by Lee Weeks
‘PTSD isn’t a bad mood.’
‘Exactly – it’s a mental disorder where people can kill and not remember. Or they choose to see it another way. This is all according to Davidson and Harding, who was the pathologist at that time. Basically, this is the last thing Davidson wants six months away from retirement. He wants us to go and see Carmichael, talk to him, tell him just enough to see if he has anything useful for us and ask him if he wants to add anything to his original statement; he must have thought things over in all these years. But the main thing is, Davidson wants him contained. If he plays nice we’ll keep him informed; throw him the odd stick to retrieve and pat his head when he does. Go with Harding this morning to Rose Cottage where the Carmichael murders happened. Ask her to fill you in on the background. She did the autopsies that day. According to Robbo she was over-friendly with Davidson at one time.’ Carter smiled. ‘It’s going to kill Davidson if he has to reopen the case. Bet he never thought he’d see this resurface. But you know what they say, Ebb. Shit sticks and bodies float.’
Davidson went to the bathroom next to his office and looked at his reflection in the mirror. Today he had on a deep blue shirt and a darker blue jacket. Grey trousers with a permanent crease. His wife Barbara bought his clothes, but he never thanked her for doing it. Their marriage had lost any ember of excitement. He had long since stopped trying to make her feel treasured or even wanted. Divorce was out of the question. He’d be damned if he’d hand over half of everything. Not at this stage in his life. Barbara could carry on enjoying her benefits as she’d always done. She’d always been happy to take a back seat. He’d worked hard to court business acquaintances outside the Force. Davidson promised himself a life again when he retired. He had a few interesting offers: big corporations that wanted him on their board. He would be travelling a lot, he would be flying first class, staying in top hotels, Barbara wouldn’t want to come. If things had worked out well in the Carmichael case then Davidson wouldn’t have had to work at all after the Police Force. He’d be Commissioner by now and retire on a massive pension. As it was, if things went badly again he would be lucky to get a job delivering groceries after he retired. The thought made him sweat. He splashed cold water onto his face then stood looking at himself in the mirror. Small beads of water still dripped from his sallow skin. Okay . . . he’d made mistakes. Just six months until he could retire, for Christ’s sake. But why now did he have to find himself back in the nightmare with Callum Carmichael?
Harding came into the bathroom. She came to stand next to him. The fact they had once slept together gave them a familiarity with each other.
‘Barbara still buying your shirts?’
He turned away, pulled down a paper towel and wiped his face, small precise dabs then went back into his office; she followed. He felt a flash of anger. Once more she had overstepped the mark. Once more he felt the urge to see her naked.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to Rose Cottage this morning?’ He sat down behind his desk.
‘Yes. The owners are sending over a key. Apparently the place has hardly been touched in all these years.’
He stared at her. She knew he wasn’t really listening to her. He was white with rage. She didn’t flinch.
‘You can’t ignore it, John. You can’t stick your head in the sand . . .’
‘Thank you for your support in the meeting this morning.’ He was petulant.
They listened to the sound of doors banging: people in the corridor outside his office. The Murder Squad in full work frenzy. It was what they lived for. It was what they did. But Davidson had had enough. He was six months from retiring and every part of his body and soul wanted out now, wanted a new life; he deserved it.
‘It’s no shame to admit the procedures let us down at the time. Everything’s in the open these days,’ Harding said as she sat down across from him. Davidson pursed his lips, leant forward, elbows, forearms on the desk, and pressed his fingertips together. He didn’t answer. He looked at her coldly. She glared back. ‘We did our best with what we had at the time.’ Davidson sighed, annoyed, exasperated; Harding stayed cool: ‘Reopen the Carmichael case, John.’
He flashed her a defiant look. ‘No.’
She persevered. ‘These are different times; transparency is the new gospel of the day.’
‘No . . . not transparency, people just want to know every sordid fact, even if they don’t understand it. They won’t care about technical reasons why we didn’t get a conviction in this case. Why should they? The buck will stop with me . . . I have everything to lose now. I made the mistake last time of thinking I would come out of it with a bright future ahead. I thought I would take on the case and reap the glory – after all, Carmichael was a war hero and a well respected officer. Carmichael wasn’t even capable of an alibi. It didn’t take long into the investigation for me to realize I had backed the wrong bloody horse.’
Chapter 7
Carmichael hauled Jumper’s body out into the snow and stood over it. The wind and snow swirled around him, as if he stood inside a Christmas paperweight that someone had shaken. Sophie had had one in her stocking. It was plastic with a reindeer inside. She had been so excited about Christmas. She came into their bed that last Christmas morning and hugged his neck and he had breathed in her sleepy smell and knowing there would never be a more perfect love. Like the first day he’d held her in his arms, wet from the womb, and he’d vowed to protect her forever.
‘Come on then.’ He had picked her up in his arms and carried her to the window and held her tightly as he opened the curtain very gradually. Sophie had held her breath for a few seconds as she pressed her palms to the cold glass and then gasped. Outside the snow was falling.
Now the sky and the ground merged as the blizzard swirled around him and the dead sheep. He knelt beside Jumper and picked up handfuls of snow, his bloody hand leaving red prints on the white ground. He took out the knife from his belt and began skinning her.
Chapter 8
Sandford looked down from the window in the master bedroom at Blackdown Barn and watched the young policeman on duty at the gate. It was starting to snow again. The officer outside had been there since seven. It was mid-morning now. Inside the house it had fallen quiet. His SOCO team of four were spread out throughout the house, conducting grid searches in each room. He tapped on the window and the young officer turned around. Sandford made a T-sign with his fingers and the officer grinned and nodded. Just as Sandford turned back from the window his eye was drawn up to the corner of the room and something sparkling there. He stood on the stepladder to reach into the corner of the ceiling cornice. A staple was punctured into the plaster. He picked out the mini pliers from his tool belt and gently wiggled it free. With the staple came a tiny fragment of plastic sheeting. He looked at it on the edge of the pliers. He held it in his hand and phoned Robbo.
‘What’s the thickness?’ Robbo asked.
‘I would say one mil. PVC.’ Sandford looked along the ceiling. ‘Puncture marks every metre.’
‘Okay,’ answered Robbo. ‘Rolls of plastic sheeting, one mil by a metre. I’ll find the manufacturers and get samples. How’s it looking out there? You dismantled the whole house yet?’
‘Yeah, funny . . . nearly. We’re going to start digging up the basement today. Needed to get some results back from the gym equipment enquiry first.’
‘Yeah, I followed it up. There was a runner, a multi-gym, and an exercise bike down there. What’s the flooring?’
‘It’s felt. I’ll get it bagged up and sent your way before we start digging. Did the gym company say they’d cleaned it yet?’
‘Yes. It’s been sent out again so no chance of DNA from it. Do you think there’s a chance there’s a body under the basement?’
‘Could be. We’re still looking for the kid in the Arsenal shirt. We’ve put cameras down the drains, no extra vermin activity. No lumpy stuff that could be flesh. Pitch pipes too; they’re old – at least fifty years – and
they’re blistered so if there were any chunks of flesh larger than a couple of inches square they would have got snagged.’
‘Is it freezing out there?’ Robbo reached over for the cafetière as he smiled to himself. The cafetière was wrapped in a leopard-print body warmer: a present from his wife: tongue in cheek, homage to his feminine side. He found it really useful; it kept his coffee hot for an hour.
‘We’ve got heaters in the mobile unit out the front. We can make tea. But yes . . . it’s bloody freezing. I’m sure I’ll be used to it by the time I finish here – either that or it’ll be spring. It’s a massive house.’
‘You can ask for a bigger team if you need to pace it up.’
‘No. I need to keep control of who’s dismantling what. There are four of us – that’s enough. If you’re interested you could come and take a look and lend a hand, though?’
‘Wouldn’t want to get in your way.’
‘Very considerate.’
Robbo never left Fletcher House except to get in his car and drive home. In all the years Sandford had known Robbo he’d watched his agoraphobia grow. Without his realizing it Robbo was no longer able to work away from his desk.
Sandford hung up and looked at the piece of plastic again; a fine blond hair was caught between it and the staple. He went across to the collection of samples he had on the floor and picked out one of the small brown bags with a see-though square section in its front; on it he wrote: piece of plastic from ceiling cornice, bedroom 1.
He opened the crime scene log and drew a diagram of the master bedroom and where he’d found the scrap of plastic. He rang his wife.
‘No, definitely won’t be home tonight, love. I’ll try and make it tomorrow for a few hours. Sorry . . . happy birthday, love . . . yes . . . I’ll be thinking of you. Kiss the kids for me and you too of course. Love you.’
Chapter 9
Ebony sat beside Harding as she threw the Audi sports car around the unfamiliar roads on the drive out of London towards the Sussex countryside. The snow grew sparser on the roads as they neared the coast. Some of the fields had a hint of patchy green.
‘Thank you for coming, Doctor.’
‘It’s not a problem. We’ll run through the case notes and crime scene diagrams when we get there. I’ll be interested to see any similarities with Blackdown Barn that come to mind. Did you speak to the owners of Rose Cottage when you got the key?’
‘Yes. I met Mr Dalson, the owner, at the Tube station. He was on his way to work. He told me they inherited the cottage from an aunt. When they inherited it, it came with a list of people who regularly hired it for set times in the year. Chrissie Newton had come the year before for the first time. She was lucky, one of the regulars dropped out and she took their May 15th to the 21st slot.’
‘What’s happened to it now?’
‘No one’s booked it since. He told me that they had only visited the cottage a handful of times since it happened. They just haven’t decided what to do with it. They’ve thought about selling it but want to keep it in the family. I think he was hoping if they waited long enough they wouldn’t remember what happened there. Did you come to the cottage at the time, Doctor?’
‘Yes.’
Ebony watched the town quickly disappear and the countryside take over. They were headed on the Hastings Road towards Camber. Camber was a broad sandy beach popular with people coming from the city. Ebony had been there once before on an outing from one of the children’s homes she stayed in. Two and a half hours crowded into a hot minibus and then let loose for a fabulous day of sand and sea and freedom. She and Micky had spent the day jumping the waves and building sand castles. She would always remember the smell of the sea as they got nearer to it and the excitement she felt. She could smell it now.
‘Did you know Carmichael, Doctor?’
‘Not well.’
‘Did you like him?’
Harding lifted her hands from the steering wheel in a shrug gesture: ‘I had no thoughts either way.’
‘What about his wife?’
‘I met Louise once, that’s all. Carmichael was lucky to get her. She was beautiful, bright. She was an heiress from some major margarine company. Although the money didn’t come till she was thirty. She wasn’t born with a silver spoon. But she could have picked anyone.’
‘You think she made a mistake?’
‘I think she had her work cut out. Carmichael wasn’t a man without a past.’
They drove down the secluded lane off Lydd Road, close to the long stretch of sandy beach. The cottage was the last one on the left. A man was working in the garden. He stopped what he was doing, pinning a rose back against the stone front of the house and waited as Harding parked up outside. Ebony got out of the car and took out her warrant card to show him.
‘We won’t disturb you – we just want to take a look inside.’
‘No problem.’ He smiled. ‘I just look after the outside. You have keys?’ Ebony nodded.
He was a posh gardener type with wild unruly hair and a cheeky smile. Harding went back to the car for her bag.
‘Have you been looking after this garden for a long time?’
‘About thirteen years. I look after the gardens of all the holiday cottages on this lane.’
‘So you know the history of this place? Were you around when the incident happened here?’
He nodded. ‘Sort of . . . I had just started working but I was actually on holiday that week. I came back to it.’
‘What’s happened to the property since then?’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing really. After it happened I rebuilt this wall to the left of the gate. It got knocked by one of the vehicles. Apart from that, nothing’s changed. Except no one comes here now.’
Ebony opened up the file she was carrying and turned the pages. ‘Doesn’t mention the wall being knocked down in the report.’
He shrugged, shook his head. ‘Someone knocked down the corner of the gatepost. I presumed it was when they were reversing, trying get round – it’s a tight spot.’
‘So you rebuilt this section?’ Ebony pointed to the pillar and the edge of the stone wall.
‘Tidied it up more than rebuilt.’
She bent down to get a better look. ‘Where was it knocked down, the middle?’
‘No . . . at the top.’
‘Can I have a number for you, in case I need to ask you any questions?’
‘Sure . . .’ He smiled. He went to his Land Rover, which was parked up the lane at another house, and brought her back a card.
‘Sorry it’s a bit muddy.’ He grinned as he tried to wipe the thumbprint from the surface with the cuff of his jacket. ‘I did tell someone at the time about the wall . . . but they didn’t seem that interested.’
‘Thanks . . .’ Ebony took the card. She looked up from reading his card: Marty Readman, landscape gardener, to see him staring at her. She looked away fast as she felt the heat come to her face. She wished she didn’t find it difficult to talk to good-looking men. Harding was waiting for her. As Ebony unlocked the door and opened it the low winter sun flooded inside and set the dust spinning. They stood in the doorway. Ahead of them were the stairs to the upstairs floor. To the right were the living rooms.
‘When you came here that morning, Doctor, what was it like?’
‘I was on my way back from Brighton when I got a call asking if I could cover for a colleague who was on duty but sick. It was a sunny day. It had been a glorious weekend. It was on my way home so I agreed. When I got here the officers who answered the 999 call from Carmichael were gone; two from the Brighton murder squad were already here.’
‘Why did they hand it over to the MET to deal with? Why didn’t it stay with the Brighton squad?’
‘Because he was a serving MET officer, I suppose. Davidson made the decision he wanted to do the best he could for Carmichael. That turned out to be an impossible task. I didn’t question it at the time. Of course . . .’ She turned to look at Ebony in th
e gloomy hallway. ‘That was the first mistake.’
Ebony opened her file. ‘Here in this hallway there were bloody smears on the wall and Louise’s handprints all the way down it. It says in the report that the blood on the wall was Sophie’s. She must have seen her daughter killed, at least wounded, before she was dragged down these stairs.’
They walked into the first room on the right.
‘Chrissie Newton was in here.’ Harding pulled away the rug that covered the stone floor in the lounge. ‘This is the spot.’ A fat brown spider scuttled away towards the hearth.
Ebony held the picture of Christine Newton in her hand.
‘Was the woman from Blackdown Barn, Silvia . . . was she opened up like that?’
‘Yes.’
Ebony walked across to the window and pulled back the curtain. The gardener had gone ‘They found an open bottle of wine, half a glass poured out. It was left over here beside this window; there was a small table here at the time. Maybe she was watching someone arrive when she drank it, never finished it.’
Ebony followed Harding as she walked along the hallway and down two steps to the stone-floored kitchen. ‘And Louise Carmichael was in here. Over there by the back door. Sophie was laid out beside her.’
Ebony stood in the kitchen by a small table. ‘Sophie had collected pebbles. They were found a bucket in here on the kitchen floor. They must have spent the day on the beach. Then come back here, given Sophie and Adam their tea: they found the washed-up plates, kids’ knives and forks on the draining board.’
They walked back past the lounge and Ebony led the way up the stairs. Shadows of the dead ivy outside the landing window flitted across the old plaster walls.
‘All the bodies were on the ground floor. I never came up here. I had no need,’ said Harding.
At the top of the stairwell they came to a small bathroom with an old enamel bath.
