Authors: Elizabeth Corley
‘I think he’s been here and gone already, sir – look.’ Muddy water puddled on the floor and fresh footprints faced towards the door.
They both moved cautiously through the house, touching nothing, to confirm that it was empty. As soon as they had, Fenwick gave instructions.
‘I want a constable on the front door and as soon as the scene-of-crime boys have finished at the school, I want them cleaned up and over here. They’re to go through this house from roof to floor. They should treat it as if the killing took place here. He might have relaxed and got careless.
‘Next I want house-to-house enquiries in this road, neighbouring streets and all along the routes between here and the school. Concentrate on the direct route and immediate vicinity first. We’re on his heels and if we move fast we might overtake him. I want road blocks around the town at
once. Every car, every vehicle to be checked.’
‘Every bike, I should say, sir. Look at these tracks out of the kitchen and across the beds. They’re fresh.’
‘Right, every bike too. I’m going back to the school – you take control of things this end. Call me if anything turns up. I’m interested in loose ends, inconsistencies – anything that makes you even think of thinking twice.’
At the school the SOCOs were still at work in the music block, but at least the pathologist had arrived.
‘Bob – what’s the verdict?’ Fenwick poked his head around the changing-room door. The pathologist, a grizzled fifty-five-year-old veteran with a chronic ulcer and temper to match appeared to ignore him. Then words were flung back over his shoulder from an unseen mouth.
‘Too early to say. She’s obviously dead and it’s obviously not from natural causes. There is no weapon in sight and the state of the body suggests it wasn’t suicide but I can’t rule that out until we’ve done the full autopsy.’
Fenwick bore the offhandedness without comment, knowing that interested silence would work where questioning would fail.
‘She was killed within the last two hours – at least an hour ago. Died from one wound to the throat – sliced through both the carotid and jugular in a single, deliberate action that went through the full 180 degrees. My guess, and it is a guess at this stage, is that she put up a bit of a fight – ran in here to get away from him perhaps. There are contusions to face and arms, damage to her right hand. I can tell you more when I’ve examined her fully.
‘The sexual assault might have happened after death – can’t be sure until we’ve had results from forensics. There’s lots of blood on the edges of the cuts in her skirt, tights and panties which suggests that he had cut her throat and then used the same knife on her clothes.’
‘Sexual assault – are you sure?’
‘Early indications are yes. There is fluid, probably semen,
across her thighs and her stomach.’
Fenwick still waited. Bob Pendlebury straightened slowly and turned to face him for the first time. ‘I don’t like this one. I don’t like it at all. It looks messy but the death wound is precise and neat. She would have died in minutes, drowning probably before shock from loss of blood.’
‘Result of the autopsy?’
‘I’ll do the PM tonight. Full report will be twenty-four hours.’
‘Any chance of completing it sooner?’
Pendlebury looked at him with derision. ‘Come on, Fenwick, you know I do eighteen holes minimum every Friday. But, I’ll see what I can do. No promises.’
The man in charge of the scene-of-crime investigation was hovering.
‘Yes, give me the highlights.’
‘Well, she was attacked on the threshold. Despite the later trampling by the girl White, and the caretaker, we can still make out what we think are her footprints in two places. He was waiting for her probably. We haven’t finished looking out here yet but there are some footprints behind that bush over there. We’ll be analysing the shape of the prints and comparing them with those inside. And someone was sick on the threshold. We need to find out if it was the attacker.
‘She escaped the first assault and went into the building. I’d rather you didn’t go further in there straight away, sir. We’re lucky, there are still footprints all over the place in mud and blood and we’re taking detailed measurements. It looks like she tried to make it to the far door, which leads into a hall. He got to her in here and finished her off.’
‘Presumably the attacker’s likely to be heavily bloodstained?’
‘Unless he had a change of clothes, yes, sir. But I think he might have done. There’s been a clear pooling of blood in the space at the bottom of the stairs – enough for two sets of footprints to be tracked upstairs. I don’t know whose they are – one set are too small for our attacker or the woman – probably the girl’s, but we need to check.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Not at this stage, sir.’
‘Why are you so sure it’s a he?’
‘Shoe print size mainly. It could be a woman with size elevens but it’s unlikely.’
‘Or someone wearing overshoes to disguise their foot size?’
The SOCO looked disconcerted. ‘That’s a possibility yes, but they wouldn’t be very agile and this attacker was.’
‘OK, I want you to finish here and then clean up and go over to her house. I’ve a feeling he’s been there. Someone has – there’s fresh mud on the kitchen floor. Check it out
fully
, will you, and I mean fully, as if it were the scene itself. If anyone wants me, I’ll be with the girl – what’s her name again?’
Melanie was huddled by the two-bar electric fire, her hands around a mug of sweet tea which had gone cold long before. The caretaker, feeling important but at a loose end, fussed over her to the point that she wanted to scream at him to go away. A WPC was with her and indicated to Fenwick that the girl had said nothing since raising the alarm. Fenwick dispatched the caretaker to find out the headmaster’s phone number and addressed his attention to Melanie.
‘Now, Melanie, listen to me very carefully.’ He spoke in the soft low tones one uses to pacify nervous animals. ‘You have been a very good and very brave girl so far. Now you’re going to have to be brave again because I need you to tell me every little thing that happened this evening, all right?’
At the start of his sentence, her head started to rock slowly left to right in silent denial. It was the only motion in the silence of the room. Fenwick stared at her, trying to gauge her mood and how best to make her respond. She was obviously deeply shocked but she didn’t appear unhinged. He had two routes forward – gentle coaxing or firm insistence. Having started with the first he decided to continue softly.
‘Melanie, what you know is very, very important. It may not seem so to you but you might hold information that is vital to helping us catch the person that did this. You must try.’ His
words and his attempt at a familiar Sussex lilt seemed to get through to her.
‘She’s dead?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘She must’ve been lying there, dead then, whilst Ron and – whilst we … Unless,’ a look of horror crossed her face, ‘unless he chased her in there and killed her while we were upstairs. Perhaps, we could have stopped him.’
‘I don’t think it’s very likely, Melanie, but to be sure tell me what happened, step by step, and we’ll find out.’
‘From the beginning?’ She took a deep breath and put the mug to one side, tucking her hands into her armpits for comfort. ‘Ron and I were in the pub.’ She caught herself up short, remembering suddenly that he was a policeman and she was under age, the minor infringement momentarily forgotten in the immensity of the crime.
‘It doesn’t matter. I won’t tell. I’ve got bigger worries than you drinking at your age. Go on.’
‘It’s embarrassing. Can’t I just get to the bit where I find her?’ Fenwick shook his head, adamant.
‘Ron was cross with me. Well, with the weather really. We’ve not been going out together long and …well … he, he …’ Fenwick refused to help her out, ‘he gets excited, you see, and with the rain we can’t go down Pixts Lane like normal.’
‘Pixts Lane?’
‘The local lovers’ lane, sir,’ the WPC chipped in.
‘I see, so you thought of the school rooms, did you?’
‘The old assembly rooms yes. I’d left a window open, you see – today, just in case, though I went off the idea in the pub – but Ron was insistent, he kept on at me.’
For the next half-hour, Fenwick went over her story until he was as sure as possible he had the times and details correct. Despite several attempts Melanie refused to give her address and phone number to allow her parents to be called and Fenwick was becoming concerned on their behalf.
‘So let’s be sure I’m straight. You were in the pub from about twenty past five to past six with Ron Jarvis. You left on his bike
and drove straight to the school. You didn’t see anyone or anything on the way here or in the grounds? You and Ron found the window closed but the door open. You went in, straight upstairs. Were up there for about ten, fifteen minutes or so and then came down. Ron must have noticed the body, was sick and ran off. You don’t think he went into the room but you can’t be sure. You went in a few paces and found the body. Then you came straight here and called the police.’
Melanie nodded.
‘You did the right thing, Melanie and you’ve been very brave. I’m going to ask the constable to get you home now. If you remember anything more, anything at all, call me at the station. Here’s my number. What you think of might seem trivial to you but it could be important.’
‘It’s the smell I’m going to remember.’
‘The smell?’
‘Yes, of the blood, and … everything else, sweet and sickly. I’ll never get it out of my head.’
‘You will eventually, you know. However horrible, these things do fade with time.’ But as he watched the small, retreating figure, shuffle away through the rain he doubted she would ever completely forget. Tragedy in childhood could leave abiding wounds and warp the spirit. He hoped her natural courage would be enough to see her through.
By 11.30 that evening Fenwick and Cooper had returned from the post-mortem leaving the pathologist and his assistant to finish off and close up. Pendlebury’s examination had simply confirmed his assessment at the scene. Forensic reports would not arrive until late the following day at the earliest. The cork board in Fenwick’s old office was starting to accumulate the usual souvenirs of a serious crime. An 8 × 12 inch black-and-white portrait photograph was pinned top left, donated from personnel files by an appalled school secretary.
Underneath, a street map was highlighted in red pen to show the route from the school to Katherine Johnstone’s home, with a green track from the White Lion pub to the school gates. The
two lines overlapped along the whole length of London Road, running almost due south from the school to the pub, where it terminated in a T-junction with Elm Drive. At this point the red line turned east and continued alone.
To the right of the map was tacked an A1 flip chart page on which were written tentative timetables and a series of connections.
The middle and right of the board were still blank, awaiting SOCO photographs. An incident room had been set up at the school but for the time being Fenwick was happier using his old office at Division. It was always his bolt hole at the end of the day; he thought better away from the din of the investigating team.
Cooper sat dejectedly on the bone-aching visitor’s chair while Fenwick paced back and forth in front of the pinboard.
‘Right, let’s go over this once more.’
The sergeant sighed.
‘At 17.20 Katherine Johnstone was last seen alive by Steve Right, a member of the choir. We can be pretty certain of the time, he was just home in time to miss his favourite children’s programme and was upset. His mother has confirmed this and we know the fastest time he could make it home.
‘The murderer might have attacked at any time after that.
But
, let’s suppose he didn’t and that he waited for her to leave the building – there’s enough initial evidence to support this.
‘The caretaker told us Johnstone was always careful to lock up – and the headmaster tells us she was a diligent woman. So how long does it take her? Five minutes, no more than ten, to check everything, get dressed for the weather and leave. That means she was outside about half five, perhaps a little earlier.
‘It would have been over quickly – he probably took more time defiling her than killing her, even with her struggle. Now it’s 17.40 plus. He gets changed – we think – and leaves. You realise, of course, if he
did
change it was premeditated, despite how it looks. It’s essential that we establish whether he did or not.’
‘How are we going to do that?’
‘I’m not sure, but the SOCO report on her house will help. If we find none of her blood there, he must have changed – he didn’t have time to wash thoroughly.’
‘Unless he had an accomplice, of course.’ Fenwick acknowledged his sergeant’s observation thoughtfully, then moved on.
‘Where was I? Melanie White and boyfriend, Ron Jarvis, leave the pub after six – we don’t know when exactly but the landlord’s fairly sure they were gone quickly. We haven’t found Jarvis yet? It’s vital we do – is there someone trying to track him down still?’ Cooper nodded.
‘Then later, as we went to Hedgefield, there’s a possibility – remote – that we passed him as he got away. His route’s pretty clear – we need a sighting. First thing in the morning I want to complete the house-to-house along the whole route.’
‘It was pouring with rain, sir. It’s unlikely there were many people about – or looking out.’
Fenwick carried on, oblivious: ‘And it’s a bus route – have checks on the stops at the same time tomorrow. Now, take me over again what was found at her house.’
‘It looks as if our murderer was there – or at least there are definite signs of a search by someone who didn’t have to force an entry. It looks like the intruder was searching for something specific. Downstairs it’s all very orderly but upstairs it’s a mess. He either lost patience—’
‘He or she, Cooper, not just he, not yet.’
Cooper was tempted to ask from which part of their anatomy women secreted semen but resisted. Sarcasm at this time of night was a certain loser.