by Adam Croft
‘What do we know?’ he asked the two paramedics, both of whom were busy trying to assess the situation. Stu knew that putting his brain into work mode was the only way he was going to be able to keep hold of his stomach.
‘Blunt trauma to the skull, by the looks of things,’ the paramedic replied. ‘It’s made a mess of this side of her head, and it looks as though she’s been hit on her upper back, too. There’s some bruising starting to appear already.’
‘What about moving her?’ he asked. He was conscious of not wanting to get in the way, but having only been in the job a few months, he was keen to pick up all he could.
‘That’s always the difficult decision,’ the older paramedic answered, throwing a glance at his partner that said Is this guy for real? ‘In this case, she’s still breathing and we’ve got a pretty decent pulse. She needs urgent treatment, and she’s not going to get it here.’
‘Right. Is there anything we can do?’
The older paramedic decided to leave it to his partner to answer this one.
‘Just try and keep a bit of distance, give us a bit of space. You’ll need to keep this lot away, too,’ he said, gesturing towards the small crowd of neighbours who’d come out in their dressing gowns and slippers to see what was going on. Right down the road, curtains were twitching and lights were coming on in bedrooms.
‘I’ll do it,’ Chloe said, heading off towards the end of the drive. Although she was barely five and a half feet tall and was invisible if she turned sideways, PC Kirkpatrick took no prisoners when she was trying to get people to do as she asked. She’d been known to take down men twice her size in under a second. The neighbours seemed to pick up that vibe, too, as they mostly made their way back to their respective homes, with just a few stragglers insisting on trying to get a good view of what was going on.
It was at times like this that Stu despaired of the Great British public. What on earth possessed people to want to stop and look at something like this? He’d lost count of the number of times he’d seen people slow down past a road traffic incident, taking pictures on their mobile phones, and he often wondered how they’d feel if it was their mother, son or grandparent who was seriously injured. But then again they wouldn’t even consider that, would they? He knew that most people never thought beyond their own skulls.
His thoughts were interrupted by Chloe jogging back up the driveway, her feet crunching on the gravel as she did so.
‘Right, they’re sending another unit down to help keep control,’ she said. ‘CID are on their way too. Shouldn’t take them too long. If I keep a cordon around the scene, can you meet the SIO when he turns up?’
‘Yeah, course,’ Stu replied, beaming inside at the added responsibility he’d been given, albeit only a fairly small one. ‘Who’s the poor sod you’ve dragged out of bed at this time of the night, then?’
‘Jack Culverhouse,’ Chloe said, before leaning over to speak to the paramedic again.
Stu swallowed hard and looked back at Chloe. ‘Uh, I don’t suppose you want to swap, do you?’
4
The taller man might have had a height advantage, but he was nowhere near as well-built as the man who was standing in front of him, almost a full foot shorter. That didn’t bother him, though. He had fury on his side.
‘What do you mean “not quite according to plan”?’ the taller man barked, his jaw clenched.
‘There were... complications,’ the smaller, stockier man replied, trying desperately to think of a way out of this situation. He knew he was in some deep shit.
‘You only had one thing to do. What the hell went wrong?’ The veins in front of his temples were pronounced, a sign of his vastly increased blood pressure.
The shorter man looked towards the floor, licking his lips and biting the bottom one. ‘Her kids were there.’
‘What? I thought you were going to wait until they were out of the way?’
‘I was. I did. It was gone midnight, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t know the damn kid was going to get up, did I?’
The taller man ran a hand through his thinning hair, the other locked onto his hip. ‘I told you we should have done this another time. During the day, when the kids are out. This is a fucking mess. One big fucking mess.’
‘And I told you that would be a bad idea with witnesses about,’ came the terse reply.
‘Well this didn’t exactly turn out to be a fucking brilliantly executed plan, did it?’ the taller man shouted, spittle flying from his lips. Then, a little calmer, he added, ‘Did the kid see you?’
The shorter man shook his head. ‘She saw something, no doubt about that. There’s no way she’d recognise me, though.’
‘How can you be sure?’ he asked. ‘Do you even realise what this means? This could blow the whole fucking thing out of the water. We’d be fucked before we’d even started. Do you know what the hell’s at stake here? Do you realise?’
‘Yeah, I realise. Of course I fucking realise. But there’s no way in hell she’d recognise me. No-one would. I made sure of that. I was dressed head to toe in black, for Christ’s sake. I looked like a fucking ninja. What more did you want me to do?’
Letting out a noise that sounded a bit like a laugh, the taller man shook his head. ‘Not gather an audience, perhaps? Might’ve been a good start.’ He exhaled noisily, then lowered his voice. ‘Did it work, though? Did you... y’know...’
The shorter man swallowed, hard. That wasn’t a question he wanted to be asked. ‘I don’t know. She was making some weird gurgling sound. It could go either way.’
‘Either way? Why the fuck didn’t you just finish her off?’ The taller man was growing more incredulous by the second. Pay peanuts, get monkeys, he thought. And he’d ended up with the runt of the litter.
‘What, with her kid standing there watching? Do me a favour.’
‘You were paid to do a job, Clyde. That means you fucking do the job, alright? That’s how this works. You don’t just stop and come home because there’s a kid stood at the top of the stairs.’
‘Yeah? So why didn’t you do it then?’ the smaller man replied, squaring up to him. ‘If you think it’s so easy, why didn’t you go round there and do it? Or is it ‘cause you didn’t want to get your hands dirty? If you don’t want to take responsibility for it, if you want someone else to do your dirty work, don’t go complaining when situations change.’
The taller man laughed again, mainly out of disbelief. He certainly wasn’t used to being spoken to like this. ‘When situations change... Jesus Christ. You’re telling me situations have changed? What do you suppose happens if Tanya Henderson lives? What then, Clyde?’
‘I dunno. She was alive before, wasn’t she?’
‘Oh yeah, she was alive. She was definitely alive. And she was getting in the fucking way. You think someone like her’s going to take this as a warning? If that was the case we’d have given her a warning. That’s why we needed her gone.’
‘Well what did you expect me to do?’ the shorter man said, getting the distinct feeling that whatever he did would have been wrong.
‘I expected you to do your job properly. And if you leave witnesses... Well, you don’t leave witnesses.’
‘What, so you’re saying I should’ve killed the kid now? Jesus Christ, man.’
‘I’m saying you don’t leave witnesses,’ the taller man said, his voice deadly serious. ‘How you interpret that is entirely up to you.’
The shorter man put his palms out in mock surrender. ’Look, I’m sorry, alright? I don’t know what else to say.’
‘Say nothing,’ the taller man replied. ‘Nothing.’ He sighed deeply, rubbing one hand across his stubbly chin as the other stayed planted on his hip. ‘There’s only one thing we can do.’
5
Wendy Knight had — somewhat miraculously for her — managed to get to sleep at a decent hour. It was a truism that a huge percentage of police officers — detectives in particular — had problems sleeping and Wendy was
definitely one of those statistics. Then again, anyone who’d been through what she’d had to go through over the past couple of years would probably have trouble sleeping too.
It was never going to be a life of plain sailing working for Mildenheath CID, but Wendy had experienced her fair share of trauma recently. Not only had her first big serial murder case resulted in her suspecting that her love interest was somehow involved, but it had actually turned out that her own brother was the killer. Then, just as she’d been starting to come to terms with what had happened, she was given the crushing news that she had suffered a miscarriage. In case that hadn’t been enough for Mother Nature in her testing phase, Wendy later had to deal with losing a fellow officer in a gunfight, as well as finding out — along with her team — that one of their own had been responsible for killing two sex offenders.
She slept peacefully, the emotional centres of her brain silently praying that they’d at least get some respite for the foreseeable future. Until the unreasonably cheerful marimba ringtone woke her up, that is. It was one of Jack Culverhouse’s requirements that all officers in Mildenheath CID kept their phones on loud during the night. Wendy hated that particular rule, especially as she was such a light sleeper.
She blamed Frank Vine, a fellow Detective Sergeant. He was notorious for his ability to sleep through absolutely anything — ringing phones, his wife asking him to stop snoring, not to mention early morning briefings. It was probably something to do with the fact that Frank Vine’s idea of keeping in shape was to resemble a circle. Wendy knew she couldn’t talk, though — she’d been neglecting herself just as much over the past couple of years.
She fumbled for her mobile on the bedside unit, managing to find her book and the TV remote — and almost knocking over a glass of water — before she finally found herself staring into the glowing screen, swiping her finger across it to answer the call.
‘Guv?’ she said, having seen DCI Jack Culverhouse’s name flash up on the screen.
‘Wakey wakey, Snow White,’ came the gruff voice on the other end of the line. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
‘What is it?’ she asked, knowing it would be particularly serious if she’d been called out at this time. Culverhouse only ever used his dark humour when there was a major investigation going on. The rest of the time, he seemed thoroughly bored with life.
‘Can’t say for sure at the moment,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘Anything from attempted murder to not being very good at walking through doorways.’
Wendy was far too tired to try and make sense of his cryptic humour. ‘What do you mean?’
Culverhouse sighed. ‘Got a woman lying in her doorway groaning like Chewbacca. The paramedics and the first response kids reckon she’s been attacked, but you know what they’re like. Don’t know their arse from their elbow.’
‘The paramedics?’ Wendy asked, just about starting to wake up.
‘No, the wooden tops. Wouldn’t surprise me if we turned up to find a cat stuck up a tree.’
Wendy rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. ‘Right. Got an address?’
‘Yep.’
‘Do you want to tell me what it is?’ Wendy said, exasperated. She wasn’t in a particularly good frame of mind to deal with Culverhouse’s terse replies.
‘Get your arse out here and you’ll find out, won’t you?’ came the reply.
Wendy got up out of bed, adjusted her nightdress and opened her curtains just a fraction, letting the glow from the streetlight filter into her room. Parked up on the road outside her house she could see Culverhouse sitting in his car, looking straight at her and waving. She saw him speaking into his phone a split second before she heard the voice in her ear.
‘Nice tits. Now hurry up and get dressed. I haven’t got much petrol left.’
6
Culverhouse drove as quickly and directly as he could to the crime scene, while Wendy sat in the passenger seat, looking out the window. She was glad there was very little traffic on the roads at that time of the night. As the car screeched around the corner into Manor Way, she could see the flashing blue lights up ahead and the sight of the poor victim’s neighbours peering out from their front windows.
‘That woman must have some kind of sixth sense,’ Culverhouse said, pointing to the pathologist, Dr Janet Grey, as they pulled up outside the house. ‘I swear she turns up before the crimes have even happened.’
Wendy didn’t even get a chance to respond, as Culverhouse had his door open and his feet on the pavement within a second of the car coming to a halt.
‘Dr Grey, my one true love,’ he said as he strode up the front path and greeted the pathologist. ‘You know, you’re doing it completely the wrong way by constantly getting me out of bed.’
Janet Grey smiled with just one corner of her mouth. ‘What can I say? It’s been a long time.’
‘Not as long as it’s been for me, I can assure you. What have we got?’
‘Not a whole lot at the moment,’ Dr Grey replied. ‘The paramedics have just taken her off to Mildenheath General. She was losing far too much blood to keep her in situ. Now we’re just waiting on SOCO to come down and do their bit.’ The Scenes of Crime Officers were the forensics team dedicated to investigating crime scenes.
‘Right. Well I’d rather get our bit wrapped up before the place starts to look like a beekeepers’ convention,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘Did you see the IP?’
Wendy, who’d just managed to catch up, raised an eyebrow at Culverhouse’s use of the acronym for Injured Party. He usually stuck with ‘victim’ or, sometimes, something much worse. She wondered if perhaps he was softening in his old age and finally coming around to the world of modern policing. She doubted it, but she decided to file it away for future reference anyway.
‘I did,’ said Dr Grey in response to Culverhouse’s question. ‘And she didn’t look good. Blunt trauma to the back of the head, as well as bruising to her upper back. Looks as though there was a significant blow to the left-hand side of her skull, too. I reckon that’s the one that floored her first of all. Large heavy object, swung right-handed. With a fair bit of force, too, I’d say. I managed to get a few photos in case we need them, but the paramedics were keen to have her in for treatment. I told them that was fine. Hope you don’t mind me doing your job for you.’
‘No, not at all,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘In fact, you can grow a scrotum, put on a ten-year-old Marks & Spencer suit and go out and interview the family if you like.’
‘I think I’ll pass,’ the pathologist said, smiling. ‘There is a witness, by the way. The woman’s four-year-old daughter. She’s too upset to interview at the moment, but she went to a neighbour’s and told them what had happened. The neighbour says the woman’s called Tanya. He doesn’t know her surname but says her husband is called John. We can have the house searched for ID once the front door area’s been cleared by SOCO.’
‘No other witnesses?’
‘Not that we’ve found. Uniform have spoken to a few neighbours and the first they heard was when the first response car turned up. I’m not quite sure how you manage to bludgeon a woman half to death on her front doorstep without anyone seeing or hearing you, but there you go.’
‘The mind boggles, Dr Grey,’ Culverhouse said. ‘So she’s up at Mildenheath General now?’
‘Yep. Specialist brain unit. Lucky she lives in Mildenheath, really. Otherwise she’d be on for a long helicopter ride.’
‘You know, Dr Grey, you never cease to amaze me,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say they’re lucky to live in Mildenheath.’
7
Mildenheath General Hospital was a place Wendy had seen quite a lot of in the past couple of years. Aside from the usual work-related visits, it was where her brother, Michael, had been taken following a drugs overdose, where she’d been told she’d miscarried her baby and where her colleague Luke Baxter had died.
She wasn’t keen on hospitals at the best of times, but the posi
tive attitude of the staff at Mildenheath General always gave Wendy hope, though how they managed to remain cheerful despite the constant pressures they were put under, she had no idea. As was the case with most areas of the public sector, the government were continually provoking, intimidating and constricting what they were able to do, their budgets shrinking and workloads growing by the day. Regionally, quite a few hospitals had reduced their services or merged them into other hospitals. For some there had even been talk of closure, and Wendy was sure it wouldn’t be long before that option was touted for Mildenheath.
Mildenheath’s accident and emergency department was one of the busiest in the region, primarily due to its location near two major motorways and an airport, as well as being on the edge of the growing urban sprawl of Mildenheath itself. There were other hospitals within easy driving distance, but Mildenheath had the unfortunate advantage of being closest.
One of the hospital’s most impressive facilities was that of the specialist brain injury unit, which was what Wendy was attempting to find as she wandered the corridors of the hospital, trying and failing to follow the confusing and contradictory signage.
Culverhouse had gone into the office to assemble the investigation team and get things moving on a practical level, leaving Wendy to speak with the doctors and try to ascertain what had happened based on the medical facts. Depending on what was uncovered in the early stages of the investigation, it could be necessary for a uniformed officer to be stationed on the ward for the protection of the patient, so the young male officer who’d first arrived at the scene, PC Stuart Easton, had accompanied her to the hospital. Based on what Wendy had seen in terms of the aftermath of the attack and the apparent ferocity of it, she felt pretty sure that the attacker had meant to kill Tanya, and her experience told her that anyone determined enough to try to bludgeon someone to death on their own front doorstep wouldn’t let something like failure stop them from trying again.
