by M. J. Ford
James’ forehead met the man’s nose in a crunch, sending him staggering backwards into the wall behind. As he reached for his face, blood pouring through his fingers, James drove a fist into his lower abdomen, doubling him up. Then he grabbed the back of the man’s collar, and the underside of his chin, and pulled him hard into the toilet cubicle. The guard sprawled on the floor. James lifted a foot and stamped on the back of his head. Once, and he was still moaning. The second one silenced him. James glanced around. No one had seen.
He pushed the guard’s stray foot inside the cubicle, then stepped in himself, closing the door behind them and locking it.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
‘You couldn’t just leave it, could you?’ he said to the motionless man at his feet. What other choice had there been? The cunt had made his bed – let him lie in it. He didn’t think he was dead, but he didn’t care either.
He took a deep breath to calm himself. Now what? He could remain in here until they reached the station, but there was no guarantee of getting far before the body was discovered. That’s if they even got to Oxford at all. Chances were the inspector would be expected to check in via the radio or in person with the driver. And when he didn’t, it would draw attention. No, he had to act now. First, he felt inside the man’s jacket and found a wallet with forty quid. He left the rest, but took his watch, and a wedding ring. Then he unlocked the door, and peered out to check the corridor. The coast was clear. He slipped through, closing the door again to conceal the body.
An inter-carriage door swished open, and a woman approached. He held his ground as she checked to see if the toilet was occupied.
‘You don’t want to go in there,’ said James. ‘Some animal’s smeared shit everywhere.’
The woman’s mouth took a downturn of disgust, and she went on her way. James looked out of the window. They were passing through a village. A platform blurred past. It couldn’t be far to Oxford now. He didn’t fancy trying to convince everyone who needed a piss to keep on walking.
It was time to get off.
He found the emergency stop by the door, and slid the plastic cover up. There was a button inside, with a number of warning notices. He pressed it. The change in speed threw him against the wall, and a screeching noise filled the vestibule, followed by screams and yells from the carriages on either side. In five or ten seconds it was over, and they came to a halt. They were in a cutting, scrubby trees with litter-flecked branches growing up the bank on either side.
The door release was behind another panel. This one he smashed with his elbow, then yanked the lever. The doors on one sides opened outwards a fraction with a dull clunk, as the locking mechanisms disengaged, and James heaved it across, hopping down onto the tracks. Pulling his hood over his head, he scrambled up the bank and reached the top. There were fields, with a row of pylons, and in the distance, a small village. He struck off in that direction.
It might be two miles to Oxford, or it could be twenty.
A small delay, but it hardly mattered now.
Chapter 10
George Dimitriou appeared to still be reeling from the news that Jo’s investigation and his own were connected, and the common link was Blake Matthis. Three of them – Jo, Alice and Dimitriou himself – were standing at the side of the house to escape the smell. ‘Blake and Megan must be about the same age,’ he said. ‘What school is she at?’
‘Marsh Hill,’ said Jo. ‘Catholic school.’
He frowned. ‘Blake’s at Isaac Newton Academy.’
‘Doesn’t mean they didn’t know each other,’ said Reeves. ‘They might have had a thing? Sounds like she wasn’t picky.’
Dimitriou nodded in agreement. ‘Doesn’t explain why he went after her folks though.’
‘If he did,’ said Jo. She wasn’t ready to drop the mismatched time-scales. Those bodies were more than three days old, and that meant they were dead for some time before Matthis was confirmed in the vicinity.
‘Maybe he was robbing the place,’ said Reeves. ‘They caught him at it, and things … escalated.’
‘It looks like it was first thing in the morning,’ said Jo. ‘Mr Bailey was shaving. They hadn’t even got dressed.’
‘That’s all speculation,’ said Dimitriou. ‘They could have been getting ready for bed. Or he made them strip.’
‘And why in God’s name would he do that?’ said Jo. ‘Is he a pervert as well as a murderer and a drug dealer and a schoolboy?’
Dimitriou rubbed his temples for a few seconds, eyes closed. She was sorry she’d snapped; they were all in the dark here, and struggling to process the discovery.
A uniform at the outer cordon came over to say there was someone who wanted to speak with them.
‘A priest,’ he added.
They went around to the front, just as Andy and Heidi came out through the front door. True to the constable’s word, the visitor wore a floor-length cassock and dog-collar. He looked unwell – perhaps recovering from an illness. He might have been in his mid-forties, his painfully thin physique accentuating his long face and aquiline nose, his Adam’s apple protruding. He wore small, wire-rimmed spectacles.
‘I’m Father Tremayne,’ he said, looking past them to the house. ‘Are the family all right?’
‘You know them well?’ asked Carrick, deflecting.
‘Very,’ said Tremayne. ‘They’re parishioners at St Peters. Rachael is a bell-ringer.’
‘The church in the village?’ said Carrick.
Tremayne nodded eagerly.
‘I’m sorry to inform you Mr and Mrs Bailey have been killed,’ said Jo’s boss.
Tremayne stared at Carrick for second, his mouth moving but no sound coming out. Then he looked at Jo, before crossing himself. ‘God have mercy on their souls. And the children?’
‘We aren’t sure at the moment,’ said Carrick. ‘But they aren’t in the house.’
‘Father,’ said Jo. ‘Can I ask when you last saw the Baileys?’
‘Not for many weeks,’ said Tremayne. ‘They’ve been on a cruise to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary. They were due to return this week.’
‘Any idea which day?’ asked Dimitriou, before Jo could say anything.
‘No,’ said Tremayne, ‘but I don’t think they were back on Sunday, as they would have come to the service.’
‘And do you know if the Baileys had any enemies?’ asked Carrick.
‘In the village?’ said Tremayne. ‘I doubt it.’
‘Anywhere?’ said Jo. ‘Did either of them mention anything to you? However small.’
‘What my parishioners entrust to me is sacrosanct,’ said Tremayne, straightening his shoulders. It struck Jo as an odd thing to say, almost mealy-mouthed. And not in the least helpful. The priest himself seemed to realise how he’d come across, and quickly went on. ‘I wish I could help, really. Mr and Mrs Bailey were upstanding members of the community. I can’t think why anyone would want to harm them.’
‘It’s puzzling us too,’ said Carrick.
Dimitriou fished in his pocket, and handed the priest a card. ‘If anything springs to mind, do let us know.’
Tremayne took the card, and his eyes went to the house again. ‘Is there anything else I can do?’
‘Keep it to yourself,’ said Jo. ‘We need to inform the next of kin.’
‘And pray for their souls,’ added Carrick, without a hint of irony.
* * *
Dimitriou announced he had a new theory.
‘All ears,’ said Jo.
‘So the parents come back from their boat trip. One way or another, they come across Blake in the house – this kid they don’t know. All hell breaks loose – they try to shoot him. Afterwards he tries to make it look like a burglary that went wrong.’
‘By cutting their throats?’
‘He did what he had to in order to cover his tracks. Couldn’t risk the gun going off again in case it alerted the neighbours.’
‘Sorry, George,’ said Reeves. ‘I’m wit
h Jo here. The facts on the ground don’t fit. Someone broke through the door of their room.’
‘And it looks like the culprit lost some blood. I don’t remember seeing any sign of an injury when Matthis fled on the bike.’
Jo’s mind went back to what the shop assistant had said he’d noticed when he asked Megan for ID, the day after Harry’s murder. She had a bandaged right hand. Going by the position of the bloody print on the stairs, it belonged to someone’s right hand also. Could she have been here too, when all of this happened?
Dimitriou didn’t look ready to drop his latest idea though, and Jo had a feeling why. Blake was his case, Megan hers. Now this scene linked them, it made sense to fold the cases together, pooling their resources, with her as SIO.
‘We’re missing something,’ she said, in her most conciliatory tone. ‘Blake and Megan are into something bigger than either of them.’
* * *
Heidi left shortly afterwards, along with Alice Reeves. The latter looked happy just to be getting away. On the way out, Jo overheard Heidi and Carrick talking about Greg Bailey. They’d confirmed he was indeed at Pembroke College in Cambridge, and Carrick asked Heidi to get in touch with Cambridgeshire Police to organise a liaison to inform Greg of the murder and to offer him transport to St Aldates. Jo didn’t envy the poor bastard who got that job. It looked like Greg Bailey was twenty years old at most. Dealing with the practicalities of a parent’s death was hard enough at the best of times, when the end was anticipated and natural. To do so in these circumstances was quite a different story.
While Carrick spoke to the Chief Constable on the latest developments, Jo took a turn around the garden. Through mature trees she could see the house next door about a hundred and fifty metres away. Close enough, probably, to have heard a shotgun blast. Her immediate, optimistic thought was that the suspect might have dumped a murder weapon somewhere in the vicinity. The garden was well manicured – the work, she assumed, of a gardener, given the scope of it. In the far corner, concealed from the main home through a pergola, was a substantial summer house, perhaps four metres by three, with mostly glazed walls. It sat on a raised wooden platform. As she approached, her stomach dropped. There were more flies inside, and they were buzzing against the panes.
Oh, Christ …
Jo considered called for the others, but her legs moved her close of their own accord. Her shoes made a hollow knocking on the decking steps up to the glass door. Inside were a few pieces of garden furniture stacked up, presumably as the previous summer had ended, lying in wait for the next to begin. There was also what looked like a folded badminton or volleyball net, and a covered barbecue. She could easily imagine the two siblings knocking a shuttlecock back and forth while the smell of cooking meat drifted across the lawn. The flies that weren’t at the window seemed to be concentrated towards the rear of the room within, buzzing around under a collapsible table.
‘Found something?’ came Dimitriou’s voice. She turned. He was upstairs, leaning from a window.
‘Maybe,’ she called back. ‘See if you can find a key for this door?’
After a search through the kitchen, no key was forthcoming, but Andy gave them the okay to break the glass, and Dimitriou used a mallet found in the property’s shed. The smell wasn’t anything like back in the main house, and Jo’s heart slowed a little. She went in first, crouching with Dimitriou to look beneath the table. ‘How disappointing.’ he said.
There, against the wall, were the decomposing bodies of two rats, and what looked like several poison pellets.
‘At least we won’t need Mel,’ said Jo.
Dimitriou reached in, and Jo thought for a moment he was going to grab one of the rodent corpses, but instead he picked up one of the pink pellets. On his palm, Jo saw it had a heart motif on its surface.
‘Looks like these guys OD’d,’ said Dimitriou. ‘This ain’t rat poison.’
Between them, they removed the furniture and other equipment onto the grass, until all that was left were the bodies of the rodents and the pills, and a torn blue polythene bag that still contained a couple of dozen more. There was a small hole in the raised floor platform that looked like it was for wiring. As far as Jo could see, it was the only way the rats could have squeezed in.
Dimitriou, leaning over it, shone a torch inside. ‘Jackpot.’
They couldn’t see a way to get under the raised floor, but checking the perimeter of the platform outside, a long panel at the rear was found to be loose. Prising it aside by hand, they revealed a cavity with the same footprint as the structure, filled with packages. Dimitriou began to pass them out. It was almost entirely pills – thousands of them, in a variety of colours. Jo tried doing some mental calculations, and her conservative estimate was north of a hundred and fifty grand in street value.
‘So this is what Blake was looking for,’ said Dimitriou. He stood, with mud on the knees of his suit.
‘You think the Baileys knew this was here?’ said Carrick.
Dimitriou shrugged. ‘I can’t see it. They were away, right? And they went to their deaths rather than spilling the beans.’
‘We’re getting ahead of ourselves,’ said Jo. ‘Blake’s a suspect, but the question is why these drugs are even here.’ She looked at Carrick. ‘Better tell Cambridgeshire Police to keep a close eye on Greg Bailey in case he tries to run.’
Dimitriou laughed. ‘I’ll put money on it being the girl and Blake,’ he said.
Jo had her doubts about his modern-day Bonnie and Clyde theory, but they were ill-formed, and she wouldn’t have staked much on Dimitriou being wrong. The St Cuthbert’s tutor hadn’t mentioned drugs at all, but it wasn’t a stretch to think Megan, with all her other issues, might have taken that path too. The murder sat in a different category entirely though. Violent, cold-blooded, and remorseless killing was a long way from truancy and sex. On the other hand you didn’t have to look far to see what otherwise normal people could do under the influence of drug-induced psychosis, especially those predisposed to sociopathy. Human compassion and empathy were often the first things to be stripped away.
She looked at her watch – just after five. If she was going to make it to Little Steps, she’d have to leave now or the traffic would be too heavy. Carrick caught her expression.
‘You should be off,’ he said. ‘We can take care of things here.’
‘No way,’ she said, reflexively. ‘I’ll call someone.’
‘Like yesterday?’ said Carrick.
Jo hesitated. The old, proud part of her wanted to tell him, ‘Yes’, and to mind his own business about how she organised her affairs. Amelia would understand, at least partly. She couldn’t walk away now; there was still so much to do. But she didn’t say it. She needed to be with Theo, and even the twenty minutes it would take to reach the nursery seemed an unbearable delay.
‘It’s all right,’ said Dimitriou. ‘Go and see your son.’
There was a surprising warmth to his voice. Jo had no doubt he’d rather work the scene without her – it was still as much his case as hers, after all – but she didn’t think it was as simple as him wanting her out of the way. He had no kids himself, and she knew from hints he’d dropped in the past that both of his parents had died when he was still at school.
‘Honestly, I can make arrangements.’ Even to her own ears, the protest wasn’t convincing.
Carrick motioned with his head for her to join him, then wandered back towards the house. When she fell alongside, he stopped and turned to her.
‘Go home,’ he said. ‘That’s an order.’
‘But …’
‘No buts,’ said Carrick. ‘Trust me, I’ve seen enough idiotic blokes mess up their families over the years by not leaving work on time. I won’t see someone I respect doing the same. Those bodies aren’t going anywhere soon, and this scene is going to take an age to clear. I’d rather you were well rested.’
Jo could see it wasn’t worth arguing further, and gave her boss a nod of underst
anding. ‘Okay, but if you need me, or if anything happens, you’ve got to call. I’ve got family who can step in as and when.’
‘Noted,’ said Carrick. ‘See you Monday otherwise.’
Jo signed out of the scene, then drove away, though every professional instinct in her body told her it was wrong. How could she be leaving work when Harry’s killer was still on the loose, and the bodies were stacking up? Along with the guilt, she knew herself well enough to register that it was her ego as much as her conscience. In her forced absence, there was every chance Dimi would be assigned as the lead. It wasn’t that he was a bad investigator. Though he gave the appearance of idleness within the office, when it came to gathering evidence, he actually got stuck in, if not with enthusiasm, with a certain dogged and single-minded energy. He’d certainly never leave the office just because his shift was up. And while he jumped to conclusions, his results spoke for themselves: in most cases, the simplest answer was the correct one.
Something told Jo, however, that this case was different, and nothing was as it appeared.
Chapter 11
SATURDAY, 19TH APRIL
Andy Carrick’s words of wisdom were in Jo’s mind throughout the following day as she concentrated on being Jo Masters the mum, and she regretted forcing him to couch his advice as an order. He was quite right either way about the importance of family. Though she couldn’t go as far as leaving her work-phone off, she put the ringer on silent.
There were periods in the day when the machinations of St Aldates faded very much into the background. The morning took her to swimming the local pool, and a session designed for babies where she and the other new mothers cooed and splashed in the shallows with their little ones. She recognised a few of them from the antenatal group she’d attended, though their names escaped her.
She’d taken the doctor’s advice to sign up, planning to make friends, but from the outset she’d felt out of place. All the other first-time mothers-to-be were accompanied by partners, practising breathing exercise together, talking hospital advocacy, and laughing over the many shades of baby effluence. She’d been on her own, even though Amelia had once offered to come with her for moral support. She’d swapped numbers with everyone at the end, almost through a sense of duty, but made no effort afterwards to keep in touch.
