Class Murder

by Leigh Russell

  To her surprise, Ian seemed momentarily lost for words. ‘I… you…’ he stammered, ‘no, you go and warm up somewhere,’ he concluded, regaining his composure. ‘There’s no point in you standing around here catching a chill. I’ll see you later.’

  Geraldine made her way slowly along the muddy path which was wet with icy patches. Once or twice she nearly lost her footing but at last she was safely back at her car. She was tempted to go home and have the breakfast she had missed, but instead drove to Fulford Road and had coffee and toast in the canteen at work. It wasn’t as good as having breakfast at home looking at the view over the river, but at least she was at the police station and didn’t have to drive through any more morning traffic. And she felt a lot better after having something to eat.

  She had warmed up and was settled at her desk planning her day when her phone rang. After listening for a moment, she sprang to her feet and went in search of Ian who was back at his desk, on his phone. His shocked expression told her that he was listening to the same message.

  ‘I don’t believe it. Where did you say it was found?’ he was saying.

  She waited until he had finished on the phone.

  ‘I know,’ she interrupted him, as he started to tell her what had happened. ‘I just had the same call. I came looking for you as soon as I heard.’

  They stared at one another for a second. Geraldine guessed that her own stricken expression was mirrored in his face. She wanted to comfort him like a child, and had to restrain a sudden crazy impulse to reach out and put her arms around him, telling him that everything was all right. But everything was far from all right. Because while they had been running around by the river chasing clues, fooling themselves that they were finally getting somewhere, the killer had also been busy.

  He had found another victim.

  63

  They made their way to the mortuary in miserable silence. When they arrived, Ian got out of the car first and stood waiting while Geraldine fiddled with the zip on her jacket and pulled her hood up.

  ‘Don’t stand out here in the rain,’ she scolded him as she joined him.

  ‘I thought we could go in together.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s only spitting.’

  Geraldine scowled. ‘That’s an understatement if I ever heard one.’ She had worked alongside Ian for long enough to know that he found the sight of a corpse distressing and suspected he was reluctant to go in and view another body so soon after Bethany had been pulled out of the river. But that was no reason to stand around outside in the rain.

  ‘You could have waited for me inside. Come on, let’s get indoors before we’re both drenched.’

  The door was opened almost at once by Avril who stepped back to admit them. Her face, already smiling a welcome, seemed to brighten even more when she met Ian’s eye.

  ‘Come in out of the rain,’ she fussed, ushering them indoors.

  ‘What is it with you women and rain?’ Ian asked. He was laughing, but Geraldine knew him well enough to register his irritation. ‘Anyone would think you dissolve if you get the slightest bit wet.’

  ‘It’s not a case of dissolving,’ Avril replied, still smiling, ‘but it’s common knowledge that you’re far more susceptible to colds and flu if you stand around in the cold and damp.’

  ‘What a load of old poppycock,’ Ian replied.

  Laughing, Avril told Ian he could ‘pop his cock’ for her any time he liked.

  ‘You’re just worried the damp will mess up your hair,’ he said.

  Brushing her hand through her short hair, Geraldine interrupted their flirtatious banter, speaking more sharply than she had intended. ‘Jonah wanted to see us.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Avril’s smile didn’t falter. ‘He’s waiting for you.’

  They followed her along the corridor. Jonah looked up from his grisly work as they went in.

  ‘You got here in double quick time,’ he said, nodding and smiling at Ian. ‘You’ll be pleased to know I’ve got another one for you. That makes four in how long is it? Seems like only a few days since Stephanie was brought in.’

  ‘It’s four weeks,’ Geraldine replied, keeping her voice even.

  ‘Hmm. One a week. It’s about time you guys sorted out this mess.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Ian asked, his voice taut with anxiety.

  He stared down at the body lying stretched out on its back. Turning her attention away from her colleague to the body, Geraldine saw that this victim was a man, wiry and dark-haired, his skin as smooth and white as alabaster. His cold black eyes seemed to be staring up at the brightly lit ceiling, as though attempting to distance himself from the indignity of this physical examination. Ian looked away quickly, his normally good-natured features twisted in a peevish frown.

  ‘Surely this can’t be meant for us? I don’t understand what we’re doing here.’

  He waved one of his hands dismissively in the direction of the corpse as he spoke.

  Jonah shook his head. ‘I would have thought it was obvious what you’re doing here. You’re detectives, aren’t you? Working on a murder case? And this is a dead body.’

  Ian grunted.

  ‘Yes, here we have a dead body,’ Jonah repeated, accompanying his words with a theatrical flourish. ‘So perhaps you’d like to tell me what it is you fail to grasp because, as I understand it, you’re the brains around this table. I’m just a pathologist. All I do is gather evidence. I don’t reach any conclusions. That’s your job.’

  Ian sounded vexed. ‘You know perfectly well what I meant. I get it that you suspect this man here to be the victim of some foul play, but it’s got nothing to do with the investigation we’re working on, has it?’

  He cast a sideways glance at Geraldine, perhaps hoping she would agree with him.

  Jonah smiled archly and put his hands on his hips like an actor in an amateur pantomime. ‘And what makes you so sure of that?’

  ‘His age for a start.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jonah sounded genuinely surprised.

  ‘He’s too old.’

  ‘Too old for what? I didn’t know there was an age limit on being killed.’

  Jonah laughed and Ian joined in.

  ‘Ian means he’s too old to be a victim in our case because the victims we’re investigating were at school together in the same class. They’re all in their early twenties. Your body here looks a lot older than that.’

  ‘He was in his mid-thirties,’ Jonah said. ‘Although he wanted to appear older.’

  As he spoke, he showed them an image of a white-faced old man with shaggy grey hair, his spectacles askew. He looked so different, it took Geraldine a moment to register that they were looking at a picture of the dead man.

  ‘You’re saying he was wearing a wig?’ Ian asked, looking baffled.

  ‘So he didn’t want to be recognised,’ Geraldine said, equally puzzled. ‘But this man’s about a decade too old to have been at school with our other victims. What made you think he was linked to them in any way?’

  ‘DNA,’ the pathologist replied.

  ‘You mean you identified the same DNA on him as you found on Stephanie?’

  Jonah inclined his head. ‘Oh yes.’

  Geraldine glanced at Ian and saw her own consternation reflected in his eyes. The pathologist appeared to be suggesting that the killer had begun selecting his victims from a larger pool of people.

  Delicately Jonah took a scraping from the dead man’s finger and held it up in front of them. ‘It’s the same DNA all right. And he was shot by the same gun.’

  ‘This was another shooting,’ Ian said slowly. ‘How come you found the killer’s DNA on the victim’s finger? I don’t understand what you’re telling us.’

  ‘He must have tried to push him away,’ Geraldine suggested.

  ‘But this time the killer had a gun,’ Ian said.
‘Thanks to our bungling,’ he added under his breath.

  ‘I could have taken a sample from anywhere on the body and come up with the same result,’ Jonah told them, pointing at the body. ‘This body is packed with your killer’s DNA. It’s in every cell.’

  Geraldine stared. ‘You mean…’

  The pathologist nodded his head. ‘You’ve found your killer.’

  ‘But someone else got to him first,’ Geraldine replied.

  Jonah nodded. ‘Yes. Someone’s killed your killer.’

  64

  Tim Hathaway had been discovered lying face down in the mud beside the path leading down to the canal, not far from the spot where Bethany had entered the water. An elderly woman had spotted the body and assumed the dead man was asleep, but suspecting that something was wrong, and concerned that the stranger might be suffering from hypothermia lying on the frozen ground, she had approached him and called out. When the man hadn’t stirred, she had gone into the library to seek assistance. A volunteer librarian had gone outside with the old woman, accompanied by a retired nurse who happened to be in the library. The first woman had become hysterical on discovering the man was dead, but the nurse had called the emergency services and before long a police assessment team had arrived to take control of the situation.

  By the time Geraldine arrived outside the library, a forensic tent was in place and the scene of crime officers were busy hunting for scraps of evidence.

  ‘He wasn’t killed here,’ one of them told Geraldine. ‘We’re doing our best to work out how he was brought here, but we’re having to do a bit of speculation. It looks as though he was dragged down the path. That much seems clear. We’ve followed the trail back as far as the road, and there are recent tyre marks. We can’t be sure but it seems he was transported here in a small car – God knows how the killer managed to cram him inside. The body must have been moved pretty promptly, before rigor set in.’

  ‘What about the killer? What can you tell us about him?’

  ‘Her. At least, that’s what we think. There appear to have been two women involved in depositing the body here, from what we can establish from the footprints around the area, although of course it’s difficult to be certain as three other women walked all over it before the death was reported, and they managed to virtually obliterate any earlier traces. And one of them was a nurse. You’d think she would have known better.’

  ‘You said you thought there were two women involved?’

  ‘That’s what we think, but we’re still waiting for confirmation. We’ve sent details of all the footprints off to the lab for analysis, but from what we can see, there are still signs of two sets of prints that were made some time before the body was discovered this morning, and we don’t think they match any of the three women who were here this morning when the body was reported to us.’

  ‘Two women,’ Geraldine repeated thoughtfully.

  ‘Does that help?’

  Geraldine shrugged. ‘Let’s see what the forensic examination throws up.’ It must have been obvious that her cautious words were at odds with the excitement she was feeling, because the scene of crime officer grinned.

  ‘We’ll get that information to you as soon as we can.’

  Back at the police station, Eileen summoned a meeting of the team, trying to make sense of what had happened. The latest victim had been identified at once as Tim Hathaway. As far as they had been able to discover, he appeared to have no living relatives, his father having died in a domestic accident when Tim was a child, and his mother following some ten years later, suffering from some sort of dementia. He had no surviving grandparents, no siblings, and both his parents had been only children.

  ‘A bit of a solitary existence,’ someone commented.

  ‘Both his parents died prematurely,’ Geraldine added thoughtfully.

  Before they could continue, a message came through. The registration numbers of cars that had passed security cameras outside the two pubs beside, and across the road from, the library had been checked. One of them was registered to Ashley Morrison.

  ‘What was she doing in Saddleworth?’ Eileen asked.

  ‘Two women,’ Geraldine muttered. ‘Leah Rutherford lives in Saddleworth. Could Ashley have been visiting her?’

  ‘Where’s that surveillance officer? He was supposed to be here,’ Eileen barked.

  A constable stepped forward. ‘I’m on the surveillance team,’ he announced.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, yes, Ashley Morrison’s car was parked in Leah’s street. She arrived,’ he checked his notes, ‘on Friday, early evening. It’s all in the report,’ he added as though he felt the need to defend his team’s work. ‘She stayed there overnight and drove off on Saturday evening, soon after dark.’

  ‘Where did she go from there?’

  He shrugged. ‘We were only tasked with keeping an eye on Leah’s house.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else?’

  ‘Yes. Leah had another visitor while Ashley was still there, an elderly man who arrived around ten on Saturday morning.’

  ‘What was he wearing?’

  ‘A long light-coloured raincoat.’

  ‘What happened then? Did he go inside?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when did he leave?’

  Geraldine held her breath. The roomful of people waited in silence for the answer.

  The constable looked uncomfortable. ‘We didn’t observe him leaving the property,’ he replied.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We didn’t see him leave.’

  Eileen’s voice dropped. ‘And you didn’t think that was odd?’

  The constable frowned. ‘We assumed he was staying there.’ He hesitated. ‘There is another maisonette in the house. He could have been a resident there.’

  ‘That was Tim Hathaway, you idiot,’ Eileen said quietly.

  ‘Yes, I realise that now,’ the constable replied. ‘But there was nothing at the time to arouse suspicion. He was just an old man entering the building.’

  Eileen nodded briskly. ‘So,’ she said, turning away from the red-faced constable, ‘Tim Hathaway turned up at Leah’s flat on Saturday morning. He knew we were looking for him, so he was travelling around disguised as an old man. What was he doing at Leah’s flat?’

  ‘He was probably expecting to find Leah there on her own,’ Geraldine said. ‘He’d already broken in there once. He might have worked out it might not be safe to break in again at night, so instead he rang the bell in broad daylight, confident he wouldn’t be recognised. He was returning to finish the job he failed to complete a week ago.’

  ‘But instead of killing Leah, he ended up being shot himself,’ Ian said. ‘Because he didn’t find Leah on her own as he’d expected. She had company.’

  Eileen nodded grimly. ‘The killer who had murdered their three friends turned up threatening to kill them. Between the two of them, Leah and Ashley succeeded in overpowering him and disarming him, and they shot him in the chest in the scuffle.’

  ‘Was it an accident, or an execution?’ Geraldine asked grimly.

  65

  Officers were despatched to bring Leah and Ashley to the police station for questioning, but neither of them was at home. An alert was immediately issued to look out for both of the suspects, as well as for Ashley’s car. With a few minutes to herself for the first time that morning, Geraldine was putting on her jacket ready to step outside to call Sam. But before she could leave the office, the desk sergeant sent a message to say that Leah had turned up at the police station. She was alone. Once she had been settled in an interview room, Ian and Geraldine went to question her about what had happened the previous night. Speaking to Sam would have to wait.

  Leah refused to have a lawyer present. ‘I don’t mind if you record what I say. I came here to tell you everything that happened
. I don’t need a lawyer if I’m telling the truth, do I? It was all an accident. We’ve done nothing wrong.’ She burst out crying and although she tried to speak, what with hiccupping and sobbing, she became completely incoherent. Geraldine and Ian exchanged a glance, Ian irate, Geraldine resigned. She handed the crying girl a tissue and a glass of water.

  ‘Leah,’ Geraldine said gently, ‘we appreciate that you’ve come here voluntarily. But you have to tell us what happened. Now take your time and calm down so you can speak clearly. At the moment I’m afraid I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Now, we know Ashley was staying with you at your flat so let’s start there.’

  ‘Yes. She said she’d come and spend the weekend with me because I didn’t want to be there by myself after the break-in, and she needed somewhere to stay. She didn’t like the room she was living in.’ She started crying but pulled herself together with a visible effort, and explained all over again how Ashley had come to be in her flat.

  ‘And then yesterday morning, you had another visitor?’

  Leah nodded.

  ‘Tell us what happened.’

  Leah’s puffy eyes opened into wider slits. ‘It was him. I didn’t realise straight away. He looked so old, but it was him. The man who’s been killing everyone. It was him. Ashley recognised him straight away, because she knew who he was but I’d never seen him before and…’

  ‘How did she know who he was?’

  ‘He’s the man she went out with in the sixth form, the one I told you about.’

  ‘The older man she was seeing while she was at school?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Geraldine nodded and waited while Leah blew her nose noisily and drank some water. After a moment, she prompted Leah again.

  ‘So what happened yesterday morning, when he came to the flat?’

  In between bouts of sobbing, Leah described how the old man had claimed he was looking for his niece who used to live in the flat Leah now occupied. He had appeared distressed on learning that she no longer lived there, and had asked if she might be kind enough to contact her landlord and see if he knew where the previous tenant had gone.