Blood Axe (4 page)

6

The detective chief
inspector gazed sternly round the room and the assembled team fell silent under her gaze. Eileen Duncan was a thickset middle-aged woman, with a square chin and a determined air. Although he was wary of working with such a forceful woman, Ian had to acknowledge that she achieved results. Her gaze lingered on him in silent acknowledgement of his presence.

‘What have we got?' she asked.

With a nod, Ian stepped forward. He wished he was better prepared to brief the team.

‘The body of Angela Jones was found just after seven thirty this morning by a hospital surgeon, Mr Charles Everleigh. His wife was with him. They were on their way to work. He was going to drop his wife at the station on his way to the hospital. She works in Leeds. We haven't got the post mortem report yet but the victim appears to have died from a head wound caused by a single slash with a sharp weapon, a cleaver or a large knife of some description. Hence all the blood,' he added, turning to glance briefly at the image on the screen behind him.

‘She looks very young,' someone commented.

‘Only just sixteen,' Ian confirmed. He paused while a faint sigh whispered around his assembled colleagues. ‘The doctor at the scene placed the time of death at between ten thirty and eleven thirty on Sunday night.'

‘Just sixteen,' Eileen repeated loudly. She sounded angry. ‘And no one noticed she hadn't come home last night.'

Ian wondered if Eileen had a daughter. She wore a plain gold band on her wedding finger, but it was hard to imagine her as a mother. She seemed too fierce to have cared for children, although he realised she must behave differently away from work.

Ian nodded. ‘Mother and stepfather didn't notice her absence until this morning. They thought she must have come in after they went to bed at around ten thirty. Mother said she would have waited up but the stepfather refused to allow it. He seems to be very much in charge in the relationship, although possibly less able to control his teenage stepdaughter.'

‘Angela Jones wasn't his own daughter,' Eileen commented thoughtfully.

‘But she was his stepdaughter,' Ian replied. ‘She lived with them.'

‘What do we know about the weapon?' Eileen asked, turning back to the evidence.

‘Well, not a lot as yet, only it must have been pretty heavy and sharp to slice through her skull.'

‘And presumably whoever was wielding it was strong,' Eileen added. ‘Oh well, let's not speculate about that for now. We'll know more when we get the result of the post mortem, and hear from forensics.'

After writing up his report, Ian set off to speak to Charles Everleigh. Conveniently for Ian, he worked in the hospital where the mortuary was located. Charles was in theatre, so Ian went straight to the mortuary where he was pleased to see Avril, the cheerful young anatomical pathology technician he had met while he was working on a previous case.

‘Hi, Ian,' she greeted him with a ready smile. ‘How's things? And how's your wife?'

‘She's OK,' he answered vaguely.

It occurred to him that he had no idea about Avril's relationship status. So much for being a detective. She wasn't wearing a ring, but that didn't necessarily mean anything.

‘I suppose you're here to see Jonah,' she went on.

He nodded, mentally bracing himself to view Angela's cadaver again.

Avril pulled a mock sad face. ‘And there I was, thinking my luck was finally in and you'd come here just for me. Oh well, your loss.'

Ian grinned and followed her into the mortuary where the local home office pathologist was examining the body. Jonah Hetherington was a plump man in his forties. He had pale freckled skin and ginger hair. For someone with such a grim job, he was unremittingly cheerful.

‘She's young,' Jonah said, plunging in straight away.

‘Yes, I know. Just sixteen.'

‘Like the song.' Jonah broke into song in a pleasant tenor voice, beating time with a bloody gloved hand, ‘She was just sixteen, and you know what I mean.'

Catching sight of Ian's expression he broke off, with a mischievous grin. Ian couldn't help smiling.

‘Right,' Jonah went on in a business-like tone. ‘Time of death around eleven on Sunday night. She was killed with one single blow which cracked her skull open like… well, cracking it in two. She would have died instantaneously. Her attacker was standing in front of her when he struck, so she may well have seen him. There's no knowing.' He paused, contemplating the dead white face, split open almost as far down as the eyes.

‘He?'

‘What?'

‘You said “he”.'

‘Did I?'

‘Does that mean you think the killer was a man?'

Jonah shook his head. ‘To be honest, I'm not sure if we're looking for a man or a woman,' he replied.

‘You said “he”,' Ian reminded him. ‘What gave you the impression it was a man who did this?'

Again, Jonah hesitated. ‘Did I say “he”?' he asked. ‘I think what I was thinking was that the killer hit her pretty hard, that's all, so it seems more likely she was killed by a man.'

‘But it's only an impression?'

‘Indeed,' Jonah confirmed. ‘At this stage, there's no knowing the gender of the killer, or anything else for that matter. Rest assured, Ian, we're doing everything we can to winkle out more information from her.'

‘Is it possible to at least estimate the height of her assailant from the angle of the blow?'

Jonah shook his head. ‘If only I could. To answer with any certainty, I'd need to know his arm length, and whether he was standing on anything when he hit her. It seems unlikely, to be honest. My guess is he was an average-sized bloke, quite strong. But that is pure guesswork, and not very helpful to you.'

‘What about the murder weapon?'

Jonah frowned. ‘A clean cut with a straight, sharp blade. It looks like a very wide knife, something like an axe blade.'

‘An axe? Keep that quiet for now, will you?'

Jonah nodded. He understood why Ian wouldn't want the media getting hold of that sensational possibility.

‘It was a particularly violent attack,' Jonah went on, ‘but I wonder if it mightn't have been a mugging that went spectacularly wrong.'

‘What makes you say that?'

Jonah picked up one of the dead girl's hands, spreading the fingers out. Looking closely, Ian could see what he was pointing out. Three fingers on her right hand bore indentations from wearing rings. He saw the same marks on two fingers on her left hand. The skin on one finger had been scraped, as though a ring had been forcibly removed.

‘And this,' Jonah added.

He indicated a fine weal on the side of her neck. ‘It looks as though she was wearing a chain that was roughly pulled off. This scratch was inflicted after she was dead.'

‘Anything else?'

‘No, except that this was a particularly violent attack.'

7

Seeing the time,
Ian cursed under his breath and rolled wearily out of bed. He had overslept after a late night. Having upset his wife by going into work the previous day, he had gone home in the evening to argue with her and make up, finally taking her out for dinner by way of an apology. After an emotionally disturbing day at work he hadn't felt like going out, but he had felt he owed it to his wife to try and cheer her up. Bev was still snoring gently as he got up. He dressed without opening the bedroom curtains and slipped quietly out of the house. Grabbing a coffee and a roll from the canteen, he went straight to his desk. Uninterrupted, he enjoyed a quiet moment to himself as he ate his modest breakfast. The tranquillity didn't last long. There was a gentle tap, and Ted poked his head round the door.

‘Morning, sir.'

‘Hi, Ted. Well, you might as well come in now you're here. What is it?'

Although he was a Yorkshire man, born and bred, the young sergeant's dark colouring gave him a Mediterranean appearance. Shorter than Ian, he was muscular and energetic. With a single-minded focus on the job, he was nevertheless easy to get along with, and Ian was really pleased to be working with him again. He smiled encouragingly at the young sergeant and repeated his question.

‘Am I interrupting?' Ted asked, with a nod at Ian's breakfast which was now just a few crumbs on a paper serviette.

‘No, no, I was just finishing.' Ian rolled up the serviette and tossed it, just missing the bin. ‘Come on in.'

‘Crap shot,' Ted said, picking up the ball of paper and dropping it in the bin. ‘I just came to see if you'd read the post mortem report.'

‘When did that arrive?'

‘About half an hour ago.'

‘Tox report?'

‘Not in yet.'

‘Pull up a chair.'

Side by side, they studied the screen. Jonah suggested the force of the attack indicated the killer was male, although he was careful to point out that his findings didn't rule out a female assailant.

‘Great that he was able to reach such a definite conclusion about the killer's gender,' Ted said. ‘That really helps.'

Ian didn't comment on his colleague's sarcasm. They both understood the pathologist needed to cover himself. The killer had been careful to avoid direct contact with the victim, so had left no discernible DNA traces on the body. Attacking his victim in the street had been risky but although the killer could have been seen, it was impossible to find any obvious trace of his identity in such a public location. The street had given them no clues to his identity, and the post mortem was no help either.

Jonah's conclusion about the murder weapon was more specific. In some ways this was the most disturbing aspect of the whole report, although it gave the police very little to go on. The girl had been fatally wounded by a metal blade fifteen centimetres in length, with a razor-thin slightly curved edge. Indentations on one side of the wound made when the blade had been withdrawn suggested it was not completely smooth. The pathologist suggested that an edge of hardened steel had been welded on to a wide metal blade, resembling an axe head.

‘Do you think it was sharpened specially?' Ted asked in a low voice.

Ian didn't answer.

‘It sliced right through her skull,' the sergeant went on.

‘He says it resembled an axe head. Maybe it
was
an axe?' Ian said.

Ted grunted. ‘I don't see many people going around wielding axes these days.'

‘Do you see many people going around slicing other people's heads open?'

‘People's heads? Do you think there might be more than one victim?'

‘It was just a figure of speech. But I think it's possible he might kill again. He's killed once. I don't know why, but I've got a bad feeling about all this.'

‘I don't think it would make anyone feel good.'

While they were waiting for the toxicology report, they took a break.

‘It's an odd way to kill someone,' Ted remarked when they were seated in the canteen.

‘Unusual but effective. Was this an attack carried out in anger? It was violent. But then again, who carries a weapon like that around with them? It might suggest a certain element of premeditation. I suppose Eileen's going to bring in a profiler.'

‘That's a good thing, isn't it?' Ted asked.

‘Depends who the profiler is. But we're going to need to throw everything at this one, that's for sure.'

‘You're right there. This killer's completely crazy. But then aren't they all? Murder isn't exactly what you might call sane.'

‘You can't imagine ever being provoked into a murderous attack on someone else?' Ian asked.

‘No.'

‘What if some deranged stranger was threatening the life of your girlfriend, or your mother?'

‘That's different. Self-defence doesn't count. I'm talking about unprovoked attacks.'

The tox report came in soon after Ian had returned to his desk. He summoned Ted and they read through it together. Angela had been drinking cider during the evening. Although her intake hadn't been excessive, she had been over the alcohol limit. She had eaten nothing but crisps since lunchtime, and had been smoking cannabis shortly before she died. Jonah concluded that she would have been tipsy and slightly high, but she was unlikely to have been out of control. She had been walking home alone, presumably after socialising on the evening she was killed.

‘We need to find out where she was, and who she was with,' Ian said.

If her parents couldn't give them names and details for her friends, they would go through all the contacts and calls to and from her phone. With luck, they would find a message giving them her arrangements for the evening she was killed, and the murder would turn out to have been personal, enabling them to wind up the investigation promptly.

‘Let's hope it was someone she knew,' Ted said.

They exchanged an anxious look.

8

Angela's parents weren't
much help. Her mother cried, her stepfather blustered, and neither of them had anything useful to tell Ian.

‘We thought she'd come home,' Moira wailed. ‘She came home late sometimes. But she always came home. She always came home.'

‘Have either of you remembered anything she said about where she went on Sunday evening?'

Frank answered gruffly. ‘She never told us anything.'

‘That's not true. She talked to me. She always talked to me.'

‘Much good that did,' Frank muttered. ‘So where did she go?'

‘I don't know,' Moira sobbed, ‘I don't know.'

Ian understood that Angela's stepfather was in shock. It was unfortunate that he expressed his grief as anger, but his wife didn't appear to be upset by his brusqueness. She was probably too far gone to pay him much attention, but Ian couldn't help wondering if such aggression was commonplace, and if so, whether it raised a question about the nature of Frank's relationship with his stepdaughter. As though to compensate for his baldness, Frank had a dark beard and heavy eyebrows. There was something unpleasantly virile about him, a kind of aggression that hinted at a capacity for violence. But Ian appreciated that could have been a response to the situation, a knee-jerk reaction to protect his distressed wife. In any case, there was no evidence to suggest he might have a violent temper. That was merely the impression he gave.

Ian approached the question of relations between Frank and Angela with circumspection.

‘Would you describe Angela as difficult?'

Frank shrugged. ‘She was a teenager.'

‘She wasn't difficult,' Moira burst out. ‘She was a happy girl. She was always happy.'

‘The thing is, Inspector,' Frank interrupted his wife, ‘she wasn't mine. Not my daughter. You could say our relationship was fraught at times, but no more than normal. She was a teenager. I'm not used to dealing with girls her age. I mean, she seemed calm enough when Moira and I started seeing each other, but that was six years ago. Kids change. If I'd known...' He broke off, and put his arm round his wife. ‘There, there,' he said awkwardly. ‘Don't cry.'

Ian hoped he wasn't going to tell her everything would be all right, but he wasn't that insensitive, just gauche. He patted his wife on the shoulder reassuringly. ‘There, there.'

Ian spoke as gently as he could. This was a delicate matter.

‘Can you remember if Angela was wearing any jewellery when she went out? Any rings, perhaps?'

‘She always wore my mother's wedding ring,' Moira said. ‘We had it resized for her after my mother died. They were very close. Please tell me it wasn't taken…' She broke off, and hid her face in her hands.

‘I'm afraid so.'

Behind her hands, Moira sobbed loudly.

‘Try not to upset yourself,' Frank urged her. ‘This might be a good thing. It could help to find her killer, couldn't it, Inspector? Someone might try to sell the ring. Describe it, Moira. What was it like?'

Moira let her hands fall to her sides and drew in a deep shuddering breath. ‘Oh you know, it was an old wedding ring. Just a plain gold band, not very wide. It wasn't much, but it had sentimental value. She never took it off.'

‘Did it have any identifying features at all? Anything you might recognise?'

‘It was just a plain gold ring, a bit the worse for wear.'

‘Was she wearing any other jewellery when she went out?'

Moira sighed. ‘She liked to wear lots of rings. They were worthless. The only one that had any value at all was the one my mother gave her. She usually had one on every finger. Even on her thumbs.' She smiled fleetingly, remembering. ‘Only my mother's was real gold. Mainly they were silver ones she bought herself.'

‘Did anyone else ever buy her a ring?'

‘You mean did she have a boyfriend? No, no one special.'

‘Not that we knew about,' Frank added.

‘Oh Frank, stop that. She would have told me.'

Frank glowered but didn't say anything.

‘Could you take a look at her jewellery and see if you can tell if anything's missing?'

Moira nodded and went upstairs.

‘Do you think this was all about her trinkets?' Frank asked while his wife was out of the room. ‘You think she was mugged and killed for a few cheap rings?'

Ian sighed. ‘I'm afraid all I can say is that she wasn't wearing any jewellery when she was found.'

‘But you could track her killer through her stolen jewellery, couldn't you?'

Moira returned before Ian could reply. She reported a pendant on a silver chain missing from her daughter's jewellery box, along with one gold ring and a handful of silver ones. As far as she was aware, everything else was there.

She described the pendant, and Ian made a note of the details.

‘It's nothing much,' she said wretchedly. ‘She didn't have much.'

Neither Moira nor Frank had any idea who Angela had gone out with on the night she died, although Moira mentioned a school friend called Zoe. Angela's phone was more useful. Having tasked a constable with looking into Frank Carter's history, Ian set to work studying the list of calls Angela had made and received before she died. He didn't have to go back very far. There were only two telephone calls, both incoming, both from her home address. She hadn't answered either call. He contacted her parents straight away and asked to speak to Moira.

‘Did you phone Angela on her last evening? At half past ten and again at eleven?'

Moira was vague. ‘I don't know, I may have done. I usually did call her when she was out, when it was getting late, just to remind her she should be getting home. She never answered her phone. Not to me, at any rate.' She gave a faintly hysterical laugh.

‘Could your husband have called her?'

‘I don't think so. He never did.'

Frank confirmed that he hadn't called Angela on the evening she was killed. Ian didn't rule out the possibility that Frank was lying to his wife and to the police. The history of texts on Angela's phone was even more revealing. Several messages had been written on the day she was killed, the last one sent only two hours before her death. It was just one word, the name of a pub in Micklegate that was popular with young people. Now they knew where Angela might have been drinking that night, Ian set up immediate surveillance of all CCTV cameras in the area, hoping to trace the victim's journey from Micklegate to Cambridge Street where she was killed. With luck they might be able to catch a clear shot of her killer.

‘Go back just over two hours to begin with,' he told the sergeant heading up the team of Visual Images Identifications and Detections Officers.

Watching CCTV was a skilled job, requiring an ability to remain alert for long periods of time. Solving the case might depend on someone spotting one fleeting frame in a blurred film. It could be missed in the blink of an eye.

‘You might need to go back earlier to find her arriving at the pub. We need to know the time she got there, and see if you can capture images of any companions arriving with her. And then we need to know exactly where she went when she left, and who she left with, and if she met anyone…'

The sergeant nodded impatiently. He didn't need Ian to tell him what was required, and why.

‘OK,' Ian said, catching his colleague's expression, ‘you know what to do.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Ian turned to his next task, going through the list of people with whom Angela had recently been in contact. Nearly twenty texts had been sent and received on the day she died. Most were to the friend Moira had mentioned, Zoe Drayton. Ian studied their exchange. It began with a message from Angela, sent at half past two in the afternoon.

‘Sassy wot u doin'

‘fa'

‘wot you doin later'

‘later???'

‘later'

‘wot'

‘wots going on'

‘wot'

‘WOT U DOIN LATER - TELL ME'

‘wot u doin'

‘wot you doin'

The messages stopped for a few hours. Soon after five o'clock they started up again. This time Zoe initiated the exchange.

‘wot you doin'

‘nothin'

‘mgate'

‘OK mgate'

‘OK'

‘c u'

There was nothing more until at nine fifteen when Angela contacted a boy she called Gary. Her text said: ‘mgate'

Ten minutes later she sent him a second text, with a third one soon after. All contained an identical message: ‘mgate'

That was the last time she had used her phone. Gary hadn't replied, perhaps because he had answered her summons in person. Ian decided to go and see him, before speaking to Zoe.