A Price to Pay

by Paul Gitsham

  She turned up her nose. ‘I married a barbarian.’

  Warren smiled. He said the same thing about her when she smothered toast in Marmite.

  Plating up, he sat down opposite Susan. He knew it couldn’t last, but for the next couple of hours he just wanted to pretend it was a normal Sunday morning. To pretend that neither he nor Susan had any work to do that day and had no plans beyond where to go for lunch and how to spend the afternoon. To pretend that they hadn’t just lost the babies. The contented look on Susan’s face as she spread butter on her toast and poured them both a glass of juice gave Warren hope for the future.

  Or at least the next few hours.

  He’d eaten only two mouthfuls of eggs and taken only a sip of coffee when his phone rang.

  They both froze.

  It rang a second time.

  Warren shovelled another forkful of eggs into his mouth.

  The phone diverted to voicemail. Neither of them said anything.

  Warren took a slurp of coffee and cut into his toast, sawing hard against the sourdough’s springy texture.

  The phone rang again.

  Susan reached across the table and touched his hand. ‘Answer it.’

  ‘They left a voicemail,’ he mumbled as he chewed.

  Susan squeezed his hand. ‘It’s Sunday morning. You know they wouldn’t be calling unless it’s urgent.’

  He sighed and picked up the handset. ‘Jones.’

  The caller chose to ignore his curt tone. ‘A body has been found. Farley Woods.’

  Farley Woods was a densely forested area stretching for a couple of miles along the edge of the A506, forming a natural barrier between the busy trunk road and the farmland beyond. By the time Warren arrived at the lay-by near to where the body had been found, one of the two carriageways had been cordoned off to make space for the police vehicles. An articulated lorry with Polish licence plates was parked up, its rear doors open to show that there was no cargo worth stealing as the driver slept in his cab overnight. A small, red Citroen sat in front of it.

  ‘The body’s been there a while,’ said the officer who’d been first on the scene.

  ‘Who found it?’

  ‘Two walkers. They said they were geocaching, whatever that is.’ She pointed towards a couple in their forties holding the lead of a medium-sized, orangey-brown dog with white markings on its face. Warren had no idea of its breed.

  ‘What about the lorry driver?’

  She shook her head. ‘He was asleep in his cab when he heard the walkers come running out of the woods.’

  ‘Is the scene secured?’

  She looked at her clipboard. ‘A Detective Sergeant Grimshaw took charge. He’s taping it off now. Scenes of Crime are about ten minutes out.’

  Thanking her, Warren walked towards the couple, introducing himself.

  ‘We were looking for a cache,’ said the husband, who introduced himself as Steven Spencer, an IT worker from Cardiff on a weekend away with his wife, Tina. The couple were dressed in thick, outdoor clothes, making the bright blue nylon forensic booties they wore appear even more incongruous. Their hiking boots had already been taken for forensic analysis.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ admitted Warren.

  ‘We were geocaching,’ said his wife. ‘It’s a bit like orienteering. People leave boxes in hidden places and post the GPS co-ordinates online for others to find. It’s very popular,’ she said in response to Warren’s slightly bemused expression.

  ‘You travelled from Cardiff to Hertfordshire to find a box. What’s in it?’

  ‘Well nothing, really. Just a logbook. You write your name on it, and the time you found it, then put it back for others to find. Then you record that you found it online.’

  ‘Oh.’ Warren still wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, or if it was relevant to the investigation.

  ‘We like walking to keep fit,’ explained the husband. ‘We were visiting some old university friends in Middlesbury and whilst they were sleeping off their hangovers, we decided to get some fresh air. We saw that there was a cache nearby, and figured it was as good a reason as any to get out of the house. We offered to take their dog, Keji, for a walk.’

  ‘OK. Well did you find the box?’

  ‘No. According to the GPS, it’s a kilometre further into the woods.’

  ‘Take me through what happened.’

  The husband pointed toward the red Citroen. ‘We used the GPS to find the nearest lay-by. We parked up in front of the lorry, then got out and headed into the woods through that gap in the tree-line.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘About seven a.m.’

  Warren was impressed. His occasional get-togethers with his university friends rarely saw anyone surface before mid-morning, and that was usually to hunt down a full-English in a local café.

  ‘We hadn’t gone very far,’ continued his wife, ‘when Keji started barking and then raced off deeper into the trees. We tried calling him back, but he wasn’t paying any attention, so we went after him.’

  ‘We couldn’t face the awkward conversation if we lost him,’ said her husband; despite the attempt at humour his eyes were bleak. He placed his arm around his wife’s shoulders, as he took over the story.

  ‘He disappeared so we just followed the sound of his barking, until suddenly he stopped and started whining. I was worried that he’d hurt himself, so I started to run …’ He took a deep breath. ‘Keji was circling this old tree with a big patch of bushes and brambles at the base. He’s a Toller, a sort of gundog, so I figured he’d found a dead bird or something.’

  After a short pause, he continued. ‘Anyway, I stuck my head into there … the smell … I saw some clothes … blood …’ He stopped talking and put his hand over his mouth at the memory.

  His wife took over. ‘It was obvious what it was, so we grabbed Keji, went back to the roadside and called the police.’

  ‘Did you touch anything?’

  The husband shook his head. ‘No, and I told Tina to stay back.’ He paused. ‘I may have caught my sleeve on some brambles.’

  ‘We’ll need to take some samples from your coat to eliminate it,’ said Warren.

  The man nodded numbly, already unzipping it.

  ‘Did Keji go into the bushes? Do you know if he disturbed the scene at all?’

  ‘I don’t think so, although I admit I lost sight of him for a bit.’

  ‘Would you be able to contact your friends and get permission for one of my team to take a clipping of his fur, just in case?’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll be happy.’ His wife spoke up. ‘It’s not like he hasn’t got plenty to spare.’ As if he knew that he was being spoken about, Keji’s ears pricked up.

  Warren thanked them both and arranged for them to be taken away by the officer in charge of the scene.

  Repressing a sigh, he trudged back to his car to retrieve his paper suit and murder bag. This far from Welwyn, Warren and his team at Middlesbury would be expected to at least start any investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death. But they had enough on their plate already with the Cullen murder. He looked forward to passing it over to a different team to bring to completion.

  Until that happened though, DSI Grayson – and thus by extension Warren – was de facto Senior Investigating Officer and he needed to make sure everything was done properly.

  ‘I reckon it’s been there for weeks or months,’ said Grimshaw. ‘It’s pretty decomposed, and there’s lots of growth around it.’

  Like Warren, he was dressed in a paper suit. Upon arriving at the scene he’d done everything correctly. Access to the body was limited; nevertheless he’d arranged for the scene to be taped off in a rough circle a couple of hundred metres in diameter, lest other early morning walkers found themselves trampling through the area in search of Tupperware boxes.

  However, that seemed unlikely. The muddy trail that the Spencers had followed was overgrown and almost non-existent in places; it did
n’t look as though many people had been there recently.

  Ordinarily, Warren would be worried about the scene being compromised by too many officers. Despite their best efforts, anyone entering or leaving a crime scene runs the risk of removing valuable trace evidence or inadvertently introducing contamination from outside. Ideally, metal walkways would be installed and a clear path to and from the site would be established to minimize the risk of footprints and other impressions being obliterated.

  Not only was that impractical in such an area, if what Grimshaw said about the age of the body was true, then any such evidence was long gone. The paper suits they wore were designed not to introduce foreign fibres, and the facemasks and hairnets stopped them shedding hair.

  Grimshaw was right about the age of the body. Much of it had rotted away, or been eaten by scavengers, with bones poking through what little flesh remained. It was impossible to tell if the body was male or female. The scene would need to be subjected to rigorous investigation, but Warren’s practised eye noted the brambles that had grown through holes in the body’s clothing. A forensic botanist might be able to use that to help narrow down how long the body had been lying there.

  Grimshaw pointed towards the corpse’s left leg. The dark blue jeans were stained a dark colour.

  ‘I reckon that’s blood. Lots of it.’

  ‘It looks that way,’ Warren agreed. He stood back slightly. In addition to the jeans, the body was wearing a dirty white T-shirt. Warren couldn’t make out the logo. The corpse’s left foot wore a dark, battered training shoe. As did the corpse’s right foot, although that foot was no longer attached to the bottom of the right leg and was sitting a short distance away.

  The corpse was slumped against the base of the tree, its arms partly around it, as if hugging it. Had it been a slow death? Had the victim held on to the tree for comfort as they bled out?

  If that was so, how had they ended up in the middle of a dense patch of shrubs? And what had caused such a significant injury?

  There were a dozen tragic, but innocent scenarios that could explain how this person had found themselves in such a predicament, but Warren’s gut had that familiar tightening. He looked over at Grimshaw, and saw the same thoughts mirrored in the man’s eyes above his facemask.

  ‘I’m declaring it a suspicious death,’ said Warren.

  Monday 16 November

  Chapter 44

  The previous night had been the coldest of the year so far. The air had been heavy with the smell of de-icer, as Warren and his next-door neighbour scraped the frost off their cars.

  Warren hadn’t seen his gloves since the previous winter and could barely feel his fingers as he drove into work. The journey was almost over by the time the hot air blowers finally stopped blasting ice-cold air into the car and started to do their job properly. His thoughts turned to the whereabouts of Joey McGhee. It had always been a long shot, hoping that the man would return, and Warren was resigned to the fact that a potential lead had vanished. He knew from previous experience that some members of Middlesbury’s homeless community were often happier living under the radar, and that despite the best efforts of outreach workers could be almost impossible to track down if they really didn’t want to be found.

  He was surprised though. McGhee had actually approached the police directly, and although he was clearly prepared to sleep rough when necessary, he was engaging with the support workers. On top of that, he had yet to claim his reward money from Crimestoppers. The forty-five pounds that Warren had given him wouldn’t last long, and it seemed strange that he hadn’t returned to earn more money. No tips had been received via the anonymous helpline, suggesting that he hadn’t decided to earn the money that way.

  Parking up, he saw Ruskin’s bicycle in the bike rack, and knew he would be showering downstairs. After he and Mags Richardson had both managed personal bests in the local half-marathon the previous spring, the man was now training for a triathlon. Where he found the time to train, work so much overtime, and organize a wedding was a mystery to Warren. Did he ever sleep?

  The briefing room was standing room only, with Warren’s Middlesbury-based team outnumbered more than two-to-one by seconded officers from Welwyn. Warren recognized many of the faces from previous investigations, but a substantial number of the junior officers were new to him. He’d decided to place Shaun Grimshaw and Jorge Martinez in charge of dividing the visiting detectives into smaller work groups headed by his own, Middlesbury-based team. It was the sort of job that they would be expected to do as inspectors.

  The meeting started with some positive news from Rachel Pymm. ‘The knife that was used to kill Stevie Cullen belonged to the victim.’

  She projected an image of the weapon recovered from the riverbank. Beneath it, a second image was recognisably the same knife.

  ‘Stevie Cullen was arrested for driving without a licence or insurance two years ago. The arresting officers searched his vehicle and found this knife in the boot. They photographed it as a matter of routine, but since it was in the boot and hadn’t been identified as used in any crime, it was returned to him.’

  ‘Why would he have had it on the day of his murder?’ asked Hutchinson.

  ‘Forensics have examined the blade and the handle, and they think it was a working knife. His best friend, Benny Masterson, claims that Stevie brought it back from France years ago after a family holiday and rarely went anywhere without it. He used it all the time when he was on the farm. He shouldn’t have been carrying it in a public place but as we know, the Cullens weren’t really ones for following the rules.’

  ‘If Stevie Cullen was killed with his own knife, then maybe Silvija Wilson is right, and it was self-defence?’ said Pymm.

  Warren pinched his bottom lip.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough on its own to exonerate Annie. An initial extension to custody had been granted already, and the time was soon approaching that she would have to be charged with murder or released. He would check with the Crown Prosecution Service, but it was obvious that as things stood, she met the threshold for charging.

  ‘Moving on, many of you may have heard that the decision has been made for us NOT to hand over the investigation of yesterday’s find in Farley Woods to a different team,’ said Warren.

  He raised his voice above the chorus of groans, and muttering. ‘The reasons for that will hopefully become clear in a moment, and it isn’t because the powers-that-be think we have too much free time on our hands.’

  There had been numerous finds overnight by the forensic teams out the in woods, and arrangements had been made for the body to be transported to the Lister Hospital in Stevenage for a post-mortem later that day. A new discovery had made the examination of the body the pathologist’s number-one priority.

  ‘Cause of death won’t be fully determined until the PM has been completed, but an in-situ examination of the body reveals that the injury to the victim’s left leg appears to have been caused by a shotgun,’ revealed Warren. The announcement was news to many of the team who had only just started their shift.

  ‘Any progress on identification?’ asked a DS from Welwyn.

  ‘Not yet, though the victim has been provisionally identified as an adult male. Fingerprints are unlikely, due to the decomposition of the body, but DNA should be possible, and the jaw is intact, so dental records are an option. The body hasn’t been moved yet, so we haven’t been able to check all of his pockets, although the uppermost pocket doesn’t appear to contain a wallet.’

  Warren switched the image on the wall projector to one of the corpse. It was clear that the elements had not been kind. Lying with its right-hand side against the tree, much of the exposed soft flesh had either decomposed or been eaten. A cap of what appeared to be dark brown hair partly covered the exposed skull.

  ‘Is that a logo on the T-shirt?’ asked Moray Ruskin. ‘I don’t recognize it.’

  ‘We’ll get clearer photos when the pathologist removes the clothing during the PM, bu
t from this angle it appears to be foreign,’ said Warren.

  ‘The badge on those trainers doesn’t look British, either,’ somebody from the back commented, ‘although it’s hard to tell these days, with all the budget brands now available on the high street. I did some work a few months ago on a case that required shoe identification. I’d be happy to take a look.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll leave that to you, DC?’

  ‘Marshall, Sir.’

  Warren highlighted the body’s left leg. ‘It looks as though the victim was not shot where he was found. As soon as it’s light, a team will be looking to see if they can find any blood residue to track back to where he was originally injured, but even in the past few weeks there has been plenty of rain. If we’re lucky we might find more pellets, or even a cartridge casing.’

  Warren flicked to another image, this time of a pair of what appeared to be garden secateurs lying next to the body.

  ‘These secateurs were found next to the body. We won’t know for sure until Forensics have finished analysing them, but we are currently operating under the assumption that the victim accessed the woods from the direction of the nearby farmland, rather than the road.’

  He flicked to the next slide, showing a plastic-coated mesh fence, with a hole snipped into it large enough for a person to squeeze through.

  ‘This fence acts as a barrier between the woodland, and a field owned by Ray Dorridge, a local farmer who was seen arguing with Stevie Cullen shortly before his death. We had all but eliminated him from that inquiry, but this is too big a coincidence to ignore. A possible link between this unexplained death and Mr Cullen is why we are currently investigating the two deaths in parallel.’

  Warren switched to a close-up of the jagged hole.

  ‘The cutting blade on the secateurs showed evidence of regular sharpening, so probably could have cut the fence if enough force was applied. Forensics have found a number of different fibres on the fence edges, which we will be seeking to match to the clothing on the body. They have also found what appear to be traces of blood; they’ll be testing the samples to see if it is human, and if so, whether it matches our victim.’