by Nathan Sayer
“The bloody bin.” He had already traveled too far to turn back without setting his whole day behind schedule. He hoped the bin man would make the short journey down his drive to the visible wheelie bin and bail him out of trouble. How far was too far? 5 metres? 10? His whole driveway was only 25 metres long. If the bin man didn’t push the boundaries of duty and get it for him, he would have to empty it into bags and take a trip to the dump, eating away into the precious time he did have off. His apology to Kate had just got longer; not only had he bitten her head off this morning, he had forgotten the very thing she had asked him to do.
The car parking spaces at the police station were assigned to rank, the higher up the food chain you were the closer to the building you got. As a Detective Inspector, Reed got a pretty good spot, about three rows back from the main doors. As childish as it was, he got a little satisfaction from parking there. When he turned the ignition off the car coughed and spluttered as if not wanting to stop for fear of not starting again. Reed’s satisfaction with his parking space waned quickly as heads appeared at the office windows to see what the commotion was. Reed pretended that the offending noise was from somewhere else, making a big show of looking for the culprit himself as he locked up, then gave a dramatic shrug and started walking away.
As he walked through the automatic doors of the police station he knew no breaking news was forthcoming or somebody would have called him. He was leading the investigation after all, but unfortunately so far he hadn’t led it very far.
He made his way up the stairs to the CID department on the second floor. The building was big and glamorous; it was only 7 years old and was the envy of many a force throughout the country. Everything you could ever need was here, and Reed still wasn’t sure if he had entered all of the departments on the site.
He entered conference room 1E, where they were basing the investigation. Every available space was filled with tables, chairs, computers and people doing various jobs. On one wall was a huge whiteboard with details of the investigation so far; maps, names, pictures, sketches and important snippets of information from various people’s statements had been stuck all over it.
Reed’s superior, DCI Edward Whitehead, was sat at the main desk at the head of the room just in front of the whiteboard reading through some papers. Reed had his own office but he had a desk here, too. He slowly padded down the corridor that was created by all the other tables and said “Morning” to a few people, trying to take his time, hoping Whitehead would up and leave. He didn’t. Reed stood the opposite side to which Whitehead was sitting and waited. Whitehead looked up, looked back down at the papers in his hand, shook his head in disapproval at something and then left without saying a word.
Whitehead was a tall, frail looking man with a long, sharp pointed nose. He had short grey hair which was combed back on top. Reed always thought that Whitehead’s eyes looked too small for his head. He reminded Reed of a weasel, and an angry one at that. He moved away with an assured walk and Reed resisted the urge to stick his tongue out.
Whitehead had been transferred to Norfolk when the new police headquarters had opened. He was headhunted from the Metropolitan Police in London where he had been in the force since he was 20 years old and now had thirty eight years’ experience behind him. He had been a Detective Chief Inspector for eleven of those.
He must have experienced every type of case at least twice over and had been appointed to show the sleepy Norfolk force how things were handled. There was no point in having a state of the art headquarters if the people inside it weren’t up to the job. DI Reed had a certain amount of respect for him professionally, but couldn’t help thinking that compared with his previous post in London, little old Norfolk was just a bit too quiet for him, making him permanently grumpy.
Reed put his files down on the desk. He checked to see that his boss was still walking away and when the coast was clear he picked up the folder that Whitehead had been reading and started to go through it himself. It was Lee Gulliver’s statement, the man who had given Carmella a lift home the night she went missing. Reed had read it a few times and had never felt the need to shake his head.
“Gather round.” Whitehead shouted, standing approximately about one metre behind Reed, making him physically jump. How had the old bastard got there so quick and unnoticed?
Reed let the meeting wash over him; there was nothing new to report so they just ran over some old ground. He was more concerned with Whitehead’s show of disapproval and wondered what his superior had seen in the statement that he had not. Pushing his self-doubt to one side, he decided it was time to go back to the boring tasks such as door to door inquiries, hoping to find one detail that had been left out- the one detail that could make a real difference. They would start near Carmella Chapman’s house and work outwards. It was uninspiring work but it had to be done. Residents could have been out the first time the police had knocked on their door; they might have remembered something since they last gave a statement, or they might mention something which seemed irrelevant at the time, but the more they considered it over time, it had seemed a little odd.
Reed walked outside the office with no particular destination in mind. He wanted to clear the meeting from his head. Every second that passed felt like another second of failure. The look on Whitehead’s face was one of contempt at the way the investigation was going. He had a look about him that suggested he could step in at any time, if he wanted, and solve the whole thing in a blink of an eye, delivering Carmella home safe and sound to her worried parents.
Reed stopped in an empty corridor and took the time to call Kate. After a few rings she picked up.
“Hi, it’s me. I forgot to put the bin out.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll just have to take it to the dump if they don’t take it.”
“Yeah, I will do. I’m sorry I snapped at you this morning.”
“Don’t worry about it, honestly it’s OK.”
“It’s not OK, I’m sorry.”
“Look, try to have a nice day and we’ll talk later. I’ve got to go. Bye.” Kate said cheerily before hanging up.
Reed felt a little better after apologising to her. Perhaps he would have a nice day.
He made his way back down the corridor acknowledging to himself that as he was so annoyed at Whitehead’s obvious show of disapproval, he was going to interview Lee Gulliver himself. He would take DC Plumridge with him, who had conducted the initial interview. The only interesting fact to come from that was that Gulliver hadn’t come forward to the police of his own accord. David Jones, another reveller who had been at the Splitz nightclub on the evening Carmella had gone missing, had called the police to tell them that she had left with Gulliver. Gulliver had explained that it was no secret and he was waiting for the police to contact him, not wanting to seem too desperate to clear his name. Reed wondered what it was that Gulliver might need to clear his name from. Up until now all they were investigating was a missing person.
Reed’s phone started ringing in his pocket just before he reached the investigation room doors. When he retrieved it from his pocket the caller ID revealed it was Whitehead. Reed looked through one of the small windows set into the door and spotted his superior stood near to the whiteboard, facing away from him with a phone pressed to his ear. Deciding to avoid a face to face conversation he stepped away from the window and answered the call.
When the news was delivered, Reed was relieved to be alone. His legs went weak and he used the corner he was hiding in to support himself. A body had been found. It was the phone call any leading officer dreaded. The call any officer dreaded. In fact, it was the call any normal human being dreaded.
Chapter 3
The body was reported as being a young female. As soon as the words had hit Reed’s ears, an instant sense of failure had struck him in the pit of his stomach. To Whitehead’s credit, he wasn’t condescending, if anything he was sympathetic. Reed was now on his way to where the body had been found and was glad
that Plumridge was doing the driving. He found himself tensing his whole body, gripping the hand rest on the car door with one hand and his knee with the other. When his knee began to hurt, it acted as a reminder to release his grip. It was a slow-building tension, slowly saturating his body in waves. It reminded him of being in a dentist’s chair or when he was flying and he slowly became aware that his whole body was as stiff as a board and he had to make a conscious effort to relax it, once he had, the tension would slowly begin to creep in again without him knowing and the whole cycle just repeated itself.
The body had been discovered on Thetford Common. The common itself was split in two by a road that ran through it; on one side it contained large grass areas that were kept tidy by the council with singular trees growing in random places. There were two football pitches and a gravel car park in the corner nearest the town. On the other side there was an unofficial car park entrance that was situated about one mile from the last house on the edge of the town as you drove towards Bury St Edmunds. It was a popular area for dog walkers, joggers, teen drinkers and the odd temporary gypsy settlement with caravans and tethered horses. The plants grew wild with only the tracks that had been worn into them over a period of years spoiling the natural setting. Reed had been there once as part of a team of officers who had moved on a group of Lithuanians that had made a small area amongst the trees their home. He had stood watch as tents, clothes and food had been packed away but rubbish left. A week later, complaints had come in from the public that the immigrants had simply moved to the cared for side of the common and set up there, forcing everybody to admit that they had been less of a problem where they had been in the first place.
The body had been found on the side that was left to look after itself and as they approached the outskirts of Thetford and the Common began, traffic had begun to slow as people tried to get a glimpse of what the police were doing. Reed could see police cars peeking through the bushes as they approached and wondered if they could have been better hidden. Parked on the road was a red Vauxhall Corsa with its hazard lights flashing and an irate-looking pensioner who was holding a Yorkshire Terrier in his arms and arguing with a uniformed officer that above all else, his dog’s walk was paramount. Other officers solemnly stood around awaiting instructions. There were two Crime Scene Investigation vans waiting to do their work. Whitehead had promised Reed that nothing would be disturbed until he got there to have a look.
The journey had been quiet and Reed looked over to Plumridge. He was a plump man who always seemed to have a thin layer of sweat on his head during the summer, making the wispy hairs at the side and back of his head stick down flat to his skin. He wore grey trousers, brown loafer shoes, a white shirt that had faint red stripes running vertically, and a bright red tie to set the look off. Reed didn’t think he had seen him in anything different for work. A grey suit jacket in winter maybe, but the styles and colours always stayed the same.
Plumridge was concentrating hard on the road ahead of him. He was normally a chatty man but he had hardly spoken a word since they had started their journey. There wasn’t a lot to say really and Reed took the time to contemplate whether he’d wished for a breakthrough in the case a little too hard. He hadn’t given up hope of finding Carmella Chapman alive. Not until about forty minutes ago anyway. The body hadn’t yet been identified but to Reed’s knowledge there were no other missing females that it could be, so if it wasn’t Carmella, it was some other poor soul who hadn’t been noticed as missing yet.
“Do you think it’s her?” Plumridge finally found his voice.
“Yes.” Reed replied. Then he went back to chewing his lip, letting the silence take a hold just as quickly as it had gone away.
As they finally pulled off the road, Plumridge guided the vehicle between two squad cars. Reed kept praying for some sort of mix up and that it wasn’t really Carmella. It could be a mannequin. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened. His brother, who was a retained fire-fighter at Watton, had spent five hours waiting for crime scene officials to give the OK to remove a suspected body from a pond. Only it wasn’t a body; it was two carrier bags caught amongst fallen branches under the water. They had probably been there for years but with winter clearing the algae and the inquisitive mind of a dog walker, two undecided PCs; it had sparked a full scale murder scene enquiry. Reed was hoping for something similar here.
As he exited the car he was greeted by a police officer, “Hello, sir. I’m PC Ashton; I was the one who first attended the call.”
“Good of you to come over, can you give me a quick rundown?” Reed said, pulling the collar of his coat up to protect his neck from the fine drizzle that had begun to fall.
“Well, I got a call that a member of the public had found a body. When I arrived, Mr Roberts was sat in his car. He was grateful of the company, having had quite a shock. He had stopped there because he needed a pee, and knew the ground sinks down into a kind of pit. Says his bladder isn’t what it was and he couldn’t risk waiting until he had finished his walk. Then he saw some bushes a little further down and decided it was better cover. That’s when he saw the body and called the police.”
“Did he get to go?”
“Go, sir?” PC Ashton asked.
“Yes, go. Go for a pee?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Well, we need to know so the crime scene workers don’t waste any time on the contents of Mr Roberts’ bladder.” Reed said.
“Yes, sir. I’ll find out.” Ashton agreed. “Anyway, Mr Roberts guided me to the area and I edged down the embankment. I tried not to get too close, but I squatted down and saw what I believed to be a body of a young female.”
“Ok, thank you.”
The officer walked away and Reed felt the damp start to seep through his clothes. He wondered if the drizzle was fine enough to shoot straight through the fibres of his clothing and directly onto his skin. That’s what it felt like it was doing. Having enjoyed a sunny couple of weeks, the weather had turned to this. Everyone would be saying the same old things they did every year, like “The grass needed it” or “It’s freshened up the air.” Reed didn’t much care for the grass right now and he didn’t think the air had been too stale in the first place. Although it was fitting that the sky had turned dark today, providing the perfect backdrop for this turn of events and mirroring Reed’s feelings.
He was dreading going to see the body; after he had ambled around the car park for as long as he could wasting time, he had no choice but to make his way down towards one of the dirt tracks, through the bushes and find the pit. As he set off, he looked over to his right and saw DS Alice Tyler talking to Plumridge, who had soon hot footed it away from Reed after parking the car so he didn’t have to accompany him to see this. Tyler was about the only friend Reed had on the force. She was attractive in an intelligent sort of way. She was tall and slim and had a pale, creamy complexion. Her hair had the tightest ringlets he had ever seen and they were always pulled back into a ponytail, coloured a bright auburn. The colour of her hair was as natural as her ringlets she had once told him, not revealing exactly how natural that was. Reed always thought that if you were to remove the band holding it all together at the back of her head, her hair would shoot out into a perfect afro with the same gusto as a spring breaking free from a cartoon bed.
As Reed made his way through the bushes that seemed to be scattered around in no particular order, he couldn’t help but wonder if they had been planted this way or was Mother Nature slowly claiming back her land? He hoped it was Mother Nature. PC Ashton was on hand to point out which track to follow and after only a few metres he spotted two officers at the cusp of the pit. One was taking official photos of the area before it got disturbed too much. The other officer was holding a clipboard; it was his job to keep a log of anybody that entered the cordoned-off area and a ring of police tape weaved its way around the trees indicating exactly where this was.
It was the third day that Carme
lla had been missing and in some way he hoped she had been here the whole time. He hoped she hadn’t been held captive for all this time and put through a living hell before being killed. Maybe an accident had occurred and she knew nothing of her own death. There was also the selfish reason; if she had died before she was reported missing, it would mean that he hadn’t had a chance at finding her alive.
The weather had been hot and sunny up until today and Reed wondered if her flesh had been left to bake in the sun? He sniffed reluctantly at the air. There was a smell he recognised but couldn’t identify. At least it wasn’t flesh, baked or otherwise. He had seen dead bodies before but most had been in a state of rest, laid out for identification. Only traffic accidents had tested his threshold for keeping his stomach contents and he pondered what injuries Carmella may have suffered and how recent. Had she died today and her killer had no more use for her? His mind worked overtime in painting horrific images that turned his stomach and he fought hard to shake them off, knowing he had to approach the scene with no pre-set thoughts.
He showed his ID card to the officer keeping guard and signed the visiting sheet. There was a strong smell of moss and damp soil. The smell he had noticed just a few seconds ago was stronger now but he still couldn’t pinpoint what it was. He looked down into the pit and amongst the natural habitat was a white canvas tent that was protecting the body from the elements. Police tape created a temporary pathway which would have been searched thoroughly by the crime scene officers and the rest of the area left untouched. Reed made for the tent with the same enthusiasm as a child being led to the dentist. Despite the mass police presence, an eerie silence took over the deeper he descended and just the sound of cracking twigs and his own breathing accompanied him.
As soon as he entered the little entrance of the tent he was greeted with the sight of a female foot- small, elegant and housed in a strappy high heeled shoe. The rest of the body was obscured by thick plants curling over it. Taking into account the description that had been given of the clothes Carmella had been wearing, he knew it was her.
