Soft Summer Blood

by Peter Helton

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Erm … that.’ Austin turned the page and held it out for him to read.

  McLusky’s eyes widened as he read the string of swear words. ‘Physically impossible, I should think, but imaginative. OK, three different incidents, at least two different gun users, possibly three.’

  ‘Yes. Could be a loan.’

  Even in twenty-first century Britain, guns were still relatively rare and handguns difficult to come by. Small-time criminals, often mere teenagers who wanted a gun for a day as protection, to intimidate a rival or for a one-off robbery like the one in St Pauls, rented the gun from the owner. It was almost always understood that the gun would not be fired unless in self-defence or to intimidate, since the owner might be charged with any woundings or killings should the gun ever be found in his possession. Often these guns were eventually found at the owner’s place during house searches that were unrelated to gun crime, the weapon hidden in predictable locations such as toilet cisterns, in biscuit tins or desktop hard drives, hiding places that the criminals had thought fiendishly clever.

  McLusky drummed his fingers on his desk in the tiny space that was not covered in empty mugs and papers. ‘Loan guns don’t get used for murder. Unintentionally sometimes, but not several killings. Either the gun has been sold on or whoever rented it has gone rogue with it. In which case he’s probably not returned it.’

  ‘Perhaps this is the scenario then: our man climbs into Mendenhall’s garden with the aim to rob him at his home, runs into him unexpectedly and shoots him in panic.’

  ‘Which might account for the badly aimed shot. So with Mendenhall shot, why doesn’t he go and rob the place?’

  ‘Because he’s afraid the shot could have alerted someone. Because he’s shocked. He didn’t mean to do it.’

  ‘Yes, Jane, he was so shocked that days later he kills Mendenhall’s friend Longmaid in broad daylight, at his house which is full of valuable knick-knacks and leaves with only a shotgun and an old fowling piece.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, unlikely,’ Austin conceded.

  ‘Whoever killed Mendenhall and Longmaid knew both of them. This isn’t some chancer whose normal stomping ground is Knowle West or Easton.’

  McLusky was surprised to have been asked to sit down, and DSI Denkhaus, his large shape sharply outlined against the brightness of his office window, looked annoyed that he had offered it. He was thumbing a report of the Cornish fire service with an expression of disgust. ‘What the hell were you thinking? You went down there without telling anyone about it – not even DS Austin apparently, though I find that hard to believe – then mysteriously the house of one of the main suspects in the murder case you’re investigating catches fire with you in it!’

  ‘There was nothing mysterious about it. Someone broke a window, poured in a gallon or so of petrol and chucked a match after it.’

  ‘What were you doing at the house in the middle of the night?’

  ‘It had been a long day. I had at last tracked down Michael Tigur, the son of the skipper, and interviewed him about the events back in 1998. I had a last look around the house and had intended to drive back to Bristol that night but I thought I was too tired to drive. I know I shouldn’t have but I went to sleep in an upstairs room and was woken by a noise and found the house was on fire. I had to jump from a window.’

  ‘Their preliminary report describes you as “persons”.’

  ‘Must be a typo.’

  ‘Someone set the house on fire with you in it. Could it have been a coincidence that they chose that night? Would they have been aware that it was occupied?’

  ‘Most likely, since my car was parked in front of the house. They may have missed it, of course.’

  Denkhaus leant back in his chair and thought for a brief moment. ‘What car does Poulimenos drive?’

  ‘Bentley Continental.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘A sort of midnight blue.’

  ‘And yours is black. Was there any street lighting? Security lights?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘Which means someone might have mistaken your big Merc for the owner’s Bentley. Either way, we’ll need to treat it as attempted murder. We will give Mr Poulimenos police protection.’

  McLusky threw up his hands. ‘I offered it twice and he turned it down each time.’

  ‘Even after someone burnt down his holiday home?’

  ‘He lives in a big place in the Chew Valley with acres of land around him. I think it gives him a false sense of security.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve come across it before. It’s nonsense. The closer your neighbours, the safer you are.’

  ‘Depends on your neighbours, sir.’

  ‘Granted. I’ll get a police patrol to swing by his house a few times. But if I was Poulimenos, I’d be worried.’

  ‘Unless, of course, he knows he has nothing to worry about.’

  This was a question that greatly exercised McLusky as he sat opposite Austin in the canteen and poked about in what was today’s healthy option: a dull piece of smoked mackerel next to a pile of anaemic bits of lettuce, bean sprouts and grated carrot. It had been billed as ‘low carb’.

  ‘That’s more like no carb,’ observed Austin but got no answer from his superior who seemed miles away.

  He was, his mind’s eye full of flames. Was Poulimenos nonchalant about his own safety because he knew he had nothing to worry about since he himself was behind the killings? For some personal motive? Or did Poulimenos have something to worry about? Did he, McLusky, have something to worry about? Who had been the intended victim of the arson attack – he or Poulimenos? What he hadn’t told the superintendent or anyone else was that he thought he and Laura had been spied on by someone posing as a birdwatcher. He put down his fork, pinched three chips from Austin’s plate and told him about the stranger watching them in Cornwall.

  ‘And you can’t even say if it was a man or a woman?’

  ‘No, though Laura thought it might be a woman, just from the way the birdwatcher moved.’

  ‘But … if the birdwatcher is our arsonist, then you two were the intended victims. Or at least you were. And whoever set the fire didn’t care if Laura died too.’

  ‘Got it in one. Denkhaus, by the way, doesn’t know about her being there.’

  ‘How did Laura deal with it?’

  ‘Not speaking to me. Her archaeology essay went up in smoke with her laptop, along with some library books and all her notes. She was ready to kill me herself. I said I’d pay for it all, but she never said a word to me all the way back.’

  ‘It’ll blow over.’

  ‘Sure. Oh, and the Rossis want me to move out so they can sell the flat.’ McLusky swiped the last chip off Austin’s plate from right under his fork.

  ‘Hey! Don’t forget your fitness test.’

  ‘Here, have my salad. I’m off to see a nasty man about a gun.’

  ‘Ma’am? Body found on the railway line. Under Queen Anne Road. The description fits Bethany Hall.’

  Fairfield moved so quickly from her office that Sorbie had trouble keeping up with her. ‘A train driver coming the other way reported it and they stopped the trains on that line. Apparently, it’s causing chaos. They want us to move the body pronto.’

  Fairfield just nodded and drove, faster than an already dead Bethany warranted. Her humble missing person’s inquiry had turned into something quite different. A mere twenty minutes after Sorbie had announced her death in her office, the inspector was standing next to Bethany Hall’s body in the shadow of the four-lane flyover. A few hundred yards off in the direction of Temple Meads station and on the same line as the girl’s body, she could see a stationary intercity express that had been halted there just in time. Bethany’s body was fully dressed, for which Fairfield was grateful, in the clothes she remembered her wearing at their only meeting outside the house she had shared with Marcus Catlin. Her limbs were twisted in a way that only a fall from a certain height could arrange, one
that involved multiple fractures. The site was guarded by two uniformed police officers, PCs Pym and Purkiss. No one else had arrived yet, apart from a second police unit who were busy closing one lane of the flyover above the site. ‘Remind me what’s up there, Jack. Can pedestrians use the bridge?’

  ‘No. But there’s a cycle lane.’

  She turned to the tall constable called Pym. ‘Did you find a bicycle up there? She used to ride one.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve not heard anything. Hang on. Who’s up there? Is it Hanham?’ he asked his colleague. The woman nodded. Pym called Hanham on his mobile; no bicycle had been found.

  ‘Someone could have seen the bike,’ Sorbie speculated, ‘after she had jumped, and they stopped and took it away.’

  ‘Jumped? She didn’t jump, Jack. She didn’t jump and she didn’t fall.’

  ‘You’re quite certain already?’

  ‘Tenner.’

  ‘Done,’ said Sorbie, despite a dismal record of losing bets with his superior.

  One by one, the teams parked up in a nearby lane and went to work, erecting a tent over the body, taping off the area. As soon as DC French arrived, Fairfield nominated her the crime scene coordinator, something the constable was good at. When DCI Denkhaus arrived, he approved of the choice. He was immediately approached by a sergeant from the British Transport Police who looked unhappy. ‘We need to get this stretch reopened as soon as possible, sir. With everyone wandering about here, we’ve had to close both lines.’

  Denkhaus, who towered over the man, looked at him as though he had said something utterly absurd. ‘My officers are not “wandering about”, sergeant; they’re working. We’ll treat this scene as we would any other suspicious death. We’ll be as thorough as with any other death. That train might as well go back where it came from; it won’t pass through here for hours yet. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an investigation to run.’

  ‘Hours? But it’ll be complete chaos!’

  ‘Then organize some replacement bus services or something.’ Denkhaus turned away and within a couple of seconds had forgotten the man.

  The BTP sergeant, who was not used to being treated like a schoolboy, was about to protest when he thought better of it. He gave the superintendent a murderous look and walked off, talking urgently into his mobile. He now had several thousand stranded passengers to take care of.

  Dr Coulthart was the last to arrive. He shook hands with Denkhaus, arranged to meet for a round of golf the following week, then walked towards the tent where Fairfield and Sorbie, now dressed in scene suits, were waiting. ‘Ah, la belle et la bête,’ he greeted them and dived inside the tent.

  Sorbie rolled his eyes to heaven. ‘I never know what that man is on about.’ He stayed beside the track while Fairfield and a crime scene technician with a video camera followed the pathologist inside. Fairfield concentrated on a spot on the tent’s side which moved with the soft breeze, until the pathologist had taken a rectal reading and noted the result on his mini tablet. She stayed quiet while the pathologist hummed and grunted as he uncomfortably knelt between the rails which, inside the tent, looked more out of place than the crumpled body. The face was dirty and scratched on the side that had hit the ground and was twisted further to one side than seemed possible, making Fairfield suspect that either her neck or her shoulder broke in the fall. Coulthart paid close attention to all the exposed areas of the body – face and neck and hands, especially the hands. Once he had scribbled some more notes on his mini tablet, he stood up with a groan and rubbed his knees.

  Fairfield broke her silence. ‘Did she die in the fall?’

  ‘Pardon? No. No, she did fall but she was dead when she landed here. She’s been dead for about twelve hours but she didn’t die here.’

  ‘Can you tell when she was thrown off the flyover?’

  ‘My psychic powers are woefully underdeveloped, Inspector, but I think I can find you a man who can answer that question with preternatural precision.’

  ‘Oh, who?’

  ‘There’s a sergeant from the BTP out there shouting into his mobile – I can hear him from here. Ask him to get his timetable out. She was obviously lobbed over the side between the last train going down the line and the one waiting out there arriving.’

  ‘Of course,’ murmured Fairfield, feeling foolish. Her next thought electrified her. ‘But that means they dropped her on the line in broad daylight! There’ll be witnesses. There might even be CCTV up there.’ She rushed from the tent and squinted up against the sun at the flyover, looking for signs of traffic cameras. Sorbie stood beside her and followed her gaze. Fairfield snapped her fingers at him. ‘Deposition site. Ten quid, Jack.’

  ‘Erm, I haven’t actually got any money on me.’

  ‘Don’t make bets you can’t cover. I shan’t forget.’

  ‘So what was the cause of death?’

  Fairfield gave him a brief wide-eyed stare; she had forgotten to ask. Looking around, she saw Coulthart walk off towards his night-blue Jaguar. ‘He couldn’t tell. We’ll find out at the autopsy.’

  ‘When’s it scheduled for?’

  She had forgotten to ask that too. ‘He’ll let us know. Go and find out if there’s a traffic control camera that covers that stretch, because if it does, then we’ve as good as got our perpetrator.’

  By the time he reported back to her, Fairfield had established that the body had to have been dropped between five past and a quarter past one, between a sprinter going through in the direction of Bath and the intercity that very nearly drove over her body. ‘There’s traffic cameras.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  Sorbie shook his head. ‘Not so brilliant. There’s roadworks three hundred yards that way.’ He pointed south. ‘And they managed to cut through the cables. Someone’s just arrived to try and fix them. They dug through the street lights too. Bloody idiots.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch. That’s great, Jack, that’s just what was needed. Bloody typical.’ She strode off, away from the forensics team and the uniformed officers searching the area, away from Sorbie, away from the dead girl, down the railway line towards the still stationary train. She paused briefly to light a small cigar from a tin of Café Crèmes, then marched on towards the train, letting out smoke from her nostrils like an angry cartoon bull about to charge. The intercity train revved up its diesel-electric engines and moved slowly away from her to return to Temple Meads station. Fairfield stopped and called after it. ‘Coward!’

  McLusky let his seatbelt slip to get out of the car so he could use the intercom set into the ancient sandstone gatepost, but the electric wrought-iron two-leaf gate was already opening, each leaf at its own sedate pace. The motion detector and CCTV camera mounted on the ten-foot wall that surrounded the property were obviously well monitored. He was exactly on time. His appointment with Roy Hotchkiss had been surprisingly easy to procure, considering that Hotchkiss was a known career criminal who had been investigated a number of times. Yet not since early in his criminal career, back in the 1980s, had he been convicted. McLusky had met and even interrogated the man in the past, but Hotchkiss was too well protected behind the legitimate parts of his business to be directly connected to the criminal operations he was controlling. Most of his sphere of influence lay in Bristol, although for a long time now he had preferred to live in the more genteel surroundings of Cold Ashton, a small village near the Georgian city of Bath. ‘Who says crime doesn’t pay?’ McLusky asked his car as he steered the Mercedes up the drive towards the big house.

  Ashton View stood in several acres of grounds, much of it woodland, at the top of the valley. It was a gothic pile built in the mid-nineteenth century by a merchant with more money than taste. There was a self-important portico in the centre of the façade, mock turrets and a tower at the corners and de- corative crenellations above. The coach house to the side of the main building had room for five cars, two of which were taken up by Rolls Royces. Groups of cedars and other trees shaded the area in front of the house.
McLusky parked with a crunch of tyres in the oval of gravel. The coach house was shut up; his was the only car parked on the gravel. Once more, the house gave no clues to the era he found himself in. Just as at Mendenhall’s house, he had the eerie feeling that he might have slipped backwards into the past, a past romanticized with the aid of considerable amounts of money.

  Nearly two minutes elapsed between McLusky working the old-fashioned bell pull, which set off a raucous bell inside the house, and the door opening and Hotchkiss’s PA appearing. Frank Alvis – chauffeur, strongman, bodyguard and cook – was fifty, six foot four and bald; he was an ex-boxer with an angelic smile and a criminal record that stretched back thirty years. McLusky had come across him before. Since then Alvis had found the need to wear glasses, he noted: delicate gold-rimmed spectacles which looked precariously out of place on his large face. Alvis closed the door gently behind McLusky. ‘Allow me.’ He walked in front of him and opened a door in the enormous hall. ‘The inspector is here, sir,’ he announced and let McLusky enter the room. The door closed so quietly behind him that McLusky checked over his shoulder to see whether the PA was still there or not.

  Roy Hotchkiss was sitting in a white armchair, lighting a cigar with a table lighter set in a lump of rose quartz. He was in his late sixties. His once-muscle-bound body still lent him a menacing presence and his eyes were still bright and blue and cold. What remained of his once-blonde hair had turned the colour of dirty snow. The fireplace to his left was flanked by two life-size china Moors. The gilt of their turbans was picked up again by the gold flecks in the maroon wallpaper; little of it showed between the gilt-framed paintings that covered the walls. An oily seascape dominated the chimney breast. The room was well proportioned and luxurious, and the French windows looked out on to a long terrace with large urns planted with garish flowers.

  ‘The wages of sin, DI McLusky. I can tell you’re impressed.’ His cigar had gone out again and he lit it once more, puffing between words. ‘Do … grab … a seat … Inspector.’ Having managed to relight his cigar, he waved it invitingly at the other armchair. Beside it sat a very large black dog. ‘Don’t mind George. He has finally crapped his last into my flower beds; I had him stuffed.’