Until last night. Until this.
And now the police will be going around lifting up old stones just to see what’s underneath them, and it’s absolutely imperative that Richard doesn’t say anything that might give them away. They’ve spent too long – and too much – covering their tracks for all that to come out now.
She pulls the thin blankets up around her shoulders.
She isn’t cold. But she is trembling.
* * *
‘Did you see the email?’
Nina Mukerjee is standing at Alan Challow’s door. He looks up and then turns to his laptop and opens his inbox. It’s a blizzard of technical language, like all reports from the lab, but he knows his stuff.
He takes a breath. ‘Well, well, well,’ he says, half to himself. ‘Who’d have thought.’
* * *
Adam Fawley
22 October
14.25
I’m with Gis and Quinn when Boddie’s call comes through.
‘Hold on, Colin, I’ll put you on speaker.’
He’s obviously still in the mortuary; there’s a tinny echo and I can hear the sound of water sluicing in the background.
‘So what have you got?’
‘Well,’ he says. ‘It had a certain lurid Grand Guignol appeal, I’ll give you that.’
Quinn rolls his eyes and I know what he means; this is classic Boddie.
‘Go on.’
‘But the bad news is that there’s absolutely nothing either on or in the body that’ll help you ID him. No tattoos, scars, birth- or otherwise distinguishing marks; no helpful metal plates or healed breaks. No obvious indication of drug use either, though I’ll need to wait for the tox screen for confirmation. Other than that, no sign of disease, excellent muscle tone, and all major organs in good working order. He’d be a remarkably healthy specimen – if he still had a head. And he was clean and well nourished too – he wasn’t living on the streets, that’s for sure.’
‘Age?’
‘Late teens, early twenties. Certainly no older.’
‘So that’s it?’
There’s a pause. I can almost hear that ‘I know something you don’t know’ smile of his. Quinn mouths ‘prick-tease’ at the phone.
‘Come on, Colin,’ says Gis cajolingly. ‘Don’t keep us on tenterhooks.’
‘There may not be anything to ID him, but there was something, all the same.’ He laughs. ‘Must be your lucky day, Fawley. Someone up there likes you.’
‘Care to elaborate on my good fortune, Colin?’
‘It was when I was doing the skeletal dissection. I noticed it at once, of course.’
He stops. Waits.
‘Go on,’ I say heavily.
‘The left humerus is slightly wider than the right.’
Another pause. But this time I know what he’s getting at.
‘He was left-handed.’
Boddie gives another brisk laugh. ‘Wonders will never cease – you’ve been listening to me all these years, after all. But yes, you’re right. Now take a look at your crime scene photos.’
Quinn reaches for his tablet, pulls up an image of the victim, then twists it to face us.
‘The knife,’ says Gis, pointing, ‘it’s in his right hand.’
* * *
Importance: High
Sent: Mon 22/10/2018, 15.05
From: AlanChallowCSI@ThamesValley.police.uk
To: DIAdamFawley@ThamesValley.police.uk
Subject: Case no EG2508/19J Gantry Manor – urgent
Quick heads-up pending the full report. We just got preliminary results back from the lab re the knife recovered at the scene. The blood on it derived from two different sources. Most of it was Swann’s but there were other traces on the inner side of the handle that were clearly transferred from the victim’s palm. I take it you’ve done this enough times to know what that means, but call me if you need a refresher.
AC
* * *
Barnetson looks down at the sorry pile at his feet. It’s not much to show for three hours’ work. A lager can that was almost certainly tossed in from a passing car, a trowel with a bent blade, an old gardening glove with holes in the fingers and a furred-up tennis ball that’s probably been here since the dog died. But no screwdriver, no mobile phone, no wallet and no rogue black plastic bag. There’s no sign that anything’s been buried recently either – in fact, there’s not much sign of anything at all having been done in this garden for a good long while. The lawn is ankle-high in leaves and ivy is crawling through the broken greenhouse glass. Plants, shed, fence: everything is brown and rotting and slowly coming to pieces in the damp.
Grover is still poking listlessly at the borders with a stick. ‘I just don’t reckon that bag’s out here, Sarge. We’ve been through the whole place twice now.’
‘It has to be somewhere,’ counters Barnetson. ‘It didn’t just vanish into thin air.’
* * *
Adam Fawley
22 October
15.47
Sometimes evidence is like buses: it all comes at once.
Quinn picks up a stack of photocopies and hands them to Chloe Sargent, indicating to her to pass them out.
‘OK, people,’ he says now, raising his voice above the chatter. ‘Let’s get started.’
He looks round. ‘Things are moving pretty fast, so this is just a quick update on where we are. First, DS Gislingham has interviewed Swann again, this time in the presence of his lawyer.’
Gis turns to face the room. ‘Let’s just say he wasn’t in a very talkative mood – it was basically “No comment” all the way. He did give us a prepared statement, but that just repeated everything he said the first time. Including, for the record, absolutely no mention of the fact that – as we now know – he went walkies down the garden straight after the shooting.’
‘Did you ask him about that?’ asks the DC who’s covering for Somer while she’s off. Bradley something. Carter. Bradley Carter. He has one of those perky-at-the-front haircuts and a chubby, schoolboyish look, but he’s ambitious, as I can tell by the glance he slides in my direction.
‘No,’ says Gis, ‘we didn’t. For the very good reason that we only found out about it afterwards.’
Carter’s frowning. ‘So we’ll talk to him again?’
‘Not yet,’ replies Gis. ‘The boss –’ a nod to me – ‘wants to hold off on that.’
I look up. ‘That’s because we have a hell of a lot of blanks to fill in first. The next time we sit down with Richard Swann I want us to know as much about this crime as he does.’
‘So as at now,’ says Gis, ‘Swann’s been sent back to the cells while we try to work out what the heck we’re dealing with here.’
‘Speaking of which,’ says Quinn, holding up the handout, ‘everyone’s favourite subject: forensics.’
There’s a rustle of activity as people turn to the right page.
‘We knew Swann must have washed and changed his clothes before Uniform got there, so surprise, surprise, there was no gunshot residue on his hands. The PJs we dug out of the washing machine didn’t yield anything either. Not even any residual blood.’
Gis gives a wry grin. ‘Guess those stain-remover things actually do what they say on the tin. Who knew, eh?’
Subdued laughter. I don’t think Gis is actively trying to piss Quinn off, but he seems to be managing it all the same.
‘Far more significant,’ says Quinn, raising his voice a little, ‘the knife. The blood on the blade was Swann’s, but there was also blood on the handle – blood that came from two, repeat two, different sources – both Richard Swann and the victim. And given the vic still had his hand round the knife when we found it, there’s only one way that could have got there –’
‘They faked it,’ says Hansen, almost too quickly. ‘To make us think Swann had been attacked.’ And now he’s looking awkward, either because he doesn’t want to look like a swot, or didn’t mean to cut across a DS. And especially not this DS.