… Bye…’ Henry hung up.
‘What was that?’ Flynn asked.
‘A cold case I’m reviewing.’
‘One of Joe Speakman’s? I know him, he used to be my DCI way back.’
‘Well, he retired earlier this year, without much notice.’ Henry suddenly had a thought and snatched up the phone and jabbed in a number. ‘Prof? It’s me, Henry — I’ve asked DI Barlow to attend Jennifer Sunderland’s PM in my stead… look,’ he dropped his voice conspiratorially, ‘I’d be obliged if you didn’t mention the teeth thing to him… Cheers… Don’t ask.’
Henry hung up and turned back to Flynn, who had a knowing smile on his face.
‘Keeping secrets?’ Flynn said.
‘Oh shit,’ Henry said.
‘What?’
‘My car! It’s at Lancaster nick… and there’s no way I can use Alison’s… it’s cash and carry day today.’
‘If you can fit your fat arse into the passenger seat of a Smart Car, I’ll give you a lift,’ Flynn said, an offer accepted with bad grace by Henry.
EIGHT
She had died a brutal death. Savagely beaten in a frenzied attack — particularly about the head — half-strangled, as Henry had seen at the mortuary. The strangulation had not killed her, but the brain trauma from the assault had.
The day before visiting the mortuary he had only half-perused the murder book, but had then read it thoroughly in the early hours of this morning before tumbling into bed with Alison and falling deeply asleep for the next few hours, before taking a convivial breakfast with Flynn.
Joe Speakman, the retired detective superintendent, had been SIO in charge of the investigation into the murder of the unidentified female.
Henry had got on well with Speakman, who was then one of the four detective superintendents heading FMIT. With all the swingeing cost-cutting going on, the chief constable had been looking at the possibility of reducing the number of superintendents on FMIT from four to three and Henry had been right in his cross-hairs. Slightly ahead of the other three in length of service, he was ripe to be pushed into retirement.
It had been a bit of a shock when Speakman had put his ticket in out of the blue. And a pleasant surprise as far as Henry was concerned. It gave him some breathing space. He didn’t want to retire just yet, had found a new lease of life as regards the job and personal life and was happy to be considering his options without the chief breathing down his neck.
But Speakman’s sudden departure had left quite a lot of unfinished business which had to be divvied out amongst the remaining detective supers and Henry had been dealt an unsolved murder. Which was absolutely fine by him.
His reading of the murder book — the book in which the SIO was required to maintain in every murder enquiry, recording decisions made, actions taken, reasons for doing things and a whole myriad of other things relating to the murder — left him slightly puzzled.
Not that there was anything intrinsically wrong with it. It just seemed… listless, lacklustre… Henry could not quite find the right word. It was like Speakman was bored by what he was doing.
Murder books were usually fascinating reading. As events unfolded, evidence was uncovered, suspects were identified, people arrested
… whatever… they could be as compelling as a thriller and often gave an insight into how the mind of the SIO worked.
Speakman’s murder book was just a bit sparse in every detail.
Maybe it was because he was winding down to retirement that only he knew about. Maybe his heart wasn’t in it and he was just contemplating how to spend his lump sum. Henry had half-heard that he had invested in property abroad.
Henry could not say… which is why he wanted to drop in on Speakman unannounced on his way to Lancaster and chat things through.
As he wriggled into the passenger seat of the Smart Car, trying not to look too embarrassed by its lack of street cred, his mind flipped over the contents of the murder book and the other related items he’d been reading.
The young woman’s body had been discovered by a dog-walker in Moss Syke wood, a smallish copse within metres of the southbound carriageway of the M6, south of junction 34, which was the Lancaster north exit. The wood was accessible by a lane that ran off the A683, the main road into Lancaster that Henry would eventually be driving along that morning.
She had been dragged a few metres into the woods and discarded there, but with no real effort made to hide or bury her. It was obvious she would be discovered sooner rather than later and the pathologist’s estimate was that she’d probably been left there for perhaps twelve hours and had been murdered about four hours prior to that in a different, unknown, location, probably indoors.
That was the first thing that struck Henry: no real effort to hide the body. What did that say about the killer?
Confidence, Henry guessed. Confident that even though the body would be found, he — or she — would not get caught and that, possibly, she would remain unidentified.
So if the killer knew that, what did it say about the victim?
Henry’s initial thoughts turned straight to people-trafficking, or perhaps migrant workers. Many nationalities came to work the cockle beds on Morecambe Bay, for example, not just the unfortunate Chinese people who had been caught up in the disaster a few years back when twenty-odd immigrant cockle-pickers were drowned after being caught by the fast-rising tides.
If she wasn’t local, and possibly she came from Eastern Europe, as the dental work suggested, then was she here illegally? If she was, then identifying her would be seriously hard. Her fingerprints had already been checked without success. And if she couldn’t be named, that always made a murder investigation much harder.
‘Fuck,’ Henry thought.
And what was the link with Jennifer Sunderland, or was the dental aspect merely just a coincidence? He wondered what the odds were. Two women met violent deaths within, say, ten miles of each other and six months apart, and both had their dental work carried out by the same person.
‘Slim.’
‘What was that?’ Flynn said.
‘Did I say that out loud?’
‘You surely did.’
‘Sorry.’
‘That’s OK.’
They had reached the junction with the A683 at the village of Hornby. Turning left would take them towards Lancaster, passing through and under the bridge that formed junction 34 of the M6.
Flynn had told Henry he did not mind going around to Joe Speakman’s house on the way into Lancaster, then dropping Henry off at Lancaster nick where he could pick up his car.
As Flynn joined the main road in the Smart Car — not a car designed to carry two strapping men in comfort — Henry said, ‘Look, there’s something else I’d like to do before seeing Joe, so I tell you what, just drive me to the nick, I’ll pick up my car and then you can get on with what you have to do. I’ll contact you later if there are any developments. And thanks for the lift.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Check out the murder scene re this cold case.’
‘Is it nearby?’
‘Slight detour, but on the way.’
‘I’ll drive you there,’ Flynn said brightly. ‘Just direct me and tell me all about the case if you want.’
Less than ten minutes later, following Henry’s directions, Flynn slowed the car and turned left into Grimeshaw Lane, nothing more than a narrow, rutted track off the A683 which ran at a south-westerly angle, but virtually parallel with the M6. The lane passed Moss Syke woods, after which it veered right and crossed the motorway on a narrow bridge.
Diane’s tiny car thudded unhappily, but gamely, in the ruts, until after a few hundred metres they reached the woods, just a few acres of tightly compressed trees, nothing spectacular. Far enough away from any prying eyes, because there were no buildings nearby, but handy enough to dump a body.