‘If you say so.’
‘So if Jadon was murdered we can make a guess that he was stabbed. But if that had happened either on the street or on the children’s play area – where Jeff was killed – we would have found some trace evidence.’
‘Go on.’
‘I was wondering … Was he abducted first?’
He seemed unconvinced. ‘What – he gets in a car with one of the people who owe him money?’
‘What if she said she needed to get to an ATM?’
‘It’s possible, I suppose, but I can hardly imagine him falling for that one.’
‘Hmm. Well, it was worth a try.’
The DS was quiet for a moment. Then, slowly and tentatively, he spoke. ‘We didn’t know him, Jo, but I can’t see him walking into a trap. He must have known that people may well wish him harm. He’d be too canny to let himself be abducted.’
She gave a deep sigh. ‘So many blind endings, Mike. Big Mill, for instance. Goodness – it would be the star of any TV murder mystery. And – nothing. Then there’s the people he was visiting that night. They must have all hated him. Hated handing over the money. Again – nothing. So what I’m asking is how did it happen?’
He thought about it for a moment, screwing up his face in concentration. Then he sat forward, frowning and shaking his head. ‘Try this for size, Jo,’ he said gruffly. ‘He’s lured into the house. Maybe using the weather as an excuse. He’s killed there and his body dumped.’
And now she was slowly nodding her agreement too.
‘The thing is, Mike,’ she said, ‘where?’
That was when, right on cue, the call came in.
TWENTY-ONE
She’d always known this call would come. Somewhere, deep inside her, she must have suspected that Jadon Glover’s body had been hidden in some tiny little rat-hole, somewhere in the vast expanse that was the Staffordshire Moorlands. Right on their patch.
And when she learned the location she realized she knew Starve Crow Cottage. She and Matthew had often walked the high trail, starting from the Roaches and crossing the boggy, high part of the moorland towards Royal Cottage, wondering if the story that Bonnie Prince Charlie had stayed there in 1745 was, in fact, true. So many place names in the moorlands were the result of fables.
They had passed the neglected house, read the name on the gate and wondered, made up stories to its origin without knowing the truth. They had seen smoke coming out of the chimney and wondered who lived there.
Now they knew.
7.30 p.m.
So the climb up to the high ground was a trip along memory lane but at the same time a place which would forever now be spoiled, the memory of those idyllic walks replaced by an image of an ugly murder, its resting ground the most sordid.
She and Matthew never had found out where the grotesque name had come from. Now she was about to learn. Mike had dug around just before they left and filled her in on the story as they drove out to the moors.
‘Really?’ she said, recalling the smoke coming out of the chimney. ‘And does anyone live there now?’
Korpanski shook his head. ‘Apparently not,’ he said. ‘The old lady, Monica Pagett, broke her hip six months ago and has never been back. She’s in a residential home.’
‘That must be hard after living out here.’ They were climbing into the chilly spring mist, the sun setting to another cold spring night.
Korpanski looked at her. ‘Hard? You mean easy,’ he said. ‘She’s in a nice warm home, with a hot shower room en suite, meals provided. No wood and coal to get in. No fires to light.’
‘And I bet she hates it,’ Joanna said, taking in the wide expanse.
Korpanski shrugged. ‘Don’t know as to that, Jo.’
But Joanna had watched her own grandmother dragged kicking and screaming away from the terraced house where she had lived all her life and knew home was home so she felt some sympathy for Monica Pagett.
Social services made these decisions. They took over a person’s life and deemed what was appropriate and what not.
How much, Joanna wondered as they approached the bleak scene, had these events also sealed Jadon Glover’s fate? Their killer had not come here by chance. Either they had known Mrs Pagett and her circumstances and property or they had happened upon it one day while hiking in the moors, as she and Matthew had done. The name and the location would always stick in the mind.
Something else stuck in her own mind. Just before they’d left she’d had to ring Eve to tell her that she was unable to come as something had ‘cropped up’.
And Eve had guessed.
‘Is it Jadon?’ Her voice had been little more than a squeak. ‘Have you found him?’
Joanna had kept her voice neutral. ‘I can’t tell you, Mrs Glover. I don’t know myself. As soon as we do know anything for certain I will be in touch.’
There had been a sniff, followed by silence.
The scene that greeted her as she climbed into the moorlands and reached the cottage was straight out of Dante’s Inferno, a sullen, leaden sky now throwing reluctant shafts of light, hardly illuminating cars, and a group of people all tensely waiting for her. Korpanski was at her side. Quiet, for once, his square face serious. He didn’t look at her.
They followed Rory’s footsteps skirting around the back of the cottage, using the concrete slabs as stepping stones across a sodden, muddy patch of grass. As they walked behind Forrester they sensed that the white-faced estate agent was not going to show them in person to the end of the path. He merely indicated with his arm, stood back to let them pass and looked as though he was going to be sick.
With the corrugated metal door wide open the smell was apparent from eight feet away, flies buzzing towards the site. Joanna braced herself. No corpse was a pleasant sight but this promised to be particularly repulsive. Time isn’t kind to bodies.
Privy shelters had been built in single bricks with no windows, little more than a pill box with a corrugated tin roof under which a savage wind was now blowing as though the elements were venting their fury on the scene. The door, too, was of corrugated tin. It was the most basic of earth closets, a wooden toilet seat set in a box which soaked straight down into a pit in the ground below. Behind her, Korpanski tried to make a joke of it. ‘Enough to give you constipation.’
She grimaced. It was the closest she’d get to a smile.
The body had been eroded by insect life, sticking out of the wooden toilet seat, the face eaten by rats but still discernible – eye sockets, teeth, jaw, hair. Even in disgust at the sight Joanna couldn’t help reflecting that for the dapper ‘front guy’ of Daylight, be-suited, mobile phone, tablet, 4x4, this was an ignominious burial. Someone had wreaked their revenge with a vengeance and spite and dumped his body where they thought he belonged. But then a closer look inside the privy made her heart hammer in her chest. Glover – if it was Glover – had his hand up. He’d tried to get out?
She looked in despair at Mike. ‘Shit,’ she said, appropriately. ‘He wasn’t dead?’
Even Korpanski’s face paled. ‘We need Matthew,’ she said, ‘and some SOCOs.’
And that meant withdrawal and the inevitable wait.
8 p.m.
The teams arrived within half an hour – practically a record, particularly out here in the middle of nowhere. She had taken a brief statement and some details from the shocked couple who had taken shelter in their car. At a guess they wouldn’t be making an offer on Starve Crow Cottage. Rory Forrester was sitting in his car, head in his hands, talking into his mobile phone. Joanna heard some of his words.
‘Police … Sealing it off … No fucking chance.’
She could almost have felt some sympathy for him. But she had a job to do too.
The SOCOs were soon busy, taping off access routes, taking pictures, soil samples, setting up arc lights. Joanna was glad to see that Mark Fask was heading the team. Efficient and thorough, they needed him.
Matthew took a little longer to arrive. Ju
st after nine she saw his maroon BMW slide in next to the squad car and waited while he donned his paper suit, hat, gloves and picked up his equipment. It was a routine she knew so well she could have choreographed it herself.
He strode towards her, long legs making short work of the two hundred yards between them. His eyebrows rose as he took in the toilet. ‘Wow,’ he said, grinning. ‘Not exactly the Ritz.’ Then, ‘You OK, Jo?’ He knew how squeamish she was. And this scene was making her particularly so. Even more than usual. But she nodded and he patted her arm.
At that the wind rose and screamed around the buildings like a mad banshee. Or perhaps it was the spirit of the crow who had starved to death vainly waiting for his owner to come home and feed him.
Matthew walked along the path and slipped inside the privy. He stood for a moment, observing, thinking but not touching. From the outside Joanna saw his head move forward and then he began work: collecting samples, bagging up the hands, taking ambient temperatures. He stood back, the door now propped ajar, and confirmed Joanna’s worst suspicion.
‘He wasn’t dead when he was put in here,’ he said. ‘He tried to get out.’
She was chilled. It was an Edgar Allan Poe nightmare, a dying man scrabbling, his body stuck in that filthy pit. She forced herself to focus. ‘Cause of death?’
His eyes were bright as they rested on her. He had the merest wisp of a smile. ‘Not a chance, Jo. Not till I get him out of there which …’ he looked around, ‘… if the SOCOs don’t mind, I’d like to do now?’
Joanna made a quick check. Once the body was pulled out of the privy some evidence would inevitably be lost, the position of the body being the most important. She consulted Fask and he nodded.
They laid the body on an open body bag, all wearing masks against the stench. Putrefaction plus a long douse in a used privy made for quite a bouquet. Joanna met Matthew’s eyes over his mask and knew they were both thinking the same thing: bath. A nice, hot, fragrant bath, soaping each other’s backs until they had erased every tiny element of decay from their skin and replaced it with perfumes.
Now she could look at the remains, mainly the clothes, Joanna could see it was – or had once been – Jadon Glover, Eve’s perfect husband. But looking at the state of him now – predation, probably insect and rodent, as well as putrefaction – she did not fancy asking Eve to identify him. She looked worriedly at Korpanski. Someone was going to have to identify him. Maybe Leroy or Scott – someone with a very strong stomach. Otherwise it would be down to clothes and DNA. What effect would seeing what had happened to their mate have on his two remaining colleagues? Would it be the end of Daylight? Would the two remaining personnel cut their losses and run away? Fast? Had the crimes succeeded in their objective? Or would greed win over fear?
Matthew took a watch from the body’s wrist, handed it to her and she put it in an evidence bag.
‘This might help with identification,’ he said. ‘A bit less traumatic than the entire thing.’
She nodded. ‘Thanks, Matt.’
The cause of death looked very much as though Jeff Armitage and Jadon had shared the same fate. There was the dirty rust of blood in a few places on the suit, holes in the fabric and marks on both hands which even Joanna could read as defensive; a vain attempt to protect himself from an avenging angel. Then she looked around her at the bleak crime scene – and what lay underneath.
Fask nodded, reading her mind. ‘We’re going to have to dig the entire place up,’ he said, ‘in case …’
Yeah, Joanna thought, still taking in the scene. The possibilities were enormous. The weapon, his missing mobile phone, another body, even?
10 p.m.
She owed it to Eve Glover to let her in on the news and that meant leaving the scene. She didn’t envy the coppers who would have to stand guard here all night. They’d need their thermal underwear.
She and Korpanski returned to the car. Rory Forrester and the would-be buyers were long gone.
Outside Number 8, Disraeli Place stood the smart silver Jaguar XJS. Eve looked at Mike, who shrugged and grinned. They might not know yet who had killed her husband and Jeff Armitage but at least they had anticipated this one.
‘Let’s burst in on them.’ It was Mike’s mischievous suggestion, his mood lighter now they had left the crime scene.
But as she was shaking her head, down the path walked a very jaunty Karl Robertson, comb-over blowing in the brisk breeze, a young man’s spring in his old man’s step. He looked like the cat who had just drunk an entire saucer of cream and was anticipating a lifetime ahead of such luxuries, so pleased with himself he didn’t notice the two detectives in the waiting car. He reversed out, his manoeuvres jerky and excitable, and burst down the street, wheel-spinning out on to the road back towards Leek and Hanley.
‘Well,’ Joanna said, ‘confirmation of our theory? Come to comfort Eve after her day in court? He looks pleased with the state of play.’ She frowned. ‘Is he married?’
Korpanski gave her a quick glance. ‘And that has exactly what significance?’
She didn’t answer. And now Korpanski was being particularly stolid and pedantic. ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions, Jo.’
‘Well,’ she said reasonably, ‘look at it this way. I’ve been working it out. It takes money to set up a business like Daylight. Jadon and his pals had to have the capital to lend out in the first place. Someone put up the money. That’s why Jadon could say, with impunity, that he worked for Robertson. It wasn’t such a lie after all. Robertson put up the money and I dare say he took a cut of the profits. So, in a way, Jadon was telling his wife the truth. He did work for Robertson, who is much more involved than we’ve suspected.’
He looked at her, hardly bothering to comment.
She nodded. ‘So did she know? Or more relevant how much does she know now and how much more does Karl Robertson know?’
He was half out of the car. ‘One way to find out.’
‘Remember,’ she said as they approached the front door, ‘Eve has a very good reason for hating her perfect husband.’
He knocked.
Eve looked calm as she answered the door. Calm but frightened. She was neatly and neutrally dressed in a black skirt and white sweater which fitted well and looked expensive. She was wearing perfume and looked nothing like a woman who’s spent the day in court listening to the injuries her mother inflicted on her murdered son. Neither did she look like a woman whose husband has been missing for the past few weeks. She looked – Joanna had to admit it – serene. Nothing like the woman in hysterics who had screamed down the phone that her perfect husband was three hours late home from work.
So, what had changed? Was she on medication?
Her eyes skittered between Joanna and Mike but she said nothing, asked nothing.
It was Joanna who spoke first. ‘Can we come in?’
Eve nodded, her eyes now asking the questions. Who? How? Why? Where?
Joanna and Mike waited until she had sat down on the sofa. Neither fancied catching her if she fainted. And the news was not good. Joanna had to remind herself that this woman was a possible murder suspect. At best she had stood back while her mother had systematically abused her son and not lifted a finger to prevent his murder. And now, far from sitting at home with nothing to do or grieving for husband and son, she had simply renewed a friendship with Robertson. So both had apparently played a double game. Because of her husband’s selfishness she had entrusted the little boy to her psycho, alcoholic, druggie mother. Surely Eve must have known? But if she had wanted Jadon she had been left with no choice. Because …
These thoughts flitted through Joanna’s mind while she waited for Eve to ask the question. Her eyes did.
‘We’ve found a body,’ Joanna said, ‘in the grounds of …’ no need to go into detail, ‘… a remote cottage in the moorlands.’
‘Is it …?’ She spoke as though terrified of the answer.
‘We don’t know for sure yet.’ Joanna tried again to p
uncture the look of utter confusion on the woman’s face. ‘You understand that we have to identify this person?’
Eve must have understood something of the degradation of a body left in the open. Her terror compounded. Her hands gripped the sides of her chair. ‘You want me to …?’
She was so white that Korpanski jerked forward ready to catch her while Joanna was convinced this was no act.
‘No, we have other ways. If it is Jadon he’s been dead for a little while.’ Something of Joanna’s better nature took over. ‘We have other ways,’ she said again, even more gently, ‘and as soon as we’re sure we will let you know.’
‘Did someone kill him – like Jeff?’
So she knew about Jeff’s murder.
‘Was it an accident?’
‘There will be a post-mortem tomorrow,’ Joanna said awkwardly, ‘but I have to warn you that the way the body was positioned and the fact that Jadon’s car was left in Leek means that at the moment we’re treating the death as suspicious.’
She did not want to go into detail. Not at this stage. And she would spare her the ugly facts – for now. They’d almost certainly come out in the coroner’s court.
Wait. It had always been Colclough’s advice. Wait until you’re sure.
To which she added a little mantra of her own. And don’t forget the person you’re talking to may well be your perpetrator.
‘We’ll keep you informed, Eve,’ she said. ‘Do you need anyone to stay with you?’
Eve shook her head.
After a pause Joanna decided to toss a pebble into the pond and see where the ripples reached. ‘Difficult times for you, Eve, what with your son and Jadon.’
Eve simply shook her head, despairing. ‘I didn’t know what she was doing. I swear I just thought he was a miserable child.’ She dropped her face into her hands.
Joanna shot Mike a swift questioning look.
Crooked Street Page 26
