by Ted Tayler
“Tell me about it,” said Gus.
He started walking towards his Focus and then stopped.
“Alex, I don’t think Lydia did more than give Blessing a brief welcome this morning. She’s not usually so quiet. Is everything okay?”
“We spent time in London searching for her father during our time off, guv. Eleanor, her mother, gave Lydia her father’s name the last time she went up to Glasgow. It was slow progress, but we found his ship. It sailed on to Rotterdam from Edinburgh. Chidozie Barre, that’s his name, worked for the same Greek shipping company until 2007. Then the trail went cold. His ship sank in the South China Sea, and after he got rescued and put ashore in Da Nang, Vietnam, it seems as if he decided enough was enough. Unless he joined another company, he didn’t go to sea again. Next weekend we start again. Lydia’s determined to find her Dad. The trouble is, after what we found last week. I think Lydia’s worried about what we’ll learn.”
“Thanks for the tip, Alex, I’ll tread warily,” said Gus. “Good luck with the whiz kids at the Hub. Keep an eye out for Kassie Trotter. You can’t miss her. If you feel peckish by three o’clock this afternoon, she’ll let you sample her sticky buns.”
When Gus returned to the office, Luke and Lydia were alone.
“Where did Neil and Blessing disappear?”
“Neil offered to explain the Gaggia to her, guv,” said Luke. “We’re getting treated to an early coffee.”
“Did Neil mention anything before I arrived earlier?” asked Gus, crossing his fingers behind his back.
“Melody’s back home,” said Lydia.
“And Neil’s not in the dog house, guv,” said Luke.
“Everyone seems to have had excitement since I saw you last,” said Gus.
“You should have gone to Specsavers, guv,” said Lydia.
“Are you having a pop at my haircut? I got enough earache from Suzie.”
“No, guv. It’s growing back already. Don’t worry. Luke had his own excitement too.”
Luke raised his left hand.
“Nicky and I haven’t set a date yet, but we’ve taken the first step.”
“Congratulations, both of you,” said Gus.
Gus noticed that Blessing and Neil were back in the room with the coffees.
“Sorry, Blessing, you’ll get to know the ins and outs of our everyday tale of country coppers in time. I think I should walk through our next case with you all. The others know what’s required. After the crime scene photos are up on the boards and the list of characters and their backgrounds added to the whiteboards, perhaps Lydia will show you how to access the Freeman Files on your computer.”
“Which part of the county are we looking at, guv?” asked Lydia.
“Mere, a small town that lies at the extreme southwestern tip of Salisbury Plain,” said Gus. “It’s close to the borders with Somerset and Dorset. It was on my patch when I worked in Salisbury, but I never had cause to go there. I passed it many times. Just before I became a detective, they built a bypass on the northern edge of the town. Before that, the A303 trunk road went straight through the town.”
“Is it as big a town as this one?” asked Blessing, “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Three thousand inhabitants, give or take,” said Gus, “so a small town with an older population than the average. The Methodist Church started as a Primitive Methodist chapel in the middle of the nineteenth century. There was a school in that building for many years. The church was de-consecrated last year and is now getting converted for residential use. It might be strange to mention the church, but it might play a part in the case that we’re investigating.”
“Are there many churches in Mere, guv?” asked Neil.
“No more than usual. St Michael’s is the oldest, and parts of that building date back to the thirteenth century. St Michael’s has one unusual claim to fame; it has ten misericords.”
“What’s one of those when it’s at home?” asked Neil.
“A mercy seat,” said Blessing Umeh, “it’s designed so you can fold down the seat and rest when you’ve knelt in prayer for hours on end.”
“Well, you learn something new every day,” said Neil.
“The town’s library and the museum moved into an old National School building back in 1970. Our victim worked there when she left school, and again after her parents died.”
“Who was our victim, guv,” asked Lydia.
Gus handed out copies of the murder file to each team member.
“Inside the front cover, you’ll see that I’ve included a summary of the original investigation led by DCI Melvin Jefferson and DI Fabian Kite from Salisbury nick. I knew both officers when I worked there. I wanted to work on this case, but Jefferson assigned me to another job two weeks before the murder.”
“A pity,” said Neil, “we probably wouldn’t be looking at this file now.”
“Jefferson was a good detective, Neil. If he missed something, then it was well hidden.”
Gus waited for a minute while the summary got absorbed.
“Ursula Wakeley died on the night of the sixteenth of January, five years ago. Ms Wakeley was seventy-eight, a spinster who lived alone in a bungalow on Shaftesbury Road. We have a street map of the area in the murder file. Get that map on one wallboard, please, Blessing. It will help us understand the movements of various people the police interviewed.”
“Did Ursula Wakeley own a car, guv?” asked Luke.
“No, and there’s no garage at the bungalow. Ursula’s parents never drove. Her brother, Arthur, eighty-five now, handed in his licence in 2015 after he collided with a bollard in Morrison’s car park. He decided it was too risky to keep driving. I don’t know when he passed his test, but I assume he parked on the road or the wide pathway leading to the bungalow. Again, photographs of the property are in the file. The nearest neighbours were around one hundred yards either side of the Wakeley’s family home. There were open fields opposite in 2013. Nobody heard a thing.”
“How did Ms Wakeley get into town, guv?” asked Neil, “that road doesn’t look as if it was on a bus route.”
“The town centre is a twenty-minute walk from the bungalow,” said Gus, “which for someone of Ursula’s generation isn’t as daunting as it would be for you, Neil. I was taking another look at the file at the weekend, and I plan to visit the murder site tomorrow. There was a garden shed to the side of the bungalow that got mentioned. Perhaps when they were younger, Arthur and Ursula owned bicycles. Who knows?”
“Had the victim always lived at this address?” asked Lydia.
“She had,” said Gus, “it wasn’t uncommon in those days for the youngest daughter to assume a carer’s duties for elderly parents. In this case, her father Gideon dropped dead in 1966, which left his widow, Elspeth, looking at twenty or thirty years on her own. Arthur already had a young family and was an assistant bank manager. Ursula worked at the library in town, but she was single. Ursula quit her job and stayed with her mother. Elspeth died in 1996.”
“These crime scene photos are horrific,” said Luke, “I won’t forget these in a hurry.”
“Nevertheless, I want them posted on a whiteboard, Luke. The killer stabbed our victim in the heart between ten o’clock and midnight. What happened either side of that is a mystery. Not just what happened, but why?”
“The original investigation deemed this was a burglary,” asked Blessing. “Was that a mistake? The violence seems excessive.”
“I can understand why Jefferson followed the trail of the missing jewellery. Consider the victim for a moment—an elderly lady, living alone, with no near neighbours. The burglar could watch the place without raising suspicion and check the level of security. When you dig deeper, you’ll learn that the victim never closed her curtains in any room in the house. So, the burglar knew Ursula was home alone. They broke in through the kitchen and carried out the initial attack. Forensic evidence showed that the burglar took a large knife from the kitchen, whacked Ursula over the hea
d with a weighty object they grabbed from a sideboard in the living room. Then they dragged Ursula into her bedroom, stripped her naked, and began rifling the drawers of her dressing table looking for valuables.”
“The file says there was no sexual motive to the crime,” said Blessing, “why did they humiliate her by stripping her naked?”
“Before I put forward my suggestions,” said Gus, “does anyone have something to offer?”
“They kept Ms Wakeley alive to find out where the valuables were, guv,” said Neil. “Murder wasn’t what they planned to carry out. They used the kitchen knife to threaten her, nothing more.”
“Two thousand pounds worth of jewellery isn’t a great haul,” said Luke. “Maybe the burglar believed there was something of greater value in the house. You know, rumours in the town that her father didn’t trust banks and had a fortune in cash under the floorboards.”
“It was someone local then, guv,” said Neil, “that’s what your former colleagues thought. When that young woman tried flogging pieces of jewellery in Ringwood, they put two and two together.”
“And made five,” said Gus. “If the jewellery they found disappointed the robbers, why didn’t they search the house after they stabbed her? Ursula’s handbag was in plain sight in the living room. When Jefferson followed the burglary angle, I believe the most important aspect got overlooked.”
“Why not stab her and have done with it?” asked Neil.
“There had to be more to it than that,” said Blessing.
“You’ve studied this file in more detail than we have just yet, guv,” said Lydia. “Can I walk through the sequence of events and you correct me when I go astray?”
“Go ahead,” said Gus.
“The break-in occurred at around ten. Ursula didn’t hear the commotion in the kitchen when the burglar smashed the glass panel in the back door. Whoever it was, opened drawers in the kitchen to find a suitable knife, and then entered the living room. Ursula still didn’t react. The intruder picked up a horse statue and hit her on the back of the head, knocking her out. Why didn’t she turn around? Was she stone deaf?”
“There was nothing to suggest she suffered from impaired hearing,” said Gus. “Her handyman, Don Hillier, Monica Butterworth, from the library, and her brother and sister-in-law gave statements to that effect.”
“You said the curtains were never closed,” said Neil, “so was there someone at the front of the house distracting her?”
“That fits with the notion that two teenagers committed the burglary,” said Lydia.
“It leaves us with a problem, though,” said Gus.
“The unnecessary violence,” said Blessing.
“Continue with your sequence of events, Lydia,” said Gus.
“When Ursula was unconscious, the one that broke in opened the door for their accomplice. That made it easier to move her through to the bedroom. The young man did the lifting, and the woman carried the knife. One of them pulled out drawers in the dressing table while the other stripped Ursula. The fatal blow took place somewhen in the next two hours. Do you think they tortured her, guv?”
“There’s no evidence of that. The only injury that occurred before the stabbing was the whack to the head. The knife wound to the heart was a fatal blow. Ursula died in minutes.”
“Why didn’t they just search the house and leave?” asked Luke.
“What came next, Lydia?” asked Gus.
“The young woman, well, I assume it was the woman, cleaned the horse statue and put it back on the sideboard with the other statue and the clock. Meanwhile, the young man continued to use the knife on the dead body, as we can see from the crime scene photos.”
“What else can you see on the photos in the murder file?” asked Gus.
“The Scenes of Crimes Officer took a photo of the living room window, guv,” said Neil, “with the curtains drawn halfway across the window.”
“What does that tell us?”
“The young woman drew the curtains before they left,” said Lydia.
“Did SOCO take photos of the front bedroom window?”
“I can’t see one, guv.”
“Odd that, don’t you think? The killer left the body, cut to ribbons in a frenzied attack after the poor woman was dead, in full view of anyone walking along Shaftesbury Road the next morning. Yet they attempted to draw the ones in the living room.”
“Ursula Wakeley drew the curtains,” said Neil.
“That explains the query Lydia had,” said Luke, “about why Ursula had heard no one breaking in.”
“And why the head wound came from behind her,” said Blessing. “Someone was outside who scared her to death. Sorry, you know what I meant. She must have been terrified.”
“I’ve read this thing through several times,” said Gus, “and I think Lydia has the important steps in the right order. I’m not sure when the clean-up got carried out, or who did it. For instance, the female could have left with the jewellery before the man stabbed Ursula. When we analysed the initial events of the break-in, it was plain they had brought the thick cloth with them to avoid cutting themselves on the glass. However, they didn’t bring a weapon. They used what was to hand. That suggested murder wasn’t on the cards until much later. As Blessing said, the face at the window terrified Ursula, as did the blow to the head, and then finding herself naked when she did recover consciousness. The young man may have told his accomplice he’d tie Ursula up, make sure there were no clues left for the police, and then get off home.”
“Surely, Ursula could identify them,” said Blessing. “They couldn’t let her live.”
“Neither person seemed to care about that, guv,” said Luke. “Ursula must have seen both of them when she came around.”
“Unless they wore masks,” said Neil.
“That was my thought too, Neil,” said Gus, “a ski-mask, or one of those grotesque character masks would frighten an elderly lady if it suddenly appeared at her window.”
“Hang on,” said Lydia, “if they wore masks, there was no need to kill her.”
“We’re getting to the crux of it, aren’t we?” said Gus. “We don’t know whether they both stayed throughout the ordeal, but a jewellery theft wasn’t the true reason for the terror they inflicted. There was no reason to kill her if she couldn’t identify them. So what can we deduce from the facts we have?”
“Ursula knew her attackers, guv,” said Luke.
“The jewellery was a ploy to fool the police into thinking it was a robbery,” said Neil.
“Murder was the endgame they planned all along,” said Lydia.
“Three correct assumptions and a bonus point,” said Gus.
“But how do we explain the mutilation that occurred post mortem?” asked Blessing.
“We discover what Ursula did that prompted such a heinous act,” said Gus.
CHAPTER 6
Gus left the team to fill the walls and whiteboards with items from the murder file. Once that was complete he could get Luke to compile a list of interviewees. Who should come with him tomorrow for the walk around the murder site?
Lydia was the obvious choice. She might think of something a mere man would miss, and he could have a quiet chat with her away from the others.
Luke Sherman posted the crime scene photos onto a whiteboard. As he worked, he couldn’t avoid looking at what they contained. Luke prided himself on having a robust constitution, and the sight of blood didn’t phase him. However, the images from Ursula Wakeley’s bedroom were gruesome in the extreme. He looked beyond the gore and tried to imagine how a person could do this to another human being?
Disturbed didn’t go anywhere near far enough.
Luke let his mind wander.
Gus suggested that a remote location such as this was ideal for a criminal to keep watch on for weeks, while they devised a plan which guaranteed success. What about the curtains? There had been no sexual element to the attack, according to the murder file. Ursula’s bungalow on Shaftesbury
Road seemed the perfect spot for a Peeping Tom. Ursula kept her curtains open year-round. Did she dress or undress with the light on in winter?
Luke reflected on other cases he’d investigated where sick individuals progressed from voyeurism to a physical assault. In extreme cases, it was the precursor to murder. Some killers had started young, killing domestic animals before attacking a man or woman. Was this what they saw at work here?
“Was there a Peeping Tom, a stalker, or pet killer in the town, guv?” he asked.
Gus looked up from his computer.
“I don’t know. Check it out. I don’t remember reading anything in the file. Either Jefferson and his team didn’t find anyone, or they discounted the idea because of the robbery angle.”
“It’s there, guv, towards the back,” said Neil. “There was nobody with that record who lived in Mere, or anywhere in the Salisbury district. Did the coroner give any sign about the wounds Ursula suffered after death?”
“In what way, Neil?” asked Gus.
“Any degree of hesitation, for instance. You expect that for a first-timer.”
“Excellent point. Let me call up that report,” said Gus. “Where are we? Right, here we go, nothing conclusive. The coroner remarked that the killer seemed to experiment with the body. Cuts varied in depth and length. Several were close together on the left arm, and on the right, they played a game of noughts and crosses. The slashes grew more violent on the torso and upper thighs. I suppose if you assume that the killer started at the top and worked down, then there’s an increasing level of confidence. That’s only my interpretation of what I see. I’m no medical expert.”
“Will they kill again?” asked Lydia.
“Who’s saying they haven’t,” said Neil.
“Well, there’s no record of anything remotely similar recorded in this region in the past five years,” said Gus.
“Should we widen the net, guv?” asked Luke.
“If the murder were planned, the urge to kill again would be strong,” said Lydia. “Does that mean we’re looking for a serial killer?”
“Far too soon to say, Lydia,” said Gus, “we’ve only got one death. This murder was planned, yes, but I suspect it was personal. The two people involved took retribution against Ursula Wakeley for something she did to them.”
