The Body in the Marsh

by Nick Louth

  ‘So how long have you lived here?’ Mulholland asked.

  ‘Two years, more or less.’

  ‘Your nationality is Slovenian, is that right?’ He nodded. ‘Can I see ID, please?’

  He went into a bedroom and came back with his driving licence.

  ‘I’d prefer your passport,’ Mulholland said.

  Horvat slouched slowly back into the bedroom and, when he emerged, tossed the document onto the coffee table. ‘EU citizen, see,’ he said. It gave his date of birth as March 1971 in Ljubljana. The picture was washed out, but it was probably him. Then she looked at the name. It wasn’t quite the name he’d given.

  ‘This says Timon A. Horvat.’

  ‘Yes, is my birth name. But I use Aleksander, my middle name.’

  ‘When did you first come to the UK, Mr Horvat?’

  ‘September 2006.’

  ‘And you are an electrician, is that right?’

  He nodded. ‘Fully qualified Registered Competent Person Electrical register. BS 7671, the doggie’s bollocks. The full safety. Want to see document?’

  ‘No, we’re not here about that. It’s about your landlord, Mrs Knight. She’s gone missing.’

  ‘I have always pay rent. I have book.’ His worried face became even more hangdog.

  ‘I’m sure you have, Mr Horvat,’ Mulholland said. ‘But when did you last see her?’

  ‘Long time. When wash clothes machine upstairs leak was last time.’

  ‘When was that?’ PC Hodges asked.

  ‘Winter. January, maybe?’ Horvat haltingly explained that he’d only ever seen Mrs Knight about three times. Mulholland asked if it would be okay to bring in a couple of technicians for an hour or two to sample for her fingerprints and DNA.

  Horvat froze as if accused. ‘Why? She’s not here.’

  ‘It’s just a precaution, nothing to worry about,’ Hodges said. ‘We can do it while you’re at work.’

  ‘We’re also going to need to take a DNA sample from you,’ Claire said.

  At that he looked really horrified. ‘I have done nothing. I promise. I don’t want trouble.’

  It took several minutes of careful persuasion before Horvat was content to sit on a breakfast bar stool in the kitchen and let Mulholland take a cheek swab. He still wasn’t happy about it, and muttered to himself even as he let them out of the door.

  The two officers waited until they were outside on the street before talking. ‘He’s a jumpy thing, isn’t he?’ asked the PC.

  ‘Must have had some problem with the authorities to be that nervy.’ Mulholland smiled. ‘He’s not on the Police National Computer under the name on the lease – I tried yesterday. But having seen the passport I’m going to try some variations of his name on the PNC. And I’m going to get his dabs done, just in case.’

  * * *

  Once CSI had withdrawn from the Knights’ home and had restored everything as far as possible to how they had found it, DS Claire Mulholland and liaison officer Gabby Underwood arranged to show Oliver and Chloe Knight around, to see if they noticed anything unusual. As the two police officers pulled up in an unmarked car, they noticed a group of three teenage girls tying some flowers to the lamp post outside. The girls turned around hurriedly, as if what they were doing was wrong. Gabby, who was in uniform, called out to them. The girls – blonde, skinny and fashionably dressed – appeared to be about 14. They muttered inaudible replies and looked at their feet. One had tears running down her face.

  ‘Are you pupils at Mrs Knight’s school?’ Gabby asked. They nodded in reply, looking at each other for reassurance. ‘Did Mrs Knight teach you?’

  ‘She took me for history,’ the shortest of the three said. ‘We can’t believe what’s happened.’ The other two nodded in agreement. ‘She was really nice. Much better than most of them. She gave me a lift home the day my dad died.’

  ‘She ran the school chess club,’ said the tearful girl. ‘She let me beat her in the first game.’

  ‘She coached my sister in Spanish vocab in the sixth form,’ said the tallest. ‘She got into Oxford.’

  As the girls drifted away, Claire looked at the neatly written note on the post with the flowers, which after various endearments ended with one large word in crayon:

  Why?

  Claire Mulholland couldn’t but agree. That question went to the heart of the case. Something that would inevitably come up now that Oliver and his sister had arrived. CSI had restored everything as closely as possible to match the pictures they had taken upon entry. Little was said as they walked around downstairs, into all the various bedrooms except Liz’s, where the door was kept shut. They confirmed the discarded clothing in the second bedroom as their father’s and Chloe confirmed that her room was unchanged. Mulholland then led them into the garden and Martin Knight’s garden office. ‘Did you come into here much?’

  ‘Well, we’ve both been in,’ Oliver said. ‘It was my father’s bolthole, so as youngsters we weren’t encouraged. He kept it locked in later years after there had been an intruder one night. I suppose I must have come in a few times a year.’

  ‘Similarly for me,’ Chloe said. ‘If the intercom was broken, which it was most of the time, I’d go and call him in for dinner, stuff like that.’ Neither of them was able to say whether the office looked any different from usual.

  ‘Now there’s just one more room I’d like to take you to,’ Claire said. She took them back into the house, and upstairs into the main bedroom. The room smelled musty, and metallic. They both looked around, then Chloe said: ‘This is different.’

  ‘How is it different?’ Gillard asked. Neither Mulholland nor Gillard had mentioned to the Knight family where they suspected their mother was killed. Chloe stared at the green rug, recently returned from the lab.

  ‘There’s a Moroccan rug here, normally, not this old thing,’ Chloe said. ‘Isn’t there, Olly?’

  Oliver shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’

  Chloe looked again, lifted up the rug and then saw the bleached carpet underneath. Then her eyes widened and she dropped the rug. Her hands slid up to cover her mouth. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God. This is the place, isn’t it? Where it happened?’ Gillard watched her beautiful soft brown eyes fill with tears.

  ‘Let’s get you downstairs now,’ Gabby Underwood said, sliding an arm around Chloe’s waist. ‘And get you a cup of tea.’ She led a sobbing Chloe out of the room.

  Oliver looked at the carpet. ‘So the bleach means it was cleaned of bloodstains?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, we think so,’ Gillard said. He looked at Mulholland, who was scanning the son’s face for signs of guilt or recognition. But all either of the detectives could see was a growing realization that this was the place where his mother had died. Oliver shuddered and said: ‘I think I’d like a tea as well, please.’

  * * *

  It was after seven, and the last of the slanting Saturday evening light was gilding the operations room blinds. It was suddenly quiet enough for Gillard to hear the murmur of voices manning the phones at the far end. He looked up from his files and saw the printer was flashing a light. It needed paper, again, or maybe toner. Gillard got up, stuffed another ream into the big old Hewlett-Packard and set it going again. It went back to clattering out the last three months of Professor Martin Knight’s work emails that LSE’s Zakira Oglu had emailed him earlier.

  This was only going to be a tip of the information iceberg. Gillard had already asked DC Michelle Tsu to read all the emails separately recovered from Martin’s absent smartphone, and to pursue Oxford University for his emails going back to the start of his 2010–2012 affair with Natalie Krugman. That would take weeks, but it was in the last three months that Gillard expected to find some clue or hint as to why he might kill his wife. Finally, at nine o’clock, with all but the overnight crew gone, Gillard turned to the task he had been saving for himself: examining Knight’s enigmatic email correspondence with Dr Natalie Krugman. The American academic and feminist had finally ag
reed to Claire’s request for an interview, which coincided with a brief visit to London on Monday. Gillard wanted to know everything about her before then.

  There were plenty of conventional academic emails between the two, though all gave a hint of affection. But then, in April, there was a single thread over one evening which showed something that could be construed as conspiracy.

  From: Dr Natalie Krugman (natalie@krugmanunlimited.com)

  Received: 14 April 2016 15:01:17

  To: Martin Knight (KnightMProf@lse.ac.uk)

  Hey Marty,

  Great to speak last week. Things haven’t been great for me since. Thibault is getting v. clingy, and will fight to retain the LA house. So I’m back in NY again. It’s not ideal. Looking forward to better times. Spain! How I dream…

  Always yours

  Nel

  From: Martin Knight (KnightMProf@lse.ac.uk)

  Sent: 14 April 2016 15:08:22

  To: Dr Natalie Krugman (natalie@krugmanunlimited.com)

  Dearest Nel,

  Not so long to endure. I just have to deal with Liz, finally(!)

  Mxxxx

  From: Dr Natalie Krugman (natalie@krugmanunlimited.com)

  Received: 14 April 2016 15:13:19

  To: Martin Knight (KnightMProf@lse.ac.uk)

  Marty, seriously, the sooner the better for both of us.

  From: Martin Knight (KnightMProf@lse.ac.uk)

  Sent: 14 April 2016 15:13:54

  To: Dr Natalie Krugman (natalie@krugmanunlimited.com)

  Ah Nel. It’s not so simple, believe me. She is so smart.

  Mxxxx

  From: Dr Natalie Krugman (natalie@krugmanunlimited.com)

  Received: 14 April 2016 15:22:09

  To: Martin Knight (KnightMProf@lse.ac.uk)

  Not smarter than me, nor as horny: I’ll screw every last drop out of you. Remember Leeds? You’ll beg for mercy!

  Gillard made some notes: to cross-check the professor’s diary for trips to Leeds, and to get Shireen to more closely check the holiday home transaction. That enigmatic reference to ‘dealing with Liz’. It could be anything or nothing. If Martin Knight had been intending to kill her, it was a little foolish to make this reference in an email. It could just as easily be referring to asking for a divorce. Whatever it was, a few months later something got out of hand. There was a huge bloodstain under the carpet in Liz’s own bedroom to testify to that. Perhaps if Liz had discovered Martin’s rekindled affair with Krugman, that could have been the trigger for a final, brutal row. If so, there were three people he knew were involved: Liz, who was dead; Martin Knight, presumably on the run; and Natalie Krugman herself.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sunday, 23 October

  Sir Gerald Cunliffe’s home was tucked away amid a mature beech wood on a minor road that ran along the scarp slope of the North Downs. It was a Grade I listed Tudor thatched house with flint walls and a sweeping gravel drive. Gillard had looked it up as part of his research on Cunliffe. The man’s steps from Cambridge undergraduate lawyer to the highest echelons of the establishment were unfaltering: called to the Bar (Middle Temple) in 1988, Recorder by 1996, a Queen’s Counsel by 1998, High Court Queen’s Bench, Presiding Judge of the South-Eastern Circuit 2009–2012, and joined the Appeal Court in 2013, the same year as his knighthood.

  Gillard parked in front of the house, but got no reply when he used the brass door knocker. He wandered around the side and found the judge in a Victorian-style conservatory surrounded by stacks of legal files. A balding, ruddy-faced man with small, dark eyes that roved above half-moon spectacles, Cunliffe was dressed in a Led Zeppelin T-shirt and jeans. A can of Red Bull sat on the walnut-topped table. ‘Take a pew,’ he said, glancing up.

  Gillard sat down on a wicker chair, then took a tape recorder and notepad from his briefcase and placed them on the table. On the wall behind Cunliffe there was a framed photograph of a much younger man, electric guitar held on high in some crowded gig. Watching his gaze, the judge said: ‘Youthful aspirations, circa 1983. Sadly never fulfilled. Filing cabinets are the only heavy metal in my life now.’ The twitch of disappointment pulled Cunliffe’s mouth for barely a second. He took a stack of files from the table and slid them into one of three huge legal document cases that sat on the floor. ‘Just to be clear, I can’t talk to you about Girl F,’ he said, nodding at the tape recorder.

  ‘I’m not involved in the case.’

  ‘Be that as it may, don’t tell me anything and don’t ask me anything. Saves complications. My report’s coming out soon anyway.’

  ‘That’s fine. I just want you to tell me about Martin Knight, and about last Saturday.’

  ‘Pretty straightforward really. We’d had this long-running arrangement for fortnightly squash, and it was my turn to host. We went to the club near the village. He was there just at 11.30 a.m. We played for roughly half an hour, then had lunch in the clubhouse. I think he left at around 2.40 p.m.’

  ‘Did anything about him seem different?’

  ‘Not really, except his energy. He was playing better than usual. He also seemed happier than I’d seen him for a while.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ Cunliffe leaned back with his arms behind his head, ‘I’ve known Martin for a long time. We went up to Jesus together.’ Seeing the look of bewilderment on Gillard’s face, he clarified. ‘Don’t worry I’m not religious, thank God.’ He permitted himself a self-congratulatory nod. ‘Jesus College, Cambridge. And I was there on the evening that he and Liz met.’

  ‘So you knew her too?’

  ‘Oh God, yes. Martin rather fancied himself as a Ted Hughes figure, and affected this hurried gait with an enormous second-hand coat flapping around like some wild, windswept crow. He was neither tall enough nor handsome enough to carry it off in quite the way Hughes did, and his poems…well frankly they were execrable, but he grew his hair long, and held fort at, Christ, can’t remember what the pub is called now. Can you believe it? I must have spent several undergraduate months lying semi-conscious on its floor in the sawdust, and can’t remember the bloody name.’

  The judge leaned forward with a glint in his eye, and gestured conspiratorially to Gillard. ‘Anyway, Martin was trying to avoid buying his round by telling some long ghost tale about this bombed-out house his parents had bought in London, when in walks this extraordinarily pretty girl with wavy dark hair, with a whole gang of comely friends, and Martin spies her and said: “And the ghost took the form of an angel with dimpled cheeks and… My God! There she is!” and leapt to his feet pointing his empty glass at Liz.’

  Gillard caught his own smile. Oh yes, he could see her.

  ‘Quick as a flash she held up her arms and declaimed: “And sir, I have come from the very pit of hell, the kitchen of Corpus Christi, to visit upon ye drunken rogues the pox of the never-filled pint.” She hammed it up a bit, but it was very quick, and there was a round of applause. Martin bought the round, and a glass of wine for her, and at her insistence some particular packet of crisps she liked. God, what are they called? You can’t get them any more…

  ‘Twists?’ supplied Gillard.

  ‘Yes! That’s it, well done. Anyway, they were always a couple after that. So anytime anyone wanted to chat her up, and there were quite a few, believe you me… I mean, she was quite something in those days…’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Gillard said. He could.

  ‘… they would always begin by offering her a bag of…what was it again?’

  ‘Twists.’

  ‘Right. Wonderful days, honestly.’ Sir Gerald beamed at the reminiscence, then looked up. ‘Anyway, Martin and Liz were the golden couple. She was quite the cleverest woman I ever met,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘I am mortified that she is dead. If I could be forgiven some inadmissible hearsay, I have to say I find it impossible, just impossible, to believe that my friend Martin Knight could have done anything remotely like this.’

  ‘You were saying he looked happier than he
had for a long time.’

  ‘Yes, well. He’d hinted at unhappiness in his marriage in recent years, which I thought was sad—’

  ‘Did he talk about any of his affairs?’ Gillard interrupted.

  ‘Well he wouldn’t have done with me because of my loyalty to Liz.’

  ‘Your loyalty?’

  ‘Yes. He knew I’d been in love with her all through college. Ever since she played the Moonlight Sonata on the college piano for me on my birthday.’ He paused, and Gillard realized he could now see a reflection of the window in his small eyes. ‘Still am, in a way. So he wouldn’t risk causing me conflicted loyalties by telling me things. But, yes, I heard on the grapevine, and I didn’t like it one bit. I don’t know really what happened between them, but I think he was a bloody fool to want to leave her.’ Sir Gerald reached into his pocket, produced a monogrammed cotton handkerchief and trumpeted a blast, which he wiped away vigorously.

  ‘He wanted to leave her?’

  ‘That’s what I heard. And run off with that feminist harridan. What’s her name?’

  ‘Natalie Krugman?’

  ‘Yes. Martin’s life has always been littered with unexploded emotional ordnance, but Ms Krugman… Well, I met her at one of Martin and Liz’s parties at Oxford. A one-woman minefield. Sexy as hell, but absolutely bloody lethal.’

  As Craig left, and drove away down the long, sweeping drive, he reflected that for all his wealth and power, Cunliffe had something in common with him. A big Liz-shaped hole in his life.

  * * *

  Mulholland looked up as Gillard walked back into the incident room. ‘Our Mr Horvat is a naughty boy,’ she said. ‘Nothing on the PNC as Aleksander Horvat, but Timon A. Horvat, a taxi driver in Hull in 2007, was cautioned about inappropriate behaviour with a 14-year-old girl. He’s on the child protection register.’