Chill Factor dcp-7

by Stuart Pawson

  The panda sent by Inspector Adey was parked outside The Garth. We’d radioed instructions for them to guard and contain the property until we arrived. I freewheeled to a standstill behind it, yanked the brake on and killed the lights as the two occupants opened their doors and stretched upright. “Got the key?” I asked the driver.

  “Right here, Boss,” he replied.

  “Thanks. Hang around, we might need you.”

  The converted gas lamps were not switched on and a Suzuki Vitara stood on the drive, nose against the garage door. The house was in total darkness, although all the curtains were pulled back. Dave put the key in the Yale latch, turned it and pushed the door open. When Silkstone dashed out he hadn’t locked the door deliberately; he’d just pulled it shut, or it had slammed behind him. Mr Yale had done the rest. So far, so good.

  As we stepped inside a wind chime broke into song above our heads. “I could do without that,” I hissed.

  The feeble illumination from a digital clock was enough to tell us that we were in a kitchen, and it was a good deal larger than the last one we’d stood in. Edges of implements and utensils in chrome and stainless steel reflected its glow. Unblinking green and red pilot lights watched us, like animals in the jungle, wondering who the intruders were, and a refrigerator added a background hum.

  I found a light switch and clicked it on. The shapes became Neff appliances and the jungle animals lost their menace. Dave handed me a rolled-up coverall and I started to pull it over my feet. I wasn’t sure if it was necessary, but I was playing safe. Sometimes I cut corners, occasionally I’m reckless, but never where forensics are concerned. Hunches are no good in this game. A hunch never swayed a jury or earned the sympathy of a judge. Motive, opportunity, witnesses, forensic. They’re what convict criminals, with the emphasis on the forensic. You can fudge the other three, but not the forensic. That’s what I’d always believed, and, so far, it had done well for me. That was the received wisdom, as taught at Staff College.

  We had a lot to learn.

  “Close the door,” I said, and Dave pushed it shut with an elbow. We pulled latex gloves on to our hands and eased our feet into over-socks. We didn’t bother to pull the hoods over our heads. My mouth was dry and I could feel my heart banging against my ribs. The thrill of the chase had long since degenerated into the drudgery of killing, the sordidness of death. It always does. Apart from the occasional gangland shooting there’s no such thing as a good murder. This wasn’t a straightforward, cut-and-dried jealous husband killing any more; it was something squalid. A clock was ticking somewhere in the room, measuring each second with well-oiled precision.

  “OK?”

  “OK.”

  “C’mon, then.”

  The interior door opened on to a hallway. I wasn’t there to admire the furnishings and look at the pictures — that would come later — but I couldn’t help doing it. I switched the light on and absorbed the scene.

  The Axminster carpet was covered in swirly patterns and felt as heavy as leaf mould under the feet. Facing us was an oil painting of a vaguely European city scene on a rainy day, churned out on a production line in Taiwan, hanging over an antique captain’s desk that I’d have accepted as a week’s salary anytime. The wallpaper was red, cream and gold stripes and a grandfather clock modelled on Westminster stood in a corner. Here, I thought, lived a man who knew what he liked. I found another switch and illuminated the staircase.

  It’s the boss’s prerogative to lead the way. I climbed the stairs slowly, keeping well over to the left in case we needed to do a footprint check on them, and Dave followed. “Silkstone said first door on the right,” he reminded me.

  The door was open, and we could already see what we’d expected by the glow from the landing lights. I reached around the doorframe and found the bedroom switch, just to do the job properly.

  She was lying face down on the bed and appeared to be naked below the waist. I stepped forward into the room and stooped beside her, looking into my second dead face that night. There was a pair of tights knotted round her neck, and the bulging eyes and pig’s liver of a tongue lolling from her mouth confirmed that she’d died by throttling. I’d have preferred the knife in the heart, anytime. I scanned her body feeling like the worst sort of voyeur and noticed that she was, in fact, wearing a short skirt that had been pulled up around her waist. My eyes went into the routine, as they had done too many times in the past, and the questions popped up one by one like the indicators on an old-fashioned cash register: Signs of a struggle? Anything under the fingernails? Bruising or bleeding? Is this where the attack took place?

  Dave was standing just outside the room, to one side, and I rejoined him. “Seen enough?” I asked, and he nodded. We stepped carefully down the stairs and retraced our path back out to my car. I rang Gilbert and told him the news. He’d contact the coroner and the pathologist and off we’d go again. We decided to get the SOCOs on the job immediately and leave everything else until after the morning meeting. Which was, I noticed, looking at the car clock, just six hours away.

  “You didn’t really want to live here, did you?” Dave asked as we sat waiting.

  “It was just a thought,” I replied.

  “You wouldn’t have been happy.”

  “I’m not happy now.”

  “Unhappy with money in the bank is better than unhappy skint,” he replied.

  “I suppose so.”

  “This’ll bring the property prices down,” he added, looking out of the window.

  “That’s a consolation.”

  The SOCO’s white van came swaying round the corner, bouncing over the speed humps and triggering the big security light. “Looks like Michael Schumacher’s on duty tonight,” Dave observed as we opened our doors. I pointed to a spot behind me and the SOCO parked there and doused his lights.

  He’s young, fresh faced, and can still boogie ’til dawn then appear in court bright as a squirrel. “Hi, Mr Priest,” he said, slamming the van door. “What’s going on? Is it two-for — the-price-of-one night, or something?”

  “First of all, it’s Charlie,” I told him. “Secondly, there are people in bed and I’d prefer them to stay there, and thirdly, don’t be so bloody cheerful at this time in the morning.” We told him what we’d found, and a few minutes later another patrol car came into the estate, followed by the other SOCO and the photographer. Bedroom lights came on in the neighbouring houses and curtains twitched. We were having an operational meeting, in hushed voices, when we heard a police siren in the distance, gradually growing louder. A minute later a traffic car, diverted off the motorway, careered round the corner and nearly took off over the humps. Somebody had dialled 999. I had words with the driver, persuaded him to turn his blue lights off, and sent him back to cruising the M62. A man from one of the houses joined us, saying he was chairman of the local Neighbourhood Watch, demanding to know what was going on. He wore a flying-officer moustache and a dressing gown over pyjamas. I ushered him to one side and asked him — “just between the two of us” — what he knew about the people who lived at The Garth, adding that I’d be very grateful if he could put it all in writing for me, before nine o’clock in the morning. He wandered off composing a hatchet job on the neighbour with the ghastly street lamps in his garden.

  That was all we could do. Priorities were identification of the bodies and times and causes of death. These would be checked against Silkstone’s story and we’d see if anything else we discovered supported or disputed the facts. If he were telling the truth the Crown Prosecution solicitors would decide the level of the charge against him; if he were lying I had a job on my hands.

  We left the experts doing their stuff, with the uniformed boys outside to keep the ghouls at bay, and went home. Come daylight, we’d be back in force.

  While I was addressing the troops about the killing of Peter Latham, young Jamie Walker was practising the new scam he’d learned at the detention centre. He’d strolled into a pub in the town centre, one he
knew the layout of because they had no scruples about serving juveniles, and sidled his way towards the toilets, carefully avoiding being seen by the bar staff. When nobody was looking he’d slipped upstairs to the landlord’s living quarters and rifled them. Pub landladies collect gold jewellery like some of us collect warm memories, and he made quite a haul. He escaped in a Mini taken from the car-park and celebrated by driving it through the town centre flat out. The traffic car that came to Silkstone’s house had earlier chased young Jamie for a while, but he escaped by driving along the towpath. Two of our pandas spent the rest of the night driving from one reported sighting to another, without success. We know it was Jamie because he left fingerprints in the pub and in the mini, which he had to abandon before he could torch it.

  I found all this out much later. When I arrived home I took off all my clothes, found a fresh set for next day and cleaned my teeth. I slipped under the duvet and closed my eyes.

  The house Annabelle and I nearly bought was two along from Silkstone’s, backing on to a rocky field that the estate agent called a paddock. It had a double garage that dominated the front aspect, with an archway over the path and a wrought iron gate. Inside were four bedrooms, two with en suite bathrooms, and a study. The downstairs rooms had dado rails and patio doors, and the next door neighbours were members of the National Trust. They introduced themselves, saying we’d be very happy there, and gave us some membership forms. Annabelle said they were sussing us out.

  We could have been happy there. The house was warm and dry and airy, with decent views over the fells; and pissing — off the neighbours would have been no problem. We could have locked the doors and closed the curtains, and played her Mozart and my Dylan to our hearts’ content. I’m sure we’d have been very happy there if we both hadn’t been such bloody reverse snobs.

  Today — no, yesterday — I pulled a carving knife out of a dead body, standing astride it as if I were harvesting carrots. Play the film in reverse and you’d see the knife going in, feeling its way between rib and cartilage, following the line of least resistance as it severed vein, nerve and muscle. A dagger in the heart doesn’t kill you. It’s not like an electrical short circuit that immediately blows a fuse and cuts off the power. Blood stops flowing, or pumps out into the body’s cavities instead of following its normal well-ordered path, and the brain dies of starvation.

  Today it was strangulation. A pair of tights knotted around the neck, stopping the flow of air and blood until, again, the brain dies. A pair of tights: aid to beauty; method of concealing identity favoured by blaggers; murder weapon. She had black hair and white skin, and may have been attractive, once. Before fear twisted her features and the ligature tightened, building up the pressure in her skull until her eyeballs and tongue tried to escape from it.

  Murder doesn’t come stalking its victim at night, skulking from shadow to shadow, whispering unheard threats. It comes in the afternoon, with the sun casting shadows on the wall and the curtains blowing in the breeze. It comes from familiar hands, that once were loving.

  The collared doves that live in next door’s apple tree were tuning up like a couple of novice viola players, and my blackbird was doing his scales prior to the morning concert. I got out of bed and staggered to the bathroom for a shower. I put on the clean clothes, brushed my hair and opened the curtains.

  The sky was light, with Venus the palest speck on the horizon, not quite drained of its glow by the advancing sun. Above it was the disc of the moon, a duller blue than the sky, one edge dipped in cream. They hovered there like the last two reluctant guests to leave a party. I picked up the alarm clock and went downstairs to grab an hour’s rest on the settee.

  The night tec’ was sitting at my desk when I arrived in the office, reading the morning paper. “Hi, Rodge, anything in about us?” I asked, slipping my jacket off.

  “Morning, Charlie. No, not yet,” he replied, moving out of my chair.

  “Pity. I was hoping they’d have it sorted for us.”

  “You’ve had a busy night.”

  “Oh, just two murders,” I replied. “Nothing special. And you?”

  “Sex or money?”

  “Sex. Sex all the way.”

  We only have one detective on duty through the night, in case the uniformed boys come across anything that requires a CID presence. He slid a typed report across to me, saying: “Jamie Walker. He was out causing grief again but we’ve got some dabs — I had to borrow a SOCO from City because ours were otherwise engaged. Hopefully, we’ll pick him up today.”

  “And as soon as we put him in front of the mags they’ll give him bail,” I said. “God, I could do without him.”

  I told him to carry on looking after the stuff outside the murder enquiries, adding that we’d have them sorted as soon as the PM results came through to confirm what we already knew. He went home to breakfast with his wife, a nightshift staff nurse at the General, and I read his report. “Jamie Walker, aged fourteen, why do I hate you?” I said to myself as I slid it into the Pending tray.

  The team, plus a few reinforcements from HQ CID, reassembled at eight in the small conference room and there were gasps of disbelief when Mr Wood told them about the developments. After his pep talk I split them into two groups and appointed two sets of control staff, as if the murders were separate enquiries, and sent the troops back out on to the streets. Priorities were the backgrounds of the three leading players and their relationships with each other. The neighbours would be given their opportunity to dish the dirt, so that might throw up something, and we needed the post-mortem results desperately. I told the Latham team to reconvene at three and the Silkstone team at four.

  We could hold him in custody without charging him for twenty-four hours, and then ask for extensions, but we’re supposed to charge a prisoner as soon as is practicable. We decided to do him for a Section 18 assault, that’s GBH with intent, purely as a holding charge, and let the CPS lawyers decide at their leisure whether to go for murder or manslaughter. He appeared in front of a magistrate that morning and our man explained the seriousness of the offence. It’s not necessary to present any evidence at this stage. The magistrate obligingly remanded Silkstone into our custody for seven days while we completed our enquiries. After that period he would appear again and hopefully be committed to appear before the crown court at sometime in the remote future. We booked his solicitor, Prendergast, for eleven a.m., when the fun would begin.

  Dave and I made a return visit to Silkstone’s house at Mountain Meadows. The sun was shining after a shower as we turned into the development, and it looked good. Several of the gardens had weird trees with twisted branches and dangling fronds, like you see in Japanese watercolours, and pampas-grass was popular. There were two panda cars outside The Garth and blue “keep out” tape stretched across the driveway.

  The PC in charge showed me the visitors’ book and entered our names in it. I saw that the undertakers had called at six a.m. to take the body away, and a reporter from the Gazette had been tipped off by a friendly neighbour. We stepped over the tape and walked down the drive.

  It looked different in the daylight. Allowing for the Silkstones’ crap taste, it looked highly desirable. Everything they had was expensive, top of the range, and they had everything. We stood in the kitchen, where we’d stood with such different feelings a few hours earlier, and took it all in. The wind chime gave a single, hollow, boing but I reached up and disabled it before it could run through its repertoire. There were Toulouse-Lautrec prints on the walls and a rope of garlic hanging behind the door.

  “Not bad,” Dave admitted. From him, that’s an Oscar.

  I sniffed the garlic, then felt it. “Plastic,” I said. “No wonder it didn’t work.”

  “Work?”

  “It’s supposed to keep evil at bay.”

  He looked at me without turning his head, and said: “Er, listen, Charlie. I wouldn’t put that in your report if I were you. One or two people have been saying things about you, re
cently…”

  The sitting room was a surprise. With its two leather chesterfields and dark wood it looked more like a gentlemen’s club than a room in a suburban house. The fireplace was polished stone, complete with horse brasses, and a photograph of the householder took pride of place above it. A beaming Silkstone was standing next to a much taller and slightly embarrassed man who looked remarkably like Nigel Mansell, former World Formula 1 champion.

  “He moves in fast company,” I remarked.

  “Golf tournament,” Dave said, which was fairly obvious from the single gloves, silly trousers and the clubs they were leaning on. “Probably a charity do, or something.”

  “Right. What do you think of the room?” The carpet was plain blue and vertical blinds covered the windows. There were no flowers or frills, no Capo di Monte shepherd boys — Alleluia for that small mercy — and not a single pot plant. The wallpaper was blue and cream stripes, edged in gold, on all four walls.

  “It’s a bit austere,” Dave remarked, turning round in a circle. He paused, then said: “The wife wanted me to put one of them up.”

  “One of what?”

  He pointed. “A dildo rail.”

  I said: “It’s called a dado rail,” not sure if I’d fallen into a trap.

  “Is it? I’m sure she said dildo.”

  “Maybe you misunderstood.”

  “Sounds like it.”