Annie cursed the lax security at the care home, but to be realistic about it, Grace Chaplin had been right. What, or whom, did their patients need protecting from? They were harmless, incapable of moving and, some of them, even of speaking. Why on earth would anyone want to kill one of them? That was what Annie and her team had to find out.
Annie noticed DS Liam McCullough, the crime scene coordinator, detach himself from the group of white-suited figures, and she called him over. They had met on several occasions before they started working together, as Liam was a close friend of the Western Area CSC, Stefan Nowak, which made for a less strained relationship, Annie found. SOCOs could be annoyingly possessive of their crime scenes, and tight-arsed about any information they gave out, but with Liam in charge, Annie’s job was just that little bit easier.
“Nearly finished,” McCullough said, walking over to her, that lopsided grin on his face showing a mouthful of ill-fitting teeth.
“Find anything useful?”
“We won’t know what’s useful until later,” McCullough said.
“We think the killer might be a woman,” Annie told him. “At least it was a woman who took the victim out of Mapston Hall, so that’s the theory we’re working on at the moment.”
“Thanks for letting me know. It doesn’t make much difference now, but it’s good to bear in mind.”
“I don’t suppose you found any footprints?”
Liam pulled a face. “In this grass?”
“Thought not. Fingerprints?”
“Plenty on the wheelchair. Don’t worry, we’ll be every bit as thorough as Western Area.”
“I have no doubt,” Annie said. “Any traces of a car parked in the vicinity?”
“None that we could find.”
“Okay,” said Annie. “I didn’t expect anything. We’ll have to send out a house-to-house team.” She looked around the bleak, windswept stretch of coast. “Not that there’s really anywhere for them to go.”
“We did find several hairs on the victim’s blanket,” McCullough said. “No doubt some belong to the staff at the care home, and perhaps some to other patients, but you never know, the killer’s might be among them.”
“The person who dealt with our suspect at Mapston said the woman’s hair was hidden under a hat.”
McCullough smiled. “Haven’t you ever noticed how hair gets just everywhere?”
“I expect you’re right,” said Annie, who had noticed a short black hair on her sleeve on her way there, as if she needed reminding about last night. “What about the marks on her ears and neck?”
McCullough pulled a face. “Seagulls,” he said. “Postmortem, thank God. That’s why there’s no blood.”
“I suppose that she was killed here, in the wheelchair?”
“Yes. I consulted with the doc on that. Lividity is as you’d expect if that were the case, and there’s enough blood on the grass around the chair to bear it out. She was killed where she sat. We haven’t finished spatter analysis yet — the grass makes it difficult — but we’ve photographed and videoed every square inch.”
“Okay. Well, carry on, Liam. And thanks for the update.”
McCullough doffed his imaginary cap. “No problem. I trust you’re in charge of this inquiry?”
“Detective Superintendent Brough’s the official SIO.”
“So we send everything to you?” McCullough smiled.
Annie smiled back. “Might as well. But do it discreetly.”
“My middle name, discretion. Bye, ma’am.”
“See you,” said Annie. She shivered as a gust of wind blew in from the sea and a seagull glided over her. She walked to the edge of the cliff and stood as close as she dared on the treacherous, slippery grass, looking down. The tide was well up now, the crashing waves dizzying and magnetic. She could understand how people had been drawn to jump into moving water, hypnotized and seduced by its sinuous swirling motion. Feeling a twinge of vertigo, she glanced at the empty wheelchair. It would have been so easy just to push it that extra foot or so, onto the rocks. No fuss. No blood. Why go to the trouble and mess of slitting Karen Drew’s throat?
Unless, Annie thought with a sinking feeling, it was done to make some kind of statement. In her experience, killers who wanted to make statements were like bores at a party, a bugger to shut up until they’d finished what they had to say.
While Joseph Randall waited in an interview room, Banks sat in his office enjoying his first few moments of peace and quiet since Templeton’s phone call that morning. He had remembered to phone his mother, who thanked him for the card, and he was pleased to hear that all was well in the Banks household. His parents were going on a Mediterranean cruise in June, she had told him — their first time abroad, except for the time his father was in the army toward the end of the war. They were leaving from Southampton so they didn’t have to fly.
Now Banks was sipping a cup of tea, eating a KitKat and listening to Anna Netrebko’s Russian Album as he jotted down a list of actions and TIEs — Trace, Interview and Eliminate — he thought should be carried out as quickly as possible in the Hayley Daniels murder investigation.
Winsome had questioned the father, Geoff Daniels, and the hotel staff at the Faversham confirmed his alibi. No one had seen him leave his room since he arrived with his girlfriend Martina rather the worse for wear around three o’clock in the morning. The barman and doorman at the club in Keighley also remembered the couple, who had been there the whole time between about midnight and two-thirty. They had had more than enough to drink, he said, and at one point they were practically doing it right there on the dance floor. The bouncer even had to step in and ask them to cool it. There was no way either, or both, of them could have driven to Eastvale and killed Hayley. Winsome hadn’t tracked down the taxi driver yet, but it was just a matter of time.
Also, mostly for form’s sake, Winsome had checked Donna McCarthy’s alibi with her friend and neighbor, Caroline Dexter. They had indeed spent the evening together eating pizza and watching Casino Royale, until well after midnight.
Officers were already reviewing as much CCTV footage as they had been able to gather, and forensics experts were still busy in Taylor’s Yard, while most of the samples the SOCOs had collected were being prepared for analysis. Nothing would happen until Monday, of course, and results wouldn’t start coming until Tuesday, or even later in the week, depending on the tests and workloads of the labs involved. If only DNA results came as quickly as they seemed to do on television, Banks thought, his job would be a lot easier. Sometimes waiting was the worst part.
Banks put the writing pad aside. He’d enter it all into the computer later. He glanced out of the window and was surprised to see snowflakes blowing horizontally on the wind, obscuring the market square. He watched for a few moments, hardly believing what he saw, then it stopped and the sun came out. Strange weather, indeed.
He glanced at the map of the Maze he had had enlarged and pinned to his corkboard. There were far more ways in and out than he had realized, and it covered a greater area. Next to the map hung his Dalesman calendar. The month of March lay in neat columns below a photograph of Settle marketplace on a busy day. He had checkup appointments with both his dentist and his GP, having thought at the time it was best to get both unpleasant duties out of the way simultaneously. Now, he was beginning to wonder. Perhaps he should postpone the dentist until next month. Or the doctor.