Separated at Death (The Lakeland Murders) (2 page)

The cops at the end of Queen’s Road recognised Hall’s car and beckoned him through the road block. For once Hall resisted the urge to park carefully and just abandoned his car as near to the bottom of the path as he could.

He knew the area well, and liked it, a street with tall terraced houses on one side, looking out at a wooded hillside. Although he’d been born down south Hall was interested in the history of the town, and knew that the woods had been a kind of pleasure garden once, where the better-heeled locals went for a stroll along carefully laid out paths. You could still see the odd trace in the edged paths and the stone benches. In spring the place smelt overwhelmingly of wild garlic.

One of the SOCO team, Hall thought her name was Alice but didn’t want to risk trying it, gave him a white suit, gloves, shoes and mask and briefed him on the scene. The street lights were only just going out, and it looked like it was about to rain. ‘The body is in amongst the trees, only about 3 or 4 metres from the path. Needless to say the ground all around looks muddy, and disturbed.’

‘Has the pathologist arrived?’

‘Yes, two up, about ten minutes ago.’

‘How about Tonto?’

‘He’s just gone up. Do you want to speak to him?’

Hall nodded, and Alice - because Hall would have been right if he’d been willing to take the chance - passed him her radio.

‘Tonto, this is Andy Hall, are you at the locus?’

Greg Barnes didn’t mind being called Tonto, in fact he quite liked it. Because for a civilian it was quite an honour to be given a nickname, and since his job usually involved taking casts, photographs and collecting any evidence in the wider locus at least it made some kind of sense.

‘Yes, I’m here. A few too many people about for my liking. They’re going to turn the place into the Somme.’

‘Is Ian Mann up there?’

‘Yes, he’s here.’

‘Right, can you ask him to get all the perimeters secure and manned, then get everyone else back down here until you’ve had a chance to examine the area round the body? That includes the pathologist as soon as they’ve got the body temperature recorded, and done anything he needs to do right now. Anything look useful so far?’

‘I’m not hopeful, looks like every copper in Cumbria’s been up here already, but I’ll get on with it.’

‘Take as long as you need. We’ll only have one chance to see the scene as it was last night.’

Hall was surprised at how many people came back down the hill to the road. What the hell were half a dozen uniformed cops hanging around up there for? Hall was amazed that there were even that number of duty, but then he realised that they must have come down from HQ, as he didn’t recognise many of them.

But he did recognise the pathologist. When Hall had moved to Cumbria from Sussex almost fifteen years before Doctor Beech had always seemed remarkably cheerful. But now, as he approached retirement age, Beech seemed much less sanguine. And that suited Hall well enough. ‘Any idea as to time of death?’ he asked.

‘Last evening, we’ll need to feed the figures into the model, but if you want an estimate based on forty year’s experience I’d say an hour or two either side of nine pm. And before you ask, manual strangulation will be the cause, though I’ve no idea what other injuries we’ll find.’

‘Sexual assault?’

‘Possibly. When can I get back to the body?’

‘I’ve asked Tonto - Greg Barnes from SOCO - to look at the ground and area on his own first. Is there anything in terms of evidence that you’ll lose by being down here for a few minutes?’

Beech shook his head. He didn’t look pleased. He was used to being the centre of attention at the locus, and even after so many years he still rather enjoyed it.

Hall excused himself, and walked over to meet Sergeant Mann, who was last man down the path from the scene. For a moment Hall imagined him as last man in a patrol, back in the first Gulf War.  As he approached Mann stuck out his hand, even though they’d been on shift together three days ago.

‘Do we have a name?’ asked Hall.

‘Yes, Amy Hamilton. Parents reported her missing at 2am, description and clothing is a match.’

‘Where are the parents now?’

‘Kendal station, in the family suite. I left WPC Smith with them, she’s had the training.’

Hall nodded. ‘We’d better get down there.’

‘Don’t you want to see her first?’

‘No, let Tonto have a bit of time on his own. We’ll come back straight after the parents. Have you got a decent picture of Amy for us to use?’

Hall knew that he needed to practice saying the girl’s name before they met her parents. Amy was the victim to him, but a daughter to them.

Mann showed him the picture that the SOCO photographer had uploaded. Hall checked that the bruising on the neck wasn’t visible. It wasn’t. Seeing the picture before the body sometimes helped families a bit, and it speeded up the formal identification process.

As a young PC Hall had seen a few bodies, usually at RTAs and a couple of suicides, but as a fast-streamer he was out of uniform inside eighteen months, and since then he could count the number of bodies that he’d seen on the fingers of one hand. But if he closed his eyes he could still see each of their faces.

‘Do you want me to stay here?’ asked Mann.

‘No, come with me Ian. I want to hear your impressions of the family. You can give me whatever background you have as we drive.’

Mann nodded. He was quietly pleased. He usually didn’t get asked for impressions. Hall gave back his suit, which the SOCO pointedly put straight into a bin bag, unused, and waited while Mann removed his.

The drive only took a couple of minutes, and Mann didn’t comment on the binoculars and notebook on the back seat of Hall’s car. Hall had been too preoccupied to hide them under the passenger seat. They sat in the car for a couple of minutes before they went in.

‘Amy was 17’ said Mann, looking at his notes, ‘a sixth former at the school your kids go to. The parents, John and Amanda, separated a couple of years back, he lives in town, she’s in Staveley. They own a chain of furniture stores from here to Preston, or rather he does now. The gossip is it cost him a couple of million to buy her out after he caught her with the bloke who was round doing their guttering, or maybe the gardening. Something like that anyway. The kids, two girls, live with them both.’

‘Was Amy the older one?’

Mann looked back down at his notes. It crossed Hall’s mind that a parent would have registered the birth order automatically, because in families it always matters.

‘Yes, two years, the younger one is called Lucy. And the parents are not known to us: so they can’t have had an especially noisy domestic when the marriage went tits up. Mind you, they lived in a great big detached house that he’s in now, so the neighbours wouldn’t have heard anyway. Immediate family all clean too, although his brother had a possession with intent to supply charge fifteen years ago. He got off, don’t know the details.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Yes, I didn’t want to start any hares running with any further enquiries until the identity is confirmed.’

They sat quietly for a moment, both trying to play through what would happen, what they’d say, and how long they’d have to sit there silently, trying to empathise, knowing that the parents would be too shocked to show much emotion that morning. Maybe even too shocked to speak. But both men knew it was futile to try to get inside Amy’s parents’ heads, because they’d long since learned that all grief is equal, but it is never, ever the same.

The family suite was someone’s idea of homely in the 1990s, and in comparison with the rest of the station it probably still was. The walls were painted a pastel shade of purple, and the furniture and lighting were both relatively soft. When it wasn’t in use a few of the CSOs used the place for coffee breaks, which had to mean something.

Hall knocked on the door, and both men walked in. Hall wondered briefly if undertakers felt the same way when they met the relatives. But they probably got used to it.

Experience and training kicked in for both policemen, and they went through the usual formalities. Hall had been given a folder by the desk sergeant as he’d arrived, and he hadn’t even opened it yet. He knew the picture of Amy was inside.  WPC Smith was sitting next to Amanda Hamilton, holding her hand. John Hamilton sat awkwardly, a little apart from his ex-wife.

Hall showed them the picture. Amanda’s sobbing told them what they needed to know. John Hamilton bowed his head and cried silently. Still he didn’t reach for his wife’s hand.

Hall forced himself to stay still on the sofa opposite the couple, and when he felt that at least the father could take in what he was saying he asked the essential questions. They already knew that Amy had been her dad’s place that evening. What time had Amy gone out, where had she been going, did she have a boyfriend, and who were her best friends at school?

John Hamilton did his best to answer, and Mann noted his replies. Amy had indeed been staying with him that week, she and her sister had a bedroom at both houses. She’d gone out at 8pm, and taken the little runabout that she’d got for her seventeenth. She was going to see her friend Elizabeth about something to do with an essay. No boyfriend, and Mann noted half a dozen names and addresses of friends, all of girls in Amy’s year at school.

‘Why don’t we take you both home now’ said Hall. ‘WPC Smith can stay with you Mrs Hamilton. And of course we can get someone to stay with you too, Mr Hamilton, if you’d like that.’ Hamilton just shook his head. Hall knew that he’d spoken every word that he could manage for now.

Hall and Mann left the station by the front door, and saw Ryan Wilson and his solicitor saying their perfunctory goodbyes outside.

‘What was young Ryan in for this time?’ asked Hall as they walked round the back of the station, past the compound with the crashed cars and impounded vehicles, to where Hall had finally found a parking space.

‘Tip off yesterday. He got pulled on the M6 and we found about 100 grands worth of assorted narcotics in the doors.’

‘That’s miles above Ryan’s usual pay grade, isn’t it? He’s more two wraps and a packet of chips I’d have thought.’

‘Aye, I know. It’s about 99 grand above his speed. Anyway, I’ve left the techies to look at his computer to see if we can find out who his dealer is. It was a fair weight of gear, it really was. But I don’t hold out much hope they’ll find owt useful.’

For the first time that day Hall smiled. His Sergeant was about as keen on technology as he was on forensic medicine. ‘OK, but let’s come back to that when we can. If Ryan has got himself mixed up in something significant then we need to get mixed up in it too.’

Hall drove the mile back to the scene slowly. Neither went to open the car door when they stopped. ‘So what did you make of the parents?’ asked Hall.

‘No question about the grief...’

‘...but that doesn’t mean one of them didn’t do it, right?’

Hall tried not to finish other people’s sentences, it was a bad habit, but Mann nodded agreement.

‘When we’ve finished at the scene let’s get the team together and start divvying out the background tasks’ said Hall. ‘I’ll take the father.’

The two men took fresh suits, overshoes, gloves and masks and waited for Tonto to call them up to the woods. It was raining, not hard but steadily, and the sky was darkening all the time.

He sat on the sofa, felt around under the cushions for the remote control, and turned the TV off. The room suddenly seemed very dark and very quiet. He thought about what had happened over the last 24 hours, and asked himself a few questions.

Would the cops let him away with the car collection story? They’d know it wasn’t true, but could they prove it? He had no doubt that Adam would have covered his online trail very well indeed, so Ryan doubted that he’d ever be found.

But what if they did charge him with possession with intent to supply anyway? When he’d asked the duty solicitor she’d said he’d get around five years this time, if he went down for that amount of gear. So how about grassing Adam or maybe even Wayne up? Ryan didn’t have to think about that one for long. He’d known Wayne all his life, and though he’d never met Adam - Wayne had put them in contact - Ryan would never tell the cops anything that implicated anyone else.