The Ghost House (12 page)

He woke early, needing to pee. He had slept well considering what he had done last night. He regretted it. He had almost ruined it all before he got to have some fun with the woman from the farm.
If I get caught I won’t be able to finish what I’ve started
. The voice in his head, the one that had told him to watch her because she could be his downfall, echoed loudly. Wiping the seat he flushed the chain.

As he washed his hands he glanced at his reflection in the mirror. When had his eyes got so dark? Maybe that was the result of being evil; it turned you rotten from the inside out. His face looked different too. His features seemed sharper, more chiselled. In fact, he felt as if the face staring back at him was someone entirely different but that was ridiculous, it was impossible. Then he remembered the way his mother had looked at him last night. Had she seen how different he looked, could she sense he wasn’t the same? Back in his bedroom he began wondering how he could get the woman out of the farm. If he waited patiently it would come to him, just as the plan for Jenna had. Somehow he would know what to do and when to do it.

Will found some chewing gum in the side pocket of his car. After blowing the fluff off two pieces he shoved them into his mouth and began to chew. There was no time to go home and shower and it was pointless anyway seeing as how he was practically already on scene. He drove down the steep hill noticing the assortment of police cars in the distance; he headed towards them.

The whole area was sealed off. The blue and white tape stretched from the rusted black railings of the Abbey ruins across the road to a huge oak tree. Jake was standing on the inside of the cordon looking as miserable as Will felt. He rolled down his window.

‘All right, lad, we need to stop meeting like this or people are going to talk.’

Jake grinned. ‘They will indeed. Anyway how did you get here so fast?’

Will cringed as he watched Jake figure it out and his expression turned to one of disbelief.

‘Please tell me you didn’t. The last thing Annie needs right now is a couple of quickies with the office Casanova. She’s messed up enough as it is. Have you any idea what damage you could do if you mess her around?’ Jake turned his back on Will and stomped across to the other side of the road. He turned his head. ‘For God’s sake, Will, I think I’m going to kill you. Bugger off and get out of my sight.’

He left Will no choice but to get out of the car and march over to him. Anger boiled inside his chest.

‘What exactly do you take me for? I swear I went to see her after work last night. All I did was make her some dinner and offer her some company. That’s it, nothing to it. We drank a couple of bottles of wine, watched a film and I slept on the sofa – end of.’ Will thought it best not to add that he’d spent most of the night with an erection while lying next to Annie. It would probably tip Jake over the edge.

Jake glared at him. ‘I’m telling you, Will, if you hurt her or treat her like one of those women you sleep with once and never speak to again then it will be a crime scene containing the remains of your face that’s being investigated. I’m not letting her get hurt again.’ Jake’s eyes filled with tears and Will was unsure what he should do so he reached out and patted his arm.

‘None of this was your fault, there wasn’t anything you could have done. If she never told you what it was like at home how were you supposed to know? I don’t want to hurt her, I just want to help.’

Jake grunted something which Will took as an agreement and he walked back to his car. Running the last five minutes through his mind he wondered what had just happened. It was far too early for award-winning dramatics. He shook his head and continued to drive down to the car park where he saw the familiar figure standing in the distance barking out orders to some student officers. It was becoming a habit: how come serious shit only happened when Jake, Kav and Will were on duty? The whole town seemed to be falling apart. He parked up and sighed as Kav shook his head at him.

‘Nothing, not diddly squat. There isn’t much by way of forensics – no blood, no signs of a struggle – so it looks as if she went with whomever it was of her own free will.’ He turned towards the white-suited CSI whose camera flash was illuminating the early morning sky. ‘Debs said there are a couple of tyre impressions which she’ll take a cast of and that’s just about it.’

Will looked around the area. It was secluded here and if it was last night there wouldn’t be anyone around. There were two houses nearby but neither of them overlooked the car park.

‘It’s unreal. How can two girls disappear within the space of a few days with no trace? It just doesn’t happen, well not around here.’

The sound of tyres crunching on gravel and the sight of Kav stiffening up made Will groan. He turned to see the newly appointed Detective Chief Inspector getting out of his shiny Land Rover™. Will had heard of his reputation as a stickler for perfection and from the corner of his eye he watched every uniformed officer nearby checking they looked respectable. It was remarkable how straight they were standing: hands out of pockets or wherever else they had them tucked to keep them warm. Will and Kav both shared the same pained expression as he crunched his way along the gravel towards them.

Kav whispered, ‘Bullshit baffles brains.’ He then launched into an overzealous greeting, pumping the DCI’s hand up and down. Will had no idea what Kav was talking about so he agreed and nodded along at what he deemed were appropriate moments until the DCI turned to him.

‘I don’t think we’ve met? DCI Stevens.’ He stretched out his hand. Now it was Will’s turn to talk crap and he did his best to for a couple of minutes until Stevens yawned, obviously bored. Kav smirked, a student officer came shuffling over to them his face drained of all colour, he coughed.

‘Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but there’s a reporter asking lots of questions, what should I tell him?’

Steven’s beamed at the young officer. ‘Ah the press, don’t you just love how they get a whiff of a story quicker than the bloody sniffer dogs. Leave it to me, son.’ With that he walked off, heading in the direction of the ‘road closed’ sign.

Kav laughed. ‘Let him get on with it, that’s what he gets paid lots of money for.’

Debs came to stand with them. ‘Morning, gents. I hate to tell you this but as you have already guessed there isn’t much to go on. I’ve bagged up a couple of cigarette ends and an ice cream wrapper but the shop shut at five and I don’t really think our guy would have hung around for a couple of hours licking his ice lolly and then discarding his evidence. But you never know; not everyone watches CSI or the Discovery Chanel. There are some tyre tracks but same again. On an average day they get between five to thirty cars in and out of here. They could even be the boyfriend’s.’

Kav answered Will’s next question. ‘He is at the station giving a statement as we speak. He was with friends at The Friars playing pool and was late to pick Emma up. He should have been here for seven-thirty but it was just gone eight when he got here. Said it was all in darkness and she was nowhere to be seen, so, being such a gentleman, he drove back to the pub to finish his game of pool. He did say he tried phoning her a couple of times but she wasn’t answering him, which isn’t uncommon for her when she’s pissed off with him, as he so elegantly put it. Emma’s sister rang him at ten-thirty to see if Emma had a key because she was going to bed. That’s when he started to panic and phoned her friends. He then drove back down here with a couple of mates and began to look for her and as you can tell he never found her and here we are.’

‘So he has a good alibi but he could have killed her and dumped the body quick in some bushes.’

‘True that, he could have but his mates said he was gone for five minutes and it was raining hard and he came back into the pub wearing the same clothes he left in which were dry apart from a few spots of rain on his T-shirt.’

‘Are we sure she isn’t sulking somewhere, making him feel bad?’ Kav pulled the folded-up incident log from his trouser pocket and began to read. ‘Not according to her sister. Emma wouldn’t worry her, they are very close and she would have told her she wasn’t coming home. It’s all wrong, Will, two girls have gone and, as much as it pains me to say this, I don’t think they are still breathing, if you get my drift. I reckon we have a serious problem and one I hoped I would never see in my career.’

Will did get his drift and he felt the same. Another van arrived and they turned to watch as the dog handler let Molly out of her cage. The dog was given one of Emma’s blouses to smell and then told to go find. It did a couple of circles then headed towards the museums entrance where after a brief sniff around it came back and sat down beginning to whine.

‘Terrific,’ muttered Will. ‘The bloody dog hasn’t got a clue either.’

There wasn’t much more he could do here. They would keep the area closed for a while longer but at this moment they didn’t know if it was a crime scene. He left by the other exit not wanting to face Jake again, not until he’d calmed down. Will tried ringing Annie but it went straight to voicemail. He had to let her know something bad was happening around here and to keep the doors locked. He didn’t want her getting caught up in it.

Mary Grieve walked her dog every day at seven in the morning and seven at night, regular as clockwork. She had done for the last five years, since she had been given the puppy as an anniversary present from her late husband. Her grandson had bought her a shiny fuchsia pink iPod shuffle for Christmas and put all of her favourite songs onto it. He even had the words ‘Best Nan xxx’ engraved on the back of it. She didn’t understand how it worked but all the same it was the best piece of modern technology she had ever been bought.

As she passed the old paper mill, dormant for at least forty years, she paused. Spot was acting strange this morning; his hackles rising he began to whine. Pulling her earphones out she looked around. Mary didn’t get scared – well very rarely. She had lived through World War II and a car crash in which her husband had been killed. No, she was a survivor and believed that when your time came that was it and there was nothing you could do about it. She had studied the buildings over the years and had seen it all: smacked up druggies so off their heads that they were asleep in puddles of their own urine; drunken teenagers getting frisky and doing things which made her hair stand on end. And then she saw the girl inside the doorway to one of the buildings and gasped.

‘Hello, lovey, are you OK? I’m going to call an ambulance, you hold on there.’ The lifeless, naked body made Mary sob out loud. As she got nearer to it she knew there was nothing she could do to help this poor girl but she had to keep talking as if there was otherwise for the first time in sixty years she might lose control and that would never do. As she got closer she shuddered at the girl’s open eyes, which stared straight at her. They were locked forever in the nightmare that had ended her life. Her forehead was a mess of grazes and dried blood. Mary took off her jacket and covered the girl as best as she could to give her some dignity. She couldn’t let the poor thing be stared at by every Tom, Dick and Harry. Mary dialled 999. Not sure who to ask for so she asked for all three emergency services.

Will grinned as he squeezed his car into the last free parking space near to the station and then his phone rang. It was a control room operator to tell him that an emergency call had come in from Salthouse Mill’s reporting a dead body.

‘Crap, I’ll be there in a minute.’ He pulled back out and followed the flashing lights of an ambulance and a fire engine to the crime scene, wondering who the hell had phoned the fire service; not much they could do. He parked behind the ambulance and watched the paramedics as they jumped out of it and made their way over to a uniformed officer who must have been first on scene. Will got out and opened the boot to take a pair of the blue paper overalls from his emergency stash. After fighting for a minute to get his arms and legs into the thing without bursting it at the seams, he slipped on some boot covers and a pair of latex gloves. He was relieved to see the officer had taped the area off and was actually holding a pale green scene log. He noticed an elderly lady sitting in the back of a patrol car. She had a small Shih Tzu on her lap. Will rustled his way over to the officer who was just signing the paramedics back out of the crime scene.

‘Has death been pronounced?’

The paramedic nodded to confirm. ‘We’ll leave it in your capable hands, poor lass.’ They went back to sit in the ambulance and complete their paperwork until they were told they could leave the scene.

‘Sarge, I only went in there to lead the old lady who found her away from the scene and sit her in the back of the car. Nothing has been touched apart from Mary placing her coat over the body to give her some privacy, but she said she never physically touched her.’

‘Excellent, well done, mate. It’s nice to see that someone actually paid attention on their training.’

The officer, who looked about nineteen, smiled.

Will ducked under the tape. This wasn’t how he had envisaged meeting Jenna White. As he got closer he focused on her face, it was hard to tell. Teenage girls change so much and she had no make-up on. He thought this girl looked a little bit too old to be Jenna but he couldn’t be sure, he would need her parents to make a positive ID. It was then that he looked at the blood-soaked matted hair.

‘Fuck.’

This girl had long brown hair; Jenna’s was brown but shorter, more spiked. He stepped back feeling defeated. This thing was something bigger than he had ever dealt with. There was nothing he could do now until CSI arrived to work their magic. Debs was the only one on call for South Cumbria. Like every other department they were short-staffed and she was tied up at the other scene so wouldn’t be allowed to process this one for fear of cross-contamination. It would be at least an hour before they drafted someone in.

He looked around. There were no obvious signs of anything being left behind; just the body. He turned to walk back to the patrol car and to speak to the old lady while he waited. He opened the car door.

‘Mrs Grieve, my name is Will, I’m a Detective Sergeant with the police. That must have been quite a shock for you. How are you doing? Do you need any medical assistance?’

‘Just call me Mary; Mrs Grieve makes me sound ancient. To be honest with you, young man, I’m not actually sure how I’m doing. How could someone do that to such a pretty young thing? What is this world coming to?’

‘I know, it makes me sick to my stomach. It’s dreadful. Mary, can you tell me exactly what happened?’ He listened as she described everything in minute detail; she was precise and straight to the point. ‘Mary, when you were walking on your way here did you pass anyone in a car or a van, any cyclists?’

She shook her head. ‘Not a soul. Usually there is the odd person around but this morning it was just me, Spot and that poor girl.’

‘Thank you, Mary. I’m going to get someone to drive you home now. An officer will come and speak with you later and take a statement. Is that OK?’

‘Yes that’s fine and thank you, officer, but I can walk. Spot needs his exercise and so do I. I will be in all day until I walk him again at seven.’

Will smiled at her and she nodded her head. ‘If you’re sure, it’s up to you.’ He watched her untangle some earphones and then push them into her ears.

‘I’m positive, thank you, Just make sure you catch the monster who has done this because until you do I don’t think I will sleep at night.’ She stepped out of the car and walked off briskly pulling the small dog behind her.

It took six long hours before the body could be removed from the scene and taken by the undertakers to the pathology lab at the hospital. Six long hours of the scene being guarded and processed. The officers left at the scene all bowed their heads as a mark of respect when the undertakers wheeled the gurney past them with the girl’s body and loaded her into the back of a waiting black Mondeo estate.

In the last two hours quite a crowd had gathered, which meant more officers and PCSOs had to attend to keep the scene secure. The local press were here. The guy Will hated had been caught trying to sneak around the back and take photos of the body. For once Stu had used his initiative and arrested the prick for obstruction and had him handcuffed in the back of a van where he was shouting about public interest and freedom of speech. No doubt the custody sergeant would have a hissy fit and let him go without charge but at least he was taken care of for now. When they had done what could be done they left the scene to be guarded by the PCSOs so they could go back to the station for a briefing. Will was angry, hungry and fed up. When they got out of the meeting and everyone had been given multiple tasks Will and Stu headed back to their office.

‘I’m starving, Will, should we go up to the hospital canteen for some breakfast before we have to go to the path lab for the post mortem?’

‘Stu, that is a bloody brilliant idea. That’s twice in one morning you’ve excelled yourself. Don’t make a habit of it though, I can’t take the excitement.’

Will had just come off the phone to the White family liaison officer to let them know that a body had been found but it did not match Jenna’s description. He didn’t want them hearing about it on Facebook or anywhere else. Laura and Paul, who had recently done their family liaison officer training, had been dispatched to prepare Emma’s family for the worst and to bring them up to the hospital to see if they could identify her. Will felt like crap, his head was banging and he wanted it all to be over.

Derek Edmondson was sitting at the table drinking his second cup of tea.
The Times
was laid out in front of him but he wasn’t reading it. He needed to find the woman and the only thing he could think of was to go to the police station and ask for some help. He didn’t really have a choice in the matter.