Acid Lullaby (Underwood and Dexter)

by Ed O'Connor

  Payne nodded and the helicopter swung eastwards over before dropping to low altitude over narrow, twisting line of the A1066. Stiles manipulated the control of the Forward Looking Infra-Red Camera underneath the EC135 and began to sweep the camera slowly across the fields. Images began to appear on her monitor screen. Harrison squinted at the strange white outlines and differential heat patterns trying to make sense of them. It was a painstaking process. Two hours later, Harrison conceded that they had drawn a blank.

  ‘Where do you want to try next?’ Stiles asked. She was already beginning to believe the search was a futile one. However, she knew that one of the missing women was a copper. She also knew from gossip in the staff canteen in Huntingdon that Harrison was living with her. She decided to keep her thoughts to herself.

  ‘Site two, is near Cambridge between Waterbeach and Burwell,’ Harrison said, checking his own map.

  ‘There’s not much there,’ Payne commented as he banked the helicopter south-east and climbed to 1000 feet. ‘Why do you want to check it?’

  Harrison hesitated. Underwood had given him the last two sites as possible locations. The inspector’s rationale had been curious. He wondered how much he could tell the aircrew without destroying their enthusiasm for the search completely. ‘We had a tip-off. The suggestion is that the bodies may be located in a wooded area near a rifle range. There are two major private ranges in the county. Sites two and three cover the areas surrounding both of them.’

  ‘What kind of tip-off was that?’ Stiles asked, looking over her right shoulder at Harrison.

  ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know.’ Harrison decided not to share his knowledge: that the two sites had been chosen on the basis of an old lady’s dream and a very shaky set of assumptions.

  Ten miles to the east, in his semi-detached house near Downham Market, William Bennett was having great diffi­culty mobilizing his family. His wife Sylvia seemed to be inventing housework deliberately to delay their departure and his twin daughters Isobel and Imogen appeared to have an addiction to sleep. He was certain that they were feigning their exhaustion.

  William wanted to get outside while the weather was favourable. He had spent an hour the previous evening preparing the family picnic in order to facilitate the logistics for the following morning. Now, the supposed time advan­tage he had created was being eroded by familial inertia.

  ‘We really need to get going,’ he told Sylvia agitatedly as she cleaned the inside of their oven. ‘The weather may not hold and then the picnic will be ruined. I’ve done jam sand­wiches for the twins and a tuna fish sandwich for you.’

  Sylvia was fighting a losing battle but she continued stalling. ‘It’s only a twenty-minute drive, Will. What’s the urgency?’

  ‘The urgency is that if it rains there’s a high chance the heath will get waterlogged. Then I won’t be able to check whether there’s anything of interest. It could be an important archaeological site, Sylvia.’

  Sylvia sighed. William’s passion for local archaeology was becoming something of a bore to her. His growing collection of apparently meaningless rocks was a particular source of irritation. Especially when he insisted on washing and drying his ‘finds’ in her kitchen.

  ‘Why is this such an important discovery, Will? Why is it any different from all the others?’

  Bennett sat on one of the kitchen chairs. ‘You’ve heard of the Lingheath Flint Mine near Thetford?’

  ‘Of course.’ Sylvia often felt as if she was living there.

  ‘Well, the stones and soil marks I found last week on Fulford Heath were very similar to the rocks discovered at Lingheath. Now, the Lingheath mines produced flint that was used in the making of weapons – you know, gunflints and so on – from the eighteenth century. The evidence I’ve found suggests there may have been another flint mine operating in the area near Fulford. Perhaps not as important but histori­cally significant nonetheless.’

  ‘A flint mine? Historically significant?’

  ‘Absolutely. During the Napoleonic Wars the mine at Lingheath was a major supplier to the British Army. Don’t you thinks that’s interesting? That the guns fired at Waterloo had flints that came from a local mine? If I’m right and there was another mine at Fulford, then who knows? Maybe flints from there were used in guns fired during the American War of Independence.’

  Sylvia shrugged. ‘It’s your day off, William, wouldn’t you rather be resting?’

  It was a training day at the local primary school where William was headmaster. He had devolved his training responsibilities to his deputy with the governors’ approval. It was an opportunity to test the theory he had been developing at weekends and school holidays.

  ‘Come on, Sylvia,’ William insisted, ‘how often do we get a chance to go out together as a family? It’ll be fun, I’ve done the picnic already. If I don’t check the heath out properly soon, the university will have students traipsing all over it dropping crisp packets and cola cans. It’s my theory, after all. Don’t you think I should get the credit for it?’

  Sylvia looked at her husband – already dressed in his clean Wellingtons – and felt a forked stab of guilt and pity. It was wrong of her to belittle his hobby. At least he wanted to involve her and the twins.

  ‘Okay,’ she conceded, ‘I’ll get the girls up. But I want to you promise that if it rains we are coming straight back again.’

  William Bennett nodded and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ll put the stuff in the car.’ He collected the sandwiches and bottles of drink from the fridge and placed them in a cool box. Before he started to load his car, he made one last check of his holdall: camera, ordnance survey map, notebooks, pens. He was ready and felt a buzz of excitement at the prospect of unearthing new evidence for his local history monograph.

  47

  Mark Willis drove slowly around the Morley Estate: a shark in shallow water. He was furious with himself for letting the two teenagers go after his altercation with Alison Dexter the previous evening. They were a possible information source squandered. In his current predicament information was money. And money was life. There was a small shopping precinct at the centre of the Morley. It contained a dismal parade of shops and a rather downtrodden doctor’s surgery. Willis decided it was a good place to wait. He parked and bought himself a cheese ploughman’s roll wrapped in plastic film from the Quik-Shop mini-market. It cost eighty-nine pence and tasted like rubber. He washed away his disap­pointment with a coke, enjoying the sugar rush. He returned to his car and waited.

  Alison Dexter hated him. He had seen the fury burning in her pebble-hard green eyes. However, he had also seen some­thing else, something pathetic. The same vulnerability that had attracted him eight years previously was still lingering there: it was an edge of desperation and loneliness. After a while that vulnerability had come to bore him. She had started to get clingy and possessive.

  Their trip to Paris had been a mistake. It had given her a hope that he knew he could never realize. She had started holding his hand, talking about the future, about how they could manage their relationship at work. He had found that her serious manner suddenly revolted him. He felt crushed, that his options were starting to vanish. The night they had flown back into Heathrow together he had felt an over­powering urge to get away from her. He had called a friend from his mobile in the gents’ toilet at baggage reclaim and engineered an escape plan. The same friend called him back five minutes later and Willis had feigned a sudden work crisis. He had put Alison into a cab with fifty pounds – ‘The least I can do, Sparrer’ – then driven alone away from Heathrow into the West End. The sense of relief had almost overwhelmed him. He had pulled an Irish nurse at a Leicester Square nightclub and spent the night working out his frus­trations on her.

  Mark Willis had suddenly been cut free. He had loved the excitement of his job and his independence but his increas­ingly claustrophobic relationship with Dexter was draining his spirit. He resolved to start enjoying himself again: get jiggy with a f
ew birds, make a bit of cash on the side. He knew how the system worked. He also knew how to exploit its weaknesses. Dexter had found out about him a couple of months later. That had been unfortunate. Her reaction had been far worse than he had anticipated. Still, he reasoned, that was proof that he was well shot of her. She was far too keen.

  Willis snapped out of his musings as a mountain bike whipped past his parked car. He recognized its rider and started his engine. He trailed the bike around to the far side of the estate. Its driver dismounted at the front entrance of a particularly dirty block of flats. Willis pulled up alongside in his Freelander and wound down a window.

  ‘You still after some pills?’ he called out.

  The boy looked at him. His eyes were watery and his face pock-marked and pale. Willis recognized the symptoms. ‘I’m a friend of Starkey’s,’ he added. ‘I can do you a better deal than him, though.’

  The boy leaned his bike against the wall of the flats and walked over cautiously. ‘You a copper?’ he asked.

  Willis laughed. ‘Do I look like a copper?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Listen,’ Willis reached inside his jacket pocket and retrieved a handful of yellow tablets, ‘see these? These are called submarines. They’ll blow your mind. I’m a big fan myself.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Like speed. They’ll give you a right fucking buzz. Give one to a bird and you are laughing.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Free to the right person. What’s your name, sonny?’

  ‘Joe.’

  ‘Tell you what, Joe. Let’s do each other a favour here. I’m looking for Starkey’s lock-up. Would you know where that is?’

  ‘You sure you’re not a copper?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Joe shifted nervously in his worn Adidas trainers. ‘He had a garage.’

  Willis groaned inwardly. ‘I know that. Over behind Hope House.’

  ‘No,’ Joe pointed in the opposite direction, ‘I saw him using a garage over the other side, behind the precinct.’

  ‘Could you show me?’ Mark handed over the pills. Joe placed these into his trouser pocket.

  ‘Okay.’ Joe climbed back onto his bike and led Willis to the far side of the estate.

  They found Stark’s other garage within five minutes. Willis saw the shiny new padlock on the door and was immedi­ately suspicious. The lock also looked much too easy to break. He knew that Stark was more cautious than this. Sensing a trap, he looked around the cluster of garages care­fully before attempting to smash open the padlock. Satisfied that he was not being observed, Willis opened the boot of his car and withdrew the hammer that he sometimes carried in the pocket of his leather jacket for protection.

  ‘Why are you still here?’ he snarled at Joe.

  ‘Do you need any more help, mate?’ the teenager asked, wondering if there were more pills up for grabs. ‘I could keep lookout.’

  ‘You do that,’ Willis muttered, eyeing the padlock.

  ‘I’ll wait by the road,’

  ‘Loser,’ Willis muttered under his breath.

  He brought up his right arm and smashed the hammer down repeatedly on the lock. It snapped at the third impact and Mark Willis hauled open the garage door. He instantly knew he had been shafted. He saw the filing cabinet with its wrenched-open drawers and the bag of cocaine that had been emptied all over the floor. He checked inside the cabinet and found nothing. Then stooping down, he picked up the piece of paper Alison Dexter had left for him. He unfolded it, expecting a triumphant, sneering witticism. She had only written: ‘!’

  Willis screwed the note up and threw it on the floor. ‘Fucking bitch!’ he shouted, throwing his hammer out through the open garage door. ‘That fucking bitch!’ She was playing a game. He could see what she was up to. He knew her too well. She wanted to make him grovel, beg for her forgiveness and charity. Well, he wouldn’t demean himself.

  He tried to clear his head to concentrate, focus on the reality of the situation. She had not done this officially, he told himself, she deliberately left the cocaine to make sure he knew she’d taken it. The garage had not been properly sealed either. The malicious little bitch had done this off her own back just to spite him. Mark Willis had seen enough. He was sick of games and the petty resentment of a childish little woman. He lived in a bitter fucking reality and time was running out.

  As he returned to his car, Joe came jogging back round the corner. ‘All done, mate?’

  Willis didn’t reply. He opened the car door of his Freelander. Joe stopped him. ‘Any chance of some more Scooby Snacks? I did keep look out for you.’

  ‘What?’ Mark Willis turned to face him with cold contempt.

  ‘I helped you out big time. Wouldn’t want me to get all talkative with the old bill, would you?’ Joe made a point of looking at Willis’s licence plate.

  Willis nodded slowly and closed the car door. Suddenly, and with brutal strength, he butted Joe in the face. Blood erupted from the younger man’s face as he stumbled back­wards and fell into the garage. Willis was on Joe before he could stand up. He smashed his fist hard onto Joe’s nose and then his jaw.

  ‘You want some extras, pal?’ he hissed. ‘Some fucking scoo­bies? Well here you go.’ He entwined the fingers of his right hand in Joe’s hair and forced his face into the dirty pile of cocaine that Dexter had left lying on the garage floor. Joe’s front teeth cracked against the unyielding concrete and he grunted and coughed as Willis ground his nose into the ground.

  ‘Little word of advice, Joe,’ Willis said as he took a pinch of cocaine for himself with his free hand. ‘In future, don’t get involved.’ Willis slammed Joe’s face into the concrete one last time and decided that every cloud did indeed have a little silvery lining.

  48

  The picnic on Fulford Heath had been a marginal success. The twins had enjoyed their jam sandwiches but a light spat­tering of rain had ruined Sylvia’s mood. William Bennett knew he would have to work quickly, before her patience began to drizzle away completely. She was already sitting in the car listening to the radio. William suspected that if the gathering black clouds dispensed their load, Sylvia would simply drive off and leave him.

  He was working in an area about 100 yards away from the car. He could see the twins playing with their water pistols. Their blonde heads bobbed around as they dodged each other’s fusillades. He had collected a number of flint samples from the area he suspected had once been a mine. He had also found a number of shallow indentations scooped in the uneven soil that he suspected had once been the entrances to mine shafts. He photographed each of these in turn and marked them with a small plastic tag for future reference.

  He had almost completed his survey. He could hear the distant ‘phut … phut’ of gunshots from Fulford rifle range in the distance and the muffled thudding of a helicopter about a mile away. There were still two large earthworks and a ditch that he wanted to investigate. These were located behind a sprawling expanse of tangled hedgerow. Seeing their father disappear from sight into this area, the twins ran over to join him, squirting each other all the way.

  William Bennett noticed something odd between the larger earthwork and the ditch that drained water from the heath. He moved closer to investigate. He could see tyre tracks, thick tracks that had left indentations gouged into the soil along the line of the ditch. They extended past the hedgerow for fifty yards in the direction of the road. He clambered over the first grass-covered mound and looked down into the ditch. He could see four grain-bags lying in the muddy water at the bottom of the gully.

  ‘Phut… phut… phut,’ said the rifle range.

  ‘Thud… thud… thud,’ replied the helicopter.

  ‘What the bloody hell is that?’ Bennett whispered to himself.

  The hedgerow crackled slightly behind him.

  ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ called the twins.

  ‘I’m here, guys, I’m just checking something.’ Bennett swung his legs over the earthwork and
gingerly lowered himself into the ditch.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Imogen.

  ‘Can we see?’ asked Isobel.

  ‘Phut… phut… phut,’ said the rifle range.

  ‘Thud… thud… thud,’ replied the helicopter.

  ‘No, you stay there please.’ Bennett advanced through the ditch.

  ‘What can you see, Daddy?’

  ‘I’m not sure, I think some naughty man has been dumping his rubbish here.’

  ‘Yuk!’ said Imogen. Bored, she turned and squirted her unsuspecting sister in the face with her water pistol.

  Isobel screamed and the two exchanged giggles and shots.

  ‘Phut … phut… phut,’ said the rifle range.

  ‘Thud… thud… thud,’ replied the helicopter.

  William Bennett crouched over the first of the four bags. It was tied at the neck with string. It stunk. Bennett hesi­tated. Holding his breath, he untied the string. Warily, he lifted the coarse edge of the grain sack and found himself confronted with the ragged, black tangle of flesh and sawn bone that had once been Liz Koplinsky’s neck. He gasped for air and stumbled backwards falling painfully in the ditch. Panicking, he hauled himself back up and, ignoring the terrible pain in the wrist that had broken his fall, screamed at his daughters to get back to their mother.

  Fifteen minutes later, County Headquarters radioed the discovery to Airborne B. Harrison was stunned when he heard the news: they were less than a mile south of Fulford Heath at the time. Stiles had been working the infra-red camera over a wooded area adjacent to the Fulford and Ely Gun Club. At Harrison’s instruction, Tony Payne accelerated away from the position he had taken over the woods and headed north towards the open ground of the heath and the family salon car parked on the muddy access road. Harrison sat back in his chair as the EC135 dropped from the sky and bumped down on the rough ground. He tried to focus on being professional; on treating what he found on the heath as dispassionately as possible; on overcoming the shock of the coincidence. Then he realized their presence in the area was not coincidental at all.