We Are Death (4 page)

Emerick, his assistant, went everywhere with him. No one was entirely sure where Harrow was, but he called in every now and again to speak to the boss. Connolly was dead, which just left Carter.

There are coincidences in life that turn out to be no coincidence at all, and then there are strange events which unexpectedly slip perfectly into a narrative, as though they had been intended all along. Carter was one such coincidence, in that he had a home in the smallest city in England. There was no reason why he should. It had not been arranged that DCI Jericho would necessarily be dragged into the events that would unfold as a result of the Kangchenjunga expedition, but Carter had come home to Wells at the right time for just that to happen.

He rarely spent any time at the house, but he had never considered renting it out. It was his refuge from the mountains and the weather and the summits and the stresses of always seeking the new and the unconquered and the undiscovered. He could come to Wells, he could see Charl if she was around, and he could chill out away from the glare of snow-capped mountains and the pressure to be daring.

Prior to his arrival the previous evening, he hadn’t been back for eight months. The team had split up after Kangchenjunga, with a view to getting back together later in the year to sort through the ramifications of the expedition. Harrow was taking the lead. He wasn’t sure why they all trusted him, but they did.

There was something capricious about Connolly, and none of the others had really known him that well; Geyerson he wouldn’t trust any further than he could throw him uphill; and Emerick didn’t really count, as Emerick taking control was the same as giving the lead to Geyerson. As for Carter himself, he had no intention of trying to move in the kind of circles that Harrow would have to surround himself with to make the most of what they had.

As soon as the expedition ended, Carter had left Sikkim and headed east. Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, south to Australia and a couple of weeks in New Zealand. Getting away from all of it. Hadn’t so much as looked at a mountain, the Southern Alps from a distance notwithstanding, or touched a pinion or an ice pick or a rope or a crampon in all that time.

Now he was looking for a few weeks at home, settling back into life just above the Levels, before heading back south for the autumn and winter season.

He’d arrived at his house at just after ten the previous evening. The cleaning service had been in, so at least the place was tidy and dust free, the bedding clean. He’d taken a shower, gone to bed and been asleep within minutes. And then, as so often happens when travelling from one side of the world to the next, he’d woken with the arrival of dawn, the day already warm after a short, hot night.

By five am he had been wide awake, by five fifteen he was out on his bike, riding slowly down through town, then speeding up as he hit the Levels and riding on out beyond Godney to the Avalon Marshes.

He was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and sandals. It was going to be another hot day, and as he rode he thought about Charl, glad that she’d agreed to come over and looking forward to what was to come. Sex on a deliciously warm, lazy afternoon.

There was a spot near the entry to the old sawmill – a place that reminded him of an episode of Scooby Doo – where he always stopped. The first of the small lakes, this one covered in the slender trunks of dead silver birches. There was something bleakly apocalyptic about it. He always wondered what had killed them, what had caused all these trees to shed their leaves and fade away to nothing but bare branches. The trees in the next lake were fine. In this one, though, there was death, all the more hauntingly beautiful as a result.

He heard the car someway in the distance – sound travelled far across the flat earth out here at this time in the morning – although it barely registered at first. He took the phone from his back pocket and took a couple of shots of the trees. The hedgerow in front stopped him getting a good picture, but he’d crept into it previously to get the decent shot he wanted, and he always took one or two more anyway when he was out here. Sometimes he compared them with ones he’d taken before, if he could find them.

He turned and looked along the road at the small silver car coming his way. He didn’t know much about cars and didn’t even think about the make. It was a small, bland car that could have been any of about a hundred. A farmworker on his way to start the day, he presumed.

He turned back to look at the trees, pulling the wheels of his bike another inch or two away from the road. He was aware of the sound of the car slowing down as it approached him, which he presumed was the guy being polite, so he pulled the bike slightly further away again, even though he was already completely off the road.

The car stopped beside him. Someone else looking at the view, or asking for directions. The roads around this part of the Levels were labyrinthine, although generally there were signposts at every junction.

Carter turned, saying ‘Morning,’ as he did so. The word was out his mouth before he saw the gun. He probably wouldn’t have been so polite if he’d known about the gun.

The bullet entered through his forehead and exploded in his brain. Carter fell, dead, in the same instant. His killer looked down at him for a few moments, then placed the gun in the pocket of the driver’s door and slowly drove on in the direction of the old sawmill.

*

H
oagy Carmichael was still playing. Somewhere. Why was Hoagy still playing? Hadn’t he turned him off? Wasn’t Hoagy gone from his life?

Maybe he was there himself, sitting in the front room, playing the piano, singing, a shirt and tie, grey trousers, and a cigarette dangling from his lips. But that didn’t make sense, as Jericho didn’t have a piano in his front room. Jericho had never owned a piano.

What was that tune?
Judy
maybe. Was it
Judy
? The words sounded unfamiliar. And the phone was ringing. That didn’t make sense either, because the phone didn’t usually ring during
Judy
.

Finally, on perhaps the thirteenth ring, Jericho lifted his head off the pillow, his eyes open, sweat on his brow. There was no music. There was no Hoagy. His mobile, set to ring until he answered it or the caller cut off, was still going.

He looked at the phone, breathing heavily. It was the station, of course. 06:27. Something had happened, which seemed unusual for Wells. Maybe the fight outside the King’s Head in the middle of the night had taken a slightly less pleasant turn than usual.

He lifted the phone, still feeling discombobulated, but didn’t speak. Constable Loovens at the other end did not expect Jericho to say anything, so he didn’t wait, quickly rattling off details of what had just been reported from out on the Marshes.

Jericho listened and then hung up. He hadn’t said a word. He left his head on the pillow for a few moments, then sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, took a moment to curse that it seemed no cooler this morning than it had the night before, and headed through the house to the shower.

––––––––

T
he road end had been closed off about half a mile from where the body lay. Jericho sat idling in his car, as Constable Drew waved him through, then decided to park at the junction and walk along. He got out of the car, left the windows open and stood for a moment, taking in the surroundings.

It had been a while since he’d been down this way. Hills on either side, and in the middle the large plain of land that had been recovered by Dutch engineers in the sixteenth century.

He nodded at Drew, who looked too hot already in his stab-proof vest, long sleeves, and long trousers. He wouldn’t want to be standing here for too long, even this early in the morning.

‘Who have we got along there?’ asked Jericho.

‘Sergeant Haynes, Constables McGuire and Pettigrew, sir,’ Drew said. ‘And Dr Trueblood, sir.’

Jericho, his hands in his pockets, glanced harshly at him, shaking his head.

‘How’d she get here already?’

‘Staying in Wells last night, I believe.’

He grunted a reply, took another look around, and then started walking along the road. Glad to take the few minutes to get a feel for the place. He liked Trueblood, aware that his defensiveness about her presence was at the thought of her getting here from Taunton before he had, when he only lived ten minutes away.

There was no freshness about the morning, just stale heat. He hadn’t looked at a weather forecast, but the break couldn’t come quickly enough for him. He walked slowly, looking out over the low fields and marshes to the left. There were a couple of homes in the distance but too far away for anyone to have seen anything useful. To the right, trees and hedgerows. There were homes over there too, closer by far, but all he could see were a couple of rooftops. Chances were no one would have seen anything from there either.

He arrived at the scene, which had not yet been cordoned off. There was no need, with the road blocked at either end. Haynes was standing with one hand in his pocket, the other holding a small evidence bag, having watched Jericho slowly approach. Trueblood was leaning over the body. McGuire was standing to the side, keeping a watchful eye on the surrounding undergrowth. At some point word was going to get out, and then the gawkers would come. Then they would have to cover up the scene far more than they already had done. But until then, they were taking advantage of the light and space, the freedom of not yet having to close themselves in.

Jericho glanced at his watch, then looked down at the body, the bike lying a couple of feet to the side. Bullet to the head, a lot of blood. He looked away.

‘The trouble with Britain,’ said Haynes, after engaging Jericho with a small nod, ‘is that we’re not designed for the extremes. And we never will be. We need air conditioning five days a year. We need decent snow-clearing equipment five days every five years. When are we ever going to spend money on that stuff? Like, never. There’s no point. So we just have to put up with it when it happens.’

Jericho had watched him throughout, then finally looked away and back at the body.

‘Can we talk about him now?’ he asked.

Trueblood turned at the sound of Jericho’s voice and smiled.

‘Robert,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

‘Too hot, but otherwise delighted to be here. What have we got?’

She smiled and turned back to her work as she spoke.

‘Bullet to the forehead from, I’d say, three to four feet. No sign, so far, that the victim tried to run. Probably didn’t have time to do anything.’

‘Any sign whether the killer was on foot, on a bike, was he–’

‘Impossible to tell at this stage. Actually, I’m not sure there’s a stage when it won’t be impossible to tell. You might need to find a witness for that. Maybe we’ll know more once we’ve worked out the entry angle.’

‘And the bullet?’

She turned and smiled again.

‘Oh, there’s definitely a bullet, but I’m not going to extract it here. Anyway, I’m not the person to tell you anything about it. I’m sure you’ll get your report soon enough.’

‘First impressions?’

She paused, her hands on the head of the corpse, then slowly stood up. When she spoke she did so with the accompaniment of a slow shrug.

‘Looks like the body was pole-axed. This close, the guy obviously didn’t see it coming. His phone fell by his side...’

Haynes raised the evidence bag which Jericho had already noticed.

‘Passcode,’ said Haynes. ‘We’ll need to take it back.’

Jericho indicated for Trueblood to keep talking.

‘So, maybe the killer walked up behind him. Maybe he drove.’

‘He’d hear the car.’

‘Yes, he would, but you know, a car’s a car. It’s not like,
oh my god, there’s a steel beast driving up the road
... Who’s going to turn and look at a car? Either way, he’s not going to expect the driver to have a gun.’

‘Or passenger.’

‘So, like I said, I’ll get the angle of bullet entry and that should give us a little more to go on. If it came from lower down, presumably we’re talking about the shooter sitting in the car.’

‘Or a midget,’ said Jericho.

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Too often we forget the possibility of evil midgets.’

The three of them stood and looked down at the corpse and the blood on the ground, the warm morning already clinging to them.

‘Can you use the word midget?’ asked Haynes.

‘You think you can’t?’ said Trueblood.

‘I don’t know. It just sounds like one of those words that’s going to offend someone.’

‘Like a midget?’

‘Yes. A midget. Or, you know, more likely one of those people who’s just professionally offended on someone’s behalf all the time.’

‘Best to stick with dwarf, probably.’

‘Maybe you just have to refer to their size in a non-pejorative manner. You know, a person of height around three foot eight fired the gun.’

‘Did you mean pejorative there?’

‘Not sure...’

‘We’re also ignoring the possibility,’ said Jericho pointedly, trying to get the conversation back on track, ‘that he was killed by someone he knew, someone who was riding with him. That could certainly have taken him by surprise. We need to get a visual on the victim this morning, even if it’s not the actual moment of murder. Find out if he was alone.’

He turned away and looked around at the farmhouses in the distance.

‘Anyone been over there yet?’

‘Nothing actioned yet, sir. Only got here a few minutes before you.’

‘Right. The tourists will be turning up soon enough. We need this area fenced off. We need to double the men at either end of the road, and look into any other ways the public can get near here.’ Another glance at his watch. ‘We need to start making calls at the surrounding houses, and we need to find out where this guy lives and go round there. I’ll speak to Glastonbury and see if we can get some more feet on the ground. Bloody press will be here soon enough as well, I expect.’

He shook his head, kicked his feet. Haynes and Trueblood were both well aware of how Jericho would feel speaking to the press.