by DS Butler
He reared away from me, gripping his leg.
“What are you doing? What on earth was that?” He stumbled backwards.
He fired questions at me. His anger, confusion and panic were all reflected in his face.
He carried on shouting his questions, but I didn’t answer.
Watching someone who is about to die is fascinating. You would think they would do something important or profound, but they don’t.
They don’t make the most of the minutes they have left. They do stupid things like ask the same question over and over again.
“He was a policeman! There will be more of them here any time now.” He grabbed an ornamental poker from beside the fireplace and waved it around. “You’re crazy. You stabbed me and you have killed a policeman.”
I took a step towards him, and he slashed the air with the poker. “Keep away from me.” His voice was high-pitched and shaky.
“Look at him,” Troy screamed. “Look at what you have done.”
I stared down at the detective’s prone body and swallowed hard. The grey hair on the back of his head was dark with blood. I turned away quickly. I didn’t want to see that.
Troy made a grab for the landline telephone, but I leaned down and unplugged the cable from the wall.
He stared at me in disbelief. His lower lip wobbled as if he couldn’t believe I had done something so cruel. I didn’t know why it was so much of a shock to him. After all, I’d just bashed someone over the head with a cricket bat and stabbed him with a needle. Fear made some people illogical.
For a few seconds he did nothing except stare at me, searching for answers.
The hand Troy was using to grip the poker was trembling. He used the back of his left hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
It wouldn’t be long now.
He stumbled back over to his computer workstation, grabbing his mobile phone off the desk. He slumped against the wall as his fingers desperately pressed the keys.
I should have stopped him, but I didn’t.
I glanced back at the detective’s body. The ambulance and police Troy was calling for would arrive too late for him, but I hoped they wouldn’t be too late for the detective.
I slid the folded obituary notice from the pocket of my coat and pinned it to the corkboard above the computer.
Troy was gripped with a spasm of pain and moaned as he bent double. I stayed to watch until he was curled up in a foetal position on the hardwood floor.
Then I stepped over the detective’s body as I left Troy’s apartment.
29
MACKINNON GOT BACK TO his house on Woodstock Road in Oxford just before eight pm. He still had mountains of work to do, but he had promised Katy that they would sit down over dinner and discuss her problems at school. And he took that promise seriously.
When he let himself in the front door, the smell of garlic hit him, and he could hear the clatter of pans and utensils coming from the kitchen.
He called out and Chloe poked her head around the kitchen door. She grinned and then walked towards him, pulling him into a hug as he was still shrugging off his coat.
“I’m glad you made it home,” Chloe said. “I thought you might have to call and cancel.”
Mackinnon kissed her on the forehead and hung his coat on the hook by the door. “It’s pretty frantic at the moment, but I didn’t want to let Katy down.”
Chloe smiled. “We’ve got a stir-fry for dinner. It’s almost ready.”
“Lovely.” Mackinnon followed Chloe into the kitchen, and a moment later, there was the sound of furious footsteps on the stairs as Katy raced down from her bedroom.
She grinned widely at Mackinnon, before remembering she didn’t want to show quite how glad she was to see him. Her grin turned to a frown.
“Can you set the table please, Katy?” Chloe asked as she picked up a spatula and began to add prawns to the stir-fry.
Katy opened the drawer and began to select the knives and forks.
“No Sarah tonight?” Mackinnon opened a cupboard and took out two wine glasses.
“No. She’s gone out again.”
Sarah had been attending Kingston University for the past few months, and although she was supposed to be home for the Christmas holidays, they hadn’t seen much of her yet.
“Is she still talking about going to New Zealand?” Mackinnon asked.
A few weeks ago Sarah had spoken to her father who lived in New Zealand, and he had promised to pay for her flight out to see him this Christmas. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to be following through on his promise, and neither Chloe nor Sarah could get in touch with him.
“Yes, she is still insisting she is going to spend Christmas there. I know she hasn’t heard from him.” Chloe lowered her voice so that Katy, who was setting the table in the dining room, wouldn’t hear her. “In all likelihood, he has changed his mind or he has spoken to his wife, and she doesn’t want Sarah there at Christmas.” Chloe shrugged. “I’ve tried talking to her, trying to prepare her for the fact that he probably won’t come through with the ticket, but I just end up sounding like the bad guy.”
Mackinnon poured two glasses of red wine.
“I guess we just have to wait and see. Maybe he will do the right thing this time.”
Chloe raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
Mackinnon walked into the dining room to ask Katy what she wanted to drink with dinner.
“Just water, thanks.” Then she added in a lowered voice, “You are going to stick up for me, right?”
“We’re both on your side,” Mackinnon said. “We only want what is best for you.”
Katy frowned and straightened a fork on the table. “Yeah, right.”
Before long, they were gathered around the table tucking in to the prawn stir-fry. Mackinnon hoped that by treating Katy like an adult she would open up and explain why she wanted to leave her school.
“I realise you haven’t been happy there,” Chloe said. “But you only have two more years there. Once you have done your GCSEs…”
Katy put down her fork. “I couldn’t stand being there for another two days. There’s no way I could do it for two years!”
“Why don’t you tell us what it is about the school that you don’t like?” Mackinnon prompted.
Katy looked down at her plate and fiddled with the edge of the tablecloth. “There’s a group of girls who gang up on me.”
“If you are being bullied we can speak to the teachers and put a stop to it.”
Katy gave her mother a scornful look. “The teachers are just as bad. They never listen to me, and if you go and talk to them, you will only make things worse.”
Mackinnon took another bite of his stir-fry and let Chloe ask the questions. He didn’t want Katy to feel like they were ganging up on her.
“What would you do if this were a job?” Chloe asked. “You can’t just run away from every problem. We need to try and find a solution.”
“If it was a job I could quit and get another one. I wouldn’t be forced to go to that awful place every day. I’ve told you why I wanted to leave. You promised you would listen to me.”
She pushed her chair back from the table and looked at Mackinnon accusingly. “You said you would listen.”
She got up from the table, and leaving her half eaten stir-fry on her plate, she fled the dining room.
Chloe called after her. “Come back here. You don’t just run off like that, you ask to leave the table…”
But Katy didn’t return.
Chloe sighed then put her head in her hands.
“I think…” Mackinnon started to say.
Chloe put her hand up. “All right. I know. You’re going to say you think we should take her out of the school and let her go to a different one.” She looked up at Mackinnon. “But, Jack, this is her future. The school is excellent. How am I going to find another school with the same reputation in the middle of the school year?
“I hate the thought of her being
bullied, Jack. I’d love to go in there and sort those girls out myself, but I can’t.”
Mackinnon wasn’t going to argue the point. He knew that the decision was Chloe’s, and it wasn’t an easy one.
30
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, KATY still didn’t want to go to school. Chloe had to read her the riot act just to get her out of bed, and a tearful Katy had refused to eat anything for breakfast. She sat at the kitchen counter looking at them both reproachfully.
Mackinnon managed to polish off a couple of slices of toast and a cup of coffee. He was just loading the dishwasher when his phone rang. The caller ID told him it was Charlotte.
“I’ll be in at about nine thirty,” Mackinnon said. “I’m travelling in from Oxford today.”
“Have you heard about last night? About what happened to Tyler?” Charlotte asked without preamble.
Mackinnon closed the dishwasher door with a click. “What happened?”
As he walked towards the door and reached for his coat he heard Charlotte take a shaky breath on the other end of the phone.
“What is it?”
“I’m at the scene now,” Charlotte said. “It’s awful, Jack. We’re not quite sure what happened, but we think Tyler must have gone out last night, calling at some of the addresses of the ex-students. He was attacked. He was hit over the head.”
“Christ. Is he all right now?”
“He’s still unconscious. He is in intensive care at the moment. It doesn’t look good.”
Mackinnon felt a cold shiver of dread run through his body and the beginnings of heartburn building in the centre of his chest. He wished he hadn’t eaten that toast.
He shrugged on his coat and stepped out of the house, closing the front door behind him.
“How the hell did it happen?”
“That’s not the worst of it,” Charlotte said. “He was found in a flat belonging to a man called Troy Scott, who was a student at St George’s Academy at the same time as Beverley Madison and Joe Griffin. Troy Scott was murdered using the same venom and Tyler was left for dead.
“They were found because Troy Scott was supposed to be designing a website for a client, and when Troy didn’t deliver by the deadline, the client tried to reach him at home. He didn’t get an answer, but looking through the letterbox he saw Tyler on the floor in the hallway.”
“Tyler wasn’t injected with the venom?”
“No, thank God.”
After a brief period of silence, Charlotte said, “It’s just awful. I don’t understand why he didn’t tell anyone where he was going. It’s totally against protocol.”
Mackinnon didn’t say so, but he knew it wasn’t the first time Tyler had gone against the rules.
“I know we’ve seen some horrific things,” Charlotte said. “But they used a cricket bat on him, Jack. He could have been lying there alone for hours.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Mackinnon said.
***
When Mackinnon arrived at the ground floor flat where Tyler had been attacked, he turned round in the hallway, slowly surveying the scene. Troy Scott’s body had already been removed. DI Tyler had been found unconscious close to the front door. Mackinnon looked down at the blood on the beige rug marked by a yellow evidence label.
Charlotte appeared at the end of the hallway and made her way towards Mackinnon, carefully sticking to the area marked out by the crime scene manager.
“Any news on Tyler?” Mackinnon asked.
“Cerebral swelling apparently. They’re not sure when he’ll wake up…” Charlotte rubbed the spot between her eyebrows. “The doctors are not even sure if he’ll wake up.”
“Christ.”
Charlotte took a deep breath, steadying herself. “Right, I better talk you through it. Tyler was found here.” She pointed to the bloodstained carpet. “Troy Scott was working on a project for a client, and when he didn’t deliver, the client came around to find out why. He’d employed Troy Scott to set up a website on short notice. He was really annoyed when he thought he’d been let down, so he came around to have it out with Troy and find out why he wasn’t answering his phone. He could see that the lights were on but nobody answered the door. He peered through the letterbox because he thought Troy was just trying to avoid him, but when he did, he saw Tyler’s body lying just here at the entrance to the hallway.”
Charlotte bit down on her lip as she looked down at the spot where Tyler had fallen, focusing on the area of dark red blood.
“The blood has soaked into the carpet as you can see,” Charlotte continued. “We know that the intruder hit Tyler with a cricket bat. There are blood smears on the flat surface of the bat. It’s being analysed, so hopefully we will get some prints off it.” Charlotte stepped forward, moving through the doorway into the living room. “This is where Troy Scott was found. His computer workstation is over there, and his body was found just in front of it. His mobile phone was right next to him, perhaps he was trying to dial for help, but there was no outgoing call registered.”
“The venom may have overpowered him before he could make the call.”
Charlotte nodded and her gaze swept to the other corner of the room. Mackinnon followed her line of sight.
There was a small glass tank containing stones and some foliage. In the corner of the tank, curled up, was a light yellow snake.
“So Troy Scott kept snakes. Interesting.”
“He only had one, and it’s a corn snake, nonvenomous. They are popular snakes to keep as pets apparently. Troy Scott kept the details of his purchase from a reptile specialist in Bristol and the vet he used. We’ve spoken to the vet who has known Troy Scott for a number of years. He told us Troy has kept snakes for over a decade, but never venomous species.”
“And no other snakes were found on the property?”
“No,” Charlotte said. “The place has been thoroughly searched and this is the only snake. There is no evidence that he ever kept venomous snakes here.”
“So we are working on the theory that Troy Scott didn’t attack Tyler himself? We are assuming a third person was here last night?”
“That’s the current theory,” Charlotte said. “It looks like Tyler was attacked from behind, but it’s not clear how the intruder managed to overpower Troy Scott as well and why he didn’t run for help.”
Mackinnon nodded. “What’s really interesting is that the killer used the cricket bat on Tyler.”
Charlotte frowned. “Why is that interesting?”
“Well, if they were just trying to kill as many people as possible then why not inject Tyler with the venom. Why hit him over the head? They used the venom on Troy Scott, Beverley Madison and Joe Griffin, all members of St. George’s Academy. The killer is selective. There’s got to be a reason he chose those victims.”
“Unfortunately for us we don’t know what the reason is.” Charlotte glanced at her watch. “Brookbank is holding a briefing at ten. We had better get back to the station. I’m in charge of coordinating the door-to-door enquiries, but I promised I’d get back for the briefing.”
“Do you think Tyler had stumbled onto something or is this just a coincidence? Was he in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
Charlotte shrugged as she followed Mackinnon outside. “It’s difficult to know for sure.”
The air was clear and cold, and their breath appeared in small white clouds in front of them as they walked along the street.
“Did he write anything down?” Mackinnon asked. “If he came here to interview Troy Scott, he would have made notes.”
Tyler was old school. He still used a notepad and pen and said he couldn’t get to grips working with a tablet.
“This is Tyler we’re talking about,” Charlotte said. “He’s not known for writing everything down. He always told me writing notes stopped him listening properly.”
Mackinnon smiled. That sounded like typical DI Tyler.
“He did write something though.”
“What?”
“He wrote the words ‘hiding something.’”
31
AFTER THE ATTACK ON Tyler, Charlotte had been given the job of coordinating the uniform door-to-door search of the surrounding properties so she had to leave Evie Charlesworth in charge of cross-checking the antivenom suppliers with a list of past students and staff of St George’s Academy.
As soon as Charlotte got back to the station, she checked in with Evie.
“Have you had any luck?”
Evie smiled and handed her a stack of printed sheets. “Yes, we’ve got a name.”
Charlotte listened carefully as Evie filled her in and then followed everyone else into the briefing room. She caught sight of Collins and slipped down into the seat beside him.
“Has there been any more news on Tyler’s condition?” Charlotte asked.
Collins shook his head. “No change. He is still in an induced coma, and they won’t bring him out of it until the swelling goes down. It could be some time.”
The mood in the meeting room was subdued. Everyone was talking in whispers as they waited for the briefing to start, and when DCI Brookbank walked into the room, everyone fell silent.
The DCI’s cheeks were redder than usual and his neck had practically disappeared between his broad shoulders. He stomped his way to the front of the room, coming to a stop by the head of the table. He leant forward, resting his palms on the flat surface. He didn’t bother to sit down.
“We are going to catch whoever did this,” he said. “We will go through every shred of evidence with a fine-tooth comb until we catch whoever did this to one of our own. Is that understood?”
There were murmurs of consent and a row of nodding heads from the officers sitting around the table.
“DC Webb,” Brookbank barked. “Where are we on the obituaries?”
DC Webb looked flustered and startled at having been called on first. “Ah, yes,” he said, uncrossing his legs and shuffling through his paperwork. “I’ve managed to narrow things down a bit. The obituaries were posted in a weekend paper which is local to East London. Unfortunately, when I phoned them this morning they weren’t keen to give out the name of the person who had purchased these obituary notices.”
