by Vicary, Tim
And yet tears, inevitably, lay behind it all. There was the empty chair at table, the memory of the days when there were two adults in bed for the girls to bounce on in the morning with their stockings. A mother who could cook without a recipe book. Who bought her presents early instead of rushing round the shops at the last minute as Terry did. Who’d once been a girl herself.
His daughters tried hard but responsibility burdened them too. The only quarrel came when Jessica insisted that Esther eat up the burnt stuffing on her plate - Terry didn’t know whether to applaud her for taking her mother’s role, or check her for being too strict. They endured the visit to Terry’s sister in Leeds, but were glad to come home for New Year.
Jane Carter had no such concerns. She spent most of her Christmas thinking of murder. Alison Grey’s murder, to be precise. She volunteered for duty when older officers were at home with their families; and she used her time well. By the time Terry Bateson returned to work, she had rearranged much of the display in the incident room, and made progress on a number of vital details.
‘Firstly, the silk scarf,’ she told him, sitting calmly in front of her computer, which, like her, had been working overtime while others relaxed. ‘As we established, it’s a designer item, by Jacques Rocher. I’ve been into their catalogue and only 5,000 of that particular pattern were produced worldwide last year. So it’s a pretty exclusive item. Retails for anything between £35 and £55 - as much as you can make the punter cough up, it seems.’
‘For a scarf?’ Terry said incredulously. ‘A metre or so of posh fabric?’
Jane grinned. ‘It’s the cachet, sir, the label. Shows other ladies you’ve made it. Or so I’m led to believe.’
‘So what’s that got to do with Alison Grey?’ Terry mused. ‘Was she into fashion?’
‘Hardly, sir, to judge by the rest of her wardrobe. Sensible clothes, mostly - jeans, corduroys, fleeces, a couple of suits from Marks and Spencer, but that’s it. Sort of stuff my mum might wear, if she was a bit younger. Nothing fancy.’
‘Apart from the scarf, which killed her?’
‘Yes, exactly. And here’s the other thing. So far as Jacques Rocher knows - that’s the company, not the man himself - they’re only sold by a dozen or so stores throughout the country. Two in London, one in Leeds - none in York, though - Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Cheltenham, Bristol, Manchester. That’s it.’
‘So you’ve been checking, have you? Who bought one recently?’
‘Trying, sir. They’re not exactly co-operative, with the sales going on. But ...’ She shrugged. ‘It may lead to something. In time.’
‘Perhaps,’ Terry said doubtfully. ‘What else?’
‘Well, the other thing I’ve been working on is this car. The red Nissan Primera. It’s a long shot, because we can’t be sure if it was stolen or not. And all we’ve got so far is the sighting by the farmer and part of the number plate - XB. Which may be accurate or not. But anyway I’ve been chasing up the dealers and again ...’ She leaned back in her chair, stretching her hands behind her head and cracking her shoulder blades. ‘... it seems there were 1,206 Nissan Primeras issued with a number plate featuring the letters XB, of which precisely 375 were red. Not an impossible number, I suppose. Given time. I’ve got two DCs working on that at the moment.’
‘Good work,’ Terry said. ‘What about TWOCs?’
‘Well, exactly. So far I’ve come up with four stolen red Primeras. One in Leeds, one in London, one in Manchester, and one in ...’ she glanced at her notes ‘... the isle of Skye. Believe it or not.’
‘I think we can put that at the bottom of the list,’ Terry said. ‘Is that the lot?’
‘Not yet, sir, no. Most of them haven’t replied.’
‘Well, keep at it, sergeant. It’s a possibility we have to eliminate. But ...’ he grimaced. ‘You know what our DCI’s going to ask?’
‘Where’s Peter Barton, sir?’
‘Exactly. Where is the bastard? Any news on that?’
‘None, sir, I’m afraid. We’ve circulated his description nationwide, but no joy so far. There’s more to that lad than meets the eye, it seems. If he can disappear so completely.’
‘Do you think it was him?’
‘It could be, sir, obviously. We’ll know for certain when we get the lab report on that scrap of cloth the SOCOs found on the barbed wire fence. They’re still working on that apparently. Staff shortages over the Christmas period.’ Jane grimaced contemptuously. ‘But he has to be top of the list. These other assaults almost look like he was practising. Working himself up for the big one. In which case, what if he’s got a taste for it, and does it again?’
‘Then we’re in trouble,’ Terry agreed. ‘But what’s his motive?’
Jane frowned. It seemed obvious to her. ‘He’s a pervert - he was spurned by women in his childhood, so he’s out for revenge. He gets his kicks from stalking single women.’
They were sitting in the incident room, its walls covered with photographs and maps of the crime scene and surrounding area. A dotted green line led from the bridleway to Alison Grey’s house. A similar dotted line in red led from the house to the gateway where the Nissan Primera had been seen. Terry drummed his fingers on the map thoughtfully.
‘I know, there are a lot of similarities with those earlier assaults, but there are differences too. Quite significant differences at that.’
‘Like what, sir?’
‘Well, for a start, look at this place, Crockey Hill.’ He tapped the board with his hand. ‘It’s not even a village - just a road junction with a few houses and a filling station. Much more remote than the other places he’s been. And that bridleway’s hardly used. Would you run there now, through all those damp woods? I wouldn’t.’
‘You’re not a serial killer, sir.’
Terry raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, thank you, sergeant, for those kind words. But if I was a serial killer, or sexual pervert, whatever, I guess my ardour would be pretty much diminished by all the cold damp mud I had to plough through to get to my victim. And there’s another point, too. How did he know she was living there alone in the first place?’
Jane shrugged. ‘He scouted through the woods, sir, I suppose.’
‘You suppose.’ Terry turned back to the map. ‘Look where this house is, sergeant. It’s down a track a hundred yards from the road, with a field and strip of woodland behind it. Young Peter coming along this bridleway is behind those woods, isn’t he? Where he can’t even see this house and has no reason to know that it exists, let alone that it’s occupied by a single woman.’
‘Maybe he deliberately set out to search for victims, sir. If Mrs Richards hadn’t come out with a dog, he might have attacked her.’
‘Well, maybe you’re right. But you know as well as I do that 90% of murders aren’t committed by strangers at all, but by someone well known to the victim. She had condoms in her bedroom, she must have had a boyfriend. What if it was some jealous lover who killed her, not Peter Barton at all? The guy who gave her that scarf, perhaps?’
Jane’s eyes met his thoughtfully. ‘You may be right, sir, but if she did have another lover, he was unusually careful to cover his tracks. I’ve been through all the e-mails on her computer, and there’s nothing even mildly flirtatious. Just gossip to friends and colleagues - most of them in other countries - and a lot of detailed stuff about this book she was writing.’
‘So they got in touch by phone, then. Must have done.’
‘Right. Only her phone’s missing. So if they sent each other texts we can’t read those either, not yet anyway. I’ve got T-mobile working on that, but it’s going to take some time. They’re going through the numbers on her phone bill one by one. But if they don’t come up with anything we’ve still got Peter Barton to find.’ She sighed. ‘It’s still very possible that she was killed by an intruder. Either someone who came up the bridleway through the woods, or the driver of the red Primera.’
‘The first thing to establish, is exactly
what happened that night,’ Terry agreed. ‘And in what order. How, exactly, did the killer - whoever he was - persuade her to stand on that chair, naked, with a scarf round her neck?’
‘She’d just had a bath, we know that much. There was a residue of foam around the sides of the tub,’ Jane insisted. ‘He came upstairs, surprised her in the bath or the bathroom ...’
‘Wearing what, exactly, on his feet?’ Terry asked pointedly. ‘Shoes that left no trace?’ The lack of footprints was a weak point in the intruder theory, they both knew. If the killer had come from the bridleway, he would have passed through woods where the ground was damp with mud and leafmould, before crossing a carrot field covered with straw. Yet there was no mud, straw or leafmould in the rooms upstairs.
‘There were a couple of wisps of straw downstairs,’ Jane said. ‘And mud - in the loo and the hall. Quite a lot of it.’
‘Dropped by our fine young constables,’ Terry said dismissively. ‘Rushing through the flower bed to the window. Why none upstairs, that’s the question?’
‘Maybe he took his shoes off.’ Jane suggested. ‘In order to make less noise.’
‘Then why no fibres from his socks?’ Terry asked. ‘One of those would be soaked in DNA, if they’re anything like mine. We’d have him. Only there aren’t any.’
Jane shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe he never went upstairs at all. Maybe she got out of the bath and came downstairs in her dressing gown, or with a towel wrapped round her, and he surprised her in the hall.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘What, come downstairs? To feed the cat, maybe. Make herself a warm drink. Or perhaps she heard a noise and came down to see what it was.’
‘Would you do that? Get out of the bath and come downstairs? A single woman, alone?’
‘Not if I thought the noise was a burglar, no. But if I thought it was the cat, knocking over a cup or something, then maybe.’
Terry shuddered, imagining the mind-numbing shock poor Alison Grey had faced, if this scenario was true. Alone in that house, half naked, attacked by a strange man in the hall. ‘That could explain why there was no sign of a struggle,’ he said. ‘She’d have been frozen by panic.’
‘Quite. Then he taped her hands, made a noose with the scarf, and it was too late.’
‘Where did he get the scarf?’
‘There’s a coat cupboard just inside the front door. Either that, or he brought it with him.’
‘And yet there’s no trace of his DNA on it anywhere,’ Terry mused. ‘That’s what gets me. He’d be sweating, bound to be. Hyped up with excitement. But nothing. He must have worn gloves.’
‘So he came prepared. Like Peter Barton did, in Lizzie Bolan’s house.’
‘Maybe,’ Terry said. ‘But I’m still not wholly convinced about this intruder theory. As you know.’
‘You think it could have been her lover?’
‘Yes. Look at it this way, sergeant. There were those scars on her buttocks, don’t forget. That’s not the sort of thing Peter Barton’s ever done - not so far, anyway. It looks more like some perverted sex game. And there’s no proof - no definite proof - that anyone broke into this house at all. He could have come through the loo window, I grant you, but our young constables blundered through there too, so that mud in the hall could have come from them. All this about the woman coming downstairs could have happened, I suppose, but it’s not particularly likely, is it? If she heard a burglar, she’d have shut herself in her bedroom and phoned 999 ...’
‘If she could find her mobile,’ Jane said. ‘We can’t.’
‘Well, exactly,’ Terry said. ‘Maybe she tried, and he snatched it out of her hands. But let’s stick with Alison for a moment. If the cat needed feeding, you’d think she’d do it before she had a bath, wouldn’t you? Or if she forgot, get herself properly dried and ready for bed before she came down. Whereas your theory has her walking downstairs half naked immediately after her bath, just exactly at the moment the intruder appears, simply to account for the lack of mud upstairs. Whereas if there was no intruder ...’
‘There wouldn’t have been any mud,’ Jane said smoothly.
‘Which may have come from our constables, sadly.’ Terry sighed. ‘Look, what if the killer was someone she knew? A man she’d let into the house quite willingly? Someone she was relaxed about having a bath in front of? Someone she might stand in front of naked? Remember, somebody caned her. And the shower head was raised too high for a woman, so it’s likely the man took a shower afterwards. Or before.’
‘All right, but how come he left no trace? No male hairs in the bathtub? Or on her body?’
‘She washed them away in the bath.’
‘No DNA on the scarf?’
‘He wore gloves. He was careful.’ It was Terry’s turn to shrug, Jane’s to look sceptical.
‘He’s her lover. A man she trusts enough to stand naked in front of, you say. She lets him whip her. And he’s wearing gloves? Sounds kinky to me. Anyway, where’s the whip?’
‘Maybe he took it with him. He’d guess we could get DNA from it. After she was dead, he’d try to clean up.’
‘He couldn’t clean everything. There must be traces of him somewhere in the house.’
‘There are. There are fingerprints everywhere. Most of them unidentified. None belonging to Peter Barton, remember. The only male ones we’ve identified belong to her landlord, Michael Parker. He visited her two days before, he says, to check her central heating.’
‘So could he be your man, her secret lover?’
Terry shrugged. ‘No evidence of that so far. He was near Scarborough when she died, he says, with some builders he employs. She phoned his office a couple of times in the last month, but not often. Still, he’s on my list. I’ll check on him further ...’
‘Well, if it was someone she knew, how did he get to the house, without anyone seeing?’
‘By car. He drove there, sometime after dark. No one would notice, why should they? The neighbour’s quarter of a mile off anyway, it’s cold and dark, and he parks round the side out of sight.’
‘So this man murders his mistress, walks out the front door, drops the latch, and drives away. Is that your theory?’
‘Yes. Not switching his headlights on until he reaches the road, perhaps,’ Terry said. ‘That’s what I’d do, in his position.’
‘Why?’
‘So no one would see me.’
‘No sir. I mean why kill your mistress, if that’s what she was? Deliberately, wearing gloves to avoid detection? And hanging her up in the hall like that, to make it look like suicide?’
‘Or to humiliate her.’
‘Or to humiliate her, yes, in front of the mirror. Scare her shitless, in fact, poor lady.’
‘Yes. Well, maybe that’s the point. He hated her so much, he planned it carefully. He almost got away with the suicide idea, too. He would have, if it hadn’t been for the tape marks on her wrists.’
‘And the scars on her buttocks, the knife mark on her throat. You think her lover carries a knife?’
Terry hesitated. ‘That, I grant you, is less likely.’
‘Or gloves?’
‘I’m not saying this is a crime of passion - something spontaneous that got out of control. It looks deliberate to me. He came there planning to do this.’
‘Which fits the intruder. Peter Barton. Or some other pervert. Someone who just thinks of her as a woman, not a person at all. An object to revenge himself on.’
‘Not necessarily. You’re forgetting how it was made to look like suicide. And the fact that she was suffering from cancer. A lover could have known that, planned to kill her, and disguise it as suicide, thinking he’d get away with it. He might have, too, if the pathologist hadn’t noticed those tape marks on the wrists.’
‘But why? What’s the motive?’
Terry frowned. ‘Could be anything. People do strange things when they’re in love. Maybe it was simple jealousy - she’d deceived him with another m
an, perhaps the guy who’d given her that scarf. Or maybe she threatened to tell his wife - tried to blackmail him somehow. Anything like that. Perhaps love just turned to hate. It happens sometimes, so they say.’
‘There’s no evidence of any of this.’
‘There’s no evidence of your intruder.’
‘Yes, sir, there is. There’s the jogger Mrs Richards saw ...’
‘Two days before. Could have been anyone.’
‘And the scrap of cloth snagged on the barbed wire, the open window, the mud in the loo and the hall ...’
‘Could have been our constables.’
‘Or the killer. Then there’s the red Primera parked in the gateway.’
‘Young lovers, probably.’ Terry shrugged. ‘You’re right, we shouldn’t exclude it, I suppose.’
‘And most of all, there’s Peter Barton,’ Jane persisted. ‘With a nutcase like him on the loose, all this is a bit academic.’
‘I know, I know,’ Terry conceded. ‘The sooner we catch the young bastard the better. It could easily be him. But it doesn’t feel right, somehow. There’s something we’re missing. Something about the woman herself.’ He paced across the room, thinking. ‘We need to know more about her. Why she came to live in York, who her friends and enemies were, that sort of thing.’ He smiled. ‘And who she was sleeping with. That’s the lad who did it, in my book.’
42. Quick Sale
THE PHONE call came as a surprise. Sarah was at her desk, deep in preparation for her fraud trial. It was Friday afternoon. The trial began on Monday, and she’d set aside this afternoon for preparation. But her client’s bank statements were more complicated than expected, and she had only an hour before she had to leave. She had promised to meet Michael Parker that evening, and was beginning to wish she hadn’t. The last thing she needed now was an interruption.
