Craig Lockwood had little to occupy him on Christmas Day either. The boys were with their mother; he’d dropped them off at their swanky house, complete with matching BMWs in the driveway. It killed him when he saw her with her new husband. He couldn’t bring himself to even say his name. But what killed him even more was when the bastard spent time with his boys. They were old enough now not to be swayed by superficial gifts, and they generally came home to Craig telling him what they were or were not impressed with. They also told him how their mother had changed. The marital breakdown had been a cliché. Craig had neglected her and she’d looked elsewhere. The boys had opted to live with their father and she didn’t object; she was keener to jet off to villas in the sun with her new fella than be tied to motherhood. The irony was that now Craig spent much more time with his family than he ever had.
His biggest achievement, though one he’d never admit to the boys, was keeping them off drugs. He’d terrified them with videos of overdoses, crime programmes and statistics so that they went to parties turned off the stuff before they even thought about trying it. It amused Craig, but the boys joked that they were more sensible than their dad. They hardly touched alcohol either; again, Craig had showed them pictures from the mortuary of enlarged livers and burst hearts. It wasn’t pretty, but he didn’t want them to end up as washed-up old losers, dependent on everything from substances to women.
At fifteen, his younger son was the same age as the missing girl from Keswick, and it smarted. All parents must imagine it, he figured: that terror of your kid going missing and turning up dead, knifed or worse. He’d once sat them down and told them they had a hundred pounds each to see how many knives they could buy over the internet. They managed to legally purchase twenty-four between them. He then showed them some photographs of knife wounds.
The elder boy was now eighteen and heading off to the London School of Economics. Craig’s worries were far from over, but at least his son had a path to walk.
He’d had a lie-in on Christmas morning, and then showered and dressed ready for his main task for the day: to incarcerate Bobby Bailey. An old magistrate pal had signed a warrant, and now Craig was on his way to Ulverston again. The fair wasn’t moving on until the day after Boxing Day, when it would resume in Kendal.
Maria had described which trailer Bobby stayed in; predictably, it was not the one he’d told the police. If Bobby had anything to hide, it would be in the trailer he called home. Only a few people knew which one that was, and that number now included Detective Chief Inspector Craig Lockwood. This was going to be a Christmas that Bobby never forgot.
Craig would have preferred it if policing was still done the old-fashioned way – with a good nose and a punch in the face – but it wasn’t and they all had to get used to it. Every damn thing had to be accounted for, and entering Bobby’s trailer might turn out to be crucial for Kelly. He had to do it right. He figured that Bobby would let his guard down on Christmas Day, not expecting the coppers to be out looking for him.
He had taken his son’s car and wore a cap pulled down low. He heard music coming from trailers, and a dog pissed up the side of a lorry. A few kids chased each other and cycled up and down on new bikes, no doubt nicked. But he wasn’t here for petty theft.
A few fair workers milled about, but no one paid his car any attention. Two men stood by the canal edge, talking animatedly and pointing out to sea. They paused occasionally to shout obscenities at passing women. After an hour or so, a group of four others approached and sat down. Craig was growing impatient. This was where Bobby usually hung out, and he begun to think that he’d been invited somewhere else for Christmas dinner. Either that, or he was sleeping off a hangover in his trailer.
He got out of his car and made his way to the trailer that Bobby called home. The shutters were all down and he tried the door. It was open. He glanced around, but the group wasn’t interested in him and carried on laughing and chatting. Craig felt a slight pang of pity: it was a sad sight on Christmas Day.
The stench hit him as soon as the door was ajar. Craig recognised the smell immediately. Either Bobby had a dead dog in there, or he was a goner himself.
He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and covered his mouth. He had plastic gloves should he need them, as always. The light was dim and the smell grew stronger. He gagged, but stepped inside. His eyes adjusted and he made out a scene of neglect and disarray, though it wasn’t as if the place had been burgled; just lived in by a lazy bastard. He looked around and called Bobby’s name.
Nothing.
His eyes watered, but he was becoming accustomed to the reeking air. Then he heard the flies. It always amazed him how quickly the little buggers sought out a juicy dead body on which to feed. It was as if they were the sharks of the air, sensing lifeless flesh from miles around. Even in a closed vehicle such as this, they always found a way in. He hadn’t seen a fly for months, but they always appeared when there was a meal to be had. He approached the bedroom, the buzzing getting louder, and braced himself. As he pushed the door open, flies flew past him and he Craig batted them away from his face.
Squinting, he made out a figure lying face up on the bed. At first glance it just looked like someone sleeping. He flicked on his torch. He knew it was Bobby.
The flies were in disarray, having been rudely interrupted; they flew off every time Craig moved, before landing on the body again. He went closer and shone the light all over the corpse. Bobby’s face was unmarked. He looked larger than Craig remembered, but that would be the bloat of gas as his insides disintegrated. His clothes moved slightly around his abdominal area, which Craig put down to the hatching and feeding of insect larvae. But it was the chest area that focused his attention.
There was a clear cut in Bobby’s shirt, around the heart, and Craig shone the torch into the gash. The flesh had been slashed cleanly and deeply, and after a look over the rest of the body, Craig reckoned this was the only wound.
It was a professional hit.
He went outside and made the call to medics and forensics. He would need uniforms here to begin interviewing. He wouldn’t be popular interrupting the dinners of those on call, and he felt a bastard, If only he’d left Bobby for another day, his colleagues could have enjoyed their Christmas. But then evidence might have slipped away, or worse: someone else could have found him.
Maria wandered over when the sirens created a fuss ten minutes later and the place lit up. A crowd gathered close to Bobby’s trailer, unwilling to be moved on by the police, who taped a barrier around the area.
‘What happened?’ Maria asked.
‘Looks like a hit to me, and judging by the body, it was a couple of days ago. See anything?’
Maria looked down at her shoes. ‘No. But I’ll ask around.’
‘You do that. If he was dealing, then maybe you could find out where his supply came from. It looks like a clean hit to me, and in my experience, people only get whacked like that for sex or money. My guess is that Bobby wasn’t part of any complicated love triangles.’
He went back inside the trailer.
‘Cursory search?’ he asked a forensic officer.
‘Pills, powder, some skunk.’
Craig nodded. It was a treasure trove of illegal chemicals, and had they apprehended Bobby Bailey alive, he could have answered many questions. Maybe he’d died because he was sloppy, though this didn’t fit the execution-style homicide. Whoever did this was in and out within minutes, and there was no sign of forced entry. The officers were brushing for prints on everything, and it would take hours, the place was such a den of filthy living.
‘Sir, what do you make of this?’ an officer asked.
Craig whistled. It was an unopened bag of hypodermic needles, clearly labelled as the property of a doctor’s surgery in Moss Side, Manchester.