Her Last Mistake - Detective Gina Harte Series 06 (2020)

by Kovach, Carla

  Gina glanced around. Blue lights flashed across the front of the manor house. ‘Have you spoken to Francesca Carter yet?’

  Briggs shook his head. ‘The paramedics are still treating her. She passed out when she found the body. Although, I think the whole ordeal has sobered her up a little.’

  Gina headed into the building and glanced through the open doors of the function room. Small pockets of people were being ushered around by officers. A familiar face caught her attention – Samuel Avery, landlord of the Angel Arms. His ashen, troubled face had creased around the mouth and his eyes made him look a little older than his late fifties now the house lights were on. Gina couldn’t understand what women saw in him.

  Samuel moved his hand away from a crying woman’s backside, her long blonde hair stuck to her face. Gina shook her head. They didn’t always see much in him at all, he just took advantage. There was no look of sympathy on his face as he comforted the young woman, just a leer that suggested he was hoping that she would extend her need for sympathy to the bedroom if he pressured her hard enough. That was his game. She knew him all too well. As he turned, she caught him tucking the back of his shirt into his trousers. Gina would come back to Samuel later, once she’d checked out what was happening in the victim’s room.

  In the corridor, the mother and father of the bride were hugging their daughter and offering the teary young woman some reassurance. Her fluffed up dress had been torn at the side and a chunk of bread roll was caught in her large braided bun.

  As Gina turned the corner to the staircase, the scene was well mapped out by the forensics team coming and going, all suited up, carrying boxes upon boxes up the steps, ready to start extracting and cataloguing all potential evidence from the scene.

  She swallowed as she followed the action. Only an hour ago, she had been lying on the settee watching the end of a film with her family. So much had happened already. She was accustomed to being called out to handle a case but Hannah had never got used to it. When Hannah was a child, Gina had often bundled her daughter into the car and dropped her off at friends’ houses so that she could work. Gina knew exactly where Hannah’s resentment had come from.

  ‘Here you go,’ Bernard said as he passed her a forensics suit, a pair of gloves, hair cover and shoe covers. ‘Put these on before we go any further and avoid the middle of the corridor.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She slipped the suit over her trousers and light jumper. As she followed him, she snapped the gloves on. Several evidence markers had been placed around the room already. Gina glanced at the one on the chest of drawers, identifying the blood that was smeared along the top. A trail of stepping plates marked the route they could all tread. A flash lit up the room as a suited body snapped away at the corpse, taking photos that would be emailed to Gina later.

  There was nothing unusual about the room. It looked like a regular country hotel room. A brochure on the table in front of the window, a shelf containing tea-making facilities and a bathroom off to the right. Gina poked her head in; it looked as if it hadn’t been used at all. A crime scene assistant passed her with several sample envelopes, a vial of liquid and some swab packs.

  Gina’s head began to throb as her gaze rested on the pasty-bodied woman. The woman looked to be in her early twenties. Her satin dress was dotted with blood and the blood from her nose injury had smeared across the pillow and was tangled in her flame coloured hair. There was something about the way she lay, her neck slightly up, not resting naturally on the pillow. She’d been placed there with her hands resting on her torso. A few white specks had been sprinkled around the pillow. She stepped in a little closer and could see that the specks were flower petals. It was then that Gina spotted the torn flowers on the floor, a mix of red and white carnation heads.

  ‘Was the window locked?’ Gina asked, but no one replied. Talking through a face mask wasn’t easy. She repeated herself in a louder voice.

  Bernard looked away from the evidence log. ‘Yes, I checked that as soon as we’d set up. The catch was firmly on the sash window. The door had been left open.’

  Gina visualised a featureless body and face entering through the door. Was the door left open by a drunken Holly or had she got out of bed to open the door? They glanced at the blood spatter. The smear on the chest of drawers had led Gina’s eye to the fine spray on the pale grey wall by the door. Gina was no expert in blood spatter analysis, but she knew that one of the woman’s injuries had occurred at the door, unless the perpetrator was bleeding too. Maybe Holly had put up a fight.

  Gina’s gaze fixed on the victim’s nose as she worked through a theory in her head. Maybe Holly had answered the door to a knock and had been instantly hit, causing the blood to spray the wall as the instrument used to hurt her was drawn back. Was there a weapon or had she been hit with a fist?

  ‘Any sign of the weapon used to hit her?’

  Bernard mumbled through his mask. ‘I can’t be sure at the moment.’

  Just as she suspected. They were midway through working a crime scene and she wanted all the information they hadn’t collated yet, and she wanted it now. More markers went down, one for a clump of hair on the carpet and another for a sock behind the door. Again, Gina was drawn to the young woman’s corpse. Most of her hair had tangled around her neck except one long strand leading from her head to her mouth. Her skin was almost translucent. Eyes, stark and open. Bed sheets tangled around her legs and body, an indentation left on the other side of the bed in the linen suggesting that another person had been lying next to her at some point.

  Bernard stepped back and surveyed the room. ‘From what I’ve seen, this room hasn’t been cleaned or vacuumed very well. We’ve already found several different hair samples, old bits of bitten nails and don’t get me started on all the fingerprints in this room. It’s a forensics nightmare.’

  Gina caught sight of a shelf holding several books above the bed, mostly Reader’s Digest collections. She had to agree with Bernard as she stared at the thin layer of dust that led from one end of the shelf to the other. ‘Cause of death?’

  Bernard nodded to usher Gina out. For the time being, she’d seen enough. What she needed now were Bernard’s initial thoughts on what the evidence was telling him.

  She clunked on the stepping plates and followed him back out to the carpeted floor on the landing, allowing the crime scene investigators time and room to get on with their huge list of tasks. An outer cordon was being wrapped around the staircase.

  ‘I need to get through. My room is there,’ a teary woman said. It was the blonde-haired woman whom Samuel Avery had been comforting.

  The officer blocking the route continued to apply the cordon. ‘Really sorry but could you please join the others back in the function room. We’ll let you know as soon as you can pass through.’

  The woman stood for a moment as if waiting for the officer to change her mind. When she realised she wouldn’t be allowed to pass, she hitched up her dress and went back down the stairs.

  Bernard caught up with Gina and they pulled down their face masks. He scratched his escaping grey beard as he stood hunched over, looking down at her as he spoke. ‘I’ll give you what I know now and, as always, I’ll prepare my report and send it straight your way. If I come across anything that I can share immediately, I’ll call you.’

  Gina nodded. ‘Okay, thanks. But what can you tell me now?’

  ‘You see the blood to her nose and face, there’s a little bit in her hair too. Two injuries. Her nose is obviously broken, that’s where all the blood came from. There is a slight split to her head; the nature of the mark suggests she was hit with something hard. I did notice a tiny smear of blood on the lamp base and that matches my initial thought that she could have been hit with that. As always, anything I say now has not been confirmed. Only a post-mortem and our lab results will verify everything or offer further or different evidence. The pillow beside her was also covered in blood but this had been positioned blood side down so that it wouldn’t
be seen straight away. Initial theory we are working on is that she was either killed by one of the blows to her head or smothered with the pillow.’

  Gina nodded. ‘Smothered?’

  ‘I’ve already said this and I stick by it for now, the blood smeared all over the back of the pillow suggests there was a struggle. I would go with smothered.’

  ‘And whoever did this, placed the same pillow back on the other side of the bed, blood side down when they’d finished.’ Gina paused. ‘It looks like our victim had also been placed on her pillow. I noticed she was tilted up slightly.’

  ‘That’s right. Someone placed her like that with her hands on her middle. It looks like flower petals were then sprinkled over her. And the indentation on the bed next to her suggests that someone else lay on her bed at some point. The positioning of the bed cover shows that this couldn’t have been our victim. We need to get the samples to the lab and the body to the morgue before I can give you anything more.’

  ‘Time of death?’

  ‘Her body temperature suggests within the past four hours.’

  ‘One more thing. Did you find a phone?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, not as yet. If we come across one in the meantime, I’ll have it bagged and let you know.’

  She knew that was all she was getting for now. The thought of Holly being suffocated with a pillow, panicking and trying to fight off her attacker sent a wave of nausea through Gina. She shook that thought away as she pulled her phone out of her pocket. There was a text message from Briggs.

  Interviews happening in the function room. Wyre has arrived too. We’ll pool everything back at the station in a briefing later. I’ll get breakfast in for the team when we leave. No one will be going home in a hurry. I need you back on duty for the foreseeable. Briggs.

  The last thing she could think about was food. She walked towards the large leaded window. As she released her brown kinked hair from the hair cover, a flash of light coming from the corner of the garden caught her attention. No sooner had it appeared, it disappeared. She tensed up as it happened again. Pressing her nose on the window for a better look, she could clearly see the light of a phone being held out and the head of a distant person.

  As she phoned Briggs, she heard her heart thrumming in her ears. ‘Pick up, pick up,’ she muttered under her breath.

  ‘Harte.’

  ‘Get someone in the garden. Bottom left when you leave the function room. There was someone out there on their own a moment ago. I saw the light from their phone leading away and now it’s gone. Stop them.’

  She hung up and ran back the way she had come, tangling up the cordon tape as she hurried to the stairwell. ‘Sorry,’ she shouted back to the police officer. Darting down the stairs, her heart was beating out of her chest. She couldn’t risk losing sight of him. If he was Holly’s killer, she was going to be the one to bring him in.

  Chapter Five

  Gina sprinted across the lawn until she reached Briggs and PC Smith. ‘We’ve called out, we’ve searched, but they’re not answering. Two officers are continuing to search the woodland.’

  Gina pushed her way past Briggs, calling out as she caught her breath. ‘Police, you are leaving the scene of a crime. Come back now. Stop.’ It was no good. Whoever she’d seen escaping through the back of the garden had long gone. They had a good enough head start. ‘Damn it! Have you called for backup?’

  Briggs’s shoulders dropped. ‘Of course I have, Harte. We have officers heading to the main roads that surround the woodland. If someone has left here, they’d have to come out on one of two roads.’

  She didn’t know why she doubted him. Maybe it was her increasing need to be fully in control of everything. She wanted to interview all the guests and staff, be with Bernard and the forensics team, be the one to chase their suspect into the woods and fields and be the one waiting at the roadside for him or her to emerge.

  A man pushed his way through the officers on the terrace. ‘Who’s in charge here? I demand to speak to someone in a position of authority. Is it you?’ He instantly looked to Briggs for an answer. This time the man was right – but in Gina’s experience, the majority of the people she met asked the suited man on the scene if he was the one in charge. This time she didn’t get to say she was.

  ‘I’m DCI Briggs and this is DI Harte. DI Harte is the Senior Investigating Officer.’

  Gina went to speak, her gaze fixed on Briggs as she realised he was stepping back and allowing her to take the lead on the case, as she had been doing for a while now. As soon as DS Driscoll landed, Briggs would be back in his office working the investigation, being the interface between the team and the press. She cleared her throat. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘The name’s Harris. Nigel Harris. I live in the cottage over there and this is my family estate.’ He shivered slightly and buttoned up his tweed jacket. ‘My staff have just called me away from my late game of bridge, saying that there’s all sorts going on. They tell me a woman has been murdered. I can’t have this malarkey happening on my property. My business has a reputation to keep so I suggest you take the body and hurry up off my premises.’

  The man stood over six feet tall with a large round middle, his bulbous red nose reflecting the little bit of light coming from the manor house. His grey curly hair fell around the bald patch at the back of his head.

  ‘Mr Harris. We won’t be hurrying and the body will be taken when we are ready to take it. A woman has been murdered and the crime scene team are working their hardest to collect all the evidence. Your business is very important to you, I understand that, but the woman in there, the one lying dead in one of your rooms, she is important to someone. Imagine if she was someone you cared about, your daughter, your niece. You wouldn’t want us to hurry up and leave, would you? You’d want to make sure we collected enough evidence and statements to convict whoever committed this terrible crime.’ Gina felt a flutter in her chest.

  The man let out a slight snort. ‘That person is not my daughter and she’s not my niece so just hurry about your business. I want you gone as soon as possible.’

  ‘Well I suggest you don’t tie us all up in meaningless conversation any longer.’

  He stared at Gina for a moment before muttering under his breath as he walked back.

  ‘Don’t you just hate some people?’ Briggs asked.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You’re in charge.’

  He shrugged. ‘I may be your DCI but you’re in charge of this investigation. I know you won’t let me down. Right, everyone is interviewing at the moment and hopefully all statements will be uploaded onto the system immediately upon returning to the station. No one is going home until that is done. It’s impossible to keep this many people in one place for long and I don’t want anyone missed.’

  The two officers who had chased their suspect emerged from the hedge. Gina took a torch from one and pointed at the ground. There had to be something left behind, anything. A few cigarette butts were scattered around the muddy cut through. ‘We need those bagged up. It looks like the masses have trampled through here. Shoe imprints upon shoe imprints are ingrained in the mud.’

  ‘Why would so many people be coming this way?’

  ‘Gatecrashers, guv,’ PC Smith said.

  Gina flinched as he broke her thoughts. ‘I didn’t hear you coming.’ It had been a while since he’d been injured at a crime scene and it made her happy to see him back where he belonged, in uniform, helping with their investigation.

  ‘You were all so engrossed in what was happening. We’ve been interviewing, as you know, and one of the bridesmaids, Lilly Hill, mentioned the gatecrashers. She said she’d like to speak to a detective in charge about Holly. Just look for the woman in the long green dress with blonde hair. She said it’s important.’

  ‘Thanks. While I’m catching up with the witnesses, I want you to find out if there were any photographers or videographers. I want all footage and photos of
the night before anything can be lost or tampered with.’

  ‘On it, guv.’

  Lilly Hill could wait. The person she most wanted to speak to was the one who had found Holly’s body.

  Chapter Six

  Gina headed back out to the ambulance. ‘We’re finished now,’ the paramedic called as he spotted her trying to catch his attention. He turned his attention back to the vehicle. ‘You sit there as long as you like, love, until you feel a little better.’

  PC Kapoor smiled as she stepped out of the ambulance. ‘Guv?’ the police constable said in a pitch that sounded as though it could crack windows. ‘This is Francesca Carter.’

  The paramedic walked around the ambulance and began speaking to a colleague.

  ‘Thank you.’ Gina stepped up and sat on the gurney beside Francesca. ‘Ms Carter. I know this is hard for you, but could I ask you a few questions?’ Gina asked in a gentle voice.

  The woman looked up, revealing her mascara-streaked face. Gina cleared her throat as she caught the faint smell of vomit coming from down the front of the young woman’s sage green dress. Her long brown hair was matted around the sides where she’d wiped her nose with her arm from ear to ear. ‘I found her.’

  ‘May I call you Francesca?’

  She nodded as she pulled a blanket tighter around her shoulders.

  ‘In your own words, can you tell me what happened?’

  She wiped her forehead with her arm. ‘I’d had a lot to drink and wasn’t feeling well. I’d been sick and all I wanted to do was go to bed. Holly’s room was next to mine on the first floor. When I passed her door, it creaked slightly and I wondered why it wasn’t locked. That’s when…’