The plan was in place. Brad was to leave his house in Compton Road at Kensal Green at 9.45 p.m. It was a Saturday, and there was no school to worry about the next day, not that Brad’s mother would have been concerned, although Rose’s would have been.
Rose was to tell her parents that she was sleeping over at her friend Steph’s house that night, which was fine by them, as Rose chose her friends well, and Steph was a person they liked and trusted. It wasn’t the real person that they saw, Rose knew that, as Steph was well ahead of her in the losing virginity stakes, and had been with half the boys in their class at school, including Brad, not that Rose was concerned. With Steph it had only been lust, as Rose’s best friend was of easy virtue.
It had been Steph who had given Rose instruction in the more exquisite art of lovemaking, which wasn’t how it was in the novels she liked to read. Rose was convinced that Steph had experienced the physical act without the emotion, something she was not going to do.
***
The two young lovers met outside Kensal Green Cemetery on Harrow Road at ten in the evening. Brad was on time, Rose was two minutes late. They held each other tight and kissed.
It was Brad who suggested they take a short cut through the cemetery to Kilburn Lane where they could catch a bus down through Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill. And once they had reached Holland Park Avenue, they could walk up Bayswater Road and into Hyde Park.
Brad had chosen the spot, suitably romantic and secluded, but he wasn’t sure how he’d last until they got there. He also wasn’t sure why it had taken five weeks for him to get to this stage with Rose. He thought it was love, but he couldn’t be sure. But whatever it was, it was important to him and to her.
They were, as he saw it, two people embarking on a life together, not a fumble in the dark, not like it had been with Rose’s friend, Steph, nor with the others. After all, he wasn’t a virgin, six women to date, and Rose was to be the last.
His brother, Jim, would have said he was a fool, and that women were only good for one thing, not that his advice was required, nor would he be commenting, as he was doing three years in prison for holding up a newsagent, the proceeds totalling just three hundred and twenty pounds, and even then he’d left his fingerprints on the cash register, and they were held in a police database.
Janice, his sister, another romantic, would have seen the gallantry in her young brother, recognised herself in Rose. Although at the time that Brad met up with Rose, she was about to be flat on her back for the seventh time that night, and it was no sixteen-year-old with sweet intentions; it was an obese, sweaty man in his late forties.
Rose felt some trepidation about walking through the cemetery, not because she was squeamish, but on account of having first watched a horror movie at Steph’s before venturing out, knowing full well how distressed her parents would be if they knew of her deceit. The film, a dystopian zombie frightener, long on darkened scenes and violent deaths, devoid of a discernible plot, had not interested her, but it was Steph’s bedroom, and she had been polite and had watched it.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Brad said. ‘Save a couple of minutes.’
He took her by the hand, and the two of them walked through the imposing entrance. It reminded him of a scaled-down version of Marble Arch, not that he knew why a cemetery should have such an entrance, nor that Marble Arch had been built in the nineteenth century, a triumphal arch that had initially been built as the state entrance to Buckingham Palace and had been moved in 1851 to its current location at the junction of Oxford Street, Park Lane, and Edgware Road, at the north-east corner of Hyde Park.
Rose felt a cold chill as they walked through. Some of the graves were maintained, most weren’t, and the occasional one had flowers on top of the headstone, or laid on the grave. Brad would admit to not feeling as brave as he had, as it was dark in the cemetery, whereas out on Harrow Road it had been bright with the street lights and the traffic. Even though they were only halfway through, only two hundred yards from where they had entered, the ever-present noise of the bustling metropolis of London had dimmed, replaced by a low hum in the distance.
‘I don’t like it,’ Rose said as she grasped Brad’s hand tighter.
Neither did Brad, but he wasn’t about to say that there was something that was freaking him out.
A man walked hurriedly by, his hat down low, his coat collar turned up high.
The two young lovers quickened their pace; the exit of the cemetery on Kilburn Lane visible not more than fifty yards distance.
Rose let out a scream. ‘Over there,’ she pointed.
Brad, feeling calmer once again, thinking to the night’s event, especially after they had drunk the wine, didn’t react at first.
‘Brad, over there, on that grave.’
Brad looked briefly before averting his gaze; after all, his mind was elsewhere. He looked again. ‘It’s a body,’ he said.
Rose ran out of the cemetery; Brad stood transfixed.
Slowly, realising the situation, Brad walked closer to the grave. He pointed the small light on his smartphone at the body, saw that it was a woman and that in her body there was a knife.
Once out of the place of death, the two of them hugged each other, the street light shining on them, a bus passing by on the other side of the road; the bus they would have caught. Rose crying and Brad shaking like a leaf.
It was Rose who spoke first. ‘We have to call the police.’
‘Your parents?’
‘It’s a dead body, we have to tell someone.’
Brad took out his smartphone from his pocket, and shakingly dialled the emergency number. ‘There’s a body, Kensal Green Cemetery, the Kilburn Lane entrance,’ he said.
After three minutes, the sound of a police car.
‘Do you want to stay?’ Brad said, conscious of Rose’s parents' reaction.
‘They’ve got your phone number, and yes, we must stay.’
Brad knew that she was right. So much for a romantic evening, he thought but did not say it to Rose.
Chapter 2
Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook, the son of Jamaican immigrants to England, had hoped for a quiet night at home with Jenny, his wife, but it was not to be. As a DCI in Homicide at Challis Street Police Station, as well as being the senior officer in the department, it was up to him to take the lead after the phone call from his second-in-charge, Detective Inspector Larry Hill, a man too fond of drinking beer, although after the last run-in with Isaac, and another ultimatum from his wife, he was now on his best behaviour.
Isaac had been surprised when he arrived at the crime scene to find Larry sober. He hoped it would stay that way, but he wasn’t confident. His inspector, Isaac knew, had a regular habit of falling off the sobriety wagon. Larry was a functioning alcoholic, and one beer didn’t stop there. They continued till he was barely capable of standing, and on one occasion he had attempted to drive home, only to be stopped after twenty seconds by a patrol car that had been waiting outside the pub.
Also at the crime scene was Detective Sergeant Wendy Gladstone, the most senior member of Homicide, in terms of her age and her time in the police force, not in rank.
‘What do we have?’ Isaac asked. Even though he had been casually dressed at home, he had changed into a suit; Larry had not. Another bone of contention, Isaac knew, but it was not to be discussed that night. Tonight was for murder.
‘Female, white,’ Larry said. ‘A knife wound to the back.’
‘Anything else?’
‘We’ve not disturbed the body, and it’s still warm. We’ll leave that to Gordon Windsor and his team.’
Isaac could only concur, as Windsor, the senior crime scene investigator, would have reacted badly if an inexperienced police officer or a seasoned detective inspector had disturbed the body. As he would say, ‘If the body’s clearly dead, then leave it to us.’
On a previous murder case, two wet-behind-the-ears and overzealous police constables had almost destroyed vital evidenc
e, although, by the time they had reached the body, they had had the good sense not to touch it.
Wendy left them and went over to where the two who had discovered the body were sat. She could see they were young, a couple out for a night, minding their business, looking for a little romance.
‘Rose’s father’s going to be angry with me,’ the young man said.
‘And you are?’ Wendy asked as she sat down beside them on the bench at the side of the street.
‘Brad Robinson. I live in Compton Road with my mother.’
‘Your age?’
‘Sixteen, almost seventeen.’
‘Let’s take this from the beginning,’ Wendy said, looking down at the bag to Brad’s side, seeing the bottle of wine, the two plastic glasses. ‘And be honest with me. You two are in trouble, aren’t you?’
‘We didn’t kill the woman,’ Rose said.
Wendy saw a pretty young woman, similar to her at that age.
‘How old are you?’
‘Fifteen. I’ll be sixteen in two months.’
‘Brad would have been in trouble if you hadn’t found the body. Lucky in one respect, although you probably won’t agree. First time for you?’
‘We’ve done nothing wrong,’ Brad said.
Wendy, not unfeeling, could see that Brad and Rose were decent enough, although Rose’s clothes were more upmarket than Brad’s pair of blue jeans and dark blue shirt.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to say any more about it, but the law is clear. Rose is underage.’
Over to one side, a crowd was forming, a man pressing forward, trying to get under the crime scene tape.
‘Your father?’ Wendy said, looking at Rose.
‘I had to phone him. He doesn’t know I’m with Brad.’
‘At a girlfriend’s? A sleepover, watch a few movies, but instead finding a quiet spot with Brad and settling down for a spot of romance, is that it?’
‘We’re old enough,’ Brad said, remembering his mother’s lectures on the subject when he’d been younger, not that she could talk. What with the unfamiliar face at breakfast occasionally, his mother insisting that he was a friend of his father’s and he had spent the night in the spare room.
‘Before your father gets here, Rose. Legally you’re underage, and Brad would have been guilty of a crime. Not the most serious, seeing that he’s young too, but he would have had to answer for it.’
‘We didn’t do anything.’
Wendy removed the bottle of wine from Brad’s bag and put it inside the large bag that she always carried.
‘You two are in enough trouble already. It might be better if neither of you mentions the wine,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ Brad said. ‘Rose’s father?’
‘Wait here. I’ll go and talk to him.’
Wendy moved away from them and walked over to the crime scene tape and the irate father. She told the constable to let him through.
‘Rose is helping us with our enquiries,’ she said.
‘She should have been at her friend’s house, not here,’ Rose Winston’s father, Tim, said. He had obviously been in bed when he had received the phone call, and under the tee shirt and an old pair of jeans Wendy could see his pyjama top.
‘There’s been a murder in the cemetery. Rose and her friend are witnesses,’ Wendy said, conscious of the man’s concern and undoubted anger. The crime would take precedence, but she could be sensitive as to the situation.
‘I know who he is. He’s no friend, just another rampant male, wanting to brag about it in school the next day, put it on social media. I’ve seen it all before.’
Wendy knew he probably had. The man was in his mid-forties, and his teen years were before social media and instant communication. He was, however, a good-looking man, hair greying at the temples, and judging by his physique, he was an active sportsman, and in his youth, another Brad Robinson. The man’s memory was selective because it was his daughter. How many daughters of equally concerned men had Winston in his youth tempted and succeeded with? Wendy knew the answer, also thought that he wasn’t the sort of man to talk about it afterwards. And if she was a judge of character, she suspected that Brad Robinson wasn’t either.
‘Mr Winston, your concerns aside, I need to interview them first. How you deal with it afterwards is up to you, but we may need to speak to your daughter after tonight. She’s had a fright, and there may be delayed shock. I would advise against you and your wife talking to her tonight. Get her home, put her to bed and let her sleep it off.’
‘I’ll take your advice, Sergeant. As long as she’s at home. She’s a good girl, but she’s still young, and the Robinsons are known in the area. You’re aware of his brother and sister?’
‘I am, but young Brad seems decent enough.’
‘A difficult age,’ Winston said.
Wendy walked the man over to his daughter; neither spoke, only hugged tightly. Brad tried to talk, only to receive a look of disgust from Rose’s father.
‘Now, Mr Winston, if you don’t mind, could you please leave me alone with the two of them,’ Wendy said.
Winston took Wendy’s advice and walked over to a shop across the road; he purchased a bar of chocolate and a hot drink out of a machine.
‘My father, he’s angry, isn’t he?’ Rose said as Wendy sat down beside them again.
Wendy, her two sons now grown up and married with children, could sympathise with the father and with Brad and Rose. She had been young once, and she had done what these two had; and then, older and not necessarily wiser, she had had to be what her parents had been, doting and concerned, attempting to instil wisdom and experience into teenagers, with their hormones, their peers, their belief that the older generation was out of touch.
‘He has every right to be, and you’re likely to get an ear-bashing.’
‘Not from Dad, he’s a softy really, but he doesn’t like Brad, not any boy.’
‘You’re both finding your way in the world. You’ll both make mistakes, tonight for instance. Let’s start at the beginning, and what you were doing in Kensal Green Cemetery.’
Brad told how they had been going out for a few weeks; how the two of them felt about each other. Wendy thought it was sweet that the young man had intended to take her to Hyde Park and to find a secluded spot. She wasn’t about to tell them that you didn’t buy the cheapest bottle of wine if you intended to wake up the next morning without a throbbing headache and a parched throat.
‘You’re outside the cemetery, on Harrow Road,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s a shortcut, I know that, but what else?’
‘I didn’t want to, not at night,’ Rose said. ‘All those gravestones.’
‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
‘It was Steph; she wanted to watch a zombie movie, I didn’t, but it was her house, and she was covering for me.’
‘I watched The Exorcist when I was your age. I slept with my light on for two nights after that. I know how you felt.’
‘I’ve walked through there before late at night,’ Brad said, calmer now that Rose’s father had been appeased for the moment.
‘I’d agree with you,’ Wendy said. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, only your imagination. You’re through the gates, then what?’
‘We walked through. It’s dark and eerily quiet. I’m frightened, holding on to Brad. We can see the gate out onto Kilburn Lane, the lights, the sound of the traffic.’
‘You’re less frightened now?’
‘A little.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘A man rushed past us.’
‘You got a good look?’
‘He had a hat, a coat, his face concealed,’ Brad said. ‘We were more interested in catching the next bus.’
‘And then?’
‘I looked over to my left. That’s when I saw a body on the grave,’ Rose said.
‘But it was dark.’
‘The street light was shining onto it from over the wall. I don’t know why I looke
d; maybe I relaxed a bit, seeing that we were nearly out of the place. I screamed, but Brad couldn’t see it at first. After he looked again, he could see it and the knife in the person’s back.’
‘It’s a woman,’ Wendy said. ‘Any idea who she is?’
‘We didn’t look that closely, but no,’ Brad said.
‘The man rushing by? Do you think he was the murderer?’
‘We wouldn’t know. How could we?’
‘You can’t. However, a man who concealed his face, dressed for a cold night, is suspicious,’ Wendy said. ‘Or don’t you think so?’
‘He could be,’ Brad admitted.
Wendy realised that asking for the opinion of a sixteen-year-old youth who had more on his mind than murder, or at least he had had earlier, did not seem the wisest thing to do, but the consensus from the crime scene investigators and the attending police was that the man they had seen was probably the murderer. Not only had the impression of a man’s size 9 shoe been found near to the body, but there had also been scuffing on the gravel path where the man had left the grass and moved away.
According to the dead woman’s body temperature and the state of rigor, death had been ascertained as being five to ten minutes before Brad and Rose had walked past, which meant that the murderer may have been startled by them and that he could possibly see them as a threat.
‘Your descriptions are vague,’ Wendy said. ‘Any more you can give us?’
‘It was dark. It was only on the grave that the light shone, and he wasn’t there.’
Wendy left the two bewildered would-be lovers and walked over to Rose’s father.
‘Take it easy,’ she said. ‘They’ve had a fright. It’s not every day you see a dead body; see a murderer.’
‘She’s doing well at school, is our Rose. It’s not like her to do something like this,’ Tim Winston said.
‘The first flush of womanhood? What did you expect? A vestal virgin?’ Wendy realised that she was being harsh with the man, but she didn’t need either Brad or Rose intimidated by her father, or nervous of the police. In time, they would remember small fragments of what they had seen, but it wasn’t to happen that night.
DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 2 Page 122
