Snakes and Ladders

by Adam Croft

  The election of Penny Andrews to succeed him had looked to be the final nail in the coffin for Mildenheath CID, but their success rate combined with the rooting out of Frank Vine had given them breathing space — and the express support of the new Police and Crime Commissioner.

  For Wendy, it sometimes felt as though going into work gave her respite. When she was at home, she spent more time overthinking things, causing herself undue stress and anxiety. Even though most of those problems were caused by work, being here gave her focus and allowed her to concentrate on the task in hand rather than worrying about things that’d either already happened and couldn’t be changed, or which might never happen anyway.

  She parked her car in an empty space, and looked up at the brick building — an icon of seventies architecture, if those two words could ever go hand-in-hand. As she switched off her engine, her phone rang on the seat beside her. She glanced over and saw Jack Culverhouse’s name on the screen.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, answering it. ‘Yeah, I know, I know. I’m late. Sorry, it’s this new phone and the bloody stupid alarm. I’m literally in the car park now. I thought I was going to make it, but those sodding roadworks on the High Street held me up.’

  ‘Right, well you’ll have to go through them again now, won’t you? I need you over at Mildenheath Woods. There’s a body.’

  4

  Jack stepped out of his car and onto the gravel surface of one of the car parks at Mildenheath Woods. It was a chilly morning, although it was meant to warm up later. Then again, the forecasts had been saying that for more than a week, and it hadn’t turned out to be right yet.

  A uniformed officer greeted him and led him into the woods towards the site where the body had been discovered, although Jack could’ve quite easily worked it out for himself by heading towards the sound of voices and the bright lights of the assembling scenes of crime team. When he got there, he noticed Dr Janet Grey, the pathologist, had already arrived. Although Dr Grey served a much wider area than just Mildenheath, the fact that she lived locally meant she was often on the scene quickly — and occasionally even before the senior investigating officer had arrived.

  ‘You’re even earlier than I expected, Jack,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Yeah, I was out dogging in the other car park.’

  Although gallows humour was a staple part of policing at the best of times, Jack had always enjoyed a good relationship with Dr Grey, and secretly quite enjoyed their comments towards each other. In reality, Mildenheath Woods was closer to Jack’s house than the police station was, so it had been merely fortunate that he’d not yet left for work when the call had come in.

  The officers on the scene had created an outer cordon around the perimeter of the woods itself, with the inner cordon being much smaller. Jack kept his distance, although he was still more than able to see the scene in front of him.

  The body lay on its side in the mud and dirt. Although the victim was heavily covered in blood and soil, it was still clearly identifiable as a young male.

  ‘Are his hands tied behind his back?’ Jack asked, looking more closely.

  ‘Cable-tied,’ Dr Grey replied. ‘Pretty tight, too. Whoever did it certainly didn’t want him getting out of it. There are one or two other oddities, too. Obviously the whole body’s pretty dirty from being buried in a shallow grave, but the knees are particularly muddy and damp. The dirt looks pretty ingrained in the trousers there, too, rather than having just been thrown loosely on top. That leads me towards thinking he might’ve been pushed to his knees at some point, or at least certainly knelt down heavily of his own accord.

  ‘Christ. Looks like a mafia-style assassination.’

  Dr Grey shrugged. ‘Not for me to decide. I can only give you the facts. But if I was in your shoes, I imagine I’d probably be thinking much along the same lines.’

  ‘Definitely murder?’ Jack asked.

  Dr Grey smiled and wagged her finger. ‘You won’t catch me out that easily. All these years and you still try to box me into a corner. It’s the detective in you, Jack.’

  ‘If you were in my shoes, then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be. With the number of pine trees in here, the mud’ll be pretty acidic. I wouldn’t want to be walking through here in shoes as cheap as those.’

  ‘These are Hush Puppies,’ Jack said, looking affronted.

  ‘I know. But to answer your question as it was intended, all I can do is point you toward the facts. Our mutual friend was likely on his knees in the mud for some time, hands bound behind his back with cable ties, heavily beaten, considering some of the early bruising here. Judging by the amount of blood and the deep neck wounds, I imagine the slitting of his throat is what caused his death. I mean, I don’t think it’s beyond the bounds of my responsibilities to assume he probably didn’t do that to himself. Not with his hands in that position, anyway. Oh, and there’s some residue on his left cheek and upper lip, which looks like a sort of glue. It looks like some of his facial hairs — not that there are many — have been ripped out at the root. If I was a betting woman, I’d say there was probably some fairly hefty tape over his mouth at one point, which was subsequently torn off and discarded.’

  Jack thought about this for a few moments. It seemed quite clear to him this was likely to be premeditated murder. For someone to have prepared tape and cable ties, lured or brought their victim out into the woods and then beaten him to his death required a certain degree of planning and foresight. Although the ramifications of that were much bigger from a criminal standpoint, it often made investigations much easier. For someone to go to that extent of planning, and to inflict that level of damage required them to really want the victim dead. Those sorts of nemeses tended to be quite easily identifiable once the victim’s life was explored and uncovered. In many ways, the scarier cases were ones where the victim encountered a malevolent stranger on the way home, or got into an argument with a random person outside a bar. Fortunately, though, stranger murders were rare, and it seemed to Jack as though this case was likely to be one where the killer was known to the victim. ‘Any ID on our man?’ Jack asked.

  ‘None whatsoever. No phone, no wallet, nothing.’

  Jack nodded slowly as he considered that perhaps this investigation wouldn’t go quite as smoothly as he’d anticipated.

  5

  ‘You’re late,’ Jack barked as Wendy walked towards him, twigs and bark crunching and snapping under her feet.

  ‘I know. I told you I would be. What’s the SP?’

  Jack walked towards her and gestured for her to follow him back towards the car park. ‘Young male, early twenties at best. Cause of death, deep knife wounds to the throat. Likely bled out, but evidence he’d been beaten too. Hands tied behind his back with cable ties, evidence he’d had tape over his mouth at one point, mud on his knees. Dr Death thinks he spent a lot of time on his knees. And yes, I already thought of the dogging joke, but I blew my load too early on that one. So to speak.’

  ‘I’m guessing this is one of those “should’ve been there” moments?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound good, though. From the way you’ve described it, it sounds like an assassination.’

  ‘Exactly what I said. Ten quid says drugs are involved somewhere along the line. Either that or some satanic death cult.’

  Wendy thought about this for a moment, but there was something else on her mind. ‘You seem… I dunno.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I dunno. Brighter.’

  ‘Brighter? Than what?’

  ‘Than you have been.’

  ‘Lovely. Thanks. And no, I’m not “brighter”. I’ve got the bit between my teeth because we’ve got a job on. It’s what we’re paid to do.’

  Wendy nodded. ‘So are you still… you know.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I mean, I just wanted to check in with how you’re doing. I know recently things have been tough. For everyone, I mean. Bu
t I know it’s been difficult for you in particular. And after the problems there’ve been in the past, I wanted to make sure you were in the right headspace for this. As a friend, I mean.’

  Jack stopped walking and looked at her. ‘I’m not your fucking friend, Knight.’

  ‘I know. Doesn’t stop me being yours, though. If it helps you reconcile it in your emotionless mind, just assume I’m concerned out of self-interest because I don’t want the investigation to go down the pan and for us to all have to work from Milton House.’

  ‘That ain’t gonna happen,’ he said, on the move again. ‘If anything, we’ve got even more chance of getting results now we haven’t got a fucking rat in the office.’

  ‘We had good results even before that.’

  ‘There we are, then. No need to worry, is there,’ Jack replied, more as a statement than a question.

  ‘And how’s Emily?’ Wendy asked as they reached the car park.

  ‘Yeah. Fine.’

  ‘How far along is she?’

  ‘Nearly twenty-eight weeks,’ Jack replied. Wendy noticed a glimmer in his eye as he said this, before it was replaced with something altogether different.

  ‘How are you all coping with it?’ she asked.

  Jack shrugged. ‘Nothing much to cope with, is there? I mean, it’s not like I’m the one carrying a baby around.’

  ‘Well, no. Not physically, maybe. But there’s a lot more to it than that. I can’t imagine it’s easy, considering.’

  ‘What, at my age, you mean?’ he answered with a wry smile.

  ‘To be fair, you’re practically a spring chicken in the grandfather world.’

  ‘Mmmm. Gonna be more than that, though, ain’t it?’

  ‘The dad still not interested?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘No. I dunno whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It is what it is, I guess. Not gonna be easy, but probably for the best.’

  Wendy smiled with one corner of her mouth. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘if you ever want to talk about anything — Emily, home stuff, the whole Frank thing — whatever it is, I’m here, alright?’

  Jack looked at her. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, before getting into his car. ‘See you back at the office. Try and avoid the roadworks this time, yeah?’

  6

  Jack stood at the front of the major incident room and addressed his team, which was, of course, now one man short.

  ‘Okay. This is the first briefing on Operation Artisan,’ he said, complete with air quotes around the name that’d been generated by the police computer. This was, like many things, something for which Jack couldn’t quite bring himself to muster up the tolerance. ‘It concerns the murder of an as-of-yet unnamed male, in his late teens or early twenties. His body was discovered by a jogger in Mildenheath Woods early this morning. All we know at this stage is that he appears to have spent some time on his knees — no jokes, please, Steve,’ he said, looking pointedly at DS Wing, ‘and had his hands tied behind his back with cable ties. The official cause of death is yet to be determined, but it’s likely to come back as showing he bled out due to the knife wounds to his neck. He’d been beaten badly around the head and body with an unknown blunt instrument, potentially something quite heavy like a crowbar or a tool of some sort. We’ll get more information on that when it comes in. The only other piece of evidence we have so far is the presence of an adhesive around his mouth area, which Dr Grey reckons is from some heavy-duty tape, which was presumably placed over his mouth to silence him during the ordeal. That piece of tape hasn’t been found, so we’re looking at the presumption that the killer took it with them. Any questions?’

  ‘What state was the body found in?’ Ryan Mackenzie asked, chewing the end of her pencil.

  ‘A pretty bloody shit one,’ Jack replied. ‘Buried in a shallow grave, covered with loose soil and leaves. There’s evidence a shovel was used to dig it, but evidently our killer either didn’t realise how much earth has to be shifted to bury a body, or he was too knackered from his little exertions a few minutes earlier. Ryan, while you’re listening, can you look at missing persons and see if there’s anyone on the list who matches the description? We’ll keep eyes and ears on the ground, too, because if our boy hasn’t been reported missing yet, it’s likely he will be at some point. We’ve made frontline aware.

  ‘We don’t think there’s CCTV covering the car park at the woods,’ he continued, ‘but Steve, can you get onto the council to double-check please? You and Debbie can pop down and have a wander about the residential roads that surround the woods, maybe see if anyone has CCTV on their house that might cover any other ways in. If our man’s gone in and out with a shovel and some heavy tools, he’ll either be blindingly obvious or in a car. Either way, it’s a lead.’

  ‘The shovel could’ve been used to beat him, too,’ Debbie Weston offered.

  ‘Possibly. I thought that, but the bruising and markings indicate it probably wasn’t. They’re still scouring the woods for anything that’s been dumped, but nothing’s been found yet. Our main priority at the moment is finding the knife. If that’s got DNA evidence or fingerprints on it, or if we can trace it back to its owner, we’re onto a winner. On the shovel, I doubt we’ll find it. I don’t think it’s likely our killer will’ve taken the tape off the lad’s mouth to hide that piece of evidence, then left his shovel up against a tree somewhere. We’re working on the assumption we won’t find it easily. I imagine this’ll be one of those where things drip in over time, so we’ll crack on with what we have and we’ll update as and when we need to. Class adjourned.’

  As Jack opened the door to his office, his phone began to ring. He leaned over the desk to pick it up, then listened as the officer on the other end gave him the message.

  Jack wrote down the details on a piece of paper, then headed back out into the incident room. ‘Okay,’ he said, getting his team’s attention. ‘We’ve had a call come in from some concerned parents, saying their little darling didn’t come home last night. They’re not able to get hold of him and were panicking, so they phoned the police. It sounds like he matches the description of our victim, so we’re going to head over and confirm. Knight, grab your coat. You’re coming with me.’

  7

  Dale and Cleo Hulford’s house didn’t look like the home of a teenager who got themselves into drugs. Jack and Wendy knew from experience that stereotypes were there to be broken, but they each had a sense that all wasn’t as it seemed as they parked up at the end of the driveway and looked around them.

  ‘Nice street,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Well, yeah. What else did you think you were gonna get when you saw the words “Private Road” at the entrance?’ Jack replied, getting out of the car.

  They walked up the Hulfords’ driveway and pressed the doorbell — an old-fashioned affair that sounded as if it was ringing bells throughout the house. A few moments later, a tall, lanky man in a chequered short-sleeve shirt and chinos answered the door.

  ‘Mr Hulford? Jack Culverhouse and Wendy Knight, from Mildenheath Police. You called to say your son was missing?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, come in,’ Dale Hulford said, stepping to one side. ‘I must admit, I didn’t think they’d send two detectives out. I didn’t think you took these things seriously until someone had been missing for a couple of days.’

  ‘You’d be amazed how many people think that,’ Jack replied, not wanting to give him false hope, nor write his son off as dead without confirming his identity.

  ‘Would you like a tea? Coffee?’ Dale asked, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘We’re fine, thanks,’ Jack said, knowing from experience that hot drinks served at home visits tended to be comparable to the boiled piss that came out of the coffee dispenser at work.

  They sat down in the living room, Jack and Wendy having been introduced to Dale’s wife, Cleo. Although they knew they couldn’t jump to conclusions based on appearances, the Hulfords didn’t look like the parents of a young
lad who got himself assassinated in the woods at night.

  ‘So you mentioned that your son didn’t come home last night,’ Wendy said. ‘Matt, isn’t it?’

  ‘Matthew, yes,’ Cleo replied. ‘We were expecting him to be in by ten or eleven, but he is back late sometimes. He usually sends us a text, but even then we don’t tend to worry too much if he’s a bit late. We’ve both been a bit under the weather, so we went to bed a bit earlier last night and just assumed he’d be back. I woke a couple of times in the night and he wasn’t here, and Dale said to leave it until the morning in case he’d slept over at his friend’s house.’

  ‘Is that where he was?’

  Cleo nodded. ‘Connor French. They’ve been inseparable since junior school. Matthew goes over there quite often to play video games, and he’s sometimes out late, but he’s never stayed out all night before.’

  ‘And did you try getting hold of him overnight?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘We texted him a couple of times and tried ringing,’ Dale said, ‘but it went straight to voicemail. We thought maybe his battery had run out, so we left it until the morning then we called Connor, but he said Matt left his last night and headed home. That was the last time anyone saw him.’

  ‘And are there any other friends he might have gone to see?’ Wendy asked. ‘Anyone who’s on the way home, other places he might’ve gone?’

  Cleo shook her head. ‘No. We’ve been racking our brains, but there really isn’t anyone. Matthew’s such a nice, quiet lad, but he doesn’t really have many friends other than Connor. He’s always been quite studious and did well at school. He’s not really one for big groups of friends or anything like that. He and Connor always keep themselves to themselves.’