Denial of Murder (2 page)

The householder resolutely remained calm. He was clearly not going to allow himself to be influenced by Driscoll's panic. ‘I'll phone the authorities,' he said softly. ‘You had better go and stand by whatever it is that you have found, and you'd also better not touch anything.' He then shut the door of his house, closing it with a gentle
click
. It was, Driscoll thought, as he turned to return to the road, as if the man had simply gone to the manual and looked up what to do when someone knocks on your door telling you that a murder had taken place outside your house. There was no anxiety. There was no alarm. There was no panic. Just note the information, close the door, make a phone call and, doubtless, return to bed. That was clearly the way of it in London, SW19.

Detective Inspector Harry Vicary, following Geoff Driscoll's route, turned his car from the Ridgeway into Lingfield Road and instantly saw the police activity ahead of him: the white police cars, with just one keeping its blue light relentlessly lapping; the black, windowless mortuary van; the blue and white police tape strung across the road, delineating the crime scene. Two uniformed constables stood on the outer sides of each tape and were firmly turning back any traffic which approached the area of police interest. One or two local residents, Vicary noted, stood at their windows looking out at the incident, but Wimbledon being Wimbledon, a curious crowd of wide-eyed onlookers had not gathered. The pedestrians, on their way to work, were, like the cars, turned away and, unprotesting, found alternative routes, while those who remained at home, for the most part, just got on with their daily routine. Vicary stopped his car close to the police tape. He walked towards it, and the constable lifted it for him as he drew close, half saluting as Vicary bent to get underneath it. Vicary saw two of his team, Frankie Brunnie and Tom Ainsclough, and he also noted the short, stocky figure of forensic pathologist John Shaftoe, all of whom stood close together, and all of whom turned reverentially to Vicary as he approached them.

‘Good morning, sir.' Frankie Brunnie smiled and nodded deferentially to Vicary. Brunnie was senior to Ainsclough and so it was he who spoke. ‘Quite a start to the day.' Brunnie was a large man, even for a police officer. He was broad shouldered, wore a neatly trimmed rich black beard and had black hair. ‘Thank you for coming, sir. We thought you ought to be in on this, sir, right from the start.'

‘All right, Frankie, thank you.' Vicary returned the brief smile. ‘What have we got?'

‘Deceased male, sir,' Brunnie replied, ‘with what appears to be extensive head injuries.'

‘Battered to death, if you ask me,' John Shaftoe offered. He was, thought Vicary, dressed in a strange combination of ill-fitting cream summer jacket and heavyweight brown corduroy trousers, which were, Vicary thought, more suited to digging an allotment in winter conditions. ‘I can't determine any other injuries, but as you can see he is still clothed, and there may be other injuries as yet to be found. There are no defensive wounds to his hands … again, none which are immediately obvious, but the injuries to the head are extensive. I can feel his skull move in separate places and, by themselves, those blows would probably, in fact certainly would have been fatal. It seems that somebody really wanted this fella dead.' John Shaftoe bent down and lifted the heavy-duty plastic sheeting which covered the deceased and exposed the head and shoulders. ‘Meet our friend, Mr Still-to-be-identified.'

Harry Vicary considered the deceased. He saw a man of small stature, with short, neatly cut hair, nominally clean-shaven, but then with a little stubble on his chin, seemingly as smartly dressed as a limited budget would permit and, like Geoff Driscoll, he too thought the deceased to be in his late thirties to mid-forties. Vicary also saw a large amount of dried blood matting the hair close to the man's scalp, and also staining his face and neck.

‘The police surgeon pronounced life extinct at …' Shaftoe turned to Brunnie. ‘What was the time again, please, Sergeant?'

‘Zero seven sixteen hours.' Brunnie consulted his notepad. ‘He, the police surgeon, was one Doctor Paul.'

‘Thank you.' Shaftoe replaced the sheet and stood holding his lumbar region as he did so. ‘I arrived at approximately eight thirty.'

‘An early start for you, sir.' Vicary smiled.

‘Yes … I had planned to come in early to commence a post-mortem which had been delayed. It's going to be further delayed now but that's the rule, as you know: recent corpses with clear suspicious circumstances come first; they get priority. The first twenty-four hours in any murder case and all that … the other PM is in respect of a corpse which was found washed up at Woolwich Reach. I've glanced at the body … he must have been in the river for at least a week … and so I think that he can afford to wait another few hours.'

‘Indeed, sir,' Vicary mumbled. ‘Indeed.'

‘So … I assume that you will want to know the time of death?' Shaftoe grinned widely.

‘If you have the information, sir,' Vicary also grinned, ‘but I know what you're going to say … that's not really a pathologist's job despite the impression given on television police dramas.'

‘Yes … that's the rule, but common sense tells us that he was still alive a few hours ago … it is a reasonably fresh corpse.'

‘Who found it?' Vicary asked.

‘The milkman, sir,' Brunnie replied. ‘He has continued with his round but will be giving a statement later. I have his details. He is adamant that he saw nothing but the corpse … no other person or persons acting in a suspicious manner. He's getting on in years, close to retirement, but was really quite calm about it all; at least he was calm by the time I arrived.'

‘All right.' Vicary absorbed the information.

‘It's a fresh corpse, as you can see,' Shaftoe continued, ‘so he was assaulted and murdered last night, sometime before dawn, and his body was then dumped here. There is a little hair growth on the upper lip and chin … two days' worth, perhaps … it seems to be much more than a five o'clock shadow, though, of course, some men have to shave more frequently than others. I would say that our friend here is normally clean-shaven but did not, or could not, shave for up to forty-eight hours before he was killed. But, of course, hair will continue to grow on a corpse until rigor sets in, so don't let that mislead you.'

‘Dumped here?' Vicary queried. ‘You don't think he was assaulted here and his body left where he was attacked?'

‘Well …' Shaftoe paused and looked about him, ‘that still has to be determined. Of course, this is very early days, but there is no sign of violence hereabouts … not that I can see, anyway … the hedgerows are clearly undisturbed, for instance. He must have bled profusely but there is no sign of blood splatter and, believe you me, blood would have splattered far and wide with this sort of injury … very far and very wide.'

‘One of his shoes, sir,' Brunnie addressed Shaftoe, ‘was found a short distance away from the body. In fact, the milkman remarked that he saw the shoe lying in the road before he saw the body in the gutter.' Brunnie then turned to Harry Vicary, ‘The shoe is in an evidence bag, sir, but it matches the other shoe that is still on his foot.'

‘I see,' Vicary replied, and then turned to Shaftoe for his comment.

‘I still don't think he was attacked here,' Shaftoe insisted. ‘The shoe could quite easily have fallen off or have been knocked off when the body was removed from whichever motor vehicle was used to transport it here. No … no … I am certain, the complete absence of blood splatter and lack of localized disturbance means that this site is where the body was dumped. The murder scene is elsewhere. I mean … no doubt you'll spray Luminol on the cars parked around here … and also on the pavement and the road surface … but as I said, my little naked eye cannot detect any blood spatter so I'm sure this is not the crime scene.'

‘Fair enough.' Vicary looked about him, glancing up and down the richly foliaged Lingfield Road, noting it to be long and straight. ‘No CCTV,' he remarked. ‘That's a shame.'

‘The suburbs, sir,' Frankie Brunnie replied. ‘It'll be quite a while before the suburbs are covered by CCTV as thoroughly as city centres are covered.'

‘If ever,' Vicary growled, sourly, ‘if ever. The professional middle-class citizenry won't take too kindly to their every move being monitored. And quite frankly, even as a copper I don't think I would much care for it.'

‘Yes, sir.' Brunnie cleared his throat, ‘Sir, with respect, I should notify you of another incident the police dealt with last night, also in this area.'

‘Oh?' Vicary raised an eyebrow. ‘Connected, do you think?'

‘Quite probably, sir. It involves a car being set ablaze. Very non-Wimbledon, you might think …'

‘As you say, Frankie,' Vicary nodded in agreement, ‘very non-Wimbledon. Very,
very
non-Wimbledon indeed.'

‘We will still have to determine whether the two incidents are connected but Wimbledon Police Station has been notified of the crime number for this incident and any information they might receive about the burnt-out car will be cross-referenced to the Murder and Serious Crime Squad.' Brunnie spoke confidently.

‘Good man,' Vicary smiled. ‘Where was it burned out? Far from here?'

‘Two streets away, sir,' Brunnie advised. ‘No CCTV there either, I'm afraid.'

‘I see,' Vicary replied softly. ‘So it seems that the villains of today are learning to avoid CCTV just as the villains of yesteryear learned to wear gloves when committing felonious acts … but …' Vicary turned to the immediate location. ‘You see it's a very good place to dispose of a body – you've really got to hand it to them. They did a recce … they very definitely did a recce, and found a leafy suburb with plenty of foliage to conceal their activity in discarding the body from view – that is, all but the closest of views, at any rate. They placed it in the gutter; if the milkman hadn't found it, it would have been found by the first commuters later in the morning. So then, tell me, what do you do after you have dumped the body?' Vicary looked first at Brunnie, then at Ainsclough, and then at Brunnie again. ‘What do you do? Well, I'll tell you what you do … you drive your car slowly away to avoid the sounds of a racing engine and squealing tyres. You drive leisurely to a location just two streets away to avoid bringing the police straight to the body, then you torch the vehicle … then … then what you do is hide in the shrubs of someone's front garden … not too close to the burning car … make sure you are a few streets away. Then you wait until daybreak and calmly walk away towards the bus station or the Tube station … which is?' Vicary turned to Brunnie.

‘Wimbledon terminus,' Brunnie replied. ‘A very easy walk from here.'

‘All right, so he or they then wait until folk start walking to the Tube station or the bus stops, mingling with them, and by their dress they ensure that they are not looking too unusual or too out of place.'

‘That's certainly what I would do,' Brunnie growled in the same sour manner in which Vicary had growled a few moments earlier.

‘And me,' Tom Ainsclough added. ‘That's exactly what I would have done.'

‘Likewise myself.' Vicary paused, as if in thought, and then he said, ‘You know, gentlemen, I think that it would take at least two people to put this body into a car and then remove it and dump it at the side of the road like this. Possibly one person might be able to do it but, frankly, I would put money on two people doing the deed; at least two persons. I would also say that after torching the car they would have separated and, at dawn at this time of year … say about six a.m. and later, when the first commuters emerge, they would have made their own separate ways to the public transport system. Do we know if the police helicopter attended the burning car?'

‘We don't, sir,' Brunnie replied, ‘but I can easily check.'

‘Yes, if you could, Frankie, if you could,' Vicary replied with a warm smile. ‘I was thinking that the helicopter's infra-red camera might have picked up body heat from someone skulking in the shrubs in the locality and, if so, the local police might have investigated and taken a name, at least a name, and if they did they would have recorded it and told us. So I think we can safely assume the helicopter did not attend. But please check anyway.' Vicary paused. ‘We'll have to trawl through the CCTV on the nearest streets, on the buses and on the Tube trains and stations. Tom …'

‘Yes, sir,' Tom Ainsclough responded eagerly, promptly.

‘Can you organize a house-to-house inquiry, please? If someone saw something of relevance I am sure that they would have come forward by now, but a house-to-house will still have to be done, nonetheless.'

‘Of course, sir,' Tom Ainsclough replied. ‘I'll get on to that right now.' He turned and walked away.

‘Good man …' Vicary called after the withdrawing figure of Tom Ainsclough. He then addressed Brunnie. ‘Any ID?' he asked.

‘No wallet has been found, sir,' Brunnie replied. ‘But we still have to do a thorough search of his clothing. Some other form of ID may be concealed therein.'

‘Very good. So, the post-mortem.' Vicary glanced at John Shaftoe. ‘When can it be conducted, sir?'

‘I'll do it directly,' Shaftoe replied. ‘I have completed my examination at the scene … if you've taken all the photographs you need to take …?'

‘All done,' Brunnie advised, ‘black and white and colour, long distance, close-ups from every angle … all done … all done and dusted.'

‘Very well,' Shaftoe rubbed the palms of his hands on his jacket, ‘I'll arrange for the body to be immediately removed to the Royal London. Will you be attending for the police, Mr Vicary?'