The incident room at Mildenheath CID was buzzing that morning. Serious crime was not only a growing part of everyday life in Mildenheath, but for the CID officers murder had been becoming more commonplace. Even so, the discovery of a body and the opening of a new case could still produce a frisson of excitement.
Culverhouse had assembled the same team that had assisted him in previous cases, choosing to reward loyalty as he was wont to do. Detective Sergeant Wendy Knight was to be his second in command, with Detective Sergeants Frank Vine, Steve Wing and Luke Baxter providing assistance.
Wendy was not Luke Baxter’s biggest fan. Like most of the rest of the officers in CID, she had worked her way up from the bottom and earned her position as a Detective Sergeant. Her father had been a CID officer and the world of policing had always been a way of life for her. Baxter, on the other hand, had joined the police force fresh out of university and was being fast-tracked through the ranks with the support, if not the impetus, of DCI Culverhouse. She wasn’t opposed to people progressing in their careers, but cocky wet-behind-the-ears people like Baxter really got on her nerves.
As was usual, Culverhouse had asked everyone to be ready for a nine o’clock briefing yet was the last person to arrive, just before quarter past.
‘Right,’ he said as he strode through the door and dumped a manila file on his desk. ‘First things first, I’ve been up all night hanging around in alleyways with Dr Grey, so I’m not in the mood for any pratting about, which includes,’ he added, looking directly at a chuckling Frank Vine, ‘sniggering about what I just said. We have a victim, female, probably mid to late forties. No identity as of yet.’ As he spoke, Culverhouse removed some printed photos of the crime scene and pinned them to the board behind him. ‘Dr Grey says the victim died elsewhere and was dumped at the location by the killer. Why, we don’t know. My first priority was to get onto the local press to announce that a body had been found and to try and find out who our victim was. It’s just gone out on the hourly news bulletin on local radio, so hopefully we’ll have a lead at some point soon.’
‘I’ll get onto Missing Persons as well, guv. See if I can match anything up there,’ DC Debbie Weston said.
‘No need. I’ve already done it,’ said Luke Baxter. ‘Nothing on record that seems to fit.’
‘Right. Thank you,’ Debbie said, nodding. Culverhouse had, in years gone by, tried to urge DC Weston to apply for a promotion but she had always been perfectly happy to remain a Detective Constable. Secretly, he’d been quite happy as it meant his Major Incident team could remain together, albeit a little DS-heavy.
Other Major Incident teams were usually more balanced in terms of the ranks of officers involved, but with Mildenheath having only the one CID team, it was seen as something of a law unto itself at county level. There had been whispers that Mildenheath CID would be brought under the auspices of an all-encompassing county-level CID department — as had all other satellite squads in the county — and there were even rumours of a pan-county CID setup being touted, meaning that their local independence would be truly lost. For now, though, Mildenheath CID was an odd, outdated quirk of plain clothes policing and that suited Jack Culverhouse just fine.
‘In the meantime,’ Culverhouse said, ‘We’ll need to do some door-to-door work in the Albert Street area to find out if anyone saw or heard anything. Can’t be easy to sneak a dead body into an alleyway around there, even at that time of night. Debbie and Frank, can you get onto that? Luke, I’ll need you to find out what CCTV coverage there is in the area. There’s got to be someone with a camera on their house, or a nearby shop that’ll have picked something up.’
Wendy looked at Culverhouse and noted that there was something different — more muted — about him. His opening warning aside, he’d seemed rather more subdued than usual. If it was anyone else, she would’ve put this down to him having been up all night, but she knew Jack Culverhouse and that should’ve only made him worse.
‘The description that’s been circulated is that of a woman aged in her forties, with shoulder-length mousey brown hair, wearing a purple strapped top and blue denim jeans. She had a silver ring on her right hand in the shape of a heart.’ As he read the description, Culverhouse handed out sheets of paper with it written on, alongside details of where the body was found and at what time. For now, this was the only point of reference the team would have with which to begin the investigation.
‘Was there no jacket or coat?’ Wendy asked.
‘Not at the scene,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘I know what you’re thinking. Cold night, early hours, not exactly going to want to go out without a coat. But then again we don’t know she was outside. If she was killed elsewhere, it could have been anywhere. More than likely indoors. Debbie and Frank, the door-to-door enquiries’ll need to cover that. See if anyone remembers a woman fitting our victim’s description entering a property nearby at any point in the last day or so.’
Before they could answer, there was a knock at the door and a young uniformed sergeant entered the room to let Culverhouse know he’d just received a phone call and needed to tell him about it. Culverhouse handed over to Wendy and stepped out of the room.
‘Well, I think that’s most of it covered actually,’ Wendy said. ‘Unless anyone has anything they’d like to raise?’
‘Yeah. I shouldn’t think it’d be a local house that she went into, if any,’ Frank Vine said. ‘Would be a bit risky, considering how close together the houses are. You wouldn’t want to dump the body too close to home, would you?’
‘True,’ Wendy replied, ‘but the further our killer had to take the body, the higher the risk of him being seen doing it. I don’t think logic comes into it too much, either. That alleyway isn’t a logical place to leave a body, especially if the victim wasn’t killed there. I think it’s safe to say our first priority needs to be identifying the victim. Once we know who our body is, finding the killer will be a whole lot easier.’
‘On which note,’ Culverhouse said, barging through the door back into the incident room, ‘you’ll be pleased to know that our radio appeal might have had some success. We’ve just had a call from a bloke who reckons our body sounds just like his ex-wife.’