by David Hodges
‘So you’re saying Landy died in a churchyard?’
‘No, what I am saying is that her fingers must have scraped along a stone surface bearing traces of this lichen. Apparently, it is usually found on the external north or east facing walls of churchyards and it is sensitive to rain and light. This particular lichen is not found in rivers, so Ellie Landy would not have picked it up from the Parrett.’
‘A graveyard then?’
‘Not necessarily – it could be the wall of a church or on a tomb, something like that – and the interesting thing is that an examination of the lichen’s condition has indicated that it probably suffered from a severe degenerative change in its environment – too much sun.’
Roscoe snorted derisively. ‘Not much of that around here lately.’
She laughed. ‘Or too much water – which seems more likely after what the Levels have been subjected to lately.’ She was serious again. ‘The important thing is that all this suggests the deceased was alive and struggling when her hand scraped along an affected surface and that, since the lichen present under her fingernails is more or less unique to churchyards, it suggests that Ellie Landy did not die in the River Parrett but was actually dead before she entered the river.’
‘So how did she end up in the Parrett?’
‘That’s for you to determine. I only present you with my professional conclusions, based on the forensic evidence obtained – and there is more. A substantial quantity of fluid found in the deceased’s lungs contained a small quantity of diatoms—’
‘Dia- what? You’ve lost me, Doc.’
‘Diatoms are eukaryotic algae and populate both fresh and sea water in vast numbers and there are said to be thousands of different species. It is possible to link a deceased person to the place of their demise by comparing the particular species of diatom found, say in a river, to the species found in the corpse.
‘When a person drowns, they absorb diatoms with the water and these eventually permeate the tissues and organs of the deceased – the lungs, the brain, the kidneys, the liver etcetera, but this can only happen while the person is alive and the respiratory system is still operating; a bit like a suction pump. Once they are deceased, the diatoms cannot be absorbed. If Ellie Landy had died in the River Parrett, one would have expected to find large numbers of diatoms in her system of the same species as those present in the river. Instead, our forensic limnologists discovered an entirely different species in her body which was not present in a controlled sample taken from the river.’
Roscoe took a deep breath. ‘Can’t say I understand your point entirely, Doc, but in essence, you’re still maintaining Landy’s death was suspicious then?’
‘Exactly, Ted,’ Summers said, her voice now more brittle. ‘I believe she was unlawfully killed in one place and dumped in the river afterwards to make the incident look like an accidental drowning.’
Roscoe was fumbling for his cigarettes now, still confused. ‘So we do have a murder on our hands then?’ he growled.
‘How you actually categorize it in the end is a matter for you, Ted,’ she retorted. ‘However, based on the forensic evidence I have put before you, I’d suggest that the coroner would expect your department to have a radical re-think on the cause of Ellie Landy’s death, but I’ll leave that decision to you.’
Roscoe returned the telephone to its cradle. ‘Bloody Nora!’ he said aloud and quickly dialled the DCI’s number.
Kate spotted the internal door just as she was about to leave the laboratory and, like the main door to the lab, someone had carelessly left it unlocked.
Trying the handle, she found that the door opened easily and lights sprang on automatically inside. The room beyond turned out to be a storeroom, about seven foot square and completely windowless. The whole of one side was occupied by cardboard boxes, stacked one on top of the other and carrying innocuous labels, such as GKR Health Foods, Stampers flour and Newbold Medicinal Products. A quick check on the contents of a couple of them revealed, firstly, tightly packed plastic bottles, containing circular white tablets, not unlike those sold as vitamins by companies dispensing medicinal supplements, and, secondly, large transparent bags of white powder, individually labelled as ‘Bread flour’ and about the same size as those sold in supermarkets. She was quite sure anyone checking the top layers of the boxes would find either vitamin supplements or bread flour too, but underneath it was bound to be a totally different story. Now she realized what those big crates in the two barns contained – probably enough illegal substances to feed every addict in a city the size of London or New York for a year or more! The scale of the thing was mind-blowing.
She had no idea as to the exact nature of the narcotics the different boxes she was checking contained and, unlike the police detectives in some of the more outlandish fictional film dramas, she had no intention of sampling any of them to find out, as it would invariably have meant her going on a trip herself. Instead, she satisfied herself by delving first into one of the boxes of tablets and slipping a plastic bottle from the second or third row down into her pocket for subsequent analysis and using another of the bottles to collect a sample from one of the bags of white powder now at the bottom of the box, after first emptying the tablets into her other pocket.
Anxious not to outstay her welcome, she then quietly left the storeroom and slipped out of the laboratory, back into the corridor. And it was at this point that she heard voices above her head and the sound of footsteps ringing on the iron stairs she was about to climb.
Whirling round in a panic, she looked for somewhere to hide. There was nowhere. Behind her was just another blank wall and in front of her, just the two cupboards she had passed on her way to the laboratory.
A foot and trouser leg appeared below the line of the corridor ceiling, followed by the hem of a white coat. Then someone laughed and as the other foot joined the first, the man in question stopped, turning slightly, apparently to speak to someone coming down behind him. At the same moment Kate spotted the gap under the stairs and virtually threw herself at it, scrambling into the open space seconds before the white coat moved off again and stepped down into the corridor.
Crouched under the wrought iron steps, Kate felt about as exposed as it was possible to feel. The latticework construction of the individual treads meant that it was possible for anyone above to see straight through them and all those on the stairs had to do was to look down and she was done for. But, even as she waited with baited breath for the shout that meant discovery, nothing happened and the white coats – she could see through the stairs that there were at least three of them – reached the corridor and went straight into the laboratory. The chemists were back at work.
The stairs seemed to be deliberately trying to attract attention as she made her way back to the upper floor, but she resisted the impulse to move more quickly; it would only have made things worse. But it was stressful trying to hold herself back and she was sure that one of the white coats would reappear at any moment to check on the noise she was making. Either they were hard of hearing or they had the lab door closed, however, and she gained the upper level without being challenged.
Then, carefully pulling back one side of the curtain masking the stairs and checking both ways to make sure the ground floor corridor was clear, she stepped out into the open and turned right, intending to head back to the toilet via which she had gained entry to the house in the first place. She had only managed a couple of yards, however, when she heard a door slam from somewhere behind her and, instinctively shrinking behind one of the big potted plants, she glimpsed a black-suited man coming towards her along the corridor.
There was a door just feet away from her and she inched her way along the wall towards it. She had no idea whether or not the door was locked or what or who might be on the other side, but with the approaching man just seconds away, she was fresh out of options.
She found the door handle and turned it. At first it remained firm, but then the door suddenly gave
way and she stumbled backwards into the room, nudging the door to with the toe of her boot as the black suit strode past the plant pot. Peering after him through the gap between the door and the frame, she saw him open a second door a few feet further on and disappear inside the room, slamming the door after him.
Releasing a long tremulous sigh of relief, Kate stared around her. She was in an ornate bathroom with a huge kidney-shaped bath, gold-plated taps and a corner jacuzzi. The window was heavily curtained and subdued light emanated from a large ceiling globe. Another gilt-embellished white door provided a connection to the room beyond, which Kate guessed might be a bedroom or some sort of study – probably exhibiting the same kind of opulence. So much for the adage that crime didn’t pay!
She was almost tempted to check to see what was on the other side of that door, her curiosity almost overcoming her common sense, but then she thought better of it and it was a good job that she did. The man’s voice seemed so close that she whirled round in a panic – for a moment thinking he was standing behind her, then realizing to her relief that he was actually in the next room – and speaking to someone else.
‘Where did you put our little fat man?’ The voice was soft, cultured and strangely menacing in the way the question was put. Kate felt a chill run down her spine.
‘In the attic room,’ another, rougher voice replied.
‘Good. That will teach him to come snooping around my private premises. Who is he?’
‘Guy called Gabriel Lessing. Says he’s from a news agency.’
There was a loud hiss, a bit like the sharp spit from fat spilling on to a hot stove. ‘A journalist? That could be bad for us. What does he know?’
‘Dunno yet,’ the rough voice replied.
‘So find out! I want to know who he is, how he knew about this place and who he has told – and I want to know like yesterday.’
‘He won’t say anything.’
Another, longer hiss. ‘Then we shall have to use some persuasion, won’t we? But first, wheel Leroy in.’
Kate’s mind was in turmoil. Gabriel Lessing? Shit! How the hell had the disreputable agency man got himself into such a desperate situation? Whatever the answer, he was now obviously being held captive and about to be subjected to some form of cruel torture to make him talk. It was incredibly horrible and didn’t bear thinking about. She had to do something and quickly, but what? She had no idea where the attic room was, except that it had to be at the top of the house – and what did she expect to achieve on her own anyway? She had never needed backup more than she needed it at this precise moment, but with her police radio probably now lying somewhere on the floor of the CID car and her own personal mobile still at home, she had no means of contacting anyone and she had about as much chance of getting hold of a phone as getting out of the grounds of this damned house without being spotted. As she pondered the impossibility of her own situation, she was distracted by another chilling development.
‘We got a problem, Boss,’ Leroy’s distinctive voice blurted a second after a door had closed with a bang and Kate sensed a nervous tremor in the drug pusher’s tone.
‘What sort of a problem?’ the other man said almost wearily.
‘It’s some POL-ice chick—’
‘Police? What are you on about?’
‘Some pig ’tec been pokin’ her nose in fings. Done nicked me on sus—’
‘Yes, I know all about that. You’ve been careless, it seems, but we’ll come to that in a minute.’
‘No worries, Boss. The fuzz ain’t got noffink on me. They chucked me out again anyway, but this ’tec, she here now – in Lowmoor.’
‘What? How do you know?’
‘She been to the pub snoopin’ around and showin’ that dead press chick’s pic there. Mavis in bar tol’ me.’
Another sharp hiss. ‘And you came straight to me after leaving the pub? You imbecile! That detective could have seen you and followed you here!’
There was a choking noise as saliva seemed to collect in Leroy’s throat and his reply cut through it in a bubbling response. ‘No chance Boss. I real careful. She don’t see me. Honest.’
‘You’ve become a liability, Leroy,’ the words came to Kate softly, but with even heavier menace, ‘and I don’t like liabilities, you know that. I brought you into the syndicate to be my front man, but you have been a big disappointment to me. You had the right credentials and some very good contacts, so at the beginning I foolishly believed you would be an asset to me. All you had to do was use your contacts to market my products to the right people through the Sapphire Club and I paid you well but it wasn’t enough for you, was it? You wanted more.’
‘No, Boss, I cool, I swear.’
There was a brittle laugh. ‘Cool, are you, Leroy? Is that why you’ve been doing some dealing on your own account, eh – because you’re cool? Stealing my stuff and selling it on? Did you think I wouldn’t find out about that junkie, Polly, and the fact that you wasted her in case she said too much to the wrong people?’
Leroy’s voice had died to a whine now and Kate could almost picture him on his knees before the other man. ‘No, Boss, I ain’t done no dealin’. I just—’
‘Lies, Leroy, they spill off your tongue like spittle, and this operation is too big to be compromised by a little shit like you.’
There was a scuffling sound, then a sharp cry, which was abruptly cut off in a choking gasping sound which seemed to go on for ever. Then the man Leroy had referred to as ‘Boss’ spoke again.
‘Get rid of the body, Tommy,’ he said. ‘I don’t want him found – ever.’
‘Good as done,’ the rough voice replied. ‘Sorry about the claret on the carpet.’
Another brittle laugh. ‘Forget it. I fancy you were just a bit too enthusiastic with your garrotte! But, more importantly, once you’ve got rid of him, sort out our guest upstairs, eh? I want answers, whatever it takes.’
‘You got it, Mr Pavlovic.’
‘And get a couple of the boys to search the grounds. In the absence of the CCTV cameras I realize I should have had installed, we shall have to do a physical search. Just make sure we haven’t got any other unwelcome visitors, eh?’
‘Like the woman cop?’
‘You catch on fast, Tommy, you could end up on Mastermind one day!’
In the next room, Kate swayed drunkenly, her senses reeling. She had just been privy to a brutal murder. It was obvious that Leroy had been dispatched as callously as an abattoir animal. For a few moments she desperately tried to control the violent spasms of reflux that were the inevitable consequence of her horrific realization and she held on to the nearby sink tightly to stop her legs from folding under her.
Leroy had not amounted to much – a complete waste of a skin, in fact – but he had been a human being and he had just been murdered just feet away from where she was standing. So, what the hell did she do about it? And, more importantly, what could she do about it? Marching into the next room and shouting, ‘Police, you’re under arrest,’ was hardly a feasible move. So what was the most sensible thing to do? Get out of the house and back to her boat ASAP obviously, but what about Gabriel Lessing? She could hardly leave him to the horrific fate that had been reserved for him. No, somehow she had to find the attic room while Tommy was disposing of Leroy’s corpse, and then try and get them both away from the place before Lessing’s disappearance was discovered.
She heard a dragging sound from the next room and a series of heavy grunts. Then a door opened and closed with a bang. Tommy was on his way with Leroy’s body.
Kate crept to the bathroom door and listened. There wasn’t a sound outside. Nevertheless, remembering the thickness of the corridor carpet and its capacity to mask footfalls, she held herself in check and opened the door just a crack. Peering around the frame, she satisfied herself that the corridor to her left was empty and that Tommy had gone. She thrust her head out further and checked the right-hand section. Nothing, just a long empty corridor. She took a deep bre
ath and stepped out, hesitated and threw a rueful glance in the direction of the toilet which could have provided her with a rapid escape route, before turning right, back towards the stairs – and heaven alone knew what.
CHAPTER 14
Ted Roscoe was very uneasy. After his telephone confab with the pathologist, Ellie Landy’s so-called ‘accidental death’ didn’t look quite as much of an accident as it had before. Even the DCI had looked to be wavering when Roscoe’d passed the latest forensic information on to him, the tic in his left cheek giving the game away as he’d smoothed his blond moustache with the finger and thumb of one hand, while his sharp blue eyes darted quick nervous glances at the DI across the desk. Not that he’d shown any immediate sign of backtracking on his earlier decision, however.
It was all right playing bloody politics, Roscoe mused after returning to his office – keeping things nailed down to avoid launching another major crime inquiry, with all the unpopular resource implications involved – but he was long enough in the tooth to know that, if things went pear-shaped, DCI Toby Ricketts would conveniently forget his previous insistence on a low-key inquiry and do the quickest about-turn imaginable. That meant one Ted Roscoe would end up carrying a very hot can as the senior case officer, while Ricketts absolved himself of all responsibility, claiming he had been given insufficient information on which to base his earlier judgment.
Outwardly, Roscoe was very loyal to his boss and, being an ex-military man, he tended towards obedience to orders, even if he didn’t necessarily agree with what he was being told to do. But that didn’t mean he had to respect the person who was giving the orders. He was one truculent, down-to-earth old-stager who had an inherent distrust of the new brand of senior rank, especially those recruited under the fast-track system, straight from university, like the blond good-looking Detective Chief Inspector Toby Ricketts, for instance. Brought up with rough, hard-drinking ‘guv’nors’, like himself – the real-life versions of such fictional TV hard men as seventies Detective Chief Superintendent Charlie Barlow in Softly, Softly: Taskforce and Detective Inspector Jack Regan in The Sweeney. Roscoe had little time for the new educated ‘wuzzits’, as he called them, with their baby-faces, smooth talk and youthful arrogance. A DCI at twenty-eight, he thought savagely? Ricketts was still just a kid. Yeah, but he was also the boss, and that was the problem!
