The Yeare's Midnight

by Ed O'Connor

  Hartfield Road snaked out of the richer suburbs of New Bolden into Cambridgeshire’s cheerless flat countryside. A cold mist hung over the Fens. Underwood drove north towards Ely, trying to block the previous night from his thoughts. His chest felt tight. The damp didn’t help.

  The journey to Fawley Close took him ten minutes. The four old cottages nestled at the southern edge of Fawley Woods. Previously occupied by farmworkers, a forward-thinking landlord had renovated the cottages a few years previously. They had been sold to young couples; mainly office professionals and teachers who worked in New Bolden or Cambridge. Lucy Harrington with her lottery grant cheque had been a recent arrival.

  A police squad car blocked the entrance to the cul-de-sac, its blue lights twirling hypnotically. A few spectators had gathered nearby. Underwood parked on the main road. He could see DS Dexter outside one of the cottages; her dark hair was severely cropped. She seemed to bristle with authority. Dexter dealt in certainties. Underwood envied her.

  The unforgiving air slashed at his lungs as he approached. There were puddles and, at the roadside, leaves crushed brown with mud that softened underfoot. Underwood coughed painfully as he approached.

  ‘Sounds nasty, sir.’ Dexter’s bright green eyes were watery with the cold.

  ‘It is, I’m getting old.’

  ‘You already are old.’

  Underwood appreciated the joke despite his discomfort. Maybe it was an intimacy. ‘Thank you, sergeant. What have we got, then?’

  ‘A mess. A journalist at the New Bolden Echo got a call at 7.30 this morning. Man’s voice told him that Lucy Harrington was dead and gave him this address. Journo called our duty sergeant.’

  ‘Did the guy have an accent?’

  ‘Nothing obvious. The journo’s over there if you want to speak to him.’

  ‘I’ll see him later. What else?’

  ‘We got here after eight. Her car’s in the drive.’ She gestured at Harrington’s Fiat. ‘Tried the door and called her phone. No reply. So we went in.’

  ‘Any signs of a forced entry?’

  ‘None. Apart from ours, of course. New Bolden CID – interior devastators.’

  Underwood smiled. Dex was a live wire. The Met had been right about her. She continued, encouraged: ‘Inside is horrendous. The body is in the bathroom. Forensic are up there now. There’s blood everywhere. It looks like a slaughterhouse. The killer left the bath taps running, so the whole place is awash. Upstairs is flooded. Getting decent forensic evidence is going to be a nightmare.’

  ‘Clever if he meant it.’ said Underwood thoughtfully. Dexter seemed uneasy.

  ‘There’s something else, sir.’

  5

  Ten miles away. A small terraced house. There are flowerpots outside but the flowers are withered and dead. The curtains are drawn for privacy, respect and celebration. Crowan Frayne sits on the patterned carpet in the living room. He sits cross-legged like a child. There is a plaster under his left eye. He still has blood under his fingernails. He will need another bath. He is tired but quietly triumphant.

  In front of him is a photograph of an old woman. She is smiling. Her band rests on the shoulder of a small boy who might be Crowan Frayne. Next to the photo frame is an African violet. Its flowers are richly coloured. He has nurtured it. Some of the flowers have fallen. There are violet petals on the carpet.

  From his inside coat pocket, Frayne takes a small, polished wooden box. There are small brass letters screwed onto the lid. They spell out ‘V. A. Frayne.’ He places the box carefully on the carpet. Slowly, and with curious respect, he opens the box. It has a purple silk lining. It holds Lucy Harrington’s left eyeball. There are two remaining spaces in the box. Frayne is satisfied. The back and sides of the eyeball are damaged. His forceps have gouged unsightly scars on each side. An occupational hazard. His first operation. Next time will be tidier.

  He closes his eyes. He is on the desert planet where he likes to hide. Sand is all around him, sand and mountains, rocks and sky. The sand is black and the mountains have eyes: the rocks talk when the sky replies. Ahead of him, lying on the sand, is a giant mathematical compass. Its pointed steel legs glitter though there is no sun. He climbs over the compass and walks to the giant flea that winks within him. It is as high as a building, purpled and turgid with the blood of a billion innocents. The flea belches blood.

  ‘Marke me,’ says the flea.

  The flea jumps over a giant grand piano that changes colours like the sand. The piano stool is two metres high. Frayne climbs up and stands on the white keys that soften like glue. The lid is heavy, so heavy, like lifting an ocean. Eventually he moves it and looks inside. A billion souls, stretched and screaming, sing their agony and absurdity back at him. The lid smashes shut.

  He is back in his living room, Lucy Harrington’s eye in his hand. He licks its smooth surface as if it were a highly polished jewel.

  6

  Underwood clipped the standard-issue plastic covers to his shoes and entered the house. It was old-fashioned inside, with white-painted walls and dark exposed beams. The carpet squelched unpleasantly underfoot. He looked up the stairway. Water and blood streamed down. The carpet had previously been blue but was now horribly stained and smeared with blood. He had never seen such a mess at a crime scene. The smell was terrible: a mildewy, damp deadness. Dexter was right. The chances of finding hair or DNA evidence from the killer would be small.

  Police pathologist Roger Leach stood at the head of the stairs at the entrance to the bathroom. He was a heavy man, bearded and thickset. His habitually ferocious expression softened slightly as he saw Underwood gingerly clambering up the narrow staircase.

  ‘Need a hand?’ Leach smirked. ‘You look rather strained.’

  ‘Feeling my age.’ Underwood was out of breath.

  ‘You’re younger than me.’

  ‘Only just.’ The carpet gave up more blood. Underwood grimaced. ‘This is like a horror film.’

  ‘It doesn’t get any better, I’m afraid. I haven’t seen anything like this before.’ Leach heard Underwood’s rasping breath. ‘You sound a bit ropy, old man. I might be having a look inside you soon if you don’t get some exercise.’ Underwood finally joined him at the doorway and looked in.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘That was pretty much my response.’ Leach moved carefully into the bathroom. Underwood stayed at the door.

  Lucy Harrington lay on her back, still wearing the black cocktail dress from the previous evening. She lay in a terrible slush of blood and water that seemed to have engulfed the entire room. The bath brimmed with water, its taps finally turned off. Harrington’s face was unrecognizable, streaked red and distorted. Her right eye stared blankly at the ceiling. Her left eye was missing, the socket black with blood.

  Underwood felt his stomach tighten. He bit his lip. The smell was getting to him. He looked up from the body. On the back wall of the bathroom the killer had written a short sentence in what looked like blood. The lettering had run down the white tiles and Underwood struggled to make out the words:

  ‘Draw not up seas, to drowne me in thy spheare,’ he mouthed quietly.

  ‘Freaky, isn’t it? Very Jack the Ripper.’ Leach had crouched over the body and was carefully inspecting the wound at the back of Harrington’s head.

  ‘Any idea what it means?’

  Dexter had arrived at the bathroom. ‘Some mad shit from the Bible, I expect. An eye for an eye and all that,’ she said without enthusiasm.

  ‘Sounds more like Shakespeare to me,’ Leach replied.

  ‘So what else have we got here, Roger?’ Underwood was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. He wanted to get away from the house quickly.

  Leach leaned back on his haunches and thought for a moment. ‘All this is subject to the post-mortem, of course.’ He gently turned Harrington’s head so they could see the wound in the back of her skull. ‘Cause of death: massive blow to the cranium with a blunt instrument. Must be metal to have done this
much damage. The entry wound is ragged at the edges but is basically round, about an inch and a half across. Hammer, I’d say. Or a steel pipe. Your boy bashed the back of her brains in.’

  ‘One blow?’

  ‘Two, maybe three. The lights went out immediately after that, I’d say. Looking at the blood-spray pattern on the tiles above the bath, my guess would be she was bending down over the bath when he clocked her. She fell forward, face first, and then he flipped her over.’

  ‘What about the eye?’

  ‘Well, it’s hard to say – he’s taken most of it. Judging by the nature of the damage to the socket, I would say that he started very carefully but got increasingly frustrated. It’s a tricky procedure and our boy is no surgeon. He’s cut through the ciliary muscles tidily enough but the eyeball was eventually wrenched from the socket. The optic nerve and a chunk of the eyeball were left behind.’

  Underwood frowned. ‘You don’t think our man’s a medic, then?’

  ‘No. At best, he’s a well-read enthusiastic amateur.’

  ‘Time of death?’ Dexter asked the obvious question that Underwood had missed.

  ‘Expensively educated guess – eight to ten hours ago. Can’t be certain before the post-mortem. The water has mucked up her body temperature. Mine too, as it happens.’

  ‘She was out at some reception until elevenish,’ Dexter observed. ‘Probably got home at about eleven-thirty. Assuming she didn’t stop somewhere first.’

  Underwood had seen enough. ‘OK. We’ll assume death was around midnight until we get the PM results. I’ll get Harrison to start the house-to-house.’

  ‘John, you should understand that getting reliable forensic is going to be damn’ nigh impossible. Marty Farrell is dusting for prints where he can but my hopes aren’t high. I’ve never seen such a fucked-up crime scene. Whoever did this is smart –’ Leach looked around him despairingly ‘– and very ill.’

  ‘Do what you can. Dex, make a note of that writing before it slides off the wall. Find out if it means anything. He’s trying to tell us something.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Dexter flipped open her notebook and carefully wrote down the strange text.

  ‘I’m off to find that journalist.’ Underwood shot a final glance at the bloody mess that had once been Lucy Harrington and cautiously made his way downstairs.

  7

  George Gardiner stood outside the cottages, rain beginning to prick at his bald head. He was trying to fight off impatience with the knowledge that he was at the centre of the biggest story New Bolden had ever seen. It beat the crap out of the car accidents and crimes against cats that he usually ended up reporting on. He consoled himself with a Marlboro Light and leaned against the bonnet of a squad car. Underwood emerged from the house.

  ‘You George Gardiner?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘About bloody time.’ Gardiner jabbed at Underwood with his glowing cigarette. ‘I’ve been waiting for an hour. It’s bloody freezing. Without me, you buggers wouldn’t even be here.’

  Underwood felt the smoke sting at his lungs, scratch at his throat. He coughed. Gardiner smirked.

  ‘Tell me what happened, then.’ Underwood was running low on patience too.

  ‘Got a call on the news desk at seven-thirty. Some of us do a full day’s work.’

  ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘Bloke asked for me by name.’

  ‘Why you? Are you the crime reporter or something?’

  ‘No. There are only four of us on the news desk. We’re hardly the New York Times. Perhaps he appreciates my prose style. I picked up the phone and this geezer says that Lucy Harrington is dead and he gives me her address.’ Gardiner looked up at the house. ‘This address. I asked him who he was and he said I should concentrate on his great conceit.’

  ‘Conceit?’

  ‘That’s what he said. He sounded like an arrogant bastard.’

  ‘Did he have an accent?’

  ‘Not that I noticed. He didn’t say much. He hung up. I called you lot.’ Gardiner pulled out his notepad. ‘Now, if you’re finished, I’d like to ask you a few questions. We’ve all got our jobs to do.’

  ‘There’ll be a press conference at the station. Before you piss off, I want you to talk to one of my officers and get them to write down exactly what this bloke said to you. Do you know DS Dexter?’

  Gardiner sniffed. ‘Looks like a dyke?’

  ‘I won’t tell her you said that.’

  ‘You can if you like.’ Gardiner blew cigarette smoke into the cold East Anglian morning.

  ‘Just tell her what you told me.’ Underwood walked away. He felt drained and it was only nine-thirty.

  ‘Thanks, by the way,’ the journalist shouted. ‘Thanks for nothing.’ But Underwood had gone.

  8

  There was a narrow side alley next to the cottage, sandwiched between the kitchen wall and the high wooden garden fence. Underwood edged around to the back of the house, realizing again that he had to lose some weight. He was struck by the garden’s simplicity: it was virtually all lawn and flower beds. Low maintenance. Lucy Harrington was obviously a reluctant gardener.

  All of the back windows were intact and shut. There were no obvious signs of entry. The back door was locked from the inside. He thought for a moment. Lucy Harrington’s killer had surprised her upstairs. He had almost certainly been inside the house when she’d arrived. He hadn’t used the windows or the front door. There was no other way into the house: he had to have used the back door. But it was locked. What did that actually prove? Only that the killer didn’t leave that way. Maybe he found another key somewhere. Underwood looked around for a loose paving stone or a brick under which Lucy Harrington might have concealed a spare key. He saw nothing obvious. He rejected the idea. A single woman living alone was unlikely to leave keys lying around outside. He looked again at the back door.

  It was heavy and needed repainting. There was a single large glass pane in the door. The house was set slightly higher than garden level and Underwood climbed the three concrete steps. He studied them carefully. Rain would have washed away any residual mud from the killer’s shoes. In any case, he hadn’t seen any mud inside the house. He crouched on the top step, noting the crack between the bottom of the door and the kitchen floor. Something caught his eye. Wedged against the foot of the door frame was a tiny purple flower petal. Was it significant? Doubtful. Underwood thought of his own house: all sorts of crap got stuck under doorways, especially those that backed onto gardens. Still, it was something. He looked down the line of the fence at the colourless flower beds; it hadn’t come from there. He picked the petal up between his thumb and forefinger and bagged it.

  ‘Any thoughts, sir?’ Dexter emerged effortlessly from the narrow alleyway.

  ‘Assuming she didn’t let him in the front door, and I don’t believe she did, he had to come in through here. But the door’s locked. Have you got a pencil?’

  Dexter handed over one of her small notebook pencils. She always carried two. Underwood took it and forced it into the keyhole. The space was tight and he was concerned that the pencil might snap. After a moment of awkward fumbling he managed to wedge the end under the tip of the key. At the third attempt, Underwood managed to lever it from the socket. There was a soft clunk on the other side of the door as the key fell to the floor; just as it had ten hours previously.

  ‘Bingo,’ said Underwood.

  ‘That’s an old trick, sir.’ Dexter was unimpressed. ‘Why not just break a window? There’d be less risk of cocking up.’

  ‘But more risk of her noticing it when she got home. He planned all this very carefully. He wanted to be in the house waiting for her. He wanted her to come upstairs. There’s a good chance that if she’d come in and seen a broken window she’d have twigged that something was up.’

  ‘Makes sense.’ Dexter was annoyed she hadn’t thought of that. Something else was troubling her. ‘How did he know she lived here? Maybe he knew her; a boyfriend or someone she’d met.�
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  ‘You think a jealous boyfriend would bother to hack her eye out?’ Underwood said dismissively. ‘Or write all that rubbish up on the wall?’

  ‘Why not? He might be trying to confuse us.’ Dexter looked around at the small cluster of houses. ‘I mean, if he didn’t know her, it’s not an obvious place to come looking, is it? Way out here in the arsehole of beyond.’

  Underwood felt instinctively that the killer hadn’t known Lucy Harrington personally. His rational mind sought for a reason. It was the timing. If he had known her, Underwood reasoned, her killer could have knocked on the front door whenever he wanted and strolled right in. Why wait until a night when everyone in New Bolden knew that Lucy Harrington would be out somewhere else and force an entry? Everyone in New Bolden. The thought niggled at him.

  ‘There was a newspaper article about her recently, wasn’t there?’ he asked.

  ‘Lots. All the local rags ran a feature on her winning that medal. Big news for a tinpot town like New Bolden.’ There was still something of the cockney snob about Dexter, Underwood thought to himself.

  ‘Not as big as this, though,’ he said.

  ‘The reception was well publicized,’ Dexter continued. ‘Anyone in New Bolden who can read would know that Lucy Harrington was going to be in the Civic Hall at eight p.m. So that narrows it down to you, me and the mayor.’

  ‘Behave.’

  ‘Sorry, guv, but I don’t see what you’re getting at.’

  ‘I don’t think he knew her. There’s something else going on here. He’s got some kind of fucked-up agenda. I think he saw a newspaper article, got horny about it and started planning. He’s very thorough. Leaves nothing to chance. Still, neither should we, I suppose. Put together a list of her friends and family. People she knew socially, people she trained with.’ It sounded pathetic. Underwood knew it would be a waste of time. He looked out at the dense clumps of trees, darkly entangled beyond the back fence. Dexter read his mind.

  ‘There are footpaths through the woods, aren’t there?’ she said. ‘Some lead out to London Road, some don’t go anywhere at all and some lead on to Hartfield Road. I wouldn’t fancy finding my way through there in the dark. You think he came in that way?’