by David Hodges
She gave a humourless smile. ‘Fresh out of those at the moment. Did you get anywhere with the check on Mottram?’
He stubbed out his cigarette on the corner of the desk and snorted his disgust. ‘Been a good boy, it seems. Nothing new recorded against him.’
‘So it’s a big fat zero all round?’
‘You can say that again.’
‘Then we can only hope the ten o’clock briefing produces something new,’ she replied, echoing her own misplaced optimism from the day before.
‘Yeah,’ he agreed, ‘but I won’t hold my breath.’
It was a good job he didn’t. The briefing itself, which was left to Roscoe to take in the absence of Ansell, yielded nothing but ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’ – no forensic evidence, no witness sightings and nothing from the Holmes system – just a few sniggers from the ‘troops’ when the DI passed on the information about the killer’s possible description.
The photographs of Melanie Schofield and Tamsyn Moorcroft affixed to the incident room whiteboard seemed to glare at Kate accusingly as the place emptied of investigators and she stood for several minutes studying the personal details of the possible suspects listed underneath: Daniel Schofield, Ed Shearing, Josh Turner, Will Fallow, Maurice Copely, Philip Granger – the list looked like a pathetic joke. With the exception of Copely and Granger, none of the names really warranted serious consideration but they were the only names they had.
‘So much for the “something new” you were hoping for,’ Roscoe commented gloomily as he peered over her shoulder at the whiteboard. ‘My money is still on that bastard Copely – or Mottram as he was once called – whom we can’t touch.’
‘There’s still the parcel,’ Kate replied. ‘SOCO might get lucky?’
He snorted. ‘Yeah but first I’d have to believe in fairies!’
She turned and gave him a thin smile. ‘Maybe if you did, we’d get that elusive breakthrough we need?’
‘I’d be happy to get anything at all, believe me,’ he said.
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ she warned with a short unamused laugh. ‘It could be the last thing you want.’
And as if right on cue, the police station tannoy suddenly barked an imperious summons: ‘DI Roscoe, contact control room immediately.’ At the same moment one of the incident room staff called out sharply, ‘Guv!’
Kate felt her stomach sink as Roscoe strode across the room to grab the proffered telephone from the operator, then stiffened before throwing a hard glance in her direction. She was by his side even before he handed the phone back.
‘In the car,’ he snapped. ‘What was it you said about being careful what you wish for? We’ve got another bloody stiff!’
The young woman was at the far end of the long garden shed, deposits of fresh-looking straw forming a familiar trail between the curled toes of her bare feet and the single door. She was on her back, wearing just a thin yellow nightshirt, which had been pulled up over her breasts, and she had been brutally strangled, her bloodied wide-open eyes registering a by-now familiar expression of terror. Similarly, as with the previous two victims, a straw figure had been forced into her mouth over her projecting swollen tongue.
Kate turned away from the body – trying not to disturb the trail of straw – and stepped out into the cool fresh air, conscious of the perspiration streaming down her face as she removed the protective crime scene booties from her feet. She had guessed the identity of the dead woman the moment Roscoe pulled up in front of the small bungalow a mile or so outside Mark village and she received confirmation of the fact as soon as she laid eyes on the grisly corpse lying in the shed.
‘Any idea who she is – was?’ Roscoe snapped at the uniformed constable standing to one side of the shed as the DI joined Kate outside.
‘Her name’s Claire Topping and she’s a hospital nurse,’ Kate said before the bobby could reply.
Roscoe’s eyes narrowed and he drew her to one side, out of earshot of the uniformed policeman. ‘Say again?’
‘I gave her a lift back here from Taunton two nights ago,’ she explained. ‘She was Hayden’s nurse at the hospital.’
He grunted. ‘I learn something new every day,’ he said drily. ‘Well, you won’t be giving her any more lifts and that’s a fact.’
She threw him a reproving glance but didn’t respond to the insensitive remark. ‘What’s so worrying, though,’ she said, ‘is that the night after I run the poor girl home, the killer selects her as his next victim – which suggests that by doing her a favour, I contributed to her death.’
‘Balls!’ he snorted. ‘You can’t beat yourself up about that. It’s just a coincidence.’
‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ she replied. ‘The killer could have followed me from the hospital that night. After all, he’s shown quite a bit of interest in me up until now and must know where I live to be able to leave those damned parcels on my doorstep.’
He shook his head firmly. ‘Doesn’t add up. What about the other two women? You had no prior connection with them at all, so why should this one be any different?’
‘He could have formed some sort of attachment to me.’
He thought about that for a moment, frowning and chewing furiously, then abruptly released his breath in a sharp retort. ‘I bloody hope not! The last thing we need is a repeat of the Twister saga.’
She nodded. ‘It’s worse than that because it also means that, apart from Tamsyn Moorcroft, he must be selecting his victims at random; there’s no connection between them or with him personally.’
‘Which prompts the question why? If his motive isn’t rape, then what the bloody hell is it? OK, so it seems certain he killed Moorcroft to shut her up after getting his hands on her straw dolls but what made him pick Melanie Schofield and this woman here? Both are pretty, in their late teens or early twenties but that’s where the similarity ends. One was a brunette, the other was a blonde. Schofield was single and a virgin by all accounts but Topping was married. Schofield lived on an isolated farm, this girl lived in a village bungalow with neighbours each side.’
She shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
He treated her to an irritable frown, as if he had been expecting something a bit more positive, then nodded towards the shed. ‘And there’s all that flaming straw again – same as at the other two murder scenes.’
‘And at the scene of Martha Tinney’s murder, don’t forget, so if these murders are copycat crimes, as I’ve always maintained, it figures that our man would want to stick to the original killer’s MO as closely as possible.’
‘A perfectionist bastard then, is he?’ he said and, abruptly turning back to the shed, he glared at the uniformed policeman as if he was the one who had committed the crime. ‘How was she found?’ he barked.
The other flinched, then cleared his throat nervously. ‘Gardener, sir,’ he said. ‘Arthur Jarvis. Lady apparently employed him to keep the place tidy. Had a key to the shed. Turned up at around eleven this morning to do some pruning and found the shed padlock broken and the lady dead inside.’
Roscoe looked puzzled. ‘Found by the gardener?’ he echoed. ‘Not her husband?’
‘Husband’s away on a security guard contract with a major oil company in Iraq.’
The DI snorted. ‘Pity he wasn’t here to guard his wife instead,’ he said. ‘Where’s this bloody gardener now?’
‘In – in the kitchen, with my skipper, sir. I was told to stay here until the pathologist and SOCO arrive.’
‘At least the plods have done something right for a change,’ Roscoe muttered uncharitably to Kate as he led the way to the back door of the bungalow.
The interview of Arthur Jarvis was short and sweet. He was an elderly retired man who did odd jobs for local people for some pin money. He was plainly badly shaken by his discovery and unable to provide any information of any value, apart from the fact that Claire Topping had been a ‘very nice lady, liked by everyone’.
‘Well
, someone obviously didn’t like her that much,’ Kate said as they checked round the house while waiting for the pathologist and SOCO team to arrive.
‘Or maybe that someone liked her too much?’ Roscoe retorted. ‘But in the wrong way?’
‘If the other two women are anything to go by, she won’t have been raped, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Kate replied.
He gave a short grim laugh. ‘There are other ways of getting a sexual kick – as you yourself said not so long ago,’ he pointed out.
She paused by the half-open French doors and stared at the shards of broken glass on the carpet inside the living room. ‘This is how he got in anyway,’ she said, ignoring the comment.
He started chewing furiously again and staring around him. ‘So maybe he did the job in here?’
She followed his gaze. ‘No sign of that. Place looks clean to me – no straw anywhere either.’
As if linked by telepathy, they both left the room and checked the other rooms and very soon afterwards found their ‘evidence’. The duvet on the double bed in what appeared to be the main bedroom was hanging over the corner of the mattress, one pillow lying on the floor and the under-sheet badly creased, with clear signs of soiling in places.
‘The bastard!’ Roscoe breathed. ‘He did her in here. But why kill her in the bedroom then go to all the trouble of carrying her out to the shed?’
Kate shrugged. ‘Back to what I keep on saying about these being copycat crimes. Just like Martha Tinney, Melanie Schofield was dumped in a barn, Tamsyn Moorcroft ended up in a shippon, which is similar to a barn, and now Claire Topping’s corpse is left in a garden shed, which, if you think about it, is the closest thing to a barn he had to hand.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘But that mattress looks really heavily soiled. Maybe this time he left some traces of himself behind?’
Roscoe considered that for a moment. ‘Which could be the very break we’ve been waiting for. We’d better get out of here and leave it for SOCO to do a proper DNA job.’
In fact, the pathologist turned up fractionally before the SOCO team and Kate was pleased to see it was Doctor Lydia Summers again. It was always good for continuity to have the same pathologist to liaise with in multiple murder investigations – not that she could provide much more than they knew already.
‘Well, she’s obviously been strangled, like the others,’ Summers said, ‘and, again, there seems to be no evidence of sexual interference, though, as I said with the previous victims, I’ll be able to confirm that one way or the other once I’ve carried out the PM.’
‘Time of death?’ Roscoe snapped without preamble.
‘I would say around six hours ago.’
‘So, midnight, same as before?’ Kate summarized.
Summers nodded. ‘Same MO all round, it seems. Creature of habit, this character.’
The SOCO van was parked outside the bungalow when they exited into the garden and two members of the team were already pulling on their kit at the roadside.
Samantha Lindslade met them at the front gate. ‘Another one then?’ she queried.
Roscoe nodded. ‘Pathologist is already with the corpse in the shed. Suggest you check the main bedroom first,’ he said. ‘Looks like blood and soiling on the sheets. Maybe this time we’ll get lucky.’
‘You already have,’ Lindslade replied. ‘We’ve finished with your parcel. Left the contents with your incident room manager.’
‘And?’ Roscoe encouraged, sensing there was something good to come.
‘There are two prints on the tape it was sealed with,’ she replied. ‘Seems your man has made his first big mistake.’
‘Are you running a scan?’ Kate put in.
‘Already have,’ Lindslade replied. ‘Did a rush job and called in some favours – especially for you. The marks are sufficient for a preliminary match. They are said to belong to one Charles Richard Mottram.’
Roscoe’s eyes seemed to shine. ‘Got him!’ he exclaimed. ‘Bloody Nora, we’ve got him!’
CHAPTER 14
Copely was still at work when the uniformed arrest team descended on his home and his wife stared at the search warrant in astonishment.
‘What is all this about?’ she exclaimed. ‘Maurice is a good man. He hasn’t done anything.’
Roscoe nodded brusquely and pushed past her into the hallway, directing the members of the team in various directions, including the shed in the garden. Kate found herself in a small study, just off the hall. It was furnished with a modern desk, a swivel chair and a stand-alone computer, and there were wall-to-wall photographs of otters, herons and other forms of marshland fauna.
‘My husband is a keen wildlife photographer,’ his wife snapped defensively at her elbow.
Kate nodded absently and concentrated on going through the drawers of the desk. They yielded nothing but more wildlife photographs and National Geographic magazines.
‘What on earth are you looking for?’ Marion Copely persisted.
Before Kate could reply, there was a shout from outside the room and, stepping past Marion Copely into the hall, she saw one of the detectives from the search team talking to Roscoe.
‘Found in the garden shed, Guv,’ she heard the detective say as she approached and she gaped when she saw that he was holding two straw dolls in his hand.
Even as Roscoe turned towards Kate with a grim smile of satisfaction, there was the roar of a powerful engine directly outside and the next instant the front door burst open and Maurice Copely strode into the hall with fists clenched and eyes blazing from a white mask-like face. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ he shouted as two uniformed officers stepped forward to restrain him.
Roscoe walked straight up to him. ‘You are nicked, mister,’ he growled, ‘on suspicion of multiple murder.’
The incident room manager made a grimace as he handed over the grotesque object SOCO had left with him in a small plastic tray. Roscoe stared at it for several moments, as if mesmerized.
The straw doll was identical to the others Kate had seen but, going by the album of photographs SOCO had left in the tray beside it, instead of a note, something different had evidently been attached to it originally, although this was now lying on top of the photographs, like a single glittering eye.
‘What the hell is that?’ the DI snapped.
‘Looks like a fob watch to me,’ Kate replied.
‘I can see that but what’s its significance?’
‘It’s the sort of thing nurses wear on their uniforms and Claire Topping was a nurse. He must have taken it from her home.’
The DI’s eyes seemed to smoulder. ‘And dropped it off at your place straight after stiffing her?’
Kate nodded but said nothing.
‘Which means,’ he continued, ‘that he went to the crime scene fully equipped with all the materials he needed – the box, the tape and wrapping paper as well as the straw doll?’
‘Sounds like it.’
‘A cool, confident customer then, and one who likes to play games?’
Another nod from Kate. ‘That’s his Achilles heel – like so many of his kind,’ she replied. ‘We can only hope that we have actually got him at last.’
Roscoe glared at her. ‘What do you mean by that? Don’t tell me you have doubts about Copely being our man?’
She looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know – I’ve just got this funny feeling.’
‘What sort of funny feeling?’
She sighed heavily. ‘Something in my gut.’ She gnawed at her lip for a second, as if reluctant to say what was on her mind, then continued with an apparent careful choice of words. ‘Look, the killer so far has been meticulous. He seems to have planned everything well in advance and he has left no trace of himself at any of the crime scenes – not so much as a footprint. It just strikes me as odd that he would make such a fundamental mistake as to leave not just one but two fingerprints on some wrapping tape—’
‘Anyone can mess up,’ he cut in, ‘even the perfect
criminal. Maybe he was rushed when he was trying to wrap up the parcel by torchlight or he’d previously handled the tape at home and had forgotten all about it?’
She shrugged. ‘You could be right. I just feel uneasy about it, that’s all.’
He snorted. ‘Don’t tell me, it’s that woman’s intuition thing?’
She smiled faintly. ‘Something like that, yes. I’m probably being over cautious. ’
‘Or just plain neurotic! Listen, it’s not often we get a perp so totally banged to rights as this arsehole and the fact that those straw dolls were stashed in his bloody shed suggests to me that he had a couple more victims lined up. At least we might have saved two more innocent lives.’
She sighed. ‘I do realize that, but I can’t help my feelings.’
He grunted. ‘Maybe not but just keep them to yourself when we grill that bastard downstairs, eh? He got away with it once. And I’m going to make damned sure he doesn’t do it a second time.’
Yes, Kate thought grimly as she followed him out of the room but perhaps that is the real issue.
The interview room, with its bare bolted-down table and chairs, smelled of stale sweat. Copely had calmed down since being brought back to the police station, but he was still perspiring freely as he dumped himself obediently in the chair next to the hatchet-faced woman solicitor he had asked for. Roscoe settled into a chair beside Kate on the opposite side of the table, flicking on the tape machine. Then he went through the usual pre-interview preliminaries for the benefit of the recording. Copely and his solicitor watched and waited, neither saying anything.
‘Right, Mr Mottram,‘ Roscoe began, ‘maybe you’d like to tell us about all these killings?’
‘My client’s name is now Copely,’ the solicitor said for him, ‘and he has no knowledge of any killings.’
Roscoe’s eyes gleamed. ‘Three young women, Mr Copely,’ he went on. ‘Melanie Schofield, Tamsyn Moorcroft and, last night, a nurse named Claire Topping. We know you murdered them, but what we want to know is why?’
‘My client denies murdering anyone,’ the solicitor intoned again.
Roscoe threw her a daggers look. ‘Perhaps Mr Copely would like to speak for himself?’ he growled.
