Paying the Ferryman

by Jane A. Adams

  THREE

  The Griffins’ home was last but one at the end of a row of larger Victorian terraced houses. Small wooden gates led through to tiny front gardens and then, at this house, three steps up to the front door. The added height gave the initial impression that there might be a basement, until you looked back down the row and realized that the house at the far end had no step and the last in the row had four. The added height was simply dictated by the lay of the land. It gave the row an imposing air though, Steel thought. A sense of being set back from the road and somehow rising above the rest of the street.

  The door was red with an inset glass panel decorated with a stylized flower. DI Steel decided it dated from later than the house, but was still old. The sort of thing a conscientious resident might choose to buy from a reclamation yard. The clear fanlight window above the door suggested a much earlier building style, as did the sash windows, but he glanced down the row and decided that both were original.

  Steel liked architecture.

  ‘In here, sir.’ A voice drew him into the hall where a young woman in uniform directed him into the room that led off to his right. The stairs were directly ahead and beyond them a short passage led to the kitchen.

  Original tiles in the hall, he thought. Blue, red, cream and black, laid out in a geometric pattern. So many people covered up their tiles, and that was a shame. He thrust his massive hands into the pockets of his waxed jacket, flexed his shoulders. Outside the day had turned chill and the damp ate its way into everything. Inside the house was warm; a massive cast iron radiator filled the space beside the front door. He followed the directions to the living room and stepped inside.

  The wooden door had been stripped and waxed and the floorboards exposed and covered with brightly coloured rugs that picked up the shades of the tiles in the hall. The walls were cream; plain, but well hung with pictures. And there were books in the alcoves. A deep, comfortable chair in the shallow bay window. Heavy curtains.

  The people who lived here were comfortable with themselves, Steel thought. Only the four locks and the heavy chain on the front door gave any indication to the contrary.

  ‘What can you tell me?’

  Sergeant Willis came to stand beside him. She handed him a sheaf of newly printed photographs and Steel riffled through them, reminding himself of the crime scene as he had first witnessed it. Before the bodies had been moved.

  ‘Victor Griffin, and his wife Lisanne Griffin. Lived here for three years and according to neighbours were quiet and friendly. No one recalls them mentioning family and they had very few visitors. They seem to have had most to do with the elderly woman in the last house in the row. Mrs Ball, a widow. Apparently Lisanne Griffin used to take her shopping sometimes and the girl, Sarah, used to check in on her regularly and run errands. She seems to be genuinely fond of the family and I think is most likely to know about their background. The doctor gave her something to help her sleep though, so you’ll have to wait. She was distraught, kept asking who could have killed such a lovely family. I think she assumed the kids had been shot too.’

  ‘We don’t know that they weren’t.’

  ‘True.’

  Steel crouched down where the body of Lisanne Griffin had lain and studied his photographs. In the pictures she lay on her back, arms out to the side as though she had just fallen back. A blossom of red blood on her chest told him where the bullet had entered, and blood flowed outward from beneath her body, staining the wooden boards and the edge of the rug. Not so much blood, though; her heart had stopped when the bullet hit. Blood had exited under the influence of gravity, not been pumped by a dying heart.

  Close by, Victor Griffin had lain on his side, and in the photographs the track of the bullet was less cleanly delineated. It seemed to have entered his body from the left side, Steel thought, shattering ribs, stopping the heart, then exiting somewhat higher on the right side, if the blood pool was any indicator.

  Steel eased himself upward. He ached. Lack of sleep and a sudden urge to join the gym a couple of weeks before were really taking their toll. He tried to convince himself he’d eventually feel better for it.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘perhaps the wife is shot first, and then the husband as he turns towards her?’

  ‘Has some logic to it,’ Willis agreed. ‘The angle of both shots is strange, though. It’s like the shooter is below the victims. Victor Griffin … it looks as though the path of the bullet starts from below the ribs and exits under the opposite armpit.’

  ‘So, maybe the shooter was sitting?’ He pointed to a chair, one of a pair either side of a matching sofa that was too bright and modern for Steel’s taste. Its contemporary redness seemed out of place with the rest of the more restrained, period features.

  ‘Which implies guest rather than assassin.’

  ‘Maybe. A guest that arrives in the early hours of the morning?’

  ‘Either someone very well known or someone they don’t want seen hanging around on their doorstep.’

  ‘An interesting thought,’ Steel agreed. ‘Either way, they weren’t expecting him. Always assuming it was a him. They were both clearly dressed for bed.’

  ‘So someone they didn’t feel the need to get dressed for, or someone, as I said, they want to get off the street quickly before anyone sees them.’ Willis shrugged. ‘Or who came in the back way, of course. The front door was still fully locked when we got here.’

  ‘And the back?’

  ‘Wide open. Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the house.’

  Steel nodded. He enjoyed working with Willis. She was never afraid to speculate; never worried about getting it wrong – not that ‘wrong’ happened very often. He knew they presented an amusing pair. Sophie Willis, small and slight with dark brown skin and relaxed black hair, was a sharp contrast to Steel’s height and bulk and pallor – even though he spent a good deal of his life outside, his skin rarely seemed to tan.

  He told the crime scene manager that his people could go back in, and then followed Willis into the kitchen.

  ‘Back door was open when we got here. There’s a key in the lock, bolts top and bottom. All the windows have locks on them and there’s an alarm, which wasn’t set when we arrived.’

  ‘So, security conscious. The crime rate round here is low; maybe they expected trouble?’

  ‘Or maybe they’d just got used to hearing the statistics.’

  He glanced around the kitchen. The cabinets looked modern and quite new but not expensively made, he thought. The centre of the kitchen was occupied by a large table with a fifties-style Formica top and lacquered black legs. Matching chairs with red seats and a high chair at one end, reminding him – if reminder were required – about the missing children. The kitchen units, he guessed, had been replaced ready for the house to be sold. They had that bland ‘it’ll do’ look that went with magnolia paint and white gloss. The table, on the other hand, suggested a love of retro and colour, as did the brightly coloured ceramic bowls on the counters and the red kettle. This was a home still in the making. Was that significant?

  He peered out through the open back door.

  ‘You want to look upstairs?’

  Willis nodded, and he followed her back out into the hall.

  Steel stared down at the little cot.

  ‘Two shots,’ Willis told him. ‘Fired straight through the blankets and the mattress.’

  ‘But anyone could see the bed was empty,’ Steel commented. ‘Why shoot into an empty cot?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just possible it was for effect, maybe to scare Sarah or because the gunman was angry that the kid was not there, or … I don’t know. You don’t suppose there were two of them? That he came upstairs and fired the shots so someone else would hear and think—’

  Steel was looking at her and she laughed self consciously. ‘I know. Speculation. No evidence of anyone else.’

  ‘No, but keep the thought in mind. Keep everything in mind. At the moment one idea is just as good
as any other. Show me Sarah’s room.’

  Steel didn’t go into the girl’s room; he stood on the threshold and reviewed it as though, Willis thought, it was a stage set for some odd, avant-garde play. ‘It all looks normal to you, does it?’

  ‘It looks like a teenage girl’s room, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think anything has been touched.’ She paused, knowing that look. ‘Something strike you as odd?’

  ‘Only the fact that it’s tidy. But then I only have my sister and her two girls as a frame of reference. Martha is anything but tidy even now. She calls it “creative clutter”, or something.’

  ‘The parents’ room is down at the end, there, next to the bathroom.’ She led Steel along the corridor. This time he did go in.

  The duvet had been pushed back on both sides of the bed as the occupants had got out. Both the victims had been in nightclothes and dressing gowns. Vic Griffin had worn slippers; Lisanne had not, but a pair of pink mules sat beside the bed waiting for their owner to return.

  ‘Can’t stand mules,’ Willis commented. ‘They just fall off my feet, especially when I’m hurrying to get somewhere.’

  ‘So she may have rushed down the stairs to answer the door and left them there.’

  ‘Maybe. A lot of people just don’t like anything on their feet.’

  ‘Then why would they be by the bed?’

  Sophie Willis shrugged. Anyone else, she thought, and this would seem like irrelevant time wasting, but Steel noticed things. Random things, and nine times out of ten they turned out to be important.

  ‘So, she jumps out of bed, rushes to the door. The baby’s room is at the top of the stairs, she’d not want him woken up. So, are we assuming someone leaned on the doorbell or rapped on the back door? I think the neighbours might have heard the knocker and no one reported having done.’

  ‘She opens the door and is convinced it’s OK to let the visitor inside. Her husband follows her down.’

  Steel frowned. ‘And later, Sarah hears sounds from downstairs. Hears something that scares her enough to get Jack out of the cot and make a run for it.’

  ‘Which suggests there was no second visitor in the house,’ Willis speculated. ‘I can just about see her getting out past one killer, but a second? No. That can’t be right.’

  ‘Baby monitor,’ Steel said. ‘Did they have a baby monitor?’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing here,’ Willis said.

  ‘No, but as you pointed out, Jack’s room is next door. If he’d cried, they’d have heard him. Check downstairs and I’ll look in his room.’

  ‘I still don’t see—’ Willis shrugged and made her way back down the stairs. The crime scene manager pointed to a little white box with a flashing red light, sitting on the bookcase. Moments later, Steel joined her downstairs.

  ‘So what’s important about the baby monitor?’

  The CSI laughed. ‘It’s like having a bug in your house,’ he said. ‘Especially the slightly older ones. They’ve got a transmission range of several hundred yards.’

  ‘Really? So you’re suggesting—’

  ‘It strikes me as unlikely anyone would fire two bullets into an empty cot,’ Steel said. ‘But I may be wrong. It may be an irrelevance. What is relevant is that anyone downstairs would probably have heard Sarah, if she went into Jack’s room.’

  His mobile rang, and Steel listened.

  ‘They’ve found Jack and Sarah,’ he said.

  FOUR

  As Steel and Willis made their way across the field, they could see the search teams being pulled back towards the church. The kids had been found now. The searchers would be needed again later, but their function had changed; they needed tea and biscuits and fresh instructions.

  An ambulance siren wailed from somewhere behind the hedge. Sarah and her little brother being taken away.

  It took them several minutes to reach the barn and Willis found herself imagining having to do this at night, in the pouring rain and carrying a frightened, cold and heavy child. The mud dragged at her shoes and she slipped twice, almost losing her footing. Steel strode ahead, seemingly oblivious of both mud and difficulties in walking, his long legs eating the distance. He waited for her at the barn door, talking to a uniformed officer that Willis didn’t know.

  ‘I thought this place was searched early this morning?’

  ‘It was, but it was pitch black and chucking it down with rain. There are no lights and no windows. The farmer and two of our lads came in and looked around best they could but they didn’t see nothing. I think they figured the girl would shout out or the little lad might be crying.’

  ‘Where were they?’ Steel wanted to know.

  They followed the officer into the gloom of the barn. The beam from his torch did little to alleviate the grey. From the dimness, shapes appeared. Machinery Willis could not guess the use of but which bristled with spikes and blades.

  ‘We figure she must have known her way around here,’ the policeman said. ‘The farmer says he has to chase the kids out from time to time, but he’s had no real problem with any of them. He reckons most of the local kids find their way in here and the other barn sooner or later and he only bothers because they smoke. He’s worried about the hay bales catching on fire.’ He shrugged. ‘Kids will, I suppose. But she must have been here before – otherwise in the dark she’d have got herself trapped in something.’

  Willis nodded even though she was bringing up the rear and no one could see her. To her eyes this vast space looked like a death trap but for Sarah, it seemed, it had spelt at least temporary safety.

  ‘Behind there, look,’ the police officer said. ‘She pulled the tarp down over them both and then she must have passed out. Me, I can’t figure out how she managed to get here. She was covered in blood.’

  He stood aside and Steel moved over so that Willis had a view of the space behind a particularly vicious looking piece of farm equipment.

  ‘She’d crawled into that space there.’

  Willis crouched down and took a small Maglite from her pocket. Straw bales had been stacked behind the machine and against the barn wall. A small space stained heavily with blood showed where the children had lain. A grey tarpaulin partly covered the machine. It had been folded back and blood was clearly visible on that too.

  ‘The little boy was dead before they got here?’

  ‘Almost certainly. From the look of it the shot went through his sister and into him. Poor little blighter didn’t stand a chance. We found her curled up with baby Jack in her arms. The paramedics were already on standby at the church, so we got them in as fast as we could. One of them took pictures of the scene while the others worked on the girl. They thought we might need a visual record. I think the camera went back to the church for the CSI to log.’

  Steel nodded his shaggy head. ‘Good. They say what her chances are?’

  ‘No. Wouldn’t commit. They said she was cold. That in a way that might have saved her because it slowed the bleeding down, but that she’d not have lasted much longer. The cold or the blood loss would have got her.’

  Willis straightened up, sensing that Steel was ready to leave.

  ‘In the end, how was she found?’

  ‘Farmer and one of the constables came back for another look. Brought better torches. The farmer saw the tarp had been disturbed and he crawled down behind the bales, found her there. Her and the baby. He’s really cut up about it. I think, like the rest of us, he just wanted to find them alive.’

  FIVE

  Steel did not speak as they returned to the house. He paused outside the back door to scrape the mud from his boots and Sophie Willis did the same before removing shoes and replacing them once more with the crime scene bootees. A CSI appeared in the kitchen doorway and handed Sophie a couple of evidence bags. ‘Shove your footwear in these,’ she said, ‘then you can leave them on the doormat. We’re fighting a battle with the mud.’

  ‘Anything useful turned up yet?’

  ‘Possibly. We fou
nd an address book in a drawer. What’s the news on the kids?’

  ‘The girl’s been taken to hospital. The little boy didn’t make it,’ Steel told her.

  ‘Poor little sods. Will the girl pull through?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. Address book?’

  ‘In the front.’

  Steel and Willis returned to the living room. Willis glanced over to where the bodies had lain. Blood had soaked into the wooden floor. The blood pools were smaller than might be expected, given the severity of the wounds; testament to the fact that death had been swift. Willis remembered the blood on the floor of the barn and on the tarpaulin. Did Sarah Griffin know that her family had been wiped out? Did she know that her little brother had died in her arms as she carried him away?

  Sophie Willis felt her heart go out to the girl. Both she and Steel had close families and she did not dare to imagine how she would feel if a similar tragedy struck at her own door. It was beyond her willing comprehension. Somehow, to imagine it seemed to invite it to happen – so Sophie did not. Could not. Would not.

  Steel was looking at the address book, turning the pages with gloved hands. It had been kept in a drawer alongside other paperwork – bills, bank statements and the like.

  ‘There’s a list beside the phone,’ the CSI told them. ‘With numbers like the school and the doctor and so on. This has most of the same numbers and a few more, but with addresses added too.’

  ‘But nothing looks old,’ Steel commented. ‘Almost all of the addresses are local. Doctor, school, nursery. If you look, most of the information is added using the same pen and in the same hand.’

  ‘There was just one thing that stood out,’ the CSI said. ‘Almost at the back.’

  Steel flicked through. Under Z there was no entry but a business card had been slipped between the pages. It was creased and coffee stained and had the look of something that had spent a long time in someone’s pocket.

  Willis leaned in to look more closely. ‘DI Naomi Blake,’ she said. ‘Maybe she had some dealings with the family before they came here?’