Dead and Gone

by D. L. Michaels

  ‘Thanks.’ I touch his arm affectionately and leave him to pack up.

  ‘I’ve been checking on items recovered from the dig,’ says Charlie as we walk away. ‘Come and see what you make of them.’

  I follow him to the inside of a forensic support van, where he introduces me to a young male officer called Declan Slate, who is bagging and tagging muddy clothes and rusty objects.

  ‘Make my day, Declan; tell me you’ve found a rusty old Stanley knife, otherwise known as our possible murder weapon.’

  ‘Not yet, ma’am, but the team is still bringing things in.’

  ‘What about the mannequin and clothing?’ asks Charlie, looking towards the bagged body shape. ‘repeat what you told me.’

  ‘Okay, well, yes, as I said earlier, the mannequin itself is that of a full-size male,’ he touches one of its feet. ‘It has a manufacturer’s stamp and product serial number on it, so we should be able to trace suppliers and customers.’

  ‘No one bought it,’ I say irritably. ‘The damned thing must have been stolen from somewhere.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says defensively. ‘I’m sure you’re right, but the suppliers will at least be a starting point.’

  ‘They will. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be snapping at you. What else did you find?’

  He picks up a log. ‘Starting with the clothing and footwear:

  • Two brown Doc Marten boots, approximately men’s size ten;

  • Black socks, size nine to eleven;

  • A pair of blue Wrangler jeans, waist thirty-two inches;

  • Black leather belt;

  • Green, military-style jacket, size medium;

  • Red and white flannel shirt, size medium;

  • Blue Nike baseball cap;

  • A beige and gold plastic Swatch watch, with blue second hand.’

  I shake my head. ‘Blue, black, red, white, gold and brown. My God, I’d forgotten how awful teenage fashion was in the early nineties.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, ma’am,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t a teenager until the following decade.’

  He avoids my scorching stare and continues, ‘A lot of what remains of the clothing is crusted in clay. However, there is some that got folded upon itself and looks stained. It’s rotted in places but you can make out very dark staining.’

  ‘It might be paint,’ I observe, not unreasonably. ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions.’

  ‘It’s blood,’ insists Charlie. ‘I looked at it while Declan was bagging other things.’

  ‘How would you know what twenty-five-year-old blood looks like?’ I ask.

  ‘We seized some stained overalls once in a murder case I worked. They’d been stashed for decades beneath floorboards in a factory where the death occurred. They were only found when the place went bust and they tore the building down. They looked exactly like our stuff here.’

  My mobile rings. I check the screen, expecting it to be Tom, with news that the telly has floated away.

  It isn’t. I recognise the number.

  ‘DCI Goodwin,’ I turn to Charlie and say. ‘Excuse me while I try to explain that we may have the victim’s blood and his clothes, but no body.’

  75

  Paula

  The dusty white plastic clock on the interview room wall is about to strike midnight. All my anxieties have been subsumed by extreme boredom and tiredness. I get up for the umpteenth time and pace the floor. I’ve done it so often that Terry doesn’t even glance at me as I pad past him. My thoughts have drifted back to Martin and his lump sums of cash, his secret bank account in the UK and his numbered overseas Swiss account.

  For once, I’m relieved to hear the door opening.

  DI Parker walks in, followed by DS Patel. If it’s possible for anyone to look worse than me at the moment, it is the DI. Her hair is a wiry, crinkled mess from being soaked and then dried without brush or blower. Her skin is wind-reddened and her nose red from the cold.

  ‘You’re free to go,’ she says.

  ‘Free?’ I can’t hide my surprise.

  ‘Yes, for the moment,’ she replies. ‘But I feel obliged to tell you that we still consider you a suspect rather than a witness in relation to the disappearance and possible murder of Ashley Crewe.’

  Terry jumps in, ‘And the bigamy charges?’

  ‘That’s something we will pick up on when we have completed our records search,’ she adds.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I tell Parker. ‘What happened out there? Your sergeant said you didn’t find anything.’

  ‘That’s not quite correct. We didn’t discover the body of Ashley Crewe. Nor did we find the knife you mentioned. We did, however, unearth a full-size mannequin dressed in male clothing.’

  ‘A mannequin – as in shop dummy?’

  ‘Yes. Exactly like that.’ She studies me, then adds, ‘Can you shed any light on why it was there?’

  ‘I can’t. I have no idea why. No,’ I say weakly.

  ‘Could it be that you saw the dummy being buried and not Ashley?’

  ‘It was Ashley,’ I insist. ‘I saw his face. His hands. His flesh. His blood. It wasn’t a mannequin; I promise you it was Ashley Crewe.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  Images of the night are filling my head. ‘I – I - saw him lying - in his own blood– I – I helped carry him out to the vehicle – in sheets. I felt his weight – the way he slumped in the cloth – I know it was him. Not some plastic dummy. Not anything other than him.’

  The DI sniffs and pulls a tissue out of her pocket. ‘Mrs Smith,’ she says, then blows her nose, ‘if all this turns out to be some big sick prank that you’ve concocted, for God knows what reason, then not only will we bring charges against you for wasting police time,’ she blows again, ‘but we’ll be seeking compensation for all our man hours and expenses.’

  ‘My client came to you in good faith,’ says Terry, sharply. ‘I can assure you she has given you an honest and accurate recollection of how she was raped by this man, and then involved in his murder.’

  She nods at him. Looks almost sorry for her comments. Pockets the used tissue.

  I wait until she looks at me. ‘Did you find nothing there to support what I told you?’

  Parker hesitates, then answers, ‘The mannequin was dressed in clothing that matched the descriptions you gave us. We will test it for DNA and hopefully then we may be a little closer to solving this mystery.’

  ‘I’m not lying to you. I saw Ashley dead and I helped bury him. I swear to you.’

  Terry gives me a look that says I shouldn’t say anything else.

  For once, I follow his lead.

  I say no more. I can stay quiet. Just as I have done for decades. But I need to know the truth. I need to know it, for so many reasons.

  76

  Danny

  I’m feeling bad. Like someone has lit a fire inside me. Like I’m burning out – from the inside.

  I open my eyes and see darkness.

  I’m dead.

  That’s what I am.

  I’m dead and my charred bones are laid out on a rough wooden cart. I’ve been left somewhere and grey-faced men in ragged robes are goin’ to bury me in a desert grave.

  Creakin’.

  Clangin’.

  It’s not a desert. I hear metal moving, squeaking.

  Gates.

  The Pearly Gates.

  I’m outside the fuckin’ Pearly Gates and them apostles, they’re votin’ on whether I should be brought inside, or slid down a hillside into the other place. That’s where the heat’s comin’ from. That’s why I’m so hot. The devil himself is claimin’ me from the inside, he’s takin’ over my body while God’s best team is deadlocked on whether to let me in or not.

  A light shines in my eyes.

  It’s God.

  God has the hands of a woman. Cold, slim fingers. They’re blessin’ me. Blessin’ me by holdin’ my eyes open and shinin’ divine light right into them.

  ‘He’s
conscious,’ says God, a woman with an Indian accent. ‘His blood pressure is normalising and his heart rate is improving. Can you hear, Mr Smith?’

  I am saved.

  God has called my name.

  My eyelids grow heavy. Slide shut. I feel the cart move.

  I am goin’ to heaven. They are lettin’ me in. Praise be to God, the Indian woman.

  77

  Paula

  Terry fixes a room for me at a nearby hotel and drives us there from the police station. It’s one a.m. when we turn off a country road into the almost empty driveway of an out-of-season tourist getaway.

  As I step out of the car and into the cold night, outside security lights snap on. They illuminate a three-storey sandstone manor house covered in ivy. He kindly carries my case across pea stone gravel, past dormant rose gardens to a pillared entrance and a cool, semi-lit hall of black and white marble, dark wood wall panels and small tiered chandeliers.

  ‘Thanks for everything today,’ I tell him. ‘I couldn’t have got through it without you.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Sleep well. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  He rushes off, leaving me envious of his eagerness to return to his family down south. With a pang of unease, I introduce myself to a young receptionist at the front desk and offer my credit card. ‘You should have a booking for me, under the name of Johnson.’

  She smiles and then taps immaculate nails on a computer keyboard. ‘Mrs Sarah Johnson, for one night?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  She swipes my card and then takes a big brass key off a board behind her. ‘Room 12 on the first floor. It’s very nice. I’ll show you.’

  I follow her up a carpeted staircase that splits into galleried landings. She’s talking softly but I’m not paying attention. My concentration has long gone. I want to sleep. Nothing more. We creak along several passageways of old oak boards before she shows me into a pleasant period bedroom that’s vaguely Victorian.

  There’s a large, high, four-poster bed, with a thick cream throw over the foot of it. Flowers in two white china vases, and under different circumstances I’d be delighted by the thick white towelling robe, the luxuriously stocked mini-bar and a vanity table stacked with complimentary creams and lotions.

  The pleasant receptionist shows me where the en suite is and points out a card. ‘This is for breakfast in your room, otherwise the restaurant is open from seven to eleven.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She places the card on the bed, says goodnight and leaves.

  I’m too tired to hang up my coat, so I throw it over a chair, unzip my small case, pull out a toiletry bag and head to the bathroom.

  In an exhausted daze, I use the loo, wash my hands, scrub my teeth and wipe off what remains of my make-up. When I’m done, I shed my clothes, plug my long-dead business phone in to charge and crawl beneath the quilt.

  I kill the lights, close my eyes and try to clear my mind. Forget the horrors of the day.

  WHY DIDN’T THE POLICE FIND ASHLEY’S BODY?

  Sleep.

  WHO COULD HAVE MOVED IT?

  Please, God, let me sleep.

  MAYBE DANNY MOVED IT. DUG IT UP AND MOVED IT. IT CAN ONLY HAVE BEEN HIM.

  I take slow yogic breaths to stop the madness. The old 3,4,5 trick. Draw cool, calming air through my nose for three seconds. Let it inflate my abdomen, fill my chest and hold it for four seconds. Then exhale - slowly, detoxing for a count of five.

  I HAVE NOT BEEN CHARGED WITH MURDER - I AM FREE.

  I repeat the breath cycle. In. Hold. Slowly exhale.

  FREE TO HAVE MY BABY.

  And again.

  MARTIN’S BABY?

  DANNY’S BABY?

  Bugger the breathing. This isn’t working.

  I switch the light on.

  MARTIN’S SECRET.

  All chance of sleep has gone.

  78

  Annie

  It’s two a.m. when I get home. Opening the front door, I dread what I might find. Furniture floating, the fridge turned into a boat, people clinging to ceiling lamps – anything is possible.

  The lounge looks fine. That’s a relief.

  Now the kitchen.

  I click on the light. Ah – sadly Tom wasn’t overreacting as much as I hoped.

  Chairs are stacked on the old kitchen table. Carpet tiles are off the floor and nowhere to be seen. The concrete beneath them has been left dark from the water that’s been swept outside. And the place stinks. I pray it’s just soil and dirt that’s been washed in and not sewage from waterlogged drains.

  There’s a nasty scum ring running around the room, about halfway up the skirting board. I guess, in a way, we’ve been lucky. None of the electrics or appliances have been damaged. It looks like the fact that the kitchen is on a lower level than the lounge has saved the rest of the house.

  I stick my head into our tiny utility room. There’s a mountain of wet towels dripping off a worktop, and more in the washer and dryer. Evidence of the early fight to turn back the invading tide. Now I feel guilty for not having been here to help Tom bail and to reassure Polly that everything was okay when she came back from the cinema with Dee. Although, knowing my granddaughter, I suspect she found it all a wonderful adventure.

  I creep upstairs to check everyone’s all right. Tom and Polly share a room and they’re both out for the count. As I tiptoe away, I’m hoping Dee’s still awake. I need someone to talk to for ten or twenty minutes. Someone who’s not a police officer.

  No such luck.

  My sister is fast asleep, her bedside lamp still on and a book open on the bed.

  Make Mine a Double… a Mastectomy That Is.

  The title makes me smile. It’s just the kind of book Dee would want to read. I close it, put it on the table and turn off her lamp. I’m not in the mood for sleep. Too much is churning over in my head.

  I return to the damp kitchen and make a mug of hot chocolate in the microwave. Once it’s pinged I take it to the front room, turn the gas fire on and settle on the sofa with my laptop.

  One of my failings – so Tom tells me – is that I’m a compulsive double checker. Not OCD standard, but approaching it. For example, if he locks the front door when we go out together, I have to give it a push and tug to make sure it’s closed. It rightly drives him crazy. It’s not just that I have a problem trusting people, it’s that I feel it’s my duty to make sure they got it right, and that if I don’t check, then I’m letting them down and any mistake would actually be mine.

  I’m the same at work. When I’ve asked people to do things, then I’ll often double check. So, I decide to review some of the tasks delegated to Nisha, Alice and Charlie’s DS, Jo Matthews.

  I log in to CATCHALL, a special police portal and database that pulls together all police, forensic, public, immigration and prison service records, plus key crime agency databases and my own unit’s historic crimes software tools.

  Experience has taught me that offenders who don’t ‘go straight’ when released from prison have a nasty habit of hooking up with former lags for their next jobs. With that in mind, I list all the main players in the current case and start my more detailed examination with Danny Smith and his wife.

  I start with her and her various names. Firstly, Sarah Paula Makeney as she was at school, then Paula Smith once she’d married Danny, and finally Sarah Johnson when she married for the second time.

  They all come up clean.

  The files on Danny, her childhood sweetheart, aren’t so pristine. He spent time in Wormwood Scrubs for his Camden Market handling offences and served just over half of his sentence. He would have got out earlier but for two fights. One was quickly stopped. The other ended in his opponent sustaining a fractured skull from an assault in the shower block. This interests me, because it comes on top of the fact that Smith hospitalised Ashley Crewe in a classroom fight, and therefore goes some way to corroborating his wife’s claim that he was instrumental in killing Ashley.

  Never
theless, I still feel uncomfortable. We’re dealing with a bright woman. Certainly not the kind to waste her time, let alone ours, by confessing to a murder that had never happened. For the umpteenth time, I run her statement through my head. She said she saw Danny Smith kill Ashley Crewe. She’s unequivocal about that. And she’s equally certain she helped bury him.

  So, where’s the body?

  One thing’s for sure, she didn’t dig it up. If she had, then there’s no way she would have stayed with Danny for so long, and no point in her confessing to us.

  Did Danny do it?

  Possibly.

  Moving the corpse would lessen the chance of him being convicted if his wife did confess. But what about the mannequin? Him placing it in the grave after digging up the body, doesn’t make sense. Increasingly, I have the feeling that I’m missing something. Or someone. Someone other than Ashley Crewe, I mean.

  I decide to list everyone involved and their immediate connections.

  Danny Smith aka Kenneth Aston – enemy of Ashley Crewe.

  Paula Smith aka Sarah Makeney aka Sarah Johnson – enemy of Ashley.

  Kieran Crewe – brother of Ashley.

  Raurie Crewe – brother of Ashley.

  Andy Ellison – knew of Ashley’s death.

  Then I catalogue secondary acquaintances and possible associates:

  Brodie, Michael and Sean Appleton – Romany crime family, known to be major drug suppliers who had one of their team (Adam Sage) murdered by Kieran Crewe.Callum Waters and Colin Richardson – ex cons from Full Sutton – prison where Kieran Crewe is also held.

  Mark Sismey and Anthony Pilcher – ex cons known to Danny Smith.

  Finally, I make a note of the most tenuously linked names:

  Brodie, Michael and Sean Appleton – Romany crime family, known to be major drug suppliers who had one of their team (Adam Sage) murdered by Kieran Crewe.

  I stop there, otherwise I’ll be making connections that will take a lifetime to check out.

  Prison records show that Brodie Appleton, the family kingpin, did a stretch in Belfast thirty-five years ago for wounding a police officer but hasn’t offended since then. Or maybe it’s that he hasn’t been caught. I remember Charlie mentioning that Andy Ellison intimated his Mr Big was a clean-handed businessman who’d previously been dirty, so I write BRODIE APPLETON’s name in caps in a notebook at my side.