Written In Blood

by Alex R Carver

  Zack wanted to protest, to tell Sophie that there was no need for her to effectively put her life on hold simply to help him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. He didn’t want his friend to put herself to so much trouble, but he couldn’t deny that it would be a help; having someone who could vouch for his movements would make it a lot more difficult for him to be hit with fresh allegations.

  “It’s your decision,” he said, realising that it would be a waste of time to try and talk Sophie out of what she was intending. “But you probably won’t be very comfortable, my place wasn’t very tidy the last time I saw it.”

  “Tidying it up will give us something to do while you keep out of trouble,” Sophie remarked, making it clear that she was not going to be put off.

  *****

  “Good afternoon, Mr Wild, I’m Detective Inspector Harrison,” he said as he approached the bed. “I’ve been put in charge of the investigation into the murders you’ve been accused of in Oakhurst. Sorry to disturb your lunch but I’m here to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Given that you’ve probably saved me from a bout of food poisoning, I don’t mind at all.” Zack swung the table that held his tray of ‘food’ away from the bed so he wouldn’t have to look at it. “I take it Sergeant Mitchell is no longer involved with the investigation.” Involuntarily, his hand went to his throat, which was still sore from the previous evening.

  “That’s right. After last night’s incident, it was decided that the investigation would be better off in the hands of someone not so closely connected to it,” Harrison said.

  Zack was sure the attack on him was not the only reason Mitchell had been taken off the case; he imagined the fact that there were now four victims, three of whom were dead, had something to do with it. Picking up his glass of water from the bedside cabinet, he sipped at it while he waited for the inspector to get on with his questions, which he was sure he could guess at.

  “I understand you were a DI yourself until recently,” Harrison noted the nod that confirmed that comment but didn’t respond to it, “so I’m sure you can appreciate that I’m probably going to have to ask you some of the same questions that Sergeant Mitchell did, just to be certain I’ve covered everything. I’ll try not to repeat things anymore than necessary.”

  “Do you want me to go, or would you rather I stay?” Sophie asked from her chair at the side of the bed.

  “You go on,” Zack told her, sure that she would only slow things down if she stayed. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll be back later.” Sophie stopped when she reached the door. “I forgot to say, the garage called earlier, they said your car’s ready to be collected. I told them I’d pick it up later.”

  “Thanks.”

  Harrison waited until there was just him, Melissa and Zack Wild in the room to speak again. “If you don’t mind, just for my own peace of mind, I’d like to start at the beginning and run through the events of the past couple of weeks to clarify your role in events, and to see if you might have remembered something that slipped your mind previously.”

  “Sure, no problem,” Zack said, aware that the real reason for going over everything was to see if he would change anything he had said before, or reveal something he hadn’t mentioned previously, something which might help to firm up the case against him. “First, though, can I ask, do you know how Emily is doing? Has she woken up yet?”

  Melissa was about to answer Wild when she stopped herself. She had no idea what the DI she was now working with wanted Wild to know and what he didn’t. She kept quiet and left it to Harrison to reply in whatever way he wanted; when he did, she was surprised by what he said.

  “Yes, she has.” Harrison watched Wild closely as he said that, searching his face for anything that might indicate concern. “According to the doctor, she woke briefly this morning, which is good, but until she remains awake for more than a minute, they can’t judge the extent of the damage to her brain, or the likelihood of her making a full recovery. Personally, I’m inclined to think that her waking so soon after the attack, even if for only a short time, bodes well for her being able to tell us who attacked her.”

  “That’s good news, I’m relieved to hear that her condition is looking up,” Zack said with genuine feeling.

  Harrison saw that Wild appeared untroubled by the news that Emily Wright had woken, but he had encountered many good actors and actresses during his time as a detective, and knew that appearances could be deceptive. For now, he accepted Wild’s apparent relief and got on with the questions he was there to ask.

  “Georgina Ryder went missing on the evening of the third, after leaving her cousin’s house in the village of Oakhurst, where you live, so she could head to the Wright Farm to meet her boyfriend, Kieran Wright. Her route to the farm would have taken her right past your house on Oak Road; did you see her that evening?”

  It took over an hour of questioning for Zack to answer all of the inquisitive inspector’s questions, by which time he was tired and hungry and ready for something that didn’t look as though it would be rejected by a starving refugee.

  *****

  Leaving Zack Wild’s hospital room at Harrison’s side, Melissa made her way down the corridor towards the lift. As they walked, she wondered what Harrison had made of the answers they had been given, which were all but identical to those Wild had given previously. She wondered more about something else, however, and once they were far enough from the room to be sure they couldn’t be heard, she asked about it.

  “Why did you tell Mr Wild that Emily woke up this morning, sir? She didn’t, and the doctor thinks it will be at least a couple of days before she will, if she ever does.”

  “I know,” Harrison said. “But I’ve had an idea for how we can catch the killer. If it isn’t either Zack Wild or Kieran Wright, we’re going to need something more than the DNA samples the pathologist has for us - they’re only any good for confirming that we’ve got the right guy once we have a suspect. My idea, if the superintendent is willing to go along with it and give me the officers I’m going to need, will help us catch the killer in the first place.”

  Melissa was no more enlightened than she had been before, but instead of saying so, she chose to wait and see if her new superior would explain further, which he did, though it took him a while.

  “How long do you think it would take you to spread the story I gave Mr Wild?” Harrison asked. Reaching the lift, he pressed the button and then waited with his eyes on Melissa for an answer.

  “I don’t know, a couple of hours maybe,” Melissa said. She didn’t like admitting that her village was a place prone to gossip – it was bad enough that Harrison assumed it was – but she couldn’t see the point in denying the truth, especially when she was beginning to understand how he was thinking, at least she thought she was. “Are you thinking that if the killer believes Emily is going to wake up, he’ll worry she might be able to identify him and try to finish her off?”

  Harrison nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking. Whoever the killer is, he won’t want Emily to identify him, especially when up to now Zack Wild has been the only suspect under investigation; he’ll want us to remain focused on Wild. If by some chance the killer is Mr Wild, which I don’t consider likely right now – even ignoring how hard it would be for him to have attacked Emily while establishing his alibi, there is the fact that as a former detective inspector, as well as a writer of crime novels, he should be well enough versed in forensic procedures not to have left the amount of evidence the pathologist found during the post-mortems – he won’t want to be identified by one of his victims.” The lift arrived then and he stepped on board. “My plan is to have you spread the rumour of Miss Wright’s waking as far and as wide as you can, just in case the killer is neither Kieran Wright nor Zack Wild, and then for us to be waiting here tonight with a team to arrest the killer when he tries to silence her.

  “Before you begin your part of this, however, I n
eed to speak to the superintendent, he’s not always in favour of this kind of operation, and I don’t want to put Miss Wright in danger unnecessarily.”

  45

  After a brief stop to look at the ruined farmhouse where Emily and Daisy had been found, which was still being examined by the forensics team from Branton, Harrison and Melissa continued up the road to the Wright Farm.

  “Do you think anyone’s home?” Harrison asked as he got out and headed across the yard to the front door of the farmhouse.

  “It doesn’t look like it,” Melissa said. “Neither Kieran’s Land Rover nor his dad’s are here; I guess they’ve got to keep the farm going, despite what’s happened. Tara could be here, though. If I was her, I wouldn’t want to go to school after everything; mind you, I wouldn’t really want to stick around here on my own either.”

  Harrison considered that as he reached out to knock on the door. He had come to the farmhouse in the hope of finding Kieran Wright, and he didn’t fancy having to search the entire farm for him. When there was no response after almost a minute, he knocked again, louder.

  “Someone’s home,” Melissa said after the second knock. “I saw the curtain twitch.” She pressed her face against the window to try to see into the room. She was pretty sure she knew who was in the house, but it wasn’t easy to see anything. “Tara, it’s Melissa, Constable Turner, can you come to the door,” she called out; there was a sudden movement near the doorway of the living room, and a few seconds later the front door opened, stopping when it reached the extent of the chain.

  “Who’s with you?” Tara asked suspiciously through the narrow gap. Her eyes, which were about the only part of her that was visible, darted from the constable, whom she knew, to the stranger.

  Melissa was not surprised by the way the young girl was acting, she was sure she would have acted the same way if she was in Tara’s position. “This is Detective Inspector Harrison, he’s here to investigate the – what’s been happening here recently,” she said, quickly changing what she had been about to say to try and avoid upsetting the girl.

  “Hello,” Harrison said in the friendliest tone he possessed. “I know you don’t know me, but you know Constable Turner, don’t you.” When the eyes bobbed up and down in a way that suggested the girl had nodded he continued, “Well, Constable Turner will tell you there’s nothing to worry about, we just need to speak to your brother; do you know where he is?”

  Tara nodded quickly and then made to shut the door.

  Harrison’s hand reached out to stop the door being shut. “Where is he?” he asked.

  “I-I think I should call my daddy,” Tara said.

  “You should,” Melissa told her. “And you should lock the door once we’re gone. First, though, where’s you brother, is he on the farm?”

  “He’s in the East Field.” With that Tara slammed the door and locked it securely, before hurrying back into the living room so she could snatch up her mobile phone. She hadn’t wanted to tell the police where her brother was, it felt like a betrayal, but she knew and trusted Constable Turner and, most of all, she wanted to get the two police officers away, she didn’t feel safe with them there.

  Harrison started to ask, “Where’s the East Field?” when the slamming of the door cut him off, leaving him to look at it in surprise.

  “It’s alright, sir,” Melissa said quickly. “I’m pretty sure I know where it is.”

  With her phone pressed to her ear, Tara watched from the window as Melissa and the inspector returned to their car and left the yard. She felt a little better when she saw them head down the road, but that was offset by the panic inspired when the phone she was calling rang and rang and rang before finally tripping over to the answer phone after almost a minute. She immediately jabbed at the screen to disconnect the call and try again.

  Three times, Tara called her dad’s number, trying to get hold of him, without success. “Where are you?” she sobbed into the phone when the call tripped over to the answer machine for the third time. “I need you, daddy, where are you? The police were here, they wanted to know where Kieran is, I think something’s up.”

  *****

  Glen Wright struck the nail one last time. Finished with his repairs, he gathered up his things, ran an eye over the cows in the field to be sure everything was alright, and headed for his Land Rover.

  The first thing he did when he climbed behind the wheel was check his mobile phone. His heart leapt into his mouth and he went cold when he saw he had a missed call, which reminded him of Tara’s failed efforts to get hold of him on Sunday - he should have been carrying the phone with him, he thought, but quickly reminded himself that it wouldn’t have made any difference, he never heard it ring when he did have it about his person.

  He felt even worse, if that were possible, when he unlocked the phone and saw that it was actually three missed calls and a voice-mail from Tara.

  His heart lurched in his chest briefly, but he ignored it as he concentrated on accessing his voice-mail so he could listen to the message from his younger daughter – it was short, only a few seconds long, but it was enough to make him grope for his keys, which were still in the ignition, and scare his cows as he turned the Land Rover around and raced for the gate.

  He brought his Land Rover to a skidding stop once he reached home, threw open the door next to him and sprinted to the back door, which opened at his touch. He felt a moment’s annoyance at that, he had told Tara to make sure she kept all the doors shut and locked while she was on her own, but it quickly changed to fear as it occurred to him that the door might be unlocked because something had happened.

  “Tara, Tara! Where are you, honey?” he called out as he crossed the kitchen and started down the passage.

  “Daddy!” There was no mistaking the relief in the young girl’s voice as Tara appeared from the living room and practically threw herself down the passage and into her father’s arms. “Where were you?” she asked accusingly. “I called and called and called but you didn’t answer. I thought something had happened to you.” Had there been anyone there to witness it, they would have been amazed at the way Tara went from relieved to accusing to scared in the space of just a few seconds.

  “Sorry, honey.” Glen hugged his daughter reassuringly before continuing to the living room, which wasn’t easy because Tara didn’t want to let go of him, she clung to him as if she thought he was going to disappear the moment she released him. “But you know how I am, I’m useless with that phone. I was fixing a fence in one of the North fields when you called, so I didn’t know about it ‘til I was done, but I hurried back as soon as I heard your message.

  “You said the police were here looking for Kieran, did Lewis say why, or why he didn’t call me?”

  Tara shook her head. “It wasn’t Sergeant Mitchell, it was Constable Turner, there was a detective with her; they didn’t say why they wanted Kieran, they just said they were looking for him. I told them he’s in the East field, then I tried to call you. I was scared when you didn’t answer, daddy.”

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Glen apologised again. “Do you feel better now?”

  “A little,” Tara said with a hesitant nod of her head.

  “Good. Why don’t you go and put the kettle on, make us some tea, while I call Lewis and see if I can find out what’s going on.”

  46

  “Where’s my son?” Glen demanded the moment he reached the reception counter of Oakhurst’s police station. “I know you’ve got Kieran here, I wanna know why, and what some strange detective’s doing scaring my daughter. Tara’s had enough to deal with the last couple of days, we all have, without having some stranger come banging on the door trying to find her brother.”

  Harrison was in the interview room, with the door closed, but he, Kieran Wright, and Melissa all heard Glen Wright’s raised voice as he demanded answers of Constable Black, who was unlucky enough to be at the counter.

  “You stay here and keep an eye on Mr Wright, Constable,”
Harrison told Melissa as he left the room. He reached the counter in just a few long-legged strides and came to a stop alongside Constable Black. “Mr Wright?” he inquired politely; the answer was obvious, but he asked anyway.

  “Who the hell are you?” Glen asked. He ran his eyes suspiciously over the stranger.

  “Detective Inspector Harrison.” He showed his warrant card. “I’ve been asked to look into the murders that have taken place here in Oakhurst, and the two attempts on the life of the man your Sergeant Mitchell has identified as a suspect.”

  “Who’s asked you to do that? We don’t need you, we know who the killer is, Lewis already figured it out, it’s that Wild bloke,” Glen said, not happy to hear that an outsider had been brought in to handle things he thought had been all but resolved. “Lewis told me he’s just waiting for some test results to come back to confirm that Wild’s the killer, once he gets them, Wild’ll be going straight from hospital to jail.”

  “I’m aware of what your sergeant believes, but fresh information suggests that Mr Wild may not be the killer,” Harrison told him. “My superiors are keen for this case to be resolved – three murders, a fourth girl, your daughter, attacked, and two attempts on the life of the only person identified as a possible suspect – and they feel an independent investigator, me, would be better suited to do that. With a bit of luck I’ll catch the killer in a couple of days and be out of your village’s hair, leaving everyone here free to go on with their lives.”

  “So why’ve you arrested my son?” Anger reddened Glen’s face as he leaned across the counter. “Don’t tell me you think he’s the murderer.”