Tooth and Claw (2 page)

A soft knock on the cottage door caused smoked herrings to chase themselves around his teeth and tongue. He checked his watch. Five thirty a.m. – far too early for the postman.

It was work. It had to be work.

He opened the door. Detective Sergeant Emma Bradbury was standing outside. Her car was a hundred yards away, considerately parked so that the noise of her idling engine wouldn’t bother him too much. The glow from the headlamps combined with the faint mist in the air silhouetted her, haloing her body in grainy light. She was wearing a grey silk blouse with a black bolero jacket over the top and black jeans.

‘Emma?’

She acknowledged Lapslie with a nervous nod of her head. ‘Boss – sorry to disturb you.’ Her voice held a citrus tang. ‘I was going to ring from the car, but I saw your bedroom light was on.’

‘I wanted to make an early start. Rouse has got me writing reports for him.’

She nodded. ‘Yeah, he said.’ She looked towards the side of the doorframe, where the nameplate for the house was attached. ‘Thyme Cottage? I’d never noticed that before. Rather twee, isn’t it?’

He took a deep breath, feeling the vestiges of sleep still tugging at the corners of his vision, making his head heavy and his eyes gritty. ‘My wife’s idea. She’s a holistic therapist. Look, I take it this isn’t a social call? I haven’t seen you for months.’

‘No, we’ve – we’ve got a case. You and me.’ She kept raising her fingers to her mouth as though she wanted a cigarette, then rubbing her upper lip nervously when she realised that she wasn’t holding anything in her hand.

‘I don’t do cases any more, Emma,’ he said gently. ‘They’ve put me out to pasture. And I thought you were working with someone else now.’

‘I am. I
was
. Chief Superintendent Rouse told me specifically to come and get you. He said he needed you. He was very insistent.’

‘I don’t care.’ Lapslie took a deep breath. ‘Emma, I just
can’t
. It’s physically impossible. Rouse knows that.’

‘He told me to tell you that he needs you on this one. He called me from home.’

‘Tell him I refuse. No, I’ll call him and tell him myself.’

Again, that nervous lift of the hand to the mouth. ‘He told me to tell you that he’s got another report for you to write. It’s an analysis of the way police witnesses give evidence in court. He said you’d have to spend the next three months attending hearings and cases at Southend, making sure you had all the evidence you needed.’

Lapslie closed his eyes and shook his head. He could feel his pulse beating fast in the arteries of his neck. ‘That’s blackmail.’

‘Yeah, he said you’d say that. And he told me to tell you that you’re right – it is blackmail.’

‘Okay. All right. Give it to me in as few words as you can manage.’

Emma paused for a few seconds, marshalling her thoughts. ‘A young and beautiful TV newsreader found stark naked and mutilated on her bed, to which she had been secured with plastic builders’ ties.’

‘Jesus.’ Jerked out of the ruts of self-pity that it had been trapped in, Lapslie’s mind skittered across the various potentials for trouble a case like that could bring. ‘Is she dead?’

‘I hope so,’ Emma said sombrely. ‘I
really
wouldn’t like to think that she might still be alive looking like she does now.’

‘You’ve been there already?’

‘I was on duty when the call came in. As soon as I found out who the victim was, I informed my superiors. They ran it right
up the chain of command, and Chief Superintendent Rouse called me back and told me to get you on the case.’

‘Who
was
the victim?’ Lapslie asked, remembering with a visceral clench of his stomach muscles the investigation into the shooting of the BBC newsreader Jill Dando ten years before.

‘Her name was Catherine Charnaud,’ Emma said. ‘She read the news on one of the satellite channels.’

Lapslie wasn’t really listening. He was remembering, instead, those days, weeks, months of the Jill Dando investigation, and how the microscope of publicity had caused a calamitous buildup of errors and assumptions in the investigation. When a policeman was killed, the police pulled out all the stops to find the killer. It was an immediate, instinctive response. Nobody took leave; everyone did what they had to, no matter how small. When Jill Dando was killed her colleagues reacted in a similar way. The subsequent investigation was probably the most scrutinised, the most discussed, the most journalistically dissected that the police had ever undertaken.

And now it was going to happen again. He could feel it.

No wonder Rouse wanted him on the case. He almost forgave the man. Almost.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘where do we need to go?’

‘Chigwell: Holy Cross Road. The house is called “Manor Farm”, but I can’t see much evidence of farmland around there. Right in the Footballers’ Wives and Girlfriends’ belt.’

‘Which is about as far from a chastity belt as it’s possible to get.’ His mind raced through options and plans that he’d thought were behind him now and receding in the rear-view mirror of his career. ‘Get on the phone. Keep sightseers away and make sure whoever’s manning the boundary of the crime scene doesn’t talk to reporters. And I mean doesn’t talk at
all
. Not even a “No comment”. If I hear anything apart from
informed guesswork from the reporters I’ll have someone’s skin as a seat cover.’

‘Understood. You want the Crime Scene Investigators to get to work before you get there?’

‘Time is always of the essence in these cases. Make sure they get access as soon as they arrive.’

‘Got it.’

‘And make a point of reminding the Crime Scene photographer that the pictures taken by police cameras are all digitally watermarked, so if they try and sell them to the
Sun
we’ll have them up on a charge before they can even book their one-way ticket to St Lucia.’

‘Understood. You want me to drive you down, or are you going to drive yourself?’

He thought for a moment. ‘You drive. I need to think.’

He followed her towards the car. It was an Audi A4. He was surprised – he seemed to remember that she’d had a Mondeo the last time they had worked together.

‘New car?’ he asked.

‘A present from a friend,’ she said, opening the door for him. From the tone of her voice he guessed that she didn’t want to discuss it.

Emma handled the car with the skill and the verve that he remembered from the brief time they had worked together on the Madeline Poel case. The drive towards Chigwell took them up through the centre of Saffron Walden before Emma could veer off and head south on the M11. The roads were lightly occupied. Aware of his condition, Emma kept the radio off, but the drone of the engine and the occasional raucous beep of horns or the rasp of an over-torqued engine as a car accelerated past them caused spasms of indescribable flavour across his tongue.

Lapslie gazed blankly at a low ground mist lying on the fields as they drove, concealing the rutted ground beneath. Bushes and hedges emerged from it like islands in a milky sea.

He spent the drive bitterly cursing the chief for riding roughshod over his medical condition and throwing him this case like you would a scrap to a dog. God alone knew that Lapslie hated the place to which his illness had brought him, but at least it was preferable to the constant sensory anguish of an investigation. Now, however, it looked as though he was being forced back into the fray whether he liked it or not, and regardless of the consequences to his mental and physical health.

Or perhaps, he thought darkly, there was more to it than that. Perhaps Rouse had decided it was time to push Lapslie out of the Force, but rather than do it directly and lay the police open to being sued Rouse was trying to put Lapslie into a position where he would have to resign. Either that or suffer a complete mental collapse. Would Rouse do something that devious? Remembering back to their time together as colleagues in Brixton, years before, Lapslie decided that he would, and he’d do it without a trace of angst.

The sun came up as they sped onto the M25: a pale wash of indeterminate colour across the sky, against which the branches of the trees stood out starkly, although they had been invisible against the darkness just moments before. The ground mist burned off rapidly as the temperature began to rise. Emma stayed on the M25 for only a few minutes, enough time to travel from Junction 27 to Junction 26, then she came off onto the A121.

Chigwell arrived like a bad smell: industrial estates, travel hotels and identikit housing replacing the fields of hay and stretches of woods that had been the backdrop to most of the drive. Civilisation, pushing nature to one side.

Emma guided the car through the last few turns and into Holy Cross Road. A small knot of gawkers, undeterred by the cold or by the early hour, had already gathered by the police tape that segregated the house at the end. She let the car coast towards them, waiting until she was within a few seconds of hitting them in the back before beeping her horn. Lapslie braced himself against the sudden stab of salmon and caramel. The small crowd parted for them; Emma let the car roll forward while she lowered the window and held her warrant card out to the constable who, wrapped-up against the weather, approached the car from beside the gateposts that separated the house from the road.

‘DS Bradbury and DCI Lapslie,’ she said. ‘We’re expected.’

‘Go right in ma’am, sir,’ the constable said, lifting the yellow and black striped tape from where it had been looped around a projection on the open gate and ushering Emma’s car through.

‘Surprised the gate isn’t closed,’ Lapslie called across Emma. ‘A bit of tape’s not going to stop a determined rush.’

The constable shrugged. ‘We had the gate closed for a while, sir,’ he said, ‘but there was so much traffic through, what with the investigating officers, the CSIs, the photographer and whatnot, that I decided it wasn’t worth it. Tape’s a lot faster.’

‘Fair point.’

Emma accelerated towards the house; a rectangular pile of red bricks with a cream portico stuck on the front and tall, fake-Edwardian windows. Gravel crunched beneath her tyres. Lapslie could taste something bitter and watery, like lettuce, washing around his tongue.

Several police cars were parked up in front of the portico, along with two vans that presumably had brought the CSIs from their usual lair; all were watched over by a couple of security cameras attached to the front of the house. Emma
parked up alongside them and Lapslie headed towards the open front door. Another uniformed constable examined his warrant card before letting him inside.

Emma turned towards him before he could enter the house. The expression on her face was a mixture of embarrassment and pity. She reached into a pocket and pulled something small and green out, which she gave to him. It was cold in his hand.

‘Look, I thought you might need these,’ she said.

He looked at the object she had handed him. It was a pair of headphones: plastic hemispheres lined with black foam rubber and linked by a metal wire headband. For a moment he wondered what the punchline was going to be – was she proposing giving him an audio tour of the crime scene, like some macabre tourist guide? – and then he realised that there was no flex dangling from the headphones.

‘Industrial strength noise suppressors,’ she said, avoiding his gaze. ‘Tell me if I’m being stupid, but I thought—’

‘You’re not being stupid,’ he said gently. ‘You’re being considerate. Thank you.’

Lapslie slipped the headphones on, and the world seemed to take a step backwards. It wasn’t completely silent – he could still hear the regular thudding of his heart, the occasional wheeze in his chest, the rush of blood through the arteries of his neck and the squeak of shifting mucus in his nose – but it was better. A lot better.

Feeling energised, he stepped into the house.

The first thing that he noticed was the smell. It was an old, familiar smell; one that had greeted him so many times over the years that he’d lost count, and yet still had the power to close up his throat and make him wince; old and musty and coppery, the kind of smell that was sometimes provoked as a taste in his mouth by background conversations in bars and
restaurants. But this time it was real. Blood. Lots of blood.

The house was surprisingly well furnished: walls painted in faded pastel greens and blues, natural cotton throws over the furniture, wooden skirting boards and doorframes bleached to look as if they had been left out in the sun, shallow glass bowls of pebbles left scattered around in strategic locations. The overall effect was of something old and comfortable that sat amongst sand dunes, near a beach. Several sculptures were set on bookshelves: driftwood twisted either by accident or design into shapes like dancing figures. Paintings on the wall looked like originals: ripples of light on water, captured in time for ever.

The main focus of activity seemed to be upstairs. Followed by Emma, Lapslie walked up to the first floor. Three uniformed officers were clustered together in a doorway. A sudden actinic flash silhouetted them, black against white. Lapslie blinked, then coughed gently. ‘Any chance of a senior officer getting past?’ he asked. His voice sounded flat and thunderous in his head.

One of the men turned. ‘Sorry, sir.’ He moved to one side, letting Lapslie into the room, staring at the headphones in puzzlement.

It was one of those moments when the totality of a crime scene built itself up incrementally in Lapslie’s mind, element by element, as if the complete effect was too stark, too terrible for him to absorb in one go.

Firstly, Lapslie took in the room itself, as though his brain were shying away from the horror that lay on the bed and taking refuge in details, fripperies, inconsequentialities.

The room was large and airy, and one side was almost entirely taken up with a window. Outside Lapslie could see the back garden, lit from one side by the rising sun shining through the ash trees that lined the boundary. Each blade of grass seemed
distinct from the others, and cast a straight-line shadow. A metal sculpture sat in the centre of the lawn: an orrery of some kind, with a globe on a plinth surrounded by rings; the whole thing suggested by lengths of straight or curved metal wire. It was rusted and pitted, but it looked as though it was meant to be that way. Artfully distressed, rather than disintegrating due to nature.