Chapter Ten

 

When Emma arrived on Monday morning, the preliminary results of the deep search on Fairthorpe's background were in. Despite his spectacular and unconventional death, he appeared to have led an exceptionally ordinary life. He had travelled up and down the south west, visiting people and arranging their finances – he did loans, investments, mortgages – the usual range of services. The problem was that there were very few complaints against him. Forensic accountants had started digging into his accounts but he didn't appear to be living outside his means. He drove a three-year-old Vauxhall Insignia and lived in a nice village in Gloucestershire, in a modest house.

Emma sat back and rubbed her eyes. It didn't make sense at all. Murder was a big deal. Despite what film and TV taught people, people very rarely just went out and killed someone. Usually, to become a murder victim, someone had to have seriously upset someone else. There were a few oddities, like people who'd kill over road rage or a spilled pint. But this wasn't a random event, like a pub fight gone wrong. No, the killer had gone to the motel with clear intent. He'd taken along a taser, a knife, a saw and a whole bag of DIY kit. All planned out in advance. That meant that the killer knew Fairthorpe, had a relationship with him and wanted him dead.

But why? That was the key question. An affair was looking increasingly unlikely. They'd found no condoms or second mobile in his personal effects. The technical teams were still working on his phone and laptop but Emma knew instinctively they'd find no trace of a lover. The wife had no suspicions and it looked like she was right.

Right now her best guess was organised crime. He worked with money and bank accounts, so he could have hidden ill-gotten gains in any number of places. If he'd been involved in money laundering and then moved on to skimming off the profits, then his murder would serve as a gruesome, public warning to what happens to people who cheat.

She wasn't the only one thinking this way. There were literally hundreds of actions on the system to check every one of his clients to see if they had any criminal links at all. She felt like crying. That was weeks of work and she could guess who'd be doing most of it.

She listlessly typed in the first name – a retired man from a suburb of Exeter. No links, nothing even vaguely dodgy. She was saved from further drudgery by the phone. It was Dani Price, the pathologist.

'I've got a weird one for you,' she said.

'What's up?'

'Well, this guy phoned through to the police. He was walking his dog along by the beach, when it turned up with a lump of flesh in his mouth.'

'Human flesh?'

'Well, that's the thing. It was burnt and had a bit of bone sticking out of it. Could've been a forearm.'

'I'm guessing, as this is the first that I've heard of it, it was a false alarm?'

'Yes. Good for a barbecue though. Someone got hold of a whole pig and blew it up.'

'Blew it up? What do you mean?'

'Well, we found a shallow crater and some scorched earth. It seems they tried to clear it up but there were still bits and pieces of bone and flesh around.'

'What are we looking at? Animal cruelty?' Emma was sick to her stomach at the thought of exploding animals.

'No, no, nothing like that. It was properly prepared and cleaned by a butcher. I'd be more concerned with someone handling explosives and setting off explosions.'

'Right then.' Emma got all the details of the location and time. It was in a quiet area of Bradwick, backing on to some waste ground.

Emma rubbed her eyes and thought over what she'd just learnt. It was actually useless information. She could pass it up to counter terrorism but without a time, date or person involved it would go nowhere. The area was a piece of scrubland outside the Seaview Estate, overlooking the sea. Any one of thousands of people could've accessed it. It could be anything from someone planning the next atrocity to kids mucking around with fireworks. She decided to create a report, circulate it to counter terrorism and put it out of her mind.