The Thirteenth Coffin (5 page)

‘A
sniper
? What is this, Iraq?’

Bradbury shrugged. ‘The Army have provided a Special Forces contact. He’s trying to establish where the shot came from. We know it came from some considerable distance, and the person pulling the trigger must have been well trained.’

Lapslie was now all attention. ‘How many shots?’

‘Just one: through the heart. She died very quickly.’

Lapslie sighed. ‘Sounds like someone knew what they were doing. Is the body still here?’

Bradbury nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Witnesses all still here?’

Bradbury nodded again. ‘They’re all giving statements, sir. Her father is in pieces. Tried to get him to hospital, but he won’t leave the scene.’

Lapslie let out a deep sigh. The trouble with murders like this, he thought, is that they become relatable. You wonder how you would feel if it was your child lying dead in their own blood. Lapslie had two sons, and the thought of anything happening to them kept him awake at night, especially as they lived with his ex-wife rather than with him. He knew, however, that he mustn’t let emotion interfere. The most he could do for the relatives now was to catch the bastard that did it.

Stepping out of the car, Lapslie followed Bradbury first to a large white tent established by the SOCOs, where he was supplied with a white disposable oversuit, a pair of overshoes and a green facemask. From there they went to the crime scene itself, just outside the doors to the church. The body of Leslie Cooke was still lying there. It was just how Lapslie had imagined. There
was a lot of blood. It spread in pools congealed around the body, small streams spilling and meandering along the cracks in the stonework and down the steps like a glutinous red waterfall. Her wedding dress was a bizarre jigsaw of maroon and white.

‘Who would have thought her to have had so much blood in her?’ he murmured.

Lapslie stood on the plastic panels which had been laid around the body in order to stop any contact with the floor, and potential evidence. He looked down at the discolouring face of a once beautiful young girl. Her eyes were still wide open and staring blankly ahead into a future that must have seemed so promising a few hours before, but now was just darkness. He knelt down and gently closed them. As he did so, he was interrupted by a young female SOCO. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Continuity of evidence.’

He looked up at her. Her voice tasted of bitter almonds, which made sense to Lapslie. ‘When science gets in the way of common decency, that’s the day I walk away from this job. Closing her eyes will make no difference to anything, except maybe to give her a little of the respect she deserves.’ He stood up slowly, not taking his eyes off an increasingly uncomfortable-looking SOCO.
‘And the next time you address me, it’s “sir”. Do you understand?’

She nodded, turned and walked away. Lapslie was glad to see the back of her. He returned his attention to Bradbury.

‘Where do we think the shot came from?

Bradbury pointed to a small medieval tower some way in the distance.

Lapslie strained his eyes. ‘Bloody hell, are you sure? That’s one hell of a shot.’

‘Special Forces, SOCOs and the ballistics boys are trying to determine that right now, sir. We’re pretty sure the shot came from there, though.’

He looked around. There was no sign of any officers with guns. ‘What about the Firearms Unit? We’ve got an armed criminal somewhere in the vicinity. That’s not something that makes me comfortable.’

‘SCO19 has been called in,’ Emma confirmed, ‘but you know how long it takes them to get to anything that doesn’t involve a man standing in the High Street with a gun actually in his hand. The assumption is that chummy with the sniper rifle had it away on his toes straight after the shot.’ She gestured around. ‘No other fatalities or injuries occurred before the emergency
services turned up. If the sniper had hung around looking for new victims then the paramedics and the wedding guests would have been decimated.’

Lapslie looked towards the tower again. To make a shot like that you really had to know what you were doing, but why would someone with that kind of knowledge and ability murder a young bride on her wedding day? Maybe that was the question that would help them catch the killer.

A voice broke into his thoughts. ‘Can we remove the body now?’

Lapslie licked his lips; the same smell as the day before – petrol. He knew who was posing the question before he turned to face him: Jim Thomson, Scene of Crime manager and senior SOCO.

‘Has the police surgeon been?’

‘Yes, sir. He pronounced death a little while ago. We were just waiting for you.’

Lapslie nodded. ‘In that case, fine, let’s get her to the mortuary and see what Doctor Catherall can tell us.’ He looked back at Bradbury. ‘So where are the witnesses?’

‘In the church hall, giving statements. We’ve taken it over as an incident room.’

‘I take it we managed to hold everyone here?’

Bradbury nodded. ‘As far as we know. Even had to cancel the next wedding. That didn’t go down well.’

‘Funny, isn’t it, how one person’s tragic death affects so many people. Let’s go and talk to the witnesses.’

Lapslie followed Bradbury back down the church steps, across the church yard and into the hall. It was a large, well-lit and well-ventilated room with a balcony at one end and a stage at the other. Pantomimes and carols at Christmas; Agatha Christie and giant marrow competitions in the summer. English village life.

Scores of tables had already been set up around the room. At each one sat a distraught witness and a police officer who was busy scribbling down their description of events. It would mostly be a waste of time, but it had to be done for completeness’s sake, and occasionally there was something there, some scrap of usable evidence. The support group were setting up a computer section and getting ready to collate the incoming information. Boards were being erected and a small briefing room established. Just after any murder it was always like this; then, as time went on and no one was caught, things became more routine until they were scaled down and the murder ended up as a cold case. In most cases, if the murder wasn’t solved within the
first seventy-two hours the chances of ever solving it were halved. Lapslie was determined that this one wouldn’t end up in a brown box stored in some forgotten cupboard. The one thing the family would need was justice and he was going to do his best to give it to them.

‘Where are the groom and her father?’

Bradbury pointed to a man with his head in his hands. As he looked up, he caught Lapslie’s eye for just a moment and moaned like an animal, and in that moment, and despite his medication, Lapslie felt all the grief and hurt he was suffering as a wash of something across his tongue. It was a taste he had never experienced before, and had no way of describing. It was the most intense, most complex, most subtle flavour he had ever tasted: sorrow and agony expressed as a single incredible essence. For a moment he had to grab Bradbury’s arm to stop himself falling. The intensity lasted only a moment and he pulled himself together quickly.

Before Emma Bradbury had a chance to ask Lapslie what was wrong, Detective Inspector Alan Shaw walked across the hall to join the two of them. Lapslie looked across at him, surprised to see him there.

‘Thought you were on night crime, Alan?’

‘I’m standing in for you here. You’re wanted back at the bunker. There’s been some kind of incident.’

Shaw had a bitter, musty taste to him, like sweat. His voice made Lapslie wince.

‘What kind of incident?’

‘The doll – the one in the bride’s dress. Someone’s played out its murder.’

8 August 2008

The fire, as far as it went, wasn’t a bad one. He’d seen far worse during the ten years he had been a serving fireman. For some reason, though, the heat from this one seemed to belie its ferocity. Richard Dale had never known a fire quite so hot, while at the same time being so small. There must be something within the building causing the heat, and they had no idea what it was. Maybe some sort of accelerant.

If it hadn’t been for his friend Niamat, who had been a fireman since he left school, Dale would still be stuck in a never-ending round of worthless going-nowhere jobs, or sitting at home wondering where the next job was coming from. Niamat had had words with a few people within the Fire Service, and before Richard Dale had realized what was happening, he was in. Not only did becoming a fireman give him a regular job with career prospects and a pension at the end – the working man’s Valhalla – it also delighted his girlfriend Cat no end. She
had been fed up with his easy-going, ‘Something will turn up’, attitude to work. Truth be told, she felt a little ashamed of him, and he couldn’t blame her. Now she had something to hold her head up about. Even the kids seemed pleased, and loved to brag that their dad was a fireman.

There had been no explosion, and the fire seemed to be generally under control, when Richard Dale felt a sudden sharp pain on the left of his forehead. He tried to sort out in his mind what the hell had just hit him. He raised a hand to the side of his head and realized that blood was streaming down his cheek. The moment he touched the blood, a feeling of nausea overwhelmed him. The combination of pain, shock and nausea finally made him lose his balance. He fell back off the ladder.

He should have been wearing a safety harness but it had been all tangled up, and on this one occasion, and despite all the rules, he had disregarded it. The bottom line was the fire needed to be put out, and put out quickly, so he’d cracked on without securing the harness. He’d done it a dozen times before without a problem. They all had.

Richard Dale was still alive when he hit the floor in the middle of the burning building. Both his legs, his right arm and several of his ribs were broken, along with his pelvis. He couldn’t move, but he was still conscious and aware of everything that was happening around him. He tried to call for help, but the
smoke was too strong. It got inside his throat, his lungs, choking him.

Outside his colleagues, seeing what had happened, did all they could to get to him, but it was hopeless. The heat was too much and parts of the building had already begun to crumble. Inside, the flames enveloped Richard Dale. His coughing screams were the last thing his colleagues heard, before the stricken building collapsed over him.

*

Lapslie had never liked Alan Shaw. He was a chancer, spent most of his career looking for the right arse to kiss. He had even asked Chief Superintendent Rouse to be his son’s godfather, and, what was worse, Rouse had accepted. Lapslie had known Rouse ever since they were both raw woodentops at Brixton nick, and it hadn’t even
occurred
to him to ask Rouse to be the godfather of his sons, Jamie and Robbie. After that, of course, Shaw was untouchable. Lapslie was positive that over the next few years his promotion would be rapid until finally he would turn up as the new head of CID. With luck, Lapslie would have retired by then. The idea of calling Shaw ‘sir’ was more than he could stand, now or in the future.

It took Lapslie and Bradbury just over forty minutes to get back to the decommissioned nuclear bunker. Jim
Thomson had wanted to come, but Lapslie wasn’t sure he could stand the continual taste of petrol. Besides, why would he need a senior SOCO at the scene of a murdered doll?

When they arrived, two DCs were waiting for them: Parkin and Pearce. Lapslie looked around: the police presence was low – the squad car was out of sight and the two coppers had been observing from a distance. It was what he had wanted – the bunker left invitingly alone – but now he wasn’t sure that it had been the best idea. Something had happened, and it had gone unobserved.

They all walked across to the large metal doors together. As they began to move inside the shelter, Lapslie stopped Pearce. ‘No, you wait here. Don’t want any unwelcome visitors barging in.’

Pearce nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

On entering the shelter the first thing Lapslie noticed was that the smell of the tramp’s decaying body had disappeared and been replaced with an odd musty smell that he normally associated with damp cellars.

Lapslie turned his attention to DC Parkin. ‘So what have we got?’

Parkin looked uncomfortable. ‘Think you had better have a look, sir.’

Parkin switched on a small hand torch, and both Lapslie and Bradbury followed him through the dank darkness of the interior. This time there were no arc lamps to guide them: just the natural light spilling in from the door and Parkin’s torch.

On reaching the storage room Parkin pulled open the door and shone his light inside. At the far end of the wall, still perched on the metal shelves, were the coffins, only this time there were only ten of them. Two of the dolls and two of the coffins had disappeared.

Pulling the torch from Parkin’s grasp, Lapslie made his way slowly towards the small line of wooden coffins. Using only the tip of his index finger he opened the small coffin lid on the last of them. Standing upright inside it was the bridal doll he had seen earlier. The doll had a large hole on the left side of her chest from which a red substance had been oozing, and the once brilliantly white dress had turned a mottled red.

Lapslie leaned forward, sniffing at the dress. He had wondered at once whether the red liquid was a dye of some sort, or ink, or even tomato sauce or raspberry jam, but it was none of those. His nose was quickly filled by the hot copper smell of blood, and Lapslie had a bad feeling that when the blood was analysed it was going
to have come from the body of the girl at the church – Leslie Petersen. He felt a shiver run through him. This case grew more bizarre by the day.

At least only two of the dolls and their coffins had disappeared. Was the killer sending some kind of message? Challenge the police; get them involved in some bizarre deadly game? Still, the good news was that Jim Thomson and his team had already photographed the two missing dolls, so at least he would have some idea of what they looked like, and hopefully their significance to the murder inquiry.