The atmosphere was electric. Every officer was trying to treat the crime scene like any other, and all of them – including the forensic team – were failing.
Anna had been that rare officer, a woman universally liked by her male as well as female colleagues.
‘There’s nothing either of us can do here, Peter,’ Trevor said. ‘Why don’t we let the forensic boys get on with what they have to do? We’ll find out more when they put their report in.’
If Peter heard him he made no sign of it.
Patrick walked out of the back door. The police photographer followed and headed down the garden.
A series of flashes illuminated the wooden fence and concrete posts and lightened the gloom of the grey, overcast morning. Patrick removed his gloves and handed them to his assistant who was moving back the screens that had been erected around the door.
‘I know about the semen stains, but I won’t be drawn on a possible rape until I’ve done a full PM
on her in the mortuary.’
‘Her! She had a name,’ Peter shouted.
‘Everyone’s doing all they can,’ Trevor laid a sympathetic hand on Peter’s shoulder. Dan walked around from the back garden on to the paving in front of the house. His enormous figure was covered by a flimsy, flapping paper overall, his hands and feet were swathed in plastic gloves and overshoes. A paper hat, similar to the token headgear worn by catering workers, covered what was left of his hair.
He looked ridiculous, but no one smiled.
‘There’s a trail of bloody footprints leading out of the back door and up the garden,’ Dan joined Bill, Trevor and Peter. ‘We found bloodstained shears on the back lawn. Forensic has bagged them.
It’s possible he dropped them before climbing over the fence and into the woods. ‘I’ve sent for the dogs.’
‘You think he’s still there?’ Bill asked.
‘If he is, the dogs will find him. He won’t be able to go far without being noticed. Judging by the prints he’s left, he’s soaked in blood.’ Dan looked at Peter. ‘Why don’t you go back to the station?’ he suggested. ‘You could co-ordinate the search for Weaver. The sooner we find him…’
Peter’s hand trembled as he gripped a cigar in his top pocket. ‘Anna wasn’t just a colleague. She meant something to me. Do you understand what I’m saying?’ His voice rose as he crushed the cigar to dust. ‘I cared for her. I’ve more right to be here than the rest of you.’
‘No matter how close you were, if you were Joe public, you wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near this house right now. You know that. Dan’s right. We need to pick up Weaver. Before he kills someone else.’ Trevor opened his car door. ‘Let’s go and co-ordinate that search.’
Peter turned on Trevor. ‘You can sit on your arse in the bloody station if you want to. I’m not Joe public to be fobbed off with platitudes and parked in a waiting room. I’m a copper. And I’m going to do what coppers are trained to do. I’m going out with those dogs and I’m going to catch that bastard and…’
‘Peter, you’re not helping us, Anna, or doing yourself any favours,’ Bill interrupted testily.
Peter turned his back on them. Placing his hands on the bonnet of the car he stared at his distorted reflection in the paintwork. ‘I want to see her.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Dan broke in.
‘Wait until we get her back to the mortuary,’
Bill said.
‘So Patrick can clean her up, and lay her out all peaceful and smiling? No! I want to see her the way she is. I want to see – and remember.’
‘Shouldn’t you telephone her family?’ Trevor interrupted, in the hope of distracting Peter.
‘Who? Her sister in Canada? Her brother in South Africa?’
‘We’ll go back to my place, you can use my phone,’ Trevor offered, deliberately ignoring Peter’s sarcasm.
‘I want to see her again, and I want to see her now! Exactly as she is.’
Dan nodded to Patrick. The pathologist returned to the house. Trevor accompanied Peter. Anna’s house was a hive of activity. Paper-suited and masked figures were crawling over every inch of the living room, but their activity stopped short several feet away from the broken figure that lay on the floor between the table and the door.
‘I wouldn’t, if I were you,’ Patrick laid a restraining hand on Peter’s arm.
‘I want to see what he did to her, so I can remind the bastard when I catch up with him.’ Peter stepped through the doorway.
‘No further. Not without overalls.’ Patrick blocked Peter’s path. Trevor took just one look before retreating. Anna’s face was unrecognisable –
hardly human. He closed his eyes but the image intruded. Jagged strips of skin lying over deep, blood-soaked gouges running horizontally from forehead to chin. One ear, severed, marooned in a sticky pool of blood at the side of the head, the carving knife embedded in the face; its blade buried in the socket where her eye had been.
Peter stumbled. He would have fallen on Anna’s body if Patrick hadn’t held him upright.
‘Take him away,’ Patrick ordered Trevor.
Everything was red. The grass around him. The damp turf he lay on. Even the mist that covered his eyes and clung to his lashes. All steeped in blood.
He inadvertently smeared it over everything he touched. It was sticky, wet. He screwed his eyes shut and shuddered, saw again the great gaping wounds. Relived her screams –
He had to find water. Running water where he could scrub away the gore. But he knew he would never feel clean again. He’d crawled through the fringes of undergrowth bordering the woodlands behind Anna’s house. He’d kept on crawling, through the darkness, through the false dawn and the real one. He had no idea of the time. It was day because it was light but it could be morning or afternoon. The atmosphere was misty, grey – dawn or dusk?
Every rustle in the undergrowth sent his pulse-rate soaring. Every animal screech sent his hands protectively to his head. The mist that concealed him was pregnant with unknown danger. God alone knew what evils lurked within the distant shadows.
He had to keep running. But he couldn’t venture into town looking the way he did. And he hurt – all over. He tried to lift his right arm, but it wouldn’t move. He looked down to see it hanging uselessly at his side. His shirt dripped blood. Hers –or his. He could see a lump where the bone had snapped above the elbow. The pain was excruciating. He bit at the torn sleeve, tearing the cloth further with his teeth. Freeing a strip, he tried to bind the arm to his chest, but the cloth was slippery… he fell into darkness.
He couldn’t lose his grip. Not now. He had to find water and another washing line of men’s clothes that he could steal. And afterwards?
Back to the streets, to running, hiding – staying one step ahead. Until Anna’s murderer or the police caught up with him. For the first time he hoped it would be the police. At least then he might have a chance of living. But maybe not if they saw him the way he looked now. Not if they thought that he had killed one of their own.
Trevor drove Peter to his own house. He couldn’t bear the thought of facing the sympathy of their colleagues at the station and he was afraid what condolences might do to Peter in his fragile state.
They both needed a drink and a pub would be too public. He poured out a couple of stiff brandies.
Leaving Peter alone in the living room he went into the kitchen, phoned through to the station, spoke to Sarah Merchant and told her where they could be found. Cutting her short, he hung up and joined Peter.
Peter finished his brandy in a single swallow.
‘We should be out there looking.’
‘With what the super put out on the streets this morning, our absence isn’t going to make any difference.’ Trevor knew Peter wasn’t thinking straight. Soon, very soon, either Bill or Dan would take him off the case. Standard procedure with any officer who was emotionally involved with a victim, especially a murder victim.
‘I can’t just sit here and get plastered,’ Peter tossed back the second brandy Trevor poured for him.
Trevor didn’t answer; he simply refilled both their glasses, sat and prepared to listen.
Sarah Merchant was still inputting information on the computer when Dan Evans and Bill Mulcahy returned to the office. She took one look at their faces and went out to get coffee.
‘If there is anything I can do to help, sir, I’d be glad to do it,’ she said when she returned with a loaded tray. ‘And if it’s a question of unpaid overtime, I don’t mind.’
‘You could attend the case conference this evening at eight o’clock,’ Bill answered. ‘We should have some results in from Patrick and the forensic teams by then that might be useful for cross-referencing.’
‘Come up with anything on the computer as yet?’ Dan asked.
‘I’m still inputting information, sir, but Sergeant Bradley and I went through it all yesterday.
Neither of us could find a close contact of Adam Weaver’s that we haven’t already checked out.’
‘Well, we know where he was last night…’
‘Early hours of this morning,’ Bill said as they entered Dan’s inner office. ‘Didn’t you see Anna’s watch? The glass was smashed. The hands stopped at five o’clock. He picked the lock on the back door…’
‘Forensic team did say they weren’t too sure about that.’
‘It was open, wasn’t it?’ Bill demanded. ‘Isn’t that enough evidence? The rest of the house was sealed tighter than a drum.’
‘It looks like he might have come in that way.’
Dan trod carefully, his own emotions in turmoil.
‘Weaver broke in, made a noise, she came downstairs to check, and he attacked.’
‘Let’s wait until we talk to Patrick and the forensic boys. This is one investigation I don’t want to predict.’
‘And one post-mortem I never thought I’d have to witness.’ Bill slammed his fist into the desk.
‘Do you want me to do that?’ Dan asked. ‘She was my sergeant.’
‘You sure you can cope?’
‘I’ll ring Patrick and ask what time he’s doing it.’
‘I’ll co-ordinate the search for Weaver. If you’ve time before the PM I’d appreciate you taking Peter officially off the case.’
‘Completely?’
‘I don’t want him any closer than Sarah Merchant’s computer. And that’s an order.’
Head down against the wind, Adam Weaver jogged along the narrow street of terrace houses. The black track suit he’d pulled off a line was damp. It clung to his limbs. And he was still blue and shivering after his icy plunge into a foul, farm-polluted stream.
He’d left the woods and found himself closer to the centre of town than he’d thought. He knew the area and the short-cuts it offered, including the alley that led down to the bottom end of High Street – the decaying end. There was a floor-level window that opened into the men’s toilets in the old cinema.
He’d watched the police check out the cinema building two nights ago from the safety of a skip.
He’d seen workmen board it up after it had been searched, and later he’d watched a couple of homeless kids prise a board off with claw-hammers, hinging it so it would stand a quick glance. Just like the one that had given them access into the old factory. A squat was risky. But he had to get off the streets, and he had nowhere else to go.
His blood ran even colder as a police car drove slowly alongside him. The window whirred softly downwards. A uniformed man hailed him.
‘We’d appreciate your assistance, sir.’
He had no choice. He stopped running, placed his hands on his knees, and kept his head down low as though he were out of breath.
‘Have you seen this man?’ The officer flashed a photograph of Tony taken from the video.
He took it from the officer’s hands and held it for a few seconds before shaking his head.
‘I’ve not seen him,’ he lilted in a credible Irish accent. It always had been one of his best.
‘If you do…’
‘I’ve seen the posters with the telephone number. I’ll get in touch.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
The car sped past and Adam began to breathe again. A few more yards. There was a room at the back of the cinema few knew about. He’d kipped there for a couple of nights last winter before the owners had cleared the place out the first time. It had been the projection booth. It might have been his imagination, but it seemed warmer than the rat-infested auditorium. And what he craved most at that moment was warmth. Dry warmth and a deep sleep that would enable him to forget what the murdering bastard had done to Anna.
‘We were going to see Blanche Davies.’ Despite the brandies he’d swallowed, Peter appeared stone-cold sober.
‘We’ve both been drinking,’ Trevor dipped into his third brandy.
‘I’ll drive if you’re drunk.’
‘Peter, it can wait.’
‘No, it damn well can’t.’ Peter was out of his chair before Trevor had time to put down his glass.
Cursing, Trevor followed him to the front door.
Peter had picked up his keys and was turning over the engine of his car. Trevor slammed the door shut, flicked up the collar of his jacket as protection against the onset of rain and climbed into the passenger seat.
Blanche Davies’ house was warm and fragrant with the cooking odours associated with a traditional English Sunday lunch. The smell coming so soon after the sight of Anna’s hacked body and a surfeit of brandy made Trevor’s stomach heave and his head swim.
Blanche opened the door. ‘Sergeant Joseph.’
‘And Sergeant Peter Collins.’ Peter showed her his identity card.
‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘May we come in for a few minutes?’ Trevor asked.
Blanche opened the door and led them into the living room which was more cluttered than the last time Trevor had seen it. The supplements of one of the up-market Sunday papers were scattered over the floor, the children’s comic section uppermost.
‘Hannah?’ Blanche interrupted her niece’s reading.
‘Would you please check the meat and potatoes for me?’
The child looked at Trevor and Peter before leaving the room. Blanche closed the door behind her. ‘How can I help you?’ she asked Trevor.
‘I’m afraid we have some bad news for you, Miss Davies,’ Trevor broke in, taking the responsibility away from Peter.