Lockhart signed in with the Crime Scene Manager at the outer tape and suited up from one of the kit boxes. His colleagues from Major Investigation Team 8 were already here. And he knew where to find them. Approaching the tent, he spotted Sergeant Harry Wiseman, a handler from the local Dog Support Unit at Nine Elms. A German shepherd sat patiently beside the man.
‘All right, Hazza,’ nodded Lockhart, picking his way across the stepping plates.
‘Sir.’
‘Found anything yet?’
‘Just a second body.’
Lockhart stopped. ‘Eh?’
Wiseman shook his head ruefully. ‘Looks like whoever done this murdered the bloke’s dog ’n’ all. Evil bastard.’
‘Shit. You got a trail away from the scene?’
‘Nope, not yet. Rain isn’t helping.’ Wiseman paused. ‘Who’d kill a dog?’
‘Good question.’ Lockhart wondered whether Dr Green would have an answer to that.
He passed a SOCO who was taking a cast of a footprint in the mud, opened the tent flaps and stepped inside.
The first thing he saw was a middle-aged man’s body supine on the bare ground, his limbs crooked and head turned to one side. His face was a mess. Battered, bloodied and smeared with dirt. A few damp leaves clung to his thick, grey beard. One eye was closed, enveloped by a swollen lump of livid, purple skin. Lockhart had a vague sense that, despite the disfigurement, he recognised the man, but couldn’t place him. To the left of the victim stood DS Smith, to the right Detective Constable Mohammed Khan.
‘Morning, guv,’ said Smith.
‘Max.’ He turned to Khan. ‘Mo.’
‘How’s it going, boss?’ The young DC spoke, as usual, through a wad of chewing gum. Khan’s protective suit was a size too small and strained against his chest and shoulders. Lockhart knew that Khan’s parents, with whom he still lived, wished their son spent less time in the gym and more in the mosque. But that was never going to happen.
‘Could be worse.’ Lockhart returned his gaze to the body. ‘Any idea who our man is?’
‘None so far,’ replied Smith. ‘Jogger found him couple of hours ago. Berry’s checking mispers reports for possible matches.’
Lockhart was pleased that Lucy Berry, MIT 8’s civilian analyst, was already working on this. Berry was a mum to two young children, but between the hours of nine and five not even they could distract her from investigative data.
‘Doesn’t look like that happened to his face by accident,’ he said.
‘Yeah. Seems as though he’s been whacked on the head, too. There’s blood matted into his hair.’
Smith indicated the area with her left pinkie. Lockhart saw the index and middle fingers of the nitrile glove hanging limp where Smith was missing two digits. The cleft hand, which she’d had from birth, might’ve stopped others joining the police altogether. But, for Smith, the disability only seemed to fuel the grit that’d characterised her twenty-plus years in the Met. She was someone Lockhart knew he could rely on.
‘What do you reckon to cause of death?’ he asked.
Smith stood to take in the victim’s whole body. ‘We don’t know what’s under his clothing, but there’s no obvious stab or gunshot wound. So, I’d say, most likely head trauma. Looks as though he’s had a proper beating.’
Without warning, an image came into Lockhart’s mind. A bleached mud-brick building, baking in the Afghan sun. A Taliban fighter inside who’d just shot dead one of Lockhart’s men, a young private named Billy Ross. A gap in the window, wide enough for a stun grenade, and—
‘Boss? You OK?’ Khan’s voice snapped him out of the flashback. Lockhart realised his pulse was racing and his hands felt clammy inside the gloves. It had been four months since he’d stopped his treatment at the trauma clinic with Dr Green. Evidently, he still needed her help.
‘Yeah. I’m fine.’ Lockhart composed himself again.
‘And probably robbed, too,’ added Khan, displaying a tan line beneath the man’s left wrist. ‘No watch.’
‘No wallet either, guv.’ Smith stooped and lifted the base of the jacket. The trouser pocket lining was half pulled out. ‘Hence no ID.’
‘Robbery gone wrong,’ stated Khan.
‘Maybe.’ Lockhart squatted down to inspect the man. Beneath the mud and dried blood, his beard was well-groomed, his clothes expensive looking. The Arc’teryx jacket – Lockhart recognised the logo – would have been six hundred quid alone. A rope leash with metal clip poked out from beneath the body. ‘Hazza said there was a dead dog, too?’
‘That’s right.’ Khan jerked a thumb behind him. ‘Lids found it just over there.’ The uniformed officers – or ‘lids’ – would’ve been first on the scene after the jogger had reported the discovery, well before any detectives – the ‘suits’ – arrived.
‘Collar?’
‘Don’t know.’ Khan looked sheepish.
‘What do you mean, you don’t know? You didn’t check?’
‘I thought it was just—’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ growled Lockhart. ‘This is basic stuff, Mo.’
‘Sorry, boss.’
‘Find the dog and see if there’s anything on its collar. Name, address, phone number. If there’s a number, ring it. Now!’
Khan stood and left quickly. Lockhart heard him outside, calling to the SOCOs.
‘He’s still learning, guv,’ said Smith.
‘We could’ve already had an ID.’
‘I didn’t think of it, either,’ she admitted. ‘We’ve only been here half an hour.’
Lockhart sighed. ‘Fair enough.’ He returned to examining the body. ‘Have you rolled him?’
‘Not yet. We left him as we found him. Don’t think he was killed right here, though. Looks from those marks in the mud like he was dragged off the path.’
Getting closer to the ground, Lockhart reached out and gently lifted the man’s chin. That was when he saw it.
‘Max, look at this.’
She stepped around and bent low. ‘What is that?’
It was a crudely drawn symbol. A triangle, each side a black line about two inches long.
Then a ringtone chirped somewhere on the corpse and they both recoiled slightly. Lockhart exchanged a glance with Smith and lowered the man’s head carefully back down. Following the sound, he unzipped the jacket, probed the pockets of the fleece beneath it and extracted a slim smartphone. Its battery had only a few per cent remaining. The ringing stopped as Khan burst back into the tent, clutching his own phone.
‘It just says “Pickle”, and there’s a mobile number,’ Khan exclaimed breathlessly. ‘Went to voicemail when I called, though.’
‘Whoever robbed him didn’t take his phone,’ observed Smith. ‘Either they didn’t find it…’
‘Or they knew it could be tracked.’ Lockhart pressed the home button and a lock screen appeared showing a couple. The older man with a grey beard was probably their victim. The woman was younger and more glamorous. ‘I’d say at least one person’s missing him.’
‘Hang on,’ blurted Khan. ‘Lemme see that, boss.’
Lockhart hesitated, then stood and held the handset out to him. Khan tapped the button and brought up the photo once more. ‘That’s that woman off the telly, innit?’ He clicked his fingers. ‘The one from Cobbled Streets. The fit one, you know? The MILF.’
‘Mo.’ Smith glared at him.
‘What?’
Lockhart was googling the cast list for Cobbled Streets on his phone. He didn’t watch a lot of telly, but the face of one of the actors, Jemima Stott-Peters, was a good match for the woman on the victim’s screen. His next search was on her name plus the word ‘partner’. Seconds later, he had an image that was, unmistakably, the man lying in front of him – and the name that accompanied it. ‘Charles Stott.’
Voices rose outside, and Lockhart became aware of one louder and deeper than the others.
‘He’s a film director,’ Smith announced, scrolling on the screen of her own
phone.
‘Find out where he lives,’ said Lockhart.
The tent flap flew open and the large frame of Detective Chief Inspector Marcus Porter entered. ‘Afternoon, all,’ he boomed.
Though in his mid-forties, Lockhart’s boss had retained the intimidating physique of his previous career as a semi-pro rugby player. At six-three, he was only a fraction taller than Lockhart, but carried considerably more weight, and not just physically. Porter was one of the Met’s rising stars. The only thing that could stop him taking one of the force’s top jobs was if he decided to quit the police for politics. Office gossip said he was interested. One detective in their team was offering odds on Porter being the first Mayor of London with Afro-Caribbean heritage. Another reckoned he’d stand for parliament in Croydon, where he’d grown up. Lockhart wouldn’t bet against either possibility. He felt that Porter was more politician than policeman, anyway. It was the opposite of his own approach to work and that difference had already led to several run-ins between them in the seven months since Lockhart had joined MIT 8.
‘Sir,’ they said as one.
‘Murder?’ queried Porter.
‘Appears so,’ Lockhart replied. ‘Massive head wounds, evidence of blunt force trauma, and, just on his neck, there’s—’
‘OK.’ Porter surveyed the corpse, his eyes darting from one detail to the next. ‘Does the deceased have a name?’
‘Charles Stott.’
‘The Charles Stott?’ Porter raised his eyebrows and bent to examine the dead man’s face. ‘The director?’
Smith angled her phone towards the DCI. ‘Wikipedia says he’s a resident of Wimbledon.’
‘This is going to be very high profile,’ said Porter, still staring at the body.
‘Looks like a robbery turned violent,’ chipped in Khan. ‘He’s out walking the dog, someone jumps him, he resists, there’s a fight, then boom, he’s dead, mugger runs off with his wallet and watch.’
‘Sounds plausible. Next of kin?’
‘I’ll track down his partner, sir,’ said Smith. ‘Jemima Stott-Peters.’
‘The actor?’ Porter pursed his lips as Smith nodded. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m going to call our press office now. We need to stay ahead of the media. Dan, I’m delegating the suspect strategy to you. Start with local ex-cons known for violent muggings.’ The boss was already reaching for his phone as he swept out of the tent. He was gone before Lockhart could reply or show him the ‘triangle’.
Porter had clearly accepted the robbery theory, for now. But something about that nagged at Lockhart. He knew most robberies took place in areas of high footfall. Phone thieves on bikes used snatch-and-run tactics. Pickpockets liked train stations and tourist hotspots. And the lone, knife-wielding attackers looking for drug money favoured pedestrian underpasses and cut-throughs. The dense woods of Wimbledon Common didn’t fit any robbery profile that Lockhart knew. Which left another possibility: Charles Stott had been targeted by his killer. And, if that was true, it meant they were probably looking for someone who knew him.
Someone who had a reason to mark him with a symbol.
After work, Lexi had gone to the CrossFit gym in Tooting to sweat out the stress of a day’s therapy. Working out was the perfect antidote to sitting on her butt in a consulting room for eight or nine hours straight. Maybe it was the session with Soames, maybe the memories stirred by the missed call from Dan. Either way, she had needed distraction and the gym had delivered it. So much, in fact, that she hadn’t even checked her phone until she got back home. That was when she saw Dan’s text, sent a few hours ago. She tapped to open it right away, at once scolding herself for her excitement to see what he’d written. Like all his communication, it was short and direct:
Got a new murder. Bit weird. Need your help. Can we meet tomorrow?
Lexi thought back to the moment she’d agreed to assist him last year and everything that had followed. She considering ignoring the request. Maybe responding to say she was too busy, or that she didn’t do forensic work anymore. She stared at the screen for about a minute, weighing her decision. She needed to look after herself. But she sure as hell owed it to others to help, too, if she could. And she’d by lying if she pretended that she didn’t want to see Dan. She hit reply and typed:
I’m free after work. Drink?
Five
It was late by the time Smith arrived outside the victim’s house. Though the residence was only half a mile from where the body had been found, she’d gone back to the MIT office in Putney to shower and change before meeting Charles Stott’s widow. It may have just been in Smith’s mind, but she didn’t want to walk into Jemima Stott-Peters’s home still smelling of her late husband’s corpse.
The detour had also mercifully relieved Smith of perhaps the hardest task for any copper: the ‘death knock’. Fortunately, their Family Liaison Officer – or FLO – had arrived an hour ago to break the news. Now, it was Smith’s job to ask some questions, as diplomatically as she could, to help their inquiry. She was primed; Lockhart had already told her that he didn’t think it was a simple robbery. The guvnor’s instincts were usually sound. On this occasion, however, she wanted him to be wrong.
Most murders were solved within the first forty-eight hours of a body’s discovery, and Smith hoped this one would be wrapped up that quickly. She’d been taken away from a case where she was helping Wandsworth CID: a serial sex offender operating in the local area, who was targeting lone women waiting at isolated bus stops.
Seven victims had all reported the same stocky man with dark eyes, slightly below average height, wearing a black jacket and balaclava, and usually chewing gum. His crimes were escalating rapidly. The first two times he was reported, he’d just been watching, staring from a distance. As his confidence grew, he approached the third and fourth women and demanded they expose themselves for him. Then, in incidents five and six, he’d sexually assaulted his victims by touching, before running away.
The most recent event was what had triggered the MIT’s involvement: a rape threat at knife point. Luckily, the woman had escaped without physical harm. Now, they were mapping the crimes for geographical patterns. Smith thought there was something solid about a map. It wasn’t the wishy-washy mind-reading of that psychologist Lockhart knew, Dr Lexi Green. OK, the shrink had contributed to the ‘Throat Ripper’ case last year but, ultimately, it’d been leg work by her, Khan and Lockhart that’d got the result. All the graft had paid off. It was even worth the occasional nightmare she still had about the killer.
Smith felt that she and her CID colleagues were making progress on the bus stop attacks – collectively known as Operation Braddock – and part of her resented being taken away from it by DCI Porter to work on this millionaire’s death. They all count the same, she reminded herself, getting out of the car and approaching the enormous front door with its grand portico. The bell produced a deep, resonant sound suggesting a cavernous hallway and, momentarily, Smith had a flicker of the inferiority that wealth often caused her to feel.
The door was opened by a small, slight woman with elfin features who Smith guessed was about her own age: mid-forties, give or take. She wore heavy make-up but, as Smith looked closer, she could see the lines around her mouth and eyes. The woman had clearly been crying. She swayed very slightly on the threshold and Smith’s attention was drawn to the glass of white wine in her hand. Were those bubbles rising in it?
‘Jemima Stott-Peters?’ she asked softly, holding up her warrant card before introducing herself.
‘Yah, come in.’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her sleeve, then turned and sashayed back down the hallway, leaving Smith to follow her. ‘We’re through here.’
The interior was luxuriously furnished with a combination of antique and modern pieces, polished woods and silver alongside modern artworks in bright primary colours. There were stuffed animals, richly upholstered chairs and even a neon sign proclaiming ‘Vacancy’. Smith wondered if her host had considered switching t
hat off, now, or indeed if it had just been switched on…
In the living room, she greeted PC Rhona MacLeod, their team’s FLO. Although still in her twenties, MacLeod had a maturity and sensitivity beyond her years and would’ve delivered the terrible news with empathy.
‘Do sit down,’ said Stott-Peters. ‘Drink?’
Smith half-raised a palm as she took an armchair. ‘Oh, no thanks, I’m fine. Do you mind if I call you Jemima?’
‘Mimi’s fine.’ The actor knocked back the rest of her drink as she crossed to a side table. Smith saw her refill the glass from a champagne bottle before returning and flopping down into a low sofa, her expression blank.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Mimi.’
‘He, just… Yesterday, Charles was here. Right here.’ She touched the empty cushion next to her. ‘And now…’ She tailed off and took another large mouthful of alcohol, rinsing it round before swallowing.
‘It must’ve been such a shock.’
Stott-Peters nodded quickly, and Smith could see she was welling up. She didn’t want to push the newly bereaved woman but, with a suspected murder, there were questions that had to be asked as soon as possible.
‘Will I have to identify him? I mean, officially or whatever.’
‘That’ll be up to you,’ Smith replied.
‘When they do Charles’s post-mortem tomorrow, the pathologist will check his dental records just to be a hundred per cent sure. You can be there, of course,’ added MacLeod soothingly. ‘But if you don’t want to attend, that’s fine.’
‘I’m not going.’ Stott-Peters rubbed her eyes. ‘I don’t think I could cope, seeing him like that for real. Perhaps Charles’s sister could do it…’
Who's Next?: A completely gripping and unputdownable crime thriller (Detective Lockhart and Green Book 2) Page 2
