Core of Evil (24 page)

‘Okay.’ She nodded. ‘You want to head out there and see it?’

‘Yes.’

Bradbury looked at her watch. ‘Almost lunchtime. We could stop for something on the way.’

The abstract mix of flavours was still lingering in Lapslie’s mouth, dominated by the taste of Bradbury’s voice. ‘Thanks,’ he said sourly, ‘but I’ve already eaten.’

Lapslie insisted that they took his car rather than Bradbury’s. It went against police protocol for a superior to drive around someone further down the food chain than them, but the last thing he wanted at that time was marmalade from her Mondeo’s engine purr added to the stuff already in his mouth. Surprised, she agreed.

While they were driving, Bradbury was on her mobile getting the CSI team arranged. It took her five separate calls, plus the possibly empty threat of Lapslie phoning the Detective Chief Superintendent’s office and getting him to reprioritise their work, to move his case up their list. At one point Lapslie could taste blackberry wine, very faintly, across the back of his tongue, and he guessed that Bradbury was talking to Sean Burrows, the Crime Scene Manager who had previously been called out to the forest where Violet Chambers’ body had been found. He was concentrating on driving, so he didn’t catch everything that Bradbury said, but judging by the harsh tone of voice she used she was pressing the point home quite heavily that this was an important case.

Eventually she put the mobile back in her pocket. ‘I’ve been asked to tell you,’ she said, ‘that by prioritising this case above the rest of CSI’s workload you’ve potentially threatened the investigation into two other suspicious deaths, and you can expect calls from the DCS within the next hour.’

‘Life’s like that,’ Lapslie said. ‘A series of choices, each of which has unfortunate consequences. You just have to do what seems best at the time. When will CSI get to the car?’

‘They were already on the road to another crime scene. They’re turning round and heading for Colchester now. That little Irish git says they’ll be
there within the hour, which is probably about as long as it’ll take for us to get there.’

The roads were relatively clear, Emma Bradbury didn’t seem inclined to talk, and Lapslie found his thoughts wandering as he drove. He was working on the assumption that someone – yet to be identified – had killed Violet Chambers and taken on her identity, writing postcards and Christmas cards to make people think that Violet was still alive while he, or she, presumably, plundered whatever money Violet had and rented her house out via an estate agent. According to Bradbury’s investigations, the money collected by the estate agents was paid into a separate account in Violet’s name from which occasional withdrawals were made in different locations. But as far as Lapslie could see, the money wasn’t enough to make it worthwhile killing Violet Chambers for. Perhaps as a crime of passion, a killing on the spur of the moment, but this had all the hallmarks of careful planning and execution. So why go to all that trouble just for a trickle of money?

Lapslie shivered. Somehow, there was more to this crime than they had yet uncovered. He had the distinct impression that the body in the forest, the house that had been rented out and the abandoned car were just the tip of the iceberg. There was a lot more of this case hidden below the surface. And, like an iceberg, it was going to be cold and hard and very unpleasant.

They arrived in Colchester less than an hour after they had set out. Bradbury guided Lapslie in through narrow streets with high stone walls alternating with wider, more modern roads flanked with warehouse-style superstores until they came to the street where the car had been abandoned.

The CSI team had got there before them. Their van was parked near the Volvo and they were already deploying the yellow plastic tent that would keep their work isolated, although Lapslie was aware that the amount of time that had passed since the car had been abandoned meant that most of the evidence would have been blown away by the wind or washed away by rain.

He glanced around, trying to get a sense of the place. They were in a wide street which curved away in either direction. On one side was a row of shops: a florists, a laundrette, a bookies and a couple of unidentifiable frontages that were closed or boarded up. A couple of the shops were selling things that were completely at variance with the signs above them. It was obviously the kind of place where property changed hands faster than the signs could keep up, if anyone bothered changing the signs in the first place. Above the shops were two storeys of flats: windows curtained even in the middle of the morning and grimy with dust and pollution. Overflow pipes projected from the flats like regularly spaced industrial gargoyles. The bricks beneath most
of the pipes were green with moss in a sharp triangle, showing where water had dripped or poured on a regular basis over the years. Sheets of newspaper, yellow and crinkled, blew along the pavement and collected in corners. There was nobody about, and a deadness to the air, as if any sound was instantly swallowed up before it could go too far from its source. Even the light seemed grey and tired. The place felt like the end of the world had come early, and it had ended not with a bang but with a whimper.

‘ “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”’ Lapslie murmured as he got out of the car.

‘Sorry, boss?’ Bradbury said, getting out of the passenger side.

‘W. B. Yeats. It seemed apt. I was just wondering what kind of person we’re going to find at the end of all this.’

Bradbury gave him a strange look, but said nothing. Together they walked across to where the tent was being erected around the boxy shape of a car.

Sean Burrows was waiting for them. He was dressed in ordinary clothes, but he was holding the papery overalls that all the CSIs wore when they were carrying out their investigations. ‘You are aware,’ he said with painful sarcasm, ‘that we prioritise our work strictly on the basis of importance.
An abandoned car that may or may not be connected to a nine-month-old death does not come high up that list.’

‘Not your call to make,’ Lapslie said. ‘Let me give you a couple of reasons why you should do this job as top priority. First: I outrank the investigating officers of all the other cases you have on your list. Second: I can get Chief Superintendent Rouse to give you a call and reprioritise your workload until your ears bleed. And third: I’m the only investigating officer who provides you with bacon rolls while you’re working.’

Burrows stared at him for a few moments. ‘Sold to the man with the attitude,’ he said finally. ‘And can we have some sausage rolls mixed in this time? One of the guys is Jewish. Had to eat the roll and leave the bacon last time.’

‘Doesn’t he know what’s in the sausages?’ Bradbury asked.

‘He won’t ask and we won’t say,’ Burrows answered. ‘Trouble is that he can’t turn a blind eye to bacon.’

‘Can you find a local café and arrange for a regular delivery of rolls and tea?’ Lapslie asked Bradbury. She nodded, and walked away.

The tent was up by this time, and Lapslie entered. The dull light from outside was enlivened by its translucent yellow walls, casting a macabre light over the dusty bronze car that sat in the centre. Three of
Burrows’ people were starting work on the car: one taking photographs and measurements on the inside, one opening the boot while the third opened the bonnet and checked for the serial number inscribed on the engine.

‘Any clues as to what we’re looking for?’ Burrows asked.

‘Whatever we can find that will lead us to the driver,’ Lapslie answered.

‘You think this is the car that old lady’s body was dumped from?’

‘It’s the only candidate so far. And I have a suspicion that the old lady that was found in the forest isn’t the only body this car has seen.’

Burrows nodded. ‘Volvos, you see. Lots of boot space, nobody ever pays attention to them and they’re very reliable. If you’re carting dead bodies around, a Volvo’s what you want.’

‘I sometimes worry,’ Lapslie said, ‘about what might happen if you guys ever decided to go freelance.’

‘We do talk about setting up a murder consultancy,’ Burrows admitted. ‘But we’d have to register for VAT and everything, and it’s just too much trouble.’

The person who had opened the boot was gesturing to her colleague with the camera. He joined her and took photographs of whatever they had found, flooding the tent with the light from the
flashgun. Burrows frowned, and walked across to join them. He glanced into the boot, then gestured Lapslie to join him.

‘What do you think – a body?’ Burrows asked.

‘That’s all I need right now,’ Lapslie said as he walked over towards the car: ‘one more body and no more murderers.’

As he got closer to the car he could make out a faint smell of flowers and earth. For a moment he thought it was his synaesthesia reaction to a low-level sound somewhere outside, but when he reached Burrows’ side he realised that the smell was a real smell, and it was coming from the boot of the Volvo. The large space was filled with twigs, leaves and colourful petals, all carefully held together with twists of gardening wire.

‘Not exactly what I was expecting,’ Burrows said. ‘I’ll have them bagged up and identified.’

Lapslie watched for a while as Burrows’ team painstakingly examined the Volvo. They fingerprinted the inside, and picked up samples of hair and lint from the seats. They were, Lapslie thought, like beetles crawling over the carcass of a dead animal, stripping it of whatever flesh it had left. It must have been his imagination, but the car seemed to shrink as they worked, as if the mystery it contained had bulked it out. It occurred to him that Violet Chambers’ body must have gone through a process very much like that: plump and fleshy when she was
first dumped in the forest beneath a few inches of earth, then progressively stripped of everything that made her human until she was just a collection of bones, tendons and mummified skin, at which time the various scavengers moved on to the next thing on their priority list.

‘Apart from the boot, which is covered with a layer of dirt, the car’s surprisingly clean,’ Burrows said. ‘It looks like it’s been vacuumed on a regular basis: possibly put through a valet service as well. There’s no fingerprints on the steering wheel: my guess is that whoever left it gave it a quick once-over with a J-cloth before they walked away. The outside’s been scoured by the elements as well. No chance of getting anything off the door handles.’

‘Good work,’ Lapslie said. ‘Keep going, and if you find anything, give me a ring.’

‘Sure,’ the CSM said. ‘It’s not as if I had anything else to do with my day.’

Emma Bradbury was talking on her mobile when Lapslie walked out of the tent. She waved him over, flipping the phone shut as he arrived.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘I managed to get a Special Constable to do some legwork on the question you asked me,’ she said. ‘The one about whether any car mechanic or garage within fifty miles of the forest where Violet Chambers’ body was discovered had been called out to look at a Volvo with this licence plate.’

‘How did you manage that? I thought there was some unspoken moratorium on getting any help on this investigation.’

‘I just didn’t tell anyone,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it turns out that a garage in Malden was called out three years ago to an isolated house in the countryside. This car was there, and it wouldn’t start. Turned out that the owner had left the interior lights on by mistake and the battery had run flat. All the mechanic had to do was jump-start it and it was okay.’

‘Who was the driver?’

The name on the form is smudged. He can’t make it out. He remembers that she was a woman in her sixties, though.’

Lapslie thought for a moment. ‘That address might well be where whoever murdered Violet Chambers is living. We need to proceed carefully. Notify Control that we’re on our way.’ He paused for a moment. ‘We’re potentially dealing with a murderer here. I think we might need an Armed Response Team.’

Outside, the local police had cordoned off the tent with incident tape, looped around trees and lamp posts and attached to drainpipes. A small collection of people who lived, worked or shopped in the area had gathered, pressing themselves against the tape so they could get a better look at whatever was going on, which was presumably more interesting than anything else they had to do that day.

Lapslie took a deep breath. The air itself seemed listless and insipid. Small flurries of wind, caught in shop doorways, drew up the dust into spirals that looked like invisible animals fighting. They were the most animated things about the scene.

Emma was arguing into her mobile as they walked. Lapslie caught the occasional terse word and suppressed curse. Eventually she flipped it shut and turned to him. ‘It’s no-go on the firearms team,’ she said, face thunderous. ‘Apparently they’re unavailable. Some kind of counter-terrorism thing in Dagenham. Control reckons that it’ll be a day or so before they’re free, and even then there’s no guarantee that we can have them. Do you want to wait?’

Lapslie shook his head. ‘Has it occurred to you,’ he asked, ‘that we’ve had to fight for resources at every step of the way in this case? DCS Rouse tried to take you off the case, the uniforms at the crime scene were pulled away to cover a football match, of all things, the autopsy records were interfered with, and any request I make for additional manpower is turned down flat. Something’s going on in the background that I’m not privy to, and I don’t like it.’ He scowled. ‘No, I’m going to head over to that address, and I’m going to do it without armed backup. I won’t order you to come along, but I could do with the company.’

She nodded. ‘Count me in,’ she said.

Bradbury was about to say something else when her mobile rang. She turned away to talk, and Lapslie took the opportunity to phone DCS Rouse on his own mobile. Rouse’s PA answered, and Lapslie said: ‘This is DCI Lapslie. I need to talk to the boss.’

‘He’s … out at a meeting,’ the PA said, with only a momentary hesitation, but her voice was shaded with dry spice. She was lying. Lapslie had a sudden intuition that Mr Geherty from the Department of Justice was standing over her, listening in. He rang off without saying goodbye.