‘We’ve had to chase off a few folk already,’ the perimeter officer said, coming to stand next to him half under the awning. He had been trying to engage Lockyer since he arrived. With reluctance Lockyer shifted sideways to allow the guy to shelter from the snow.
‘People are just curious,’ he said.
‘People are sick,’ the officer said, walking away. ‘Lucky we’ve had help.’ He pointed towards the woods.
Lockyer followed the officer’s extended finger and saw Barney standing at the edge of the wood, his arms folded. He looked like a giant stone sentry. ‘Well, of course he’s here,’ he muttered to himself. Was there a crime scene in Somerset this guy didn’t frequent?
‘Making friends, I see.’
He turned to find Dr Basil Reed standing behind him, stepping into a pair of wellington boots. ‘Nice to see you again, doctor,’ he said. ‘You must have had one helluva journey down from Flax Bourton?’
‘It was all right,’ Basil said with a shrug. ‘I’ve got a four-wheel drive. Besides, Barney parked her up at the top of the hill so I won’t get stuck.’
‘Of course,’ Lockyer said, rolling his eyes.
‘Have you been over yet?’ Basil asked, either not caring for or not understanding Lockyer’s joke.
‘I was about to.’
‘Then we’ll go together,’ Basil said. ‘I can introduce you to the faces you don’t know.’
‘That would be great, doc.’ Lockyer had never called a doctor ‘doc’ in his entire life, but for some reason Basil’s personality fit the tag.
‘I’m surprised they had enough boards to cover an area this size,’ Basil said, pointing down at the beginning of a series of footboards leading from the road all the way to where Stephanie Lacey was found.
‘I’m not sure they need’ve bothered,’ Lockyer said. ‘With this weather I can’t imagine they’re going to find much of use.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Basil said. ‘This lot are accustomed to dealing with outdoor environments. I bet they turn up more than you think.’
Lockyer nodded. He wondered if he should offer Basil an arm to steady him, given how slippery the road surface was. It wasn’t that he looked infirm. On the contrary, he was the picture of vim and vigour for a guy of his age, whatever that might be; but Lockyer had been brought up to respect his elders. ‘You all right there?’
Basil turned and looked at him over the top of his glasses. ‘I’m fine, thank you, detective,’ he said. ‘I don’t need a rug to put over my knees either.’
‘Point taken,’ Lockyer said, following behind as the doctor headed for Lacey’s car just off to their left.
‘Have they done the car already?’ Basil said, speaking to the perimeter officer Lockyer had managed to offend.
‘Yes,’ the guy said, pulling at his hat. ‘They’ve done four sweeps of the vehicle, four where the girl was found, two of the area leading up to and leading away from the crime scene, and they’re on a third sweep of the crime scene itself, where the bulk of the attack took place.’
‘They’ve not wasted any time,’ Basil said.
‘No,’ the officer said, throwing Lockyer a look. ‘People have been coming by all morning trying to get a look-see. They realized if they didn’t get the evidence now they’d be hard-pressed to get anything decent once Tom, Dick and Harry have been through there with their iPhones and cameras.’
‘Thanks, Ian,’ Basil said, waving Lockyer over to join him. ‘Shall we walk it and talk it?’
‘Sure.’
Basil cleared his throat and took a Dictaphone out of his coat pocket. ‘Do you mind?’ Lockyer shook his head. ‘Good. Let’s get started, then.’ He approached the driver’s-side door, bent forward and leaned in. ‘The girl was inside the vehicle. Her attacker approached from . . .’
‘The front of the car,’ Lockyer said. ‘There’s evidence of another vehicle over there.’ He pointed to an area sectioned off by yellow crime scene tape. They’ve made casts of a few tyre treads. I’m hoping there’s a match to ones I’ve already got; that’s if they’re useable in these conditions.’
Basil pushed out his bottom lip. ‘Oh, ye of little faith,’ he said. ‘So our attacker approaches from there, opens the door here and grabs our girl with their . . .’ He mimed the action as he was talking. ‘Left hand, I’d say.’
‘We think she was dragged by her hair.’
Basil sniffed and nodded his head up and down. ‘That would make sense,’ he said. ‘Hair is easy to hold on to.’ He looked down at the door handle. ‘Any prints here?’
‘Not that they’ve told me,’ Lockyer said, though he didn’t like to admit that they hadn’t told him much. Maybe if he had been nice to the perimeter officer, he might know more.
‘I’m sure they’ve taken samples of what they can,’ Basil said, turning and walking in a slow zig-zag across the road and over to the verge. It was like watching a butch Miss Marple putting together the clues. ‘Drag marks here, here and here,’ he said. ‘The victim was facing down . . . you can see the impressions here.’ He pointed to some indentations in the verge. ‘These are from the front of her shoes, not the back.’
‘How do you know?’
‘They’re rounded,’ he said, curving his hand as he spoke. ‘I’m sure we have hair, saliva, blood perhaps, but I’d imagine all will be from her. We’re assuming the attacker wore gloves?’
‘I think that’s a safe bet, although it looks like she scratched him,’ Lockyer said. ‘There was a good amount of what looks like skin in with the mud, et cetera, under her fingernails.’
‘Well, that’s good,’ Basil said, looking down as he stepped forward.
Despite the heavy snow, the struggle was evident once they passed the verge and entered the woods. Leaves, snow and mud had formed a sort of mulch. The new snow was settling in depressions that looked like the imprints of knees, elbows and one of the victim’s whole body, as if she had been picked up and dropped. It was disturbing to look at, to visualize what it must have been like while she struggled to break free. When Jane had called earlier she had relayed Stephanie Lacey’s injuries like she was reading from a shopping list – there were that many. They approached a section of undergrowth that had been marked out, and yellow plastic markers put in place. Each had a letter. The resulting file would detail each letter and what, if anything, had been found. Lockyer stopped when he thought he saw a shadow to his left. He looked, staring deep into the wood. He shook his head. He was getting as bad as Jane. In fact, he was worse. At least she had the decency to only get scared when she was on her own.
‘Looks like there was some impact here?’ Basil said. ‘Could be an arm . . . or perhaps a leg. The blood loss is minimal so I’d say ankle, knee, elbow or . . .’
Lockyer dragged his thoughts back to reality. ‘The victim has a broken patella,’ he said. ‘It’s an open fracture.’
‘Fine, fine,’ Basil said, moving away. ‘So she’s still being dragged. Still struggling. Oh, and here?’ He stopped beside a single yellow marker. ‘There is a significant amount of blood here.’
Lockyer came and stood next to him and looked down. He didn’t know what Basil could see, but all he could see was a mess of the mulch and fresh snow. ‘Where?’
‘Here,’ Basil said, pointing to a section of turned earth. ‘The blood has soaked into the ground here. Look at the colour change between this, say –’ he looked around him – ‘and over there. Do you see it’s darker?’
‘Good eye,’ Lockyer said.
‘The best.’
Lockyer turned at the sound of Barney’s voice. ‘Barney, my boy,’ Basil said. ‘You keeping the weirdos away?’
‘Someone has to, doc,’ Barney said. Lockyer resolved not to use the shorthand again. ‘You know better than most what people can be like.’
‘True, true,’ Basil said. He turned to Lockyer. ‘Do you know—?’
‘Yes, we’ve met,’ Lockyer said.
‘How’s the chin?’ Barney asked
, rubbing his giant hand over his giant bearded chin.
‘Fine,’ Lockyer said.
‘What happened to your chin?’ Basil asked, a curious look on his face.
‘Nothing,’ Lockyer said. ‘Nothing important.’ He looked at Barney. ‘We should get back to it, doctor. I have places to be.’
‘Of course, detective,’ Basil said. ‘Keep up the good work, Barney.’
Lockyer turned away. ‘You were saying?’
Basil looked down at the ground and put his gloved hand to his mouth. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I’d hazard a guess this was a bleed from the scalp. Head wounds bleed like hell.’
‘Part of the victim’s scalp was missing,’ he said. ‘We’re assuming it came away with a chunk of her hair.’
‘Do we have that?’ Basil asked, unmoved, it seemed, by Lockyer’s revelation; but then, this was his business. He dealt with injury and death every day. Maybe nothing shocked him any more.
‘Not so far,’ Lockyer said. ‘I told the CSI guys to keep an eye out after I spoke to my colleague earlier.’
‘Townsend?’
‘No, one of my colleagues from London.’
‘Ahh, DS Bennett,’ Basil said.
‘That’s right.’ Lockyer frowned. ‘Have the two of you met?’
Basil shook his head. ‘No, no,’ he said, looking back to where Barney was still standing guard. ‘I’ve just heard her name mentioned, that’s all.’
‘And?’
‘It’s all right, detective,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’ve only heard good things.’ Lockyer wasn’t sure what made him more uncomfortable: people talking about Jane, or Barney talking about Jane – good things. ‘And so on to the main event,’ Basil said, pointing up ahead to a large group of CSI all bent over the scene they were examining.
Lockyer picked his way through the undergrowth, using the footboards where needed. He had to resist the urge to keep looking over his shoulder. ‘Did you get my email about . . . ?’
‘Jenkins, yes,’ Basil said.
When he didn’t say more, Lockyer asked, ‘So what did you think?’
‘I think it shouldn’t have been handed back to the coroner so soon,’ Basil said. ‘I did the post-mortem on Chloe Evans. Need I ask who missed the link with the charcoal residue?’
‘Townsend,’ Lockyer said with a sigh.
‘He’s not having a good week, is he,’ Basil said, looking over his glasses at Lockyer. The rumour mill appeared to be as well-oiled down here as it was in Lewisham.
‘So you think it’s possible Jenkins could have been attacked?’
‘Not could, detective, was,’ he said. ‘The injury to Jenkins’ shoulder was, as the pathologist said, a glancing blow, but it would have been enough to knock her off her feet . . . drunk or not.’
‘So you’re saying the pathologist was right,’ Lockyer said. ‘But you just said—’
‘Those were the only injuries described in detail in the post-mortem, but they were by no means the only ones present,’ Basil said. ‘I didn’t have the body to examine, of course, but just from the photographs I could see she had defensive wounds on her forearms and hands. She had a broken nose, and what looked like a fractured eye socket . . .’
‘How was this not . . . ?’
‘It’s all been lumped in with the head injury and the fall,’ Basil said. He turned and looked at Lockyer. ‘All I can say is my colleague, Dr Michaels, is no longer practising. I was brought in to take over the area when he was given . . . mandatory retirement. Trouble with the drink, I’m afraid.’
‘Great,’ Lockyer said, thinking that with the catalogue of screw-ups surrounding these cases, he would be lucky to catch anyone at this rate. ‘So you’re happy to confirm she was attacked . . . amend the documentation?’
‘Absolutely,’ Basil said.
‘Even drunk, surely, Michaels should have picked up on this.’
‘Of course,’ Basil said. ‘However, this isn’t the first mistake of his I’ve seen. It’s come to the point where I dread even the mention of the man’s name.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Lockyer said, thinking the only upside, at least for Townsend, was that Michaels’s incompetence took at least some of the heat off his catalogue of errors. If the good doctor had laid off the booze and done his job, Avon and Somerset would have started the search for a killer two years ago, not two days ago.
Jane walked into the private room and shut the door behind her, taking care to be as quiet as possible. The consultant had explained that Stephanie Lacey had a burst eardrum, so she would be very sensitive to sound.
She looked over at Stephanie. The girl was a sorry figure to behold.
The curtains in the room were drawn and the lights were down low. Jane picked up a chair and placed it next to the bed. She sat down, crossed her legs, rested her hands in her lap and waited. Stephanie was awake. She had stirred when Jane came in, but she had turned her face away. Jane took this as a sign that she wasn’t ready to talk – not yet.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Thank God she had put it on vibrate. It was a message from Lockyer:
Confirmation from pathologist – Jenkins was attacked.
Jane re-read the message. Any doubt she might have had evaporated. So that made three: Chloe, Pippa and Andrea. Stephanie made four. She looked back at the girl, glad she couldn’t see Jane’s reaction as she took in the devastation of her broken face.
The eye she could see was swollen shut. A thick bandage covered the other side of her face. The skin on her cheeks and around her mouth was pink and red with flecks of white, like raw steak mince. Her neck was a myriad of bruises, purple, burnt orange and yellow. Her ear was black, a dry crust of blood on the lobe. And that was just her face. The consultant had told Jane the extent of Stephanie’s injuries from top to toe: a tear in her scalp, a fractured eye socket, a split lip, a broken jaw, severe swelling around her throat and windpipe, a punctured lung, multiple lacerations and contusions covering her entire body, a broken kneecap, a torn quadriceps tendon, and she was hooked up to a warm saline drip to treat hypothermia. The doctor had said she was lucky to be alive. Jane had to agree. The broken body in front of her was the kind she was more used to seeing at the mortuary, not the hospital. The courage and strength it must have taken for Stephanie to escape was unfathomable – almost. Jane reached up and held her own throat, memories of her own ordeal tightening her windpipe.
It wasn’t so long ago that she had been in a similar position: throat swollen and bruised from the hands that had tried to squeeze the life out of her. It wasn’t the first or, she imagined, the last time that her life would be threatened because of her job, but it was the first time it had been at the hands of a friend. She closed her eyes and tried to remember how she had felt; to come so close to dying, and yet survive. The memories were a jumbled mess of thoughts, emotions and physical pain. ‘I was attacked,’ she said, before she realized she was going to speak. Stephanie turned her head. ‘I remember how helpless I felt, lying in a hospital bed, relying on strangers to fix me.’
Stephanie’s tongue poked out of her mouth. It was almost purple. She licked the edge of her torn lip. ‘I’m not broken,’ she croaked, her face contorting in pain.
‘Can I get someone? Do you need some water?’
Stephanie rocked her head from side to side on the pillow. ‘He wanted me dead,’ she said, ‘but I survived.’ The defiance in her voice was astonishing.
Swap places, and Jane had been a wreck. It had taken her weeks to come to terms with what had happened, but what came next had been, in a way, worse. There was a void. She had felt thrown off her axis. Her life would be forever split into two parts: before the attack and after. But Stephanie Lacey seemed to defy her position. Despite her appearance, she wasn’t a victim.
‘How are you feeling?’ Jane asked, knowing it was a stupid question but feeling compelled to ask.
‘The painkillers are good, but . . .’ Stephanie swallowed, her eyes searching.
‘Please.’ Her voice was a hoarse whisper. Jane was finding it difficult to focus, difficult to remain detached. She was here to do a job, not rake up old wounds. This wasn’t about her. It was about Stephanie.
‘Stephanie,’ she said.
‘Steph.’
‘OK. Steph. My name is detective sergeant Jane Bennett . . .’
‘Knew you were a copper,’ Steph said, her words distorted by her swollen tongue and lips.
‘I’m here to find out what happened . . . to find the person who did this to you with, if you’re up to it, your help.’
A single tear rolled down Steph’s cheek. Jane resisted the urge to wipe it away. ‘I don’t remember anything once he hit me.’
Jane opened her pad and rested it on the edge of the bed, leaning forward so the girl wouldn’t have to speak above a whisper. ‘So you were attacked by a man?’ There was a second’s delay before Steph nodded. ‘Can you tell me what he looked like? Hair colour . . . the clothes he was wearing . . . anything you can remember. The smallest detail could make all the difference.’
Steph closed her eyes. She was very still. Jane held her breath. She knew what Steph was doing; she had done it herself. She had closed her eyes so she could remember. What Steph couldn’t know, what Jane wouldn’t tell her, was that in the coming days, weeks and months the images would come back to her over and over again, to the point where she would be afraid to close her eyes. She would be afraid to sleep, because that would be when her attacker would come again. For months Jane had woken in the night, her mouth open in a silent scream as she tried to escape the feeling of his hands around her throat. She looked at Steph, at what was left of her young face.
‘He was big,’ Steph said.
‘Tall? Fat?’
‘Tall,’ she said, her t’s distorted to d’s.
‘What else?’ Jane said.
The Night Stalker (Detective Jane Bennett and Mike Lockyer series Book 4) Page 25
