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Stevie discovered the body. The old lady was still sitting on the bench as if she had been waiting for the hospital bus and had fallen asleep. There was dew on her hat and shoulders and the end of her nose, and her dark coat was soaked through. The handbag was untouched, still containing the pension she had collected the day before.
A large spider’s web stretched from her earring to the corner of the bench. The spider had scarpered when Steve had arrived on the scene, sniffing around Maggie’s feet.
Stevie was a red setter.
It was ten minutes to eight on a moist morning and Maggie would always be asleep at that time. She was asleep still, enjoying the beginning of the big one.
Two minutes later Stevie’s owner showed up, panting like the dog, Mr Milkins, sixty-nine, retired solicitor. He fired up the mobile phone his granddaughter Sara had bought him for his birthday, and tried to remember how to use the darn thing. Figured it out, maybe, and zapped 999.
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The incident room was packed; everyone was in early to sift through the results of the televised broadcast. The phones had been red hot for four hours following the initial showing; and again later when the feature was repeated on the bedtime roundup. Every loony and attention seeker in the region had called, or so it seemed to Karen.
It was me I did it, stabbed the guy; kicked him in the river.
No, you didn’t. Go away! Stop wasting police time.
The phones were still busy the following morning, though the initial rush of idiots had abated.
One or two vaguely interesting things had come in, but nothing concrete; and nothing seemingly from the perpetrator.
Walter half expected that. He sniffed and sat back in his chair, and clasped his hands behind his head. One or two thoughts had come to him during the six fitful hours of sleep he had grabbed. It was hard to think in the incident room with all the kafuffle going on. He might take some time out and go and sit in one of the private offices. One of the young WPC’s came in and set a mug of coffee on his desk. He hadn’t asked for it, but was happy to seize it.
‘Thanks, er...’ realising that he had no idea of the kid’s name.
‘Thompson, sir,’ said the girl smiling. ‘Jenny Thompson.’
‘Thanks Jenny Thompson,’ and he smiled, and she pulled a pleasant face and hurried away to begin data entry on the latest computer program that supposedly aided finding the killer. It probably did, but it was not something that interested Walter too much.
He glanced across at Cresta. Still in purple, though different shades today. She’d combed her straight, dyed hair differently, and there was a purple clip in it to keep it just so. She was writing furiously, longhand, and she was a very neat writer, standard forward sloping style, each individual letter practically identical, like you see in American universities, which may not have been so daft, for she had studied at Stanford for three years. The Americans were the best at profiling, miles ahead of anyone else, leastways Cresta believed that, and she might have been right.
Some of the younger guys had suggested she was spending her time writing a crime novel at Chester Police expense, building in the realistic atmosphere she was witnessing, which might not have been such a ludicrous idea, judging by the pile of completed papers she had turned over.
‘How are you doing?’ asked Walter.
‘Fine, Walter,’ and she stopped writing and looked up, ‘I have nearly finished my initial report. I have a few ideas.’
‘Me too,’ he said, ‘though I can’t think straight in here.’ He called to Karen. She looked away from the latest data on the screen. ‘I want a small meeting, just you, me, and Cresta. Organise a room will you, drinks and some toast would be nice.’
‘Maybe we should include Mrs West,’ suggested Karen, looking back over her shoulder toward the private office that bore the boss’s name, a door that remained firmly closed.
‘You think?’
Karen nodded.
Walter sighed and said none too enthusiastically, ‘OK, you tell her, will you.’
Karen made to walk that way but came to a halt as soon as WPC Jenny Thompson stood up, still holding the phone, and shouted, ‘We have another one, another suspicious death!’
The room fell silent, Jenny suddenly conscious of all eyes upon her.
‘Where?’ said Walter and Karen and Cresta almost in unison.
‘Delamere forest.’
‘Who?’
‘A woman, an elderly lady, a Chester woman by the name of Margaret O’Brien. Some retired solicitor found her apparently. He’s still there now; the local police are on the scene.’
‘Tell them not to move a thing. Nothing! We are on our way. Come on Karen.’
‘I’m coming too,’ announced Cresta, getting up in a hurry and dragging her purple coat from the back of her chair.
Walter and Karen shared a look. They weren’t used to having passengers riding when they were on a case, but what could they do?
Karen drove, Walter sat in the front with Cresta behind him. Karen had grabbed a marked car, a powerful BMW, one of her favourites. It didn’t take them long to get there, not the way she drove. She adored seeing the traffic scuttling from their path like panicking beetles, and when they delayed her, she didn’t hesitate to use the blue lights and wailing sirens to sweep them out of the way.
Cresta held on tight. Walter closed his eyes.
They found the place, radioed in by their man on the spot. It was a surprisingly remote location, way off the main road, down a recently re-laid gravel track. Two local policemen were there, and a doctor, and the old solicitor, and Stevie, and they all glanced up as the shark-like car pulled into the small car park.
Walter stepped out to be confronted by the older man.
‘Are you in charge?’
‘I am.’
‘I’ve given your man here a statement; I am getting very cold and not a little irritated. I need to go home.’
‘I’m getting cold and not a little irritated too,’ said Walter, striding down toward to the bench.
The man huffed and puffed and followed.
‘Give me five minutes,’ Walter said, ‘after that we’ll have a quick chat and then you can go.’
Milkins pursed his lips and nodded his head and led the dog to the water for a drink.
‘Well?’ said Walter. ‘What’s the score?’
The doctor looked away from the dead woman and said, ‘Estimated time of death between half eight and half past ten last night. There are no obvious injuries.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘Too early to say. You’ll have my full report before close of play today.’
‘And if you had to guess?’
‘I am not a guessing man.’
‘Try! Please.’
‘If I had to guess, I’d say carbon monoxide poisoning.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Colour. Look at the skin. Hypopigmentation, a common sign.’
‘Mmm,’ said Walter, peering at the corpse. ‘Not natural causes then?’
‘Oh no, I’d be very surprised at that.’
Walter nodded. ‘Ring me, will you, when you’re done?’
The doctor nodded, and they all turned and watched the ambulance bouncing down the track toward them.
‘Karen.’
‘Guv?’
‘Have a word with the solicitor guy. Ask him if he saw anyone else. Tell him we’ll need his fingerprints to eliminate him. Tell him to go with the local boys and get that done and then he can go home.’
‘Sure Guv.’
Walter peered across the lake and pictured the scene when the killer was here. Was the murder carried out on site, or elsewhere and the victim brought here? It was a quiet enough place. It could have been done on site, in which case what was the killer doing while it was going on? Standing by, watching? Maybe. A killer isn’t going to be too squeamish. But if not, pound to a penny Walter would wager the killer would have wandered off, a quick stroll round the lake perhaps, maybe a good place to find footprints in the mud, especially if the path was rarely used.
He called the local officer over and instructed him to make certain that SOCO took casts and photographs of all footprints in the vicinity, and especially those on the far side of the lake.
‘Don’t let me down,’ said Walter, staring into the young kid’s eyes.
‘I won’t,’ he replied earnestly, and he wouldn’t because this was the most important thing he had ever done.
‘Cresta?’ called Walter.
‘That’s me.’
‘What do you make of it?’
‘Much as I would have expected. A remote place that the killer has previously visited. That’s how the he-she thing knows it’s here. Probably been here before with a partner, maybe more than once, maybe with more than one partner, a scene of happy memories, I’d say.’
‘Memories?’
‘Yes, the partner’s gone now, departed, maybe voluntarily, maybe died...’
‘Maybe murdered,’ added Walter.
‘Precisely.’
‘What sparked everything off?’
‘Loss of the partner, I would say.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. But how long ago?’
‘Within the last twelve months. Not recent, I suspect. It’s been festering in the back of the brain, building, slowly. At first they imagined they could cope with it.’
‘When all the while they couldn’t.’
‘Clearly.’
‘How many people have been through a broken relationship in the last twelve months?’
Cresta pulled a face that said it all.
‘Another random killing?’ said Walter.
‘Looks that way.’
‘The he-she thing is either incredibly lucky or incredibly clever.’
‘Why lucky?’ asked Cresta.
‘The track has been freshly re-gravelled so no car tyre tracks that we can trace, the heavy rain has probably washed away any footprints, the same scenario.’
‘That looks like luck.’
‘That’s what I think, and if the he-she’s had all the luck up to now, it’s about time their luck ran out.’
Cresta nodded.
‘Man or woman?’ asked Walter, as Karen came back.
‘I can’t tell,’ said Cresta.
‘Man for me,’ said Karen.
‘Me too,’ said Walter, ‘course it’s a man.’
‘Let’s wrap it up here and get back to Chester.’
Returning in the car Karen said, ‘Was the press conference such a success?’
‘I think so,’ said Cresta.
Walter said nothing.
‘We now have a dead old lady on our hands,’ said Karen.
‘That would have happened anyway,’ said Cresta.
‘You think? Is this not his response to our baiting?’
‘He or she, are in this for the long-term. It, for want of a better word, will keep on killing until you catch them.’
‘I think Maggie O’Brien would still be alive if we hadn’t done the broadcast,’ said Karen.
‘Rubbish!’ said Cresta.
‘We’ll never know,’ said Walter, ‘but we now have more to go on, more evidence, more leads, so from that point of view, the broadcast was an undoubted success. In the end the evidence will trap him.’
‘Or her,’ added Cresta.
‘That too.’