Murder Mile

by Lynda La Plante

  Jane was on her hands and knees when he took an envelope from his pocket. “I meant to give you this earlier, but with all that was going on around Simmonds’ arrest, I forgot. My contact in the SIB found out Simmonds agreed to leave the army quietly to avoid a court martial and being sent to a military prison.”

  Jane frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “He was caught in bed with an eighteen-year-old army cook. Simmonds wasn’t dishonorably discharged, but let’s say it had a very nasty smell to it and the army quickly swept the incident under the carpet. My contact couldn’t even find a case file, so it’s all hearsay evidence, I’m afraid.”

  “If it’s true, then I would say David Simmonds was probably aware Aiden Lang was a rent boy,” Jane remarked.

  Lawrence opened his case, removed his camera and took some photographs of the living room, as Jane put the envelope in her bag. He placed a ruler between the stained areas and then photographed them. He took out a Stanley knife and cut the bleached area out. As he turned it over they could both see the faint remnants of what might have been blood.

  “Is it blood?” Jane asked.

  “I need to do a Kastle-Meyer test first,” Lawrence said.

  He got a small box from his bag marked KM kit. He opened the box, revealing three small bottles of liquid. Lawrence rubbed a small, round piece of white blotting paper against the stain on the underside of the carpet. He added a drop of ethanol to the paper from one of the bottles, followed by a drop of phenolphthalein reagent and finally a drop of hydrogen peroxide. Jane watched, fascinated, as the middle of the bit of white paper turned pink.

  “Does that mean it’s blood?” she asked excitedly.

  Lawrence nodded. “It’s only what we call a presumptive test, though. Animal blood would cause the same reaction. I’ll have to do the Ouchterlony test at the lab to determine the species of origin, but the bleach could affect the grouping results. If we can group it we can check it against the victims’ blood groups.” Lawrence placed the pieces of cut carpet in individual exhibit bags.

  Jane shrugged. “If Lang was cut up in here there would have been lots of blood.”

  “Depends. I had a dismemberment case where the body was cut up in a bedroom on layers of thick plastic sheeting and we didn’t find any blood at all. The thing is, once you’re dead the heart isn’t pumping so you don’t get blood spurting out everywhere when the body is cut up. The best place to dismember someone, of course, is in the bath.”

  Jane started to leave the room, but Lawrence grabbed her arm to stop her.

  “Not so fast, Jane, there are two small stains on the carpet in the hallway I want to examine first.”

  Jane was surprised. “Are there? I didn’t see them.”

  Lawrence smiled. “It’s not easy on a red and brown carpet. But when you’ve seen as much blood as I have over the years, it’s easier to spot small stains.”

  They went into the hallway. Lawrence stopped between the living room and surgery, put the rulers on the floor and took some photographs. Jane still couldn’t see anything obvious on the worn carpet. Lawrence tested the two spots with his KM kit and both reacted for blood. He cut them out and put them in separate bags.

  Jane was anxious to know Lawrence’s thoughts. “What do you think? Could Mrs. Hastings and Helen Matthews have been murdered here?”

  Lawrence opened the door to the surgery. “This is all hypothetical, but we know Mrs. Hastings had stabbing injuries, whereas Helen Matthews was strangled. Also, the pathologist’s time of death indicates they were both murdered on the Friday evening.”

  Jane nodded in agreement. “It still leaves the question of who was killed first and why.”

  Lawrence continued. “If the blood in the hallway and the living room is from Mrs. Hastings, it suggests something happened in the surgery, or the hallway, first.” Lawrence moved from the surgery to the hallway and living room as he spoke. “Then she ran into the living room, where she was stabbed, bleeding onto the carpet.”

  Jane thought about it. “If Mrs. Hastings and Helen Matthews came here of their own free will, it mean Simmonds, and/or Lang, hadn’t premeditated the murders, doesn’t it?”

  Lawrence nodded. “It could be that something got rapidly out of hand.”

  “Like an argument. Helen believed her son Simon had been abused by Simmonds. If she came here and challenged him, he would have denied it. The thing is, I can’t get my head around why Mrs. Hastings might have come here. Do you think they came here together and he killed them both at the same time?”

  “It would be hard for Simmonds to have killed them both at the same time. Also, one was strangled and the other stabbed.”

  Jane was fired up. “But if Lang was involved, he could have stabbed Mrs. Hastings to death while Simmonds strangled Helen Matthews. Then Simmonds killed Lang, realizing he couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut.”

  Lawrence shrugged. “Only Simmonds knows the truth. Without a motive, this is all supposition.”

  He went back into the surgery room and looked around. “If the first two murders were not planned then the murder weapons had to be close to hand.” Lawrence looked closely at Simmonds’ dental tools neatly laid out on a table next to the dental chair. He picked up a dental chisel. “The tip of this and some of the other tools are like a flat-head screwdriver. I’ll take them all and test them on plasticine for comparison against Mrs. Hastings’ stab wounds.”

  “If one of the dental tools was used to kill Mrs. Hastings in the heat of the moment, then how come Simmonds used a pre-knotted cord to strangle Helen Matthews? Plus, the same knotted cord was used to kill Eileen Summers. We know she went to the hostel looking for Ben Smith, so her murder must have been planned.”

  Lawrence shook his head. “Sometimes the answer is staring you in the face. If you look too deep you can miss it.”

  He went back into the lounge and let his eyes wander around the room. Jane followed, not understanding what he was looking for. Suddenly Lawrence clapped his hands together.

  “Got it! Like I said, Jane, the answer was right in front of us.” He went back into the surgery.

  Jane followed him. “You’ve lost me, Paul. What’s right in front of us?”

  “Actually, it’s more a case of something that’s missing.” He removed one of the white cord ties from the surgery curtain and tossed it to Jane.

  Jane examined it, instantly realizing what he was thinking. “The color’s the same, but there’s no slip knot and this has a tassel at either end. The cord found round our victims’ necks didn’t.”

  “The ends of the cord used on the victims were frayed. Simmonds is smart; I suspect he cut the tassels off and tied the slip knots after the strangulation to make it less obvious what the cord was originally used for.”

  “But we can’t prove the ligature cords were from here,” Jane said.

  “There is some evidence to suggest they were,” Lawrence said, beckoning Jane to follow him.

  Back in the living room, he told her to have a good look around.

  “Can you tell me what’s missing in here?”

  Jane scanned the room carefully, looking for a link to the ligature cords.

  “No tie-backs on the curtains?”

  “Exactly. There’s discoloration on the curtain and hooks on the walls. There were clearly tie-backs on them at one time.” Lawrence looked at the living room curtain with a magnifying glass. “There’s still some fibers on the curtains.”

  Lawrence proceeded to lift the fibers using Scotch tape, which he then placed onto a piece of acetate. “If these fibers match the ones on the cords used to strangle the victims, that will be powerful evidence against Simmonds.”

  Jane made notes of everything Lawrence said in her notebook. She knew it would form a crucial part of the interview with Simmonds. Lawrence went outside, called the SOCOs in and briefed them on what he had found so far. He told them he wanted every surface in the surgery, lounge and kitchen fingerprinted, and a
thorough search for any further blood stains.

  Jane and Lawrence went upstairs to the bedroom, where she showed him the broken photograph of Simmonds in a tweed suit. Lawrence agreed the bedroom was like an eerie shrine to Simmonds’ mother. He looked in the wardrobes for a tweed suit but didn’t find one.

  Next, they looked in the bathroom, which was spotless. There was no visible sign of blood anywhere, but they could both make out a faint smell of bleach. Jane helped Lawrence remove the panel along the bathtub and the waste pipes, but again there was no sign of any blood.

  “Either Lang wasn’t cut up here or Simmonds has done a thorough job cleaning up,” Lawrence remarked.

  She followed Lawrence downstairs to the kitchen, where he checked under the sink for cleaning fluids and blood stained rags. There was a bottle of bleach, which was nearly empty, and a cleaning cloth that looked new. Jane opened a drawer and found a roll of black plastic bin bags.

  “These are the same color as the bin bags the body parts were found in, but is it worth taking them as evidence if they’re mass produced?”

  “There’s a lot of forensic evidence you can get from a simple bin bag, which I’ll bet Simmonds wouldn’t know.”

  Jane looked doubtful. “Is there?”

  “When the bin bags are made, unique scratches and roller marks are left on them by the production machinery. The ‘striation marks,’ as we call them, can be compared side by side to see if they are from the same batch.”

  “So, if the striation marks on these bags are the same as on the ones the body parts were in, then they came from this roll of bags?”

  Lawrence nodded. “Also, where a bin bag is torn from a roll, each tear is unique, making a physical fit between torn edges powerful and often conclusive evidence.”

  Impressed, Jane held up the bin bags. “If this torn end fits to one of the body parts bags, it will be enough to charge Simmonds, then?”

  Lawrence smiled. “It could be the proverbial last nail in his coffin.”

  A SOCO entered the room. “Excuse me, DS Lawrence, but I think there’s something you need to see out the back.”

  Lawrence and Jane followed the SOCO through the kitchen, out the back door and down the concrete steps to the garden. The SOCO pointed to some small steps that led down to a rear basement area.

  “There’s an old coal bunker down there, which we’ve searched, and there’s nothing in it. Next to it is a locked door, which I think probably leads to a cellar, but we haven’t looked in there yet. Do you want me to force the door with the sledgehammer?”

  Lawrence nodded. He and Jane watched as the SOCO smashed the door open, revealing a damp-smelling cellar. The SOCO shone his torch around the room, lighting up various wooden crates and odd broken bits of furniture stacked against the bare brick walls. The torchlight reflected off a glass cabinet, inside which was an array of white plaster casts and red rubber molds of peoples’ teeth. On a shelf beside it, stacks of airtight jars containing white plaster powder were neatly lined together.

  “We’ll take all those molds for the forensic odontologist to look at, just in case any of them match the dental plate in our skinned head,” Lawrence said.

  “What’s that gurgling sound?” Jane asked anxiously.

  The SOCO found a light switch and two fluorescent tube lights lit up the cellar. At the back was a large chest freezer. They could all hear the gurgling sound coming from it now. Jane followed Lawrence over to the freezer and stood beside him. His hands still in the latex gloves, he gently eased the lid open. Opening it to its full extent, they could see two compartments, one for fast freezing, which was empty, and the other larger area for storage, which was half full. Lawrence borrowed the SOCO’s torch and shone it inside, revealing frozen salmon and trout heavily wrapped in cling film or in clear plastic freezer bags. There were also some plastic containers and bags with handwritten stickers describing the contents. There was shepherd’s pie, lasagna, and bread and butter pudding. Some of them were marked “Mum’s.” Lawrence picked up a frosted-over container and showed it to Jane.

  Jane shook her head in disbelief. “Some of this stuff must have been in here since his mother died. I thought her bedroom was creepy, but this is really weird.”

  Lawrence looked through the contents of the freezer. “No body parts, unfortunately. Odd that the quick freeze section is empty, though.” He leant forward and sniffed. “Slight smell of bleach as well.”

  “You think Simmonds might have cut the body up and stored the parts in here?”

  “Can’t be ruled out.” He closed the lid and ran his gloved finger over the top of the freezer. “Hardly any dust on this, compared to the shelves. I reckon it’s been cleaned recently.”

  Lawrence knelt on the floor and turned his head sideways, so he could see the underside of the freezer handle. He had a sly smile on his face as he looked at Jane.

  “What people can’t see, they miss.”

  “Miss what?” Jane asked.

  “It looks like there’s some blood smeared on the underside of the handle.” He turned to the SOCO. “Can you get a blood test kit, please?”

  When the SOCO returned, Lawrence took a small paper swab and gently rubbed it against the inside of the handle. He handed it to the SOCO, who put some chemical drops on it and the paper instantly turned pink. Jane now knew the reaction meant it was blood, but further tests would have to be done at the lab to determine if it was human.

  “Let’s remove the handle, box it up and get a uniform car to take it straight to the lab for further testing and fingerprinting,” he concluded.

  The receptionist at the Harley Street clinic was in shock as Gibbs showed her the warrant and told her they’d come to arrest David Simmonds on suspicion of murder. Through floods of tears, she told them Simmonds was in his surgery room treating a patient. Gibbs had already told his team there could be a lot of wealthy and influential people in the building, so he wanted everything done by the book.

  Gibbs knocked once on the surgery door before entering. Simmonds was standing over a patient lying back in the reclined dental chair. A young female dental assistant stood to one side.

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Simmonds demanded.

  “I am Detective Inspector Gibbs. This is Detective Constable Edwards,” Gibbs answered, holding up his warrant card.

  “You’re a detective?” Simmonds asked, recognizing Edwards.

  “Ten out of ten,” Edwards replied, as he pulled a set of handcuffs out of his pocket. “David Simmonds, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Helen Matthews, Sybil Hastings, Eileen Summers and Aiden Lang. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but what you say may be put into writing and given in evidence.”

  The dental assistant dropped a tray of instruments she was about to put into the autoclave. Gibbs asked her to wait downstairs and she hurried out of the room.

  “What about my patient? I haven’t finished his treatment.” Simmonds indicated the man in the dental chair, who sat up and removed his dental bib.

  “I’m sorry, but one of the other dentists will have to deal with you, sir,” Gibbs said.

  The ruddy-faced, white-haired patient seemed more angry than shocked. “Just as well I was having a check-up and clean rather than root canal work. My name is Arnold Davidge, and I happen to be a barrister as well as a close friend of Mr. Simmonds.” He gave Edwards a withering look. “Is there really any need for handcuffs? I hardly think David is a risk to you.”

  Edwards caught Davidge’s haughty tone. “I don’t think the families of the women he murdered would share your view,” he retorted.

  Gibbs was quick to stop things getting overheated. “We’re just doing our job, sir.” He looked at Simmonds. “We have a warrant to search the premises.” He held up the warrant and Davidge asked to see it.

  “It’s all right, Arnold. I’ve done nothing wrong.” Simmonds seemed completely relaxed, lifting his cuffed hands and pointing to Edw
ards. “That officer came to my Peckham clinic posing as a homeless man needing treatment for a toothache. I also caught a female detective called Tennison searching the surgery without a warrant.”

  “This is outrageous and unacceptable behavior, officers,” Davidge said.

  “Get Simmonds out of here now,” Gibbs hissed to Edwards.

  Davidge got a business card out of his pocket and handed it to Gibbs. “I’ll be representing David. What police station is he being taken to?”

  “Peckham,” Gibbs informed him.

  “I’ll be there to advise you during the interview, David. For now, don’t say anything. Not a word, you hear me?”

  Simmonds nodded as Edwards led him out of the room. Passing his colleagues and other patients who had gathered in the reception area, Simmonds kept his head bowed. The expression on his face was unreadable.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jane and Gibbs were in Moran’s office, discussing the events surrounding Simmonds’ arrest.

  “So if Davidge says anything about you being unlawfully at the Peckham surgery, just stick to the looking for the toilet story,” Gibbs told Jane. “We got Simmonds’ Mercedes taken to the lab for examination. Edwards took Simmonds’ dabs when we got back to the station and is taking them up the yard. They can be checked against any unidentified prints from the hostel, in Hastings’ car, and on the bin bags the body parts were found in.”

  Jane told them about the fridge freezer and possible blood and fingerprints on the handle.

  Moran was skeptical. “I suspect Simmonds is too smart to have left his fingerprints anywhere, but it’s worth a try. Did you find anything else of interest at Brayards Road?”

  Jane went over everything she and Lawrence had found at the Peckham surgery and mentioned the importance of the bin liners.

  “We also searched the garden shed. There were no screwdrivers or hacksaws, just gardening equipment. Behind the shed, in a recessed area, we found the remnants of a recent garden fire, which Lawrence examined. He scooped the ashes up and placed them in a bag for a thorough examination back at the lab.”