Past Mortem (7 page)

TEN

T
he last of the unsolved cases that had caught Newson’s eye was a kidnapping and murder in Stratford-upon-Avon. Newson took the train, which he always did when travelling outside London, because he preferred it to driving. This was another aspect of his character that his colleagues at New Scotland Yard found utterly baffling. On the journey Newson decided that he would enter his own profile on the Friends Reunited site. Perhaps Christine was doing as he had done, spying on the site without committing herself. He hoped that if he made an appearance it would flush her out. He took out his brand-new internet-connected mobile phone, opened up the tiny keyboard and began to type his message.

Hi, everybody. It’s Period Head here. Yes, the Ginger Minge aka the Human Carrot Spewsome Newson and, on very rare occasions, Edward. It was nice to hear news from those of you who’ve already signed up. Hi Gary, sorry you hated school so much. Hi Roger, I’m in the police too, as it happens. Not what I expected when we were all young but sadly Queen decided not to replace Freddie Mercury with me and there aren’t many coal mines any more, so I never got to take over from Arthur Scargill. I’m with the Met, a detective in fact, which sounds more exciting than it is. I’d love to get in touch with anybody who remembers me, so why not drop me a line?

He considered adding a PS to say that he was single, but decided it might look a bit desperate, besides which the fact that he hadn’t mentioned a partner would probably do the trick.

Newson had never visited Stratford-upon-Avon before. He’d expected an entirely half-timbered town filled with perfectly preserved Elizabethan buildings. Though there is much of this to be found in Stratford, it also has considerable modern developments away from the centre, and it was from one of these streets on a quiet Sunday afternoon that Neil Bradshaw had been spirited while walking home from the newsagent with his copy of
The Sunday Times
. From there he was taken to a seed shed on a farm two or three miles along the Birmingham Road, near a village called Snitterfield, and it was in this shed that he died.

Newson met Natasha at the gates to the farm. She had driven up from London earlier in the day to talk to the local police.

‘They know when he was lifted because he’d been out to the newsagent and hadn’t come back.’

‘His family missed him?’

‘No, there was no family. He was divorced, three times. He lived alone, between girlfriends, I suppose. The neighbour said he knows Bradshaw never came back because he was in the front garden waiting for him.’

‘Sunday drink?’

‘Hardly. They were in dispute over a hedge. Our Bradshaw had been growing one of those things that do a metre every five minutes and the bloke next door was going to have it out with him.’

‘But he never got the chance.

‘No, because Neil Bradshaw never came back from the newsagent.’

The seed shed in which Neil Bradshaw had been found dead stood alone, isolated from the other farm buildings by a large field, and it was here that Newson and Natasha met Douglas Goddard, the farmer who had rented the shed to the killer.

‘We never met,’ Goddard told them. ‘He only dealt with me over the phone. Said he was an artist, he needed privacy to work and apparently my shed had perfect ambience.’ Goddard was standing in the shadow of a dilapidated combine harvester around which many weeds had grown, weeds that were now stealing their way up into its mechanism.

‘He left cash in an envelope in my post-box down at the road and made it very clear that if he was disturbed he’d be off and take his money with him. I didn’t mind a bit, a quiet tenant’s a good tenant as far as I’m concerned, and he paid well over the odds. I’d like to add, Inspector, that I intended to declare the cash in my tax return, and I still do, of course, although it seems funny now, almost like blood money. I’ve thought about giving it all to charity, as a matter of fact.’

From the way this last sentence was left hanging in the air it was clear to Newson that thinking about it was as far as Goddard would ever get with his charitable instincts. Newson had already learnt from the original interview notes taken by the Stratford police that Mr Goddard had been at great pains from his first interview to stress his intention to declare the rent he had received. Indeed, he seemed to view the whole affair as an effort by an anonymous murderer to get him into trouble with the Inland Revenue.

‘I was happy to let the seed shed out because I don’t need any seeds at the moment, seeing as how the whole farm’s lying fallow. Look at my combine, sunflowers in the cab. Strange sort of farming, I call it, but then these are very strange times. Did you know that the Department of the bloody Environment pay me to sow meadows? I mean, what’s the use of a meadow when it’s at home? You can’t eat dandelions.’

‘Meadows are an essential element in biodiversity,’ Newson explained. ‘The wild flowers bring the insects, the insects bring the birds.’

‘And what do the birds bring? Bird shit,’ the farmer replied. ‘It’s like with my hedges. I’m not allowed to tear them up. My own bloody hedges! Just so some hedgehog’s got somewhere to sleep for the night. Who, I should like to know, gives a toss where hedgehogs sleep? You townies, that’s who. You don’t know the first bloody thing about country life, but that don’t stop you making rules about it.’

‘Excuse me, but you seem to be mistaking us for people who are remotely interested in your opinions,’ said Natasha, who had a hangover and was in no mood to put up with the whining of reactionary countryfolk.

‘Steady on, Sergeant,’ Newson said.

‘Well, just ask him what we need to know and then we can get out of this bloody field.’

‘You can’t talk to me like that, young lady,’ Goddard complained.

‘Of course I can,’ Natasha replied. ‘Just like I can check the tax discs on those two clapped-out old bangers I saw in your barn. You have to register all vehicles these days, you know.’

‘Look, we won’t keep you long, Mr Goddard,’ said Newson in his most conciliatory tone. ‘I just wanted to confirm that you only ever saw your tenant visit once.’

‘Like I said, I never actually saw him at all, but on that Monday morning, the one after the Sunday when I now know that poor bugger got kidnapped, I saw there were a van parked down at the shed. As I told your blokes at the time, I think it were probably a Toyota Hiace, but I couldn’t be sure ‘cos like I say I’d been told to steer well clear and I did.’

‘You weren’t curious at all?’

‘Why would I be? The bloke said he was an artist. I don’t give a toss about art, do I? He paid. That satisfied my curiosity.’

‘And the van was there all day?’

‘Yes!’ Goddard said with-the exasperation of one who has had to tell his story before. ‘It were there all through Monday and it were still there when I turned in that night. I remember because he was still playing his music…’

‘You mentioned the music to the officers at the time, but you didn’t say what music it was. Do you remember?’

‘I could hardly hear, what with it being so far away and that, but at night the wind changed and I caught the odd bit. Old stuff, from when we were kids. You know, Slade, glam rock an’ that, least it could have been.’

Inspector Newson thanked the farmer for his help and he and Natasha made their way down to the seed shed that no longer contained seeds.

Despite the fact that the murder had taken place almost a year earlier, the scene remained very much as it had been when the starved and mutilated corpse of Neil Bradshaw had been carried from it. Either out of sloth or squeamishness, Goddard had elected to let things lie and the crude soundproofing with which the killer had lined the walls and ceiling was still in place, as were many of the planks, bolts and bars that had been installed in order to make the shed into a secure prison.

‘He must have soundproofed the place just before he left, or Goddard wouldn’t have heard the music,’ Newson said.

‘Maybe,’ Natasha replied. ‘Although if it. had been on loud enough he might have heard it anyway.’

‘Well, he certainly used the music to cover up the sound of Bradshaw’s screams.’

‘Which gives you a link to the Bishop murder, I suppose.’

‘It’s something, isn’t it?’

Together they looked around the silent, empty shed. The air was heavy and stale and smelt of hay and dirt.

‘If the killer hadn’t stopped paying the rent I imagine the corpse would still be here,’ Newson observed, for it had only been the absence for a week or two of his cash envelope that had led Goddard to investigate. ‘I suppose our murderer knew how long it takes for a man to die of thirst, and once he knew his man was dead he didn’t want to waste his money paying any more rent.’

The floor of the shed was bare now, but the scene-of-crime photographs showed that it had once been littered with instruments of torture: pliers, clamps, tweezers and a vice. An examination of the corpse suggested that these tools had been used to torment the victim’s genitals and -nipples.

‘So the torturing didn’t kill him?’ enquired Natasha.

‘No.’

‘But it would have hurt.’

‘It certainly would.’

The autopsy made grim reading. The killer had begun the torture using his hands, squeezing and poking at the victim’s crotch and chest. The pectoral -bruising in particular showed evidence of hard gripping and squeezing by both a left and a right hand, lots and lots of fingerpad bruising.

‘He groped him?’ Natasha said.

‘Essentially, that’s what he did,’ Newson replied, ‘and not very gently either. He really bruised the man’s chest. Digging his thumbs deep into the pectorals. Bradshaw was quite a big man. He had tits, and the killer really went to work on them.’

Natasha grimaced. ‘When I was fifteen I had a boyfriend who used to grope me too hard.’

Newson gritted his teeth and swallowed.

‘He used to stop when I asked, but only after I’d asked a few times,’ Natasha said. ‘Years later I worked out that he had enjoyed the pain he caused me.’

‘Why did you let him do it?’

‘I didn’t, I dumped him.’

‘After how long?’

‘Oh, I don’t know…A month.’

‘A month? You let him hurt you for a month before you dumped him?’

‘It might have been less…Could have been a bit more. Natasha looked embarrassed. Newson did not pursue the point.

‘After the groping, the killer began to use his tools.’ It made Newson’s own balls ache just to say it.

‘Fuck,’ said Natasha, for want of a more useful response.

‘Then Bradshaw was sodomized. The pathologist was pretty certain it was done with the handle of a claw hammer that was found with the pliers.’

‘Nice.’

‘Then he put a pair of knickers on his victim.’

‘What, lingerie?’

‘No, just white cotton girl’s knickers from Marks & Spencer. Also a short, pleated tartan skirt.’

‘So the suspect crushed Bradshaw’s balls and then dressed him in knickers and a skirt? Do you think he wanted to turn him into a girl? Like some weird transsexual thing?’

‘I don’t know. That wouldn’t explain him torturing the man’s nipples.’

‘So how did he finish him off?’ Natasha asked. ‘I’m sorry, I know I should be up to speed on all this, but I was pissed last night with the girls. It was a meeting of the All Men Are Bastards Club.’

‘It’s the men you choose to associate with who are bastards.’

‘No, you’re wrong there. It’s actually been scientifically proven that all men are bastards. Not you, obviously, you get a special exemption.’

Inspector Newson presumed that this must be on account of the fact that he was short, mild and clearly in Natasha’s opinion devoid of any hint of danger, sexuality or anything that she might find remotely attractive. ‘I’m honoured,’ he said.

Newson then explained that after. the killer had had his fill of torturing Bradshaw, he had placed food and water on a little ledge, which he had secured to the wall about eight and a half feet from the ground. The killer had then put a chair below the ledge. By standing on the chair Neil Bradshaw would be able to stretch to within half an inch or so of the supplies but no nearer.

‘That’s just medieval,’ said Natasha.

There were four holes in the floor just in front of the chair, where a television camera had been bolted to the boards, lens pointing upwards. The camera had been connected to a television monitor suspended on a bracket from the ceiling directly above the ledge.

‘The camera had no recording function. It merely transmitted a live picture to the screen.’

‘So Bradshaw had to watch himself reaching for the food.’

‘Watch himself from below.’

‘Weird angle to choose. You’d have thought the sicko would have wanted Bradshaw to stare into his own desperate face.’

‘No, he wanted Bradshaw to stare up the skirt.’

‘That is so weird.’

‘Yes. At this point we presume that the killer left Bradshaw to it. Bradshaw died about a week later from his wounds, which by then were rotting and infested. You can see from the way the planks beneath the ledge are scuffed that the tormented man repeatedly stood on the chair and reached for the water which was forever beyond him. Those scratches on the wall below the ledge were made by his fingernails.’