Condemned

by R. C. Bridgestock

‘Odontology will assist with the teeth,’ Chevelle said, stepping back for a moment to allow Margery, the mortuary assistant, to remove the top of the dead man’s skull.

  Annie squirmed at the cracking sound the procedure made.

  ‘Like taking the top off a boiled egg,’ Charley said smiling, her focus keen, her voice eager with anticipation.

  Examining the open skull at close quarters, Professor Chevelle raised his eyebrows, and drawled. ‘Well now, Inspector, aren’t you the lucky one?’ Charley could feel herself holding her breath in anticipation, as the professor plunged a pair of long-nosed tweezers into the man’s skull, and plucked out a bullet. ‘Look, I’ve a present for you.’

  At the shrill ‘ping’ of the bullet dropping into the tray beside him, Chevelle’s gaze drifted away from the corpse to Charley’s face once again, and when their eyes met he continued, ‘Your starter for ten! I’m no firearms expert, but I’m sure they’ll be able to tell you, quite quickly, what sort of weapon that was fired from.’

  Charley’s expression was one of pleasure, and some relief. The examination of the second victim was revealing positive lines of enquiry. DNA testing, without the need for extra, expensive procedures, would hopefully give them more.

  Charley thanked Davis before leaving, who aired his suspicions that the female had died from a forceful stab wound to her chest, which would have entered her heart. The male corpse had died from a gunshot wound to his head, and the bullet recovered from within, proved it. He was likely a victim of an execution. As Charley left, she couldn’t help thinking that Chevelle was good, no, he was excellent!

  Whatever had taken place, Charley now had confirmation that both killings had been premeditated and intentional.

  ‘Strange how the actions after the murder were similar in both killings, though years apart,’ said Annie thoughtfully, as they travelled back to the Incident Room together.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Charley.

  ‘Well, after the murder, both bodies were hidden. The killer, I assume was hoping that they would never be found.’

  ‘It keeps going around in my head, what could the motive be?’ Charley said, as she steered her car into Peel Street Police Station’s back yard.

  On their arrival, the Incident Room was buzzing. More enquiries could now be set in motion, and there was plenty to discuss; all relevant information would be imparted to the wider team at the debrief.

  ‘I want an urgent enquiry setting up with the ballistics experts,’ Charley told Wilkie Connor. ‘I want to know what sort of weapon the bullet came from, and I want to know if that type of weapon was known to be linked to any other crimes. I’m sure they’ll treat it as a priority, but just in case, give them a gentle reminder. I don’t want to hear about their workload, we’re all busy. We have an armed murderer out and about and who’s to say that they won’t strike again soon.’

  The afternoon was drawing in as she debriefed the team. When a suspect was traced for the death of the male victim, she was mindful that a team armed with weapons would be required to effect the arrest. It would be a serious mistake to use unarmed officers, thereby potentially putting lives at risk.

  ‘Risk Assessment is a ball-ache, but a necessity,’ Charley told Annie. ‘Life on the street is dangerous, possibly more dangerous in the UK than ever before, and ignoring the warning signs and neglecting to take remedial action is not an option in my book,’ she said. ‘My priority is the protection of the public, and you lot.’

  Charley then updated Divisional Commander Stokes with the mortuary’s findings. His concern was about the cost of the investigation. ‘Just make sure you get all the funding you can from Headquarters, Charley. I don’t want to bankrupt the Division.’

  His concerns were duly noted. ‘There’s no need to panic yet,’ she told him. ‘It’s early days.’

  Stokes looked at the running costs, and grimaced. ‘Any suspects yet?’

  ‘No, we don’t even know who our victims are yet, but once we do, I expect things to move quickly.’

  ‘Good, keep me posted.’

  Back in the Incident Room, she had a question for her team. ‘That metal on the man’s broken bones?’

  Mike responded immediately, ‘An urgent enquiry has been made at the local hospitals.’

  ‘The DNA that Chevelle took from the male is already on its way for checks by Forensics,’ said Ricky-Lee.

  Annie looked downcast. ‘Sadly, the identification of the female isn’t going to be as straightforward.’

  Charley saw tired eyes, set in tired faces around the table. ‘What we must remember is the detective’s mantra: clear the ground beneath your feet before extending the parameters on the search field. We’re doing all we can, and I want that to be how it remains throughout. Whilst we carry on with new lines of enquiry, I want the intelligence cell to look at every crime that the Dixons ever committed, including the ones that they are still wanted for. After all, the pair lived at Crownest within the time parameters that have been suggested by the post-mortem of the male corpse.’

  Charley turned to Annie. ‘Get on to the cold-case team again, will you? I want to know from Ben and Terry exactly what sort of weapons the Dixons are known to use. I also want to know if the previous investigations included Ballistics to assist in linking the crimes known to have been committed by the pair, and I want to see those reports.’

  The attending officers took notes and their heads nodded in compliance.

  What Charley desperately needed to do was to place the gun that had fired the bullet into the man’s skull in the hands of the killer, whoever that may be.

  The Dixons remained the priority. To put them in, or out, of the enquiry was her aim sooner rather than later. Their criminal record, and the fact they had lived at Crownest, made them prime suspects to the crime.

  As the team went back to their desks, Charley returned to her office. The day wasn’t over yet. She wondered if, when the Dixons were traced, they would have weapons on them. Her next thought, as she sat at her computer screen with her fingers hovering over the keyboard, was that no weapons had been found at the house, nor had any ammunition been recovered, other than the bullet in the victim’s skull.

  She uploaded the Dixon’s file, to see if there were any weapons seized on their last arrest. She paused, waiting for the results, and when they came, she felt the sinking feeling she associated with disappointment – the recorded data told her nothing.

  Perhaps the pair had lured the male to the house to kill him? If so, why? Perhaps Mr Raglan should think himself lucky than he wasn’t one of their victims, too. Her mind raced, with so many questions, possibilities, ideas running through her head. She knew that sleep would be hard to come by that night. Copies of the full intelligence file on the Dixons had been added to the Incident Room suspect database. It would make good bedtime reading, if she didn’t get chance before she left the office.

  Murder enquiries are essentially about eliminating people, so she couldn’t be limited in her thinking. Her instincts told her that the culprit had to be someone who knew of the tunnel behind the fireplace. Therefore it made sense that it had to be an occupant, or someone who knew Crownest well. After all, as Joe Greenwood, the owner of Nevermore had told her, there was no mention of the tunnel shown on the original plans for the property, so it had to be someone with inside information.

  Her concentration was so deep that when Annie knocked on her office door Charley jumped.

  ‘Ben and Terry are off today,’ she said.

  Charley threw her head back and ran her splayed fingers through her hair. ‘Isn’t that always the case? Days off are days wasted!’

  ‘They are,’ Annie grinned. ‘However, Tattie has it on good authority from their team lead that no weapons have ever been recovered at, or after, any of the Dixon’s arrests.’

  The SIO’s head dropped, her eyes lit up. ‘I want copies of the files which show what witnesses have said.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Annie. />
  ‘I want to know what type of ammunition, shell casings and so on, have been recovered at the scene of the crimes.’

  Annie smiled. ‘The Dixons are reported to have matching handguns.’

  Charley nodded. ‘I’d believe anything where those two are concerned.’

  Annie tilted the notepad in her hand to allow her to read the notes she had made and highlighted. ‘The bullet casings recovered from their previous crime scenes are nine millimetre.’

  Charley frowned. ‘That’s a common calibre with most types of handgun.’

  ‘Apparently so, and handguns are the weapon of choice for criminals these days, with a lot adapted from imitations, or conversions of original weapons, I’m told.’

  ‘Just as lethal, Annie. I’ll give Ballistics a ring, and give them the heads-up on what we see as a possible link. I want to know what their timescale is. The bullet from the skull should be with them shortly.’

  ‘Perhaps then we’ll get some answers,’ said Annie.

  ‘We can live in hope,’ Charley smiled as she turned to the telephone. ‘Come on, pick up. I’m not going to hang up. Surely you don’t wear ear protectors all the time at Ballistics!’

  Chapter 18

  Ballistics could confirm two things. The shell casing had arrived, and on initial visual examination, the expert declared it nine millimetre. She would have to wait for further insights. Frustrated and demoralised with the process because it appeared this was all she was getting for now, Charley dropped the telephone receiver dramatically onto its cradle. She was more than aware that the necessity to carry out the desired tests meant she was at the mercy of the specialists’ workload, yet again, and it galled her. Patience was a virtue, she reminded herself with gritted teeth.

  In the briefing room, on sharing the news, the dip in moral was tangible.

  Looking around the room, Annie saw demotivated faces. ‘On the positive, we know that our male victim was killed with a single gunshot,’ Annie said in a weak attempt to lighten the mood.

  Tattie hovered on the periphery of those gathered at the briefing. Her movements somehow exasperated Annie’s momentary hiatus. Annie forced a smile. She hated people hanging around, it reminded her of the convent where the nuns constantly hovered in the background. Annie’s rational self began to fight with her deep-seated emotions, as they always did when she remembered her brother’s suicide, the result of his abuse at the hands of the priests, at school. It was the reason she had become a copper, to try to do her utmost to try to stop man’s inhumanity to fellow man, or at least make sure the guilty paid the price for their crime. She would never ever understand how her mother could still justify her religious faith given what had happened.

  ‘Why didn’t the bastards take a leaf out of Judas’s book and kill themselves?’ Annie had screamed at her mother.

  She had watched those of the cloth who had been found guilty leave the courtroom, those cruel, sadistic people whom Ash, her brother, had trusted and obeyed. Ash had been a good kid, but he’d never got over the abuse he had suffered at their hands, which resulted in his suicide. She conceded that mass suicide of his abusers would be yet another selfish act, for if they threw themselves on their swords it was their belief that it would redeem them from their crimes, and Annie was glad that wouldn’t be allowed to happen.

  Cheeks flushed, her voice cracked, she came back to the present-day meeting, and continued, ‘we also know that the preferred weapon of the murderer was a handgun.’

  Charley glanced over her, concerned. Annie looked particularly peaky. Was she expecting too much from the youngster who had relocated from the city as a uniformed officer? She had then been catapulted into Peel Street CID because the dinosaurs in the hierarchy, who liked their old style of rural policing, didn’t know what to do with Annie’s vibrant, go-get-’em personality. Charley, on the other hand, liked Annie, and rejoiced in the young detective’s inquisitiveness, especially if Charley’s own enthusiasm was waning. She felt a little fed up now, most probably due to the head cold that was threatening to take hold, and the fact that she had just been informed by Wilkie Connor that a local expert in the field of paganism who they had tracked down looked like a non-starter.

  ‘I hear on the grapevine that you’re having trouble finding someone who knows a bit about heathens?’ said Winnie following the briefing, as she counted drops of eucalyptus into a bowl of steaming hot water which she then placed on the edge of Charley’s desk.

  Charley looked into Winnie’s kind eyes, but she couldn’t help wishing it was her mum who was the one administering the TLC to her.

  ‘It’s okay, something’ll come up,’ she said, sliding the bowl to one side so she could get to her computer keyboard. She looked at Winnie rebelliously, ‘and I haven’t got the time or the inclination for that sort of malarkey!’

  Charley sniffled ungratefully into a tissue Winnie offered her. The bright lights of the computer screen hurt her eyes, and the pain in her head made her nauseous. When the stabbing pain came, it made her flinch as if from an electric shock. She shut her eyes momentarily and cried out loud. Immediately her hands went to her head.

  ‘Hmm… Well, that’s a matter of opinion,’ Winnie said as if to herself, and after watching the young woman struggle, her voice rose. ‘Charley Mann, you’re as stubborn as a mule. Just for once will you bloody well do as you’re told! Put the towel over your head, like a tent, and breathe in. It’ll make you feel a whole lot better.’

  Too tired to argue, Charley moved the bowl closer and inhaled the aromatic odour, before she began to cough incessantly. ‘Well, I wonder who I take after?’ Charley gasped when she caught her breath.

  ‘Point taken,’ Winnie said, with a slight cock of her head as she thought of Charley’s Dad, Jack, her childhood sweetheart, the love of her life who, at seventeen, had stubbornly decided that if she went away to college, whilst he stayed home lumbered with looking after the family farm, then they were finished.

  Then, when Winnie returned home from her adventures, it was to be greeted with the news that Ada, Charley’s mum, was found to be expecting, and given the old-fashioned ways of the family a shotgun wedding was planned. The rest, Winnie had told Charley, was history. One thing you could say about Jack, he never turned his back on his responsibilities. Which had only made Winnie love him more, even it had been from a distance for the rest of her life.

  Charley’s spluttering broke Winnie’s reverie. ‘Do you know someone, a pagan specialist, I mean?’ she asked, with more than a little desperation in her voice audible from her position under the towel.

  Clutching the duster in her hand tightly, Winnie polished the corner of Charley’s desk with vigour. She smiled. ‘Not quite, but I’m sure if I asked my old friend Josie Cartwright, she’d be able to help you.’

  Charley swiftly lifted the corner of the towel. ‘The writer, author, historian Josie Cartwright is your friend, really?’

  * * *

  From the main road Josie Cartwright’s house was too far away, and too small to appear as more than a black smudge on the opposite hillside. Winnie’s directions were to follow the path of a chain of electricity pylons, which swung precariously in the wind, across the bleak valley from one hillside to the next.

  A broken five-bar gate leant against a toppled, moss-peppered dry-stone wall. It led Charley, Annie and Winnie down a single uneven farm track which took her to the door of a quaint old cottage overlooking a cobbled courtyard. It was impossible to see what the other surrounding buildings would have once been, as they had already been absorbed back into the landscape.

  There were the markings of a flower garden and a vegetable garden which were very obviously lovingly worked by its owner. Charley stood at the cottage door and raised her hand towards the knocker, but before she placed her hand on it, the door was opened by a slight, stooped, white-haired old lady who held a crocheted blue shawl together between her thumb and the first finger of her arthritic left hand.

  As soon as
she saw Winnie through her watery blue eyes, her smile widened, her arms flew open, and she embraced her friend warmly. Winnie, full of excitement and joy, scuttled ahead of them down the higgledy-piggledy, narrow corridor with doors leading off into other rooms. ‘That sloping floor’ll show you whether you have a small inner ear canal,’ she called to the younger women, and then abruptly vanished through a door under a small twisted staircase.

  ‘Whatever does she mean?’ whispered Annie over her shoulder to Charley. But before Charley got chance to tell her it was probably a reference to a person’s balance, Josie ushered the detectives into a cosy room with a blazing fire in the iron grate of an old stone fireplace.

  The two elderly ladies came together in the lounge, to share a moment of giggling, just like children. ‘When we were younger, we used to tell our friends that this crooked little house was haunted,’ said Winnie.

  ‘Stop frightening the lasses,’ said Josie with a shy, gentle shake of her head. ‘Truth be known, she’s never grown up that one,’ she whispered.

  ‘Why would I want to grow up?’ said Winnie aghast.

  A magnifying glass sat on a low coffee table, next to several pairs of discarded spectacles, and a heap of books stood in front of Josie’s comfy chair.

  There was a whistling from the kitchen. ‘Kettle’s boiled,’ Winnie said, cheerily, clearing spaces at the table to one side of the room. It was covered with a large plastic floral tablecloth, the very latest fashion, 1960s-style.

  Annie looked about her. ‘Oh, this place is just… awesome,’ she said to Josie. Reaching out tenderly she touched the wooden beams, and stained glass with her fingertips. ‘I absolutely adore old things, and the dustier the better!’

  Charley gave Annie a nudge. What was she thinking of?

  Annie wasn’t paying any attention to Charley; she was already meeting Josie’s eyes and blushing. ‘I’m so sorry! I didn’t intend to be rude.’

  Josie laughed out loud, and, when she laughed she looked years younger. She liked Annie. She liked old things too.