Sunday mornings in the middle of a murder investigation are like any other morning of the week. Nevertheless, Warren had decided that he could afford to head to the office a bit later. Susan had taken the rest of the week off work, but he knew that she hadn’t slept any better than him, tossing and turning until well-past midnight. She was now slumbering quietly beside him.
He looked at his phone. No voicemails or emails had come in overnight. The display showed half-past seven. Despite Susan’s lack of rest, he knew she would be awake soon.
Moving quietly, he slipped on his slippers and dressing gown and padded softly downstairs.
A look in the fridge revealed eggs that needed using and some fresh apple juice. There was some nice sourdough bread in the bread bin.
The smell of scrambled eggs on toast and the aroma of fresh coffee was enough to bring Susan downstairs. As she slipped her arms around his waist and kissed the back of his neck, it was almost as if the past few weeks hadn’t happened, and Warren allowed himself to relax.
‘I assume you are going to ruin those lovely eggs with Worcestershire sauce?’ she teased.
‘Of course. Would you like some on yours?’
She turned up her nose. ‘I married a barbarian.’
Warren smiled. He said the same thing about her when she smothered toast in Marmite.
Plating up, he sat down opposite Susan. He knew it couldn’t last, but for the next couple of hours he just wanted to pretend it was a normal Sunday morning. To pretend that neither he nor Susan had any work to do that day and had no plans beyond where to go for lunch and how to spend the afternoon. To pretend that they hadn’t just lost the babies. The contented look on Susan’s face as she spread butter on her toast and poured them both a glass of juice gave Warren hope for the future.
Or at least the next few hours.
He’d eaten only two mouthfuls of eggs and taken only a sip of coffee when his phone rang.
They both froze.
It rang a second time.
Warren shovelled another forkful of eggs into his mouth.
The phone diverted to voicemail. Neither of them said anything.
Warren took a slurp of coffee and cut into his toast, sawing hard against the sourdough’s springy texture.
The phone rang again.
Susan reached across the table and touched his hand. ‘Answer it.’
‘They left a voicemail,’ he mumbled as he chewed.
Susan squeezed his hand. ‘It’s Sunday morning. You know they wouldn’t be calling unless it’s urgent.’
He sighed and picked up the handset. ‘Jones.’
The caller chose to ignore his curt tone. ‘A body has been found. Farley Woods.’
Farley Woods was a densely forested area stretching for a couple of miles along the edge of the A506, forming a natural barrier between the busy trunk road and the farmland beyond. By the time Warren arrived at the lay-by near to where the body had been found, one of the two carriageways had been cordoned off to make space for the police vehicles. An articulated lorry with Polish licence plates was parked up, its rear doors open to show that there was no cargo worth stealing as the driver slept in his cab overnight. A small, red Citroen sat in front of it.
‘The body’s been there a while,’ said the officer who’d been first on the scene.
‘Who found it?’
‘Two walkers. They said they were geocaching, whatever that is.’ She pointed towards a couple in their forties holding the lead of a medium-sized, orangey-brown dog with white markings on its face. Warren had no idea of its breed.
‘What about the lorry driver?’
She shook her head. ‘He was asleep in his cab when he heard the walkers come running out of the woods.’
‘Is the scene secured?’
She looked at her clipboard. ‘A Detective Sergeant Grimshaw took charge. He’s taping it off now. Scenes of Crime are about ten minutes out.’
Thanking her, Warren walked towards the couple, introducing himself.
‘We were looking for a cache,’ said the husband, who introduced himself as Steven Spencer, an IT worker from Cardiff on a weekend away with his wife, Tina. The couple were dressed in thick, outdoor clothes, making the bright blue nylon forensic booties they wore appear even more incongruous. Their hiking boots had already been taken for forensic analysis.
‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ admitted Warren.
‘We were geocaching,’ said his wife. ‘It’s a bit like orienteering. People leave boxes in hidden places and post the GPS co-ordinates online for others to find. It’s very popular,’ she said in response to Warren’s slightly bemused expression.
‘You travelled from Cardiff to Hertfordshire to find a box. What’s in it?’
‘Well nothing, really. Just a logbook. You write your name on it, and the time you found it, then put it back for others to find. Then you record that you found it online.’
‘Oh.’ Warren still wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, or if it was relevant to the investigation.
‘We like walking to keep fit,’ explained the husband. ‘We were visiting some old university friends in Middlesbury and whilst they were sleeping off their hangovers, we decided to get some fresh air. We saw that there was a cache nearby, and figured it was as good a reason as any to get out of the house. We offered to take their dog, Keji, for a walk.’
‘OK. Well did you find the box?’
‘No. According to the GPS, it’s a kilometre further into the woods.’
‘Take me through what happened.’
The husband pointed toward the red Citroen. ‘We used the GPS to find the nearest lay-by. We parked up in front of the lorry, then got out and headed into the woods through that gap in the tree-line.’
‘What time was this?’
‘About seven a.m.’
Warren was impressed. His occasional get-togethers with his university friends rarely saw anyone surface before mid-morning, and that was usually to hunt down a full-English in a local café.
‘We hadn’t gone very far,’ continued his wife, ‘when Keji started barking and then raced off deeper into the trees. We tried calling him back, but he wasn’t paying any attention, so we went after him.’
‘We couldn’t face the awkward conversation if we lost him,’ said her husband; despite the attempt at humour his eyes were bleak. He placed his arm around his wife’s shoulders, as he took over the story.
‘He disappeared so we just followed the sound of his barking, until suddenly he stopped and started whining. I was worried that he’d hurt himself, so I started to run …’ He took a deep breath. ‘Keji was circling this old tree with a big patch of bushes and brambles at the base. He’s a Toller, a sort of gundog, so I figured he’d found a dead bird or something.’
After a short pause, he continued. ‘Anyway, I stuck my head into there … the smell … I saw some clothes … blood …’ He stopped talking and put his hand over his mouth at the memory.
His wife took over. ‘It was obvious what it was, so we grabbed Keji, went back to the roadside and called the police.’
‘Did you touch anything?’
The husband shook his head. ‘No, and I told Tina to stay back.’ He paused. ‘I may have caught my sleeve on some brambles.’
‘We’ll need to take some samples from your coat to eliminate it,’ said Warren.
The man nodded numbly, already unzipping it.
‘Did Keji go into the bushes? Do you know if he disturbed the scene at all?’
‘I don’t think so, although I admit I lost sight of him for a bit.’
‘Would you be able to contact your friends and get permission for one of my team to take a clipping of his fur, just in case?’
‘I’m sure they’ll be happy.’ His wife spoke up. ‘It’s not like he hasn’t got plenty to spare.’ As if he knew that he was being spoken about, Keji’s ears pricked up.
Warren thanked them both and arranged for them to be taken away by the officer in charge of the scene.
Repressing a sigh, he trudged back to his car to retrieve his paper suit and murder bag. This far from Welwyn, Warren and his team at Middlesbury would be expected to at least start any investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death. But they had enough on their plate already with the Cullen murder. He looked forward to passing it over to a different team to bring to completion.
Until that happened though, DSI Grayson – and thus by extension Warren – was de facto Senior Investigating Officer and he needed to make sure everything was done properly.
‘I reckon it’s been there for weeks or months,’ said Grimshaw. ‘It’s pretty decomposed, and there’s lots of growth around it.’
Like Warren, he was dressed in a paper suit. Upon arriving at the scene he’d done everything correctly. Access to the body was limited; nevertheless he’d arranged for the scene to be taped off in a rough circle a couple of hundred metres in diameter, lest other early morning walkers found themselves trampling through the area in search of Tupperware boxes.
However, that seemed unlikely. The muddy trail that the Spencers had followed was overgrown and almost non-existent in places; it didn’t look as though many people had been there recently.
Ordinarily, Warren would be worried about the scene being compromised by too many officers. Despite their best efforts, anyone entering or leaving a crime scene runs the risk of removing valuable trace evidence or inadvertently introducing contamination from outside. Ideally, metal walkways would be installed and a clear path to and from the site would be established to minimize the risk of footprints and other impressions being obliterated.
Not only was that impractical in such an area, if what Grimshaw said about the age of the body was true, then any such evidence was long gone. The paper suits they wore were designed not to introduce foreign fibres, and the facemasks and hairnets stopped them shedding hair.
Grimshaw was right about the age of the body. Much of it had rotted away, or been eaten by scavengers, with bones poking through what little flesh remained. It was impossible to tell if the body was male or female. The scene would need to be subjected to rigorous investigation, but Warren’s practised eye noted the brambles that had grown through holes in the body’s clothing. A forensic botanist might be able to use that to help narrow down how long the body had been lying there.
Grimshaw pointed towards the corpse’s left leg. The dark blue jeans were stained a dark colour.
‘I reckon that’s blood. Lots of it.’
‘It looks that way,’ Warren agreed. He stood back slightly. In addition to the jeans, the body was wearing a dirty white T-shirt. Warren couldn’t make out the logo. The corpse’s left foot wore a dark, battered training shoe. As did the corpse’s right foot, although that foot was no longer attached to the bottom of the right leg and was sitting a short distance away.
The corpse was slumped against the base of the tree, its arms partly around it, as if hugging it. Had it been a slow death? Had the victim held on to the tree for comfort as they bled out?
If that was so, how had they ended up in the middle of a dense patch of shrubs? And what had caused such a significant injury?
There were a dozen tragic, but innocent scenarios that could explain how this person had found themselves in such a predicament, but Warren’s gut had that familiar tightening. He looked over at Grimshaw, and saw the same thoughts mirrored in the man’s eyes above his facemask.
‘I’m declaring it a suspicious death,’ said Warren.