Concrete Evidence (3 page)

Detective Sergeant Jim Stirling loomed in the doorway of the house, his huge frame almost filling the double glazed porch. Annie could tell from the colour and condition of the white window frames and the sheen on the new roof tiles that the house had been built in the last few years. Uniformed officers were making a cordon with yellow crime scene tape and a small gathering of neighbouring residents were comforting an elderly woman. She was well dressed and visibly distraught. A female Family Liaison Officer was questioning her and making notes. It was a far too familiar scene.

“Here we go again,” Annie said to herself as she locked the car and walked towards the path. Jim Stirling waved and walked to meet her.

“Bad one, Guv,” he growled and shook his head. He sounded like he had gravel in his throat. Annie had seen career criminals turn white at the sound of the big sergeant’s voice.

“They’re all bad aren’t they?” she smiled thinly. Another gust of wind whistled through the branches, rustling the dying leaves and whispering secrets that only the trees knew. Stirling handed her a small jar of eucalyptus gel in answer to her question. Obviously, the victim was already ripe. “I see,” Annie said applying a smear of the gel beneath her nostrils. “Do we know who the victim is?”

Stirling nodded and pointed towards the grieving woman. “The victim’s cleaner found her and called her mother. Luckily we got here before her mother did and stopped her going in,” he grimaced. “There’s no way a mother should see her daughter like that.” He sighed. “She’s one of ours, Guv. She’s a Special Constable from the Halewood station. Somebody went to town on her.” He shrugged and stood aside as they reached the porch. A CSI handed them forensic suits and plastic overshoes. Annie removed her jacket and climbed into the suit. Jim Stirling struggled into his and turned towards Annie. “There’s no sign of forced entry,” he said looking at the mortice locks on the door. He pointed to the wall, “the alarm was reset by whoever left her here. All the doors and windows are secure. The cleaner had to use her set of keys to get in and she had to turn the alarm off. She thought her employer had gone away without telling her at first but then the smell hit her.”

Annie looked around the hallway. She was pleased to see wood laminate covered the floor along the hallway and that it continued up the stairs; it was always a decent medium for recovering shoe prints and hair samples. “Let’s have a look at her first,” Annie said peering into the living room. It looked like a set from Ikea, bright and airy but unlived in. She headed for the stairs and climbed them slowly. The stench of decomposition grew stronger with each step. That was normal but there was something else in the air. Something that didn’t belong there. It was subtle but it was there. She paused to speak to her sergeant. “Can you smell petrol?”

“All I can smell is the victim,” Sterling stopped and sniffed the air. “My sense of smell isn’t great.” His crooked nose looked like he had been smacked in the face with a spade. Annie had asked him a dozen times how he had broken his nose but he always shrugged it off saying, ‘You should see the other guy.’ The thought of what the other guy would look like made her shudder. “Now you mention it, I can smell something. It’s definitely fuel of some type.”

The smell of petrol made Annie think. “Whose is the car on the driveway?”

“Her mother’s.” Stirling answered. “We know the victim had a vehicle, a BMW 3-series. It’s missing. Traffic have been informed.”

“Good.” The landing was L-shaped with three bedrooms and a bathroom off it. Pine framed photographs hung on the magnolia walls. Annie had the feeling that the victim had left the builders’ neutral décor untouched, adding only pictures and photographs as her own stamp on her new home. “This is a nice house,” Annie commented, “expensive too.” They reached the main bedroom and Annie instinctively took a deep breath before stepping through the door. The scene which faced her was in stark contrast to the rest of the house. It went from organised to carnage in one step. Kathy Brooks was engrossed with directing her camera man but she noticed Annie and held up her hand in greeting.

“Meet our victim.” She gestured to the bloody form on the bed. “The house belongs to Jayne Windsor, I think this is her,” she nodded towards the body. “Or what is left of her.” She sighed. “I need five minutes to tie up the initial scene photos. As you can see, there is plenty to photograph.” She smiled thinly and began walking the cameraman through an array of angles which she needed to be recorded. “There’s a strong smell of petrol coming from somewhere and it’s bothering me that’s why I haven’t got the full team in here.”

“Have you called the fire brigade?”

“They’re on the way,” she smiled nervously. “I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.”

“It’s faint downstairs but it’s definitely stronger here,” Annie said. She remained near the doorway, Stirling towered behind her. Both remained silent while they analysed their own first impressions of what might have happened.

The victim was face up on the bed. Annie could only tell that by the position of the feet, which were pointing at the ceiling. The face was gone, replaced by a bloody maw surrounded by blond hair, which made the police hat on her head look ridiculous. Her arms were positioned straight out on each side in the shape of a crucifix. There were no fingers or thumbs attached to the hands. None that she could see anyway. The position of the body was staged, that much was obvious. Oddly the police uniform, which she wore, seemed undamaged and unstained. It didn’t belong in the scene. Blood splatter arced up both sides of the wall above the headboard, reaching the ceiling. Between the arcs of blood, a pentagram had been daubed. Mirrored wardrobes, the glass smeared with bloody handprints, covered one wall; the gory reflection added to the horror of the vista.   

“First impressions?” Annie said.

“My first impressions were the same as yours,” Kathy said inspecting something on the bedside table. It looked like a glass of some kind. “But my impressions are not the same now and they’re changing by the minute. Give me a few more minutes and I’ll be with you.” Annie turned to Stirling and he shrugged. There was little to no point in arguing. Kathy Brooks was the best CSI around and if she was still digesting the evidence then there was nothing to gain by crowding her.

“We’ll take a look around the other bedrooms, okay?” Annie gestured to Stirling that they should move along the hall.

“We haven’t been in them yet. Don’t touch anything!” Kathy called after them. Annie looked at her, eyebrows raised, annoyed by the comment. “Sorry,” Kathy shrugged and blushed. “All is not what it seems here. Trust me.”

Annie nodded and accepted the half baked apology although she was intrigued by Kathy’s concern. “I’ll see if I can find where that smell is coming from. We don’t want the firemen slowing us up if it’s nothing to worry about.”

“Thanks.” Kathy nodded.

Annie grimaced and walked out of the room. “She seems a little spooked,” she said quietly.

“She’s a scientist,” Stirling grumbled. “They’re always spooked about something. It’s part of their icy charm.” His black leather jacket creaked as he moved. The smell of leather reminded Annie of her teenage years riding horses. She had loved the smell of the tack-room and it evoked happy memories of a time when death was something that happened on TV.  

Annie smiled and walked into the second bedroom. The curtains were closed and the quilt was ruffled. Someone had slept in the room recently but there was nothing obviously untoward. The third bedroom was a box-room with a single bed in it and little space for anything else. The mattress was covered with a quilted protector but unmade.

“The curtains are closed in here too,” Stirling pointed out. “Bit odd. Closed by the killer do you think?”

“I’ll forgo having any opinion for now,” Annie said walking into the bathroom. She looked around and the practiced senses she possessed began to prickle. “Look here,” she said. Stirling stood in the doorway and watched. “No toilet roll, no towels. No woman worth her salt leaves an empty toilet roll on the holder.”

“That’s definitely a man thing,” Stirling agreed. “I had a bad experience once; I had to use my socks, now I keep my spare rolls within arm’s reach of the toilet.”

“Too much information.”

“Sorry, Guv.”

“There are some images I don’t need to imagine, thanks.”

“Only saying,” he said sulkily. “It is a bloke thing.”

Annie grinned sarcastically. “Do we know if she had a boyfriend?”

“Single, Guv. One of the sergeants from Halewood implied that she might be on the other bus.”

“Of course she was,” Annie frowned. “Female constable who doesn’t shag everything at her station?” she shook her head and tutted. “She must be ‘on the other bus’.”

“His words not mine.”

“I know that.” Annie said.

“He also said that she wasn’t very popular.” Annie looked at him waiting for him to expand. “Something to do with the Barton case. Remember that?”

“Of course I do,” Annie frowned. “What did he say?”

“Nothing detailed. He couldn’t get off the phone quick enough to be honest,” he shrugged. “I’ll look into it later. It might be worth a trip to Halewood.”

“Okay,” Annie said thoughtfully. “Ask one of the CSI to start in here and tell them to look for the dirty laundry.” She noticed a circle on the tiles next to the toilet. Something had been removed from there. Annie guessed it was a pedal bin. Whoever had killed the victim had been very precise in cleaning up. That much was obvious. They were organised and had spent a long time in the house. That displayed a cool confidence which only an intelligent killer could possess. “Have uniform do a sweep of the tree line and all the bins in the street before it starts raining again.”

“Guv.” Stirling grunted and headed towards the stairs. “The smell is stronger here, Guv.” He said on the landing. Annie looked around, sniffing but couldn’t see anything obvious that explained the fumes. 

“I’m ready for you, Annie,” Kathy’s voice called from the master bedroom distracting her. Annie took a last look around and noted other obvious items missing. Bleach, soap, shower gel, shampoo, toothpaste and conditioner. Minimum requirements for a young woman’s bathroom. Had the killer taken them? Her toothbrush was lonely on the basin, accompanied only by a tub of cold cream and bactericidal hand wash, which was on the window sill. A loofah mitt hung from the shower hose. The chrome drain trap sparkled as if it had been cleaned recently. Annie thought that any killer that thorough wouldn’t leave any clues behind for free. In hindsight, she couldn’t have been more wrong.       

CHAPTER 3

Tod Harris woke up feeling guilty although the feeling wasn’t as intense as it had been days before. The day after it had happened, he was panic stricken. He had expected the police to kick his door in and drag him off to jail at any minute. The urge to run was overwhelming. Despite all the planning and promises, he couldn’t sit and wait. He had to go before he drove himself insane. Within an hour of waking up, he was on a train heading south to Birmingham and from there he had taken a cab to the airport. His budget ticket to Alicante had cost him less than he expected, having said that, he would have paid ten times the amount to escape the fear of being caught. He’d had a three hour wait for his flight, which he spent pretending to read a newspaper while keeping an eye out for approaching police officers. Paranoid wasn’t a strong enough word to describe his state of mind. He waited until the boarding gate was empty and double checked that there were no detectives waiting for him before approaching the stewards with his passport and boarding card. He had only relaxed when the aircraft had left the runway.

On arrival, he took a bus from Alicante and found an apartment at the third time of trying in the busy resort of Benidorm. Tod had calmed down somewhat since then. His head felt fuzzy as the previous night’s alcohol clung to his nervous system. The sun was blazing through the balcony doors making it impossible to sleep any longer. Despite drinking himself into a stupor the night before, he’d spent hours in a nightmare filled daze somewhere between sleep and consciousness. There was no escape. The images that haunted his dreams remained with him through his waking hours. He couldn’t outrun them.

There was no explanation for his actions, certainly no excuses. Once the intense wave of lust that drove him had waned, all that was left was guilt and remorse. What he had done made him feel physically sick. He had crossed a line from which he couldn’t return. If they caught him, not only would he go down for a long time, his family and friends would be horrified and devastated. They would be destroyed. He couldn’t bring himself to think of what effect it would have on the health of his elderly mother. Her beloved son a monster? It was inconceivable.                                                   

He climbed out of bed and looked out across the balcony. The view of the sea was obscured by a forest of towering hotels but the pool area and the narrow streets beyond were pleasant enough to look at. The ‘Old Town’ of Benidorm was quiet in comparison to newer  parts of the resort a mile or so away, which were plagued with stag and hen parties yet it was busy enough for him to remain anonymous. The beer was cheap, the tapas bars were excellent and he could spend all day on his sunbed by the pool scouring the British newspapers for information. So far so good. Whatever was going on at home, he didn’t appear to be a known fugitive just yet. Maybe they would never link him to any crime. Maybe pigs would fly over the Spanish resort too.