Deadly Focus

by R. C. Bridgestock

  Dylan and Dawn travelled in his car to Dean Reservoir. He travelled the road often, as did his fellow workers, because it was a short cut between Harrowfield nick and Tandem Bridge Station. The blustery winds made it feel cold and the clouds were grey and heavy, threatening rain. However Dylan was pleased that the traffic was surprisingly light.

  ‘Can we have the helicopter up, to attend the scene for an eye in the sky view and aerial photographs, please?’ Dawn asked the officer in the control room via the radio. ‘A body tent and windbreaks would be good too. They’ll need to be the sturdy ones. The wind’s really picking up here.’

  ’I’ll contact operational support and get back to you,’ came the crackling reply.

  ‘Fell walking isn’t my speciality, boss, and no way am I going to get my new boots covered in sheep shit,’ said Dawn looking down at them, horrified at the prospect.

  ‘You girl. I’ve got my wellies in the boot, but you’re not having them.’

  ‘You’ll just have to carry me, then, won’t you?’ she said cheekily.

  ‘Impossible,’ he remarked, laughing, which made his lips stretch tight and sting. ‘Ow,’ he said.

  ‘Serves you right.’

  Dawn was married and had met her husband Ralph while they were still at school. She’d been a waitress and he’d been a trainee chef. Her Achilles’ heel was food, which she never apologised for. ‘You are what you eat,’ she would often say, ‘And boy, do I eat.’ Ralph was now the head chef and owner of a restaurant they’d named ‘Mawingo’, Swahili for ‘up in the clouds’, after a place they had visited on their honeymoon. It had far-reaching views across the Yorkshire countryside, and a fantastic reputation. She assured Ralph she didn’t love him for his culinary specialities, but it was a hell of a bonus.

  Access to Dean Reservoir was difficult. Salters Road was a narrow, single track tarmac road with few passing places. It was littered with potholes and corroded edges, definitely not a road on which you could travel at speed.

  ‘I’m glad it’s your bloody car we came in,’ said Dawn as they bumped along the uneven surface. The road was on a slow incline to such a height that you could see over the historic village that lay below in the valley. They travelled up the hill and the road opened up to a huge expanse with long distance views of moorland. It was nice in summer, but in winter it was bleak, barren and uninviting. The hills in the distance were dark silhouettes touching the sky. The clouds rested on the ground and the trees beyond appeared to float as if suspended in the sky. It was an awesome sight. If it had been painted it would have looked unrealistic on canvas. To the left of the road was a coppice of trees; some evergreen, some bare, which shielded the reservoir ahead. The trees were bending as though exercising in the strong wind. There were no homesteads nearby. It was a lonely scene. As they travelled the desolate road a few sheep wandered around near to the walls. They could be seen huddled together in the distance, desperately trying to shelter from the elements, the only visible sign of life around. Dylan had ensured the road was closed off to all traffic where the outer cordon started. It would ensure that the Press with their marvellous zoom lenses could not get close enough to take photographs of the body. He knew once they heard about it they would be there like a shot.

  ‘Do you think it’s Daisy?’ Dawn asked.

  Chapter Four

  The wind roared across the moor, flattening the long grass and teasing the trees in its path. They stopped in the gravelled car park alongside the marked police vehicles. Dylan’s car door was almost ripped off its hinges as he opened it onto the rough open terrain. There were deep dark holes filled with bits of twig and clumps of heather underfoot. The crime scene tape flapped about like the tails of a kite in the wind. The weather could at any moment turn perishing, Dylan knew only too well. Outdoor clothing was a must. He was immediately impressed with how the first two uniformed officers at the scene had acted on their own initiative and made a mental note to send a report to their supervision to praise them. Future CID material, he thought to himself as he began clambering into his protective suit. Leaves curled and twisted, sweeping the ground around him.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he shouted over the wind as he fought to keep the suit in a position that meant he could get his leg in. The SOCO van pulled up beside him and, more by good luck than management, Jasmine was on call. Jasmine could have only been a size eight, but her ability made up for her lack of muscle.

  The two detectives who’d attended the scene were DC John Benjamin and DC Vicky Hardacre. Dylan was pleased to see them; John was an athletic young black lad who was a gentleman and a bloody good detective in Dylan’s eyes. Vicky was a young girl, single, tall, blonde, quite attractive, always upbeat. She was outgoing, loud and brazen, but in Dylan’s experience she had a heart of gold. While he allowed Jasmine to get on with the photographs and digital filming, Dylan and the others sheltered as best they could from the icy wind at the side of the police van.

  ‘How the hell are you, boss?’ Vicky shouted to be heard over the noise of the blustery weather.

  ‘Good, Vicky, and you?’

  Dylan’s phone rang. His hand was so cold he fumbled when trying to get it out of his pocket and missed the call.

  ‘Bloody mobiles,’ he grunted. It rang again. He opened the van door and stepped inside. Hearing anything in the howling wind was impossible.

  ‘Judith Cockcroft’s the on-call pathologist and she can’t get to the scene for another three hours, so she’ll see us at the mortuary at eleven,’ he said climbing out a few moments later. Dylan was anxious to see if the body had red hair and needed to know if it was a girl, but he couldn’t see anything from where he stood. They were all sadly confident that it was going to be Daisy as they got the nod from Jasmine and started towards the body.

  ‘Hell. Watch out where you tread, the ground’s uneven,’ Dylan warned as he stumbled. His ears burned with the cold so he pulled the hood of his paper suit up in an attempt to keep warm, then took a pair of gloves out of his pocket and shuffled from one foot to the other, rubbing his arms as he stood looking down at the body. It was white, marble-like against the matt background of brown, coarse moorland grass. He knew they were lucky to find her so soon. Dylan looked up as he felt a few heavy spots of rain on his face. The wind continued to whip him and he turned his back to it.

  The torso looked doll-like in the vast expanse. A mark on the child’s buttock stained her skin. The clumps of heather had guarded her from the elements, so incredibly she hadn’t deteriorated rapidly. Dylan no longer noticed the weather as a waft of lavender passed under his nose. His senses were heightened. Everyone was still, their focus on the little girl, oblivious for a while to anything or anyone around them as they took the sight in. Dylan asked Jasmine to move the body slightly. Now they could see the two marks, one visible on each buttock. They were dark and appeared to be cigarette burns. Jasmine photographed them independently, close up. The little girl’s legs were parted. She looked like a mannequin, rigid and inflexible. Seeing an adult’s dead body was always a shock to the system, but seeing a child’s dead body was worse, Dylan reckoned. It drew you to it with a quiet sadness. A life not lived. They were the worst you could be called to, the injuries sometimes so horrific, so unbelievable, and so appalling on someone so innocent. Moving his eyes slowly up the body, Dylan could see only her left hand; her right one was beneath her.

  ‘Bloody hell, the end of her little finger is missing,’ said Dawn. It looked like a clean cut, a black bloodstained stub. The killer was obviously calm and calculated, but why take part of a finger? What was the significance?

  The blue plastic carrier bag covered the whole of her head and neck to her shoulders but a few red hairs spilled in tendrils beneath it.

  ‘Daisy?’ Dawn said in a whisper.

  ‘It’s got to be, hasn’t it?’ said Dylan. ‘We won’t remove the bag here. We’ll wait ‘til we’re in the mortuary.’ They laid a clear, sterile plastic sheet next to the body and lifted her the
few inches it took to get her off the ground. Very gently they rested her upon it, not attempting to turn her again. It was folded over, each end sealed and taped. She was ready to be moved from where she had been dumped like rubbish.

  The rain was coming down with a vengeance now and lashed across the landscape; it was icy and beat the group relentlessly. Quite fitting. The weather was as angry and resolute as the team for such a waste of life. A tent was being erected over the area where she’d been found, to protect it from the elements and to try and keep as much of the scene preserved as possible.

  ‘I’m satisfied this is just a dump site. It’s not the primary murder scene. We’ll need soil samples,’ Dylan said, talking to the team as well as making a mental list for himself. ‘The weather will undoubtedly do its damage, but any opportunity to examine some of the ground is better than none.’

  The mortuary attendant arrived with the HM Coroner’s black transit van to take the body back to the mortuary. The plastic sheet containing the little body was placed inside a body bag that the mortuary attendant brought over to the officers. It was similar to a large holdall with four handles. Single-handedly, John carried the light weight to the waiting vehicle. Daisy was now in safe hands. The rain continued to beat down as the doors closed, unforgiving, pelting the ground in anger. There was no sign of Daisy’s coat, shoes or bridesmaid dress.

  Dawn stopped for a moment and brought out a multi-coloured embroidered handkerchief from beneath the blue latex glove that covered her hand. She was left-handed and dabbed her mouth with the hankie, an action that was similar to that of using blotting paper. Dylan had seen a vast number of beautiful hankies used by Dawn over the years. He knew she was hungry because she dribbled. She had once confided in him after a few glasses of red wine that she’d no control over it. It was only slight, almost unnoticeable, but she thought she looked like a salivating dog.

  Fortunately coffee and sandwiches arrived. A warm drink was welcome. They took off their protective suits, put them into evidence bags and got into their vehicles. The windows steamed up as the engines ran, heaters on full. Dylan sipped his drink, warming his hands. He stuffed his stocking feet under the blast of the warm air from the heater until his toes tingled as the feeling came back in them. Caffeine at last. The swelling and numbness of his mouth caused coffee to run down his chin.

  ‘Want a hankie, boss?’ Dawn smiled as she bit into a teacake. He declined, shaking his head.

  ‘You bring me to some weird and wonderful places,’ she said, shivering so much her teeth chattered. ‘Why do you think the killer used the plastic bag over the head and cut off Daisy’s fingertip? What’s all that about?’ she asked him as she took sips from her steaming plastic cup.

  ‘We’ll find out when we get him, Dawn, and we will get him.’

  ‘We will,’ she echoed.

  Dylan handed her his drained cup, wiped the inside of the windscreen with his gloved hand, put the car into first gear and slowly crept forward to the uniform car, raising his hand in thanks to its occupants. The uniformed officers would stay and keep a watchful eye on the scene while they followed the body to the mortuary for continuity.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be here even if I was dead,’ Dylan said as they arrived. No matter how many times he went to the morgue it never got any easier.

  Chapter Five

  He texted Jen from the sanctuary of the car park to tell her he’d be home late. I’ll be waiting came her reply and he smiled to himself.

  ‘What you got to smile about?’ said Dawn.

  He tapped his nose. ‘You’re not in the need to know,’ he said, concentrating on dialling the superintendent. She pulled a face and continued to make up her pocket book.

  ‘The Super says good luck, and we’ve to keep him updated,’ Dylan remarked sarcastically as he hung up. ‘For all the blasted good that does.’

  Mortuaries never seemed to be modernised in Dylan’s experience, definitely nothing like the ones he saw on TV. Harrowfield mortuary was an old ivy-laced, detached building in the hospital grounds. The interior was even less inviting. It felt grubby. Jen had once asked him to describe the smell, but he couldn’t find the words. The odour seemed to be rejected by his body as if he shouldn’t inhale it. However today it hit him the minute he entered. He could taste warm metal and smell rotting flesh, old garbage, and an abattoir on a balmy day. He reached in his coat pocket for his extra strong mints and popped one into his mouth. Dylan had learned never to go to the mortuary without them. He walked down the corridor past the curtained window of the viewing room. The room where families got one more opportunity to see their loved ones, albeit laid out on a trolley. It was glossed up as formal identification, but in reality it resulted in the outpouring of emotion, the chance to say goodbye. Ironic that in something as terminal as death people still needed closure. Dylan walked across the vestibule to the upstairs office. He’d spent hours at this place over the years, too many, he reckoned. He took a deep breath, as once again he knew he’d have to put on his professional mask of the man in charge for the others. The young rookies in attendance didn’t need to see his repugnance. He had to look after them, reassure them, consoling them that at least they got to walk out, not many people did. Dylan knew that downstairs at the rear of the building was the old marble examination table with its fluorescent light hanging above it like the light above a snooker table. In the adjacent room there were fridges three tiers high, where the bodies were kept.

  Les, the mortuary assistant, was in the office already, dressed in his coverall, wellingtons and plastic green apron.

  ‘I might have known it’d be you disturbing us, Dylan,’ he said as he switched the kettle on. ‘You’re like the grim reaper these days.’

  Dylan laughed. ‘You’ll never be out of work while I’m working, Les. I don’t seem to be able to go to bed these days without someone calling me out to a body.’

  Judith Cockroft, the pathologist, appeared as the clock struck eleven.

  ’Glad to see it’s not only me that’s run ragged, Dylan.’ she said. Then, on seeing his facial injuries she added, ‘You can tell me how you got that as we progress.’

  ‘I wish I got paid as much as you though, for my pain.’

  She smiled broadly at him as she took off her coat, hung up her bag and started to put on her green suit and apron, washing her hands, and tying her gown as she talked. ‘So, what ‘ave you got for me today?’

  Dylan outlined the circumstances of Daisy’s disappearance and then moved onto the body of the small girl. He told her about the position of the body, the bag over her head and the missing fingertip.

  ‘Daisy had long red hair. It can be seen beneath the carrier bag and we don’t have another missing girl in the area,’ he said.

  ‘Seems highly likely then.’ She sighed deeply.

  DC John Benjamin nodded to Judith, Les and Dawn as he entered the room with Vicky in tow.

  Dylan placed his coffee on the floor at the side of his chair as he sat and took his policy book from his briefcase.

  ‘The arrangements have been made for the scene to be protected,’ John said, sitting down beside him. ‘The underwater search team are ready to look in the reservoir for the clothing like you asked, sir.’

  ‘Thanks for that, John,’ Dylan said as he put his pen to paper.

  Coffee consumed and suited up, they went down to the examination room to be met by the sight of the young girl’s body on the table.

  ‘It’s Daisy,’ said Dawn in a matter-of-fact way.

  ‘You don’t need to state the bloody obvious,’ Dylan snapped. Seeing the youngster on the slab had turned his stomach, but watching Dawn’s eyes fill with tears he was sorry for his outburst.

  Jasmine busily took photographs, Vicky collated exhibits that were handed to her by Judith, and John assisted.

  The officers watched and listened intently. The body was unwrapped and the plastic sheeting used to cover her was carefully peeled away. She’d been placed on the tab
le face down, just as she had been found. Her fragile, tiny frame hardly filled a third of the slab. For some reason it felt chilly in the mortuary. Dylan shivered; it was cold and eerie. He recalled how Wendy had described Daisy’s excitement and joy as she’d left home to visit her grandma.

  The only voice was Judith’s calm expressionless commentary. ‘Not sexually assaulted,’ she stated into her Dictaphone. ‘No signs of any penetration,’ she said as she took vaginal and rectal swabs. ‘Two circular burn marks, one to each buttock, which look to me like a cigarette burn. Let’s remove this awful carrier bag before we do anything else,’ she said pulling the bag off the head and handing it to Vicky. As she did so a mass of red hair cascaded onto the slab. Dylan heard an intake of breath, but from whom he couldn’t tell. At the rear of the head near the top there was a large indentation filled with blood. A closer look made possible by Judith moving the hair showed that her skull had been smashed.

  ‘She’s taken a fierce blow,’ she remarked. Jasmine photographed as Judith measured the wound.

  ‘Two inches in diameter.’ She held her breath as she stretched to hold the ruler to the wound. Dylan considered what weapons could have caused the trauma while the little girl was turned over by Les and Judith. Daisy was easily recognisable now from her picture. Her eyes were wide open, staring, piercing, her red hair spread across her upper torso.

  ‘What beautiful hair,’ Judith remarked as she gathered it in gloved hands to cut samples. She looked closely at red marks visible where Daisy’s eyebrows had once been.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ whispered Dawn.

  ‘Someone has attempted to shave them off,’ remarked Judith, looking up from the body to Dylan. There were no other obvious injuries to the body, but the usual samples of blood; nail clippings and scrapings were taken, tenderly. Her internal organs were checked and weighed. Dylan noticed that the mortuary had lost the smell that it had had when they entered and he wondered why. The emotion in the room was tangible as Judith closed Daisy’s eyes. Her hair and body was washed and she looked peaceful. The little cherub was at rest, as if asleep. But this child would never wake. Dylan’s emotion changed to anger. He badly wanted the bastard that could do this.