by Jane Adams
‘That would make time of death around midday.’
‘No, that would make my rough estimate around midday. When was the body found?’
‘Two fifteen, two twenty or thereabouts. The call came in at two thirty-seven. Mobile phones don’t do so well around here. The pair who found her had to go back to the farm on the main road and call in on a land line.’
Peterson frowned. ‘They claim to have received their tip-off at around one this afternoon. The call was made from a telephone box in Honiton.’
Mike had been looking more closely at the trail of blood. ‘I’d have expected more spattering. More spread. The blood’s run in just this one stream.’
The police surgeon looked impressed. ‘I was coming to that. You’re quite right, arterial blood usually spurts in all directions. Maybe our man was intent on not getting his clothes dirty. Maybe to keep to our timescale, he couldn’t allow himself time to change.’
‘So she was already dead when he brought her here?’ Peterson asked.
‘No, I didn’t say that. What it probably means is that he reduced the pressure sufficiently for it not to spurt. My guess, and it’s only a guess as yet, is he wanted the effect without getting himself covered.’ He paused, his mouth curved with distaste. ‘To put it bluntly, he drew off sufficient to lower the pressure before he even got her here. Then he arranged things neatly and finished the job.’
Mike felt sick. Murder he had dealt with many times, but Jake Bowen had the knack of going well beyond previous experience.
‘Well, then, we’ve answered one question,’ Peterson said harshly. ‘Poor kid certainly didn’t walk here.’
He turned away and Mike followed him back up onto the path.
‘The Jacksons are letting us have use of their barn as an incident room. Just as well! We’d never get a mobile up those narrow lanes and I’m pulling in all the extra bodies they’ll let me have, posting a twenty-four-hour, two-man patrol to keep the trophy hunters at bay.’ Mike nodded. ‘I don’t envy the night shift,’ he commented. ‘This hole’s bleak enough in daylight.’
‘What daylight?’ Peterson gestured. ‘It’s all just bloody dead. Downright weird if you ask me.’ He paused again as though not sure how to say what he had in mind. ‘Do you believe in spirit of place, Mike? You know, you’ll go somewhere and it’ll feel wrong.’ He went on without waiting for an answer. ‘This place. I mean, it’s like it’s been waiting here, all this time, just for something like this to happen.’
He laughed, trying to dispel the notion.
‘I’ve known places like that,’ Mike said quietly. ‘There was one I came across when I first worked in East Anglia. A place called The Greenway. It was only a pathway, with these damned great hedges either side of it, but there was always this feeling about it. Something that said we didn’t belong there.’
Peterson smiled. ‘It’s getting to all of us, isn’t it? We know so much about this man and yet the more we know, the further away he seems to get. Damn it, Mike, we even know the bugger’s name. No wonder the bloody press are making us a laughing stock. Four deaths and he’s pre-warned us about each one. And we’re no bloody closer.’
Mike nodded in silent sympathy. It had all been said and he had nothing to add, but Peterson wasn’t finished.
‘It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see in some American slasher movie. You know, some place where crossing the county line actually means something, and with so much bloody space the states are like separate countries. But I mean, look at this. A goddamned wood in the middle of Dorset and we’re chasing this psycho who even has the cheek to send us photo locations before he commits the crime.’
He reached into his pocket, withdrew copies of three photographs and held them out in front of Mike, who didn’t bother to look.
‘It could have been anywhere,’ Mike said quietly. ‘A few fallen trees and a bit of a bush. Nothing to set it aside from a thousand other places across the country, not until you see the real thing.’
Peterson shook his head and continued to regard the pictures, comparing them to the actual scene. Then he shoved them back in his pocket. ‘I know. You’re right,’ he said. ‘Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, but you think our bosses are going to look at it that way? Or the media? Or Joe Public? Damn it, Mike. One man and he’s got most of the population locking themselves in after the Six o’clock News every night.’
He sighed, rubbed tired eyes with the heels of his hands, then straightened himself up. ‘Get yourself back to Dorchester, find out how the interviews with our friends from the press are going. I’ll see things are finished up here.’
Mike nodded. ‘One thing’s for certain,’ he said wryly. ‘Mr Ed Macey finally got his exclusive.’
Chapter Three
The murder in the woods near Honiton, just above the Jacksons’ farm at Colwell Barton, had made the national evening news. At that point, no connection had been made between this and the three others attributed to Bowen, but, as had become typical, Jake Bowen himself had drawn public attention to his latest escapade.
The pictures of Liz and Macey standing in the woods surrounded by half-burnt candles appeared in two of the morning editions of the tabloids.
Liz found Macey staring at the front pages scattered over the top of his desk.
‘You’ve seen them then?’
‘What do you think?’ He looked up at her, then pushed an office chair in her direction. ‘Sit down before you fall down. Christ, you look bad!’
‘Thanks a bunch. I didn’t sleep, OK? You got a cigarette?’
‘Thought you’d given up.’
He pushed the packet towards her. Liz was new to this game, a mere trainee. He wondered, looking at her pale face and red eyes, if she’d be changing her mind on a career in journalism. Most kids at her stage of the game were writing Local Notes on the village fete, not encountering dead bodies in remote woodland. Her hands trembled as she sparked up and she drew a deep, unsteady breath before managing a weak smile.
‘I’ll be OK,’ she said.
‘Sure you will. Sure you will. We’ve been summoned to another chat with Detective Inspector Michael Croft later this morning. Dumb shit probably wants to accuse me of taking these.’ He gestured angrily at the tabloid pictures. ‘God, Liz, but I wish I bloody had. I truly do.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Don’t I? All my working life I’ve waited for something like this. It falls in my lap and I can’t take advantage. There’s no justice. No bloody justice at all.’ Liz said nothing; she was learning to take little notice of Macey’s bluster. Instead, she pulled the pictures towards her, trying to be calm.
‘He’d have to think you were some kind of cool shit to have taken these,’ she said. ‘Stood there with a dead body, set the camera on a timer and posed with that real shocked look on your fat face.’
She broke down then, covering her face with her cigarette-free hand and sobbing bitterly, still deep in shock.
‘He was there, Macey. There in the woods watching us all the time. We could be dead by now, don’t you understand that? You’re going on about missing the chance of a lifetime and we could be fucking dead.’
Macey reached out and put what he hoped was a comforting hand on Liz’s shoulder. She was right; he just didn’t want to tell himself that. The two pictures that had been spread right across the front pages of the morning news showed the clearing in the gully shadowed by trees and slightly unfocused, as though to preserve some sense of decency. But clear enough and in the foreground, the shock and disbelief on their faces so plainly written, stood Liz and Macey.
June 19
The morning news was full of it. Maria Lucas had watched it on the television: the pictures of the latest Bowen outrage and the predictable responses from anyone and everyone who could wangle a little airtime.
Library pictures showed Chief Superintendent Peterson speaking at an earlier press call and Mike Croft, almost out of shot, looking as though he’d slept
in his suit and had not shaved for at least a week.
It was, Maria mused, about the only time she got to see him these days. Brief glimpses caught as he sought to avoid the press photographers or the TV cameras. She knew from the odd times they had managed to talk that the strain of conducting this investigation so much in the public eye was becoming unbearable.
The phone rang. She picked it up on the second ring. ‘Oh, good morning, John. Yes, I saw him. I guess this puts paid to our plans this weekend.’
She could hear John Tynan’s smile. ‘That’s the penalty for being involved with a policeman, my dear. Seriously though, it’s a nasty business.’
Maria sighed. ‘Isn’t it always? I was going to give you a call later anyway, see if you were free tonight.’
‘Yes, I think so. What did you have in mind?’
‘Essie,’ Maria told him. ‘Jo’s still in the hospital, likely to stay there until this baby’s born, and, as you know, Essie’s still at my momma’s place. I thought I’d give everyone a break and take her to see the latest Disney or something.’
‘And you’re not keen on facing it alone? No, certainly I’ll come. I’d love to. Essie’s a pleasure, though are you sure Disney isn’t a bit tame for her? I thought space aliens with big guns were more up her street.’
Maria laughed. ‘Probably, but as she’s only five I think we might have problems getting her in. Anyway, I’ll find out the times and give you a ring around lunchtime. That’s if I get a lunchtime.’
‘Heavy workload?’
‘You wouldn’t believe it. Prozac must be the in fix this season.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘OK, got to go, John. Catch you later.’
She rang off and began to get her notes in order. Maybe, she thought, if Mike was going to be tied up all weekend, she should offer to have Essie. Maria’s sister, Jo, was expecting her second child and, with high blood pressure and oedema, was having something of a rough time. It would be a load off everyone’s mind if Auntie Maria stepped into the breach.
* * *
Mike and Peterson watched the officers file out after the morning briefing. The barn which had been commandeered as their incident room was hardly ideal. No animals, but the place was still half-filled with hay bales and feed sacks piled against one wall. The flagstone floor struck cold even on the summer morning and Mike was glad that at least this was not happening in the middle of winter.
There was electricity in the barn, or rather there were two overhead lights. A generator was promised for later that morning to power essential equipment, and it had not yet been decided if this should be set up as a long-term incident room or just a temporary feature. That would depend on what was found at the crime scene, what witnesses came forward and on Jake Bowen’s next move.
Two cats lounged in the patch of sunlight that poured through the open door. Eight thirty, but the last of the mist had evaporated and the day was already hot. The bright sunlight threw the rest of the barn into deep shadow and Mike turned the pin-board he was setting up towards the light to give himself a clearer view. He was pinning up pictures of the scene in the woods and of Jake Bowen’s previous known victims. There were others, still unproven, filling a stack of files and untold disk space back at Honiton and elsewhere, but, Mike figured, to display that would take more than a pin-board and be a task too depressing to even attempt.
Peterson pulled out a chair, reversed it and sat down. He’d let Mike handle the morning briefing and assign the search teams and two local mobile units to carry out the door-to-door inquiries. Neighbours were well scattered, a few along the single track road, more placed well back along rutted lanes or accessible only on foot.
It was a task complicated by the number of visitors. The farm across the valley and a couple of others further along the road had been given over to the tourist trade.
Folk just there on holiday and intent on relaxing and enjoying themselves probably wouldn’t notice the unusual if it got up and hit them in the face. Many would be in residence only at the ends of the day, not be around to see murders committed at noon. Add to this, as they’d found out the night before, that there were at least four well-established footpaths into the woods, with as many offshoots from each one. When Jake Bowen had chosen what looked like a public time and a public place, he’d certainly known exactly what he was about.
Peterson looked across to where Mike was pinning the photographs.
‘Four murder victims,’ he said, ‘in five months.’
‘That we know of.’
‘Don’t make life complicated, Mike. OK, four that we can prove. And not a bloody thing to connect them.’
‘We can add the Norwich rapes,’ Mike persisted, carefully aligning one of the photographs with the edge of the board. ‘Three of them anyway, and the woman at Kennet in Wiltshire, Marion O’Donnel, all late last year. Whatever else he might be, our man’s no slouch.’
Peterson got up, came across to where Mike was standing and began to sort through the notes and pictures lying on the table. It had been Mike Croft’s involvement with a spate of violent attacks on women on his home patch of Norwich that had first brought him into contact with Jake Bowen. That had been at the tail end of the previous year. Peterson himself had become involved in early February of this, when a young woman had been found brutally murdered in a Bristol park. With the turning of the year, Jake Bowen had moved west.
‘You spoke to the two reporters last night,’ Peterson said. ‘First impressions?’
Mike thought about it. Ed Macey and Liz Corran’s statements had been analysed at the morning’s briefing. Peterson was after a personal response.
‘The caller asked for Macey,’ he commented. ‘That’s typical Bowen behaviour, pick on someone specific, someone local, someone who’s likely to want to get involved.’
‘Wouldn’t that go for any reporter?’
‘Maybe, but Macey’s been working on provincials all his life.’ Mike shrugged. ‘Some people would like it that way, but I think not Edward Macey. He talked last night about looking for a break into the big time before it was too late.’ He paused, pinned up an enlargement of the wound in the victim’s throat. ‘The young woman, Liz Corran, I think we can see her presence as incidental to Bowen’s plans. I’m sure he wanted Macey as a witness and went to great lengths to get him there.’
‘Which, betting on Bowen following his previous pattern, means he might well make contact again.’
‘He might,’ Mike agreed. ‘The officers who interviewed Macey’s associates say he’s apparently in the habit of mouthing off in his local when he’s had a few. Goes on about how he could have been working on one of the nationals if he’d had the right breaks or the right connections.’
‘And that’s just the thing Jake Bowen would be on the lookout for.’ Peterson nodded. ‘And asking round here if there’d been any strangers in the local pubs would get us laughed out of court. We’re in the middle of the bloody tourist season.’
‘Not quite.’ Mike smiled wryly and went to fill the kettle from the tap on the wall. They hadn’t asked, but had assumed that this was drinking water. At any rate, it tasted all right in tea. ‘The real tourist season begins when the schools finish. That’s the third week in July around here, so it’s worth asking. We’ll get a list of conflicting information a mile long, especially as Macey’s “local” could be any one of three or four pubs, but I’ve got a couple of officers on to it.’
Peterson nodded. ‘Have you spoken to Maria yet?’
‘No. She was out when I called last night. I’ll have another go mid-afternoon. She generally grabs ten minutes or so then.’
Peterson shook his head. ‘I think my wife’s forgotten who I am,’ he said. Then, ‘So what do we have? A woman caller. Asks for Ed Macey and gives him a map reference and a time and tells him that there’ll be something useful waiting for him.’
‘Yes. She sounded drunk, Macey said, and wouldn’t answer any of his questions.’
Peterson took a copy of
Macey’s statement from the table, glancing through it. ‘He mentions that she kept giggling and breaking off to confirm with another person that she’d got it right.’ He dropped the statement back on the table. ‘I mean, anyone else would have reckoned it to be a wind-up and put the phone down.’
‘But not Macey. He wanted this to be real. The caller only had to mention Jake Bowen’s name and he’d be there, on the line with the worm in his mouth.’
‘I agree.’ Peterson frowned. ‘We know how thorough our man is. It’s obvious he’s talked to Macey or at the very least observed him.’
Mike shrugged. ‘Macey is not what you’d call a quiet man,’ he commented. ‘My guess is, with a few pints inside him, you could sit way across the saloon bar and still not need to read lips to know what was on his mind.’
‘So that leaves the woman. The call came in at one p.m. and we’re assuming our victim had probably been dead for around an hour by then.’ He paused and reached across to see to the kettle, which had just come up to the boil. ‘So we have to ask ourselves, does Bowen have a friend or relative living in the area? Someone to make the call for him. Did he meet some woman in the pub and get her drunk, tell her it was some kind of a prank?’ He dunked tea-bags in the mugs and then handed one to Mike. ‘I don’t like what you’re thinking.’
Mike took the mug. ‘Neither do I,’ he said, ‘but we both know Bowen’s record. He’s too thorough, too organized, to use someone he just picked up in a pub, unless he was very certain they’d not talk about it. A friend? Relative? Maybe. My bet is, though, whoever made that call is going to be Bowen’s next kill.’
Chapter Four
Mike drove out to Dorchester to speak with Liz and Macey. He found Macey sitting in a side office behind a desk piled high with newspaper clippings and handwritten notes.
‘All the stuff I have so far on Jake Bowen,’ Macey told him. ‘I’ve even got you in amongst that lot somewhere.’
