BURIED CRIMES: a gripping detective thriller full of twists and turns (11 page)

Chapter 16: Soil Samples

Monday morning, week 2

Rae was examining the brickwork. ‘What do you think, sir?’

Barry Marsh directed a flashlight at the cellar wall and fingered the metal ring affixed to the brickwork. A single bulb lit this end of the cool, slightly musty room and few details could be made out. He guessed that this end of the cellar, away from the steps from the kitchen, had hardly been used over the years. The room was spacious enough to hold the junk that most families would throw into a cellar. There was no need to come to this end at all, with its dry soil floor. He was surprised that no one had bothered to split the vast room into smaller units, and fit shelves and cupboards. But then he remembered the garage, workshop and shed, all within easy reach of the back door and garden. Probably this room had never been needed.

‘Well the boss has already asked forensics to take a sample of soil from over here, just as a precaution. It’s not worth getting them to come back and dust for prints unless we find a strong reason for it.’ The dim room had a different, eerier atmosphere than the rest of the building, and they were almost whispering. Maybe it had played a part in the events of twenty years ago.

‘We need to trace every single previous occupant just to eliminate them from suspicion. I’m almost finished with the list. I’m just wondering, boss. We’ve only been tracing tenants. We may need to start on the landlords and owners next. The owners could well still have access to a key, couldn’t they? They’d know when the place was going to be empty, or even when the residents were away on holiday. We can’t discount them.’ She peered into the dingy gloom of the cellar. ‘This place gives me the creeps.’

‘Until just now we couldn’t be sure what might have happened, and what led to those two children being buried. But now? It’s starting to look one way, isn’t it? None of us have met this kind of thing before. It’s why the boss went to London last week to see an expert she knows, just in case it turns out to be nasty. She was wondering about inviting him down, so that we’re prepared for what we might discover. It’s looking more and more as if he’ll be needed. I keep wondering what that metal ring is for, sunk into the brickwork like that. I feel uneasy too.’

The two detectives climbed back up the steps to the kitchen door. Marsh locked the cellar behind him.

‘Are there any other copies of the key?’ he asked Philip Freeman, who was waiting in the kitchen.

Philip opened a drawer and took out a tin containing a single key. ‘That’s all we have,’ he said.

* * *

Twenty minutes later Marsh and Gregson walked into the incident room and made their way to the information board. Marsh was adding a few words to the "cellar" strand on the display when he realised that Sophie and Neil Dunnett had joined them. He also realised that Rae had fallen silent. She was staring rigidly at the board as if in a trance. The atmosphere had become tense, and Dunnett did nothing to alleviate it.

‘Good morning, Sergeant. And good morning to you, DC Gregson.’ His voice was low. It almost slithered through the air, and the emphasis on the final phrase caused Rae to stiffen even more.

‘Morning, sir,’ said Marsh, trying to lighten the strained atmosphere. ‘Good to see you here. An effective press release on Friday, I thought. It read well in the papers.’

Dunnett ignored him and continued to stare at Rae. ‘How have you settled in, Gregson? Dorset treating you any better than Wiltshire?’

There was a pause. As she responded, Rae continued to stare straight ahead at the board. ‘Fine thank you, sir. I believe so. I think I’m doing a good job.’ Marsh and Sophie could both hear the tremor in her voice.

‘Well, don’t let the team down, Gregson. Not on my watch,’ Dunnett said.

Sophie broke in. ‘That’s hardly likely, sir. I’ve already stated several times that I think Rae has done a first-rate job for us.’

‘As long as that continues, I’ll be happy.’ Dunnett shook hands with Sophie and left.

Rae was trembling. She turned and hurried out of the room without a word. Marsh and Sophie stared at each other, then Sophie said, ‘I’ll check the toilets, you check the car park.’

Rae was nowhere to be found.

* * *

A full half hour later Rae reappeared, carrying a coffee that she set carefully down on her desk. She started to work on the Finch Cottage residents’ list. Marsh looked at Sophie and raised his eyebrows, but she shook her head. The results had come in from the analytical chemists at Southampton University, so Marsh ploughed on. He finally gave up trying to decipher the rows of figures and the explanatory text that accompanied them. He took them to Sophie.

‘Sorry, ma’am. It would help if I knew what we were looking for, but I’m completely lost, I’m afraid.’

‘I guess you were just on the email address list,’ she replied. ‘It’s really intended for Dave Nash, but I think I can explain. If the children were kept down in that cellar, tethered up and mistreated, there might be residues in the soil. That’s why I requested the analysis. Urine leaves a high nitrogen content. Faeces leave phosphates. Blood leaves iron. None of it could have been leached away by rain, not there, so we’re looking for unusually high levels. They took samples from three areas in the cellar, left side, right side, and near the rear wall, where you were looking at that securing ring. So let’s look for differences.’

She spread the documents out on the desk and began reading.

‘Look. This set of figures shows higher nitrate levels than the others. It’s sample C, which is our position of interest, where that ring was fixed to the wall.’

Marsh read. There were slight variations in the nitrate figures for the other two samples, but the level here was significantly higher.

‘Same for the phosphate, do you see? Though it’s not as obvious.’

‘So that means the children could have been there? And, if so, they were being maltreated?’

‘It suggests the possibility. It could also be that someone stored some general fertiliser at that spot, and spilled some. We can’t be sure what caused the increase. But look here. The iron shows no such level, indicating that there was no blood in the soil. We’ll need to have a chat with Dave about all this, but I think my assumptions are right. It all adds to the picture, doesn’t it? But it can’t be counted as hard evidence. It simply adds weight to the possibility that the children were kept down there for a while, and maybe in awful conditions. But there could be other explanations. Maybe someone kept a dog tied up to the ring. It’s all a mass of unknowns and we could get ourselves completely side-tracked by the various possibilities. We have to build up a reliable picture of what went on, and that is not going to be easy.’

Marsh pointed to the covering letter. ‘They’re asking us to contact their head of department, a Professor Wendy Millward. I’m a bit dim about all this detailed science, ma’am. Maybe it’d be better if you did it?’

Sophie was amused. ‘It’s a sign of the times, isn’t it, when a bloke passes the scientific stuff over to a woman? Yes, I’ll give her a ring later. Maybe she’s found something else that’s interesting.’

‘So, what now?’

‘I’ll get Harry Turner to come down and talk us through it. If we’re not absolutely clear, we’ll find our minds are all over the place.’

Marsh paused. ‘What about Rae, ma’am?’

‘She should have calmed down by now. Have a word with her. See if she’s willing to volunteer an explanation. I’m trying to recall the details of what I found out about our esteemed DCS when I had my first run-in with him a couple of years ago. I think he was in Wiltshire for a spell before he came here. I just wonder whether they’ve crossed swords before. It would explain why he said those odd things last week.’ She tapped her fingers on the desktop. ‘Don’t push it, though, Barry. Let her take her time, and leave it if she’s obviously not ready to do so. We can follow it up later, in the pub if necessary.’

Rae didn’t look up when Marsh approached her desk.

‘Hi. Do you want to talk?’

Rae kept her eyes fixed on the papers in front of her.

‘Not really, sir.’

‘That’s fine. But I do need to know if the two of you have a history.’

There was a long pause. ‘Yes, we do,’ she whispered.

Marsh noticed the heightened colour in her cheeks.

‘The boss and I need to know about it, Rae. We need to be kept in the picture if we’re to help you.’

Rae nodded. Finally she raised her eyes. ‘Okay. Maybe later, or tomorrow. I can’t think straight just now.’

‘Do you want to take a break and go home? We can afford to give you the rest of the day off.’

Her reply was sharp, bitter. ‘That would play right into his hands, wouldn’t it? That’s what he’ll be looking for, some sign that I’m weakening. It’d give him an excuse to start putting the knife in. No, I’ll stay here. I’m alright, really. And thanks for your concern. I do appreciate it. Can you tell the boss that?’

‘Pub later, after we finish here?’

Rae gave him a weak smile. ‘Okay. Does that mean the boss’ll give me the third degree?’

‘I expect so. But don’t worry. She has history with him too.’

* * *

Barry Marsh emerged from the bar area carrying a tray holding a few packets of crisps and nuts, the usual pint of ale for the boss, a gin and tonic for Rae and an apple juice for himself. He’d go for a drink in one of the Swanage pubs after he’d driven home if he needed it, but he suspected he’d feel too worn out.

‘When he first appeared as a DCI in Salisbury, one of the DCs nicknamed him "The Swindon Tosspot."’ Rae took a mouthful her drink. ‘That’s what I was told. That was before I became a DC. I was warned about him almost immediately I joined the unit. They told me he sometimes seemed to be out of his depth and would explode into fits of rage at the slightest provocation. At first, things were fine. I think he recognised that I worked hard and didn’t make mistakes, so I got off lightly compared to some of the others. But it all changed when I officially announced that I was transitioning. I followed the guidelines the personnel team gave me to the letter. But I found myself being left out of anything important. I was spending my time filing and on the phone, being asked to get the tea and coffee. I know someone’s got to do those things, but that type of drudge job had previously been shared out. Now they were given almost exclusively to me. And I hadn’t even transitioned then. I was still a bloke. I talked to my line manager, a DS, about it, but she just shrugged her shoulders. "What did you expect?" she said. "Complain to the boss if you don’t like it." So I did. What I didn’t realise was that it had all been a set-up. When I took my complaint to him he was ready and waiting. He told me I was a sordid little runt. According to him, I was ruining the camaraderie in the unit, everyone had complained to him about me. No one wanted to work with me, I had no real future in the police and I needed to find a different line of work. Of course, he said all this when there were no witnesses about, so I knew it would be my word against his if I made a complaint. I also guessed that’s what he wanted me to do — make a formal complaint. I’d have initiated an action that could be used against me, so I could then be accused of all kinds of things. So I kept my mouth shut. Things just got worse, particularly when I went through my transition and reappeared as a woman. I was ignored completely, almost as if I didn’t exist. I got most of my instructions through emails or written memos. I was side-lined completely. When I questioned this, unofficially of course, I was still ignored. Eventually one of my friends on the team told me what was really happening. It was all orchestrated by the Tosspot, and anyone who appeared to be on my side would find their own future in the unit under threat.’

‘So what did you do?’ Sophie asked.

‘I soldiered on. I spent the better part of a year wasting all my training, doing menial, office work but I refused to give in. That’s when I did the extra study that you saw on my CV, just to keep my hand in. Then I had several months off for my surgery, and when I came back he’d gone. The atmosphere was completely different, much more accepting. I tried to make a go of it but I felt I’d been let down by the rest of the team and I told them so. They could have shown me some support, but they’d chosen not to. They’d opted to keep their heads down and look after themselves rather than do what was right, and I couldn’t forgive them for that. The only exception was my friend, Stevie, the one who’d tried to keep me in the loop about what was going on. How would I ever be able to work with people who’d done that to me? I thought the Tosspot had gone to county headquarters, so I decided to apply for a job here, in Dorset, just to get away from him. I had no idea he’d transferred here. It’s a nightmare. I feel as if I’ve walked into some kind of trap.’

Sophie took a sip of her beer. ‘I can see how it might look to you, but things really aren’t as bleak as you think. Barry and I are your line managers, not the DCS. As long as you’re working in this unit and doing a good job for it, you’re safe. All he can do is to needle you, which is what he was doing this afternoon. And I must say you played right into his hands by reacting like that. He obviously spotted it. We can only expect more of the same, I’m afraid.’

‘Sorry, ma’am, but I was totally unprepared.’ Rae looked miserable. ‘I didn’t know how to respond.’

‘Well, it needs to be better than that. Don’t let him draw you out, which is what he’ll be trying to do. My guess is that next time will be worse. He’ll try to goad you into an angry response, knowing that I won’t be able to protect you if you say something insubordinate enough. The key thing is not to speak to him without one of us being present. The trick with a bully, Rae, is to keep him on the back foot by taking the initiative yourself. You know the old expression "Know Thine Enemy"? You should. It’s the essence of good detective work. Most important of all, leave any confrontations to me. I have the background and experience to deal with them.’ Sophie turned to her sergeant. ‘That goes for you, too, Barry. I don’t want you sticking your neck out. Play it safe and let me handle any flak that he chooses to hurl our way. I can play dirty when I need to, and this might be one of those times.’