No Place to Die (3 page)

‘We’re almost done in here, Jane,’ one of the Scene of Crime Officers said. It was difficult to tell exactly who was who on the SOCO team, when they were working on-scene. They were in the full get-up: hooded white paper suits, boots and face-masks. One of the team flicked off the lights and turned on the four UV lamps positioned at each corner of the room. The smears of blood on the wall were unmistakable. They stood out like black scratches across the paintwork.

Sue’s sobs dragged Jane from her thoughts. She walked out of the utility room. Sue was sitting alone at the kitchen table now, crying into her hands. Thomas and George had been taken back to Sue’s parents. Thomas was thirteen, George only eleven. They were both too young to see this – too young to support their mother or be exposed to this amount of grief. Jane thought about Peter. She had missed putting him to bed this evening, like so many other evenings. Then she thought about Lockyer. She needed to call him, to let him know what was happening. Since Sue’s call, Jane had only been able to brief him with the bare essentials. Mark and Lockyer were close, or had been, and given his current demeanour she knew Lockyer wouldn’t let up until Mark was found.

She let her head fall back, relishing the pinch as her neck muscles pushed against her tired shoulders. It was then that she realized she wanted the blood to be Mark’s. She wanted his wounds to be self-inflicted. She was trying to force a suicide to fit the scene in front of her because the alternative was worse, much worse.

22nd April – Tuesday

I can’t feel my legs. The numbness is spreading.

At first it was just my feet. I reached down with cold fingers, stroking the soles, pinching my toes, but I felt nothing. It was like touching someone else’s freezing flesh. Even now the thought makes me shudder. I don’t know how long I have been here, but at the beginning – at the start of this nightmare – I would have given anything not to be alone. I screamed and cried out, hoping to hear an answer. Someone else in the dark with me. Someone to save me. But there is no one. I am alone. I don’t cry any more. There isn’t enough moisture left in my body to create tears. I’m empty.

I curl up in a ball, reach down and run my hand over my left thigh. Nothing. I try the other leg. No feeling at all. Death is leaching under my skin, sliding into my bones, slithering up towards my heart. I roll my head back and forth on the hard ground. Coloured lights dance behind my eyelids. I think about my routine. Routine – it feels like an alien word down here, but it is the only thing I have to stop the madness. Before the
numbness started I would crawl back and forth, my hands searching every inch of the space, touching the smooth mud, feeling for any inconsistency. I know the layout of my tomb better than I know my own face. The thought comforts me, though I don’t know why. I have tried to dig my way out. I dug until my fingers ran with blood. To know you are bleeding, without being able to see. A sensory game I am unaccustomed to playing. The pain familiar, but dulled by the cold. The smell metallic and sweet. The sensation as the slick warmth bathes my hands, dripping onto the floor of the space. There is no way out.

I sleep, but there is no rest. Hours, or maybe days, ago I awoke to find I couldn’t crawl any more. I couldn’t move. My body had become a dead weight, pinning me down. I wailed and pleaded with the darkness. My routine was gone. Without it, madness would return and envelop me. As I rocked myself, I pushed my tired mind to find another escape, another regime I could follow. The numbness has been my answer. I use it to mark the time. Like the hours on a clock, it creeps inch by inch over my body.

My time is running out. I can see the hourglass in my head. I can visualize each and every grain of sand dropping through the centre, as if in slow motion. Each grain is a nerve ending, an electron, a neuron – a basic-level gene that makes up my life. It is pouring away faster and faster. I remember my bed. I can almost feel the warmth of my duvet, thick and heavy on top of me. It’s pulled up over my head, my breath heating my face. I know I should get up. I know I need to get on, keep living, but the heat keeps me there, fixes me to the spot. I feel
a pain in my stomach, dull and cramping. It travels up to my chest, squeezing my lungs.

The numbness is spreading.

23rd April
–
Wednesday

Jane stared across the open-plan office at Lockyer. He was hunched over his desk studying something on his laptop. He hadn’t spoken all morning, not since she had told him about Mark’s disappearance. She had prepared herself for a barrage of questions, but instead he listened and nodded, before returning to his bubble of apathy. He didn’t even react when she told him that the DNA results on the blood wouldn’t be back until Friday, at the earliest. ‘You’ll just have to be patient,’ he had said in a monotone. Patience – a word no one in this office would associate with Lockyer, let alone hear him say aloud. She shook her head and put her hands over her ears, trying to block out the revving of engines and car horns invading the office from Lewisham High Street. She wasn’t sure she had the capacity to be patient as well as dealing with her caseload, her boss’s bad attitude and the constant noise of Lewisham traffic.

She turned in her chair and looked out of the window. The station car park was the only view that greeted her: police vans and squad cars lined up in precision-spaced rows. The sun bounced off the windscreens, creating disco-ball patterns over the expanse of concrete. It wasn’t a green field with oak trees swaying in the breeze or an ocean view, but, like a lot of other things, she was stuck with it and it could be worse. She rubbed her eyes, remembering too late that she was wearing mascara. She peered into her computer screen and attempted to wipe away the black smudges on her cheeks. She felt like crying. There was still no movement on the missing girl from the Stevens case. The girl whose photograph Jane had memorized, though not from choice. Missing Persons were yet to come back with anything, and no one had called in after the press release. Cases were piling up around her: half-started, half-finished, half-arsed. She slumped in her chair and spun back around and resumed checking her emails. When she saw one from Lockyer, she pressed ‘Delete’ without thinking. He had withheld evidence relating to his brother – evidence that might have a serious impact on the Stevens case. That was bad enough, but it was the brother part that really stung. All the years they had known each other, worked side by side, Lockyer had never even told her he had a brother, let alone that he was autistic, like Peter. Didn’t he trust her? Her phone started ringing.

‘DS Bennett,’ she said, snatching up the receiver.

‘Hi, Jane, it’s Dixie. I’m working the front desk today and wondered . . . ’ There was a pause. ‘I wanted to see if . . . Are you dealing with Mark Leech’s disappearance?’

Jane sat back and pushed her fringe off her forehead. ‘Well, officially it’s not a disappearance yet, Dix,’ she said, ‘but I guess the jungle drums are working. What can I do for you?’ This was the first call about Mark, but given how long he had worked in Lewisham, Jane knew it would be the first of many. In fact she was surprised it had taken this long for word to get around.

‘A call just came through. I thought it might be . . . relevant.’

‘Hang on,’ Jane said, reaching across her desk and snagging a pad and pen. ‘Go on.’

‘Derek Small, phone number: zero, double seven, three, nine . . . four, one, three, six, seven, eight. He lives at the southern end of Elmstead Woods. He’s found a trainer – brand unknown – in the woods. He thinks there might be blood on it.’

Jane noted down what Dixie was saying. ‘Right. Anything else?’ She wanted to ask why this would be of interest to her, but sensed that Dix had more to say.

‘I told Mr Small to leave the item where it was and that an officer would be in touch. His dog picked it up, tried to take it home apparently, so Mr Small can’t be positive where in the woods the shoe was. Anyway he’s gone home now, but he said he’s happy to come back out whenever we can get a squad car over there.’ Dixie paused, it seemed, for Jane to say something, but what could she say? A call-out about an unidentified trainer – blood or no blood – was a bit beneath Jane’s rank. ‘Anyway, I know you’re probably wondering why I’m bothering you with this,’ she said, as if Jane had spoken aloud, ‘but I just thought you ought to know that . . . I thought you might not know that Mark used to walk his dog in Elmstead Woods. He went there a lot. I mean, it would be a while ago now, as Barney died a few years back, but . . . I’m sorry, you must think I’m nuts. Mark was so good to me when Jason was ill. I wanted to help, if I could?’

Jane took a deep breath and looked down at her pad. She had doodled crazy S-shapes all around Mr Small’s name and phone number. ‘It’s fine, Dix, I understand. I’ll get a car sent over there.’ She paused. ‘I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.’ She listened to Dixie apologize several more times, before hanging up and dialling through to Despatch. She relayed all the information and was about to hang up when the officer stopped her.

‘Actually, looking at the system, we’ve just had another call relating to Elmstead Woods,’ he said.

‘About the shoe?’

‘No. A caller – no name given – phoned in to say that a man . . . Hang on a second, let me get into the full phone log.’ Jane waited, drawing her pad closer to her, with her pen poised. ‘That’s right. A man, mid- to late fifties, dark hair, well built, about six foot, was hanging around the park and, quote, “walking funny”; seemed to be, and again I quote, “injured”,’ the officer said, with an air of disinterest. Jane figured he was angling for her to take both calls off the sheet. An image of Mark flashed into her mind. He wasn’t far off six foot. His hair was dark; thinning, but still dark. And he was certainly well built.

‘Assign the call to me,’ she said, logging on to her computer. ‘Email me the full sheet and I’ll deal with both calls.’

‘Doing it now,’ he said without hesitation.

As she hung up the email pinged into her system. She opened it, pressed ‘Print’, pushed away from her desk and walked over to the printer. Until the DNA came back from the Leech house, Mark’s case would be in limbo between her and Missing Persons. She could waste days waiting, or she could follow up on the calls. There would probably be some grumbles from the MISPER contingent, but Jane could handle that. If two unconnected calls did, in fact, relate to Mark, then any aggro would be worth it. She went back to her desk, filled in a decision log, shut her laptop and headed for Lockyer’s office.

As she approached she wondered whether it was worth disturbing him. He was in the same position, but his eyes were closed. He could be thinking, but Jane was pretty sure he was sleeping, sitting up, in his office, in the middle of the day. ‘Sir?’ she said, hoping the rest of the office hadn’t noticed Lockyer resting his eyes. He stirred and then jolted awake, his arm jerking, scattering paperwork all over the floor. ‘Sir,’ she said again, trying to act as if nothing had happened. ‘Despatch have had a couple of calls about Elmstead Woods. Old guy’s dog found a shoe, possible blood-splatter. Another caller saw a man who seemed to be unsteady on his feet, possibly injured. Thought I might head down there and check it out . . . just in case. Description sounds a bit like Mark. He used to walk his dog there, apparently.’ She finished and looked at Lockyer, who was staring back at her. ‘Tenuous, I know, sir,’ she said, feeling a blush start at the base of her neck. ‘But I think it’s worth a look.’ She tried to put as much confidence into her last statement as she could muster. He didn’t look impressed but then he didn’t look unimpressed, either. He just looked.

‘Want some company?’ was all he said.

‘Sure,’ she said, restraining the shrug in her shoulders. ‘I mean, yes, sir. Thank you.’

23rd April
–
Wednesday

Jane stepped over a fallen branch and followed the line of officers in front of her. Twenty of the outdoor unit were walking, a few feet apart, their heads bent, each wearing an all-in-one, white disposable suit. They had been searching Elmstead Woods for the past four hours, but so far had found nothing. Nothing but the bloodied trainer. It belonged to Mark. His name was written in black felt-tip pen inside the heel. A remnant from his days on the force, before anyone bothered with lockers for their personal items. She looked over the officers’ heads at Grove Park Cemetery. It was only twenty yards away: lines of headstones nestled in the grass. What were the chances that today’s search would end with a cemetery and a grieving family? She fell into step with the final officer in the line.

The indoor unit was at the station in Lewisham, trying to piece together a timeline to establish how Mark might have ended up in Elmstead Woods – or at least how his trainer had. Eighty per cent of the woods had already been searched, although it was difficult. The undergrowth was thick and overgrown. Finding anything in such a wilderness was going to be difficult. She pushed a stone over with her heel. It felt odd to be surrounded by grass and trees, rather than concrete and a plethora of takeaway shops, like the ones that lined Lewisham High Street. She tipped her head back and let the waning sun warm her face.

She tried again to imagine Mark taking his own life. It wasn’t unusual for people to return to a familiar place. The fact that Elmstead was an old haunt – a place Mark used to come to when he was still on the force – could have a bearing on his motivation. It wouldn’t be the first time an officer, retired or not, hadn’t been able to cope with the pressures of the job. Some cases ate you up and spat you out. For the most part you had to suck it up and move on, but some officers weren’t that lucky. Jane had already taken a look in the archives at some of Mark’s old cases. A couple stood out. There was a house fire in Peckham: a mother and three children had died in the blaze; a fourth child, aged ten, had been left badly burned. Mark arrested the father, Stanley Pike, after his fingerprints were found on two oil canisters. The canisters had been thrown in a skip two streets away, but the case fell apart during the trial. The defence was able to prove that the chain of evidence relating to the oil canisters had been compromised. Mark and his team were publicly reprimanded for the error and it delayed his promotion by two years. The other case was one that Mark handled a year before his retirement. The victim was a young girl, Amelia Reynolds. She was raped, beaten and then strangled, before her body was dumped in an allotment shed. She wasn’t found for two weeks. The evidence trail was non-existent. Her killer was never found.