“So he continued stabbing her after she was dead?” Brock prompted.
“Yes.”
“Was there a struggle?”
“There was a lot of activity, obviously, but whether she resisted him . . . I couldn’t say.”
“Was she restrained in some way?”
“I think her thumbs were tied together—there’s deep bruising and tearing of the flesh of one thumb and the remains of a thin cord round the other.”
The thick curtains and carpets in the room seemed to absorb all sound from outside, so that a heavy silence filled the pauses in the doctor’s account. Kathy was conscious of a ringing in her ears.
“Was she sexually assaulted?” Brock said.
The doctor nodded. “There is extensive vaginal and anal bruising. But hardly any traces of semen. They’re still working with the UV light, but I couldn’t be sure there was any at all. He washed her, afterwards.”
“Washed her?”
“Yes, that’s how it looks. There was a wet face flannel in the bathroom, and the sheet beneath her is wet.”
Another pause, longer, as if the doctor were becoming increasingly reluctant to go on.
“What about time of death?” Brock asked.
The doctor shrugged. “Maybe twelve to fifteen hours . . . say between midnight and dawn.”
“And her face?”
“That was done after she was dead. He made a cut from ear to ear, under her chin, then pulled the skin back up to her hairline. He didn’t do it very neatly. Possibly the blade wasn’t very sharp—all the other wounds are stabs, rather than cuts.”
“Any ideas about the mutilation of the face?”
“None whatever. I can’t imagine that he was trying to hide her identity.”
“No.”
“There was another odd thing. Her jaw was propped open.”
“Eh?”
“With a piece of matchstick, jammed between her back teeth, here.” The doctor opened her own mouth to show them, then closed it and began to get to her feet.
“I think that’s about all I can tell you for the moment. I had a look at the parents. I think we should get their own GP to see them. He should be familiar with their medical history. This is the name they gave me.”
She gave Brock a note and he said, “We’ll organize it. Are you happy with the way they’re going upstairs?”
“Oh yes, Desai’s very competent.” She hesitated, then went on, “The father took me to one side and asked me why this had happened to his daughter. I said I couldn’t tell him.” She looked Brock in the eye. “I could have given him some medical terms, but what would that explain?”
Brock nodded.
“Also, he asked me if she had died quickly. I lied to him. I said yes.”
ANGELA’S MOTHER SAT CROUCHED in an armchair in front of the fireplace, her head bowed towards the tapestry screen which was used to hide the grate during the summer months. She was sobbing quietly into a tiny handkerchief clutched in her hand, and a policewoman sat in the inglenook beside her, holding the cup of tea which Mrs. Hannaford had accepted, but not touched. She appeared older than Kathy had expected, and made no attempt to hide the silver in her hair. Her husband rose to his feet from the chair opposite her when he saw Brock and Kathy come into the room, and followed Brock’s nod towards the bay window, where the three of them sat down, out of earshot of Glenys Hannaford.
“This is Detective Sergeant Kolla, Mr. Hannaford,” Brock said. “She’ll be part of our team working on this case.”
Basil Hannaford looked at Kathy through his horn-rimmed glasses without seeing her. He sat stiffly upright, his heavy features expressionless. Kathy had the impression of someone mentally hanging on grimly to the rail of a ship during a hurricane. In the light of what they had come home to, his carefully casual travelling clothes and the glow of his holiday tan seemed incongruously frivolous.
“I’d just like to check again with you the sequence of events this morning, then we’ll leave you in peace for the moment. We’ve asked your GP to come round, and he says he’ll be here within the hour.”
Hannaford didn’t respond. Like his wife, Kathy took him to be at or near retiring age. There was a pugnacious set to his mouth and chin, temporarily softened by shock.
“You and Mrs. Hannaford were in Germany on holiday, is that right?”
It was a moment before he nodded. “We . . .” He cleared his throat and tried again, speaking in a low monotone. “We were on a tour. Four days on the Rhine, and then four days on the . . . the Romantic Road . . . in Bavaria. Got back to Frankfurt last night and caught the plane to Gatwick this morning.”
“What time did you get in?”
“10:53 was the scheduled time.”
“Were you expecting Angela to meet you there?”
Hannaford shook his head slowly. “No . . . No. We took the car to Gatwick. Left it there. Airport car park.”
“So this morning you collected the car from the airport car park and drove back here, arriving when?”
“Soon after midday. Gardening programme . . .”
He stopped, jaw clenched, and they waited.
“On the radio?” Brock murmured after a moment.
Hannaford nodded. “Radio Four. Hadn’t long started.”
“Now when you arrived home, you drove into the drive, where your car is now?”
A nod.
“And was there anything at that stage that you noticed? Anything out of place?”
He thought a moment and frowned. “Only . . . only that Angela didn’t come to the door. She’d have heard the car arrive, if she’d been at home.”
“What did you think?”
“Thought she must still be at church. The service runs from 11:00 to 12:00.”
“Would she have gone to that in her own car?”
“Doesn’t have a car. It’s a ten-minute walk to St. George’s.”
“So there was nothing to alarm you at that point?”
“No. I went to the front door, to open it before I got the bags out of the boot.”
The expression on his face changed.
“You noticed something?”
“Not at first. I called Angela’s name, but the house was so silent. I knew . . . she wasn’t there. Then I noticed, on the hall floor, her bag.”
“Describe it, please.”
“Just thrown down. The clasp was open and some of the things inside had spilled out.”
“You didn’t think she would have left it like that?”
“No, of course not. Not just lying there, on the floor.”
“What did you do?”
“I picked it up—put the things back inside. Then I started checking the rooms, down here first of all, then upstairs. And then . . .”
“Were there any signs of a disturbance in any of the other rooms? Anything at all that you noticed as being odd in any way?”
“Nothing, no. Not until I got to Angela’s room . . .”
They waited in silence for a moment, then Brock murmured, “Was her door closed when you first saw it?”
He nodded.
“And Mrs. Hannaford, has she also seen Angela’s room?”
“Couldn’t stop her. She’d followed me into the house. I was standing just inside the doorway of Angela’s room, trying to . . . comprehend. Glenys must have come up behind me. I heard her ask what the matter was. Then before I could turn round she passed out—just fell to the floor. I carried her through to our bedroom. Rang you from the phone there.”
“Did you go back to Angela’s room after that?”
“No.”
“So neither you nor Mrs. Hannaford stepped more than a couple of paces into the room? You didn’t go over to the bed, say, or move anything?”
“No, no.”
“All right. And where is Angela’s bag now?”
Hannaford pondered. “I think I put it down in the hall before I started looking into the rooms. On the settle, I think.”
“Could you show us?”
They got up and made for the door. As they passed Mrs. Hannaford she looked up and whispered, “Basil?”
“It’s all right, Glenys. I’ll be back in a moment.”
The black shoulder bag was still lying where Hannaford had laid it.
“Ah,” Brock said. “We assumed that belonged to Mrs. Hannaford. Kathy, would you ask Desai upstairs to check this for us, please? Tell him we’d like to have a look inside as soon as possible.”
Kathy went quickly upstairs to Angela’s room. This time she stopped at the doorway and spoke to the back of the man who was crouching beside the bed.
“Are you Desai?”
He looked back over his shoulder at her. He had a lean face, dark good looks, Indian she assumed, and the same arrogant expression in his eyes.
“Chief Inspector Brock asks if you would check the dead girl’s handbag for us. It’s lying on the hall settle downstairs. As far as we know only the father has touched it, although it’s possible the mother did too. They found it lying, open, on the hall floor when they arrived this morning.”
“OK.” He turned back to his inspection of the carpet.
“He says we’d like to get at the contents as soon as possible.”
This got no answer. Kathy stood for a moment staring at the woman’s body on the bed, then clenched her jaw and hurried back downstairs. Brock and Hannaford had returned to the window seats in the bay.
“Why do you want to know the name of her dentist?” Angela’s father was asking.
“Sometimes it’s useful.”
Hannaford shook his head and gave a name.
“Did your daughter have any particular physical distinguishing marks at all, Mr. Hannaford? A birthmark, a tattoo?”
The man looked at Brock as if he were mad. “A tattoo?”
Brock shrugged apologetically. “These days, quite a few young people do.”
“Really? Well, perhaps the sort of people you . . .” He stopped himself. “No, of course not. It’s inconceivable.”
“And have you any idea what she might have been doing yesterday evening?”
Hannaford shook his head.
“Were you in touch with her at all during the past week? Did you ring her from the Continent?”
“Yes, once. It would have been last Tuesday, I think. We had reached . . . what was the name of the place?” He looked for a moment towards his wife as if to ask for help, then remembered. “Lindau, on Lake Constance. We rang her from the hotel at about 6:30 that evening. Everything was perfectly normal. She didn’t mention any plans for this Saturday, as far as I know. I would have expected her to be with Adrian if she went out at all.”
“No, dear.”
They looked up to see Mrs. Hannaford standing a few paces away. The vicar was holding her arm, awkward. Brock stood up to get her a chair.
“Adrian was going out with his friends, don’t you remember? One of them was having a stag night. He’s getting married next Saturday.”
Hannaford shook his head. “No, no, I don’t remember, Glenys. Shouldn’t you be lying down?”
“Dr. Pollock will be here soon, dear. I’ll wait till then.” She hesitated, then continued. “She said she was going out on Saturday evening too. She’d got tickets . . . for the theatre.”
“Tickets, Mrs. Hannaford?” Brock asked gently. “There were others going?”
She bit her lip suddenly and began sobbing once more. After a moment she whispered, “A friend from the office.”
She turned away and blinked out through her tears at the garden. “The grass needs cutting, Basil,” she mumbled distractedly. Kathy followed her gaze. A lush lawn framed by beds of annuals and banks of shrubbery led to a huge, shady ash tree at the far end. A plump squirrel was scurrying across the lawn, its fluffy grey tail held high.
ANGELA’S HANDBAG CONFIRMED WHERE she had been the previous evening.
“You’ve met DS Leon Desai then, Kathy? DS Kathy Kolla.”
“Yes, we met upstairs,” Kathy said coolly.
Desai nodded briefly in acknowledgement and turned to the handbag on the dining-table in front of them. Brock let him empty it with his gloved hands, carefully bagging each item as he brought it out. The first of these was a glossy theatre programme, folded to fit into the bag, for a performance of Macbeth at the National Theatre. Later, when they came to her purse, they retrieved the theatre ticket, for the evening of Saturday, September 8.
Kathy made her own list of the items in the bag as Sergeant Desai brought them out. They included a current season ticket on Southern Rail from Petts Wood to Blackfriars in the City of London, an Access credit card, a cheque card and a blood donor card. There was no driver’s licence.
“All right, thanks, Leon. How’s it going upstairs?”
“Slowly. We’ll be some time yet. He seems . . .” He hesitated.
“What?”
Desai shrugged. “I was going to say that he seems to have been remarkably careful. It sounds an odd thing to say, looking at all that mess. But it’s not as easy as it should be to find his traces among it all.” He pursed his lips with frustration. “What I would appreciate, sir, is if you could keep people downstairs. You know what it’s like. Every new person is just another contamination to eliminate. Somebody threw up in the toilet upstairs not long ago, and we hadn’t even started in there yet.”
“Oh dear.” Brock frowned, avoiding his glare. “Yes, of course, Leon. Just give us a shout when you can let us back up again.”
The man got to his feet. “Any idea how he got in yet? We haven’t been able to find any traces of a forced entry upstairs.”
“No,” Brock said, “nor down here either. That’s one of the worrying things.”
Desai nodded and left.
“Who is he, Brock?” Kathy asked when the door closed behind him. “I thought he was with Scene of Crime.”
“He’s our LO, Kathy—Laboratory Liaison Officer. He’s with the Met Forensic Science Lab in Lambeth, coordinating the scientific blokes, advising us on scene management and so on.”
“Well, when I went upstairs he made it pretty clear what he thought of liaising with contaminants like me.”
Brock smiled. “The more refined their equipment gets and the more subtle the traces they can pick up, the more of a headache the rest of us become for them. What they’d really like when a crime is discovered is for the whole neighbourhood to be evacuated and sealed off, and for them to be given a month or two to sift through it in space suits. You can understand their frustration with what happens to their evidence when we barge in. It’s bad enough for them trying to make sure that they don’t themselves provide some opening for the defence—you know, inadvertently picking up a hair in the toilet and transferring it on their shoe to the bedroom, or something.”
“Yes, I know,” Kathy said. “We spent quite a lot of time on that at Bramshill. But it’s also important that we get a good look at the scene.”
“Of course. Look, Kathy,” Brock said, changing the subject, “I didn’t get a chance to say it earlier, but thanks for agreeing to come out today. I could have called Bren, but he’s had quite a bit on his plate recently. And of course, I’m really delighted you’re joining us tomorrow.”
Kathy beamed. “You know it’s what I always wanted, Brock. I was a bit worried that there would be some . . . well, embarrassment at what happened at Edenham—that it might stop them transferring me to Serious Crime.”
“It is true that, on the whole, young aspiring officers are discouraged from stabbing suspects to death. I dare say that it would be regarded as unduly colourful, on a personnel file. On the other hand, you did save my life, which would probably count on the plus side, marginally. At least, it does with me.”
He smiled at her. “On the two occasions we’ve worked together, Kathy, you’ve managed to cause quite a bit of physical damage, to yourself as much as anyone else. This time, let’s just track down the animal responsible for what happened upstairs, and then arrest him in an ord
erly fashion, shall we? For the sake of your file.”
“You don’t want me to become type-cast, is that it?” Kathy smiled back.
“What I’d particularly like is for you to concentrate on the girl. Find out what you can about her. It’s beginning to look as if the physical evidence may be a bit sparse, in which case the connection between Angela Hannaford and her killer will become all the more important.”
“Perhaps there is no connection. Perhaps it could have been anyone.”
“No. We’re surrounded by five million houses very much like this one. There has to be some reason why it was this house, this girl, this time. How did he know there was a young woman here? How did he know she was on her own? How did he know that he had time to spend on her? I don’t mean that he necessarily knew her, although we’ll begin with that as a possibility. But even if he didn’t, there was some connection between his pattern of life and hers.”
Kathy nodded. “Where would you like me to begin?”
“The boyfriend, I think. I’ve got people from the local Division starting on house-to-house interviews in the street here, with the neighbours and so on. But you might see where you go with her social life. Keep in touch with me here. This is the phone number.”
As Kathy got into her car, she looked back and saw him come out of the porch at the front of the house, talking with a couple of local CID detectives. He was a big man, and his mop of grey hair stood out above their heads, framed by a trail of yellow honeysuckle blossom growing around the framework of the porch. He seemed to be only half listening to the other two, his eyes straying over the windows in the upper part of the house. He scratched his beard, pondering, then hunched his shoulders and said something, and the little group dispersed.
KATHY RANG THE FRONT door bell and waited while the chimes died away inside. Eventually the door was opened by a small girl, barely tall enough to reach the latch. She stared up at Kathy silently while the smell of roast lamb and scorched ironing drifted out of the interior of the house.
“Hello,” Kathy said. “Is Adrian at home?” The little girl just stared at her, saying nothing. “Adrian Avery?” Kathy repeated.
“I’ll need a fresh shirt tonight, Mum,” a male called from somewhere upstairs.
All My Enemies Page 2
