The Coopers Field Murder

by Wonny Lea

  ‘Toxicology reports will tell us if she was on any prescribed medication, or if she was poisoned by anything, and things like DNA results will be with you as quickly as the lab is able to process them. Just let me know when you need me to address the team and I will be there.’

  Martin offered his thanks to the professor but they fell on deaf ears, as he was already passing Mrs Williams more samples to be labelled and the two of them continued working – both at ease with the established routine of their strange world.

  On the way back down the stairs Matt checked that Martin still wanted him to follow up whatever it was that Sergeant Evans was concerned about at Parkland Nursing Home.

  ‘Yes I do,’ was Martin’s reply. ‘It’s obviously nothing to do with this case, but according to Sergeant Evans the visitor he saw at the nursing home this morning was more than just rattled at hearing about a police presence – he was visibly shaken and took a few minutes to compose himself. As you said earlier it will probably just turn out to be someone who has a phobia about anyone in uniform but we are all aware of the renowned Evans’ nose and there could be something going on there that we should make it our business to find out about. Take Sergeant Evans with you.’

  Matt was about to leave Martin when his boss asked him to pick up the details of the three missing local women they had talked about earlier. ‘Drop them off at my office on your way past,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll see if any information we have on them ties up with what we now know about our lady. From what you said previously there is only one to be considered but I’ll take a look at them all anyway.’

  ‘Try not to be too long at Parkland, I was thinking of getting some lunch about one-ish and then starting the first session for this case at two o’clock prompt. Let everyone know will you?’

  Matt nodded and walked down the corridor towards the office he shared with two other detective sergeants. Although Matt hadn’t liked the arrangement initially, he had to admit that it worked quite well. Each of the other DSs were allocated to their own DI, in his case a DCI, and because they were all involved with different cases they were hardly ever in the office at the same time.

  In spite of that the three had formed a pretty good working relationship and they often used one another as sounding boards before making suggestions to their relative bosses.

  The office wasn’t empty now and as Matt entered, DS Janice Dilworth got up from her chair, pushed past Matt, and made her way to the door. She had been crying, but even as Matt called out to ask her what was wrong she was already out of sight. Matt picked up the file he had come in for and dropped it off at Martin’s office as requested.

  On his way to pick up Sergeant Evans he wondered about Janice Dilworth. She had replaced one of the other detective sergeants just six months ago when she was newly promoted, and Matt found her input into office discussions really stimulating.

  At first the thought of working closely with a young woman had worried Matt. He had a bit of a reputation with regards to women but had never yet broken the golden rule of not mixing work with pleasure. He had been perversely pleased to meet a short, round-faced woman, who was pretty by anyone’s standard, but was certainly not his type.

  Janice was, like Matt, a graduate entrant and had achieved a first-class honours degree in Criminal Justice from the University of Essex. She was judged by most people to be ‘going places’, and she was one of the last people he would have expected to see in tears.

  He hoped it wasn’t anything too serious – he would make sure of catching up with her later. He would have to tread carefully as he guessed she would most likely be embarrassed by the incident.

  Martin had a single sheet of paper on his desk and was filling in the three columns under his crime-busting headings – the same ones he had written on the whiteboard. It always amazed him how quickly information was gathered at this stage of any investigation and how each piece of data was like a magnet pulling in other facts and figures from the most unlikely places.

  The purpose of his headings was to focus his mind and to ensure that the smallest of details were not overlooked. It always worked for him and now that he had written down everything that was so far known about the body he was in a position to cross-reference his findings with the information Matt had left him.

  As Matt had indicated it was easy to rule out two of the locally reported missing women. One was five feet six and looked from her photograph to weigh in excess of twenty stone. Her file indicated that she was a spinster and had no children, but did have a full set of teeth.

  The other woman was reported as being just five feet and one inch and of slight build. A possible match until Martin caught sight of her age. Her relatives had given her age as just thirty-seven and her hobbies were listed as bungee jumping and social networking – he had little problem in ruling her out.

  Martin sat up straight in his chair and his hopes went up too as he ticked off the features of the third missing woman against those of the body found in Coopers Field.

  Mrs Daphne Mansfield, the woman on the missing persons file, had been reported missing by her sister less than two weeks ago.

  Her physical description was practically a perfect match, apart from the fact that the height was five feet two. Martin wasn’t too concerned about that, knowing that people are often wrong when estimating heights – even for someone they know very well. He also knew it to be a fact that women especially could lose up to a couple of inches off their adult height as they got older.

  Mrs Mansfield was eighty-two at the time she was reported missing and Martin read the statement given by her sister at the time.

  The statement was headed with the date and time it was given and recorded as being taken by PC Helen Cook-Watts. It read:

  ‘I wish to report my sister Mrs Daphne Mansfield as missing. She came to stay with me a few weeks ago because she wanted to come back to Wales before she died. I don’t think she was dying but that’s what she said.

  She normally lives, if living is the word, in Doulon Bottiere, that’s not far from Nantes in the Pays de la Loire area of France. Her daughter Charlotte actually lives in a smart suburb of Nantes but didn’t want Daphne living with her and her husband – so they shipped my sister off to some converted chateau with dozens of other over-the-hill women to end her days.’

  ‘She has very poor eyesight, you know, and can only get about with help on account of her being crippled with arthritis – it’s a family thing, we all suffer from it and the only thing that makes my life bearable is that one day her precious Charlotte will be suffering the same pain.’

  Martin looked up from the statement and grinned to himself. He could only assume that PC Cook-Watts had transcribed this statement from a taped interview, and he wondered how long it had taken. There was evidence from time to time of attempts to keep the statement relevant to the missing person although Martin suspected that Helen had been forced to hear most of the family history.

  The sister making the report was named as one Miss Elsie Forrester, aged eighty-one, and her address was a street Martin recognised as being just off City Road in Cardiff.

  He read, with some amusement, the rest of the statement that took up almost four pages, and then turned his attention to the fact sheet that was attached. This really grabbed his attention. Mrs Mansfield was probably the same age and height as the woman whose death they were investigating. She had severe visual and mobility problems, wore dentures, and had been reported missing just two weeks ago – it was all fitting very nicely.

  What didn’t fit were the last couple of paragraphs. It would appear that prior to the reported disappearance Mrs Mansfield’s daughter and her husband had come to Cardiff and had tried to persuade Daphne Mansfield to return to France with them. According to Elsie they had argued and the couple had been very angry when she last saw them.

  Elsie’s statement went on to explain that she had rung her niece’s home when she discovered Daphne’s room to be almost empty the following da
y. The French housekeeper had answered the phone and told Elsie that Monsieur et Madame Lefevre had called in that morning to collect some papers needed for taking Madame’s mother back to Maison de Retraite. The maid apparently said that Madame Mansfield was sitting in the back of the car but did not get out as her legs were too stiff and in any event Monsieur Lefevre was in a hurry.

  The last part of the statement was in the format of a question and answer session with PC Cook-Watts asking the questions and Elsie Forrester responding.

  Martin concluded that although Elsie had been told by the housekeeper that her sister had returned to France, she was unhappy with not being able to speak to Daphne and so reported her missing anyway. However, on the face of it, there was the likelihood that the woman had returned to France with her daughter and so could not be the body that was found this morning.

  Martin walked around his office and stared up at the beautifully ornate Victorian ceiling. He willed the sunburst motif with its swirling bunches of grapes and flowers to provide him with inspiration, as he was sure it had done in the past.

  It was possible that Mr and Mrs Lefevre had murdered Mrs Mansfield and dumped her body in Coopers Field before returning to France themselves. But the maid had seen Daphne in the back of the car, so it was hardly likely that they would have taken her back to France and then killed her and returned the body to Coopers Field. However, it was two weeks since they returned to France and anything could have happened in that time.

  He told himself that there was still a chance that the woman found in Coopers Field was going to be identified as Daphne Mansfield, the sister reported missing just two weeks ago.

  Her identification would make it easier for the team to find out what had happened to her since her disappearance. With any luck and a great deal of work that would lead to discovering how she had been killed, and if the Lefevres had indeed done the killing.

  Martin was not happy with the number of variables and knew that his only option was to await forensic results and in particular DNA profiles. Daphne Mansfield’s DNA was available to them because when she was reported missing by her sister PC Cook-Watts had taken a sample of hair from the brush that had been left in Daphne’s room. If the murdered woman’s DNA matched, then he and DS Pryor would be flying to France in an attempt to discover how anyone could be in two places at one time – not to mention being dead in Coopers Field and alive in France.

  Some things added up, but lots of things didn’t, and Martin found himself somewhat aimlessly pondering the mysteries of families. Surely the Lefevres had not committed murder – and if they had, what was the nudity and the strategically placed pile of clothes all about? It was most likely that Daphne Mansfield was safely settled back in the French equivalent of a nursing home, wasn’t it?

  Chapter Four

  The Sergeant’s Nose

  Matt caught up with Sergeant Evans in the car park and they deliberately chose to drive to the Parkland Nursing Home in a marked police car. ‘It’s probably nothing,’ explained Sergeant Evans, who was in the driving seat. ‘Lots of people expect the worst when a policeman in uniform knocks at their door, but this man’s reaction was exceptional and we hadn’t even gone there to see him.’

  ‘Start at the beginning,’ suggested Matt, who was getting a bit confused regarding who the man in question was and what he was doing at the nursing home.

  ‘Well as you know, Mrs Linda Pattern, the woman who found the body this morning, was distraught, and at one time I thought she was going to collapse completely. Luckily for us a young woman noticed Mrs Pattern’s condition and recognised it for what it was. She was in a state brought on through hyperventilation following a shock and not, as we thought, in a near-death condition as a result of a heart attack.’

  ‘The young woman turned out to be Sarah Thomas, a nurse on her way to work, and within a few minutes she had the situation under control. She used a paper bag from her lunchbox and made Mrs Pattern breathe into it. We have been shown that trick at some of our first aid sessions. I believe it works because when we breathe out we breathe carbon dioxide into the bag and then we breathe that back in, diluting the level of oxygen we have reached through hyperventilating – it’s something like that, anyway.’

  Matt nodded, as he too had attended the first aid training.

  ‘The cheek of it was when Mrs Pattern complained to her Good Samaritan that the bag smelled of onions and she particularly dislikes onions, especially raw onions; how was that for gratitude!’

  Matt grinned and shook his head. He knew better than to make any comment, as it didn’t take much to get Sergeant Evans wandering off on a tangent, and so Matt attempted to move the conversation on. ‘I presume Sarah Thomas told you she worked at the Parkland Nursing Home and you went there to interview her.’

  ‘Yes. I took PC Cook-Watts with me and we were met by a young care assistant called Maria. She was in no way fazed by our presence, and went off in search of Sister Thomas, who she said was in the office. Maria went off quickly but I didn’t see any point in waiting in the reception area so we followed her down the corridor and noticed her pass a man and a woman just before she got to the office.’

  ‘I heard Maria telling Sister Thomas something about a body and that the police were there and obviously the man in the corridor had also heard these words. We saw him turn back towards the office and then he sort of staggered as if he was going to faint and when we got to him he really was as white as a ghost – not that I’ve ever seen a ghost.’

  Evans stopped his account at that point and turned the police car into the small parking area just inside the gates of the nursing home. There was room for about ten cars at a push but one of the four cars already there was taking up enough space for two cars to park. This car immediately caught their attention but for Matt it was more than that and he positively drooled over the gleaming alloy wheels that effortlessly supported the silver metallic body. He was unable to resist looking through the windows and the pale grey leather interior did not disappoint.

  ‘It’s a Mercedes-Benz E500 Sport, and virtually brand new,’ he told Sergeant. Evans. ‘This car is a seriously expensive piece of motor. What wouldn’t I give to get behind that wheel?’

  Sergeant Evans laughed out loud. ‘I’d give anything to see the wife’s face if I arrived home behind the wheel of that little beauty. She knows I’ve always had a longing for a sports car and would probably think I’d finally flipped and helped myself from the car showroom. As she controls all the money in our household she would most certainly know that even the wheels of that thing would break the bank.’

  Matt took a sideways glance at Sergeant Evans and adjusted his image of the Evans family. Everyone viewed the sergeant as a father figure and valued his work and life experience. Until now Matt had imagined that at home there would be a cuddly Mrs Evans, up to her elbows in flour and rolling out pastry for homemade pies. This didn’t fit the picture he was now getting of a lean, mean accounting machine and he grinned as he thought that the truth was probably somewhere in the middle.

  ‘Remind me of why we’re here,’ he suggested to Sergeant Evans as they crunched over the gravel in the car park and made their way to the front door.

  ‘Well, I’ve already taken a statement from Sister Thomas regarding her involvement in Coopers Field this morning so there’s nothing more on that count. When I mentioned the incident with the gentleman in the corridor to DCI Phelps he suggested we speak to her about that. As I said before, it’s probably nothing, but the man’s behaviour was odd and the DCI probably just wants to put my mind at rest.’

  The cheeky young face of Maria answered the doorbell and she beamed at Sergeant Evans, remembering him from his earlier visit. Matt looked at her and thought that it could almost be worth being a resident here just to have such a ray of sunshine in attendance. He returned her smile, albeit somewhat less widely, and after introducing himself formally he asked if it was possible to speak to Sister Thomas.

  ‘
She’s doing some dressings at the moment but if I tell her you’re here I’m sure she will see you as soon as she can.’

  ‘No rush,’ said Matt. ‘Tell her we just want to speak to her for a few minutes, but only when she has finished what she’s doing.’

  Maria led the visitors from the reception area down a corridor to a small room that was obviously used for visitors and asked them if they would like some tea or coffee. Realising they may have to wait a while Matt accepted her offer on behalf of both of them.

  Maria all but skipped off, leaving the two men who were simultaneously aware that they were both grinning. It was Sergeant Evans who fell into spontaneous laughter.

  ‘She’s a real tonic. It’s almost impossible to look at her face without smiling. How old do you think she is?’

  ‘Barely seventeen, I would have thought, and I would put her as even younger, but there’s an age limit to working as a carer so yes, she must be seventeen at least. You don’t see many girls of her age with their hair tied back in bunches and no vestige of makeup.’ Matt’s thoughts moved to his twelve nieces, and in particular to the oldest ones aged between twelve and fifteen. They were well in to make-up and fashion and often scared Uncle Matt with their level of sophistication. They seemed to be growing up far too quickly.

  Sergeant Evans was thumbing his way through some of the nursing home brochures that were on the central coffee table. ‘Looks like a fair amount of poetic licence within these pages, but nothing actually libellous. I bet the owner paid well for these glossy photographs, but he missed a trick. Just one picture of the smiling Maria on the front cover would have seen potential clients beating a path to the door.’