Cobweb (2 page)

There was no doubt about it: the man's pallid, normally round face was now like a one-sided balloon.

‘I'm on painkillers and antibiotics, sir,' was his response to the question.

‘They used to yank 'em out,' Harmsworth observed. ‘Solves the problem straight away.'

Boles winced. ‘It's actually a gold crown – they do sometimes play up after a while.' He dropped his gaze. ‘I know I drove here but I'm not really supposed to while I'm on these pills, sir.'

Harmsworth sighed and got back behind the wheel.

The park was not a large one – more like a recreation ground, about fifteen acres in size – and had the usual grassy open spaces, tennis courts, a bowling green and also a Victorian fountain, defunct, its basin full of litter, at the end of a short avenue of rather weary-looking lime trees. Near the bowling green, seemingly disused, the grass long, was a shrubbery with wide linking paths which curved between the planted areas, finally merging at a circular flower bed in the middle, from which most of the plants were missing. Police incident tape was still affixed to the metal railings that surrounded the planted areas, cordoning off one section.

Harmsworth pulled up to the rear of a police van parked on one of the paths and got out. ‘This place still stinks of death,' he muttered, ducking under the tape, Boles following on.

It did, even after the rain, the tall laurels, hollies and viburnums preventing any breath of breeze cleansing the air. At some time during this day, when every search, test and examination had been completed, a team would be permitted to move in to eradicate all traces of violent crime. Harmsworth acknowledged with a brief wave the presence of a uniformed constable keeping an eye on things from the driving seat of the van, reckoning that quite a lot of soil would have to be removed as well as some of the smaller bushes.

‘The initial PM findings weren't in before you left yesterday,' he reminded Boles briskly. ‘And if we're not talking about a psycho who's been let out and hasn't taken his pills, then it's a maniac who should be inside and has taken far too many. Judson, the pathologist, couldn't pinpoint which of the twenty or so stab wounds had been the cause of death but finally narrowed it down to five. He could not say whether he had been disembowelled before or after death. As you know, the guts were trailing from the body but that could mean that either Giddings was still alive and moved, or the body was shifted after he was dead. Or, of course, the killer pulled the innards out himself. Judson's fairly convinced the head was cut off after Giddings was dead and that wasn't the actual cause of death.'

Boles nodded unhappily.

‘Before all that happened to him,' Harmsworth continued, ‘Giddings was fairly healthy for a man of forty-five, but there were early signs of cirrhosis of the liver so we can assume he had a history of drinking too much. Goes with the job for some, perhaps. What we've got to find out is why he came here instead of going home for the dinner party.'

They had reached their destination, a little dell with mangled vegetation and stained beaten earth. Above was a small tree of some kind. All was now protected from the elements by a special awning – a tent had been impractical in the circumstances. Although the forensic team had removed as much of the aftermath of violent murder as possible, even shovelling up bagsful of blood-soaked earth for testing, body fluids that had not escaped into the ground had dried to a dull brown colour. There were clouds of flies.

Harmsworth was trying to banish from his memory the way the victim's intestines had been draped over some low branches. ‘Any problems?' he asked the constable, who had left the van and followed them.

‘No, sir.'

‘Have SOCO finished?'

‘They were here early, sir. They've been gone about twenty minutes.'

‘They found nothing else interesting, I suppose?' the DCI asked hopefully.

‘Nothing they told me about, sir.'

Harmsworth grinned. ‘Never mind, lad. You ought to know by now that Scenes of Crime officers were oysters in their previous lives.'

The man did not smile.

‘It's vital that we trace Giddings's movements on Friday,' Harmsworth said to Boles as they walked away a few minutes later. He wanted to discover, if possible, what course the murder victim might have taken on this last part of his journey to a meeting with death. Also, as was the DCI's habit, he needed to get the feel of the place.

They negotiated the tape and walked across the park heading east. ‘We've discovered that he was at the House of Commons in the morning and was seen on the terrace having coffee and a doughnut at around ten fifteen,' Harmsworth went on. ‘He'd left his car at home and used public transport, which apparently wasn't unusual. The PM revealed that he ate scampi and chips at around five hours before death, so was that a late lunch or an early tea?'

‘People like that usually have something like sandwiches and cake for tea,' Boles pointed out in his somewhat lugubrious fashion.

Harmsworth, originally from Birmingham, had never got used to southern habits. ‘But he'd got a long time to go, hadn't he?– before he could have a decent bite to eat, I mean. There was a dinner party planned and likely as not he'd have had to wait until around eight thirty or nine that night. Well, I know that Vera and I don't have folk around very often, but she'd kill me if I forgot all about it. What was Giddings up to? There wasn't much alcohol in his blood, so he didn't get half plastered and it slipped his mind. Had he and his wife had a row and he was paying her back by not turning up? She's insisting he wasn't homosexual, so what the hell was he doing coming
here
?'

‘Would she admit it if he had been?' Boles offered.

Harmsworth grunted, hearing church bells over the sound of traffic. He was not a religious man, but the contrast between that and what they had just seen and been talking about made the crime appear even more obscene.

Theodore du Norde remained elusive and over the next couple of days, with extensive house-to-house enquiries ongoing, Harmsworth concentrated on trying to trace Jason Giddings's final movements. Then, on the Tuesday of that week DS Erin Melrose tracked down the taxi driver who had picked up the MP at the nearest tube station. He had dropped Giddings off at a pub, the Green Man, which was about five minutes walk from the park, at around five forty-five. Giddings had been alone, his demeanour ‘normal'; he had not appeared to be in any kind of stressed state nor in his manner hinted at any concerns.

In the very early hours of the following Wednesday morning a car went through temporary barriers on a road bridge over the M25 near Woodhill, crashing on to the motorway beneath. It was the site of a similar accident two days previously involving an articulated lorry, when several people had been killed in the resulting pile-up. This time, probably owing to the time of night, no other vehicles were passing beneath at the time, though several drivers had to take avoiding action. The emergency services were at the scene almost immediately.

DCI Harmsworth had died instantly.

I
wrote that brief reconstruction of the last few days of Derek Harmsworth's life quite a while afterwards from several sources: personal experience, accounts given to me by colleagues, his wife and from things he had jotted down in his own notebook and in the case file. I also used my imagination, for I am a writer by trade. I use my maiden name – Ingrid Langley – but normally stick to fiction, and this was anything but that. Neither I nor Patrick, my husband, would have been involved at all but for other occurrences in connection with the Jason Giddings murder inquiry.

Patrick had resigned his army commission some months previously then been ‘volunteered' for a pilot scheme allowing one-time officers in the services and similar professionals to join the police at fairly senior level. During a probationary period he had tackled the assignment he had been given with his usual aplomb, meaning that he broke most of the rules, and those in charge had become exceedingly nervous. But he had finally been offered a job, as an investigator in a section that was, to quote Commander John Brinkley, ‘a sort of a branch of a branch'. Patrick, late of D12, a fairly high-flown department in MI5, had surmised that this was the equivalent of a twig, had taken a dislike to Brinkley and co.'s somewhat devious methods – they had deliberately been obstructive to see how he would react, thereby risking the outcome of the case – and none too politely declined.

Matters had not stopped there, however, and shortly afterwards a letter had arrived from the Home Office asking if Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Gillard would consider being an ‘independent advisor' for the newly formed Serious and Organized Crime Agency on a contract basis. His pay grade would be that of superintendent even though all SOCA personnel working directly with the police are nominally constables. If his wife wished – I had been his working partner in the MI5 days – she could act as a ‘consultant'. Not surprisingly, Patrick had written straight back asking for more information.

The reply was not exactly enlightening, emphasizing that Patrick's MI5 experience was what was needed and quoting a statement by the PM when he had said ‘We will have to do things differently' owing to the level of brutality used by organized crime and ‘The law has been too weak in recent times and the criminal too strong.'

‘But there still have to be official ground rules,' Patrick commented, rereading the letter. He grimaced. ‘Shall I go for it? Four young mouths to feed and all that.'

We have two children of our own, Justin and Victoria, and adopted Patrick's brother Larry's two, Matthew and Katie, when he was killed a couple of years ago.

I said, ‘It mustn't be just thought of from that point of view. What do
you
want to do?' What did he now want from life? come to think of it; but perhaps this was not the right time for an in-depth discussion on the subject.

‘I'm not sure really. It sounds interesting though. And I can't just stay at home and be your toy boy' – this with a mad grin; he's three years older than me.

‘Go and ask George,' I suggested. George is Patrick's horse.

So Patrick went for a ride on George up on Dartmoor and when he returned wrote to accept the job, provided what he referred to as ‘certain conditions' were met. The distaff side of the family, having done some thinking of her own, agreed to assist as well. Surely, I thought, two heads were always better than one. The letter posted, we were not to know that within a couple of weeks we would receive a phone call and be on the job.

We were not called in because DCI Derek Harmsworth's mutilated body had high levels of alcohol in it, nor even because his colleague DI John Gray was adamant that Harmsworth hardly ever drank when working on a case, and at other times only in moderation. Nor was it because Gray was making rather a nuisance of himself, raging at anyone who would listen to him that what had happened to Harmsworth was not an accident and there ought to be another PM. Then, somehow, the local press got to hear of his misgivings, which were duly plastered all over the front pages and the DI was carpeted.

No, we were called in because Gray was then murdered, at home, knifed in similar fashion to Jason Giddings.

There was no question, however, of loss of nerve among Harmsworth's colleagues even though we found out later that the DCI's sergeant, Paul Boles, had gone on long-term sick leave having suffered some kind of ‘breakdown'. I had an idea that an outsider's presence would be resented, even a rookie member of SOCA, and Patrick would have a difficult job on his hands. First, though, he would have to be fully briefed by SOCA officers on the workings of the new organization and, on the morning following the phone call, duly caught the train to London.

I did not hear anything from him for a couple of days and reasoned that there was no need to bother him. Then, very early on the third morning, the phone rang.

‘I'm starting work for real in an hour or so,' he began. ‘It would appear that someone put a word in for me, saying I was indispensable – heaven knows who – plus what another bod described as “your ability to get the opposition shit-scared”. Someone's insisting I use my old army rank and I shall be permitted to carry a weapon on assignments if I think it necessary.'

‘But you're not under the same kind of
carte blanche
status as in the old days surely.' I was hoping that this did not mean he was going to be given the most dangerous jobs.

‘No, but no one's actually saying a lot with regard to that.'

‘Patrick, I really feel you ought to establish exactly what's what before you begin this,' I argued.

He chuckled. ‘I've always enjoyed surprises. Do you still want in?'

I thought his reply typical of a man and highly unsatisfactory, but said, ‘Having agreed to do so, have I a choice?'

‘Yes, you do. I insisted that the family and your writing come first. You can just be on the end of a phone and ready to help me with ideas if you want to.'

Perhaps I was getting more cautious as I got older. ‘What would you want me to do right now
should
I decide to saddle up?' I enquired.

‘Undertake, or rather pretend, to research for a new novel set in Essex. Snoop a little on the Giddings widow and see what you can find out about her and the family. I'll fix you up with the address, which is in the poshest part of posh Woodhill. You could hang around in the locality where Giddings was murdered – that's in fairly neck-end Woodhill – and get the feel of the place.'

‘Where will you be?'

‘I don't know yet so I can't tell you. I'd prefer it not to be known at the nick that you're with me – not yet anyway. If you see me we don't know one another unless I give you a kiss. Look, I must go. Give my love to the gang.'