“It’s you,” Simon said, finally recognising Miller. “I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to catch the bastard who killed my girl.”
Miller noticed that on the table outside the door was a bottle of Scotch and a single glass.
“That’s why we’re here,” Miller said. “We hoped you could answer a few questions.”
Simon took a long drag on his cigarette, before flicking the ash into a plant pot. “Sit down,” he said gesturing to a wooden bench. “I’m afraid I only have the one glass,” he said as he poured a large Scotch.
“That’s fine,” Miller lied. Few things would have made him feel better at that moment than a large Glenlivet. “We’ve just come from Sheffield…”
“Ah…” Simon said.
“We just wondered if you could fill in any details about Jocasta in the summer before she went missing.”
“You asked Martha about that summer?”
There was something in the tone of his voice that surprised Miller.
“Of course. We wanted to see if we had missed anything.”
“I see. Well I’m not sure what Martha told you, but Jocasta spent most of the summer working her way through the reading list her tutor had given her.”
Newbold shifted uncomfortably at the mention of summer. It was two days before Christmas and they were sitting outside as if it was August. Was she the only one who felt the cold?
“That would be Martin Charles?” Miller asked.
“Yes.”
“What did you think of him?”
“Think of him? What the hell kind of question is that?”
Miller was taken back by the sudden anger that disfigured Simon Heath’s face. He had just learnt of the death of his daughter, so mood swings were a normal part of the process, but there seemed to be something else.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Heath,” Miller said, keeping his voice calm and non-confrontational, “but I don’t understand your reaction.”
Simon took a long drink of whisky and looked from Miller to Newbold and then back again. He let out a long sigh. “You don’t know, do you?’
Now Miller was completely lost. “Know what?”
“Why do you think my marriage broke down?”
Miller had assumed the pressure of Jocasta’s disappearance had proved too much for the parents. He had seen it before. For some couples a tragedy brought them closer, but for others it did the opposite. “I just assumed…” as soon as Miller said the words, he realised that was exactly what he had done – assumed. What the hell was wrong with him?
“Why did your marriage break up?” Newbold asked.
“Because of Martin Charles.”
“Jocasta’s tutor? The chief adviser to the Archbishop of Greater London?”
Simon groaned. “The hypocrisy is mind blowing.”
“You’ve lost me,” Miller said, suddenly feeling as if things were about to get a lot worse.
“Martin Charles,” Simon said, revulsion and despair making his voice sound harsh, “Martin Charles, theology lecturer and paragon of the church was sleeping with my wife.”
Miller slumped back in the bench. This changed everything.
Chapter 14
It took Miller a few minutes to fully process what Simon Heath had just told him. Martha Heath had been having an affair with her daughter’s theology teacher. That would have been bad enough in a normal family, but when he considered the importance religion had played in their lives, the betrayal Jocasta must have felt would have been terrible.
“Your daughter knew?” he asked.
Simon shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope to hell not.”
“So when did you find out?”
“A month or so before Jocasta disappeared. One night I had planned to visit a friend, but he had become unwell so I returned home early. It’s almost too much of a cliché.”
“You found Martin Charles and your wife in bed together?” Miller asked.
“On the kitchen floor, actually. Funny how a cliché can rip your life apart, isn’t it?”
Miller grimaced. “What happened?”
“What do you think happened? I shouted, I threatened to kill him. Martha was in tears. I threw him out and a few days later he left Whitby for some course in Rome.”
“He left because you caught him with your wife?” Newbold asked.
“It would be nice to think he was a gentleman who did the right thing and left so that we could save our marriage, wouldn’t it?” His voice was now raw with spite and pain. “But it turns out he had already accepted some job in London. He was just working his notice. And you know what? I’ll never forgive the man for that. He was sleeping with my wife and he had never told her he was due to leave. What kind of man does that?”
Miller looked anew at Simon Heath. What kind of man was cheated on by his wife and yet was angry with the other man for lying to her? He found himself liking Simon Heath.
Miller glanced at his watch and then at the rapidly emptying bottle of Scotch. “One more question,” he said. “Do you have any idea where your daughter went on that last day?”
“Where I’ve always thought she went,” Simon said. “She went to see her killer.”
*
It was seven-thirty by the time Miller and Newbold left Simon Heath to the dregs of his whisky bottle. “You take the car and get yourself home,” Miller said. “It’s only a five minute walk to my apartment.”
Newbold seemed reluctant to leave, but Miller insisted. After she had driven off, Miller took out his mobile phone and called DS Riddle. He answered on the first ring.
“Where are you now, sergeant? Do you fancy a drink? OK – how about meeting me in the White House in half an hour?” Having got a positive response, Miller headed home for a quick shower and then walked along the cliff top to the pub.
Miller was the first to arrive so he ordered a pint of Theakston Old Peculiar and sat in a corner away from the TV screen. It was busy, but he managed to find a table for two. He laid his jacket across a second seat and looked around the bar. The barmaid was talking to a couple of locals who he vaguely recognised. He was just trying to place their faces when the door opened and Riddle walked in with a hangdog expression.
“You obviously need a beer as much as me,” Miller said. “Might as well get me a second one in while you’re at the bar.”
Riddle not so much sat down as slumped into the chair Miller had saved for him. “How’s the Samantha Thompson case going?”
“It isn’t,” Riddle said, taking a long sip of his drink. “It isn’t going at all.”
“Tell me about it,” Miller said.
Riddle sighed. “Everywhere I go it’s a dead end. The whole Pagan thing looked promising, but either everyone has an alibi or there’s no motive at all. If I’m honest, it all sounds too fantastic.”
“How do you mean?” Miller asked.
“Well, if you were some sort of Pagan maniac – which after meeting a dozen or so of them seem to be in short supply – I just don’t see why you would be carrying out some weird ceremony on a freezing night on top of the headland. It’s all so Hammer Horror.”
Miller smiled. Riddle had a habit of summing up his own thoughts in a simple, pithy phrase. “I think you’re right,” Miller said. “Ever since we discovered Samantha’s body there has been something bothering me. Then the whole Jocasta thing happened and I put it to the back of my mind, but you’ve put your finger on it. It was very Hammer Horror. It felt…” Miller finished his first pint and reached for the second as he searched for the right word. “Staged,” he said. “That’s what has been bothering me. There was something staged about the whole thing. It’s odd, isn’t it? Murder is all too terribly real, and yet the way we found Samantha Thompson seemed unreal.”
“But where does that get us?” Riddle asked. He was already beginning to wish he had bought himself a second pint.
Miller had no idea. “Who else did you speak to?”
“The vicar has been really hel
pful with background on the local occult scene, but he didn’t actually see anyone. He was at home by eleven.”
Miller thought for a moment. “The discovery of Jocasta Heath’s body has really thrown a spanner in the works, hasn’t it?”
“In what way?”
“Think about it for a moment,” Miller said. “On a normal murder case you deal with one killing, occasionally two; but in almost all cases they are clearly linked. But in this case, the two bodies may have nothing whatsoever to do with one another.”
Miller held up a hand to stop Riddle’s imminent argument. “I know Davis said that the chances of them not being linked is small – and to be honest, I agreed with him. It’s just now…”
“It’s just what?” Riddle asked.
“It’s just… well, let’s look at what we do know. Samantha Thompson was murdered on the headland, probably not very far from where her body was found. The killing has all the hallmarks of a Satanic rite, even down to the dead crow left across her body. Then there’s Jocasta Heath. Yes, her body was found on a narrow stretch of sand below the chapel. But beyond that, what links the two killings? There is no suggestion of any Satanic element and she has been dead for three, possibly four years.”
“True,” Riddle said finishing his pint, “but if there had been some occult element to her death, what evidence could there be four years after the fact?”
Miller had to accept that Riddle had a point. There could have been some weird Satanic element in the death of Jocasta but the chances of discovering what that might have been were practically zero. Whichever way he looked at it, both cases weren’t going anywhere together or apart.
“Another?” Riddle asked.
“I’ll get these,” Miller said. He maneuvered his way to the bar and caught the eye of the girl who had just finished serving a middle-aged couple. “Two pints of Old Peculiar,” he said, with one eye on the row of whisky bottles. They made him think of Simon Heath. He owed it to him and Martha to find out what had happened to their daughter, just as he owed it to Samantha Thompson to find her killer. That was a lot of debt he was in.
Miller carried the two pints back to the table and placed them carefully on the beermats. “If the cases aren’t linked,” he said, “we’re in for a lot of trouble. I’m not sure we even have the resources to run two separate murder inquires. Davis will probably have to call in support from York. And I don’t want that. I want to find out what happened.”
Riddle nodded his understanding. One of the first things they taught you when you joined the police was to maintain a distance from the work. It made complete sense, but however good a detective Miller was, it was something he had always been terrible at doing. And if he was honest about it, Riddle wasn’t much better. “Do you think the cases are linked, sir?”
Miller shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. They should be linked, but I just can’t see anything that ties them together except what may just be the coincidence of location. Samantha’s death seems to be linked to the occult or possibly Paganism, although I think we’re both agreed that there’s something not right about that. Jocasta on the other hand died years ago and yet her body has only just materialised. As far as I can tell they moved in very different circles. Jocasta was a first year theology student who came from a deeply religious family and spent her final summer working her way through her tutor’s reading list. Samantha Thompson was a surveyor in her thirties.”
Miller then told Riddle about the revelation that Jocasta’s mother had been having an affair with her daughter’s tutor. “The thing is,” Miller said, “I don’t even know if that’s relevant. A terrible shock for the family, but Jocasta wasn’t directly involved.”
“What do you mean?” Riddle asked.
“Look at it this way,” Miller said. “A wife had an affair with a man. The husband discovers the affair. Violence follows. Who kills who?”
“The husband kills the other man,” Riddle said, beginning to see what Miller was driving at.
“Right. But Martin Charles is alive and flourishing down in London. What else could happen?”
“The daughter could kill the other man. Or even her own mother for breaking up the marriage?”
“Less likely,” Miller said, “but definitely possible. The problem is that as I said, Martin Charles is still alive. So too is the mother. And for that matter is the father. The only situation that doesn’t make sense is the one we’ve got – it’s the daughter who is dead.”
Riddle was warming to Miller’s line of thought. “You’re right. The affair, although the time frame is right, just doesn’t seem to stand up to any version of events.”
“And then we’ve got the murder of Samantha Thompson. She has no connection to the family, no connection with the university and as far as I know, no connection with Martin Charles. So what the hell links the two murders?”
Riddle grimaced. There was another explanation, of course. But it was the worst-case scenario and he didn’t want to give it any extra weight by saying it out loud. But he had to face facts. “Perhaps the only link is the murderer. They’re random killings. Which means we’ve got a serial killer on our hands.”
Miller was thinking about the Death’s Disciple case, which was the last thing he ever wanted to be thinking about. “I think it’s something we have to consider, but there’s one fact that stops me being convinced that’s what we’re facing.”
“What?” Riddle asked. He was almost as eager as Miller to dismiss the serial killer theory.
“Why has Jocasta Heath’s body only just been discovered? It’s not as it was discovered somewhere that it had lain hidden for the past four years. It was taken from one place and for a reason that we just don’t know was deposited on that strip of sand. Why now?”
Riddle was staring at his pint with an intensity that suggested he might actually find the answer to his question in its dark depths. “Sorry sir, I just don’t know.”
“Me neither, sergeant. If I’m honest, it’s baffling. All I can hope for is that we’re missing something.”
“Might that be me?” a deep rumbling voice said. The two policemen looked up to see the broad and ruddy figure of the pathologist standing in front of them holding three pint glasses in his big hands.
“Alan,” Miller said. “Sit down.”
The pathologist disappeared for a moment and then returned with a chair.
“I always forget this is your local,” Miller said as Powell sat down and took a long sip of his pint. “Must be at least a hundred yards to chez Powell, but it’s as close as I could get!” He laughed deeply and then suddenly became serious. “Although tonight is more business than pleasure.”
“How so?”
“I thought you might want to see this,” Powell said, pulling a folder from inside his jacket.
“Samantha Thompson’s autopsy report?” Miller said, involuntarily lowering his voice.
Powell nodded.
“Well?”
“I suppose you want the edited highlights?”
“If you don’t mind.”
Powell looked for a moment as if he did, but he opened the folder at its last page. “Death was caused by a huge trauma to the rear of the skull. The weapon was something heavy, pointed, but not sharp. Surprisingly, given the state the body was found in, there was no sign of any sexual activity pre or post death. And as I suspected, the crosses carved into both feet were posthumous. If it’s any consolation,” he said, looking directly at Miller, “I would guess she knew nothing about it. For all the ceremony of the way she was found, I would say she never even saw the attack coming. There are no defence wounds.”
“Well that’s something. And Jocasta Heath?”
Powell sighed. “Even rushing it through, it’ll be after Christmas. But,” he said, halting Miller’s protest, “I’ll tell you a couple of things now. One, as I suspected, the marks on her tibia were caused by a small rodent, most probably rats.”
“And the second?” Miller ask
ed.
“This is odd,” Powell said, licking his lips after a hearty drink of his beer. “It’s her fingertips. Of course there’s been a significant amount of decay, but it wasn’t too difficult to make out?”
“What wasn’t?”
“Her fingernails – all her fingernails – have been worn away as if they had been roughly filed down. Or…”
“Or?” Miller asked. He was now sitting forward in his chair.
“Or, as if she had been scratching against something hard. Stone perhaps?”
“What the hell does that mean?” Riddle asked. “Sorry, sir.”
Powell waved the apology away. “There are traces of grit under what’s left of her nails. My guess is we will find it’s stone. But it’s only a guess.”
“This can’t have been done to her after she died?” Miller asked.
“Oh, no,” Powell said. “I’m very much afraid she would have been alive at the time.”
Chapter 15
As much as Miller wanted another drink, he wanted a clear head more and the walk back to his third floor apartment was just what he needed.
After leaving Powell and Riddle together, Miller had walked down a short road to the cliff top and then turned right towards home.
He had a lot to think about.
The final hour of December 23rd found Miller standing on his balcony, unaware of the cold. The mournful sound of Sinatra’s She Shot Me Down album wafted through his living room and out through the door. In his hand was a glass of 16-year-old Glenlivet. His eyes were closed. Images of Samantha Thompson walking away along the cobbles of Church Street played across his mind. These merged into the face of Jocasta Heath. Something has been nagging away at his mind ever since Riddle had arrived. Something his sergeant had said was just out of reach. If only he could remember what it was.
Finally, Miller went inside, locked the door and walked through to his bedroom. He lay on his bed and to the melancholic sounds of late night Sinatra, he fell into a troubled sleep.
*
Christmas eve dawned dry and very cold. Miller realised from the terrible taste in his mouth that he hadn’t brushed his teeth the night before. He went in search of orange juice, but had to settle for a bottle of water. He looked at the clock. 7.35am. He took the Sinatra CD out of the player – Sinatra and mornings just didn’t go together – and replaced it with Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk before he headed for the shower.
Better the Devil You Know Page 11
