by Giles Ekins
‘OK. I’ll get Emma Cox and Brian Endcliffe, both DC’s, they’d be best, got good common sense, the pair of them.’
‘Good.’
As Terry left, Grace returned to the kitchen doorway, there was a momentarily blinding flash as the surgeon took a photograph before looking across to Grace.
‘Oh, hi. I’m Bagster, Dr Phillip Bagster the PS. You’re the SIO?’
‘DCI Swan. Grace Swan. Grace. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Dr Phil they call me, after some American TV show. Never heard of him myself. Anyway, nice to meet you too, pity it’s under such circumstances but that is what we do, right?’
Bagster turned back to the body as Terry returned and gave a nod to Grace to confirm that her instructions have been carried out.
‘Death is obviously confirmed, life is extinct,’ Bagster continued, ‘most likely blunt force trauma to the back of the head but the final cause of death will be confirmed at the post mortem.’
‘Time of death?’
‘Rigor has started in the eyelids and jaw, so I would suggest about three hours ago.I haven’t checked the body for lividity, but the Home Office pathologist will do so when they take control of the body.’
‘The Coroner’s office said it would be Erika Berger?’
‘Erika? Good, she’s one of the best’
Bagster finished his examination of the body, his only function to confirm that death had occurred. ‘Right, one of the response officers said there might be another body in the garage?
‘Yes, the son, David, states her mother might have hanged herself in there. The trouble is the garage door is electronic and apparently there’s only the one key fob. The son claims his mother must have taken the only key inside with her.’
‘No, even if it’s electronic, there should be a manual override,’ Terry interjected, ‘in case of a power cut or something. Usually there’s a keyhole, the lock pulls out to insert a crank handle, it’ll be located at the side or front of the garage, on the same side as the motor.’
‘OK, good. Let’s go and talk to the son and find out where this handle is.’
After removing and bagging up the forensic suits, they would put on fresh ones if they needed to return to the house, otherwise there could be cross-contamination of the scene. Preservation of the scene is the priority element of any investigation.
David Jarrett sat in the back of one of the police cars, playing a game on his iPhone. Grace slid in beside him, Terry stood outside by the open car door, bending down so he could listen to the conversation. David looked up briefly at Grace but did not stop playing, his thumbs flicking rapidly back and forth across the screen as he shot down invading monsters.
‘David? David Jarrett, I’m Detective Chief Inspector Grace Swan. May I talk to you for a moment?’
Reluctantly, David stopped his game, but only after playing for another 10 seconds, just to make his point. ‘Yeah?’
‘Firstly David, I am sorry to confirm that your father Donald is dead.’
‘Yeah, thought he must be.’
‘When you made your 999 call and when you spoke to the response officers, you said that your mother must have hanged herself in the garage. Why did you say that?’
David sniffed loudly and thought for a moment, ‘Dunno really, but it just seemed so obvious at the time. I mean she wasn’t in the house, the garage key wasn’t there and so what else could it be? And I was in shock I suppose, said the first thing that came into my head. Look, I don’t want to talk about it anymore, right? I’m upset, can’t get my head round things, you know what I mean?’
‘All right, I understand but we will have to have another talk later, probably tomorrow.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Just one last thing. Does the garage door have a manual override? There is a key hole at the side, there should be a manual handle or crank to open the garage door when there‘s a power cut. Do you know where it is?’
‘Not offhand, but there is a small key in the wooden bowl on the hall table, that’s where we put car keys, the garage and the alarm remotes, stuff like that. Wondered what it was for, p’raps that’s it.’
‘Very good, David…’
‘Don’t fucking patronise me, I’m not a kid.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t intend to.’
‘Yeah, whatever.’
‘What about a handle or crank, do you know where that might be?’
‘The only place I can think of is the cupboard under the stairs, Donald keeps, kept, a white plastic box with tools and stuff, most likely in there I should think.’
Having found the key and crank handle as suggested, one of the uniforms inserted the handle into the socket and began to turn it. With a groan of protest the door slowly creaked open until it was raised about three feet. Grace called a halt, not wanting the whole world and his dog to see what was inside and then she and Terry slid underneath the door and into the garage.
Hanging from the roof beams was the body of a woman.
Thirteen
It was late by the time Grace left the Jarrett’s house and headed for home. A Peter Gabriel CD was softly playing in the audio system, but she wasn’t listening, the events of the day were surging around in her mind like film on a loop.
Once out of West Garside, she joined the A629 and then the A61 going south. Both roads were relatively traffic free and she was quickly through the centre of Sheffield and onto Abbeydale Road South. Opposite Dore and Totley train station Grace turned up Dore Road and into Dore village. Fieldview Grove was off Church Lane and her house, number 6, was at the end of the cul-de-sac.
She did not immediately get out of the car but simply sat there, dog tired and mentally drained, reviewing all her actions at the murder scene, ensuring she had followed every homicide procedure correctly. Although Grace had attained PIP level III, she had only twice acted as SIO on murder enquiry and was determined to get it right. As she had on the two previous enquiries.
Guidelines and strategies for the investigation of homicides are given in the Murder Investigation Manual, a document of more than 300 pages produced by the Association of Chief Police Officers. Accordingly, as SIO, she had to stay on the scene until she was satisfied that all initial investigation procedures had been satisfactorily carried out.
She had to coordinate with SOCO, the Scene of Crime Officers, ensure the scene and potential evidence were preserved . Every inch of the murder scene in the kitchen and the apparent suicide in the garage, as well as the rest of the house was photographed and videoed and the garden and surrounding area subject to a finger-tip search. All computers, phones, iPads in the house had to be bagged and removed, as were letters and utility bills.
She gave the instructions for extensive house to house enquiries and for CCTV cameras in the vicinity to be scrutinised for signs of unusual activity such as cars speeding away from the area or parked suspicious vehicles. She delegated Terry Horton as D/SIO, to ensure that her instructions were carried out to the fullest.
Re -entering the crime scene, Grace and Terry made a preliminary assessment what type of homicide it appeared to be, no assumptions could be made based on first impressions. The Manual classifies homicide into Domestic Homicide, Homicide in the course of other crimes, Gang Homicide, Confrontation Homicide, Jealously/Revenge and five other types. All that Grace and Terry could do at this stage was provisionally eliminate the more obvious categories, such as Racial violence, Sexual attack or Gang murder.
‘It looks like a domestic, but we can’t rule out a botched burglary, jealously or revenge,’ said Grace, speaking more to herself than stating the patronisingly obvious to Terry, who nodded in agreement.
‘Whoever did it, Grace, hit him with a lot of anger. He must have seriously pissed somebody off. there’s a dozen or more blows to his head, but I agree, it does look like a domestic.’
‘Open mind, Terry, open minds,’ she chided gently, but with a smile.
‘Yeah, I know, just saying.’
&n
bsp; They were joined by Erika Berger, the Home Office pathologist.
‘Hi, I’m Erika Berger, and this is Keith, my assistant.’
Erika , Terry surmised, was in her fifties, about 5’5’’, blonde from what could be seen of her hair from under the hood of her forensic protection suit and exuded steady professional demeanour as she set about examining the body. She carefully lifted his hands to check for trace material such as skin scrapings scratched from his attacker. The hands were then bagged in polythene bags to preserve any evidence. The bloody hammer was then carefully lifted and bagged.
Like the Dr Phil before her, she lifted Donald’s eyelids and manipulated his jawbone, assessing the extent of rigor mortis.
Body temperature and ambient temperature of the kitchen were recorded and then Erika, avoiding the pool of blood on the floor, knelt under the table, lifted Donald’s trousers legs and checked the extent of lividity. When Donald Jarrett died, his heart stopped pumping blood through his body, the blood then settled to the lowest extremities of the body. From what she could see, Erika was reasonably certain that he had died where he sat.
Erika next examined the body hanging in the garage, presumed to be that of Janet Jarrett.
Close to the body was a 4’0’’ stepladder, lying on its side. Further over, towards the door of the garage, they saw a small blue and grey remote-control fob.
It looked as though Janet had entered the garage, closed the floor behind her, tossing the fob to the floor as though she no longer required it. She then tied the noose to one of the roof joists, climbed the step ladder, put the noose about her neck and then kicked the ladder away.
That was what it looked like, but for Grace, and every other police officer, suspicious deaths are always considered as murder until proved otherwise, ‘Think murder’ was the creed every investigating officer had to follow.
The Coroner’s office was informed, and permission given to remove the bodies. The bodies were bagged in body bags and driven away to the Medico-Legal Centre in Sheffield. 16 miles away.
This was because the mortuary at the hospital in West Garside did not have the same specialist advanced technology as the Medico-Legal Centre. It was here that Erika Berger would conduct the autopsies.
The yellow nylon rope used by Janet Jarrett to supposedly hang herself had to be preserved for forensic examination. The rope, with a ready tied noose had apparently been tossed over a roof joist, adjusted for length and then tied to the joist. That knot was also critical evidence so a 19” section of the joist was cut away with the knot intact and a piece of 4” x 2” nailed in its place.
Grace had been at the scene for more than ten hours before she finally felt able to leave and head for home; to catch a few hours’ sleep before the first case briefing at 8,30 am the following morning.
Weary to her bones Grace finally got out of the car and slowly made her up to her front door and stepped inside.
Fourteen
The house was dark and quiet. Grace switched on the table lamp that stood on a sideboard just inside the hallway, blinking in the sudden light as shadows dance across the polished wood floor.
‘Hello, hi there,’ she said.
‘Hello love, you’re late. Bad day?’
‘Shitty in the extreme, thank you, Gary, the absolute pinnacle of shitiness. Two bodies, husband and wife, murder/suicide or murder/murder, I’m not sure at this moment but it is a bad one and I’m shattered. What I really need is a bath, a long hot bath and a very large vodka and tonic.’
‘I’ll get it for you if you like, I am, as you know, the world’s leading authority on the mixing of vodka and tonic,’
‘No, it’s OK thanks, I’ll get it and then it’s that bath. A long soak with lots of sweetly smelling bubbles, get rid of the stink of death.’
‘You want me to scrub your back?’
‘You’re on.’
‘And your front as well?’
‘Now you’re talking, Gary’
But there was no Gary. Gary was dead, dead from a sudden heart attack. All the words were inside her head. She picked up a framed photograph from the sideboard, the photograph of a man smiling into the camera. Grace blew him a kiss to him and put the photograph back. ‘Good night, Gary, God Bless, Sleep tight, my darling.’
Fifteen
In West Garside, DS Terry Horton had also reached home. He was 35 years old, with a full head of silver hair and very pale skin, 5.9’’ tall but with the broad shoulders, chest and muscular arms of a weight-lifter, or rather ex weight-lifter, having popped a cartilage in his right knee whilst attempting a clean and jerk that was too heavy for him. He now only occasionally used a gym, preferring to run along the riverbank paths near his apartment on Redemption Island, a mile-long finger of an island located in the now ‘gentrified’ old industrial heart of the town.
After his amicable divorce, Terry bought a two-bedroomed apartment on the third floor of the converted Tyzack’s Metalworks. Although the rooms were small, he had a roof terrace overlooking the river Gar, which had once been foul-smelling and putrid from industrial waste, but now was cleansed and clear. From his terrace, he had once spotted a kingfisher perched on the willows that lined the riverbank and he had read that further along the river, a pair of otters had been spotted. How wonderful was that?
He parked his car in his allotted space and took the stairs up to his flat. He had a quick shower, made up a cheese and tomato sandwich on artisan bread bought from a local bakery drank a bottle of ’Redemption,’ an IPA beer from a nearby craft brewery and then went to bed, falling asleep almost as his head touched the pillow. It had been a long day.
Sixteen
The West Garside Police had previously been housed in Endeavour House in West Garside town centre. Constructed in 1928, it was a brick and stone purpose-built police station on four stories with cast-iron columns and beams, small casement windows, slow elevators, poor ventilation and insufficient toilet facilities.
Almost as soon it was built, it proved inadequate for purpose, with cramped quarters, limited parking and insufficient storage for the mountain of paperwork that a police investigation generates. However, it was not until 2011 that the authorities finally recognised that Endeavour House was no longer suitable for modern policing and new premises were constructed on a riverside site located off the dual carriageway leading to the industrial estates.
Concordia Court was designed by an award-winning architect, a gleaming 3 storey vision of glass, white marble and stainless steel, energy efficient to LEED Gold standard, light bright and airy and almost universally hated by those working there and many wished they were still housed in Endeavour House, despite its inadequacies.
Also, Endeavour House was close to ‘The Mulberry, ’ a pub on Mulberry Street which had been the watering hole for West Garside coppers for eighty years, whereas the nearest pub to Concordia Court was a car ride away, another (major) cause of dissatisfaction,
But for Grace, the new building was ideal.
She had arranged with the Office Manager for a MIR (Major Incident Room) as well as an adjacent briefing room, As the investigation progressed, the numbers at the daily briefings could increase, attendees might include Crime Scene Managers, SOCO’s, blood spatter and DNA analysts, Office Manager, Scientific Support, Search Coordinator, Behavioural Investigative Advisers, Press Officer or Community Awareness Specialist, upwards of fifty officers could be working on the case, but for this first briefing Grace kept the numbers limited to the initial investigative team as suggested by Terry Horton and agreed with the Office Manager and would be held in the briefing room.
Grace hated lateness in others but found herself running late. She had risen at 6am, showered, ate two slices of buttered wholemeal toast, drank a glass of orange juice and two cups of M & S instant coffee and set out in what she thought was ample time.
However, the traffic through Sheffield town centre had been brutal with hold-ups by St Mary’s Gate, road works on Penistone Road reduced traffic
to a crawl and an endless line of heavily laden trucks and lorries on the A629 slowed her even further. It was nearly 8.40 by the time she finally made her entrance into the MIR.
‘Apologies, everybody, for keeping you waiting but I hope you’ve had time to bring yourselves up to speed on this case’, pointing to the three whiteboards behind her. Photographs of the face and bodies of Donald and Janet Jarrett were posted on separate boards whilst the third board showed photos of the scene, a map of the area together with sketch layouts of the kitchen and the garage. Terry Horton had been busy setting all of this up and she nodded her thanks to him.
‘OK, people, let’s get to it. For the record, I am DCI Grace Swan, on temporary detachment from Sheffield CID following the unfortunate death of DCI George Chatham. So, for the records, please identify yourselves.’
DS Terence Horton’
‘Thank you, Terry.’
‘DS Fred Burbage, ma’am.’
Burbage was in his late fifties but looked older, his once ginger hair had thinned out to straggling lengths which he vainly brushed over the top of his head in a comb-over. He was wearing a grey flannel shirt with the top button missing, so that his tie, a dark red with white diamond motif and what looked like egg yolk, hung loose about his neck and it was doubtful if his grey woollen suit had been pressed since the millennium. He looked a mess, but according to Terry Horton he was a good detective, very precise in his record keeping, belying his scruffy appearance.
‘DC Emma Cox, good to meet you, ma’am.’
Emma was 27, a moon-faced, size 20 brunette with a ready smile and easy manner, comfortable in her size and appearance. She was wearing a pink sweater with a V neck, pink trousers, pink trainers and pink nail-varnish and a more intimate examination would have revealed that her underwear was also pink. Looking at her, Fred Burbage idly wondered if she even dyed her pubic hair pink?
