The Body in the Snow
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
DCI Craig Gillard Crime Thrillers
Read on
The Body Under the Bridge: Chapter 1
Copyright
For Louise, as always
Chapter 1
‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Kirsty Mockett knew within a few seconds of waking on that fateful March morning. Even for a Sunday it was quiet. Like the world holding its breath. No traffic noise, not even the faint drone from the main road half a mile away. The gap above the curtains filtered an unusual brightness onto the ceiling, along which soft shadows flitted like ghosts. The room felt chilly. It wasn’t yet seven a.m. and the heating had not kicked in. She slid from the warmth of her bed, excitedly flung apart the curtains, and saw that the forecast had been correct. It was falling still, great fluffy, whirling flakes, blown in on an east wind all the way from Siberia, across the North Sea, beyond London and into Surrey, over the town of Ashtead. It had coated the discarded toys, decorated the broken garden seat and iced the abandoned washing machine which littered the garden of the downstairs flat. The drunken, paling fence, held up only by its wire, looked rustically pretty with each post topped by a dollop of whiteness, and the straggly hawthorn gloried in a piping of icing that balanced on every twisted stem.
Snow!
She grabbed her running gear from the radiator, stripped off her pyjamas, and dressed rapidly. She pulled her wavy chestnut hair into a ponytail, with three rapid and practised hand movements. She cleaned only her teeth. The shower could wait until later. It was less than a mile to the common, and she wanted to be out in this, to feel the childlike joy and the excitement of running in the snow. Kirsty had every reason to be happy that day, the last day before she began her job as a crime scene investigator for Surrey Police. It had taken her two years to qualify, and had allowed her to escape a job she had once thought she loved. But at twenty-five, she knew this was what she wanted to do. Tomorrow, Monday, it was all to begin. A clean start to a new life in the police force.
She was wrong.
Her work would begin today – a day early – unexpectedly. From the first shocking moment it would make extraordinary demands that would have tested the most experienced of investigators. And it was to upend her life, throwing her back into a nightmare she thought she’d left behind years ago.
* * *
Leaving the terraced house at a jog, clapping her gloved hands together for warmth, she stared up at the drifting flakes which cascaded still from a white-out sky. Picking up the pace, she passed a middle-aged man using an estate agent’s sale board as a shovel to clear the snow outside his home. One or two vehicles crept past, barely a mile an hour faster than she, trundling crunchily in the tracks ahead.
A small suburban park, her usual exercise destination, was only a half mile away, but today she was going to go to the common. It was twice as far away but the combination of woods, rolling hills and open grassland was a far better setting to revel in this wintry weather. She ran up Woodfield Lane, past Ashtead Station to her left, over the level crossing and, where the road swung right past a bungalow, she continued straight on. This was a paved bridleway onto the common. She stopped at the vehicle barrier, breathing heavily, but feeling warmth already seeping into fingers and toes. With no one about, she was able to use the top of the metal gate for her hamstring stretches and warm up routine without self-consciousness. Of the three vehicles parked near the start of the track, one had clearly been there overnight, based on its complete covering of snow. The second, a lightly dusted olivegreen Jeep Cherokee, had been parked a few minutes ago, because the flakes landing on its bonnet melted immediately. Only now did she notice the third – a dirty white Toyota estate, windscreen wipers moving, the male driver’s face discernible as shadow within. Two minutes later, at 7.18 a.m., she set off along the snowy path at a gentle pace. With slippery ground this was not a day for breaking records, but merely for enjoying the beauty. Five minutes into her run, Kirsty passed a middle-aged Asian woman, striding along the edge of a brake of coppiced hazel woodland. The woman was using a ball thrower to exercise her energetic boxer dog. The muscular animal, racing for a tennis ball thrown far to her left, tore in front of Kirsty, causing her to check her stride.
‘Oh Bertie, don’t be so rude,’ the woman shouted. Kirsty threw back a smile at the woman. Shortly after, she turned off right to do a woodland loop, and upped the pace. She was only three minutes into her jog, luxuriating in the silent whiteness of the world, and the carpet of untrodden snow ahead.
Her relaxation was torn asunder by a piercing, bloodcurdling shriek followed by the frenzied barking of a dog. She paused for only a second, sweat transmuting into ice. Something terrible had just happened and she knew what she had to do. Pivoting towards the sound of the animal, she exploded into a sprint. There were no more screams, but the first still echoed in her head.
She burst out of the woods and turned left onto the main path, racing towards the noise. She pulled out her mobile from the sleeve pocket. Too busy unlocking the screen, she almost collided with a hooded mountain biker, a whirl of dark colours going full tilt in the opposite direction. The boxer was 200 yards ahead, racing in circles, barking angrily. It rushed towards the edge of the trees and halted, whimpering, before resuming its circuit. As Kirsty approached she could now see the woman was lying on the ground. The dog rounded on her, blocking her approach, snarling. It had blood on its face and head.
‘Good boy, Bertie,’ she said, in as friendly a tone as she could manage, crouching and holding out her hand towards the dog. She hoped its behaviour was born out of loyalty rather than belligerence. The dog eyed her dubiously, then rushed off to challenge a dog walker, a silver-haired gent with a golden labrador on a lead, hurrying from the opposite direction. The boxer’s barking and stance caused the man to stop, and shorten the lead on his own pet.
‘Did the dog attack her? Is she all right?’ he asked.
Kirsty shook her head. It was the answer to both questions. Her last two strides had brought her within three yards and confirmed her worst fears. There was blood everywhere, spattered across the snow, pooling on the path next to the woman. The ball thrower lay to her right, just out of reach of her open hand, while the dog’s leather lead was grasped firmly in her left fist. She had dark red nail varnish, and several rings. But this was no dog attack. The woman was lying face up, her brown eyes wide in shock, her mouth open, unmoving. Snowflakes on her eyelashes. The side of her skull had been smashed in, her hair matted in the contents, a pink slush already forming beneath it. It was clear she had suffered many grievous blows.
‘She’s dead, stay well back,’ Kirsty said, eyeing the dog, which was repeatedly investigating the body of his mistress, its paws ma
king yet another obscuring track across the blood-spattered snow.
‘We better call the police,’ he said.
Of course.
As if to remind her, a ringtone sounded loudly nearby, demanding attention. The dead woman’s phone. Ringing and ringing in insistent jollity. Someone trying to reach her. Too late. Someone who would never get to talk to her, to ask her a question. A humanising reminder that this person had been part of somebody’s life.
And just then, the snow stopped.
* * *
The dog, having barked at everybody, orbited the body on a fast elliptical run, periodically stopping and scanning the horizon, as if seeking the assailant. On a nearby pass, Kirsty lunged forward and grabbed his collar. The animal looked up at her accusingly, but did not struggle. With a jolt she realised that this snowy tableau, a five yard radius from the body, had captured every clue a crime scene investigator could hope for. A bicycle track within three yards of the body, signs of a dismount, several footprints, all of which were vital though transient clues to what had just occurred. They had to be preserved if at all possible.
She turned to the man. ‘Actually, would you ring?’ The man nodded, and pulled his own dog back just as a Jack Russell terrier bounded over, romped past the boxer and began to sniff the body. ‘For God’s sake,’ Kirsty shouted; she struggled to prevent the boxer tackling the terrier, whose owner, a middle-aged woman with a down gilet and a headscarf, was still a hundred yards away.
‘MADAM!’ Kirsty bellowed in a voice stronger than she had ever believed she possessed. ‘Call your dog back immediately!’
The woman shot back a look of irritation. ‘He’s all right, he won’t bite,’ she brayed back.
‘There is a DEAD BODY here. This is a crime scene.’
It was her very first. All her training had kicked in, and yet she was helpless. The inviolable sanctity of the forensic search area was already being polluted and compromised under her nose, and she could do little about it.
The woman began to call for her animal in a tinny high-pitched entreaty. ‘Binky, come on Binky.’ The animal paid not the slightest bit of notice, so Kirsty threw a stone at it and missed. The stone landed on the hem of the coat of the dead woman, and the Jack Russell sniffed at it.
The male dog walker, phone clamped under his chin, was trying to describe their exact location to the operator, and in response to Kirsty’s gestures led his own animal and the now attendant terrier away from the scene. With the collar of the boxer in one hand, Kirsty whipped out her phone and began to take photographs, trying to capture the bike tracks, the footprints and the blood spattered snow. The first few pictures were spoiled by flash, so she overrode it, but still it was hard to capture the depth and shape of the imprints, especially with the distressed animal in her other hand trying to lunge at any other dogs which approached. She recalled from her course only a few weeks ago that the ideal way to preserve tracks and footprints in muddy ground was take a cast of them. Presumably that would apply to snow too. But that required considerable resources and time. She had neither.
Finally, she was able to pass along the boxer to the male dog walker, who swapped his phone across to her to complete the call to emergency services. Kirsty identified herself, and said she needed CSI assistance as soon as possible. As she waited, the sky cleared and a bright sunshine bathed the common. The temperature had already begun to climb, and droplets were beginning to slide off twigs and branches.
Her first crime scene.
Melting away before her eyes.
Chapter 2
Detective Chief Inspector Craig Gillard got the call at the dog-end of a long night shift. Saturday nights had a habit of sliding well into Sunday. A fight outside the Three Feathers in Epsom at three a.m. had left one man unconscious, and another with a broken jaw. Three men had been detained by venue security staff. Uniformed police had secured the scene; the duty CSI officer was busy elsewhere, so as duty DCI it was up to him to bring some order. The crime scene was easy to map out, with spatterings of blood across thirty yards of pavement. At one edge, he found a pair of broken spectacles and a bloody tooth located in the gutter. Most of the witnesses seemed drunk, as were both victims and the apparent assailants. Luckily, there was good CCTV coverage. Like most brawls, the advent of dispassionate camera surveillance had greatly simplified who said what about who hit whom. He always kept a data stick in his pocket, and had been able to download the relevant footage within half an hour of arrival. That would give enough evidence to hold the alleged attackers overnight. They were taken away in a van, leaving just him and one PC to finish up.
By the time the snow started at around half six, he was on to the paperwork. Silent flakes, drifting through the light of the sodium lamps above him, beginning to cover up the bloodstains, masking the chewing gum stains and dusting the street in a heavenly but misleading innocence.
Gillard was sitting in his unmarked Vauxhall checking the notation on evidence bags which separately contained: one chunky gold-effect chain (male style, broken), one pair of men’s designer spectacles (broken), a double molar, a torn shirt collar (cotton, male), bloodstained on the inside, and a small folding hunting knife, apparently unused. It could have been worse. He finished the form, checked the time (7.27 a.m.) and suddenly began to fantasise about a bacon sandwich. Two rashers – done crispy – with ketchup, in a brown bap. At this time on a Sunday morning he was unlikely to get any of that around here. But with any luck, he could be back at Mount Browne, Surrey Police headquarters, by the time his shift ended at eight.
The phone call from the incident room changed all that.
A body found at Ashtead Common, just a few miles away. Clear evidence of homicide, and CSI trainee, Kirsty Mockett, a witness, trying hard on her own to secure the crime scene. Gillard vaguely recognised the name.
The operator passed on the puzzling message. ‘She’s asking if you have anything to take a cast of footprints and tyre prints in snow, before it melts.’
Gillard was taken aback, and simply muttered his thanks.
‘I’ll leave that one with you then,’ the operator said, before passing on the exact location.
* * *
Kirsty had been expecting the ambulance first, but it was a grey Vauxhall estate which bumped its way the 200 yards down the bridleway towards her. The vehicle stopped thirty yards away and the man who emerged, tall, well-built and exuding capability, was familiar. She remembered DCI Gillard from the applied forensics module, when he had given a talk about dealing with bloodstains. Then he had been wearing a suit, but now he looked rugged in bomber jacket, jeans and hiking boots. His smile of greeting was just what she wanted to see. Her relief was so intense that her eyes watered, and she let a single sob escape before masking it with her hand.
‘I’m so glad to see you, sir,’ she said.
‘We’ve met, haven’t we?’ Gillard said offering his hand. After a quick introduction she began to tell him of all the difficult issues encountered: the cyclist, the dogs, the snow, and all the damage to the crime scene that she couldn’t prevent. She felt she was babbling, but he listened carefully and nodded before turning to her. ‘I got a big bag of ice in the rucksack, it was the best I could do this time on a Sunday morning. The publican at the last crime scene helped me out.’
Kirsty led Gillard through a small scattering of bystanders and their short-leashed dogs, to within five yards of the body. It had been covered with a plastic dry-cleaning bag, weighted with a couple of stones. There was a small mound of snow nearby. But elsewhere, the underlying green of grass was visible through the slush. Only in the shadow of the trees, ten yards further on, was the snow still an unbroken white.
‘This is the best I could do,’ Kirsty said. ‘There was a tyre track and a partial footprint, which to me indicated someone stepping off the bike, very close to where the body was found.’ She knelt down, and with a gloved hand brushed the top of the snow mound away, revealing a large pizza box.
‘W
as this here?’ Gillard asked.
‘No. I found it in the bushes. But with the snow melting so fast, I needed something really well insulated. One of the dog owners grabbed a plasticised notice from the board over there, which was stiff enough to enable me to slide under and lift the whole section of snow into the box. I’ve no idea if it’s retained all the details, but it was the best I could manage under the circumstances.’
‘It’s ingenious,’ Gillard said. ‘I’m impressed.’ He could see that the box lid had been domed, to avoid touching the thick layer of snow within. ‘I’ll not open the lid, but I’ll rest it on the sack of ice until we can get it into somebody’s deep-freeze,’ he said.
‘There is a ranger’s house at the top of the hill,’ said the male dog walker, who was still keeping hold both of his own labrador and the boxer.
‘Has anyone been to the body?’ Gillard asked.
‘No. I thought—’
‘But you are absolutely sure she is dead?’ The question had a scaffolding of blame already built into it.
Kirsty nodded. ‘Her skull is… smashed. It was a savage attack.’ Her own voice seemed high, piping and wholly unconvincing. Gillard made his way over to the victim and knelt. He briefly lifted the edge of the translucent plastic bag, and confirmed what Kirsty had said.
The sound of the ambulance cut across the snowy fields behind them, and with it was a police patrol car. They made their way down the slushy grass towards them.
Kirsty watched as Gillard rapidly briefed the arriving officers and passed across the pizza box and the ice sack on which it was resting. A white police tent was brought from the boot of the patrol car, and two uniformed constables began to screen off the scene of the attack with blue and white tape.
Gillard then turned back to Kirsty. He seemed particularly interested in the cyclist whom Kirsty had described almost knocking her down. ‘Well, we’re still in the golden hour, which I’m sure you remember from your training.’
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