by Adam Croft
Wendy wondered whether she would ever consider herself to be fully healed. The scars ran deeper than the one on the side of her neck, just below the collar line. She looked at Xav, then leant over and kissed him on the forehead.
4
Gwen O’Connell loved living on Hollybush Lane. It was quiet, serene and tranquil. She’d always lived in the countryside, and loved being outdoors. She was fortunate to only work part-time now, so she could spend five days of the week pottering in the garden or taking walks along the local footpaths, of which there were plenty.
Her favourite route was to go through the gate at the edge of the layby almost opposite the end of her drive, skirt up the edge of the field and then walk down the river towards the village, before heading back up the hill to Hollybush Lane. It was a walk she did early every morning with Bessie, her golden retriever. Sometimes, if the weather was nice, she’d do it again in the evening, after dinner. It was about two miles in total, and Gwen credited her relatively good health to the walking and gardening, which she enjoyed in equal measure.
She told Bessie to sit as she opened the gate at the end of her front path, the same as she did every morning. Bessie knew the routine, and would often sit before Gwen had even told her to. There were rarely any cars passing by here, and if there were she’d have heard them coming up the gravel track long before they reached this point, but she knew it was good practice to teach dogs to only cross the road when told. She couldn’t bear to think of Bessie being harmed.
Her husband, David, had taken their previous dog, Alfie, to the vet when it became clear he’d reached the end of his life. Gwen couldn’t bring herself to go into that cold, soulless building for such an intimate moment. She’d far preferred to say her goodbyes to Alfie in the comfort of his own home. She didn’t think she was being selfish — she just didn’t want to remember him in that place.
Alfie had never been the same after being hit by a cyclist in the village about three years before he died, and many of his health problems likely stemmed from that incident. Although she knew no dog would be around forever, Gwen wasn’t taking any chances with Bessie. Bessie was her friend and her companion — the only one she had while David was working away.
She led Bessie across the road, and they walked side by side for ten or fifteen yards until they reached the layby. Gwen walked over to the small gate, as she did each morning, unlatched it and pushed it open against its springs to let Bessie through. This morning, though, Bessie wasn’t playing ball.
Gwen looked over at the dog and called her name, but got no response. Bessie was sniffing at the undergrowth near the turnstile. Gwen knew this area like the back of her hand — every flower, every bush, every divot in the footpaths — and something didn’t look quite right to her. The undergrowth looked like it had been disturbed, and there was a patch where the ivy and bracken was loose, although it had been pulled back over the ground after being lifted.
Bessie let out a single bark, then started digging in the mud underneath the foliage.
‘Bessie. Stop. Come here,’ Gwen shouted, hoping the tone of her voice would be enough to catch Bessie’s attention, but it wasn’t.
She walked over to Bessie and took hold of her collar, pulling her away from where she’d been digging.
It was then that she noticed the chequered shirt sleeve sticking out of the undergrowth.
5
It wasn’t often that Jack Culverhouse wished he did internet shopping, but he could more or less be guaranteed that feeling each week when he stepped into the local supermarket.
He watched the Tesco and Ocado lorries parking up on his street, delivering to his neighbours, and wondered how much easier it actually was. Either way, it had to be better than trying to navigate his way past the prams and pushchairs as little old ladies clattered their shopping trolleys into his ankles at every turn. Sometimes he wondered if it’d be easier to starve.
If he was working long shifts, he’d make use of the supermarket’s twenty-four-hour opening and get his shopping done at five o’clock in the morning before heading in, or past midnight once he was finished. On his days off, though, he tended to brave the hordes during the mid-morning rush. It was a case of having to. He wasn’t going to force himself to get up at half four or stay up past midnight if his work didn’t dictate it. Fortunately for him, today was one of those days when he was forced to get up early.
He’d lain awake for much of the night worrying about Emily. Not only was she out at all hours with no explanation as to where she’d been, but she was always perfectly bright and chirpy when she got in. That was probably a good sign, of course, but it worried Jack that there was no sense of remorse or indication that she recognised she’d worried him.
She was a teenager, he told himself. They don’t have those levels of understanding yet. He was, no doubt, the same when he was her age. But that didn’t stop him from feeling angry about it. The anger, though, was dampened by the shock and upset of seeing the marks on Emily’s forearm last night.
The marks he’d noticed a few months back were old scars, and he’d chosen not to bring the subject up. These ones, however, were fresh. How could he sit back and not say anything now? A history of self-harm was one thing; Emily had been through some traumatic experiences and had had a tough childhood. He could blame himself for that one. Digging up the past wouldn’t help anyone. But these marks were new. This was the here and now. Although Emily seemed bright and happy enough, something was clearly troubling her on a deeper level.
He’d thought about how he might broach the subject with her; what he’d say, how he’d begin the conversation. His main worry was how she’d react. He couldn’t risk her freaking out and disappearing on him or wanting to go to her mum’s. Helen had problems enough of her own to deal with, without having Emily land on her doorstep. Besides which, Helen had barely shown the slightest interest in looking after Emily for the past few years, choosing instead to palm her only child off onto her own parents while she disappeared off into the night.
Jack tried to hide his frustration as a young woman barged her trolley in front of him, just as he was reaching for a shelf. He bit down on his lip to stop himself from yelling an obscenity at her.
‘Unbelievable, isn’t it?’ a voice said from just over his right shoulder. ‘Makes you wonder how anyone gets anywhere in life with manners like that.’
Culverhouse grunted and nodded slightly, acknowledging the woman who’d spoken to him. She wasn’t looking back at him, but was checking the ripeness of the mangos as she popped three of them into a see-through plastic bag and put them in her basket.
‘Smoothies,’ she said. ‘I find they wake me up far quicker than my morning coffee used to.’
‘Never tried one,’ he replied, strangely drawn to the fact that someone was actually making polite small talk in the supermarket rather than racing around the aisles as if nobody else existed.
‘You should. It’s easy. You just need a juicer. They do them in here for about thirty quid. They’re by the greetings cards. Christ knows why.’
‘Probably the same person who thought it was a good idea to put the bacon in one aisle, and the cooked ham four aisles further down.’
‘Ah. Health and safety, that’ll be. Cooked and uncooked meats.’
‘What’s the point? They’ll still end up inches apart in my fridge anyway. How bloody big do they think my kitchen is?’
The woman laughed. ‘I’m Chrissie.’
‘Jack.’
‘I imagine you enjoy the supermarket run as much as I do, Jack.’
‘If you’re fantasising about having red hot needles jabbed into your eyeballs right now, you’re probably about halfway there.’
She smiled and continued up the aisle, grabbing a bunch of bananas and some apples as Jack followed her. ‘I tried online shopping once but it wasn’t for me,’ she said. ‘I needed thirty-five millilitres of white wine vinegar for a recipe. Ended up ordering thirty-five bottles of white wine.
’
‘Sounds like a pretty convenient mistake to me,’ Jack replied.
‘It does, doesn’t it? Except I wasn’t as far wrong as I thought. The vinegar would’ve tasted better, as it happens. So, what brings you to the supermarket at such an ungodly hour? Actually, no, don’t tell me. It’s not going to be good news either way. It’s either alcoholism, a pig of a job or insomnia. Or all three, in my case.’ She laughed, letting Jack know she was mostly joking.
‘I can relate to that,’ he said.
‘You’re not married, then, I’m guessing? Don’t see many married men in supermarkets at this time of day.’
‘No. Well, I was.’ He didn’t go into the details as to how technically he was still married, but to a woman he’d seen two or three times in ten years.
‘Probably for the best, if you’re anything like me. I was with someone for almost nine years before he decided he couldn’t deal with my work schedule. Nice, that, isn’t it?’ She smiled, and Jack could see she genuinely wasn’t bitter. She seemed to have this boundless confidence and optimism; a sense that life goes on. C’est la vie. Besides which, he knew exactly what she meant. He was fairly sure she probably wasn’t a copper — at least not in this neck of the woods — but sensed she didn’t want to talk about her job.
‘So. Jack. I don’t normally do this. I promise. But I don’t suppose you want to swap numbers, do you? No pressure or anything. I just thought maybe if our pain in the arse jobs allowed us to share an hour or two off, we might have a drink together. Chew the fat over our shared love of supermarkets.’
He had to admit he liked her attitude and sense of humour. She had the sort of dry wit he admired. But something was holding him back. He certainly hadn’t had the best of luck with women, particularly not recently. He’d flirted with the idea of a dating app on his phone a few months back, but had quickly discovered the only women of his age who were single were either spinsters who’d never had a partner for more than three weeks or makeup-plastered women whose previous sixteen husbands had all died.
He was about to think of an excuse — or a false mobile number — when his work phone rang. He fished it out of his jacket pocket and answered it. He knew it wasn’t going to be good news.
‘Yeah?’
The officer on the other end introduced herself. ‘Sir, we’ve got an incident that needs CID involvement. Human remains found buried in some undergrowth near Middlebrook. We don’t know much more at the moment, but it doesn’t look as though it’s historic.’
‘Right. Email me the details. I’ll be there in half an hour. Sorry,’ he said, to Chrissie. ‘Going to have to pay for this lot and dash off. Work calls.’
She smiled, and he could see she was perfectly at ease. ‘Not to worry. Maybe we’ll bump into each other another time. If you haven’t discovered online shopping by then. It’s not all bad, but steer clear of the white wine.’
Jack let out a chuckle, then fished a scrap of paper from his trouser pocket. ‘Here,’ he said, writing his personal mobile number on it before handing it to her. ‘If you’ve still got any of that cheap plonk left, I’m game.’
6
Jack Culverhouse parked his car on Hollybush Lane and walked the remaining thirty or so yards to the crime scene. It was a sad indictment of the realities of his job that his foremost concern at that moment in time was whether he’d put the milk in the fridge when trying to jettison his shopping at home.
He flashed his ID badge at the officers on the edge of the cordon and donned the requisite white forensics suit, the scene having already been sealed off. It was customary for the chief investigating officer to direct proceedings even before that stage, but public areas sometimes had to be treated differently.
The scene had to be sealed off and preserved at the earliest possible opportunity, to minimise the risk of contamination, and in this case there had to be road closures, too. It was all about preserving evidence and minimising the risk of an upstart brief trying to get his client off the hook at any future trial by opening up the possibility of contaminated evidence.
‘What’s the SP?’ Culverhouse asked as he zipped up his white plastic oversuit.
‘The woman who lives there,’ the officer said, pointing to the house they were parked outside, ‘Mrs Gwendoline O’Connell, was out walking her dog. The dog started digging in the undergrowth and found an arm. She tried to get the dog to stop, but it started tugging at the arm. She says she was afraid of getting too close to it, and by the time she managed to get the dog away, it was pretty clear there was a whole body there. She’s inside with a couple of my colleagues.’
Culverhouse nodded and walked a little closer towards the body. It looked fresh. Although he was no forensics expert, he doubted if this person had been dead twelve hours. From what he could see, the victim was a young male.
‘You happy for us to get to work?’ one of the SOCOs asked him. The Scenes of Crime Officers would be the first people to actively work with the scene, photographing it and taking items of evidence whilst recovering the body.
‘Perfectly. Let me know what you find. I’ll go and have a word with the dog walker. I’ve got two DSs en route. Send them my way when they arrive.’
Culverhouse was barely outside the police cordon when he tore the white protective suit off. He hated those things. They were noisy, sweaty and claustrophobic, but a necessary part of the job. Regardless, he tried to minimise the amount of time he spent wearing them.
He walked up the front path of Gwendoline O’Connell’s house, admiring her front garden as he did so. The front door was ajar, so he knocked and let himself in.
He walked through to the kitchen, a cosy, tiled cottage affair, and introduced himself to Mrs O’Connell and the young female officer who was sitting with her.
‘I just want to ask you a few questions if I may, Gwendoline. I know my colleague has probably already asked you most of them, but I’m afraid you’ll have to bear with me.
‘Gwen,’ she said. ‘Sorry. Only my mother called me Gwendoline.’
‘Ah. Sorry. Gwen. My colleague outside told me—’
‘I was in shock. I had police officers speaking to me. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Between you and me, Jack’s not my real name either, but hey ho. We’re masters of our own destiny. Could you just run through what happened this morning for me, please?’
‘I’ll try. I went out for a walk with Bessie, my dog. I do the same walk every morning, and some evenings as well. We’d barely been out of the house thirty seconds. I was about to go through the gate over the road there, and Bessie started scratching and digging at the undergrowth. By the time I got there… There was an arm.’
‘What did you do next?’
‘I called the police.’
‘On your mobile?’
‘No. I don’t know why, but I went back into the house and called from the landline. I had my mobile with me, so I don’t know why I did that. The shock, I suppose.’
Culverhouse nodded. He knew only too well that people did bizarre things when confronted by a dead body. A large part of his job was spent trying to get people to act normally.
He recalled one incident about ten years earlier where he’d turned up to a crime scene, where a man had discovered a body in an industrial waste bin. The man had been so shocked he couldn’t remember his own name, and had to wait for his colleagues to turn up for work before he could identify himself to the police.
Another time, back when Jack was a uniformed constable attending a report of a burglary in progress, he’d turned up to find the burglar sitting in a little old lady’s kitchen, quietly enjoying a packet of Jelly Babies as the homeowner sat talking to him. Far from being shocked and frightened when she discovered the burglar sorting through the contents of her living room, she’d taken pity on his skinny frame and decided he needed fattening up.
‘You mentioned you walk the dog in the evenings sometimes. Did you go out yesterday evening?’
‘No,’ t
he woman said, seemingly speaking to an area of carpet. ‘I went to visit a friend yesterday afternoon and was back later than I’d hoped. By the time I’d sorted dinner out, it was too dark to be heading out. I was going to give Bessie an extra long walk this morning, but…’
‘And she showed no sign of being interested in that area of undergrowth yesterday morning on her walk?’
‘No, nothing at all. We walk right past it, and she didn’t notice a thing. This morning, though, she bolted straight over there before we’d even got close. That’s the weirdest thing about it. It makes me almost certain it couldn’t have been there yesterday.’
Jack felt inclined to agree, and forensics would be able to tell if the victim had been killed within the past twenty-four hours. It was a shame, though, that Gwen hadn’t walked Bessie the previous evening, too. That would have enabled them to narrow the window down to something closer to twelve hours, rather than twenty-four.
‘I don’t suppose you or any of your neighbours have CCTV cameras on the fronts of your houses, do you?’ Jack asked.
‘I’m not sure about the neighbours, but we have.’
Jack’s ears pricked up.
‘What area do they cover?’
‘There are two on the front. One covers the front door and some of the drive, and the other is higher up and covers the rest of the drive and the road up to the hedgerow on the other side.’
‘Would it show any vehicles that drove past the house and stopped in or near the layby?’
‘Yes, it would. They would have had to come past the house. The road doesn’t lead anywhere. It carries on for another half a mile or so, but it only leads to the other houses down the lane. So it would be on CCTV unless the vehicle came from a house further down.’
‘How long is the footage stored for?’
