The Body in the Marsh

by Nick Louth

  ‘What about the blow to the head?’ Mulholland asked.

  Delahaye shook his head. ‘Post-mortem trauma.’

  ‘We did that,’ Gillard conceded. ‘Getting him down.’

  ‘However, there are other matters which muddy the water somewhat,’ Delahaye said. He looked at the two detectives, his glasses glinting coldly in the light.

  ‘Beneath the ligature mark of the rope is another narrower and deeper mark which follows a somewhat different trajectory. Here.’ He pointed to a purple crease at about the level of a shirt collar. ‘This is consistent with a different and, I think, earlier ligature from that which was found on his neck.’

  ‘I’m sorry, are you saying that he tried a different noose first?’ Mulholland asked.

  ‘No, the angle doesn’t work for a suspended body,’ Delahaye said. ‘It’s quite difficult to see because of the post-mortem fingerprints, third-party blood, dust and other contaminants.’ He looked up at them accusingly. ‘As we can all agree, this was a somewhat confused and poorly controlled crime scene. However, I think what we have is evidence of prior strangulation. The lack of observable texture on the skin hints that an electrical cable was used.’

  ‘So it wasn’t suicide?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘In my judgment, no. I think fatal asphyxiation was administered by another person. The hanging was probably only five minutes or so post-mortem. It’s an attempt to disguise murder as suicide.’

  ‘There would be no end of people with a motive to kill him,’ Mulholland said.

  ‘Well, we may even find out who. In cases where there is some suggestion of victim fight back, my first port of call is taking samples from under the nails. Mr Smith’s nails were quite short, but on the left index finger I think I have a useful sample which appears to include a little blood. Hopefully we can then find out who it was.’

  Gillard left the mortuary at 6.45 p.m., feeling optimistic. That was punctured within a minute of emerging into the car park, when he took an urgent call from Alison Rigby’s secretary Jill Collins. She told him he was to come to the ACC’s office in Mount Browne immediately, along with everyone else on the Girl F team. Radar Dobbs was already there.

  ‘I’m a good hour or more away,’ Gillard said. ‘Any clue what it’s about?’

  ‘Put it this way,’ Jill said, conspiratorially. ‘There has been a momentous development on Girl F. Graham Coldrick has just this minute resigned as our chief constable.

  Chapter Thirty

  Gillard and Mulholland blue-lighted their way to Guildford through the tail end of the evening rush hour. They got there in 50 minutes, and after walking through the largely empty corridors of Mount Browne’s main building joined Dobbs in what was effectively the antechamber to Rigby’s office. ‘She’s been on the phone to the IPCC for an hour,’ Dobbs said. ‘She’s had me waiting the whole time.’ If the complaints commission was involved, it really could be momentous.

  ‘Have you picked up any signals, Brian?’ He realized this turn of phrase for a man known as Radar would not be welcome. ‘Was it Smith’s suicide?’

  ‘Nothing except rumours.’ He rubbed his left ear.

  Secretary Jill Collins came out, and led them into Rigby’s office where the ACC was on the phone, just saying a terse goodbye to somebody. The atmosphere was distinctly chilly, and the three detectives found themselves standing in a line, eyes front, as if this was a military inspection.

  Rigby leaned back and surveyed them. ‘Some new evidence has emerged into the public domain on the Girl F case – damning evidence that compounds the damage caused to this police force from previous errors in the investigation.’

  ‘What evidence, ma’am?’ asked Dobbs.

  ‘I’ll get to that. The upshot of this is that the chief constable has brought forward his retirement to today. I will be assuming day-to-day control of the force, and I will also be taking an even more active role in damage limitation.’ She put on her glasses and looked at a document on her desk. ‘Harry Smith left several packages with his solicitor Samira Jindal which were to be posted in the event of his death. Once she heard of the supposed suicide, Ms Jindal rang Coldrick and told him that she had carried out her client’s wishes.’

  This doesn’t sound good, Craig thought.

  Rigby stood and came to stand in front of her desk, which caused them all to step back. ‘One of those packages went to the IPCC, the other to the Daily Mail. They contained data sticks with images of child abuse on them. There were also several photographic enlargements of a few of those images and a covering letter which alleges that they show Girl F actually being abused by a senior serving member of this constabulary.’

  ‘Coldrick, ma’am?’ Mulholland gasped.

  ‘No, thank God. Not that senior. The newspaper was kind enough to courier the package to us, though undoubtedly they expect an inside track on the story in exchange. The officer in question has been suspended, his home raided under my instruction, and his computers seized. We are urgently seeking his whereabouts.’ She gave them all the glacial blue stare in turn. ‘The fallout of this development is going to be enormous. This was an officer whom we trusted, and who, for all his obvious failings as a modern policeman, was still allowed to lead major cases. We have to find him now.’

  I know who it is, Craig realized. Of course.

  Rigby continued: ‘His early involvement in the investigation of the Girl F case will be an enormous embarrassment to this force for many years to come.’

  ‘It’s Paddy Kincaid, isn’t it?’ Craig said.

  Rigby glared at him. ‘Yes. Just hearing his name makes me want to vomit. Craig, I’m putting you in charge of the pursuit. You know the man better than most. Time to redeem yourself.’ She turned back to the others. ‘Fortunately, Coldrick falling on his sword may make it a little easier for the rest of us, if we can get Kincaid quickly. This is to remain highly confidential. We won’t be able to keep the media at bay for long, but if we can manage a few days we might be able to get Kincaid charged first. Being proactive is vital.’

  * * *

  He may only have had a few hours head start, but Kincaid had well and truly gone to ground. He’d last been seen at lunchtime, leaving Caterham on foot. No police vehicles had been taken, and his own car was parked outside his house. Quick checks showed he wasn’t at home, his father’s house or with his in-laws. His grown-up sons and daughter drew a blank, as did the rugby club. Gillard reckoned he’d not have a friend left in the force when they knew what he was accused of. Gillard only had a small team: DC Michelle Tsu for the ring-around from the office, and two uniformed constables to do the legwork.

  Three hours in, all the really obvious places had been checked. And then Gillard had a brainwave. Where could Kincaid go that he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed? Simple and obvious when you think about it.

  * * *

  It was gone 2 a.m. when Craig eased his unmarked Ford down a familiar car-crowded street of terraced houses in Croydon. With him, in plain clothes, were PC Tiana Clore, a tough Barbadian built like Serena Williams, and PC Finlay Skinner, a rangy young male of 19. They carried little of the weighty kit which identifies a copper, just torch and Taser. This was all about speed and surprise. The keys to Harry Smith’s house were supposed to have been in the Girl F evidence drawer, but of course they weren’t. When Gillard had relayed his suspicions, Rigby had ruled out a fully resourced stake-out, which would attract press attention. ‘Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey,’ she had said.

  As they cruised along, Skinner used the dashboard ANPR camera to check up on the parked cars. ‘That Ford Ka belongs to Kincaid’s daughter,’ he said. It was outside Harry Smith’s house, now boarded up with metal security sheets.

  Gillard grimaced. ‘And we know she’s at home in Farnborough.’ He had always thought Denise Kincaid was a shifty individual. Covering for her dad while he borrowed her car was perhaps understandable, but she’d go down as an accessory. The difficulty now would be getting in quietly, knowing how
many pieces of home security equipment Smith’s home boasted. Fortunately, the previous warrant was still valid.

  Parking round the corner, the trio approached on foot: Gillard down the long alleyway that ran behind, the other two on the main street. He peered over the back fence at the familiar patio with its rusting trampoline, sagging at one side, broken plastic kiddie slide and wooden shed. Movement sensors triggered the patio lights, and he quickly withdrew once he had seen the reflection of the security grille locked in place behind the unrepaired French windows. No quick exit here. The whole team could go in from the front. Gillard and Skinner left Tiana Clore as lookout, then slid silently up to Harry Smith’s front door. The police padlock which had secured it was gone.

  There was no warning shout, no knock at the door. Just Skinner’s jemmy levering the already damaged door. Three attempts and they were in. Craig hit the light switch and bounded upstairs, while Skinner raced to the rear lounge. Somewhere a sash window rumbled open. Then came a crashing metallic sound. Craig tore through to a first-floor back bedroom and looked out of an open window to where the patio lights once again blazed. Kincaid, in track suit and trainers, was already in the garden and scrambled over the fence into the back alley. How had he jumped down the dozen feet without injury?

  Of course – the trampoline, which had been within ten feet of the back of the house. And he’d tipped it over after him to block pursuit. Gillard wasn’t going to attempt that jump, but he had a secret weapon. He ran to the front door and bellowed: ‘Tiana, cut him off, right-hand end of the alley.’

  Tiana Clore exploded past him, a dark streak thundering up the street and out of view, parallel to Kincaid’s rightward sprint along the alley. She had represented Barbados in the heptathlon in the London Olympics, and the 200 metres was her best distance: personal best 21 seconds dead.

  Gillard shouted to Skinner, rushed out of the front door, and into the garden. They were just scaling the back fence to the alley when they heard Kincaid’s gasping breath. Pulling themselves up over the fence, they saw him sprint along the alley past them, heading left, pursued by a black missile called Tiana. Two seconds before impact, a breathless Kincaid whirled around and pulled out a pistol. Glock, semi-automatic, it looked like.

  ‘He’s armed!’ Gillard bellowed. But Tiana was faster. ‘Taser!’ she yelled, and a bright jolt of light arced around Kincaid, followed by his roar of agony as he jerked, the gun spinning away as he dropped. When Gillard got to him, Kincaid was lying face down in a puddle of his own urine. Now conscious, the detective superintendent was emptying his considerable vocabulary of racial and sexual slurs against Tiana while she knelt on his back. She had a little smile on her face as she used a thumb lock grip to force his arm so far up that Gillard feared she might dislocate it.

  * * *

  Alison Rigby had Surrey Police on overdrive. Within an hour of Kincaid’s arrest, a terse pre-prepared statement was issued to the press saying that a 53-year-old male from Surrey had been arrested in connection with an allegation of child abuse. No mention of Girl F was made in the statement, nor that the unnamed man arrested was a policeman. As intended, the item was largely ignored in the media, despite the coverage given to speculation that Coldrick’s retirement was something to do with the Girl F case. Next day she approached Devon and Cornwall Police to bring in an independent team to examine the allegations, even though the IPCC had yet to officially react to its package of child abuse images.

  In the subsequent days the new acting chief constable brought the fear of God to the entire staff at Mount Browne. She strode quietly through the hallowed gothic halls, sitting in randomly on meetings, joining smokers as they gathered behind the communal bins, talking to trainees and receptionists, her transfixing blue stare always framed in dark eyeshadow. She directed the media effort too, crucial now to save the force’s reputation. A Channel 4 camera crew sometimes scurried round after her on her rounds, part of a hurriedly arranged documentary to run in the summer.

  It took a week for the full story of Kincaid’s abuse to break, led by the Daily Mail, which also secured an exclusive interview with Rigby on the fight to bring in 21st-century policing. She deflected most questions on Kincaid’s arrest on the grounds it was an ongoing investigation, but deftly referred to it as a ‘historic case of abuse from someone in a position of trust’. It cleverly made the case sound a lot older than it was.

  Faced with the reality of the images, Kincaid confessed. He was the enforcer ‘McGinley’ that Horvat had mentioned. He admitted to four sample counts of abusing Girl F, to tipping off Horvat that the police raid was coming, and to stealing and destroying evidence from Horvat’s data stick. He also admitted the theft of a Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol from the Surrey and Sussex Police Tactical Firearms Unit. Finally, after prolonged and dogged questioning by Radar Dobbs, he confessed that it was he who had gone to visit Harry Smith the night before the police raid, ostensibly to tip him off. When Smith’s back was briefly turned, Kincaid strangled the smaller man with a length of electrical cable he’d brought for the purpose. The flex wasn’t long enough to hang Smith from the banister, but when rooting around in the house he found a length of rope which was.

  Dobbs’s thorough interrogation managed to confirm what Gillard had suspected. It was Kincaid who, after killing Smith, had unlocked all the locks and bolts at the rear of the house to facilitate his own entry six hours later. Even the garden gate bolt had been slid back ready. Volunteering to get the warrant late on a Sunday had allowed him to manipulate the timing of the raid, and as the most senior officer he was effortlessly able to allocate tasks that suited him.

  As Gillard sat with the newly promoted DI Claire Mulholland in the Mount Browne refectory, he reflected on how cleverly Kincaid had played everyone’s expectations: ‘His motive for being on the raid was unimpeachable. No one could doubt that his career had been ruined by the failure to properly investigate the Girl F case.’

  ‘When in fact he was deliberately hampering the investigation even prior to 2009,’ Mulholland said. ‘Losing statements, failing to follow up leads, because to do otherwise would inexorably have led his subordinates to him.’

  ‘Exactly. And being first into Smith’s home, deliberately cutting his hand on the glass and getting Aaron Gibson to follow him in, allowed him to mess up the crime scene so comprehensively that any DNA of his from the murder would be put down to later contamination.’

  ‘He didn’t allow for Dr Delahaye’s skill in disentangling two different types of strangulation,’ Mulholland added.

  ‘No, but even then he had a defence,’ Gillard said. ‘Few would have really blamed Kincaid for killing Smith if his motive was anger at the abuse of Girl F and the destruction of his career. I had suspected that was what was driving him. But I never guessed that Kincaid wanted Smith dead to silence him. The same reason he wanted Horvat abroad. To bury his own involvement as an abuser.’

  * * *

  When Craig walked out of the refectory, intending to drive back to Caterham, he was ambushed by Rigby who was just emerging from a meeting.

  ‘Ah, just the man I want to see. Follow me.’

  In her new and tastefully redecorated chief constable’s office she leaned against her desk and reached behind her for the large plastic jar. She unscrewed the lid, dipped her fingers in, and popped a brown orb in her mouth, crunching it noisily.

  Craig was momentarily frozen in shock. So that’s what the jar was for.

  ‘Maltesers,’ she said. ‘A middle-aged vice. Want one?’ She offered him the jar.

  Craig took one and ate it. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So Craig, the media are being rather kind to us.’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘I feared the suspicion in the press would always be that someone in Surrey Police knew that Kincaid was abusing girls and covered it up.’ She crunched another Malteser thoughtfully. ‘Instead, they have charitably taken the line I wanted: just one rotten egg in an otherwise decent basket.’
>
  ‘I think that’s true, ma’am.’

  ‘Luckily Professor Knight seems too busy hiding to throw any rotten eggs of his own.’

  ‘Ma’am.’ Oh God, here it comes.

  ‘And speaking of which, here we are once again, Detective Chief Inspector Gillard.’ She went behind her desk and picked up some papers.

  ‘Ma’am.’ He didn’t know what else to say. It was clearly another of her rhetorical questions.

  ‘It’s been six months, almost. Martin Knight is still out there somewhere, making us look stupid. And next week, so I hear, the funeral of Mrs Knight takes place.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. The coroner gave his permission. Though he’s hanging onto the body parts to match with any others that show up.’

  ‘It would have been a good time to find him, wouldn’t it? And ideally, the rest of her. But I think we need a fresh pair of eyes. Or perhaps ears.’ She smiled at some little private joke. ‘I’m appointing DCI Dobbs to lead the case. You will instead be looking at our backlog of unsolved cases. Here.’ She passed over a thick file. Craig looked through them with mounting incredulity. Burglaries, a notorious off-and-on domestic abuse case, a sheaf of criminal damage reports and a stolen motorcycle.

  ‘Think of it as penance for not telling me you dated a murder victim.’

  * * *

  It was a freezing February morning, and Gillard turned up the car heater to maximum. He was parked across the road from St John’s parish church in Caterham, watching Liz Knight’s funeral cortège arrive. Three black limousines and a line of private cars. This was a private affair, and Gillard had not been invited, but he had called in sick to Mount Browne so he could watch from a distance. Oliver Knight appeared dignified as he helped his sister out of the car, and then Liz’s parents Tom and Geraldine Bishopsford. He spotted Helen Jennings, Lord Justice Cunliffe, even the infuriating Jimmy Bartram. The funeral director removed a huge spray of white lilies so that the coffin could be slid easily from the hearse. Somewhere among the many floral tributes would be his own flower selections – a wreath of red roses sent anonymously, as well as a more traditional wreath. ‘With deepest condolences, Surrey Police.’