Snarl

by Celina Grace

  “It’s fine,” Kate said quickly. She could feel her pulse quicken. “What is it?”

  “The usual. Worse than usual. I need you here right away. “

  “No problem—“

  “I’m sending Mark over to get you. He can fill you in on the way.”

  “No problem,” said Kate again. She felt a little winded. Worse than usual…what the hell did that mean? Then she remembered Anderton didn’t know she wasn’t at her own home. She explained.

  “Stanton’s place? Yes of course – Mark said something—” Anderton sounded… well, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Pissed off? Amused? It was the merest trace of something, gone in an instant as he went straight back into professional mode. “I’ll tell Mark to take a detour then. Does he know where your paramour lives?”

  “Yes he does.” I’ve been seeing him for almost a year, you know. “I’ll be ready.”

  “Right. See you soon.”

  “Do we have an ID on the victim yet?” asked Kate quickly, before he could ring off.

  Anderton was silent for a moment. “We’ve ID’d one of them,” he said, eventually.

  “One of them?” repeated Kate and Andrew looked up from his paper at her tone.

  “This is a multiple murder, Kate. Didn’t I say?” No, you didn’t. “It’s one of the co-directors of the MedGen Facility.”

  “Alex Hargreaves?” asked Kate, shocked.

  “No, Jack Dorsey.” Dead air hummed down the line again for a second. “That’s all we’ve got at the moment. See you soon.”

  The broken line bleeped in Kate’s ear. She put the phone back in her pocket. Andrew was looking at her from across the table, his mouth crimped.

  “Was that work?” he asked. She knew he knew it had been.

  “Yes. I’ve got to go.”

  “Oh, not today, surely?”

  Kate tried to look sorry. “I have to. I’m really sorry, Andrew. You know what it’s like.”

  Andrew looked down at the paper again and flipped another page with an irritated flick of his fingers. “Yes, I know what it’s like,” he said, quietly. “Oh well. If you have to, you have to.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Kate, more sincerely this time. She quickly got up and gave him a kiss. “I’ll let you know how I get on.”

  “Fine.”

  She kissed him again and then turned and made for the stairs and the bedroom, racing for her clothes and feeling that welcome sense of anticipation, tinged with a little fear, that she always felt at the start of a new case.

  Within ten minutes, she heard the beep of Olbeck’s horn outside. She grabbed her bag, kissed Andrew again as he sat, still in something of a sulk, at the breakfast table and left the house, shutting the door behind her firmly. She flung herself into the passenger seat rather breathlessly.

  “Fill me in. Please, fill me in.”

  “Alright, alright. Keep your hair on.” Olbeck reversed the car out of the driveway as Kate buckled herself in. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  “I heard it’s Jack Dorsey.”

  “You heard correctly. Dorsey, a currently unidentified male, and Dorsey’s wife.”

  “Jesus.” Kate was silent for a moment, looking ahead unseeingly through the windscreen. “What are the first ideas? A domestic? Or something else?”

  “I don’t know and can’t speculate. I haven’t even been to the scene yet. It’s in Poltney Carver; village on the far side of Abbeyford.”

  “I know it. Well, vaguely. Isn’t it the next village to Poltney Winter? Where Michael Frank lived?”

  Olbeck nodded crisply. “That’s right.”

  “Hmm,” said Kate. “Well, I guess we’ll know more when we get there.”

  It was a beautiful spring day: the kind of day where the British countryside looks its best. Its best is very good indeed, thought Kate, looking out of the car window. The trees were newly clothed in leaves of a bright fresh green and the sky was a clear, dazzling blue. Faint white wisps of cloud lay on the horizon. The hedgerows and fields were dotted with a profusion of colourful wildflowers, like dainty embroidery on a smooth, green blanket.

  The car passed the sign for Poltney Carver. It was a small but clearly affluent place: the driveways of the pretty cottages that lined the few streets of the village housing large, expensive cars. Several of the houses of golden stone sported window boxes, filled with golden, dancing daffodils and the smooth upright heads of pink and white tulips. Ahead, Kate could see a police car and a couple of uniformed officers guarding the gateway to what was obviously Jack Dorsey’s house. Olbeck slowed the car to flash his identification and they were waved through.

  The drive was a long one, winding through sun-dappled woods where the first early bluebells could be seen in a faint, bluish haze under the beech trees. Olbeck slowed a little as they approached the next blind bend in the driveway. It was as well that that he did, because the second they rounded the bend, Kate yelled and Olbeck gasped as the broad white snout of an ambulance filled the windscreen of the car from side to side. The siren screamed as Olbeck yanked desperately at the steering wheel. The two vehicles passed each other with a sliver of space between them. Then the ambulance was past, blue lights flickering briefly over the interior of the car. Hedgerow twigs and leaves thrashed at the windows as the car juddered down the rough edges of the road, before burying its bonnet half in and half out of a hazel hedge. The engine stalled.

  Kate and Olbeck remained motionless for a moment, Kate gripping the sides of her seat with both hands. As she realised they’d come to a stop and she was still in one piece, she released her grip, finger by rigid finger, and slowly sat back in the seat.

  “Jesus, that was close,” she said, when she could be sure of her voice.

  Olbeck had gone pale. “You’re not wrong. What a brilliant piece of irony that would have been; killed by a speeding ambulance…”

  He fumbled his seatbelt open with shaking hands and got out of the car, holding onto the door like an old man. He groaned. “God, would you look at my paintwork.”

  Kate got up out of the car herself. She was feeling sick with the backwash of adrenaline, although the fresh air helped. “It’s a mess,” she agreed. “Still, could have been worse.”

  Olbeck was bent over the bonnet, tutting and flicking at the myriad scratches. “I’ve probably buggered the suspension as well,” he muttered. “God Almighty…”

  He swung himself back into the driver’s seat and gingerly tried the key in the ignition. The engine turned over a few times, then sputtered back into life. “Move back a bit, Kate, while I try and get this out.”

  Kate moved back obediently. Olbeck nudged the car back out of the hedge and onto the open road again. He revved the engine a little. “Seems to be okay. Let’s get on.”

  Kate hopped back in, feeling more normal. The same thought struck the two of them simultaneously and they turned to one another in the same instance.

  “The ambulance—”

  “Blue lights—”

  “That means – that must mean—”

  “One of them is still alive,” said Olbeck. “Probably. Let’s go find out, shall we?”

  He drove very cautiously along the rest of the winding driveway, sounding his horn at every corner. They encountered no other vehicles. The driveway ended in a wide sweep of gravel in the front of a beautiful, four storied house of the gothic Victorian type, built in Bath stone with a multitude of glittering mullioned windows and a small fountain playing in the smooth green circle of lawn in front of house. There were several cars parked already and two uniformed officers guarding the half-open front door.

  After the shock of the near-accident, Kate hadn’t anticipated what they would soon be seeing at the crime scene. The beauty of the surroundings somehow made the fear of what was to come worse. She felt a twinge of pain in her back, deep within the scar. As Olbeck turned off the engine, she took a deep, shaky breath and unclipped her seat belt.

  Chapter Six


  The silence was the first thing that she noticed. The only noises she could hear were natural ones: birdsong, the rustle of leaves, the musical tinkle of the falling water in the fountain. Their footsteps sounded abnormally loud as she and Olbeck crunched across the gravel to the front door. Kate took another sweeping look around before they entered the house. There was a security camera mounted up on the front wall of the building, another trained on the step on which she stood. Alongside a car that she recognised as Anderton’s, and two patrol cars, there was a large black four wheel drive vehicle, something that looked like a classic vintage sports car and another silver four wheel drive. Did those belong to Jack Dorsey and his family? Kate looked again at the front of the house, with its myriad windows. Behind the nearest window to the front door, she could see thick folds of expensive fabric held back by a glossy curtain tie. Against the wall of the house were flowerbeds planted with old-fashioned, cottage garden flowers: hollyhocks, larkspur, well-clipped rose bushes. There was money here – a lot of money.

  Olbeck and Kate slipped on gloves and boots and stepped forward into a small inner hallway, wooden panelled and unfurnished except for a delicate little wooden table stood against the far wall. On its surface, a mercury glass vase held an arrangement of spring flowers. As she walked forward, Kate caught a faint breath of their delicate scent, obliterated a moment later by the heavy, metallic tang of blood. It should have been a warning but she still had to look twice as they walked out into the larger, inner hallway. The walls were painted a warm cream and the overhead lights were on. Kate thought for a moment that the hallway was tiled with glossy, wine-coloured tiles, a decorating choice that contrasted rather oddly with the rest of the interior. The illusion lasted a second, until she realised that the floor tiles were actually a conventional black and white, in a checkerboard pattern. They looked a glossy scarlet because they were submerged in a flood – a veritable lake – of blood.

  A body lay in the middle of the red pool that filled the hallway from edge to edge. The body of a middle-aged man, tall and heavy, dressed in a dark tracksuit. His hair was cut brutally short and the bald spot at his crown shone under the overhead lights. He was waxen-white, the cleanly incised wound in his neck just visible.

  The police officers regarded him in silence. Kate could feel her face freezing to a neutral expression automatically. It was partly a learned response – you realised early on not to show any sign of distress or emotion if you didn’t want the piss ripped out of you by the male officers – but it was partly a defense mechanism, as well. Keep your face blank and somehow the horror of what you saw was reduced, just slightly. Just enough to cope.

  “Is all the blood his?” Kate asked Olbeck, in a subdued monotone.

  He was standing at the edge of the blood, staring intently at the body. Kate realised there was no way to get past the blood pool to the other side, without walking through it. Not a chance. Scene of Crime would kill them if they attempted it – she could already see two white suited technicians giving them uneasy glances from further down the hallway.

  “Looks like it,” said Olbeck. He raised a hand to the SOCOs to placate them. “We’ll go round, guys. Don’t worry.”

  They retraced their steps back through the first little antechamber and stepped back into the sunshine. Kate lifted her face to the warmth of the rays. The air felt incredibly fresh after the tainted stuffiness of the hallway. She closed her eyes briefly. The redness of the sunshine through her closed lids recalled the bloody lake inside, the body of the man spread-eagled within it, as if swimming.

  They walked around the outside of the house, looking for a side entrance. Through a wrought iron gate in a box hedge, the path opened out onto smoothly manicured lawns, with a white iron conservatory before them. There were more cameras here, trained on the French doors that led into the conservatory. The doors stood open and the edge of a green curtain, made of what looked like heavy, lined silk, could be seen flapping gently in the breeze.

  “Look at all these cameras,” Kate said, gesturing. “Surely we’ll have something from one of them?”

  “Let’s hope so.” Olbeck had caught sight of Anderton and Theo, standing on the threshold of the house. At the same moment, their colleagues noticed them and lifted their hands in greeting. Theo looked as if he’d got up too early after a heavy session the night before. Anderton looked fairly normal, perhaps just a trifle pale.

  “Good morning,” he said, as Kate and Olbeck approached. Kate didn’t smile in response – it felt inappropriate in the circumstances. “I suppose you’ve been through the front?”

  “Tried to,” answered Kate. “Couldn’t get past the body.”

  “That’s the security guard. His name’s Darryl, not sure on the surname, yet.”

  “Not much of a guard, was he?” Olbeck said, a remark that from him that was quite remarkable in its unexpected callousness. Kate raised her eyebrows. Perhaps he was more unnerved than he was letting on.

  “What else have we got?” she asked.

  Instead of answering, Anderton gestured towards the house. “Go on through. You’ll soon see. Come back out and tell me what you think.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  Anderton gestured again. “Just go and get your first impressions,” he said.

  Theo sat down rather abruptly on a convenient garden bench and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking slightly. Kate was going to say something, tease him a little about coming to work on a hangover, before deciding that she’d better keep her mouth shut. She and Olbeck exchanged a look and then stepped through the doorway, into the conservatory.

  The same heavy green silk curtains they had glimpsed from the garden had been drawn over the panes of glass that made up the walls. The floor was tiled in the same checkerboard pattern as the hallway. Kate and Olbeck stepped cautiously through into the house. They came out into a large room; a sitting room, beautifully furnished, with pale green walls, a polished dark-wood floor and a large, cream rug. Antiques stood against the walls, too many beautiful things to take in at once. The lights were on, blazing from the overhead chandelier and the curtains were drawn back from the ceiling height windows.

  The beauty of the room made what was in it worse. Jack Dorsey’s body lay in front of the fireplace. Kate had to look twice to be sure it was him, he had been so savagely attacked. She looked once at the knife wounds to his face and chest and then looked away, swallowing. She groped for her neutral mask and tried to fix it back onto her face, which wanted to grimace and crumple. She could feel Olbeck at her side, his arm touching hers, and the warmth of his body momentarily brought a little comfort. She fixed her eyes on the rug, purposefully not looking at the body. Dorsey’s blood had spurted in arcs and splashes and sprays, marking the pale rug in an awful abstract artwork. It was dry now, brownish red, stiffening the long fibres of the carpet. She realized now why Theo had looked so bludgeoned. Her gaze was drawn to another dark splash on the far wall, next to the huge, gilt-framed mirror that reflected the horror contained within the four surrounding walls. Something written in blood, in dragging, jagged letters a foot high. KILLER.

  She and Olbeck remained at the edge of the room while the technicians did their work. Camera flashes went off at monotonous intervals, Kate trying not to flinch at every one. After what felt like an hour, but was probably only ten minutes, Olbeck turned to Kate and, with mutual appeal in their glance, they turned and left the room.

  Once again, out in the open air, Kate drew in a shaky breath. The air outside tasted indescribably fresh and sweet after the abattoir inside. She and Olbeck walked over to where Anderton and Theo sat on their bench. Anderton looked up in silent enquiry.

  “Jesus,” Olbeck said eloquently. He sat down on a low garden wall that edged what looked like a kitchen garden.

  “Exactly,” agreed Anderton. “Butchered. I think that’s the word I’d use.”

  “Was there another victim?” asked Kate, remembering the ambulance.

  “
Dorsey’s wife, Madeline. She was lying next to him when we got here. Terribly injured but, incredibly, still alive.”

  “Alive?” asked Kate. She felt her pulse quicken. “Do you think she’ll make it?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so. But – well, if you’d seen her…”

  “What were her injuries?”

  “Knife wounds, same as Dorsey. She looked like she’d lost a lot of blood.”

  “God,” said Olbeck. He pushed himself up off the wall and began pacing around. “Was it – I mean, we’re certain there was an intruder?”

  Anderton looked pleased. “Ah, you’re thinking it could be a domestic? It’s possible, although from the fact that the security guard is also dead, unlikely. We’ll obviously know more if Mrs Dorsey pulls through.”

  “Who reported it?” asked Kate.

  Theo spoke up for the first time. “Cleaner,” he said, a little thickly. Clearing his throat, he threw his cigarette butt into a flowerbed and went on. “She’s currently in the kitchen with a WPC, having hysterics.”

  “Understandably,” Anderton said, also getting to his feet.

  Kate remembered something; a flashback from her interview with Jack Dorsey at MedGen. His desk, a silver-framed photograph: blonde wife, blonde children, arms interlinked. She felt a coldness spreading in the pit of her stomach. “The children,” she said, feeling as if she didn’t quite have control of her mouth. “The Dorsey children… are they – has anyone checked—”

  Anderton looked at her properly for the first time since she’d arrived. A flicker of sympathy crossed his face. “They’re at boarding school, both of them. Both safe. Thank fuck,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

  Kate sat down on the wall herself, feeling almost queasy from the wave of relief that spread over her. Then she thought about having to break the news to them. Sorry, kids, about your mum and dad… Resolutely, she turned her mind away from the thought.

  “We’ve searched the rest of the house and we’re spreading out into the grounds.” Anderton had been speaking for a few moments before she became aware of what he was saying. She tried to concentrate. Anderton went on. “There’s no sign of forced entry. We haven’t yet had a look at the CCTV footage, that’s obviously top priority once the SOCOs are finished here.”