The Death Collector (17 page)

‘The doc says that there is no evidence of a sexual assault,’ Evans said. ‘That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t one, but there was no tearing, no semen deposits, no bruising at the top of the thighs.’

‘Perhaps a condom was used,’ someone said from the other side of the room.

Evans agreed. ‘They’ll swab for lubricants, but there were no signs of force around there. There are some bruises around her wrists, the back of her head and on her shoulder blades, so it looks like she was held down with her hands held over her head.’

‘So how did she die?’ Hunter said.

‘Strangulation or suffocation,’ Evans said. ‘The little red marks in the eyes are there.’

‘That sounds like an angry killing,’ Hunter said.

‘The husband offed her before she met up with lover boy,’ Weaver said, stepping forward. ‘Killed and dumped her to make it look like a sick killing.’

‘Perhaps,’ Evans said. ‘The doc would agree that she didn’t die on the moors. It was a dumping ground, nothing more.’

‘How does she know?’ Hunter said.

‘The wounds are clean cuts, done after she died. If she had been alive, there would have been a struggle of some description, making the wounds more jagged. There were also some small pieces of green plastic stuck in the flesh, like she had been rested on strong garden bags and the saw had caught and snagged them.’

‘Do we know it’s a saw?’ Hunter said.

‘That’s the best guess. The limbs have been sawn off like a lamb’s leg for the butcher’s window – there are small lines in the flesh that criss-cross each other.’

‘The forwards and backwards of the saw-blade?’ Hunter said.

‘That’s the one,’ Evans said. ‘It’s looking like she was strangled and then dismembered so that she could be dumped. The body parts would fit into a car boot a lot easier. Which means that the location was selected. So why there?’

Hunter looked over at Weaver before he said, ‘So we would find it. It’s remote enough to let him dump her without being seen at night but near enough for the ramblers to find her in the morning. He’s distracting you. You’re buying the bluff.’

‘He?’

‘Husband. It looks like she was playing away. She told him she was at a friend’s house but she wasn’t, and her friend won’t give up her secrets. So he plans it so that he kills her and dumps the body in a way that an angry husband wouldn’t. Is there a history of violence?’

Sam raised his hand. ‘A couple of reports.’

Hunter smiled, although there was no warmth to it. ‘There you are.’

‘So what now?’ Evans said.

‘I’m going back to the victim’s house,’ Hunter said. ‘Except this time I’m taking a CSI with a search team with me. We’re looking for green garden bags and traces of blood where she was cut up.’

‘And don’t forget the car,’ Evans said.

Hunter took a deep breath through his nose. ‘Thank you, Inspector, I’ve done this before.’ And then he left the room, Weaver going with him.

Charlotte leaned into Sam. ‘It looks like you’re no longer teacher’s pet.’

That brought a smile from him. ‘I don’t think we gelled,’ he said. ‘First dates are like that.’

Evans turned to Sam and raised her eyebrows, as if to query whether Hunter could be right.

Sam shrugged, avoiding a proper conclusion, and then he shook his head. No, he didn’t believe it. Hunter was getting it wrong, and Sam wanted to know why.

Carl tried to keep track of time but it was impossible. The cellar was in complete darkness. He didn’t know if it made time go more quickly or whether it dragged out every minute so that he had only really been there for a few hours. He was waiting for hunger to hit him, but the fear was keeping that at bay.

The pain in his head was easing now but his back and shoulders were still shooting sharp twinges through his body, the bruises from the fall down the stairs. He had learned to manage it by moving slowly, just tiny stretches, but his fear of moving made him stiffen up more, the tightness of the rope around his neck a constant reminder.

He put his head back against the cold wall as he fought against the tears. He should have told his mother where he was going. Or his lawyer. No one knew where he was and he had to find a way to stay strong. It was hard, though. His legs were aching from standing, and he was scared of the man coming back.

He couldn’t believe it had come to this, being tied up in a cellar, all because of his father’s obsession.

Carl had once been so proud of him. He was a detective, and Carl had wanted to grow up to be just like him, even wanted to follow him in his career, but he wasn’t sure any more. The job had changed his father. It had taken him away. All he had wanted to do was find out why.

It had started more than a year earlier. Just another routine day.

Carl had been in his room when his father came home. He was upset, angry, throwing things around. That wasn’t like him. Carl had been upstairs, just browsing the internet, but he had stopped and listened. His parents didn’t argue often, and his father never ranted like he did that day – he wasn’t making any sense. He had mentioned a woman’s name, so Carl had closed his door and put his hands over his ears. He didn’t want to hear that.

His father went into the smallest bedroom, his sister’s old room, and slammed the door. When he emerged a few hours later, it was if the argument had never happened, but from then on his father was different. There were moments of distraction, his thoughts elsewhere, where his father would suddenly stop eating or be caught looking out of the window when he was watching television. When he was in his room, he spent a lot of time on the telephone.

A few months later, his father went out and never returned.

So Carl had been searching for him, and his search had ended up here. He took a deep breath. Is this where his father had been, too? In this cellar, tied up? If he had, he hadn’t left alive, and Carl knew with growing certainty that he had to find a way to get out. He couldn’t trust whoever the man was to let him go and, if he didn’t escape, his mother would be left alone to wonder where both the men in her life had gone. He couldn’t bear the thought of that.

There was a noise outside, the faint rumble of a car. Carl tensed. He waited for the anticipated sound of the door through the ceiling, which was followed by footsteps on the wooden floor, slow and deliberate. Carl held his breath as it fell silent above him. There were flutters in his chest as the quiet was broken by the sound of the cellar door being unlocked. He listened to the slow clomp of footsteps down the stairs until the lamp was clicked on. Carl winced in the glare, turning away.

The man stood in front of the light, so that he was just an outline. Carl got the upward flick of his hair and the scent of aftershave.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ the man said.

His tone was soft, which surprised Carl. There was the rustle of a plastic bag and then a drip of liquid onto the floor. Carl yelped when something cold was placed on the back of his head. It was a bag of ice.

Carl grimaced at first, but then the pain started to recede and he was able to put his head back against the wall, jamming the ice pack in place.

‘So what do you know about me?’ the man said.

‘I don’t know anything,’ Carl said.

A hand shot forward and pushed Carl’s head back. He cried out as the ice cubes dug into his scalp.

‘Don’t play games, that is my advice to you,’ the man said, his face close, so that Carl felt the warmth of his breath and the spray of his spittle.

‘I’m not playing games,’ Carl said, grimacing.

‘So answer my questions. I’ll get the answers one way or another, so make it easier on yourself. Tell me what you know about me.’

Carl closed his eyes, his mind racing, filled with panic and fear, yet understanding that the man in front of him wanted desperately to know how much he knew. It was the only bargaining position he had. ‘I don’t know anything about you,’ Carl said. ‘I was just watching the house, to burgle it.’

Another push to Carl’s head, so that it banged against the wall. He shouted out and grimaced as he tried to put his hands to where it hurt, remembering belatedly that they were held back by the chain.

‘I want your name,’ the man said.

‘It’s Carl,’ he said, the words coming out as a gasp. ‘Carl Jex.’

The man reached forward and pulled the ice away. ‘All right, Carl,’ he said. ‘So tell me again what you were doing outside my house.’

‘I told you. I was going to burgle you.’

The man put his face close to Carl’s, making him recoil, although there was nowhere to go. All he got was the smell of his breath. Stale whisky, some coffee. ‘And I’ve got so many nice things that you thought you’d have another go?’

Carl didn’t respond. Instead beads of sweat ran down his forehead, despite the coldness of the cellar.

‘Why should I keep you alive?’ the man said. ‘You’ve seen things in here, so you know I can’t let you go. If you’re just Carl the burglar, I could end this now.’

Carl swallowed and looked away for a moment.

The man’s fist slammed into his cheekbone, knocking Carl to the side, his fall prevented by the taut yank of the rope making him gasp as it pulled tight around his neck. Blood flew from his mouth and onto the floor and half a tooth went with it.

He bucked and gasped as he tried to draw in air, his legs unsteady, swinging around as the rope went tight. He panicked and his bladder gave way, soaking his trousers. After a few seconds he felt arms around him, pulling him back to his feet and pushing him against the wall. There were fingers behind the rope, digging in and scratching Carl’s neck, loosening it again, allowing him to breathe.

Carl sucked in air but the intake of coldness caught the nerve endings in his broken tooth, making him screech in pain.

‘Don’t lie to me again,’ the man whispered into his ear, with a menacing hiss. ‘I can leave you down here to die. Just remember that.’

Carl nodded that he understood. A tear ran down his cheek. ‘How long am I staying here for?’

The man moved away. ‘Until the end,’ he said, and he turned and walked out, throwing the cellar into darkness as he clicked off the light. The cellar door slammed.

Carl put his head back against the wall and sobbed. Despite the new pain in his teeth, he let the cold air rush in as he wailed in despair. He’d seen so little of his life, and he knew then that it was going to end in darkness, the faint shadows ahead of him the last things he would ever see.

Sam put the phone down after another call revealed not very much.

Charlotte looked up. ‘You seem frustrated.’

‘I am. I’m finding nothing out about Sarah’s husband that makes him a suspect. There are those calls to the police, but her friends say he’s a quiet man. Perhaps too quiet for her, but that’s all.’

‘Quiet to the outside world doesn’t mean he’s the same behind closed doors.’

‘I know that, but no one has suggested Billy might be responsible apart from Hunter. And why would he leave his children at night to do what he did? He seems pretty devoted to me.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

Sam thought about that, and about how DI Evans had supported his suspicions about the location. ‘I’m going to speak to Evans.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t like the way this is going.’

Charlotte glanced to the front of the room, where Hunter and Weaver were talking still, just whispers in the corner. ‘Don’t make Hunter your enemy,’ she said.

‘Sometimes it’s about doing the right thing,’ Sam said, and walked out of the Incident Room to Evans’s small office next door. She was staring into a coffee cup when Sam knocked lightly on the door and walked in.

She looked up. ‘Sam?’

He closed the door behind him. Now that he was standing there, his notion to speak to her didn’t seem like the greatest of ideas. Although he sensed the tension between Evans and Hunter, he didn’t know how far they went back or where her loyalties lay. His gaze flitted between her raised eyebrows and the framed photographs on the edge of her desk. Family pictures. A young girl, Evans smiling with her.

‘Come on, get on with it,’ she said, impatience showing in her voice.

He took a deep breath and said, ‘It’s about the investigation. I’m concerned.’

‘Why?’ Evans said, frowning now.

‘It’s DCI Hunter, ma’am.’

She pointed to the chair in front of her desk. ‘Sit down.’ When he followed her direction, she said, ‘Talk to me, Sam.’

He looked at his hands, unsure how to start, not knowing if he was about to begin a dialogue he would later regret. But he realised that he was too far in to stop now. There was only one way to say it: as it was.

‘I don’t want to appear out of tune here,’ he said, ‘and if you think I’m saying things I shouldn’t be saying, tell me and I’ll carry on doing what I’m supposed to be doing.’

‘Just say it.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Hunter has fixated on the husband, and I don’t know why,’ he said. ‘I saw him, the husband, and the shock was genuine. Hunter has already allowed the crime scene to be messed up, and now he seems set on making it about the husband.’

Evans sighed. ‘Hunter has been around a long time and thinks that whatever answer is obvious to him can be the only answer; and with his history, who could tell him he’s wrong? He’s put away a lot of really bad people.’