Chapter Eighteen

All the way back up to Bristol he had driven into worsening snow. While Keynsham had received picture-book flurries, dirty grey clouds had dumped a heavy load of it on the city, bringing visibility down to a few yards and slowing traffic to a crawl. On the car radio, McLusky listened to talk of closing more schools and to announcements of cancellations of trains and buses. Bristol Airport was closed due to fog.

When eventually he crawled up the A360 to the bottom of Rownham Hill, found a gap in the traffic and crossed over on to the grass verge, he seemed to be the last to arrive. He left the Alfa at the end of a row of police vehicles. His crutches earned him curious looks from a couple of constables but no comment.

When he rounded the corner on to the familiar cycle path, he stopped and glared with a feeling akin to hatred. Here he stood again, and the victim, surrounded by SOCOs and attended to by Dr Coulthart, lay, as far as he could make out, just where the body of Mike Oatley had been found. Cables were still being run and more arc lights set up, which was just as well. It was dark now, visibility was bad and it would have been all too easy to walk straight into the black, icy river.

Austin spotted him and came towards him, but McLusky moved forward to meet the DS halfway. He didn’t want to give the impression that he needed special treatment. Before each swing he jabbed the crutches hard into the snow to make sure they didn’t slip. ‘They really did dump her in the same place,’ he said with disgust.

‘Yes, pretty much. Right in the middle of the path this time, but otherwise, same place.’

‘Tell me it wasn’t the same damn cyclist who found her, Jane, because if it was, then I’m going to have him.’

‘No, a couple of kids, ten-year-olds, came down here to smoke.’

‘That’s a fag they won’t forget in a hurry. I suppose they trampled all over the bloody locus.’

‘They did a bit. No more than anyone would have done, though.’ It was obvious the DI was in a foul mood. ‘Is your foot playing up?’

Throbbing was the word. ‘Just a bit. Painkillers must have worn off. Hang on.’ He reached into his pocket, found the bubble pack of painkillers and pressed two pills into his hand, then another one for good measure, and popped them into his mouth. He turned the crutch upside down and with the ring of the armrest scooped up a clean-looking dollop of snow, which he stuffed in his mouth to wash down the acrid pills.

‘You really have done this before,’ Austin said, almost impressed.

‘Too right. But tell me it doesn’t feel déjà-bloody-vu to you too.’ He swung forward a pace and called to the group around the body: ‘Okay to come closer?’

One SOCO looked back. ‘Fine. Come along the corridor, gents.’

McLusky travelled along the marked-out corridor to the deposition site, where an upbeat Dr Coulthart waited for them. ‘Good afternoon, Inspector. You’re handling those crutches like Long John Silver. Injured in the line of duty, I hear. I wish you a speedy recovery.’

‘Thanks, Doc.’ He nodded at the body. ‘Not killed here, then. Enlighten me: same place, same method, same killer?’

At their feet in eight inches of snow lay the body of a woman with mid-length brown hair, now caked with dried blood. Her features were unrecognizable, a puckered mess of black and blue, swollen and in places ruptured. The body was clothed in a pink and white jumper, shortish blue skirt, opaque black tights and walking boots. The tights were torn just above the boots. Her clothes were filthy and bloody.

‘You don’t really expect an answer to that here and now, do you? There are a couple of differences, however, that might puncture that theory straight away.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘The victim is female.’

‘I’m glad you are here to point this stuff out.’

Coulthart ignored it. ‘And she was strangled. Manual strangulation marks; you can just make them out there.’ He pointed to the dark bruising on the side of her neck. ‘I’m not sure that’s what killed her yet, but there you go. That’s two differences. We might find more.’

‘By all means make our lives as difficult as you can, Doctor.’ Austin had caught some of McLusky’s gloom.

McLusky, however, appeared to lighten up. ‘No, DS Austin. We want the good doctor to tell us categorically that this can’t be the same perpetrator, because then we can simply hand it over to Trinity Road and be on our way. We couldn’t possibly be asked to work on two separate murder inquiries.’

‘But we already are. The Leigh Woods murders and now these two.’

‘Same perpetrators.’

‘We’ve no real evidence for that yet.’ He turned towards Coulthart, looking for support.

‘Don’t look at me; it’s forensics who are dragging their feet.’

‘But surely … Both Deeming and Bice were involved in drugs. There isn’t the slightest indication that Mike Oatley was. Then we have two different ways of getting rid of the bodies for starters. And both Deeming and Bice had been tied up. Not Mike Oatley.’

‘Because he was already too beaten up to run.’ McLusky stomped a crutch for emphasis. ‘One of his knees was shattered.’ He had already had this argument with Denkhaus. Same perpetrators. He’d been as stubborn as a child about it, without any real evidence to back it up. In the end, the super had relented, probably because he didn’t want it to be two separate investigations either.

‘Any sign at all that this one was tied up?’ Austin asked Coulthart.

‘Yes, there are signs that her arms were tied with tape. I think we may find that her legs were as well. She was probably gagged with tape too.’

‘Okay, I give you that,’ Austin said. ‘But it’s a different method of tying up and gagging.’

‘You’re nit-picking now,’ McLusky said.

‘At least admit there are nits to pick.’

‘Not on me. But maybe, yeah. Time of death, Doc?’

‘Oh, sometime during the night, perhaps, though that’s merely a guess at this stage,’ Coulthart said. For once the pathologist looked genuinely uncertain rather than deliberately vague. By now McLusky had learnt to tell the two states apart. ‘We’ve no way of knowing what the temperatures were like in whatever place she was before. And it’s sub-zero out here.’

‘How long do we think she’s been lying here?’

‘SOCO think about an hour before they got here, which makes it about four.’

‘What?’ McLusky looked about him as though searching for the originator of this wild theory. ‘You’re telling me they dumped her here in broad daylight? And no one saw a thing?’

‘Hardly broad daylight. It was already quite dark then. There was a heavy snowfall, heavier than now, and look …’

McLusky did. He couldn’t see far in any direction, and the opposite side of the river was completely obscured. He went rhetorical. ‘Still. Look at it. This is the nearest access point, so they probably stopped out there rather than carry the body along the path. But that road must have been hellishly busy at four. And for what? I can’t see anything special about this place. And if it isn’t special, then there’s another reason for dumping them here.’

Coulthart picked up his case. ‘I’ll leave you to your musings, gentlemen.’

McLusky watched him go, remembering the doctor’s perishable soul and briefl y wondering what soulful delights he might be travelling towards tonight. Then other matters claimed his attention. He found the senior SOCO. It was the same man who had predicted the time of deposition of Mike Oatley’s body. ‘You think she was dumped here an hour before she was found?’

‘That’s our estimate, and we don’t think we’re out much either way.’

‘No chance of footprints, I guess? Or better still, tyre marks?’

‘I think we might be lucky with both. We’ve been digging out quite a few, last time as well. The footprint compacts the snow, then snow falls on top, but its infill has a different density. We dig around it, take away the whole thing, stick it in a box and keep it sub-zero. We won’t get much of a tread pattern, but size and shape definitely. Same with tyre marks.’

‘Is that what all the digging was back there?’

‘Yes. We might get lucky. If I’m right, then I think it’s a van rather than a car.’

‘Interesting.’

‘Yes, a red one, we think.’

‘Very funny.’ SOCO humour. McLusky could do without it today.

It was after one in the morning when he got away from the site and drove home. He liked driving in the city at night: there was space and air to move about in; you could look further than the nearest car. He could hear sirens close by as he turned into Stokes Croft. Checking his mirrors, he saw two fire engines following. He pulled over and waited for the heavy diesel engines to growl past, then followed in their wake. When it looked as though they were going his way, turning into Ashley Road, he did a quick mental check of his kitchen: yes, he had turned the gas off this morning. The fire engines carried on down Ashley Road. Just out of sight around the next bend, he could see the bright glow of a fire and black smoke billowing skywards. Instead of turning off, and purely for sightseeing purposes, he drove along until he got to the site of the fire.

When he got there, he saw Constable Pym standing in the middle of the road, signalling him to stop. Flames roared behind two first-floor windows of a 1960s three-storey building. He was in time to see the well-rehearsed routine of the firefighters connecting and rolling out hoses. A small crowd had gathered on the pavement opposite, being shouted at to move further away from the engines. McLusky got out of the car. He was instantly hit by the heat of the fire, even at this distance. He could hear its dark roar too, until the noise from the pumps drowned it out. The flames soon collapsed as jets from two hoses pumped through the shattered windows on to the flames. Pym stopped another car, which then started a laborious U-turn. McLusky swung on his crutches to the constable.

Pym brightened up. ‘It’s you, sir, I didn’t recognize your car. Did they call you out for this?’

‘I was on my way home. I live round the corner.’

‘Seriously? Well I thought I was on my way home too. Then this cropped up.’

‘What is that place? It’s not residential, is it?’

‘No, it’s a local charity. A community centre sort of thing.’

‘No one in the building?’

‘There was no sign. It’s normally closed this time of night.’

McLusky nodded, prepared to turn around on his crutches. He was tired and had lost interest.

‘It could be arson, sir.’

‘Could it?’

‘Someone reported hearing a crash. Broken glass. Just before the fire broke out. And the centre’s van was torched a few days ago.’

‘Was it? Okay, Pym. Let me know what the fire officers say once they’ve been over it.’

He turned his car around and drove home. Once inside the flat, he flicked on the light and exhaled. He could see his breath in front of him. He thought he’d probably be more comfortable sleeping in the car.

‘I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure it was drugs money. He did get paid a lot, might have put it by over the years.’

James Boyce had handed himself in as McLusky had counselled. This advice had earned him another rocket from upstairs, and he had to admit to a certain amount of relief when Boyce actually turned up at Albany Road, on his own, without a solicitor. Now in Interview Room 2, Boyce was contrite and co-operative. McLusky let Austin conduct most of the interview so there could be no question of animosity.

‘Is that what you want us to believe, or is it what you wanted to believe yourself?’ Austin didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Did you see any drugs in the lockup?’

‘No. There was nothing.’

‘You didn’t find some bags of yellow or brown stuff and put them aside for a rainy day?’

‘No, I wouldn’t deal in drugs. There was nothing. I would tell you. I’m totally against drugs.’

One of the things SOCO had found and didn’t need forensics for was a note band that had once belonged to a thousand-pound bundle of twenties. ‘And you found the money how? Presumably a hundred and ten grand hadn’t just been left lying around?’ Austin asked.

McLusky spluttered as the tea he’d been sipping went down the wrong way. ‘Excuse me, back in a while,’ he said when he had composed himself. ‘You carry on.’

‘DI McLusky leaving the room,’ Austin said for the benefit of the machine recording the interview.

Once in the corridor, McLusky hurried. He had exchanged crutches for a single walking stick this morning and had also managed to fit his left foot into a shoe one size too large for him, both items bought at a charity shop in St Pauls. Using the stick and walking on his heel, he hobbled along as fast as he could manage. ‘Like a demented cripple,’ Sorbie muttered to himself as he watched the inspector limp past the CID room.

McLusky felt in too much of a hurry to wait for the lift, and propelled himself down the stairs. His haste drew an interested glance from Sergeant Hayes at the front desk as he clattered out of the door into the car park. The MiTo bleeped and unlocked itself. Only when his hand had closed around the handles of the carrier bag did his heartbeat begin to steady. He travelled back up serenely in the lift.

‘DI McLusky enters the interview room,’ Austin informed the recorder.

McLusky liberated the gift box from the carrier. He commented on it for the benefit of the recorder as he opened the box and lifted out the cake, which seemed none the worse for having bounced around on the floor of the car. The money was tightly crammed into the hollow cake. He lifted it out, counting as he went. Most of it consisted of neat bundles of twenties, with only some rolls of mixed notes on top, secured by rubber bands. ‘Happy fourteenth birthday. One hundred and ten grand, accounted for.’

Austin didn’t comment on the fact that it hadn’t arrived in an evidence bag until after the interview was wound up.

‘The money totally slipped my mind. Dead bodies have that effect on me.’

‘We have a preliminary from forensics on the garage, minute traces of heroin found in a storage box. You think Boyce is telling the truth? That he just found the money, not sold the drugs?’

‘Can you see him dealing drugs? I don’t think he’d have walked away with the money; they’d simply have taken it off him.’

‘Then it was his dad. But he walked away with the money.’

‘Yes. Donald Bice knew more than just how to drive a boat. Either he was aware of a consignment of drugs hidden somewhere and laid his hands on it after Fenton was securely inside, or it was hidden in the lockup all the time. And he was no street dealer. You know what street dealers’ cash looks like: bags of grubby notes. You saw the money. That came in one lump.’

‘And it’s about the right amount for two kilos of good-quality heroin.’

‘Exactly. But if he managed to walk away with the money, why was he killed?’

‘Good question,’ Austin admitted. ‘I’ve got one of my own, though: what makes you so sure the cycle-path bodies tie in? Especially the woman? She could turn out to be a rape or robbery victim. Beaten for her credit-card details, for instance.’

‘Did you see what she was wearing? If she’d had credit on her card, she’d have bought some decent clothes.’ McLusky saw Austin take a deep breath and held up his hands. ‘I know, it’s all pretty vague. In both cases the killer takes a lot of time over the killings and much less care over the disposal of the body.’

‘But at least the first two were buried. These were just dumped.’

‘That’s because they were killed for a different reason, Jane. Same killers, different reason.’

Austin took another deep breath, but McLusky cut him off again. ‘No point arguing about it. Listen to the oracle. When forensics dig their lazy arses out of the snow, they’ll confirm it. Anyway, we’ve a more pressing question. Who’s the second cycle-path body? Let’s try and find out before a third one lands on the mat, shall we?’