Strange Affair (3 page)

“Did you know she was dead when you looked through the window?”

“Well,” said Adrian, “I’ve never seen a dead person before, but you can sort of tell, can’t you?”

Yes, Annie thought, having seen far too many, you can tell.
Nobody home
.

Samantha gave a little shudder and seemed to melt deeper into Adrian’s embrace. “And the flies,” she said.

“What flies?” Annie asked.

“On her face and her arms. Flies. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t even trying to swat them away. I thought how much they must be tickling her.”

Annie swallowed. “Were the windows open?”

“Yes,” said Samantha. “Just like they are now. We really didn’t disturb anything. I mean, we’ve seen Morse and Frost on television.”

“I’m sure you have. I just have to make certain. I don’t suppose you saw anyone, heard any other cars or anything?”

“No.”

“What did you do when you found her?”

“Rang the police.” Adrian pulled a mobile from his pocket. He wouldn’t have had much luck with it around these parts a few months ago, Annie reflected, but coverage had improved a lot recently.

“And there’s nothing else you can tell me?”

“No. Look, we’re just so…devastated. Can we go home now? I think Sam needs a lie-down, and I could do with a strong cup of tea.”

“How long are you staying at Greystone?” Annie asked.

“We’ve got another week.”

“Stick around,” said Annie. “We might want to talk to you again.”

Annie went back to rejoin Hatchley and saw Dr. Burns’s grey Audi arrive. She greeted him and they walked over to the Peugeot. This would be a difficult examination for Dr. Burns, Annie knew, because the body was sitting upright in an enclosed space, and he could hardly move it before Dr. Glendenning, the Home Office pathologist, arrived. She also knew that Dr. Burns was aware the Scene-of-Crime officers would be eager to give the car a thorough going-over, so he was being extra careful not to touch any surfaces and damage any possible prints, even though he was wearing disposable gloves. It was the police surgeon’s job only to determine and
pronounce that the girl was dead – the rest was up to the pathologist – but Annie knew that Dr. Burns would like to give her some idea of time and cause, if at all possible.

After feeling for a pulse and examining the woman’s eyes, then listening for a heartbeat through his stethoscope, Dr. Burns confirmed that she was, indeed, dead.

“The corneas haven’t clouded yet,” he said, “which means she’s probably been dead less than eight hours. I’m sure the flies have laid their eggs already, which you’d expect to happen quite soon in summer with the windows open, but there’s no sign of advanced insect activity, another indication we’re dealing with a relatively recent death.”

Dr. Burns slipped off a glove and slid his hand inside the woman’s blouse, under her arm. “Best I can do as far as temperature is concerned,” he said, noticing Annie’s curious glance. “It does help give an approximation. She’s still warm, which confirms that death occurred only a few hours ago.”

“It was a warm night,” said Annie. “How long?”

“Can’t say exactly, but I’d guess about five or six hours at the most.” He felt the woman’s jaw and neck. “Rigor’s present where you’d expect it to be, and as the heat probably speeded that up, we’re still working within much the same parameters.”

Annie looked at her watch. “Between two and four in the morning, then?”

“I wouldn’t swear to it, of course,” said Dr. Burns, with a smile, “but that sounds about right. And don’t tell Dr. Glendenning I’ve been making wild guesses. You know what he’s like about that sort of thing.”

“Any thoughts on cause of death?”

“That’s a bit more difficult,” said Dr. Burns, turning to the body again. “There are no visible signs of strangulation, either ligature or manual, and no petechial hemorrhaging, which
you’d expect with strangulation. Also no signs of a stab wound, no blood that I can see, at any rate. It’ll have to wait until Dr. Glendenning gets her on the table.”

“Could it have been a heart attack, or something like that?”

“It could have been. Heart attacks aren’t so common in healthy young women, but if she had some sort of genetic disorder or pre-existing condition…Let’s say it’s within the realm of the possible, but unlikely.”

Dr. Burns turned back to the body and probed gently here and there. He tried to unloosen the woman’s hand from the steering wheel but couldn’t. “That’s interesting,” he said. “Rigor hasn’t progressed as far as the hands yet, so it looks as if we’re dealing with cadaveric spasm.”

“What does it mean in this case?”

Dr. Burns stood up and faced Annie. “It means she was holding the wheel when she died. And the gear stick.”

Annie thought about the implications of that. Either the woman had just managed to pull into the lay-by when she died, or she was trying to drive away from something, or someone.

Annie stuck her head through the car window, uncomfortably aware of the closeness of the corpse, and looked down. One foot on the clutch, the other on the accelerator, gear stick in reverse and ignition turned on. She reached out and touched the travel mug. It felt cool.

As she moved back, Annie smelled just a hint of something vaguely sweet and metallic. She told Dr. Burns. He frowned and leaned forward, apologizing that he had no sense of smell. Gently, he touched the woman’s hair and pulled it back to expose her ear. Then he gasped.

“Good Lord,” he said. “Look at this.”

Annie bent over and looked. Just behind the woman’s right ear was a tiny star-shaped hole, around which the skin was
burned and blackened with a soot-like residue. There wasn’t much blood, and what there was had been hidden by her long red hair. Annie was no expert, but it didn’t take an expert to realize that this was a gunshot wound fired from close quarters. And if there was no gun in sight, and the woman had one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gear stick, then it could hardly have been a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Dr. Burns leaned through the window in front of the woman, feeling the other side of her skull for signs of blood and an exit wound. “Nothing,” he said. “No wonder we couldn’t see anything. The bullet must still be inside her skull.” He stepped away from the car, as if washing his hands of the whole affair. “Okay,” he said, “that’s all I can do for now. The rest is up to Dr. Glendenning.”

Annie looked at him and sighed, then she called Hatchley over. “Inform Superintendent Gristhorpe that we’ve got what looks very much like a murder on our hands. And we’d better get Dr. Glendenning and the SOCOs down here as soon as possible.”

Hatchley’s face dropped. Annie knew why, and she sympathized. It was the weekend, but all leave would be cancelled. Sergeant Hatchley probably had plans to go and watch the local cricket team and have a booze-up with the lads afterwards. But not now. She wouldn’t even be surprised if Banks was called back, depending on the scale of the investigation.

She looked down the road and her heart sank as she saw the first media vans arriving. How quickly bad news travels, she thought.

2

U
naware of the excitement just a few miles down the road, Banks was up and around before eight o’clock that morning, filter coffee and newspaper on the table in front of him, mild hangover held at bay by Paracetamol. He hadn’t slept at all well, mostly because he had been waiting for the phone to ring. And he hadn’t been able to get that song Penny Cartwright had been singing out of his mind: “Strange Affair.” The melody haunted him and the lyrics, with their images of death and fear, troubled him.

His window framed a view of blue sky above the rising northern daleside, and the grey flagstone roofs of Helmthorpe about half a mile away at the valley bottom, dominated by its church tower with the odd turret on one corner. It was similar to his view from the wall by his old cottage, just a slightly different angle. But it failed to move him. He could see that it was beautiful, but he couldn’t
feel
it. There seemed to be something missing, some connection, or perhaps there was a sort of invisible shield or thick fog between him and the rest of the world, and it dimmed the power of all he had held dear to move him in any way. Music, landscape, words on a page all seemed inert and impotent, distant and unimportant.

Since the fire had consumed his home and possessions four months ago, Banks had become withdrawn and taciturn; he knew it, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was suffering from depression, but knowing that was one thing, changing it quite another.

It had started the day he left hospital and went to look at the ruins of his cottage. He hadn’t been prepared for the scale of the damage: roof gone, windows burned out, inside a shambles of charred debris, nothing salvageable, hardly anything even recognizable. And it didn’t help that the man who had done this had got away.

After a few days convalescing at Gristhorpe’s Lyndgarth farmhouse, Banks had found the flat and moved in. Some mornings he didn’t want to get out of bed. Most nights he spent watching television, any old rubbish, and drinking. He wasn’t drinking too much, but he was drinking steadily, mostly wine, and smoking again.

His withdrawal had driven the wedge even deeper between him and Annie Cabbot, who desperately seemed to need something from him. He thought he knew what it was, but he couldn’t give it to her. Not yet. It had also cooled his relationship with Michelle Hart, a detective inspector who had recently transferred to Sex Crimes and Child Protection in Bristol, much too far away to maintain a reasonable long-distance relationship. Michelle had her own problems, too, Banks realized. Whatever it was that haunted her was always there, always in the way, even when they were laughing or making love. They’d been good for one another for a while, no doubt about it, but now they were down to the “just good friends” stage that usually comes before the end.

It seemed as if the fire and subsequent spell in hospital had put his life on pause, and he couldn’t find the play button. Even
work, when he got back to it, had been boring, consisting mostly of paperwork and interminable meetings that never settled anything. Only an occasional pint with Gristhorpe or Jim Hatchley, a chat about football or the previous evening’s television, had relieved the tedium. His daughter, Tracy, had visited as often as she could, but she had been studying hard for her finals. His son, Brian, had dropped by a few times, too, and now he was in a recording studio in Dublin with his band working on a new CD. Their first as the Blue Lamps had done okay, but the second was slated for much bigger and better things.

More than once Banks had thought of counselling, only to reject the idea. He had even considered that Dr. Jenny Fuller, a consultant psychologist he had worked with on a number of cases, might be able to help, but she was on one of her extended teaching gigs – Australia this time – and when he thought more about it, the idea of Jenny delving into the murky depths of his subconscious didn’t hold a lot of appeal. Maybe whatever was there was best left there.

When it came down to it, he didn’t need any interfering shrink poking around in his mind and telling him what was wrong. He knew what was wrong, knew he spent too much time sitting around the flat and brooding. He also knew that the healing process – the mental and emotional process, not merely the physical – would take time, and that it was something he had to do alone, make his way step by weary step back to the land of the living. No doubt about it, the fire had burned much deeper than his skin.

It wasn’t so much the pain he’d endured – that hadn’t lasted long, and he couldn’t even remember most of it – but the loss of all his worldly goods that hit him the hardest. He felt like a man adrift, unanchored, a helium balloon let float off into the sky by a careless child. What was worse was that he thought
he ought to be feeling a great sense of release, of freedom from materialism, the sort of thing gurus and sages spoke about, but he just felt jittery and insecure. He hadn’t learned the virtue of simplicity from his loss, had learned only that he missed his material possessions more than he ever dreamed he would, though he hadn’t yet been able to muster up the energy and interest to start replacing those items that
could
be replaced: his CD collection, his books and DVDs. He felt too weary to start again. He had bought clothes, of course – comfortable, functional clothes – but that was all.

Still, he reflected, munching on a slice of toast and marmalade as he scanned the reviews section of the newspaper, things were definitely improving a little each day. It was becoming easier to get out of bed in a morning, and he had got into the habit of occasionally taking a walk up the daleside opposite his flat on the fine mornings, finding the freshness and exercise invigorating. He had also enjoyed what he heard of Penny Cartwright’s singing the previous night and was beginning to miss his CD collection. A month or so ago, he wouldn’t even have bothered reading the reviews in the paper.

And now brother Roy, who hadn’t even rung or visited him in hospital, had left a mysterious urgent message and had not called back. For the third time since he got up that morning, Banks tried Roy’s numbers. He got the answering machine again, the recorded voice telling him to leave a message, and the mobile was still switched off.

Unable to concentrate on the newspaper any longer, Banks checked his watch and decided to ring his parents. They should be up by now. There was just a chance that Roy was there, or that they knew what was going on. He certainly seemed to keep in touch with them more than with Banks.

His mother answered and sounded nervous to be getting a call so early in the day. In her world, Banks knew, early morning phone calls never meant good news. “Alan? What is it? Is there something wrong?”

“No, Mum,” Banks said, trying to put her at ease. “Everything’s fine.”

“You’re all right, are you? Still recovering?”

“Still recovering,” said Banks. “Look, Mum, I was wondering if our Roy was there.”

“Roy? Why would he be here? The last time we saw Roy was our anniversary last October. You must remember. You were here, too.”

“I remember,” said Banks. “It’s just that I’ve been trying to ring him….”

His mother’s voice brightened. “So you two are making it up at last. That’s good to hear.”

“Yes,” said Banks, not wishing to disabuse his mother of that scrap of comfort. “It’s just that I keep getting his answering machine.”

“Well, he’s probably at work. You know how hard-working our Roy is. Always got something or other on the go.”

“Yes,” Banks agreed. Usually something about two shades away from being criminal. White-collar, though, which didn’t seem to count as crime to some people. When Banks thought about it, he realized he really hadn’t a clue what Roy actually did to make his money. Only that he made a lot of it. “So you haven’t heard from him recently?”

“I didn’t say that. As a matter of fact he rang about two weeks ago, just to see how your dad and I are doing, like.”

The implied rebuke wasn’t lost on Banks; he hadn’t rung his parents for a month. “Did he have anything else to say?”

“Not much. Except he’s keeping busy. He might be away, you know. Have you thought about that? He did say something about an important business trip coming up. New York again, I think. He’s always going there. I can’t remember when he said he was going, though.”

“Okay, Mum,” said Banks. “That’s probably where he is. Thanks very much. I’ll wait a few days and call him when he gets back home.”

“You make sure you do, Alan. He’s a good lad is Roy. I don’t know why you two haven’t been getting on better all these years.”

“We get along fine, Mum. We just move in different circles, that’s all. How’s Dad?”

“Same as ever.” Banks heard the rustle of a newspaper – the
Daily Mail
his father read just so he could complain about the Conservatives – and a muffled voice in the background. “He says to say hello.”

“Right,” said Banks. “Say hello back…. Well, take care of yourselves. I’ll call again soon.”

“Mind you do,” said Banks’s mother.

Banks rang off, then tried both of Roy’s numbers once again, but still no Roy. There was no way he was going to wait a few days, or even hours. From what he knew of Roy, under normal circumstances if he had buggered off somewhere and not bothered to ring back, Banks would have assumed he was sunning himself in California or the Caribbean with a shapely young woman by his side. That would be typical of him and his me-first attitude. As far as Roy was concerned, there was nothing in life you couldn’t get through with a smile and a wad of cash. But this was different. This time Banks had heard the fear in his brother’s voice.

He deleted the message from his answering service, threw a few clothes along with his toothbrush and razor into an
overnight bag, checked that the lights were out, unplugged all the electrical items and locked the flat behind him. He knew he wouldn’t get any rest until he got to the bottom of Roy’s odd silence, so he might as well drive down to London and find out what was happening himself.

Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe called the meeting in the boardroom of Western Area Headquarters after lunch, and DI Annie Cabbot, DS Hatchley, Crime Scene Co-ordinator DS Stefan Nowak, along with DCs Winsome Jackman, Kev Templeton and Gavin Rickerd sat in the high, stiff-backed chairs under the gaze of ancient wool barons with roast-beef complexions and tight collars. Their notes and files were set in neat piles on the dark polished table beside Styrofoam cups of tea or coffee. Pinned to corkboards on the wall by the door were Peter Darby’s Polaroids of the scene. It was already hot and stuffy in the room and the small fan Gristhorpe had turned on didn’t do much good.

Soon, when the investigation got seriously underway, more manpower would be allocated, but these seven would remain the core team: Gristhorpe as senior investigative officer and Annie, who would do most of the fieldwork, as his deputy and administrative officer. Rickerd would be office manager, responsible for setting up and staffing the murder room; Hatchley would act as receiver, there to weigh the value of every piece of information and pass it on for computer entry; Winsome and Templeton would be the foot soldiers, tracking down information and conducting interviews. Others would be appointed later – statement readers, action allocators, researchers and the rest – but for now it was of prime importance to get the system into place and into action. It was no
longer merely a suspicious death. Jennifer Clewes – if that was really the name of the victim – had been murdered.

Gristhorpe cleared his throat, shuffled his papers and began by asking Annie for a summary of the facts, which she gave as succinctly as possible. Then he turned to DS Stefan Nowak.

“Any forensics yet?”

“It’s still early days,” said Stefan, “so I’m afraid all I can give you at the moment is what we
don’t
have.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the road surface was dry and there are no discernible tire tracks from any other vehicle. Also, we haven’t turned up any physical evidence – discarded cigarette ends, spent matches, that sort of thing. There are plenty of prints on the outside of the car, so that will take Vic Manson a while to sort out, but they could be anyone’s.”