by Andrew Lowe
He drove past the roadblock signs and parked in a lay-by near a huddle of FSIs, de-suiting and transferring equipment into a Scientific Services Unit van. A tall, fifty-something woman with a crop of peroxide blonde hair directed the group with short, sharp commands. She was the only one who kept on her Tyvek suit. Turquoise.
Sawyer drew in a slow breath and released it through pinched lips. He got out of the car and approached the cordon manager: a swaggering young officer in a new uniform, probably pressed by his mother. He rummaged for his warrant card.
‘He’s with me!’ The blonde woman strode away from her charges and squinted at Sawyer, looking him up and down.
He nodded at her. ‘Sally.’
She waved a hand. ‘Excuse me. I’m looking for a man called Jake Sawyer. Good detective. Dresses a bit like you.’
Sally O’Callaghan was posh, strident. She sounded like royalty alongside Sawyer with his languid Northern vowels.
He shook her hand. ‘Comedy isn’t your thing, Sally.’
She smiled. ‘Fuck it. I’ll stick to tragedy.’
The cordon manager logged Sawyer’s attendance, and Sally angled her head towards the trees. They trudged, in silence, up a slope, into thinning woodland. As they stepped over the inner cordon tape, Sally turned to him. ‘Channelling Walter White, Jake?’
‘I’m on holiday.’
‘Not any more.’
The forensic tent had been erected over a stone wall that marked an underused walking route up to Lockerbrook Farm. The fabric flapped and scraped against an overhanging branch as Sally led Sawyer inside.
DCI Keating stood at the far side with his back to them, finishing a phone call. Sally had left a pair of suited male FSIs to oversee the tent, and one of them—short, with calm, kind eyes peering over the top of a face mask—handed him a pair of latex gloves.
‘Scene is fully documented,’ said Sally. ‘But I’ll be taking the bag, obviously.’
Sawyer snapped on the gloves and crouched by the extra-large black leather holdall. He unzipped the main compartment. His green eyes glinted in the Paladin light as they moved over the contents.
Keating loomed behind. ‘Nice of you to make an effort, Detective.’
Sawyer didn’t look back. ‘Sally’s done that one, sir.’
The bag contained the naked body of a woman in her early sixties. She was white and pale, with long black hair matted into the grooves of her collarbone. Her arms had been crossed over her chest and she had been tightly rolled into a polythene sheet, sealed by several strips of silvery grey gaffer tape. No blood, no immediate sign of injury. She looked clean, fresh. Like shrink-wrapped meat.
Sawyer pinched at his beard. ‘Who found her?’
‘Dog walker,’ said Keating. ‘Fella who works at the Visitor Centre. Early morning. He brings his dog to work some days. He says it ran up here and didn’t respond when he called. He came up and found the dog sniffing around the bag.’
‘Who is she?’
‘No ID,’ said Sally. ‘Dabs and DNA in the system.’
Sawyer peeled away one of the strips of tape and lifted the polythene from the woman’s head and shoulders, as if he wanted to give her a chance to breathe. He lifted her left arm; it was rigid, and, as he tucked the left hand under the right, the movement raised the other arm. He checked over the chest area and rested the arms back in place. He lifted two more tape strips at the body’s lower end and slid his hand underneath the woman’s ankles, lifting the legs, as if weighing them. ‘Nothing else found? No jewellery? Watch?’
‘No,’ said Sally.
Sawyer replaced the tape strips. He turned and stood upright. Keating and Sally had been joined by a young detective, almost as short as the FSI who had handed him the gloves. His suit was well fitted, but his tie knot was rushed and untidy.
‘Good to see you, sir,’ said DC Matt Walker.
Sawyer gave him a dimpled smile. ‘Dedication, Detective. Not the most life-affirming way to start your weekend.’
Walker shuffled slightly. ‘Heard you were coming, sir. Wanted to get in at the beginning.’
Sawyer nodded, glanced at Keating. ‘Moran? Myers?’
‘Not around. Shepherd’s in Liverpool. Family stuff.’
Sawyer nodded. ‘I’d say she’s been dead for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Rigor is just leaving her legs.’ He looked at Walker. ‘It comes in head to toe but leaves toe to head.’
Walker frowned. ‘I knew that.’ He crouched by the bag, mirroring Sawyer’s previous position. ‘He bothered to cover her breasts. Wouldn’t it have been easier to get her in the bag with her arms by her sides?’
‘It would,’ said Sawyer. ‘So what does that tell you?’
Walker thought for a moment, then turned. ‘Could be that he has respect for her. Doesn’t want to leave her exposed.’
‘In my experience,’ said Sally, ‘men with genuine respect for women don’t kill them.’
Sawyer nodded. ‘Maybe he sees those breasts as belonging to him, and he doesn’t want anyone else looking. Or he might just be a bit anal. Likes things to be just so. The strips of tape are all pretty much the same size. And he’s cut them with scissors rather than tearing them off. How’s the rest of the scene, Sally?’
‘Clean. Plenty of footprints on both sides of the wall. Lots of footfall round here.’
Walker stood up. ‘Trace and eliminate?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Sawyer. ‘Let’s look into sexual motive first.’
Keating clicked his tongue. ‘Wasn’t she a bit old for a predator?’
‘Maybe that’s his bag,’ said Sally.
‘Get her to Drummond. We need to know who she is and why someone would want to stab her.’
Sally stepped forward. ‘Stab?’
‘Single entry wound, just below the left breast. Looks like he’s sealed it, too. Cauterised. That might explain why it’s all so clean.’
Walker leaned in and studied the body. ‘Left breast?’
‘Yeah,’ said Sawyer. ‘Straight through the heart.’
4
The Murder Investigation Team occupied the whole of the first floor at Buxton Police Station. It was supposed to be interim, while the permanent premises were set up in Sheffield. But the positive outcome in the Crawley case had cast the project into bureaucratic limbo, and the unit had gone native.
Keating had parked Sawyer in a large room next to his own, on the back side of the building. They both enjoyed an expansive view of the Tarmac Silverlands football stadium: currently hosting the second half of an afternoon game. The planners had positioned Sawyer’s desk facing away from the window, but he had shifted it side-on, so he could keep one eye on the street and the other on approaches from the open-plan office outside.
A shadow filled the frosted glass of his door. Two taps.
Sawyer waited, rolled his eyes. ‘Come in.’
DS Ed Shepherd entered and made for the chair in front of Sawyer’s desk. He was a big man, and struggled to disguise the waddle in his walk. But he seemed fresh, clear-eyed. He had lost his dated goatee and, by Sawyer's reckoning, at least twenty pounds.
Sawyer sat back in his chair. ‘Thought you were up in the homeland?’
‘I got Keating’s message,’ said Shepherd, taking a seat. ‘Family wedding. Good excuse. Daggers from the better half, but duty calls.’
‘You don’t have to wait to be admitted, you know. This isn’t the headmaster’s office.’
Shepherd shrugged. ‘Says Mr Approachable now. Never know when I might catch you on a bad day. Pick up a bollocking.’
‘How’ve you been? Looking good. Although I don’t mean that to imply that you didn’t look good before.’
Shepherd smiled. ‘Thanks. Running, cycling. No booze, no sugar. And not a single carb passes these lips. Don’t stress. It gives me a pass to comment on your new look.’ Sawyer nodded, waiting. ‘Bass player in a nineties rap-metal band. Standing at the back in a press shot, trying to out-cool the singer.’
Sawyer studied him. ‘“Bass player”. That sounds like an insult in itself.’
‘If I was trying to insult you, I’d have gone for keyboards.’ Shepherd looked around. ‘Nice place. Keating keeping you close. As a friend?’
‘I assume so. He’s finally given me HOLMES access. Are you up to date?’
He nodded. ‘Can you cover the first briefing, though? I’ll take it from there.’ Cheers from the football crowd. Concentrated, but muted. ‘Away goal. Sounds like they’re getting a spanking. Although you wouldn’t know about that, being a glory hunter.’
Sawyer flinched. Either Shepherd’s banter was cloying, or Sawyer just hadn’t calibrated yet, after his time out of touch. ‘I’m a Liverpool fan. I know better than to hang my hopes on silverware.’ He opened a drawer. ‘Speaking of trophies, I’ve got something of yours.’ He took out a chunky metal tactical pen with a textured grip.
Shepherd shook his head. ‘Keep it. I got a new one. Better than that.’
‘I’m not going to engage in pen envy. How’s the head?’
Shepherd shifted his gaze to the window. ‘Better. Exercise is helping. No problems lately.’
‘You getting some help?’
Shepherd craned his neck, as if to catch a better view of the football. ‘I’m dealing with it.’
‘At around six-thirty this morning, an employee at the Fairholmes Visitor Centre up in Bamford followed his dog up a walking trail and discovered the body of a sixty-one-year-old woman, Susan Bishop.’
Sawyer took a breath and looked around. The MIT detectives had gathered in their usual cliques, facing the briefing area. Most were perched on desks to get a better view, while DC Walker stood beside Sawyer and DS Shepherd, head raised, surveying the audience.
‘DC Walker was FOA,’ said Shepherd.
Sawyer glanced at Walker; he was struggling to suppress an odd little smile. Behind Sawyer, the whiteboard carried a large monochrome headshot of Susan Bishop. Posed, side-on, pouting to camera. It was a professional shot, not a selfie. ‘Susan’s professional name was Suzie Swift. She was an actress and model who did a lot of TV work in the seventies and eighties. Variety shows, a few bit parts.’
Walker stepped forward and checked his notebook. ‘She was a regular on something called The Dicky Emery Show.’
Titters from a group near the back. Keating emerged from his office and they fell silent.
Myers, a hefty detective with rolled-up sleeves and a tall, shiny quiff, raised a hand and waggled his pen. ‘Was she local?’
‘Miller’s Dale,’ said Sawyer. ‘Maggie and the FLOs are with the husband. Says he was about to call her in missing when they turned up.’
He turned to the whiteboard. Susan Bishop was still there, smiling at him, suspended in time, brimming with the composure of a natural performer. Gleaming teeth, salon-fresh hair: inky black, crimped at the edges. He saw it plastered into the grooves at her neck. He saw her skin: bloodless, blanched.
He saw Jessica Mary Sawyer, beaming from the garden gate in his wallet Polaroid. Christmas morning, 1987. Black hair, fanned around her neck by the winter wind. Eyes shining with love and pain, freighted with secrets.
‘Why?’
His heart lurched. Susan Bishop had been given sixty-one years. His mother only thirty-four.
‘DI Sawyer?’
Keating’s voice, swimming up from somewhere. He turned back to the group. Side-glances. Shepherd and Walker implored him with raised eyebrows.
‘That’s… what we need to find out,’ said Sawyer.
A silence. Murmurs. Sawyer was struck by a queasy possibility: he had become absent for a few seconds. Drifted off. Answered an imaginary question.
‘Find out?’ said Keating.
Shepherd moved in front of Sawyer. ‘The body is with pathology, but we believe that Susan was stabbed. Once.’
‘Once?’ A new voice, from a scrawny detective in wire-frame glasses in the group near the back.
‘Yes, DC Moran. Once.’ Sawyer stepped to the side, into Shepherd’s place, regaining ground. ‘Prelim from Drummond shows marks around wrists and ankles.’
‘She was cuffed,’ said Walker.
A beat. Sawyer continued. ‘Wound on forehead from blunt instrument. He knocked her out, restrained her, delivered the stab wound and waited for her to die. Then he wrapped her up, packed her into a vehicle and dumped the body at Fairholmes.’
‘He?’ said Shepherd.
Sawyer sighed. ‘Women don’t stab.’
‘Apart from Joanna Dennehy.’
‘The exception that proves the rule.’
‘Passive data? said Moran.
Sawyer shook his head. ‘No cameras or ANPR on the Snake Road or the path into the Visitor Centre. Speed camera near the reservoir bridge but I assume he wasn’t joyriding. Questions. Where was she killed? Wherever it was, why not leave her there? Myers, find out what you can about the route from the murder scene to Fairholmes. Check phone mast data. And why was she killed? Moran, take victimology. Tell me everything about her and find me a good reason. Old showbiz connections, possible grudges. DC Walker, work with Sally on the holdall and plastic sheeting. I want to know where and when the holdall was bought. I’ll talk to the husband in the morning. From here in, DS Shepherd is your case manager. I’m SIO. He’ll coordinate briefings and keep me up to date. Everything into HOLMES, please. And Stephen? Details out of the press for as long as you can.’
Stephen Bloom, the tall, Nordic-looking media manager stood up to speak. As ever, Bloom’s tailoring was more suited to a corporate conference than a provincial police station. He wore a royal blue waistcoat, sky blue shirt, grey tie. ‘Fairholmes have already had ITN on the phone, sir.’
‘They won’t know anything,’ said Walker. ‘The guy who found the body didn’t open the bag. He just called it in as, uh—’
‘Suspicious package?’ said Moran.
‘Keep it dark,’ said Sawyer. ‘We might get something significant from Drummond’s findings. And, technically, we’re already questioning a suspect.’
‘The husband,’ said Walker.
Sawyer nodded and headed back into his office. He was about to close the door behind him when he realised Walker was on his tail. He beckoned him inside.
‘Sir. Would it be possible for someone else to look into the holdall? As first officer attending, I’d like to work on victimology if possible.’
Sawyer took a red boiled sweet out of a bowl on his desk. He unwrapped it and squeezed it into his mouth. ‘It’s possible.’ He whipped his jacket around his shoulders and shrugged it on. ‘But that’s DS Shepherd’s call now.’
5
The lift clunked into place on the basement level of Sheffield’s Northern General Teaching Hospital. It took a few seconds for the mechanism to oblige, and the doors squealed and parted, as if prised by invisible hands. Sawyer turned side-on and slid out into the corridor before they were fully open.
As usual, the place smelled like an old car park: chalk and cement, a tingle of ammonia. But there was comfort in the lack of front, the disregard for subtlety.
As he turned the corner by chemical storage, he saw a vast figure ducking into the office adjoining the mortuary. Frazer Drummond turned and caught Sawyer’s eye as he approached, but then entered the room and closed the door behind him. Sawyer picked up his pace and followed him inside.
‘I’m impressed with your new welcoming approach, Frazer. Hearts and minds, eh?’
Drummond dropped into his desk chair and yanked a handful of tissues from a box. He blew his nose. ‘I’ve got a fucking cold coming on, Sawyer. I could have done without a weekend bat signal from Keating. So pardon me for not cupping your balls.’
The voice—sonorous, Glaswegian—rattled the windows of the box-room office. He peered up at Sawyer over the top of his semi-rimless glasses. ‘Interesting new look. Going undercover or just breakdown chic?’
Sawyer looked around the room. The walls remained bare, but Drummond h
ad gathered a collage of family photographs on a corkboard by his desk. Signs of life. ‘Crawley is in Manchester. Says he’s insane.’
Drummond scoffed. ‘He’s as sane as you and me.’ Sawyer caught his eye. ‘Well. Me, at least.’ A silence lingered. Drummond sat back. ‘You’re not seriously seeking professional validation from the man whose wife you tried to steal.’
‘That’s not what happened. And even if it were true, it didn’t work, did it? You won. Might be time to move on.’
Drummond sprang to his feet and lifted a folder out of his filing cabinet. He flapped it onto the desk and sat back down. Sawyer ignored it and gazed through the windowed side door into the autopsy room.
‘I hear she was an entertainer,’ said Drummond. ‘Bringing a bit of light into a dark world.’
Sawyer turned and sat on the edge of the desk. Drummond bristled. He only kept one chair in the office, but hated his desk being used as a rest spot. ‘TV. Minor roles. Early retirement a few years ago. Husband runs a talent agency.’
Drummond sat back. ‘There’s no business like it, apparently.’ He opened the file. ‘Uniform bruising around the lips. He put gaffer tape over her mouth. To keep her quiet.’
‘Why take it off?’
Drummond shook his head. ‘Something that had done its job? Something he didn’t need to leave behind. He probably forced her to strip at knifepoint, cuffed her…’
‘Tell me about the wound.’
Drummond nodded and zoned out a little. ‘Closing it up. That’s a new one. Looks like he might have used a soldering iron.’
‘Cauterised? It looked like a fresh burn.’
‘Yep. Old Hippocrates was doing that way back in the fifth century BC. Heats up the tissue and blood, causing it to coagulate.’ He fixed Sawyer with a patrician stare. ‘Protein denaturation. But you knew that, right?’
