A Reason to Kill (5 page)

T
he phone ringing at five to seven woke Mac just before the alarm was due to go off. He struggled from sleep, that five-minute discrepancy making an unaccountable amount of difference to his body clock.

‘Hello. McGregor.' He sat up, listened, swung his legs out of bed. ‘I'm on my way.'

Mac replaced the receiver and stared hard at the phone. ‘Shit!' The uncarpeted floor was cold beneath his feet. He struggled into his clothes and grabbed his coat from where he had left it on the back of the chair. Should he take his car? No, it would take as long to retrieve it from where it was parked at the back of the police station as it would to walk down to the bottom end of Newell Street. Slamming the door hard, Mac ran down the stairs.

Outside Mrs Freer's little house were three police vehicles. One was scientific support. Two men clad in white coveralls stood beside the front door. Eden kept them company. He waved Mac over.

‘She's dead?' Mac was incredulous.

‘Found less than an hour ago. The woman who comes to get her up in the morning, she comes early. She's got a half-dozen to see first thing and Mrs Freer likes to be first.'

‘Where is she now, the care worker?'

Eden pointed towards one of the police vehicles. A young woman in police uniform sat in the back seat with an older woman huddled in a grey tweed coat. She was crying, handkerchief alternately clamped to her mouth or dabbing furiously at her eyes.

‘Is the doctor in there already? He got here fast.'

‘Not anyone from the rota,' Eden said, referring to the list of medics available for crime-scene consultation. ‘The care worker, Mrs Healey, knew there was a doctor living just up the road. She ran out of the house and fetched him here but it must have been obvious there was nothing he could do. He's talking to the crime scene co-ordinator but he's confirmed death and given us a very approximate time. The old woman was lying on the floor and he reckons she was cold. We got a liver temp when the CSI arrived and we've got an estimate for about midnight, give or take.'

Mac nodded. ‘How did she die?'

Eden took a deep breath. ‘Some bastard beat her around the face and head. Then they ripped the place apart. I think we can make a guess what they were after.'

Mac swallowed the lump that had suddenly risen to fill his throat. He looked away.

Eden moved closer. ‘Not your fault,' he said quietly. ‘So get that out of your mind right now. This was not your fault.'

But it is
, Mac thought.
It is. Just like the last time
.

The doctor emerged a few minutes later, shaken and pale. He had given all the information he could and handed over to the crime scene co-ordinator. The two white-clad CSIs went inside. Uniformed officers took their place beside the door and Eden led Mac to one of the waiting cars. ‘Might as well be warm,' he said. ‘I've sent Andy to get us some coffee. I don't imagine you've had anything.'

Mac shook his head. ‘I came straight here.'

‘Well, nothing much we can do until the SOCOs have completed their bit and uniform let us in.'

‘What about the care worker? Should I go and talk to her?'

‘Already taken care of. I've got DS Birch seeing to that. She'll take her back to Dorchester, take a formal statement. Sally's a good girl. We were colleagues in my last job, though she was just a humble PC then.' He grinned, showing oddly white teeth. False, Mac thought. ‘Not that our Sally was ever humble. You could never accuse her of being a shrinking violet.'

Mac sat back in the back seat and rubbed his eyes. ‘So,' he asked, ‘what do you want me to do?'

‘Drink your coffee when Andy brings it and then just wait.'

‘Neighbours?'

‘Uniform were first on scene. They've got it covered and we're expecting reinforcements from Dorchester and Weymouth later. I'll have to organize a press call. You want to handle that?'

Although phrased as a question, Mac realized what response was actually expected. He winced inwardly. He hadn't done a press conference since … ‘OK,' he agreed. ‘I can take care of that.'

For a perverse moment, Mac resented that he had been dragged out of bed in such a hurry only to find himself without any useful task. He rebuked himself for even allowing the thought. A woman was dead; what was a little inconvenience compared to that? He knew from experience that he'd be busy soon enough. Eden was right: take time, drink coffee, discuss what little they knew.

‘No disturbance in the night?'

‘Nothing reported. Next door heard a bit of a bang around eleven, but didn't investigate further. The walls are thin but Mrs Freer lived downstairs and there's a hallway between the living room and the house next door. That would deaden most of the sound, I'd have thought.'

‘And the bang was from downstairs?'

Eden laughed. ‘Mrs Briggs says she couldn't tell. Mr Briggs argued that it must have been, seeing as how his neighbour can't get upstairs. My guess is they feel guilty for not investigating and it's better for the conscience not to be sure.'

‘And the search, it was throughout the house?'

Eden nodded. ‘Whoever it was turned the place over upstairs and down. It's a mess.'

‘How did they get in?'

‘Jimmied the back door, same as last time. It must have made a noise. The doorframe had been reinforced. It would have gone with a hell of a crack.'

‘You think that's what the neighbours heard?'

‘It could have been,' Eden agreed, ‘but they were both adamant the bang came from inside the house and they've got a point. They were in the living room. Front of the house, all doors closed and the TV on, watching some action film or other, all loud noises and explosions.' He shrugged. ‘I suggest you have another go later, let the implications sink in. Helpless old lady beaten to death only yards away while they watched the telly; thinking about that might jog their memories.'

‘Or add what they
think
they might have heard. Think they
should
have heard,' Mac commented.

‘Ay, well there's that too. Ah, here's Andy with the coffee. You took your time,' he growled as the red-haired boy opened the door.'

‘Had to wait for the café to open, boss.'

He handed Eden and Mac tall insulated cups, topped off with plastic lids. He hovered.

‘Something else?' Eden asked.

‘Er, no. I suppose not.'

‘Then go and make yourself useful somewhere,' Eden told him.

‘I think he wanted to be paid,' Mac observed wryly as the young man scurried off, cheeks as flame red as his hair.

Eden removed the plastic and took a long swig. ‘Bugger, that's hot. Ay, well we don't always get what we hope for, do we?'

It was another hour before the body was ready to be removed and Mac and Eden allowed inside the house. Sharp sea air blowing through the hall had not entirely eliminated the stale odours that clung to the carpet and infiltrated the plaster and wallpaper, but another smell overlaid them now. Blood, death and a smell that told Mac that Mrs Freer had lost control of her bowels. Mac followed the designated path and entered the living room from where he had taken the handgun the day before. Mrs Freer lay in the narrow gap between her bed and the back of the sofa. The sofa had been eased aside to allow access but Mac could see the dents in the worn carpet where its castors had sat and noted the lighter patch of green that had been hidden from view and the tread of feet. The carpet hadn't been olive after all. Drawers had been pulled out from the wall unit and the contents emptied on to the floor. Paper and trinkets scattered and flung and the two easy chairs pushed aside, their seats ripped and slashed as though the intruder thought the old lady might have hidden something inside. The sofa had been treated in a similar fashion and its foam innards poked out obscenely through deep incisions in its back.

Mac realized he had been delaying the moment. Eden had already crossed the room and knelt now, close to the body, talking to the photographer and one of the CSIs. Mac came over to join him, steeling himself before he looked down. Before – for Mac, life was all made up of ‘before' and ‘after' the death of the child. ‘Before', he had faced the dead with, if not equanimity, at least a degree of professional detachment. And after? Well, this was the first one ‘after'. The first of the dead. He forced himself to look down and then to kneel beside the older detective, aware that other eyes watched him; others wondered what was causing him to delay. Even if they weren't, Mac felt that they must be.

He listened as Eden and the photographer discussed additional shots, distracting his mind with detail as his gaze took in the state of the body lying at his feet. Mrs Freer's head had been snapped back at an angle not possible in life. Mac didn't need to be told that her neck was broken. She stared at him, chin too high, back of the head too close to the opposite shoulder, so that she seemed to be straining to look back at someone standing behind her. Blood had pooled beside the ruined mouth, the fragile cheek broken by a blow that had caved it inward. Hair matted with blood.

‘He must have grabbed her arms,' Eden said. ‘Look at the bruising.'

Black marks stood out against white skin. Old flesh bruised easily, Mac thought, but even allowing for that the grip must have been cruelly strong.

Abruptly he stood up, marched outside, no longer caring who noticed or who commented. He stood outside the door trying to breathe, though his chest felt so tight that he could draw no air into his lungs and a red haze came down across his eyes.

No, he couldn't faint. He couldn't shame himself quite so completely.

Someone took his arm and he heard Eden's voice, felt himself being tugged slowly away from the door. Eden got him into the car and handed him what was left of the now cold coffee.

‘Drink it up, caffeine will help. Or at least, that's what I tell myself.'

Automatically, Mac moved to obey, grimacing at the chilled and sour taste. ‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘I don't know what happened.'

Eden held up a hand to silence him. ‘It's the first one, isn't it? First time since that little girl.'

Mac blinked. ‘You know about that? Of course you do. Everyone knows.'

‘Not everyone, but I read your file and then I made a few discreet phone calls. I like to know who I'm working with.'

Mac laughed harshly.

‘And you know what everyone told me? To a man they said that you were a good copper. The right sort. That you blamed yourself for summat no one could help. Lad, you could have had an army on that beach and that bastard still would have done the same. There'd still have been blood on the sand and that little girl lying dead. Only thing you did wrong, that is if we're going to be finding fault, is that you didn't get off after him fast enough.'

‘I went to her,' Mac said. ‘I wanted to see if …'

‘If a miracle had happened and you could do anything to save her. Lad, it would have been obvious to a blind man that she was dead even before she hit the ground, but you know, I suspect that most of us would have done the same. What you did was misjudged, but it was human and I'd rather work with a human being anytime.'

Mac swallowed the last of the coffee. ‘Thanks,' he said.

‘What for? You ready to go back inside?'

Mac nodded.

‘You take the upstairs, see what else she had, and I'll supervise the removal.'

‘I'm all right now,' Mac protested.

‘I don't doubt that you are,' Eden told him. ‘Just to make sure, you'll be attending the autopsy, but for now …'

Mac nodded and got out of the car, waited while Eden eased his bulk through the door.

‘Next of kin,' he asked, slipping back into the minutiae that kept his thinking under control.

‘Next thing we've got to find,' Eden said.

The bedrooms had been layered in dust. In places, Mac could still make out the strata. Thick fluff settling to the bottom and clinging to the carpet; progressively finer sprinklings powdered over time, creating a veil of spider-silk grey across the boxes and the bed, the dressing table and the matching lamps that stood on white bedside tables either side of a pine bed.

A quick glance into the second room told him that it had been used for storage and, judging from the uncarpeted floor and magnolia walls, it had most likely always been that way. The intruder who had killed Mrs Freer – always supposing, Mac reminded himself, that there had only been the one – had rampaged through this tiny back bedroom. Mac guessed he'd soon realized there was nothing to find and that much of the damage – torn photographs, smashed glass, blankets pulled from the airing cupboard and slashed with the same ferocity evidenced by the sofa downstairs – had been actions of spite and frustration.

He picked up one of the torn blankets, sniffed. It smelled of age and mould. Damp and chill came out of the walls and rose from the uncarpeted floor. Mrs Freer didn't use the upstairs of her house; she probably didn't bother to heat it either. He'd noticed a gas fire in the living room and a small halogen heater in the kitchen. It was likely she just managed with those.

He wondered if Rina was responsible for the kitchen heater. Then he realized he'd have to be the one to break the news.

The bedroom had seen less ferocious treatment. The dust strata settled on the bed was still largely intact. Pink candlewick showed through the cobweb grey. The bed was still made and Mac wondered how many years it had waited like that, for sleepers who would no longer settle there.

The curtains were drawn and Mac tugged them open, setting off a cascade of dust that attacked his throat and eyes. He coughed spasmodically, rubbed his eyes with hands that he realized, belatedly, were filthy and grimed with more of what he was trying to wipe out. Rapid blinking produced tears and washed the worst of the grittiness away, bringing a modicum of relief.