The Body Under the Bridge

by The Body Under the Bridge (epub)

  The young man blinked. For a moment she felt that he could read her mind, and felt her cheeks flush.

  ‘Okay. You’ll have to sign them out,’ he said. ‘You could have warned us.’

  ‘It’s okay, I’ll only be five minutes.’

  With the keys in hand, Mel let herself in. The secretary’s in-tray showed an up-to-the-minute listing of which AWL properties were taken. Perfect. She had already driven past three of them before coming here. In each case the lights were off, so she assumed he wasn’t there. That left only five to do. She’d do the furthest property first. It was a secluded rural barn, just the place he’d take Vanessa to avoid being disturbed. Mel laughed. I’m going to disturb you alright.

  She dropped the keys back with the salesman, and drove off at a ferocious speed.

  * * *

  Programming the satnav, Mel drove over the M4 and into Wiltshire. It was forty minutes later when the female voice told her to take a rural side road, which eventually became a track between two arable farms. In the distance she saw the building she was aiming for. The sales sheet said it was a charming nineteenth-century barn, with satellite Internet, wifi and all mod cons. But she had been there once before, briefly, and could testify that it was dirty and ill-kempt, with pigeon shit everywhere. They had been on their way out for a night at a country hotel while John was away on the nightshift at Mount Browne. Kyle had shown her the internal office, like a portable ticket booth, that he had created within the barn from flat-packs. He had also pointed out the barn had an illegal blue asbestos-lined roof. Completely impossible to lease, and it would cost tens of thousands to renovate. Kyle had been scathing, saying it was the most obscure and useless bit of Angie’s entire industrial property portfolio. She had come out of her divorce with the worst end of the deal. She had supposedly been awarded half the value, but her ex-husband must have bribed the surveyors to overvalue all these semi-derelict buildings, and not to notice the asbestos on this one. They had both laughed about Angie being duped. Already by then Mel had become enmeshed in scorning a woman she didn’t even know, simply because she was a rival.

  ‘I used not to be like that,’ she shouted, over Bach’s ‘Air on the G string’. ‘I used to be nice. He’s made me greedy, selfish and bitchy. I’m clingy and shallow. And jealous, even of my own daughter.’

  There was a red Fiat that she didn’t recognise outside the barn. She hoped that she had not made a mistake and that it really would be him that was there, not some other tenant who had been given informal access. There was no window for him to see her from, but she was aware that the rough track would create tyre noise. She knew too that she must not underestimate him. She had no idea whether there was CCTV fitted on the barn. It would be typical of him to have done that. He was meticulous. Always meticulous.

  She slid the car into a gap by a hedge, 300 yards away from the barn. She shrugged off the formal jacket and went to the boot. She slipped on John’s stab vest, then his thick outdoor coat and over trousers which she had grabbed from his home office on her way out. She could have taken his formal cap too, had she been so minded. Finally she took off her high heels, and slid on John’s wellingtons. There are some advantages to having a short, slightly built husband. For the first time in many days she felt a slight twinge of affection for the poor sod.

  Finally, she donned Vanessa’s leather backpack with its deadly blade within, then trudged towards her target.

  * * *

  Picking her way around puddles and noisy gravel, Mel approached the barn. At ten yards it was clear there was no CCTV camera, just a satellite dish. She could see the building’s hardwood doors were closed. She rested her ear against them but could hear no sounds within. She also knew that with the internal office, which did have windows, there was no way she could surprise him. Was it really just a question of waiting for him to come out? It was only noon, and he could be in there all day. She made her way carefully around the perimeter of the building, noting that there was a lean-to shed at the back, with a cracked window and a rotten door. It seemed to be full of discarded timber, old window frames and builders’ rubble.

  She reached the door handle and, as she pulled, it let out a grinding noise. There was a great clattering of wings as a flock of pigeons exploded from the top of the barn. She jumped inside the shed, close the door and waited. After a minute she heard the creak of the barn door opening and footsteps. She held her breath as the crunch of feet came closer and then went past. She saw the shadow of him pass across the window. She took a deep breath, slid the knife from its scabbard and burst out of the door.

  He was just turning away, his craggy profile catching the light. She knew what she must do. She had surprise on her side, but must use it quickly, and decisively. If she hesitated she was dead. But she was a woman and violence did not come easily. The prospect of taking a life terrified her, especially that of a man who for the last three years had been the secret joy of her world and her reason for living. And that was why she hesitated. She hesitated because she wanted answers.

  ‘Why wasn’t I enough? She’s my daughter, you bastard!’

  ‘Mel!—’ Surprise flew across his face on spotting the blade, and instinctively he crossed his arms to protect his chest. Her first downward slash bit deep red exclamation marks into the outer edges of both his hands, even as one snaked out for her throat, his favourite target. He caught her on the windpipe even as she ducked, but not before she thrust deep and low, her entire right shoulder behind it, pushing, pushing until her fist connected with his solar plexus, and the deep-buried blade jarred against bone. His screech of agony as he keeled over backwards was an octave higher than she had ever heard from him, and was accompanied by a spray of blood that spattered them both.

  But she wasn’t finished with Kyle.

  In fact she had hardly begun.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Vanessa Perry was fizzing with excitement. It was five p.m. and she was standing by the Thai Airways check-in desk at Manchester Airport. It had been an epic journey to get there, by taxi and several trains, and had made a hefty dent in her cash. She had picked up all the clothing he had ordered for her from John Lewis in Manchester, including the big white suitcase with her wedding dress in. She could hardly keep still, even though the flight didn’t leave until 20.50. She had dutifully messaged him at eleven, once she was on the train to Manchester. He had messaged her back quickly, but did not respond to her subsequent texts. She had been shocked when he had struck her earlier that day, but having thought it through it was simply a measure of the depth of his passion for her, and his disappointment that she could not quite match his standards of organisation and planning. She would just have to try harder. Even what he did to her in sex, when he liked to press her throat hard with both hands until she almost fainted, she realised was just another form of love. When she had first mentioned it to Becky, her friend had said that it was supposed to make the pleasure more intense, and porn stars did it all the time. It must be normal, so she would just have to get used to it, to surrender to his power.

  She cleared her mind of these minor worries. Just a few hours and she would be in his arms again. From her new Louis Vuitton handbag, she took out the small jewellery box, and slid off the tight-fitting lid. She stared at the beautiful ring within, the big sparkly diamond he had bought her, much larger than the measly thing her dad had given Mel. Surely it would do no harm to put the ring on now? Kyle wouldn’t mind. She slid out the ring and carefully placed it on her engagement finger.

  Feeling like a different woman, and full of the joy of love, she looked around the busy check-in desks for signs of her lover approaching. He’d told her he’d booked them both business class tickets, which had presumably cost loads. She could hardly wait to get her glass of champagne, the proper meal with cloth napkins and the real cutlery that someone who travels in style should feel entitled to. Her dreams really were coming true.

  She was still standing there at six o’clock. None o
f her texts had been answered, and the queue for economy had begun to form. She smiled away her anxiety, telling herself that there was still plenty of time. He was busy, obviously, a bit under stress. The papers were full of stories about dead bodies, and then this evening’s Manchester Evening News had mentioned his name in connection with the inquiry. She had no idea how anyone could deal with the kind of cloak and dagger life that he had to live. She passed the time by looking at her ring from various angles, watching it sparkle, and thinking about the life in Thailand that they would have together. But as the minutes passed, and Kyle didn’t show, she began to rehearse various disappointment scenarios: He’s annoyed with me over the late arrival with the car. He’s upset because I keep messaging him. He’s not managed to find the big red suitcase. He’s been arrested by the police or MI5. That would be awful, but for her it was not the worst fear. That was a much more personal one:

  He’s met somebody else and abandoned me.

  That was always the biggest worry, and never far from her thoughts.

  Just before seven o’clock, and now feeling decidedly anxious, she walked up to the business class check-in clerk. ‘My fiancé has our passports and booked the tickets, I just want to check my big suitcase in to save some time.’

  The woman smiled and said, ‘What name is it please?’

  ‘His name is Kyle Halliday.’

  She worked the terminal and looked puzzled. She asked Vanessa to spell the name, and after another minute said. ‘Hmm. No booking in that name. Can I have your name?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said hurriedly. ‘He’ll probably be here in a minute.’ She realised that the police might be looking for her too, and using her own name would be stupid. Kyle had arranged the passports, and of course they would have to be false names. Hers too. Silly not to realise that.

  For half an hour she wandered around the terminal, looking at the other check-in desks, peering into shops, but always with a view of the approach routes to the Thai Airways desk. The economy passengers queued up and were gradually dealt with, luggage checked in, boarding passes dispensed, all ready to pass through security. The check-in area gradually emptied out, just the odd passenger now hurrying in to business class. But no sign of Kyle. At eight o’clock, with still no sign of him, she began to cry. A few people came up to her and asked her if they could help, but each time she shook her head.

  Vanessa kept telling herself that she had to be brave. What he had asked her to do was very little compared to all of the work he had done. At five past eight, having tried to ring him and text him another dozen times, she went back to the business class check-in. The clerk double-checked for a Halliday booking, and then shook her head. ‘I’m really sorry. All of our business class passengers are already checked in,’ she said.

  Vanessa twisted her ring desperately. ‘He might have left a ticket for me,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m Vanessa Perry, Mrs Halliday-to-be.’

  An immediate look of pity crossed the kindly face of the check-in lady. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Let me check again, perhaps the tickets are for seats in economy.’ As she worked the keyboard, her expression subtly changed, a crease of concern in her brow. ‘Just one moment, please,’ she said, and picked up a phone, and stared over Vanessa’s shoulder. She spoke quietly to someone and then said, ‘Okay, that’s fine. No, she’s right in front of me.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, everything is just fine.’ The smile this time was more formal, colder. Vanessa looked over her shoulder, and saw two uniformed security men approaching her.

  ‘Vanessa Perry?’ asked one.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Everybody has been very worried about you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think you need to come with us.’

  * * *

  Detective Inspector John Perry got two calls in quick succession. The first was to tell him his wife had rung 999 to announce that she had killed the man who had abducted their daughter. The second was while Gillard was driving him to that crime scene in Wiltshire. It was Greater Manchester Police, with news that Vanessa had been found safe and well at Manchester Airport. For a good half hour after that, Perry had sat with his eyes closed, breathing deeply. Gillard left him to it.

  ‘What I don’t get,’ Perry eventually said to Gillard, ‘is how Halliday managed to get his own Mitsubishi Warrior stolen, yet still have it to run you down a few days later.’

  The DCI accelerated hard to pass a slow lorry. ‘My guess is that he arranged for your daughter to steal it, in disguise. Then in his witness statement, which of course nobody would challenge, and the CCTV kind of confirmed, he described seeing some bloke driving it off.’

  ‘But what on earth is the point of something so elaborate?’

  ‘All right, imagine he just picked up Beatrice Ulbricht at the bus stop on Sunday, attacked her in the Warrior, maybe made some kind of mess in the car, blood, semen whatever. All the forensic leads are going to point back to him, right? He’s sharp enough to know that even if he scrubs it well, there are going to be traces. So his best protection is to have a fallback position in case the car is identified, and that fallback position is that yes, the vehicle is his, but it was stolen from him before Beatrice was killed. So of course it’s got his DNA in it. It’s kind of brilliant really, making himself the victim. Because his is the only description we have, and it is one we are going to trust. After all, we’ve all seen him fall on his arse in the road.’

  ‘Well, it did look real.’

  ‘I’m sure it was. I can’t imagine he expected Vanessa to pull him off his feet like that, though I’m guessing that he exaggerated the extent and duration of his injuries.’

  ‘Vanessa passed her test first time four months ago, but she’d have needed coaching on a big truck like that.’ Perry thought for a moment. ‘Look, I used to be a physics teacher. There’s no point arranging to have his Warrior stolen on the Monday, say, if he killed Beatrice on Sunday. He can’t go back in time and fix it.’

  ‘Yes, but the marvellous service that Vanessa provided for him on the train was to make Beatrice appear to be still alive two days after she actually died. It’s a kind of timeshift.’

  Gillard looked at Perry, who was staring out of the window. It was clear he wasn’t thinking straight, but that was hardly surprising. His whole life had been turned upside down. Not many people could recover from that.

  The next day

  An early morning incident room meeting saw DCS Rajinder Otara reveal the results of the CSI investigation of Kyle Halliday’s lair under the railway arches. Gillard was aware of most of the main points: that Yvonne Fairfield’s body, already frozen for some years, had been the decoy inside the Mitsubishi Warrior, with Sam bound and gagged inside a locked metal box in the inspection chamber underneath. But some details had eluded him.

  ‘Here is the Japanese tuna freezer,’ Otara said, pointing to a photograph of a very large cabinet freezer. ‘It’s in this, we are convinced, that the bodies first of Jane Morris, then Yvonne Fairfield and later of Beatrice Ulbricht, were stored. By the time CSI got to look at it, it was clear this freezer had stopped working.’

  ‘Presumably that is why he got rid of the bodies into the river,’ Gillard said. ‘The freezer he had been relying on for decades finally packed up, soon after he dumped Beatrice into it.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Otara responded. ‘We think there was a power surge during the thunderstorm on Sunday. Halliday was able to monitor the electricity from an app, and must have realised immediately, and driven over to try to rectify the situation.’

  ‘But what about the other bits of chiller kit there?’ Gillard asked. ‘There was enough to freeze the car.’

  ‘My guess is that he saw a problem and an opportunity,’ Otara said. ‘Once he realised the extent of the flooding, he saw that it was a chance to dispose of a couple of the bodies in circumstances that might not draw attention to him. Stowing them inside the Allegro put someone else i
n the frame. If the bodies had been lost in the water for, say, another three or four days, they would have been much harder to identify, particularly Jane Morris.’

  Rainy Macintosh put up her hand. ‘We know from credit card activity that Halliday had ordered another big industrial freezer, but there was a week-long delay in delivery,’ she said. ‘He would have been left with three decomposing bodies in the meantime. He only got the big chillers delivered a couple of days after, and they would never have been a long-term solution.’

  ‘That’s all beginning to make sense,’ Gillard said. ‘But what strikes me now is that it was only because he was trying to get revenge on me that he kept Sam alive. Otherwise she’d have been killed and then frozen with the others.’

  A hush descended on the incident room, as all eyes turned to Gillard.

  Otara addressed him directly. ‘You can take great solace in having cracked the riddle so quickly. Even another minute in that inspection pit and she would have drowned.’

  * * *

  After the meeting finished Gillard and DI John Perry remained in the incident room while DCs Rainy Macintosh and Rob Townsend showed them Kyle Halliday’s silver briefcase, found yesterday at the barn. ‘What we’ve got here is his complete box of tricks,’ Rainy said. She opened the lid to reveal a foam insert, in which a small laptop and six mobile phones were embedded. There were spaces for half a dozen more. ‘Each mobile phone is used only for one woman. The social media, the photographs, text messages and so on only correspond to a particular relationship.’