Jack-Knifed

by Wonny Lea

  There was no requirement for Prof. Moore to confirm that Mark was dead and he set about using his expertise to affirm the time of death, recognising that on this occasion the condition of the titbits in the oven would be as good an indicator as anything he had to offer. After the first visual assessment of the scene both men stood to one side and made room for the SOC team of photographers and forensic evidence gathers to get on with the their unenviable jobs.

  Alex made some initial suggestions and continued to make notes, and after a while it was almost as if the team was no longer seeing Mark’s dismembered body but was hell-bent on finding out the hows and whys of what had happened – and, most importantly, who had perpetrated the disgusting act.

  The scene in the lounge particularly caught the attention of Alex and he made speculative notes about the possible reason for the destruction of the sofa and wondered if it was in the lounge that the horror had started. There was no sign of a struggle, not an ornament broken, not a piece of furniture out of place, and there was certainly no sign of blood anywhere.

  Alex knew that he would be working closely with Martin Phelps, and that his thoughts and ideas would be welcomed by Martin at all stages of the investigation. Alex knew that, with the skills of his experienced and thorough team, there would be within a few days a clear picture of exactly what had happened in Mark’s home before, during, and after his murder.

  He walked around the sofa, examining its ruin, and judged there to be around twenty cuts in the leather. Most of them were short, as if the holder of the knife had just stabbed and stabbed, but with a couple of very long slashes into the seats from where most of the filling had escaped. It didn’t appear as if anyone had put up a fight to stop this destruction, as the sofa was the only item in the beautifully furnished lounge to be damaged, and there were other free-standing ornaments and pieces of furniture that would certainly have been casualties in any struggle.

  There was no further movement from the fireplace, but Alex could see that the fire had only just burned out. Looking closer, it was clear that a lot of the coals had never even begun to burn. There were signs of some quite large folds of paper which had mostly burned; perhaps the whole purpose of the fire being lit was just to destroy some sort of documents – after all, it was far too warm to justify a fire, even if it did add to the ambience of what was still a beautiful room. Alex called one of the photographers to capture the state of the debris, but refrained from moving and bagging anything, as he knew Martin would want to see it in situ, before it was disturbed.

  Back in the kitchen, Alex puzzled over the pieces of what looked like two broken white porcelain plates. These, and numerous lovingly created hors d’oeuvres scattered over the floor and on top of the body parts, and were the only signs anywhere of a potential struggle.

  Surfaces were being dusted for fingerprints, and samples of blood, hair, and fibres were taken as flash after flash lit up the now-darkening rooms. From every conceivable angle, Mark’s body parts and their surroundings were photographed, measured, and documented. Screens had now been erected outside and arc-lamps positioned, as officers prepared to work through the night both inside and outside the house.

  ‘Could someone switch on the lights?’ grunted Prof. Moore. ‘There’s not much more I can do here so I will be packing up and expect to have the body and limbs available for me to do a full post-mortem examination in the morning.’

  ‘I expect DCI Phelps would like to speak to you before you leave,’ suggested Alex. ‘I rather thought he would have been here by now, although he does prefer us to get as much of the preliminary work done ahead of his team arriving.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got better things to do than to wait around for people who think they are more important than the rest of us,’ muttered the professor, as he put a thermometer back into the Gladstone bag that was one of the relics he had kept from the time when he was a proper doctor.

  ‘Oh, come on Prof, that’s hardly fair’ said Alex. ‘Martin Phelps is the least likely of us all to take advantage of his position, and no one works harder than he does, especially when it comes to catching the likes of whatever bastard did this.’

  ‘OK, point taken, no offence meant’ grunted the Prof. ‘Maybe I’m just getting too old for this level of human depravity. I just need to get out of here. Permanently.’

  Alex looked at the professor and realised that he had never really thought about his age. He couldn’t remember a time when Prof. Moore had looked any different to now, but at a guess Alex would put him in his late sixties. He had years of experience and, although an acquired taste, he was without doubt one of the country’s leading criminal pathologists. Alex thought what a tremendous loss Moore would be to the business of investigating serious crime in the whole country, let alone the county, when he finally retired. So, thought Alex, the lowlife responsible for the murder and mutilation of Mark Wilson may also have to take some blame for the loss, to his profession, of such a brilliant mind as Professor More. Although Alex had enormous sympathy for Mark and his family, he felt that in some ways the loss of Professor Moore would be the greatest crime.

  Chapter Three

  DCI Martin Phelps

  The interview was taking much longer than expected, but Detective Chief Inspector Martin Phelps believed he owed it to the widow of a very brave member of the public to let her give vent to some of the anger she felt regarding her husband’s death.

  He knew something was going on with his team. He had seen his sergeant pacing the corridor outside his office, and he was anxious to know what had come in but careful not to show any signs of being distracted from Elaine Philips. Her husband had been what the press seemed to delight in calling a ‘have-a-go hero’, and although the family had no reason to hold the police responsible for the death of Daniel Philips, there was no doubt that Mrs Philips, and in particular her eldest daughter Karen, did hold them responsible for their failure to find and prosecute the killer.

  The incident had happened more than six months ago, when Mr Philips had called into his local tobacconist’s in Ely, an area to the west of Cardiff city centre and considered by some to be one of the city’s less desirable localities. Many people still remembered the so-called ‘Ely Petrol Riots’ of 1991, when angry gangs had burned down a number of shops and houses, and Mrs Philips had told DCI Phelps that it would have been better if they had moved away at that time. But their family home was there, and for the most part the family had always considered themselves to be a firm part of a diverse but usually well-knit community.

  So it had been a sickening blow to the family when, in the middle of a quiet Thursday afternoon, the tobacconist’s shop door had been kicked open by a man brandishing a long-bladed knife. The shop owner had said it was an attempted robbery, and that he had been prepared to hand over what was in the till, but a customer – Daniel Philips – intervened, and the robber had lashed out and stabbed him. It was a superficial wound, and according to forensic evidence it would not have been fatal. In spite of stabbing him, it seemed as if the intruder barely noted the presence of the customer as he focused on the shopkeeper, and presumably the contents of his till.

  But Mr Philips did not leave it there, and apparently shouted, causing the man to turn, as Mr Philips ran straight at him and heavily into the path of the now forward-facing knife. Instantly Mr Philips had crumpled to the ground; with the robbery not going according to plan, the would-be robber retrieved his knife and left the shop.

  There was apparently hardly anything that Mr Addula the shop owner could remember, as he said he had been terrified and unable to move while the attack was actually happening.

  He recalled afterwards that because there was relatively little blood, he thought that Mr Philips had just fainted. He’d waited for a while before approaching the collapsed man, in case the man with the knife returned.

  It was in fact another member of the public, coming into the shop for a newspaper, who first went to the aid of Mr Philips, but it was already
too late. The post-mortem report described how the knife had gone between two ribs and made a direct entry into the heart just below the aorta. DCI Phelps could not remember another case in his career where there was so little evidence pertinent to bringing a killer to justice.

  As a first-hand witness, Ali Addula was worse than useless, and each time he related his account of the incident there were differences in the sequence of events. He apparently had no idea whatsoever what the attacker had looked like. In one account he was over six feet tall and had dark hair, but this was in contrast to a different recollection of the killer wearing a black hoodie and Mr Philips, who was just five feet nine inches, towering over him. There was a CCTV camera, but no tapes, and the crime scene being a shop meant that there were countless footprints and fingerprints – none of which had matched up with any known criminals.

  Even though the shop was normally busy with lots of passing trade, no one saw anything. The knife was never found, and in spite of radio and television appeals there were no genuine leads. For now, at least, it looked as if there was little or no progress to be made.

  Martin had been, and in fact still was, the senior officer for the investigation, and he had agreed to meet with Elaine Philips on a regular basis to tell her what was happening. He knew he was getting to the position when he would have to tell her that their regular meetings were becoming pointless, and he looked at her sadly as she got up from her chair and held out her hand towards him.

  She looked pale and tired, but as always she had a quiet dignity and in many ways it was this acceptance of what she considered to be the inevitable that made Martin so desperate to find her husband’s killer.

  ‘As always you have been kind and respectful,’ Mrs Philips said. ‘For the past six months I have thanked God that you were assigned to this case, Mr Phelps, but I sense that there’s nothing more that can be done at the moment. I know you will not give up, but it will probably be better if you just let me know if there are any developments in the future, rather than you having to meet me just to say “sorry, no progress”. That can’t be easy for you.’

  Martin drew in a quick breath as he got up to shake her hand, and marvelled at the fact that she was concerned about making things easy for him, and that she had been the one with the courage to bring their regular meetings – and the hope they represented – to an end.

  He replied. ‘I have your number and I will of course be in contact if anything at all turns up. And yes, you can be one hundred per cent sure that I will not give up. Please look after yourself, Mrs Philips, and if there is anything you or your family and friends think of, please do let me know.’

  ‘Goodbye, Chief Inspector Phelps.’

  ‘Goodbye for now, Mrs Philips.’

  Martin watched her walk down the corridor and then closed his office door, hoping he would have a few minutes to gather his thoughts before encountering the eager face of Detective Sergeant Pryor and the prospect of a new case. Surely it would not be one as hopeless as the Philips murder.

  Looking up at the ceiling in his office, Martin marvelled, as he always did, at the Victorian beauty of the room. He particularly loved the stuccoed ceiling with the centre rose featuring a sunburst motif surrounded by swirling bunches of grapes and bold flowers.

  The Victorian building known as Goleudy, in which his office was housed, was an enormous block of six floors that had been built near the docks in Cardiff at a time of frantic activity, with endless industry and coal exports to countries all around the world. The building had been erected in 1878, and it was the heart of the business for one of the major coal mining companies working out of Cardiff Docks until the late twenties.

  At that time there was global competition from cheaper German coal, with oil becoming a viable alternative, and many companies went bust, including the Evans brothers’ operating company, which owned Goleudy. Martin remembered hearing the history of the building, long ago, but he hadn’t really absorbed all the details, and now he could only recall that the place had been abandoned for many years, before becoming the centre of a major family dispute and a court case over property rights.

  The upshot was that somewhere along the line the property had been bequeathed to the South Wales Police Force, but with so many of caveats regarding its use that it had barely been used until the decision in 1998 to transform it into a state-of-the-art centre to house all the agencies involved with crime detection and prevention in South Wales. Critics of the scheme had favoured a new building, where the latest computer technology and crime-fighting equipment could be installed, but detailed cost analysis of the requirements revealed that all this was possible in Goleudy, without needing to purchase land – land that was now at a premium, with the Cardiff Bay development being so successful.

  And so it was in 2005, quite soon after the appointment of the first woman to the post of Chief Constable of a Welsh police force, that this amazing facility was opened for business. The planners had been sensitive in the modernisation process, keeping the red brick façade and changing the grand entrance hall into a fit-for-purpose reception area behind which some ground-breaking research and activity could be facilitated.

  It made sense to accommodate a traditional style police station as the ‘front of house’ facility, and this was how the general public came to see Goleudy. The reality was that each of the floors was given over to specialist fields of criminal detection or crime prevention. The ground floor behind the reception area contained the usual array of interview rooms and offices, and the vitally important cafeteria, where some officers felt more at home than in their own kitchens. In the basement was a set of eleven holding cells with the latest surveillance monitoring, and a security door at the side of the building allowed access from the large car park.

  Martin’s office was on the floor above the reception area, and he could look out on to the pavement outside the building, and down the road towards the Cardiff Bay area, although the Bay itself was obscured by other buildings. It did however mean that he was within walking distance of Mermaid Quay, and he was known to walk around the area when he was particularly puzzled by a case. The Philips case had seen him circle the whole Bay on more than one occasion.

  His phone rang and he noticed that the call was from Shelley Edwards, who was a civilian appointed to the training department on the third floor. Shelley’s auburn hair and deep green eyes had been a key factor in the last year’s exemplary attendance record for what had previously been the least-enjoyed topic on the compulsory training programme. Shelley covered health and safety law and had her own views on why the British were compliant in more areas of this complex legislation than the rest of the EU combined. She brought a potentially dry subject to life, and her special take on risk assessment left her course attendees with examples that would remain with them for a long time.

  Shelley and Martin had a comfortable relationship, and had shared the occasional lunch in the staff dining room and the odd couple of drinks on the way home. Martin sensed that Shelley would be more than willing to take their friendship to a different level, but he already had an ex-wife and a number of broken relationships, and had become wary of anything serious because of all the demands it would bring and the almost inevitable conflict with his job.

  Because Shelley was one of the few people working in Goleudy with whom Martin did not come into contact with directly concerning his cases, he was able to talk to her about other things. This had provided him with some precious intervals that he was not at present prepared to compromise.

  ‘Hello Shelley, you’re not someone I would have expected to be ringing from her office at this time on a Saturday night,’ laughed Martin into the receiver. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘I hope so,’ responded Shelley. ‘It’s just that we have the first of the all-Wales courses starting on Monday, and I wanted to make sure that the equipment’s working properly and that the seating arrangements suit the programme. I understand I should be honoured by the fact that the Chief Co
nstable has agreed to give an opening address, and so I thought it best to check everything is ship-shape. I can’t do any more now, so I wondered if you felt like a drink? Always supposing you are about ready to pack it in for today.’

  ‘Nothing I would like better, but,’ replied Martin, who was somewhat surprised to realise that he was genuinely disappointed, ‘I have just finished a quite tricky meeting, and my sergeant is pacing the corridor excitably, so I suspect something has come in that is going to send my Saturday evening in a very different direction.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ returned Shelley. ‘We can do it another time. And let’s hope that DS Pryor brings you less trouble than you imagine.’

  ‘That would be a one-off, but still, fingers crossed and good luck for next week – not that you need it!’ That was the last that Martin was able to say, before DS Pryor could contain himself no longer and propelled himself into his boss’s office.

  Anyone not knowing Matthew Pryor, Matt to his friends, could be excused for being alarmed at the sight of his cut and swollen left eye and bruised right cheek. They could have been the result of a run in with some criminal ne’er-do-wells! Those who did know him were more likely to ask if it had been a good game, as Matt was one of the prop forwards for the South Wales Police rugby team.

  He certainly fitted the image of a prop: he was strong and heavy, and well-suited to win rucks and mauls and drive the game forward with what some said was too fearless a determination. He would possibly have made it as a professional rugby player in past decades, but he lacked the commitment to the level of training required for the modern game – and he also had serious ambitions to succeed as a detective.