by Iain Cameron
The following night, he and Rachel had been invited to the home of Rachel’s new boss, a large house in Tongdean Avenue in Hove, for a dinner party. He knew a newspaper editor’s salary didn’t stretch to a house in such a good area, but his wife was rich, her father a millionaire businessman. As a consequence, the sort of wine he and Rachel drank over Sunday lunch, a five quid bottle of own-label, didn’t hit the mark. He was under strict instructions to buy a couple of bottles of decent Californian Zinfandel.
Balking at the high prices, he finally selected two bottles at twenty pounds each and carried them to the counter. There, a pretty assistant by the name of Tamsin, who looked too young to drink alcohol herself, wrapped his purchases in tissue paper while he reached for his credit card and inserted it into the machine.
‘Angus. I haven’t seen you for ages.’
Henderson turned. ‘Simon,’ he said sticking out his hand. ‘It’s good to see you again. How are you?’
‘I’m great. Glad I left, to tell you truth. The station was doing my head in.’
‘What are doing now?’
‘Security consultant.’
Henderson spent a few minutes catching up with his former colleague before saying goodbye. No matter how much ex-Detective Sergeant Simon James tried to put a gloss on his departure from Sussex Police, he couldn’t hide the trembling hand and the bottle of whisky held discreetly at his side.
The former DS had a serious drink problem in the latter stages of his career at John Street, and it looked as if the new job hadn’t changed him. Looking at his own habits, Henderson often met narks in pubs, the team celebrated successes there and he and Rachel could usually be found in one. Habits like this, forged in the harsh environment of a tough job didn’t always go away when the job disappeared, as Simon James proved. It was a warning which Henderson would be a fool to ignore.
NINETEEN
‘What do you do, Angus?’
Henderson took a moment to consider the question. Depending on who he was speaking to, he might say ‘cop’, ‘security consultant’, or if making a real effort to keep a low profile, ‘government employee.’ None of which were a downright lie.
He and Rachel were at the house of Rachel’s boss, News Editor Gary Richardson. The person posing the question was one of Gary’s neighbours, Steve Gatson. The owner of a burglar alarm business, a man more likely to respect the police than hate them, so instead he said, ‘Detective Inspector, Sussex Police.’
‘Interesting. Do you deal with house burglary and shoplifting or are you involved in the more serious stuff?’
‘I’m in Serious Crimes.’
‘I imagine the big case of the moment is the murdered photographer from Hurstpierpoint.’
‘You’re right, but before you ask if there are any suspects in custody, the answer is no. Not yet.’
Henderson lifted his wine glass, a deep red Barolo with strong cherry hints, according to his eulogising host earlier, and took a drink. Most people would turn away at this point and start talking to someone else, unwilling to continue a conversation that could expose them to the dark underbelly of the place where they lived, but to Henderson’s surprise he didn’t.
‘I suspect the job must be harrowing at times.’
‘You’re quite right, it can be.’
‘How do you cope? I suppose you develop a bit of a thick skin after a time.’
‘For sure you do, and the way you measure it is when you come across an awful sight like a multiple stabbing or a fire. I look at the youngest and newest constable. You see, I might be analysing the scene dispassionately, trying to establish how they died and looking for clues, but chances are they’re throwing up their guts.’
‘It shows how other people are responding to the crime even though you might be trying to block it out.’
‘Yes, but it’s a difficult path to navigate. We’re human like everyone else, and if I was to imagine a loved one in such a situation, I’d fall apart, right?’
‘Sure, but it wouldn’t do for detectives to fall apart when talking to relatives of the victim.’
‘I can’t say it’s never happened.’
‘I bet.’
‘So, on the one hand, we’ve got to be dispassionate and analytical in the way we conduct the investigation and how we deal with members of the press, like Gary over there,’ he said nodding across the table to the man opposite. ‘On the other, we need to have sympathy and compassion for the grieving family.’
‘It must put a strain on marriages and health, with people working long, unsociable hours.’
‘It does but it’s not only the long hours, it’s the junk food eaten late into the night to keep us going and the booze consumed at the end of a hard day or week.’
‘The point Steve raised about relationships is a valid one,’ a woman at the far end of the table said. Henderson hadn’t drunk much wine as he was on-call, but he’d been slow to realise the other eight occupants around the table had stopped talking and were listening to the conversation between him and Gary Richardson’s neighbour.
‘She’s a marriage guidance counsellor,’ Steve said in his ear.
She went on to throw around statistics about the level of divorce within the Emergency and Social Services, how they were higher than the national average and similar to those found in the emergency services of other Western European nations. He’d read the same thing many times before himself, and when encountering such an article in a magazine or newspaper, it often ended up in the bin. He preferred to concentrate on the successes in his life, not the failures.
He was saved from further analysis-paralysis when his phone rang. He excused himself and walked into the hall.
‘Is this Detective Inspector Henderson?’
‘It is.’
‘Lewes Control, Amanda speaking. How are you this evening, sir?’
He knew Amanda and made a point of talking to her whenever he spotted her smiling face in the staff restaurant.
‘I’m not bad. You rescued me from a potential ear bashing.’
‘In which case, I suspect you’ve now moved from the frying pan into the fire. We’ve received a report of a body on the Castle Hill National Nature Reserve.’
‘What’s the location?’
She gave him the coordinates and, turning to face the wall, his phone jacked to his ear and his notebook held up against the smart, expensive-looking wallpaper, jotted down the details.
‘The body was found by a passing driver, who stopped to take a leak. The pathologist has been called.’
‘I’ll need a SOCO team with a portable lighting rig, and can you call DS Walters and ask her to meet me there?’
‘Will do. Anything else?’
‘No, thank you. Bye Amanda.’
‘Bye sir.’
Henderson knew the place Amanda was talking about, a large area of open farmland to the east of Brighton, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, with few trees to break up the undulating landscape. He turned to find Rachel standing there.
‘Who’s Amanda?’
‘An operator at Lewes Control. She’s mid-fifties, three kids and twice the size of you.’
‘Are you leaving?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘How can you? My boss is in there. How will it look with me just moving into a new job?’
‘It will look fine. Gary works with news journalists, he knows what it’s like being on-call.’
He reached forward to put his hands on her shoulders but she pulled away.
‘Don’t. You leaving will spoil my evening.’
‘Rachel, I can’t stand here and discuss this with you. You knew when we first started going out things like this could happen.’
‘Well maybe I didn’t think hard enough.’
‘We’ll talk about this later. I need to go. Can you apologise to the folks in there for me?’
He looked at her; stony face, hands on hips, lips in a tight line.
‘Bye,’ he said.
/> That went well he said to himself as he opened the car door. Luckily, Rachel’s boss owned a large house with a driveway big enough to accommodate all the cars outside, as he didn’t want to waste any more time by asking those inside the house to shift their vehicles out of the way.
Gary lived in Hove and it didn’t take long for Henderson to make his way to the A27. At Falmer, he took the turn-off towards the American Express Community Stadium, the Amex as it was known to Brighton and Hove Albion supporters. About half a mile past the stadium, where in the daylight drivers would see little more than rolling fields to the left and right, a featureless landscape in winter but full of life in the summer, he slowed and pulled into the side of the road. He parked behind two vehicles, one a police patrol car and the other the VW Golf belonging to DS Walters.
‘You got here before me for a change,’ he said to the approaching DS as he got out of the car.
‘I didn’t have so far to drive when the call came.’
‘Out with the new man?’
‘No, he’s attending a conference in Vienna.’
‘What’s the story here?’ Henderson said as he opened the boot of the car, took out a protective plastic suit, shoes and gloves and put them on.
‘Nathan Farrell, the guy now sitting in the back of the patrol car, got out of his car, which he’s moved up the road to let our vehicles in, to take a leak. He walked over there,’ she said pointing into the field, ‘so passing cars wouldn’t see him.’
‘I don’t see much cover.’
‘I guess if he moved in about five metres, car lights wouldn’t pick him up.’
‘Okay, so he walks into the field. Did he trip over the body or did he spot it?’
‘He was standing there peeing, looking back at the road when he saw it. First, it was picked up by a car’s headlights, and a minute or so later he went over to investigate.’
‘You know my next question.’
‘Did he touch the body? No, he got such a fright he immediately ran back to his car and called us.’
‘Last question. Why did he need to stop for a leak? Has he been drinking?’
She nodded. ‘Over the limit.’
‘Ah shit.’ Breathalysing a witness and then telling him, if he didn’t already know, he was about to lose his licence and being hit with a hefty fine didn’t make for a cooperative witness. For some people, it could mean they couldn’t continue doing their current job and, in addition, when they finally got their licence back, their insurance premiums would rocket, that is, if they could find an insurer willing to take the risk at all.
‘Let’s take a look at the body.’
The verges on both sides of the road were covered in coarse grass and weeds to knee-height. The body lay even further below the verge in what looked to him like a drainage ditch, making it invisible to passing cars. In some ways, it was a good place to dump a body. Cars zipped past at fifty to sixty miles an hour without stopping and those who walked in this part of the South Downs were instructed to stick to designated paths.
By the light of the torch he could see it was a woman and looking closer, a naked young woman, perhaps eighteen or nineteen with brown wavy hair. It was obvious she was dead without him checking, which he did with a gloved hand on her neck. Her skin was as pale as a ghost, no colour on her lips and her eyes were open and staring vacantly at weeds.
‘A pretty girl if not for the bruises and scratches on her face and around her ribs,’ Walters said.
‘Indeed,’ Henderson said, ‘and–’
‘Who is this interfering with my crime scene?’
‘It’s not me, gov, honest,’ Henderson said. He stood and stretched.
‘Hello Angus,’ Grafton Rawlings, the pathologist, said, as he walked towards him.
‘Hello Grafton. I didn’t hear the familiar growl of your car’s exhaust.’
‘This is because I parked it up the road on a paved section. Can’t have the Healey sitting on damp grass. What have we here?’
‘A young woman who looks as if she’s been badly beaten. The cause of death isn’t obvious.’
‘Give me a few minutes and I might be able to tell you.’
Rawlings bent down and with a practiced hand, felt all around her head and down the contours of her body.
Henderson stepped away and approached Walters. ‘The bruises worry me,’ he said.
‘Me too.’
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘They look similar to those on Cindy Longhurst?’
He nodded. ‘They do, but I’m hoping it’s something else.’
‘What, you’d rather we had two murderers running around Sussex than one?’
‘No. It would be easier with one killer for sure, as two crime scenes can be compared and differences identified. I was thinking this might be something we can sort out quickly, like a domestic.’
‘I think you’re clutching at straws, boss.’
‘Angus, can you give me a hand to turn her?’ Rawlings asked.
Henderson walked towards the pathologist but stopped when he heard a noise behind him.
‘Where do you want the lights, gov?’ a deep voice said.
In the dim light Henderson could make out two members of the SOCO team carrying a portable lighting unit.
‘Over here,’ Henderson said pointing at a point near Rawlings, ‘but make sure the beam is angled down and facing into the field. We don’t want it blinding passing drivers.’
‘Right oh.’
Henderson knelt down beside the body. He placed his hands on the dead woman’s back and the top of her legs.
‘On the count of three,’ Rawlings said, ‘one, two three.’ Henderson heaved and they rolled the inert figure from lying on her front to her back.
With a click, the tragic scene before them became bathed in a cold, white light, further emphasising the paleness of the cadaver’s skin. Not only did the lighting rig brighten the area, it illuminated the bullet wound he could now see at the side of the dead woman’s skull.
TWENTY
DI Henderson stood outside the door of Assistant Chief Constable Andy Youngman’s office. A few moments later, the man himself came out to join him and they both walked in the direction of the conference room.
The murder of the girl found on the Castle Hill National Nature Reserve had caused palpitations around Sussex. The similarities between her death and Cindy Longhurst’s were not lost on anyone, including the press, who were already warning young women not to venture out alone at night.
What they were cautioning them against, Henderson didn’t know. He didn’t know if the murders were the work of a sadistic serial killer, stalking the streets and country lanes of the region, or something else. If they were seeking a serial killer, he would applaud such advice, but a number of other possibilities also came to mind. Problem was, he didn’t have the hard evidence to counter the growing hysteria.
Youngman walked into the conference room, a large auditorium with seating for over two hundred, Henderson in his wake. In the seats and standing along the aisles, not the jaundiced faces of weather-beaten cops, none too happy at having to listen to the ACC banging on about another racial equality initiative or anti-drugs campaign, but the nation’s media. Looking closely, he could see print journalists, online reporters, television news and a couple of German and French television crews.
ACC Youngman, the officer with ultimate responsibility for the Major Crime Team, took centre stage both in seating position and in stature. Six-foot-four and built like a useful centre-half, Youngman was two years away from fifty-five, police retirement age, but the bald man with the eagle-eyed stare, was a dedicated keep-fit enthusiast. He eschewed fast-food and alcohol, late-night staples for most of those under his command, and could outrun many men much younger than him.
Youngman arranged the papers in front of him and then stood, a cue for those in the hall to be quiet. ‘On Friday, at around eleven in the evening, the body of this young woman was foun
d at the edge of Falmer Road, close to the American Express Community Stadium.’
Behind Youngman’s large frame, the screen lit up. The first image displayed the murder scene followed by the best photograph Grafton Rawlings could arrange of the victim’s face after she’d been cleaned up. With a little make-up, she looked less pale but it couldn’t disguise the bruises around her nose, cheeks and ear, although the blood-matted hair around the side of her head had been washed and tidied, leaving no trace of the bullet’s deadly entry.
‘We have been unable to identify this girl from the Missing Persons Register and therefore I would like to appeal to all your readers and viewers to look closely at this photograph. If anyone can identify this young woman, I would ask them to contact our helpline.’
The telephone number of the helpline appeared on the screen.
‘I would like to assure all callers to the helpline, their calls will be treated in confidence. I would like now to hand over to Detective Inspector Angus Henderson, the Senior Investigating Officer on this case.’
Henderson stood. He took a moment to look at his audience. It wasn’t a dark room as favoured by pop bands and comedians, the floodlights obscuring all except the front row. Ten-thirty in the morning, all ceiling lights blazing, they could see him and he could see them. He clicked the little device in his hand and the screen behind him came alive with a photograph of the murder scene.
‘As the Assistant Chief Constable said, the body of this young woman was found at the side of the Falmer Road, about half a mile from the Amex Stadium. I say at the side of the road, but due to the height of the grass and the shallow ditch where the body was located, it would have been completely obscured from passing motorists and walkers.
‘The cause of death was a bullet wound to the side of the head. The bruises on her face and body indicate she had been beaten before being killed. The time of death was approximately twenty-four hours before. We believe the body was taken to the place where she was found shortly after she was killed, between two and three o’clock the previous morning. I would appeal to any motorists travelling along the B2123, Falmer Road, in the early hours of Thursday morning to come forward. They may have seen something that could help us.’
