A Price to Pay

by Paul Gitsham

  Standing in the hallway beyond, Warren recognized the portly form of CSM Andy Harrison talking to another white-suited technician. The veteran CSI broke off when he saw Warren enter.

  ‘Come in, DCI Jones. We’ll have to forgo the kiss on both cheeks and the handshake; we don’t want to contaminate the scene.’

  The longer Warren knew the man, the stranger his sense of humour became; he supposed it was a natural response to the things the man dealt with every day.

  ‘The victim is in the back room. We’ve finished the preliminaries and we’re waiting for the pathologist to come and take a look.’

  ‘What’s the layout of the rest of the property?’

  Harrison pointed towards the rear.

  ‘These old houses had galley kitchens leading through to an outside toilet and coal shed. When they converted this one from residential to commercial, they made use of the existing plumbing and kept a small sink and kitchenette for staff use. The old out-buildings now house a washing machine and a tumble dryer; it looks as though they wash their towels and uniforms on site.’ He rotated on the spot. ‘Upstairs, the front bedroom is also kitted out as a massage suite, the original bathroom has been split in two and turned into male and female toilets, and the small bedroom has been turned into a store cupboard. It appears that the staff also keep their personal belongings in there and use it to get changed.’

  Warren followed him through; Grimshaw hadn’t been exaggerating, it really was a bloodbath. Here, even the scented candles, still guttering in the wind from the open window, were unable to mask the cloying smell of fresh blood.

  The victim was a young man, probably in his twenties. White, with dark hair, he lay on his back, his body nude from the waist up, revealing a bulky torso that suggested hard work rather than hours spent in the gym. A gash to the left of his chest had leaked enough blood to obscure the tattoos that crossed his pectoral muscles and shoulder.

  The attack had clearly been very quick. The victim’s blood-covered hands indicated that he had made some attempt to cover the wound.

  ‘The pathologist will confirm, obviously, but I’d say the knife was quite large and it penetrated at least one of the chambers of his heart. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was given a twist on the way out.’

  Warren tore his eyes away from the wound to focus on the victim’s face. The man’s eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, his mouth open in surprise. The blood loss had left his skin waxy in appearance, making the two or three days’ stubble on his cheeks and chin stand out even more.

  ‘The witnesses said that the killer escaped through the window,’ said Warren. Even from his vantage point on the opposite side of the room, he could see bloody marks on the window frame.

  ‘That’s what it looks like at the moment, although we’ve not lifted any prints. I’d say the killer was wearing gloves. We’ll look in more detail when the body’s been removed, and we can move around more easily.’

  Warren pointed to a number of evidence bags sitting on a chair in the corner.

  ‘Are those his personal belongings?’

  ‘Looks that way. The larger bags contain clothing. Blue jeans with leather belt, a black T-shirt with some rock band I’ve never heard of, and a brown leather jacket. He kept his socks, shoes and underwear on. The smaller bags contain his wallet, keys and mobile phone, which were in the inside-left pocket of his jacket.’

  ‘We need to identify him, so I’ll sign for those and leave the clothes with you.’

  Warren collected the bags, before taking another look around the room.

  His first impressions were that the murder had happened exactly as Grimshaw had stated. The killer came in through the window, stabbed the victim as he lay helpless on the massage bed, before taking the knife with him, leaving through the window.

  He looked again at the victim’s wide-staring eyes and his surprised expression.

  Something wasn’t right about the scene, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  Back outside in the fresh air, Warren wasted no time taking off his paper scene suit. Early evening and it was already dark. He handed the evidence bags over to Shaun Grimshaw whilst he undressed.

  ‘We need to identify the victim. Take a look in his wallet and see if you can find a name. The bus service around here is crap, so he may have parked up nearby. Use the key fob to check the cars nearby; we might be able to identify him that way. Bag his phone and ask IT if they can unlock it. This doesn’t look like a random killing, so I want to know who he’s been in contact with.’

  Grimshaw opened the evidence bag containing the wallet and started leafing through it.

  He let out a heartfelt groan. ‘You are never going to believe who it is.’

  Chapter 2

  The two young masseuses who had found the body were huddled together in the rear of a police van, tears streaking their faces. Their bloodstained work uniforms had already been taken by the CSIs, but even in the less than flattering replacement coveralls that they’d been issued, Warren could see that Grimshaw had a point. The two young women were very pretty, with shapely figures. Could they have been hired for their looks?

  A detailed, formal interview would have to wait, as there were currently no Serbian translators available; however, the limited English that they spoke was enough to confirm the sequence of events as relayed by Grimshaw.

  The owner of the parlour, Silvija Wilson, was a well-dressed, middle-aged woman. She had arrived in a brand-new Mini Clubman shortly after Warren emerged from the crime scene and was waiting impatiently outside the cordon.

  ‘Are my girls OK?’ she asked immediately. Her accent was almost pure Essex, with just a hint of Eastern European.

  ‘They are a bit shaken, but physically they are fine,’ Warren assured her.

  ‘Thank goodness.’

  ‘The women tell me that they’re Serbian nationals,’ said Warren.

  ‘With valid work visas,’ Wilson interrupted.

  ‘I’m sure that they are here perfectly legally,’ said Warren, ‘however, without a translator, they haven’t been able to fully answer my questions.’

  ‘Would you like me to translate for you, to speed things up?’ interrupted Wilson.

  Warren smiled politely. ‘That’s very kind, but we’re better off waiting for the translation service.’

  She looked disappointed, but Warren knew better than to take her up on her offer. Given the circumstances, Wilson could hardly be considered unbiased and the last thing he wanted was for questions to be raised over the veracity of the translation.

  ‘Why don’t I just ask you some background?’ he suggested.

  Wilson nodded her assent.

  ‘You are the owner, I take it?’

  ‘Yes. I started the business from scratch about ten years ago.’

  ‘And you are the manager?’

  ‘Overall, yes.’

  ‘Is it usual for you not to be present during the day?’ Warren raised a placating hand as Wilson started to bristle. ‘I’m not judging, Ms Wilson, I’m just trying to get a feel for the normal ebb and flow of staff and customers.’

  She relaxed somewhat. ‘I come and unlock in the morning and do a bit of paperwork. Except on Saturday, which is our busiest day. I let the girls get on with running the shop. They know what they are doing.’

  ‘That’s rather trusting, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘They’re family from back in Belgrade. They are my sister’s daughters. I sponsored them for a work visa and they joined me a little over twelve months ago, with the aim of learning a skill and improving their English.’

  ‘How is that going?’ asked Warren.

  She gave a so-so gesture with her hand. ‘They are very skilful at massage and the customers really like them, but the English … not so good. I had intended them to spend time socializing with English people, but we do have a small Serbian community here, with some rather good-looking boys …’ She shrugged. ‘They’re young.
What can I say?’

  ‘And do you still see clients?’

  ‘Only a few. I have a couple of older ladies who got to know me when I worked on the other side of town. They came with me when I set up this business and they’re more like friends than clients.’

  ‘So, you weren’t in the shop earlier, when the attack happened?’

  ‘No. I opened up at the usual time – half-past eight – then emptied the safe of the weekend’s takings and did a bank run, before going to see my father-in-law. He’s not very well and in a home.’

  ‘You take the money to the bank yourself?’ asked Warren.

  ‘Not much choice, really. We’re a small business; we can’t afford Securicor to come and do it for us. To be honest, there isn’t that much cash these days. Most clients pay by card.’

  ‘So, there wouldn’t have been much money on the premises at the time of the attack?’

  ‘No. Monday’s a quiet day usually, so aside from the float in the till there wouldn’t have been very much.’

  ‘I see that it’s also a nail bar. Do Malina and Biljana also do nails?’

  Wilson shook her head.

  ‘No. We have a couple of girls who come and do that. They hire the space; I don’t actually employ them.’

  ‘Where were they today?’

  ‘They weren’t in. Monday is a quiet day.’

  ‘So, the only members of staff in the shop at the time were your two nieces?’

  ‘Yes. As I said, I was visiting my father-in-law in Stenfield. Look, can I go and speak to them? They must be absolutely terrified after what’s happened.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  There came a tap on the door: Shaun Grimshaw.

  ‘Just got off the phone from HQ. No registered Serbian speakers available until eleven o’clock tonight.’

  Warren sighed and looked at his watch. Be careful what you wish for indeed; if he’d stayed to the end of the budget meeting, he’d probably be heading home for the evening by now.

  It looked as though Susan would be dining alone again.

  Back at the station, Warren held the first briefing of the case. It was eight p.m., and a lot had happened in the almost seven hours since the emergency services received the call reporting the killing. He was keen to keep up the momentum; crimes such as murder were often solved by actions taken in those first few hours.

  Warren would hold a far more detailed briefing the following morning, but it was important that he bring everyone – including his superior, Detective Superintendent John Grayson – up to date, as well as introducing his rapidly growing team to one another.

  Middlesbury CID was something of an outlier in Hertfordshire Constabulary, in all senses of the word. The consolidation of nearly all of the serious crime units in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and later Cambridgeshire into one, centralized headquarters down in Welwyn Garden City had led to the closing of most local CID units.

  Warren’s predecessor, the disgraced DCI Gavin Sheehy, had fought the case for Middlesbury to remain open as a first-response unit, able to deal quickly and effectively with low-level crime within the farthest reaches of the county, and at least start the ball rolling on larger-scale investigations. To that end, DSI Grayson oversaw a small, core team of detectives, led by Warren, with additional support from Welwyn when needed.

  Since taking over from Sheehy four years previously, Warren had made it one of his priorities to maintain Middlesbury’s unique status, growing to love a role that saw him doing far more hands-on policing than would be normal for one of his rank.

  Thus far, the small unit’s disproportionately high success rate had kept them open in the face of ever-increasing government cuts.

  For now.

  Warren started the briefing with a full-screen headshot of the man in the massage parlour projected onto the screen.

  ‘This is our victim. Stevie Cullen, the twenty-three-year-old son of one of North Hertfordshire’s most notable families. For those of you not familiar with the Cullens, “most notable” is not a praiseworthy term.’

  Nods rippled around the room.

  ‘That’s a mugshot from his last arrest, and we positively identified him from his fingerprints and the tattoos covering his chest. Needless to say, the car that his keys unlocked is not registered to him, rather it belongs to his brother, as Stevie received his first driving ban before he was even old enough to pass his test. His mobile phone has a screen lock that IT are figuring out how to circumvent as we speak.’

  Warren let the mutterings die down before he continued.

  ‘We need to turn his life upside down, folks. This was clearly a targeted killing. Given the circles that the Cullens are alleged to move in, then that must be a primary line of investigation. The Serious Organized Crime Unit from Welwyn will be briefing us on what we know or suspect about the Cullens’ business interests tomorrow. In the meantime, we need to track his movements over the past few days, as well as finding out who was in the area at the time.

  ‘Jorge, can you fill us in on any witnesses located in the local area and the preliminary search?’

  DS Jorge Martinez addressed the room.

  ‘It won’t take long, I’m afraid. Despite being a Monday lunchtime, we haven’t found a single member of the public who witnessed the killer escaping the scene or recalls anyone suspicious hanging around. There are a number of small businesses in the area with inadequate parking, and public transport is poor, so residents are used to seeing strange cars parked in their streets. The lack of parking wardens enforcing resident-only parking is a long-running bone of contention amongst the locals.

  ‘We’ve identified a dozen or so properties, both business and residential, that may have usable CCTV footage of the area and we’re securing it for DS Richardson’s team to look at.’

  ‘Any discarded clothes or the murder weapon?’ asked DS David Hutchinson.

  ‘Nothing so far. We’ve emptied all the public waste bins in the vicinity, and we’ve secured the wheelie bins from all the local residents and businesses. First thing tomorrow, when the sun comes up, we’ll have teams doing a fingertip search of all the local streets.’

  ‘Any rumblings on social media yet?’ asked Warren.

  DS Rachel Pymm, the team’s officer in the case – the person charged with keeping the HOLMES2 case management database up to date – shook her head.

  ‘Nothing much so far. A few photographs have surfaced on Twitter of the cordon, with plenty of speculation about what has happened, but nobody has mentioned Stevie Cullen yet.’

  ‘Good,’ said Warren, ‘his loved ones don’t deserve to find out he’s dead from some bigmouth on Facebook.’

  Chapter 3

  It’s known as the ‘death knock’ by both journalists and the police. It was an aspect of policing that Warren rarely had to do these days, his rank largely shielding him from the duty. However, given the history of the Cullen family, he decided to accompany the family liaison team himself. He wanted to hear what the family had to say first-hand; to pick up those tiny nuances and signals that might not get passed on in the reports.

  The Cullen family lived in a ramshackle farmhouse on the very outskirts of Middlesbury. Surrounded by fields, the car headlights had revealed a yard full of clusters of stacked Portakabins and shipping containers, locked behind large, steel gates. Warren’s nose alerted him to the presence of pigs.

  Lots of pigs.

  Mrs Cullen opened the door. Spotting the uniformed officer standing behind him, she scowled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mrs Cullen?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We’d like to speak to you about your son Stevie …’

  ‘He ain’t here.’

  She started to close the door. Warren slipped a foot between the door and the frame.

  ‘Hey, you can’t do that. You need a warrant …’ she yelped.

  ‘We need to speak to you about your son. May we come in?’ Warren paused. ‘Is your husband in? Is there
anyone who can be with you?’

  The blood drained from her face and for a moment he thought she would faint. He readied himself to catch her.

  ‘Seamus! It’s the police.’ Her voice was surprisingly strong.

  A muffled voice replied from the depths of the house. ‘Tell them to piss off.’

  ‘It’s about Stevie. Oh God …’

  Seamus Cullen emerged from the rear of the house, wiping his hands on a greasy rag.

  He stopped dead in his tracks. Whether it was the grim expression on Warren’s face, the family liaison officer holding his cap respectfully in his hands, or his wife’s look of distress that told them why they were there was unclear. Either way, it was Seamus Cullen whose knees buckled and left him grabbing the staircase for support.

  Coffee and a sit-down returned most of the colour to Seamus Cullen’s face. Seated opposite the couple, Warren gently told them what they knew so far.

  Facing them, it was hard to reconcile the family’s reputation with the couple in front of him. Like most police officers in this part of the county, Warren was well aware of the family’s reputation; however, he had never personally dealt with them. Most of their transgressions came under volume crime, particularly the fencing of stolen property, and antisocial behaviour, with health and safety violations and a carefree attitude to tax returns thrown in as well.

  The family’s nearest neighbours were almost a mile away, but Stevie Cullen in particular was still the subject of numerous complaints about noise, riding quad bikes dangerously, and using threatening and intimidating behaviour. It was behaviour he’d learnt from his parents.

  None of that was evident at this moment; gone were the hard edges and defiant attitude towards authority. The couple in front of him had lost a child, in the most horrific of circumstances, and their grief was all-consuming.

  ‘It looks as though the attack was deliberate. Can you think about anyone who might have wanted to hurt or kill Stevie?’