* * *
‘I don’t quite understand,’ the secretary said. ‘How could anyone attend the wrong funeral? We print out a list of the ceremonies each day and post it outside in several prominent positions.’
‘That’s what I’m here to find out,’ Marsh replied. ‘I’m looking for the name Georgie Palmer. Do you have a record for a funeral in that name for April the twentieth?’
‘Yes, we do. At four in the afternoon.’ She pointed at the list for the date in question. ‘You can see that the previous service was an hour earlier. Did they get the time wrong?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware. They arrived a bit early, that’s all I’ve been told. And this is the complete record for that day? There’s nothing missing?’
‘Ah well, you see, this is for the full-length ceremonies. We slot in short committals as and when we can if they’re needed in a hurry. You know, if someone has a church funeral and just needs five minutes here. They don’t go on the main list that we pin up outside.’
‘But there’s still a record? There must be, surely, if someone’s cremated?’
‘Oh, yes. The short committals are very quick because they’re not always cremated at the time of the ceremony. It’s often done later or the next day. There might have been one because of the hour gap before the Palmer funeral.’
She checked her computer records. ‘Yes, there was. It looks as though there was a five-minute committal that day. Let me check the name.’
Marsh waited.
‘Here we are. Philip Woodruff.’
‘What?’ He leant across the desk to look at the screen. There it was, in clear lettering. ‘I want every single detail associated with that ceremony printed out. Who organised it, who booked it, who paid for it. Nothing missing. Do you understand? And don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.’
* * *
‘What does it mean, ma’am? It’s so unexpected. I don’t know what to make of it.’
‘Nor do I at the moment, Barry. Let’s not speculate too much until we have more facts, so we need to follow it up in more detail. And you still can’t remember where you came across the name years ago? Or the context?’
Marsh shook his head. ‘I thought it was in Bournemouth, but Bob Thompson thinks otherwise. It’ll come to me soon enough, particularly when we start digging.’
‘Let’s check over what we know. In late April the Armitage couple went to a funeral at Poole and ended up attending a committal by mistake. A few weeks later they’re found dead, apparently a case of suicide. I spot someone behaving suspiciously near the scene, and his car is registered as being owned by a company that shares the same name as the deceased person at the mistaken funeral. It could be dismissed as coincidence if the name were a common one like Smith, but Woodruff? How likely is that?’ She paused. ‘Go and see both the Armitage offspring. We need to push them to remember every detail about that odd funeral mix-up, particularly Rod. What his parents told him will be in his brain somewhere. It’s a pity we can’t insert a mind probe and download the information direct. Stuff gets completely mashed up in that fuzzy brain of his.’
‘Sounds too sinister for me, ma’am. I don’t know whether I’d want to be in the police if we could do that. Imagine the other stuff we’d come across at the same time if someone’s brain was being wired up.’
‘We’d see all their erotic daydreams, I expect. Fascinating.’
He looked horror-struck.
‘Only joking, Barry. You shouldn’t take everything I say quite so seriously. By the way, Dave Nash called in with an interesting snippet. There was no trace of a reel of tape, either inside the car or outside on the ground.’
‘So it proves they didn’t tape the hosepipe to the exhaust themselves?’
‘It’s the kind of mistake that’s so easy to make. Someone made what they thought was a really good job of it all, but the devil is in the detail and that’s what they’ve mucked up on. Whoever it was taped the pipe and pocketed the reel afterwards rather than leaving it lying around. A simple error, but it gives us confirmation. Dave’s team has combed the whole area and nothing has shown up.’
* * *
Matt Silver, Sophie’s boss at headquarters and now a chief superintendent, visited in the late afternoon accompanied by Bob Thompson, a detective sergeant from Bournemouth who was in line for promotion to DI rank. Sophie guessed that Silver was visiting the various investigation units around the county in order to find a home for Thompson once he’d gained his promotion. Would this create a knock-on effect? Would it create a situation where she might lose Barry? She fervently hoped not, but she guessed that Kevin McGreedie, the current DI in Bournemouth, wouldn’t want to wait too long before filling the vacancy created by the loss of Thompson. Her own position was a rare one. The rank of DCI was slowly being phased out. Heaven knows what she’d do when they got around to examining her role. She chatted with the duo for several minutes in front of the incident board, before heading to the canteen to buy a drink. She spotted George Warrander sipping a coffee, alone at a table, so she went to join him. He attempted to rise as he spotted her, but she waved him down.
‘No need, George. I thought I’d join you for the chat I promised you. How are you getting on?’
‘I’m really enjoying my job, ma’am. It’s been great so far.’
Sophie sipped her peppermint tea. ‘No regrets, then? You must have taken a salary hit.’
‘Yes, but I’m sure it will even out in the long run. Anyway, there’s no comparison in terms of the value of the job, so I don’t have any regrets, not yet anyway.’
Sophie noticed that he still had the same spiky hair style, albeit slightly shorter, that she remembered from two years earlier, when she’d interviewed him during the Donna Goodenough investigation. ‘Did you follow the trial?’
‘Yes, as much as I could. And the next big one you were involved in, that Duff character. It must have been a strain for you.’
She nodded. ‘But everything worked out well in both cases. That’s all we can ask for, isn’t it? I’m glad you seem to have made such an impressive start, George. I know that Rose can appear to be a bit of a cynic, but she’s got a heart of gold underneath that hard-bitten exterior. Why don’t you pop up to the incident room sometime in the next day or two? Rae, our DC, has almost finished putting together what we know so far. You and Rose, as the first squad involved, may have some suggestions. I’ll let Barry Marsh know.’
‘That would be great, ma’am. Thanks. I’d better go. The sarge will be expecting me in a minute or two. I really appreciate your help, ma’am.’
Sophie sat pondering for several minutes, sipping her tea, then returned to her office. It had been a good day. The Armitage deaths were now confirmed as murder rather than suicide, which gave her team something substantial to work on. She now needed some thinking time, to consider how the newly discovered facts fitted in with her mental picture of the events surrounding the Armitage deaths. She knew little about the small town of Blandford Forum, so she had an early evening walkabout of the Georgian town centre, admiring the buildings grouped around Market Place. The buildings looked their best in the sunshine.
‘It looks beautiful when it’s like this, doesn’t it?’ Sophie turned to see Pierre Giroux. ‘I spotted you admiring our little town, so I thought I’d come across for a chat.’
Sophie smiled at him. ‘Yes. I was reading about the history of the big fire here. It must have been terrible when it happened, but the result is an attractive town centre like this.’
‘I’m an outsider, and even I love it. You ought to visit the museum sometime. It’s fascinating.’
‘How’s Sharon? Many people go and see their GP when they’ve lost their parents in a tragedy, but she’s hardly likely to do that, is she? I hope one of her colleagues is keeping an eye on her.’
‘I think so, and I do my best, Chief Inspector. We talk, but there’s not much more I can do. She’s taken it hard and isn’t sleeping at all well, but I su
ppose that’s to be expected.’
‘You just have to give her time, Mr Giroux. But then, the same will be true for you and your children. You’ll all be in shock still.’
He nodded. ‘It’s all too unreal. I keep thinking, this can’t be true, this can’t have happened. But it has. Once we’ve had time to calm down, I plan to take them on a short break to France to stay with my family. We all need some normality, even if only for a short time.’
CHAPTER 13: Smarties
Tuesday, Week 2
‘Now, Georgie boy, don’t go getting yourself into any bother out here in the wilds. I’ll be back later in the morning to check up on you, and I don’t want to find you asleep under a bush.’
The two uniformed officers were back at the Morden Bog Nature Reserve, where George Warrander was scheduled for a morning guarding the incident site. Not that there was much left to guard. The final clear-up of the scene was planned for later in the day, with the removal of all barriers to public access. The car had been taken away, along with all other debris found in the vicinity. In reality he was merely watching over the lengths of "Crime Scene Do Not Cross" tape that still encircled the area and were flapping gently in the breeze. Good job it wasn’t raining. That would have turned boredom into misery.
Warrander watched his sergeant, Rose Simons, drive away. Then he took a slow walk around the outer edge of the site, trying to remember exactly how it had looked a few days earlier when they’d first been called to the tragic scene. The scars on the young saplings, formed as the small car had wedged itself into the undergrowth, were still evident. The ground had been churned up by the trailer used to transport the abandoned vehicle to the forensic depot for further examination, and much of the undergrowth had been cleared in the search for evidence. He returned to the point where the track ended as it reached the clearing, and sat on a log. This is quite pleasant, he thought. There was no one about to disturb the serene atmosphere. He watched as a group of rabbits appeared and started to nibble at the tufts of grass and a small weasel-like creature dashed across the path. Warrander took a mint from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. He sat for about fifteen minutes before setting off for another stroll, this time across the centre of the clearing, approaching the area where the car had been found. A thick clump of heather, its flower heads not yet open, lay to one side with some bushy shrubs beyond. Warrander picked up a stick and began to idly poke around in the undergrowth. He stopped suddenly. There, half hidden by the leaves and heather, was a reel of sticky tape. Grey sticky tape, the same shade as the tape used to fix the length of tubing to the exhaust pipe on the Armitage car. How had it been missed by the search teams? He used his walkie-talkie to radio back to the station, then sat down to wait.
Dave Nash was on the scene within half an hour, along with one of his most trusted forensic officers. Sophie Allen and Barry Marsh were not far behind. Nash was clearly puzzled. He looked annoyed.
‘It can’t have been missed,’ he insisted. ‘We went over this whole zone inch by inch, and not just once. We even searched it again yesterday, once the car was removed. It’s inconceivable that it’s been there all the time.’ He turned to Warrander. ‘How noticeable was it? You’ve obviously moved it slightly.’
‘About an inch. There was just one small part of it showing through. I thought it was a stone at first, but the colour was wrong, and it glinted. That’s why I poked it a bit.’
‘So a part was definitely visible?’
‘Yes, but just a tiny bit. It would have been easy to miss.’
‘By you, maybe. But not by my team.’ Nash sounded enraged, almost ready to explode. Sophie laid a hand on his arm.
‘George didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Didn’t you have close-up photos taken of the whole area? Maybe they need to be checked before we jump to any conclusions. When you’ve finished with the first set of photos, get George to poke the reel back into the position he found it in. Get some more shots, then we can compare them with the ones taken on Friday.’ She looked again at the roll. ‘This looks brand new, as though it’s never been used. See the yellow tab at the end? Surely that’s the manufacturer’s original. Doesn’t it look like it to you?’
Nash and Marsh were less sure. The area was searched and photographed again, and the two detectives walked back to their car, reaching it just as a squad car arrived. Rose Simons hurried out.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘George spotted a reel of sticky tape. Forensics are back at the scene,’ Marsh explained. ‘Maybe you’d better get him away or stay here with him. It’s nearly caused Dave Nash to have a heart attack.’
Rose laughed. ‘That boy of mine, he’s something else, isn’t he? I’ll put a stop to his smarties ration if you want me to.’
‘Maybe you should double it, Rose,’ Sophie answered. ‘There’s another interpretation here, not just the obvious one of a negligent search team. Let’s wait and see.’
* * *
Sophie and Marsh watched for a while then drove to the forensic centre.
‘It could make quite a difference to us, couldn’t it ma’am?’
She nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Whatever way you look at it, it’s a bit of a game changer. Interpretation one, that the forensic search missed it and it’s been there all the time. It appears to make the case for suicide stronger. Interpretation two, that it’s been planted overnight. It means someone’s just realised their mistake in not leaving the tape and has been back to correct the error.’
‘But if that’s the case, it’s too late, surely? We’ll have the photos to show it was planted later. If anything, it will add to the evidence.’
Sophie shook her head. ‘No. Think in the long term, Barry. It weakens any potential court case. Any half decent defence lawyer would use it to cast doubt on the competency of the forensic unit, arguing that they must be inept because they missed it. And if they’re inept on this issue, what other mistakes have they made? That’s how the argument will proceed. It’s very clever. Look, we all know it was murder because of what Benny discovered in the post mortem. That was backed up by the missing reel. Now it’s turned up, it leaves the medical evidence only. What bothers me is how they knew. Was it just coincidence and they realised their mistake in the last few days, then chose last night to plant it there? Or is it linked to us realising it wasn’t there on Friday? The thing is, hardly anyone knew about it. Dave only confirmed that no reel of tape had been found yesterday afternoon. When did Rae post that information on the incident board?’
‘It was there when I came back from Poole, so maybe mid-afternoon? Why?’
‘Because Dave swears that none of his team would talk, and no one apart from him knew of our hunt for the reel of tape anyway. So who could have seen it on the incident board?’
‘The chief super was in yesterday afternoon with Bob Thompson. Blackman and McCluskie called in to drop off a report. Pete Armitage was in because he’s putting in an estimate for repainting the inside of the station and needed to see all the rooms. I passed him downstairs as I came in. And there could have been others that I don’t know about. Some of the uniformed squad have been in and out. I suppose we’d have to include the cleaners too.’ He paused. ‘Don’t you think this is all a bit ridiculous, ma’am?’
‘Maybe. But I’m a bit paranoid, Barry, as you well know.’
* * *
It was as Sophie had expected. The photo evidence taken on the day of the gruesome discovery showed no evidence of any discarded reel of tape in the place where Warrander had found one. Warrander was adamant that a small part of the reel was showing, but this was not the case in the originals, so they now knew that someone had visited overnight to plant the evidence. The problem was compounded by the fact that no new tyre prints were evident, nor had any vehicle stopped in the vicinity during the hours of darkness when there had been no police presence. A small video camera set up to record traffic movement on the nearby road had shown that no cars had stopped at the side o
f the road, yet the activity sensors had recorded movement, although this could have been wild animals snuffling about in the undergrowth. The chances were that someone had made a long walk in the dark to the forensic site. It was puzzling, and disturbing in its implications. Was someone playing games with them? Or was the explanation simpler than that? Did the culprit not realise the detailed level of photographic evidence that is now made of a crime scene? But in that case, why had nothing been captured on the videos?
She spoke quietly to both Nash and Marsh. ‘Keep this to yourselves. The fewer that know about it, the better. If someone was there last night, we don’t want them to know that we’ve found the tape. Let’s continue to keep the place under surveillance. Do you think it might be worth doing another quick check of the area? Assuming someone came by car, they may have left traces. Footprints maybe.’
Nash agreed. ‘I’ll do it. As you say, the fewer that know about it the better.’ He returned to his car.
Sophie called Rose Simons, who was still at the nature reserve with Warrander, and explained the situation, emphasising the need for total discretion.
Detective Sophie Allen Box Set 2 Page 33
