Tent over the sundial
NOT THE BEST time of year for this. Bliss, still in his coverall, was hunched under a trellis supporting roses, a couple still in flower. His beanie was pulled down over his ears and the phone. The rest of him was freezing. He was thinking it was about time some bugger invented a thermal Durex suit.
He looked back at the square stone house.
‘Car in the drive. Keys found on the edge of the lawn, car keys and house keys on the same ring.’
‘So we’re looking at a disturbed burglary?’ Annie said, from the warmth of Gaol Street.
‘What it looks like to me, but early days, obviously. Norra difficult house to burgle – they may’ve tried to get into another not too far away but buggered off when the alarm went off. In this case, no alarm. Pane of glass at the back smashed for entry, then they just open the front door. And they’re still here when the occupant gets home.’
‘Why didn’t they just leg it?’
‘A question I’ve asked meself, Annie.’
You’d think they might’ve heard the car pulling in and buggered off the back way, but so many of them nowadays weren’t like that. Being disturbed, that was an irritation, an injustice. Well hacked off at not being allowed to get on with their job, and if you insisted on getting in the way, it was your own friggin’ fault for being a property owner. That was the way in the cities, all too often. That sense of entitlement. But out here?
Bliss peered through a hole in the trellis at lumpy countryside of small hills and woodland. The sky was unfriendly, clouds like the old, greying knots of wool you found on the barbed wire around a field of sheep. And such a lovely clear sky last night, if cold as hell.
‘I think I should come out,’ Annie said. ‘In fact, I think I should tentatively take this one off your hands. Before it’s taken off both of us.’
He was in no position to argue. Should’ve been on his way to Hewell by now, with Vaynor. Been driving into the city through mean, sleety rain when Terry Stagg had come through on the mobile, telling him Karen Dowell and a posse were already there, and he’d turned the car round immediately, headed south-west.
Karen was coming out of the cottage, from the back entrance. Carefully. Unzipping her suit when she reached the end of the path, raising a hand to Bliss, leaving it raised to convey she needed to talk. The small front lawn had been taped off. There was a tent over the sundial.
‘Country cottages?’ Bliss said. ‘Hardly worth it, surely? Some of them around here are just holiday homes. Nothing of value inside. Not much to be had at all apart from marginally antique furniture, for which you’d need a bloody big van, and where do you put a big van on a lane this narrow?’
‘You can’t give antiques away any more. What’s it look like?’
‘A full-time home, but quite modest. A working home. Old computer and a lorra bookshelves. Cupboards and drawers ripped open, dresser pulled over. Routine ransacking.’
‘Let’s not waste time,’ Annie said. ‘We need to swamp that area. I’ll chuck it upstairs, though local knowledge is going to be paramount. We need to involve the village from the off. I’ll get an incident room organized. Shit, Francis, we don’t need this right now.’
‘We don’t need this ever,’ Bliss said.
Having seen the victim. The face in ruins from being smashed repeatedly into a concrete sundial. The face framed by bloodied white hair, above the reddened dog collar.
‘This is how it looks,’ Karen said. ‘The car’s in the drive, locked – OK? So she’s come home, locked the car and she’s walking to the house. Not realizing she’s left her sidelights on – which is how she was found. Still on just before dawn when this fitness freak from the village comes jogging past—’
‘Where’s he now?’
‘Probably in counselling. We can get him back anytime. So… he sees the car lights just about still on, wonders if he should wake her up before the battery goes flat. Finds the front door slightly ajar.’
‘Which also explains the patch of vomit outside the gate?’
‘It does.’
‘So, to go back to last night, or whenever she’s walking to the house…’
‘Has the keys in her hand. Drops them when she’s hit? Could be she saw some movement inside, and she’s backing off, as anyone would, and that’s when she’s attacked. And it doesn’t stop. I mean, this isn’t just to disable her so someone can get away, this is someone who really doesn’t care.’
‘Yeh.’
Karen led him to the low hedge separating the short drive from the lawn. Pointed at the tent over the sundial.
‘Concrete, hexagonal, sharp corners. But it looks like she was hit with something first. We’re thinking the spade. No blood on that. She goes down. Someone picks her up by the hair and starts slamming her head and face into the sundial. You saw the left eye.’
‘Yeh.’
Where the left eye had been.
‘That thing that used to stick out of the middle, to throw a shadow. Can’t remember what it’s called.’
‘Something like gnome,’ Bliss said. ‘That did her eye?’
‘All this to be confirmed by Slim Fiddler and Dr Grace, but it was probably broken off in the process. Also a crack in the concrete table-thing. That shows you the sheer force. And then they dragged the body back into the house, shut the door on her.’
‘Like you say, they wanted closure. Place like this, they could’ve got away easy. So it could be she saw one of them. If there were lights on in the house.’
‘Somebody she knew?’
‘I was about to say that. They get around, these vicars, multiple parishes. Somebody’s son? What about the neighbour who reported the attempted break-in? That match up?’
‘Dunno about a neighbour, boss, it’s nearly half a mile away. But, yeah, broken window in the front door, inside a porch.’
‘When?’
‘Last night. Alarm went out at eleven-fifteen. Occupants were on their way back from the Temple Bar – pub in the village – but saw nothing. Uniform called in on them last night, wasn’t much they could do.’
‘Didn’t check if the neighbours saw anything?’
‘They checked with the nearest neighbours but they’re on the other side, nearer the village. You can’t even see this place from there even in the daytime. Anyway, we’re down there now, looking at it again.’
‘So they just move on to the next house, and Mrs Duxbury gets in the way?’
‘Too coincidental to ignore.’
‘Yeh.’ Bliss turned away from the garden. ‘So where did they come from? Down from the Midlands, up from Newport?’
‘Not if she recognized one, boss.’
They’d closed the road at both ends, only two other homes affected by this, and the folks there were probably used to disturbance – the SAS base at Pontrilas was only a few fields away, lot of helicopter traffic. This was the Sass’s less public base, where they set up siege-and-rescue situations, where elite soldiers came to learn how to dispose of people with minimum fuss. No access to it from this lane.
‘May not be my problem for much longer,’ Bliss said. ‘Ma’am may be taking over. Calls for rank, this one.’
Karen was nodding.
‘A priest? If her head had been cut off, you wouldn’t be able to move for anti-terrorist guys.’
‘And they’d throw open the gates at the SAS,’ Bliss said.
The friggin’ sleet was coming back, along with the old numbness over his left eye, residue of a beating in a cellar under the Plascarreg. It wasn’t even ten a.m., and they hadn’t brought the body out yet.
Karen patted him, with affection, on the arm.
‘I know exactly how you must be feeling, boss. Really, really want these bastards for yourself, and you’re stuck with Jag.’