised him. The last thing he wanted was for the school’s new Head of Biology to become known to the Parent Teacher Association and other gossips as ‘that science teacher with the really rude husband’.

Finally finding himself alone in the school’s reception area, he was able to answer the call. “OK, Tony, what have you got?”

The booming Essex voice on the end of the phone sounded amused. “Caught you at a bad time, guv?”

“You could say that. Let’s just say that ‘Silent Night’ was suddenly no longer silent. What’s happened?”

All traces of humour immediately left the other man’s voice. “You’d better get over here, boss. We’ve got a body.”

* * *

Less than thirty minutes later, Warren carefully manoeuvred his dark blue Ford Mondeo up a sodden dirt track. The cold December night was pitch black, the dark and threatening rain clouds blotting out the nearly full moon and stars. The only lights visible were the flashing blue strobe from the police patrol car blocking the road and the interior lights of the empty ambulance parked next to it.

To his left, Warren saw several parked vehicles. He made out the familiar white outline of Detective Inspector Tony Sutton’s sports car, a Scenes of Crime incident van and a few others that he didn’t recognise.

A middle-aged uniformed sergeant with a clipboard stepped out to greet him.

“DCI Jones?”

He scribbled Warren’s name and time of arrival on the scene log and directed Warren to park up next to Sutton’s Audi.

“DI Sutton is at the scene, sir, along with the paramedics and the members of the public that found the body. A Scenes of Crime manager is on site and others are on their way; should be here within the hour.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. Where is the body?”

The officer pointed ahead, up the dirt track.

“A couple of hundred yards up there. Apparently it was found by a group of dog-walkers. They were pretty on the ball, by the sounds of it. They stood still and phoned for us; didn’t trample all over the scene. They swear that they only walked on the footpath, so we’ve made that the main access route.”

Warren nodded his approval; the sergeant seemed pretty on the ball himself. It never ceased to amaze him the way that despite all of the pleas and warnings from the crime scene specialists, many police officers — detectives included — insisted on poking around the site of a suspicious death, potentially destroying any evidence before it could be collected. By designating the already forensically compromised footpath as the only access route to the crime scene, the sergeant had ensured that any evidence in the surrounding area would be left undisturbed.

Pulling out his mobile again, Warren called Tony Sutton. The detective inspector answered immediately.

“I’m down at the main gate,” Warren informed him. “I have a paper suit in the boot of the car. I’ll come and join you.”

With the aid of the sergeant’s powerful Maglite torch, Warren perched on the edge of his open car boot as he squirmed into a white ‘Teletubby’ suit made out of plastic-coated paper. The last thing he wanted to do was contaminate the scene with any trace evidence from his own clothes; he could destroy valuable clues, or, worse, he could give the murderer’s legal team the tools necessary to raise reasonable doubt and secure an acquittal.

Finally, suited and booted and feeling faintly ridiculous, he clumsily started up the path. Even without the large torch, he could have found his way; the designated path was wide and well-established and somebody had stuck metre-high sticks in the ground with police tape around them to act as a guideline.

As he walked Warren felt himself shiver, and not just because of the crisp air. The path cut through a small stretch of woodland and the trees loomed forbiddingly on either side of him. The rustle of his paper suit and the sound of his breathing weren’t quite enough to hide the haunting hoot of an owl, hunting in the distance. A sudden rustle to his right betrayed the presence of some small animal, spooked by the powerful beam of his torch. It was at times like this that Warren was reminded of the fact that, despite enjoying a country walk on a summer’s afternoon as much as the next man — especially if it involved a pub or two — he really was a city dweller.

Continuing his slow trudge, he became more accustomed to his surroundings: the damp smell of the woodland, the faint pull against each footstep from the muddy path. It had rained a bit the day before, he recalled. Depending on when the body had been dumped the scene was either preserved with nice footprints in the damp soil and the victim covered in fibres and other forensic gifts, or nature had done her best to cleanse the area and make the Scenes of Crime team’s job harder.

Finally a glow started to appear through the trees. The shiny, plastic crime tape that led the way curved sharply to the right. Warren was grudgingly impressed; the spot was well hidden from the road, suggesting that the killer — assuming the victim was murdered — knew the area and had probably chosen the site with some care. He filed that away for future consideration.

Ahead a small clearing was brightly lit with a bank of powerful battery lights and criss-crossed with blue and white tape, designating which areas had already been walked upon and which might still yield some clues.

Standing huddled together against the night air were four late-middle-aged people; two men and two women, comprising two couples, judging by the way they were paired off. A chocolate-brown Labrador sat alert at the feet of the shorter of the two men, watching everything going on with great interest; a fat, golden lump of indeterminate breed lay slumped as if dead next to the other.

A rather less-well-wrapped police constable looked as if he would dearly love to swap the ramblers’ Gore-Tex and fleeces for his own fluorescent police jacket. On his feet, he wore a pair of muddy white booties, stopping him from contaminating the crime scene with outside material. At least he wouldn’t have to clean his boots before his next shift.

The couples were also wearing the white booties, but this time to stop them losing any trace evidence that they might have picked up as the first on scene. It was an elegant solution, Warren decided, given that it was impractical to have them walk all the way back to the front gate in their socks. He wondered if anybody had told them that their walking boots would be spending at least a couple of days at Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire’s Forensic Science Unit at Welwyn Garden City.

He glanced at the two dogs and couldn’t help a smile as he realised that in a perfect world they would also be wearing plastic booties. Depending on what the Crime Scene Manager decided was necessary, both of those dogs might just find themselves undergoing a very thorough grooming in Welwyn.

After introducing himself to the shivering PC, Warren was told that Tony Sutton was with the CSM, Andy Harrison, examining the body. Two other Scenes of Crime officers were with him, starting a preliminary search and setting up a tent to protect the body from further degradation from the elements. The paramedics had been told to stand down as the body would be left in situ overnight. They looked relieved to be going, but agreed to wait to escort the couples back to the waiting SOC van after Warren heard their story.

Finally, Warren met the walkers. Thanking them for their patience and apologising for the wait, he soon ascertained that they were two recently retired couples out on a regular walk. Apparently, they got together about three times a week and went for a three or four mile ramble with their dogs, before retiring to their local pub. They had a number of favoured routes, with this one being preferred on colder evenings, since the trees sheltered them from the wind somewhat. Their last walk through these woods had been four nights previously. That might or might not give a time frame on the dumping of the body, Warren decided, since a very fresh corpse might not have attracted the attention of the dogs.

As Warren had guessed, it was Peanut, the chocolate-brown Labrador, who had found the body. As was their custom, both dogs were off their leads with Peanut romping through the trees on the edge of the pathway. Susie, the golden lump, was getting on a bit now and preferred to trot alongside her owners. At the mention of her name, one of Susie’s ears pricked up, before flopping down again. The poor thing looked knackered, thought Warren.

The walkers had been alerted by a sudden urgent barking from Peanut.

“He’s a sensible one, is Peanut. He’s not given to silliness, so I thought I best go and see what got him all excited.” The oldest of the four retirees was a short man, with a trim grey beard and gentle accent that might once upon a time have been West Country.

Leaving his wife with the other couple, he’d entered the trees to find Peanut sitting on his haunches barking and whining, clearly distressed.

“It was the smell that gave it away, see. I knew that there was something dead in there as soon as I got near. And I figured that if it had been a deer or something else, Peanut wouldn’t have been acting up like he did, he’d have been straight in there sniffing around. Far as I can tell, he never went within ten feet of the body.

“Anyway, it was pretty dark in there, but I’ve got one of those little wind-up torches on my key ring and as soon as I shone it on the body I could see she was dead.” The man’s voice cracked slightly. “Poor thing. I took a couple of paces closer, figuring I should at least take her pulse, but I didn’t. You don’t smell like that if you’re still alive. Then I remembered all of those crime dramas that Marie watches and I figured I best leave well alone.”

At the mention of her name, his wife slipped a comforting arm around his waist.

“Ben here has a mobile phone and so I got him to phone 999 and then we waited for you lot to arrive.” The other man, taller and still sporting a full head of dark hair, waved an old, brick-like phone in the air as if to prove his friend’s point.

After asking them a few more questions and making sure that the CSM had taken everything he needed, Warren thanked them again and sent them back down the path with the paramedics.

Now it was just him and the police constable. If anything, the bright lights made the woods seem more oppressive, blotting out what little natural moonlight could make it through the clouds, enveloping the two men in a white bubble, surrounded by inky blackness. There could be absolutely anyone or anything standing outside that little cocoon and neither man would know…

Jesus, Warren, get a grip. You’re in bloody Hertfordshire, five miles from Middlesbury, not two hundred miles up the Amazon River. There aren’t jaguars waiting in the trees or crocodiles lurking under the river; we’ve probably scared off every rabbit or fox for miles around.

Nevertheless, he was relieved when he saw the flash of white light coming from the woods and, a few seconds later, the slightly comical shape of Tony Sutton waddling towards him.

“Stop smirking, guv, you look just as bloody silly.”

Warren, glad that his smile of relief had been mistaken for mirth, responded in kind. “What have we got, Detective Inspector Tinky Winky?”

A snort of laughter was quickly suppressed by the presence of the uniformed constable, then the brief moment of levity was gone, neither man feeling it appropriate now. Sutton’s face turned sombre.

“I think you’d better come and see for yourself, Chief. It’s not a nice one.”