by Nick Oldham
Henry knew that crime scenes were precious and, because this was not his case, he did not really want to add to the number of size-eleven boots that may have already trampled on this particular scene. But he had been asked along and therefore wanted a look, so with Rik Dean’s blessing, he climbed into a forensic suit – nicknamed a Zoot suit – and invited Daniels to do the same.
Rik Dean then led them back through the slit in the screen to the front door of the house, where a crime-scene investigator was closely examining the damaged door, photographing it and dusting and swabbing the splintered wood for prints and DNA.
‘Door jemmied,’ Rik said. ‘There’s been quite a few burglaries around here recently, apparently.’
Henry paused, squatted down a few inches and peered at the marks in the door frame.
‘Not a common MO for doors,’ he mused. ‘Does it link with the MOs of the other breaks?’
‘I don’t know just yet,’ Rik said. ‘I’m on with that now … but I do know that it was also the murder weapon. It’s not really called a jemmy – it’s a wrecking bar, apparently.’ He turned to the CSI. ‘May we?’ The man stood aside and slowly Rik pushed the door open with his gloved knuckle to reveal the hallway and the body lying in it.
The wrecking bar was still imbedded in the dead man’s head. He was lying in a large pool of coagulating blood.
Rik stepped in carefully, his feet treading on the specially laid plastic pads that everyone having business at the scene would have to use to enter, thereby preserving as much evidence as possible.
Henry and Daniels followed his footsteps.
Henry said nothing, kept his hands by his sides and just looked around. He heard Daniels emit a tiny squeak.
‘Looks like a burglary gone wrong,’ Rik said.
‘Talk me through it,’ Henry told him.
Rik cleared his throat. ‘We know he came here after leaving the chief yesterday evening. He’d told Mr Bayley he was going to spend the night here before getting back to the force later today. This is his mother’s house, by the way. She’s with a neighbour at the moment and a family liaison officer. According to her, they spent some time chatting, then she went to bed. He stayed up. She thinks he was doing paperwork or something. It looks like he disturbed the offenders coming in through the front door and, in a panic, they whacked him.’
‘Bit extreme,’ Henry said, looking along the body of John Burnham, a man he had been in conversation with not much more than twelve hours ago.
Behind him, Daniels caught her breath again.
He turned. ‘You OK?’
She nodded.
‘Do we know if anything’s been stolen?’ Henry asked Rik.
‘Not yet.’
‘Who found the body?’
‘Some guy walking past with his dog … checked out, no connection,’ he said, referring to the man.
Henry nodded, then looked Rik in the eye. ‘Is everything in motion?’
‘Yep, and the Home Office pathologist is due … it’s Professor Baines.’
That was good. Baines was the best there was.
‘In that case, I’ll leave it with you.’ He looked at Daniels. ‘Are we done here?’
She nodded eagerly, wanting to get away.
Daniels tore off her forensic suit and threw it at the officer who was issuing and taking them back, then scurried out through the slit in the screen, leaving Henry to peel his off slowly and hand it back for auditing purposes, signing the return sheet for himself and Daniels.
He found her fifty metres down the road, leaning against the stone wall with her face buffeting the fresh wind blowing in from the moors. Her complexion now did not look so great.
‘How’re you doing?’ Henry asked.
‘I wouldn’t mind, but it’s not my first murder scene. Just the cold brutality of it …’ she explained. ‘How do you keep so cool?’
‘I don’t,’ Henry divulged. ‘Not really. I just know I have a job to do and there are certain expectations on me, one of which is to take it in my stride. Underneath, I remain a blubbering mess.’
She looked at him, astonished. ‘Seriously?’
‘Really, really.’ He patted her shoulder. ‘Let’s go and see what the boss has to say.’ He set off towards FB’s Jaguar. The man himself was leaning against it, talking on his mobile phone. He finished whatever conversation he was having and faced Henry.
‘What do you think?’ he asked Henry.
‘Well, like Rik says, it could be a burglary gone wrong – or he was targeted. This area’s been hit by a few break-ins recently, so if the MO is similar to those, then we could just be looking for the local Billy Burglar who panicked, which should be a fairly easy arrest. Even if the MO doesn’t quite fit, I’d still be rounding up the locals and solving those crimes as a by-product.’ He hesitated.
‘You don’t think it was a burglary, do you?’ FB said.
‘I don’t know what to think, though my other hypothesis is that Mr Burnham has been deliberately targeted. I have no earthly reason to speculate why that should be so, though. I’d be keeping my options wide open … Anyway, Rik knows what he’s doing. He’s had a great mentor.’
FB nodded, not rising to Henry’s accolade of himself. He went to lean on the wall overlooking the fields. ‘He was quite a good mate, Henry.’
‘Oh, right … I didn’t know.’
‘Aye, well … anyhow … I’ve been ringing round as you can imagine … my phone’s fucking red hot.’
‘Does this affect what Mr Burnham wanted me to do in Central Yorkshire?’
‘That’s what some of the calls have been about. I’ve spoken to the Home Secretary, the Central Yorkshire Crime Commissioner … and the bottom line is that, for the immediate future, I’ve been given a watching brief over that force until everything’s sorted in terms of a replacement for him. Short answer: yes, you can start a review of those murders, so away you go. You’re on light duties, so you shouldn’t even be here.’
Suddenly FB clutched his chest and the colour drained out of his face.
‘Boss, you OK?’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah … just sometimes get bad heartburn. Go … you go.’
‘You’re going to kill me,’ Henry said. He looked sideways at Daniels.
They hadn’t gone far, maybe four miles at most, but Henry could see she wasn’t concentrating on her driving, her mind very much elsewhere. He had directed her to drive over to Todmorden, which was in West Yorkshire, then to take the Halifax Road, which would continue to take them due east. But she was not with it.
Henry spotted a café and told her to pull in.
‘Let’s get a brew and recoup.’
She nodded, tight-lipped. ‘I’d like that.’
They parked opposite, a little further down the road, and walked back to the establishment, which was called The Little Bird Café. It had a few chairs and tables set out on the pavement and it was just about warm enough to sit out. Henry left her and went in to order a couple of mugs of tea, which he came out bearing, and sat opposite her at the small table.
She gripped the mug for its warmth. ‘I’m feeling a bit girlie.’ She exhaled unsteadily. ‘I’ve dealt with numerous child abuse cases, rapes, domestic assaults, some really horrible stuff … and I have been to a couple of murder scenes, so I don’t know what it is. It just took me by surprise, and the fact he was a cop and in his mum’s house. God!’ she gasped. ‘I’m really annoyed with myself. Must look a right tool … I’ve been a detective for four years!’
‘No, you don’t. It’s only natural. Sometimes it all catches me by surprise, too … We do a job that sees and experiences violence first-hand. Doesn’t mean you have to like it, but you do have to learn to deal with it,’ he concluded gently. ‘At least in the public eye. There’s no time for … what’s the word? Reactions? You have to save them for your private moments. But then again, what do I know? I’ve been on the edge and peered down that precipice … it’s got to me in the past.’
&
nbsp; A flashback: on the banks of the River Ribble in flood. Children in a bus, blown off the motorway bridge, collateral damage caused by a ruthless killer who had stuck a bomb on his target’s vehicle so that when it blew up in the middle of a busy motorway, many others suffered.
It was all still with him.
His desperate, almost useless attempts to save lives, and almost drowning himself in the process.
Mostly it was boxed away, tighter than a bank vault.
Occasionally, the door opened.
His eyes glazed over slightly. There were many other closed boxes in his head and he fervently hoped they would never all open at the same time to release the demons within.
‘I could very easily be a nut job,’ he said, then put a finger to his lips. ‘Maybe I actually am.’ His vision came back into focus and he made eye contact with Daniels, who was looking at him with concern. He smiled. ‘You’ll be fine. The time to worry is when you feel nothing.’
‘Thank you,’ she said genuinely.
Henry leaned forward earnestly. ‘This may seem shallow, but inside this café is a piece of carrot cake with my name on it, and one with yours on it, too.’
SEVEN
There was a certain aroma in the car. All the hours spent together without having the chance to wash properly or shave, then the diet of burgers and coffee from drive-throughs having taken its toll. And Silverthwaite’s flatulence did not help matters either – so tangy Hawkswood could almost taste it, even with the windows open.
They had parked on some spare land a good two hundred yards further up and on the opposite side of the road from Burnham’s mother’s house on Todmorden Road, partially concealed by a huge mound of chippings dumped by the council which would ultimately be used to resurface the road. Angling the car so they had a decent but restricted view of the front of the house, they settled down to watch the proceedings unfold, confident that if they were challenged in any way they would be able to bluff their way with a flash of their credentials and come up with a cock-and-bull story to explain why they were here. They did not expect to be challenged anyway.
The activity at the house started with a man walking his dog down the road and glancing in through the open front door to see Burnham sprawled out in the hallway. It had not taken long for the first patrol cops to arrive, all coming up the road from the direction of the town centre, none driving down past the two detectives.
They were sure they were in a good position.
They were on a large tract of spare land between the last terraced house on their side of the road and the next houses, probably a quarter of a mile further on. Opposite, across the road, was a dry stone wall with fields beyond, running up to the higher moors.
Hawkswood was using a tiny pair of binoculars to watch the comings and goings and the speedy build-up of cop activity: firstly uniforms, then CID, followed by a CSI van, the erection of screens and the tent at the front door.
All as it should be.
Throughout the morning, Silverthwaite kept in contact with Runcie, updating her when there was anything to report.
Such as, after a couple of hours, the arrival of the chief constable in his fancy Jag.
They watched, eating cold burgers and drinking coffee.
‘We probably need to get back now,’ Silverthwaite suggested.
Hawkswood quickly placed his burger on his lap and jammed the binoculars to his eyes. ‘Shit.’
‘What is it?’
Slowly, he handed the binoculars to Silverthwaite and pointed with a wavering finger.
Silverthwaite refocused to suit his eyesight.
‘Shit.’ Henry Christie had arrived in a green Peugeot driven by a young black woman. Silverthwaite’s chin wobbled. ‘What’s he doing here?’ He watched Henry get out and walk slowly towards the murder house. ‘More to the point, how can he even be walking?’ Even from that distance, with Henry reduced in size by the lens, he could see Henry wasn’t just strolling along. ‘Why isn’t he dead? Or at least in hospital?’ He turned accusingly on Hawkswood. ‘You did push him down those steps, didn’t you?’
‘As sure as you stuck a jemmy in Burnham’s head.’
‘It was a wrecking bar,’ Silverthwaite corrected him. ‘He must bounce, the bastard. Looks like he’s in pain. Walking like an arthritic monkey.’
He continued to watch Henry, feeling his stomach churn for more than one reason: the very unsettling feeling of seeing Christie rock up to this crime scene after believing he might never walk again this side of Christmas (or ever again). Despite his snide remark to Hawkswood, he had been behind him when he launched Henry down the cellar steps, so had seen him nosedive down.
‘We should’ve made sure.’
The other unsettling feeling in his guts was because of the horrendous diet he’d been living on for the last day, the meal at The Tawny Owl excepted. His stomach was all griping pains and escaping wind from both ends, and the realization that sooner rather than later he would need to pay an urgent visit.
Henry and the woman were met by Fanshaw-Bayley and the detective who seemed to be in charge of the scene.
After a chat, they were led through the screen.
Silverthwaite took the binoculars away from his eyes and handed them back.
‘We didn’t leave anything incriminating, did we?’ he asked. Hawkswood shook his head.
Silverthwaite took out his phone and called Runcie with an update, readying himself for the rant that would surely – and did – come. He held the phone away from his ear as she raged at his and Hawkswood’s ineffectuality. Many expletives accompanied the abuse before she hung up.
Silverthwaite looked at his phone. ‘I’ve never known a woman use the word “cunt” so many times,’ he said. ‘Especially when she was talking about you.’
‘She certainly doesn’t mince her words,’ Hawkswood said, ignoring the jibe.
‘Seems to think we should’ve killed Christie.’
‘I heard,’ Hawkswood said sourly, lifting the binoculars to his eyes again.
Silverthwaite’s guts gurgled.
Christie and the woman – obviously another detective – reappeared after a few minutes and talked to Fanshaw-Bayley at his car, then made their way back to the car they had arrived in.
At which moment, Silverthwaite could not hang on any longer.
‘Jeez, I got to go – now!’
The Peugeot pulled away from the roadside.
‘He’s setting off, coming in this direction,’ Hawkswood said.
‘And I need a shit,’ Silverthwaite said urgently. He grabbed the door handle and opened it, almost falling out on his knees as he scrambled around to the back of the car, struggling to undo his belt but just managing to yank his trousers down and squat low as the Peugeot drove past; Hawkswood had slithered low and out of sight behind the steering wheel. Silverthwaite peeked diagonally across the boot, and as Henry and the woman drove past, his bowels evacuated themselves in the most horrible, spectacular manner.
‘I don’t believe this,’ Hawkswood said. He and Silverthwaite had given Henry about a ten-minute start before they set off, starting to think it would be unwise to remain in the vicinity of the murder when two Support Unit vans drew up and disgorged over a dozen bobbies who would be deployed on initial house-to-house enquiries and maybe some searches of land before a real, concerted search was undertaken. Whatever, they would no doubt encompass the two detectives and their car. Knowing they would only be able to bluff that one so much, they set off back over the hill and into West Yorkshire, down into Todmorden and east on the A646.
Hawkswood’s outburst was as they travelled in slow traffic past a café and saw Henry and the female detective sitting outside with brews and large chunks of cake.
‘This fucker’s gonna haunt us,’ he said.
‘Eh, what?’ Silverthwaite was still in recovery from his urgent call of nature, which included the embarrassment of not having slid his underpants off enough and having a further accident in th
at respect, hence he’d had to ditch the garment in the pile of chippings. Nor could he rid himself of the memory of watching Christie drive past, his eyes just above the level of the boot of his car. He was also seriously worried that his stomach had not finished playing up.
‘Get down,’ Hawkswood said suddenly. He himself slid low behind the wheel and Silverthwaite did not have to be told twice, even though he wasn’t sure what was going on.
With just their eyes showing above the dashboard, they drove past the café as Christie and his companion shovelled in cake.
Henry settled into the battered car seat next to Daniels and they set off towards Halifax, virtually circumnavigated the town and dropped on to the M62.
Progress was slow on this motorway, but Henry did not mind too much. He spent the time rereading the murder books, although his thoughts continually flipped back to Burnham’s death, which did not sit at all right with him as a burglary gone wrong. Few burglars he had encountered in a long career of catching them had the courage to stand up to the occupants of houses, unless they were frail grannies, which Burnham was not. Most would flee first. Yes, there were the bad ones, the ones intent on causing harm or rape, but they were the headline-grabbers and the minority. Mostly they were weedy losers.
He tried to concentrate on his assignment: two very different killings, seemingly not related, but as he read through the pages, one similarity did hit him.
‘Nothing much about mobile phones for either of these guys,’ he commented. He’d already noticed this with regards to Mark James Wright’s murder – the guy stabbed near his car, whose file he had open on his knee. There was no phone listed on the inventory of his property, and though there was one listed for Tom Salter, there did not seem to be much information from it. However, Henry knew the murder books were not meant to be an extensive record of property seized.
‘I noticed that,’ Daniels said.
‘Bit odd.’
‘Could the offenders have made off with them?’ she asked.
