Separated at Death (The Lakeland Murders)

Separated at Death

The Lakeland Murder
s
, number one.

By J J Salkeld

HERRINGBONE Press

© copyright J J Salkeld, 2012-13

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

In the dark wood the body’s temperature was already falling quickly, and its descent to slab temperature would later be plotted on a graph and included with the PM report. Time of death would be estimated at between 9pm and 10pm, correctly since the time was now exactly 11.18pm and the irreversible fall in body temperature had begun just less than two hours earlier.

But for the next eight hours, until an inquisitive labrador called Barney bounded up to the body pursued by his breathless and overweight owner, the teenage girl would lie alone through that early December Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, never blinking as the falling beech leaves settled silently and gently on her face. 

A few yards away someone had started to leave old Christmas decorations on a small spruce tree, and the larger baubles were just starting to move in a cold, strengthening breeze.

Already the insects were taking an interest in the body, and before morning the more inquisitive mammals would too. In the woods life went on, as it would.

Wednesday, December 8th

Detective Inspector Andy Hall was sitting in his old BMW at the end of a side street watching the cars pull into the car park of Hector Pound’s works, on the northern outskirts of Kendal, when his mobile rang. One of the children had set it to play a tune that he didn’t recognise, something from a TV talent show perhaps. Either way, he didn’t much like it.

He didn’t answer, and let the call go to voicemail. Because what he’d been sitting and waiting for was just about to happen. He could see his wife’s car in the distance, a pale blue Fiat 500, just stopped at the school crossing patrol, and he was only interested in seeing who arrived at Pound’s immediately before and after her.

Hall already knew that a shiny new silver Audi would pull in within five minutes of his wife’s car. But twenty years as a policeman meant that he also understood the difference between knowing and proving. Knowing was what ordinary people did when their wife was unfaithful, and which caused impulsive people to do stupid things, but proving was what he was trained to do. And it was also what he preferred to do, given the choice.

When the Audi duly arrived, and turning into the works entrance a little too fast, he had no doubts that the evidence was building. Not yet enough to win a conviction in a court of law perhaps, but building nonetheless.

He sat quietly for a moment. His face, still curiously unlined for a man of 48, was expressionless, and had a colleague from work walked by at that moment they would not have guessed that anything was remotely amiss.

He looked down, seeing nothing, for another thirty seconds. Then he picked up his phone, accessed the message, and listened. And if a colleague had walked past at that moment then perhaps they would have seen a look of surprise on his face, if only for a moment.

Interview room 1 was his favourite because it was the darkest, with just one narrow window high up, and the paint had lots of chips and scratches. As usual he hoped that his collar, Ryan Wilson, would have been wondering about exactly how all the damage to the decor had happened but, as always, he doubted that Ryan had the imagination. And, even if he did, Mann knew the truth; that countless collisions between plump PC’s utility belts and the walls had actually been the cause of the damage.

But no-one could call Ian Mann plump. Wide in the shoulder and thick in the neck perhaps, but definitely not plump. Ryan, meanwhile, was small and skinny, even in his oversize clothes. They’d been at it for half an hour already, and they were still going nowhere.

‘Ryan, you were stopped driving on the M6 at 1am this morning with a hundred grand’s worth of drugs stashed in the car. And not very well stashed I might add. Please don’t keep telling me that you didn’t know it was there. I’m really not that stupid.’

Ryan looked straight back at the older man, He took his time before replying.

‘I’ve already told you. I was being paid £250 to pick the car up and bring it back to Kendal. Simple as, honest.’

As soon as the interview had started Jane Kennedy, Mann’s solicitor, noticed how similar the two men’s accents were. She had a good ear, because both men had grown up, two streets and twenty years apart, on the same council estate on the outer edge of town.

‘And the bloke who paid you to do the job is someone you met at a hound trail last year, who you can’t remember much about, and who you later kept in touch with on the internet and by text. And he left the car outside Carlisle station with the money, in cash, under the driver’s seat, and the keys up the exhaust pipe.’

‘That’s right. I already told you.’

‘You do know that there’s CCTV at Carlisle station, so in a few hours we’ll know if that part of your story is true, don’t you Ryan? We’ll know if you got the last train north, and arrived a bit around eleven, like you say.’

The young man’s smirk, perfected over the fifteen years since infant’s school, when he first began to realise that they couldn’t really stop you doing anything, told Mann all he needed to know. That part of the story would check out. So he changed tack, and tried again. ‘And it didn’t strike you as odd? Why didn’t your friend, whose real name you don’t know, just drive the car down to Kendal and get the train back to Carlisle himself?’

‘He’s a very busy man.’

‘I thought you didn’t know anything about him?’

‘All right,
I
expec
t
he’s a very busy man then.’

Mann looked over the table at Ryan. The lad was easily fifteen years younger than him, and obviously fancied himself as a bit of a hard case, but Mann knew that he was just a fast-food fed bully. He could give the kid the nastiest knife from down in the evidence lockers and there’d still be no contest.

He hoped the kid sensed that, although a fat lot of good it would do him if he did. And Ryan certainly wasn’t stupid, even if he wouldn’t be able to concentrate long enough to read all the way through his statement when it was typed up for him. Mann firmly believed that diet was a lot to do with it, which is why he was careful with his own.

‘So Ryan, you understand that we’re going to your mum’s house now, with a warrant, and we’ll take your laptop away for analysis. Among other things we’ll be looking to follow the electronic trail back to your generous friend who likes to leave old cars full of drugs for you to collect.’

Ryan nodded. He still looked as cocky as ever. Mann knew that he’d have to take Ryan and his solicitor back to the custody sergeant and arrange for the lad to be bailed, pending further enquiries. So he thought he’d leave him with something to think about while he was away. ‘Ryan, I’m surprised that you haven’t asked me something.’

Ryan said nothing, but looked down for a second. Mann took that as a tell that Ryan must be thinking about the self-same thing that was puzzling him. ‘I know what you want to ask me Ryan. It’s the question you’ve been asking since you first saw those flashing lights behind you on the M6 last night. How did we know that there were drugs in that car?’

Ryan looked up, and went back to stare mode. Mann looked levelly back. ‘Now that’s a good question Ryan, it really is. Could you really have just been unlucky enough to get a tug?’ Mann paused, expecting no reaction, and getting none. ‘Or is there more to it do you think, eh?’

Mann looked back at Ryan for a long time, but the lad still said nothing. The duty solicitor looked at her watch. The policeman’s pause must have earned her thousands over the years, they went on for so long, and she could only assume that it was a technique that they learned from each other. A bit like the way that all vicars end up all sounding the same. Mind you, she wouldn’t have minded having that sergeant look into her eyes the way he was looking so directly into Ryan’s.

But Ryan barely even blinked, and kept silent. They’d both been here before, many times over the last dozen years, since Mann was a green PC fresh out of the Marines, and Ryan was fresh out of short trousers. But Mann had to admit to himself that Ryan was going up in his own little world, because nothing in his lengthy file suggested that he had any involvement with the upper echelons of the criminal underworld. Until he turned up in possession of a serious weight of gear anyway.

The knock at the door was more urgent than usual, and Mann sensed that he was about to be interrupted for a good reason. And he really didn’t mind, because Ryan’s planetary presence in his life just became that bit more depressing every time they met.

Some things just seemed to be predestined, and Ryan had all the makings of a career long pain in the arse. The paperwork that this would generate didn’t even bear thinking about, but at least it had looked like a very decent haul of gear for once.

It had taken Andy Hall a fraction of a second to recognise the voice on the message, because Chief Superintendent Robinson usually did emails, copiously copied to senior ranks of Cumbria Constabulary, rather than the telephone. So Hall called the station, and was put straight through.

Over the next sixty seconds Robinson had done a good job in getting the basic facts across. The body of a young woman had been found in Serpentine Woods that morning, death confirmed, initial indications suggested manual strangulation, area secure, full forensics on route from HQ. ETA 30 minutes.

‘Remind me Andy, how many murders have you handled in your time with us?’

‘Two, sir. One was a domestic, went down as manslaughter, and the other a drink and drugs fueled fight.’

Robinson didn’t reply for a second, but what had he expected thought Hall. Kendal was a small market town on the edge of the Lakes, full of retirees and holiday-makers. It would be quite wrong to say that there was no crime in Kendal, but even before the cuts there’d only been one CID inspector based in the town, and Hall had held the job for almost five years.

‘And are you happy to keep Sergeant Mann with you on the case? The Chief has already emailed me with an offer of help from HQ. Apparently they have a couple of sergeants with plenty of homicide experience gained elsewhere. I think one’s from the Met.’

It was difficult to read Robinson’s tone at the best of times: was he slightly contemptuous of the city copper, or impressed? Normally Hall would have tried to understand the political sub-text, because there had to be one, but not this time. ‘Of course I am sir. Sergeant Mann is an outstanding officer, and I’d trust him with my life.’

‘But it’s not your life we’re talking about, is it Andy?’

Hall moved the phone to his left hand, then reached down to the ignition. Perhaps Robinson even heard the clatter as Hall’s diesel engine caught.

‘Report back to me at the station as soon as you have finished at the locus please Andy. We can talk more about the resources you’ll need then.’

Hall never made calls as he drove, and it took almost twenty minutes to get across town to the scene, through the morning traffic. It always surprised Hall that so many people still went to work in the town, since the old manufacturing industries had almost all shut down, and the area had filled up with retired folk. He sometimes wondered where the people who’d lived there before had gone to.

For the first time in weeks, possibly months, Hall’s mind felt completely clear, and he knew that this crime would possess him completely until it was resolved. He wouldn’t think about his wife during working hours today, and that was a kind of blessing.