“Thanks,” he said. “Anything useful?”
“Not much,” she replied. “There’s the bag and the camera equipment. Obviously we’ll dust those, check if there’s any DNA. You never know, there might be more than just the victim’s fingerprints on them, but I doubt it.”
Johnny nodded. “You think this is a suicide after all?”
Gail shook her head. “That’s not what I’m saying. I just think that if somebody did throw her off the cliff, they knew what they were doing. They took care to cover their tracks. There was only one route through the grass to the spot where her coat was. If there was a killer, he was clever enough to follow the same path she took.”
“You photographed it?” he asked.
“I thought I wouldn’t bother,” Gail replied. “Couldn’t see the point.”
Johnny gave her a look.
She laughed. “Of course I bloody have, Johnny. What d’you take me for? It’ll all be up on your board in Lesley’s office by the end of the afternoon.”
He smiled at her. Gail was alright, despite the gossip about her and her ex-husband that Dennis liked to allude to.
He heard footsteps approaching from behind: Mike.
Johnny turned. “Any joy?”
Mike looked as downcast as Johnny felt. “Nothing mate. No one saw anything. No strange cars, no individuals they didn’t recognise, and nobody seems to have seen Ameena Khan herself. Everybody around here shuts their curtains all night, keeps them closed, doesn’t get up until eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Lucky bastards,” Johnny said, thinking of his own hours, which were about to get worse after his wife gave birth.
“OK.” He turned to Gail. “Let’s hope you find something useful on that camera.”
“Like I say,” she told him, “I’m not holding out much hope. See you back at the office, yeah?” She got into the van and drove away.
Johnny looked at Mike. “I’m going up there,” he said.
“Up to the cliff top?”
“Where else?”
“But the CSIs have finished up there.”
“I want to look at it myself.”
“You want to get a feel for how it happened. Stand up there yourself.”
Johnny shrugged. He knew that wasn’t the real reason he was going up there and so did Mike, but neither of them were about to say it.
“You coming?” he asked.
“Might as well,” Mike replied. “Maybe I can get some insight too.”
Johnny grunted, knowing that Mike had his own reasons for going up there as well.
They walked along the path in silence. The sea on one side, tangled hedges on the other. Eventually the hedges disappeared and they were on the headland, approaching Old Harry Rocks. In front of them was the promontory leading to the rocks. To the right, the coastal path, across Ballard Down and onwards towards Swanage.
Johnny took the turn towards the spot where Ameena Khan’s coat and camera gear had been left. As he reached it, he cast around the area to see if he could spot the path in the grass that Gail had talked about. But it was gone. He couldn’t tell where Ameena had been when she’d been pushed off.
“Poor woman,” he breathed, looking out to sea. “Horrible way to die.”
Mike nodded. He pulled his jacket off and slung it over his shoulder. “Terrifying.”
“Do you think she knew?” Johnny asked. “That someone was about to throw her off? How long d’you think she had?”
Mike shrugged. “We’ll probably never know. It might have been sudden, might not.”
“She came here under her own steam though,” Johnny said. “She wasn’t brought here.”
“That’s not what the evidence suggests.”
Johnny plunged his hands into his pockets. He turned away from Mike and carried on along the cliff edge, towards Swanage. After a short while, he came to the point where the coastal path met the Purbeck Way, which went inland. He stopped.
He turned towards the sea and stared out, not saying anything. Mike stood next to him doing the same.
After a few moments, Johnny let out a long sigh. “We’d best get back to the office.”
“Best had,” replied Mike. He looked down, towards the hidden rocks below them. “You’re thinking about Mackie.”
This was the spot where DCI Mackie had thrown himself off the cliff four months earlier.
Johnny had been up here a few times since. First when it had been a crime scene. Again, after it had been concluded that Mackie killed himself. Finally, and more than once, to attempt to exorcise his own demons.
“Poor bugger,” he said. “What must it be like to get that desperate?”
Mike shivered. “No idea, mate.”
Johnny turned towards his colleague, facing back the way they’d come. DCI Mackie had the same views on suicide as most police officers. They knew what it meant to clear up the mess. They knew about the coastguard guys, the car or train drivers. The paramedics. Not to mention the family.
He knew that no copper would do that, unless they were truly desperate.
Mackie had retired in January. A retirement that he’d served his time for, one that he’d looked forward to. He’d joked about how he’d fill his time when the rest of them were still working cases, how little he’d miss them. He’d been cheerful about it.
So why had he killed himself?
“Come on,” said Mike. “We need to get back. Let them know we found nothing on the door to door.”
Johnny nodded. “And I’ve got the post-mortem.”
Mike’s face darkened. “That’ll be fun.”
“Too right,” said Johnny, as they walked back towards the car.
Chapter Ten
Lesley headed down the echoing stairs of the law firm, pondering what she’d just seen and heard.
Harry Nevin had been cagey. Despite agreeing to hand over the files, there had been an air of defiance about him, a sense that he was hiding something. She hoped the files would shed light on it. And as she’d left the offices, she’d noticed people looking at her nervously. Like they all knew what she was there for, and they weren’t happy about it. Of course Ameena Khan’s death tainted their reaction to her presence, but she’d felt like there was an extra edge to the atmosphere as she’d walked through the open plan office. Something more than grief, more than shock. Something akin to deception.
As she walked away from the building, she heard a voice behind her. “Excuse me!”
Lesley turned, patting herself down. Had she left something behind? A phone, her notepad? She wasn’t carrying a bag.
A young black woman ran out of the office door. She wore a bright pink jacket over grey trousers and looked smart and efficient.
“You’re looking for me?”
The woman nodded. She looked towards the windows of the law firm. “You’re the detective working on Ameena’s case?”
“DCI Clarke. Who are you?”
“My name’s Sam, I’m Ameena’s PA.” Her eyes lowered. “Or I was, I s’pose.” She clutched herself, as if suddenly realising that her boss was dead.
“Have you got something you want to tell me?” Lesley asked her.
People pushed past them on either side. The street was busying up now; they weren’t far from the main shops.
The woman, Sam, looked back at her, her eyes full of worry. “What did he tell you, Mr Nevin? What did he say?”
“That’s confidential, I’m afraid. Why? What do you expect him to have told me?”
The woman’s brow furrowed. “No, sorry. It’s alright. You don’t need me to bother you.” She turned away.
Lesley put out her hand and touched the woman’s arm, anxious not to grab her in the middle of the street.
She didn’t want her to get away. Nobody ran after a police officer if they didn’t have something important to tell them.
“Do you have information about Ameena?”
The woman froze, her back to Lesley. She raised her head slowly,
looking up at the windows of her employers. She turned to Lesley, her face wary.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
Lesley stepped towards her. “Come with me.” She ushered the woman towards the building, where they couldn’t be seen from above.
As they walked, Sam’s gaze kept flicking up to the first floor.
“Are you scared?” Lesley asked her. “Is there something I need to know?”
Sam shook her head. “No. Not scared. Just…”
Lesley cocked her head. “Just what?”
“He won’t send you all the files,” the woman said.
“Sorry?”
“You’ve asked him for Ameena’s files, haven’t you? You’ve asked him what cases she was working on.”
Lesley looked back at the woman. “Yes.”
“Look, I watch the TV shows, I know how it works. A lawyer dies, a criminal lawyer. You want to know who her clients are, you want to know if anybody’s pissed off with her, if there’s someone whose case she’s lost, someone who might want to kill her.”
“We’re not certain that it is a murder,” Lesley said. “It might just be accidental death.”
Sam looked into Lesley’s face. Her nostrils flared. There was certainty in her eyes.
“What do you know, Sam? You can tell me in confidence.”
She shook her head. “All I can tell you is he won’t send you everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’ll send you a bunch of files, they might not even be Ameena’s. But it won’t be everything, and it won’t be what you need.”
“In that case, can you tell me what I need?” Lesley’s impatience was growing.
Sam jerked away. She looked towards the front door of the building. A man emerged, dressed in a tight-fitting grey suit. Sam pulled Lesley around the side of the building.
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “I just want you to know that you need to look further.”
“If there are important files or an important case that I need to know about, then you need to tell me what it is.”
“Sorry, no. Client confidentiality.”
“This is a police investigation, Miss…?”
“Chaston. Sam Chaston.”
“Miss Chaston, this is a police investigation. I’m sure—”
“I’d lose my job.”
“You won’t lose your job for helping the police with a legitimate inquiry.”
Sam looked back up at the building. She was rubbing her arms, shivering despite the heat of the day.
“I can’t tell you, I just want you to know to look further.”
Lesley pulled her card out of her pocket and handed it over.
“If you decide you want to tell me more, you call me, day or night. It’s important.”
The woman nodded. She grabbed the card, folded it up into a tiny square and pushed it inside her blouse. She gave Lesley a final look and hurried away.
Lesley followed her around the side of the building and watched her enter.
The PA shook herself out as she went inside, as if to purge herself of the conversation that she’d just had with the detective.
Lesley looked up at the first-floor windows. There was something going on with this law firm, something that could be relevant to Ameena’s death. Nobody inside was telling her.
But what Harry Nevin didn’t know was that Lesley had someone on the inside.
Chapter Eleven
Johnny stood a few steps behind the pathologist, anxious not to get in the way. Classical music blared from a speaker sitting on a sideboard beyond the bench where the body was laid out.
Dr Whittaker looked at him, an eyebrow raised. “Good of you to arrive on time,” he said.
Johnny shrugged. It wasn’t exactly difficult to arrive on time for one of Dr Whittaker’s post-mortems. The man seemed to take hours, if not days, to work himself up to a stage where he would deign to examine a body.
“I’m glad I got here on time, too,” he said. “I can observe.”
“You’re not going up throw up on me, are you?” the pathologist sneered.
Johnny had done plenty of these. As a DC for eight years, he’d attended dozens of post-mortems. He’d seen far worse than this. Bodies bloated from water, scarred by fire. Bodies so decomposed they were barely recognisable as human.
Ameena Khan’s body was intact, her injuries relatively mild. Her torso was blotched by black, red and yellow bruising. Her face had been smashed in on one side, and her arms had bruises running all the way down the skin.
Other than that, she looked peaceful. Lying on the table, eyes closed, arms to her sides. She hadn’t been opened up yet and looked much as she would have done when the coastguard had dragged her off the rocks below the cliff.
The speaker switched to another track. Johnny glanced at it.
“You don’t approve?” said Dr Whittaker. “The music, you think it’s too light?”
The music didn’t sound light at all to Johnny. He shook his head.
“Fingal’s Cave,” the pathologist told him. “It felt appropriate. Helps me concentrate.”
He looked at the body. “Let’s start on external injuries. We don’t need to open her up just yet.”
Johnny looked down at Ameena. It felt like a violation, what they were about to do to her, the more so given that the injuries sustained in her death had barely broken the skin. The only external bleeding was on her left cheek, which had been smashed open. Johnny hoped the pathologist would be able to tell if it had been smashed by the rocks or by an assailant.
Whittaker took a step towards the body and placed his fingers on her forehead.
“Hmm,” he said. “So her face… significant bruising to the left cheek, lacerations along the jawbone and the skin is broken in…” He paused, muttering to himself. “Three places.” He nodded to an assistant who stood at the other end of the table making notes.
“Do you think somebody hit her?” Johnny said. “The injuries on her face?”
Whittaker moved her head from side to side, peering at the wounds. “They look consistent with her falling face first onto the rocks,” he said. “Jagged scarring.”
He squinted. “And there are fragments of rock embedded in the skin.”
Johnny nodded. He got his own notebook out of his pocket and made a note. Fragments of rock. Significant bruising, sustained when she fell.
Whittaker shifted his attention to the woman’s chest. Again, there was significant bruising. Like an abstract painting. Swathes of red, yellow, brown and black peppered her skin.
Whittaker traced his fingers along the edges of the bruises, pushing up the skin. Johnny wasn’t sure why. Maybe the skin would change colour with pressure?
“Hmm,” Whittaker said, “Bit harder to tell on dark-skinned victims.” He looked at Johnny. “But believe it or not, they bruise the same as you and me.”
Johnny felt his upper lip curling. He tried to imagine what the DCI would say if she was standing here. He swallowed and said nothing. Wimp.
Whittaker bent over the woman’s body, examining her chest. “No sign of any stones or rocks here,” he said. “But then her clothes would have protected her.”
He looked up at Johnny. “I assume your forensic people have the clothes?”
Johnny nodded. He had no idea what the forensics guys had, but he knew that if the clothes were available, they would be examining them. Gail and her team ran a tight ship.
“Here,” Whittaker said. “The pattern of this bruising is also consistent with it being sustained when she fell on the rocks. All of the bruising is to her front, nothing on her back. I imagine she fell headfirst and landed face down.” He raised an eyebrow. “Do you know how the coastguard found her?”
Johnnie nodded. “Face down.” That was all he had been told, but it was enough.
Whittaker lifted one of the woman’s arms. “However,” he said, “her arms aren’t consistent with that hypothesis. She’s got bruising here to the
upper arm, both sides.”
Johnny felt himself perk up. “Inflicted by an attacker?”
Whittaker looked at him. “Top of the class to you, boy. Yes, look at this.” He raised Ameena’s right arm, lifting it so that her hand pointed towards the ceiling. “See this bruising here.”
Johnny moved around the doctor to get a better view. He could hear the pathologist’s assistant shuffling out of the way, but his gaze was focused on the victim.
Sure enough, there were distinct bruises on her upper arm. Three small circles, all areas of darkened skin.
“Somebody held on to her very tightly,” the pathologist said. “She’s got bruising consistent with being restrained. Lifted, maybe. Finger-marks. I can only see three on this arm.”
He dropped the arm abruptly. Johnny jumped at the sound of it hitting the table. Whittaker moved around to the other side and examined her other arm.
“Yes, we have four here. Consistent with somebody gripping her arm from behind.”
Dr Whittaker dropped Ameena’s arm and reached out to Johnny. He grabbed his arm to demonstrate. “See?” He let go.
“So they lifted her and threw her over the cliff?” Johnny rubbed his arm.
Whittaker looked at him. “I’m a pathologist, man, not a clairvoyant.”
Johnny held the pathologist’s gaze, determined not to be cowed by this man. Whittaker was lazy and slow. He was a decent enough pathologist, but Johnny imagined that the DCI had worked with better.
Johnny, on the other hand, was an experienced detective. He knew how to do a job properly, and he knew when to turn up on time.
He straightened. “So you’re saying it wasn’t an accident?”
Whittaker nodded. “Nor suicide. Somebody definitely pushed this woman off the cliff.”
Chapter Twelve
Ameena Khan’s camera was wet, but not so wet that it was ruined.
Gail had taken it apart and removed the SD card. She’d also taken out the battery, which was leaking. Last night, she’d placed the camera and SD card in the kit they used for drying electrical items out: a ziplock bag containing silica and other chemicals designed to dry without causing further damage.
The Clifftop Murders (Dorset Crime Book 2) Page 5
