by James Raven
‘Can I help you?’ she said in a thin, high-pitched voice that could have belonged to a man or a woman.
‘Miss Cross?’ Temple asked.
She gave a hesitant smile, revealing neat, white teeth. ‘I am.’
‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Temple and this is my colleague, Detective Constable Marsh.’
‘Oh, yes. I’ve been expecting you. Come in. And please call me Amanda.’
It was warm inside and there was a strong smell of polish and dried flowers. They followed her along a short, carpeted hall into a living room that contained an odd mix of inoffensive flat-pack furniture. Matching black leather sofa and armchair. Teak coffee table. White laminated sideboard. Glass TV stand. French windows gave access to a back garden and the sun was streaming through narrow blinds, making Temple blink in the glare.
‘Can I get you both something to drink?’ Amanda said.
Temple shook his head. ‘We’re fine, thanks.’
‘Then please take a seat.’
The two detectives sat on the sofa, and Amanda perched herself on the edge of the armchair facing them. Her posture was straight and assured but Temple sensed that she was uncomfortable. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands and kept adjusting her glasses.
‘I’d like to begin by asking you how much you know about what’s happened over the past twenty-four hours or so,’ Temple said.
She inhaled sharply. ‘I know from the news and from speaking to Hilary Dyer that it’s a ghastly business. You’ve found a body, and you suspect there could be more bodies buried out there in the forest. And I gather that you think Grant Mason was the person who kidnapped and killed those people.’
Temple raised an eyebrow. ‘There’s actually not much you don’t know then.’
‘It’s what everyone is talking about,’ she said. ‘It’s all over the internet and the papers are full of it. I really can’t believe it, though. I met Grant a number of times and he’s been a guest in this house. He always seemed so nice and gentle.’
‘Well, appearances can be deceiving,’ Temple said.
‘I’m sure that’s true, Inspector, but I tend to speak as I find.’
‘So you never suspected him of being up to no good?’
‘Of course not. As far as I was concerned, he was a mild-mannered man who spent most of his time hiking around the forest and writing about it.’
‘But am I right in assuming that you didn’t really know him that well? It was your twin brother, Noah, who was his friend and drinking buddy?’
‘That’s true. I did explain on the phone that Noah’s not here and I’m not expecting him back until tomorrow.’
‘I know, but we were coming to the forest anyway so I thought we should drop in to leave you one of my cards. And I was hoping you could contact your brother for us and tell him we need to talk to him about Mason as a matter of urgency.’
‘I would if I could, Inspector, but his phone’s switched off. I tried ringing him last night and this morning but got no response.’
‘So when did he actually go?’ Temple asked.
‘On Thursday afternoon. He drove into Southampton and took the train.’
‘Have you spoken to him since then?’
‘Just the once. I rang him as soon as I heard Grant had died, but he’d already heard about it on the radio.’
‘Do you know where this stag do is taking place?’
‘Various venues across London. That’s why he went up on Thursday. They’re dragging it out over several days. He’s staying with one of his old pals in Bermondsey.’
‘Do you know who’s getting married?’
‘Someone named Dave. He’s an old school friend. That’s as much as I know. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t very interested since it’s just a glorified piss-up.’
‘I’ve been on a few of those,’ Temple said.
‘And so has Noah. The last stag he went on was in Newcastle and he got so wasted I didn’t hear from him for a week.’
Temple grinned. ‘I understand your brother is a painter and decorator.’
‘That’s right. He works for himself and makes a reasonable living.’
‘Do you work, Miss Cross?’
‘I do now. After Noah moved in with me a few years ago, I started working with him as his secretary, bookkeeper and general dogsbody. Before that, I was living off the settlement I got from my ex as part of the divorce.’
‘So how often did your brother and Mason get together?’ Temple asked.
Amanda thought about it. ‘Usually about two evenings a week at the pub. Sometimes they’d meet for a lunchtime drink. In summer, they occasionally played golf and went on hikes organized by the ramblers’ group in the pub.’
‘So that was about the extent of it?’
She cocked her head on one side. ‘I don’t understand why you’re asking me all these questions. Do you actually suspect that Noah knew what Grant was doing?’
‘Not at all,’ Temple quickly pointed out. ‘We intend to talk to all of Mason’s friends and acquaintances and we’ll be asking them the same questions. We know a bit about Grant Mason the author, but next to nothing about his personal life. And it’s important that we find out as much as possible.’
‘Well, I’m not sure how helpful Noah will be. They weren’t really that close.’
‘So who was close to him, Miss Cross? Do you know?’
Without hesitating, she said, ‘The obvious person to talk to is Tom Fowler. He frequents the same pub and I know he spent a lot of time with Grant.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Drinking, socializing, hiking. Noah doesn’t like him much. He thinks he’s creepy, but that’s mainly because Fowler is into kinky sex apparently and doesn’t mind people knowing about it.’
Temple felt his pulse quicken. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’
She shrugged. ‘He likes all that rough stuff. You know, where couples tie each other up and use whips and canes.’
‘You mean bondage and sadomasochism?’
‘That’s it. Fowler is part of that scene. He goes to fetish clubs and S&M events around Hampshire. But then, so what? Each to his own I say. He’s not married and if it’s what turns him on, then it’s his business.’
‘So how do you know this?’
‘He talks about it when he’s drinking. Doesn’t care who knows about it.’
Temple glanced at Marsh. She was busy scribbling notes on a pad.
‘We intend to talk to Mr Fowler later,’ Temple said. ‘Can you tell me anything more about him?’
‘Not really, except that he’s an estate agent and he’s not married. I’ve only met him once.’
Temple’s phone vibrated in his pocket with an incoming text message. He didn’t take it out immediately. Instead, he glanced at his watch, then asked Amanda if she had any questions for them.
‘Well, I’d like to know what makes you so sure that Grant was a mass murderer. And why you believe that there are more bodies out there in the forest. It seems inconceivable and the television news isn’t really clear on it.’
‘We found a piece of evidence inside Mason’s house,’ Temple said. ‘I can’t give you the specific details but I can tell you that it pointed us in the direction of the graves.’
Amanda tugged at her bottom lip with her teeth and gave a nod.
‘I can’t imagine what you found,’ she said. ‘But whatever it was, I can assure you it had nothing to do with Noah. If he’d been involved in anything bad with Grant, then I would have known about it. My brother wouldn’t hurt a fly, Inspector. And if he’d harboured any suspicions about Grant, he’d have told me.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Miss Cross. And like I said before, we just need to talk to him. I can assure you he’s not a suspect.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘And when he gets back, I don’t doubt he’ll help you in any way he can.’
Temple got up and gave Amanda Cross one of his cards.
‘When you hear from your brother, please get him to call me straightaway,’ he said. ‘Day or night. My mobile number is on the card.’
She said she would and showed them to the door. Temple thanked her for seeing them and said he’d be in touch.
As soon as they stepped outside, Temple took out his phone and read the message that was waiting for him. It was from the detective who had been sent to observe the search for a grave near the village of Burley.
The message was short and to the point and it turned Temple’s gut to ice.
They’ve found two more bodies.
25
As they drove away from Amanda Cross’s house, Temple asked Marsh to call the office and get them to check and see if Tom Fowler had form. Then he asked her to ring Fowler himself to arrange an interview. She got through to him at his estate agent’s office in Brockenhurst. He said he’d be finishing work at lunchtime and agreed to meet them at his home.
‘We could go straight to his office, guv,’ Marsh said. ‘It’s not far from here.’
‘First I want to see what they’ve found at Burley.’
‘Well, I can’t say I’m looking forward to that.’
And neither was Temple. He could feel his jaw tighten at the prospect. The discovery of another grave with two more bodies was a shock if not a total surprise. It was looking increasingly likely that Grant Mason and his accomplice had murdered fifteen people over the past two years, before burying their bodies at locations marked on the map.
‘I reckon we’ve got a prime suspect in Tom Fowler, guv,’ Marsh said, breaking into Temple’s thoughts. ‘He sounds like a Grade-A pervert.’
‘Just because he’s into BDSM doesn’t make him a perv,’ Temple cautioned. ‘You’d be surprised how many people are doing that stuff, especially in the wake of the Fifty Shades phenomenon. But you’re right – he’s an obvious candidate for Mason’s partner-in-crime.’
‘Maybe that’s why he acted strangely when we turned up at Hilary Dyer’s house. After you went into the kitchen with Hilary, he seemed awkward and wasn’t keen to talk. Then he suddenly said he had to go.’
Temple conjured up an image of Tom Fowler standing in Hilary’s lounge in his crumpled grey suit. He’d looked like a typical, hard-pressed office worker. Nothing about the man had struck Temple as odd, except perhaps his hasty departure from the house. Temple wondered why he’d left without bothering to say goodbye to Hilary. Did he panic when suddenly confronted by the police?
At that moment, Marsh took a call from the office, informing her that Tom Fowler did indeed appear on the Police National Computer.
‘You’re not going to believe this, guv,’ she said. ‘Fowler spent three years inside for manslaughter. This was twelve years ago. He killed his girlfriend during a kinky sex session.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
‘He claimed it was a tragic accident, that they were playing a sexual bondage game that went wrong, but the jury found him culpable. He was lucky he wasn’t charged with murder.’
‘Have you got the details?’
She nodded excitedly and read from her notes. ‘Her name was Jessica Cassidy. They’d been seeing each other for about six months, having met at some fetish club. Anyway, one night, he tied her up, put a ball gag in her mouth and covered her eyes with duct tape. He said it was with her full consent. But then he left her to go out for a drink and didn’t get back for ten hours. While he was gone she died of asphyxiation.’
Temple shook his head. ‘Christ, why was he away for so long?’
‘According to the court reports, he got drunk and forgot about her. I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening before.’
So had Temple. In fact, he’d read a force briefing paper not long ago about that very subject. It was prompted by a series of bizarre deaths during bondage sex. It also reported that a growing number of people were putting their lives on the line by indulging in fetish activities with total strangers. One woman in Newcastle allowed some guy to tie her up the same night she met him in a pub. He then proceeded to rape her and slice up her face with a Stanley knife.
‘Can you ring the office back and get them to check when and where he served his time?’ Temple said. ‘I want to know if he crossed paths with Mason while in prison.’
Marsh got straight on with it while Temple reflected on what he’d just been told. It was a significant development. Tom Fowler, Grant Mason’s closest friend by all accounts, was a killer as well as a fetish freak. It was hard not to jump to the obvious conclusion that he was the man wearing the mask in the videos. And also the man in the balaclava who had ransacked Mason’s house.
Temple wondered if it was just coincidence that two such unsavoury characters were living close to each other in a tiny rural community. Had they met by chance in the local pub? Or had they become acquainted before moving to the forest?
He added these to the list of questions in his head. The list was growing by the minute, but at the top were two questions that needed to be answered as a matter of urgency.
Were Bob and Rosemary Hamilton still alive? And if so, then where the hell were they?
The second grave had been discovered just outside Burley, a quaint village surrounded by open forest and barren heathlands.
The exact spot was to the east of the village in a thickly wooded area known as the South Oakley Inclosure. It was just off the road that runs between Burley and Lyndhurst.
A police checkpoint had been set up at the entrance to a visitor car park. There were vehicles parked along the grass verges on both sides of the road, including a TV satellite truck.
Temple lowered his window and held up his ID for one of the uniformed officers to see.
‘Just turn left here, sir,’ the officer said. ‘It’s all happening in the woods next to the car park.’
Temple steered the pool car along a gravel track to the parking area, where tall pine trees cast deep shadows across the ground.
The place was packed with uniforms and white-suited forensic technicians. On any other Saturday it would have been busy with tourists and day-trippers.
There was an assortment of police vehicles and Scientific Services Department vans. A mobile incident truck was taking up a lot of space at the far end.
Temple parked up and he and Marsh got out. A uniformed sergeant they both recognized approached them, and gestured towards a path that led into the woods.
‘You need to follow the path for about fifty yards,’ he said. ‘It’ll take you to where they found the grave.’
Once again, Mason and his partner had chosen a spot close to one of the forest’s many car parks. And Temple could see why. They had probably come here at night when it would have been deserted. Their vehicle would have been shielded from traffic passing on the road and together, they would have carried the bodies into the woods where a grave had probably already been dug.
Temple found it a chilling thought that it had been so easy for them to dispose of their victims. And if it hadn’t been for Mason’s map, the graves would almost certainly have remained undiscovered.
Temple dragged down his shirt collar to loosen it as they walked along the path. When he wiped a hand across his forehead, he felt a thin sheen of sweat there.
The grave was in a small clearing in the woods, about twenty yards from the path. It was surrounded by scrub and brambles and close to the decaying stump of an old oak tree. SOC officers were going about their work with a calm, concentrated commitment. A couple were preparing to erect a forensic tent over the grave. The air in the clearing was thick with the heavy, rich smell of turned earth.
DC Neil Cornish saw them coming and acknowledged them with a wave of his hand. It was Cornish, a dour Irishman, who had sent the text message to Temple’s phone.
He pointed to some plastic stepping plates that had been placed on the ground. Temple and Marsh used them to get up close to the action.
‘It took them four hours to locate the grave,’ Cornish
told them. ‘This is the very spot that’s marked with a cross on Mason’s map so they knew roughly where to look.’
‘What exactly have they found?’ Temple asked.
‘Two corpses that are little more than skeletons. A man and a woman for sure. They were wrapped in bin bags and were lying one on top of the other about three feet down.’
‘Is there anything to identify them?’
‘Not so far. But the names against this location on Mason’s map are Simon and Jane Cramer, a married couple from London who disappeared while on a touring holiday in this part of the world.’
Temple stepped up to the large hole in the ground. The bodies were still partly covered by remnants of the black plastic bags.
Temple’s stomach was strong, but the sight before him made him want to retch. After four months in the ground, the bodies had become badly decomposed and only shreds of blackened tissue remained, along with teeth and strands of hair.
The pair had been buried without clothes or any other belongings and it was going to take a while to confirm their identities.
The hole that had been dug was big enough to accommodate a SOCO who was on his knees examining the bones and the earth beneath them. He was busy taking insect and soil samples that would be examined back at the lab.
When he spotted Temple he stood up and said, ‘There’s something you need to see, sir. I only just noticed it myself.’
The SOCO leaned forwards and extended his right arm, pointing a finger at the neck of the smallest corpse.
‘See that there,’ he said. ‘It’s a short length of electrical cable, which I’m guessing was used to strangle her. The poor woman was buried with it still wrapped around her throat.’
Temple would never have noticed it if it hadn’t been pointed out to him. The cable was discoloured and seemed to have melted into the spinal bones at the base of the skull.
‘Well, at least we now know how one of the victims was murdered,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the same method was used on the others too.’
