‘You all right?’ the woman said, catching Geraldine looking at her.
‘I was just admiring your jacket,’ she fibbed, nodding at the fake leopard skin. ‘It looks warm enough!’
‘Too bloody warm in here,’ the woman replied. ‘But I wouldn’t want to go out without it. Not tonight. It’s bloody freezing. Must be good for business in here though.’ She raised her mug and grinned.
Above the din of people enjoying themselves, the laughter and chatter, shrieks of children, and clattering of glasses, a scream rang out. Voices fell silent with an air of expectation. A second scream reverberated around the tent, seeming to fill the space, making it difficult to pinpoint the source. Geraldine was on her feet scanning the scene. Her gaze fell on the white face of a young woman. Open-mouthed, eyes bulging in horror, she let out another scream. Geraldine made her way to the hysterical woman, holding her police ID badge up to the crowd. A group of onlookers was gathering around a man who was lying on the ground, a pool of blood spreading beside his head.
‘Call an ambulance!’ someone shouted.
‘Is there a doctor here?’
Geraldine was on her knees, careless of the still-warm blood soaking into her jeans.
‘Move aside, I’m a doctor,’ a voice snapped.
‘An ambulance is on its way!’ another voice called out.
‘I think it’s too late for that,’ Geraldine muttered to the doctor who was leaning over the prone body. ‘Move back,’ she called out as she stood up and took out her phone. ‘Give the doctor room to work.’
As a few people began to shuffle away, two uniformed constables arrived.
Geraldine made her way over to them. ‘Stay here and don’t let anyone leave the tent. I’ve summoned the assessment team,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, we need to protect the area as a potential crime scene and keep all these people away from the body.’
‘Easier said than done,’ the older of the two constables replied.
The people in the tent were becoming increasingly vocal in their demands to be allowed to leave.
‘I’ve got to get my boy home to bed,’ a woman with a wailing toddler complained.
‘You can’t keep us here,’ a man’s voice boomed.
Geraldine turned to face the agitated crowd.
‘A man has been injured, and this is now a potential crime scene,’ she announced and the clamour faded. Only a few small children continued to fuss. ‘An ambulance is on its way and we have a doctor here taking care of the casualty. We have to ask you to be patient. A police team will be here shortly to ask each of you whether you saw anything prior to this attack. We’ll speak to those with children first, so you might like to form a line along that side of the tent. The rest of you, please take a seat at the back of the tent, and allow us to get on with our job. With your co-operation we’ll be able to send you all out of here as quickly as possible.’
‘You do know he’s dead?’ the doctor said quietly.
‘I know. But let’s keep that to ourselves, at least until the team arrives. I’ve reported it as a potential public order situation. We don’t want to start a riot.’
Geraldine’s fears proved ungrounded, and the threatened mayhem settled into a semblance of order as people inside the tent began organising themselves according to her instructions. The impetus to depart transformed into a determination to be first in the queue to answer the police questions. All it had required was someone to take control of the impending mass panic. She had done well to contain the situation so far, but beneath the veneer of calm a man lay dead at her feet, his blood slowly hardening on her jeans, and his killer possibly in the tent, a bloody knife concealed on his person. Glancing around the tent at the angry faces of adults, and crying children, Geraldine wasn’t sure whether to hope the killer was still among them or not. Either possibility was equally worrying.
As the harassed parents shuffled into a squabbling queue, a Father Christmas walked along the line entertaining the children, offering them little trinkets out of his bag. Looking around anxiously, Geraldine was relieved to see her colleague and old friend, Ian Peterson, walk into the tent. She hurried to join him.
‘What are you doing here?’ Geraldine asked in surprise. ‘I thought you were spending Christmas with your brother?’
‘I thought you were going to your sister’s?’
‘Yes, well, she’s gone away for Christmas.’
‘He didn’t come over in the end. So looks like it’s just you and me.’
She glanced at the body lying at their feet and thought, there’s another person who’s not going to be enjoying a Happy Christmas this year.
‘The DCI’s off,’ Ian said. ‘I’m sure they’ll dig up someone else to run the investigation if they have to, but let’s hope we can wrap it up before tomorrow and then it won’t be necessary to bring in anyone from outside.’
‘What’s it like out there?’
‘A bit of a blizzard, but the local team will be here soon.’ He looked around the waiting crowd of people. ‘We need to get them out of here as quickly as possible.’
Geraldine nodded. There was no need to explain her reason for keeping the crowd there. Shortly after Ian turned up, a team of uniformed officers arrived and began searching and processing the potential witnesses. With so many onlookers milling around, it seemed self-evident that someone there must surely have seen the killer, but so far no one had admitted to noticing anything untoward as the attack had taken place. The woman who had raised the alarm told them she had never even met the dead man before.
‘I was sitting here with my girlfriends and this man just came and sat down beside me at the end of our bench.’
She spoke as if his presence had been an intrusion.
‘Was anyone with him?’ Ian asked.
‘I don’t know. I mean, who goes out on their own on Christmas Eve?’
Remembering how she had parked herself on a bench beside a group of strangers, Geraldine was silent.
‘Did you see anyone else with him?’ Ian persisted patiently.
‘No. But someone came up to him.’
‘Someone?’
‘I think it was a man.’
‘What did he look like?’ Geraldine asked.
She frowned. ‘I can’t really remember. I’ve been drinking.’ The witness paused, frowning. ‘I wasn’t really looking. I just noticed him out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t see anything, but then the man sitting next to me kind of fell forward and slid off the bench. That’s when I saw the blood and started screaming.’ She gave an embarrassed grimace. ‘I panicked. It’s not what you expect to see on Christmas Eve, is it?’
As though she might expect to see someone stabbed to death any other evening of the year.
No one else sitting at the table had seen anything. All Geraldine and Ian could gather was that a figure had approached, put an arm around the victim, and then vanished, leaving a dying man behind. Some of the accounts described the attacker as a hooded man, others said he had white hair, one or two thought he might have had a beard. All the accounts were contradictory and inconclusive.
‘It sounds as though the dead man was here on his own,’ Ian said, gazing around. ‘It’s a pity they don’t have CCTV here.’
‘Hiding in plain sight,’ Geraldine muttered.
‘What’s that?’
‘Who might have known there was no CCTV here?’ she asked.
‘Anyone who works here, and anyone who came in and looked around, I suppose. We know, and we’ve never been in here before. That doesn’t narrow it down at all.’
Geraldine looked thoughtful. ‘But who might be inconspicuous on Christmas Eve?’
Ian shook his head.
‘A hooded man, with a beard,’ she muttered. ‘I think I may have seen him.’
‘You saw him?’
�
�I don’t think I was the only one.’
She turned away from Ian to look around. Most of the staff who had been serving drinks had joined the queue to be questioned. Only the swarthy manager and a burly man who had been manning the entrance and selling tickets were now standing behind the bar. Geraldine filled Ian in on who they were.
‘You actually had to pay for a ticket so you could come in and buy a drink?’ he asked.
Geraldine nodded. ‘It was cold outside,’ was all she said.
‘You should have called me,’ he replied. ‘I’d have bought you a drink.’
‘Now you tell me.’
The manager was washing glasses in a sink behind the bar. Geraldine watched him for a moment before she turned back to Ian. ‘Watch the exit. I have an idea.’
Without another word, she strode over to the bar.
‘Yes?’ the manager asked her. ‘Can we help you any more than we have done already?’ He glared at her, evidently vexed by the interruption to his business. He had already been complaining vociferously about his loss of income on his busiest night of the year.
‘I’d like to take a look behind the bar,’ Geraldine said.
‘What for?’
Undeterred by his air of hostility, she pushed past him. Her eyes narrowed as she glanced around. Beside a stainless steel sink there was a drainer stacked with wet glasses and a few large knives which looked as though they had recently been washed. Beside the sink on the floor lay a discarded costume.
‘Very neat,’ she muttered.
Slipping on her gloves, she picked up the scarlet Father Christmas outfit by one furry white edge, noticing a barely discernible dark crimson stain on one side of it.
‘Oi, get your hands off that!’ the manager shouted out, his face reddening and his voice rising in anger.
In one swift motion he lunged at Geraldine. As he shoved her aside, her shoulder hit a row of wine bottles that shattered with a loud crash as they hit the floor. One of them struck her a glancing blow on the side of her head. After that she was only dimly aware of Ian sprinting across the tent towards them as the manager seized her arm and dragged her away from the red costume. His forearm grasped her around her throat and she heard him yelling.
‘Keep away from me or this bitch gets it!’
The bouncer who had been selling tickets took a step towards them and hesitated when he saw the manager’s grip tighten. Geraldine’s assailant pulled her away until his back was against the sink. By now Ian had joined them behind the bar. He manoeuvred his way past the bouncer so that he was standing facing Geraldine and her captor.
Instead of hurling himself at them, Ian spoke very softly. ‘You’re not helping yourself by attacking a police officer. Let her go and we can talk about what happened here tonight.’
‘Tonight? Tonight? You think this is all about tonight?’ the other man shouted back.
He was holding Geraldine so close, she could smell his sour sweat.
‘What happened here tonight has been a long time coming,’ he went on. ‘That piece of shit has been screwing my wife for three years. Three years! Messing with my wife! He had it coming! I should’ve done this a long time ago.’
‘Let the sergeant go and you can tell us all about it,’ Ian said, coaxing the man to release Geraldine. ‘We want to listen to you, but we have to talk this over calmly. Not like this. What you’re doing isn’t going to achieve anything, is it? You had a reason for attacking that man, but the sergeant hasn’t done anything to hurt you. She’s got nothing to do with it, has she?’
‘She was snooping around back here where she’s got no business to be poking about.’
‘She was doing her job,’ Ian replied quietly, as though they were discussing the weather. ‘Come on now, you can’t go assaulting police officers. Let her go and there’s no harm done.’
With a grunt, the man let go and Geraldine staggered forwards, her throat so sore she could hardly speak. Immediately two uniformed constables leapt on the killer to handcuff him and lead him away.
Ian stared anxiously at Geraldine. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Never better,’ she croaked. ‘How about that drink you promised me?’
Ian smiled. ‘Come on then, let’s go and celebrate Christmas.’
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2017
First published in print in 2017
by No Exit Press
an imprint of Oldcastle Books
PO Box 394,
Harpenden, AL5 1XJ
noexit.co.uk
All rights reserved
© Leigh Russell 2017
The right of Leigh Russell to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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ISBN - Class Murder
978-1-84344-930-0 (Print)
978-1-84344-931-7 (Epub)
978-1-84344-932-4 (Kindle)
978-1-84344-933-1 (Pdf)
ISBN - Killer Christmas
978-0-85730-265-6 (Epub)
978-0-85730-266-3 (Kindle)
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Class Murder Page 32
