Read The Secrets of the Shadows (The Annie Graham series - Book 2) Online
Authors: Helen Phifer
‘If you don’t mind I’d rather walk down with you, I need some fresh air.’
They left the house and walked briskly down to the police station. John perched on the dry stone wall which bordered the car park. ‘I’ll wait here.’
Annie went inside and heard Cathy’s voice coming from her office; she knocked on the door and walked in.
‘Ten o’clock and if you’re a minute late I will know because I have an officer stationed at the bottom of our street just to keep an eye on you.’ She ended the call. ‘What’s up?’
Annie launched into a condensed version of the last ten minutes.
‘Shit, really – the priest’s nephew? Bloody hell that’s one for the books. Take the panda, no-one needs it tonight so it won’t matter if you don’t bring it back until tomorrow. You’ll just have to park it outside your house when you finish, oh and Annie you be careful.’
Annie nodded and ran into the office to get the keys off the hook. She felt terrible for John and that lovely lunch was now sitting in the pit of her stomach feeling like a lead weight. She went back outside, his face was grey and she hoped that he wasn’t about to keel over. She got into the car and he followed, no sirens because it wasn’t technically an immediate response but she did put the blue lights on to get through the busy traffic.
For once luck was on Will’s side, Task Force, the armed response unit were actually in Ulverston which was only eight miles away and they would be armed and here for the briefing in fifteen minutes. The DI was running the briefing and Will was glad that he was here to take over; it had been a long few days. He wasn’t too happy about Annie bringing the priest but the man deserved to know if his nephew was involved and it was his home they were going to be storming into with rifles, tear gas and tasers. He just hoped that none of them were needed and the man would come in without any hassle, they didn’t know if he was the killer or not but he was the closest thing to a lead they had and they weren’t taking any chances. Will walked into the large briefing room on the first floor which was almost full and would be once the armed officers arrived, the thunder of footsteps coming up the stairs signalled their arrival and he began to feel better than he had in days. They came into the room dressed from head to toe in black and looked a formidable sight. They all wore black baseball caps, black jumpsuits and black body armour, they lined up along the back wall ready for their orders. Will nodded at them and got a collective nod back, this was serious and everyone knew that, there was no laughing and joking like at any other briefing, everyone was eager to get on with it.
Thirty minutes later they took their positions surrounding the presbytery; Will had walked the perimeter of the church and house, uncomfortable in his stab vest under his shirt and suit jacket. There was no sign of life from the house, two of the men in black had practically given one old woman an instant heart attack as she had come out of the church with a bunch of wilted flowers. They had escorted her away from the area and placed her in the back of a marked police car until it was over. Officers had closed the road at either end to stop traffic and members of the public strolling down and getting caught up in anything. The atmosphere was tense. Will walked back and gave the all clear over the radio. The entry team moved in, the heavy red battering ram held securely between them. Four loud bangs and the wooden door splintered, giving way, and then they were in. The first officer inside gagged on the smell it was so bad. One of them waved Will over and lifted up his mask. Will jogged over towards the door and felt his stomach lurch, someone or something was dead in there and it stank. He lifted his hand to his nose and nodded his head. Stepping back he waited until the entry team did a sweep of the building. He wasn’t sure what to expect but he knew it was going to be bad, maybe the killer had topped himself and would save them the trouble of putting him before the courts. The three officers who had gone in came back downstairs and removed their hats. The sergeant spoke, ‘There’s a dead male in the upstairs bedroom. Looks like he’s been there a few days, decomposition is quite advanced. Probably due to the fact that someone turned the heating up full in the room. It really stinks in there Will but from first impressions it looks like he’s your guy.’
‘Bollocks, thanks guys. We’ll take it from here.’
Will turned to the DI who had been talking on his phone the whole time giving a running commentary to the control room inspector. ‘It’s time to get suited and booted sir.’
A car drove into the street, blue lights flashing. Annie’s familiar figure got out of the driver’s side and a grey-haired man got out of the passenger side.
Double bollocks
. He was glad to see Annie but not so glad to see the priest. He watched as she turned to the man and must have told him to stay put because he ran his fingers through his hair, then shrugged and leant against the bonnet of the car.
Annie walked towards Will, ‘Anything?’
‘Dead man in the upstairs bedroom, I haven’t been up there yet but Task Force said he looks like our guy. We can’t let him in.’ His head nodded in the direction of the priest.
‘Really? Bloody hell I suppose that would explain why no-one has seen him since that night. Okay I’ll keep John out of the way but he’s not daft, what do I tell him?’
‘You’re going to have to tell him that we’ve found a body but we don’t know any more than that at this moment in time. His house is now a crime scene and it will some hours, possibly days before he’ll be allowed access to it. Is there anywhere you can take him? You know how long this is going to take; he could be here until tomorrow.’
Annie shrugged; she’d never had to babysit a priest before. ‘Can he not go inside the church, or is that a crime scene as well?’
‘Not as far as I know, I want him near in case he has something to do with it but not too near that he’s going to get in the way. I’ll get Scott and Ian to give inside the church the once over and then you can both go and wait in there. Thanks Annie, I appreciate everything that you’ve done today.’
Will turned and walked across to where the team of armed officers were huddled, for the time being they had been stood down and were in the process of putting their weapons back inside the armed response vehicle.
Two of them headed in Annie’s direction. ‘It stinks in there; it’s going to take more than some fabric freshener to make that house smell as fresh as a daisy again.’
‘Is it that bad? This is turning into a living nightmare when bodies are turning up in churchyards and presbyteries. It’s just not right.’
Both of them nodded in agreement with her and all three of them walked towards the church. It was open thanks to the flower-arranging old lady who couldn’t have noticed anything amiss or she wouldn’t be alive and breathing. But it was better to be safe than sorry. Annie waited at the church door while the two officers went inside and checked the building, five minutes later they came out.
‘All clear, maybe you should let that old woman out of that car and send her on her way, she’s been in it since we came.’
Annie looked across at the car and the woman who was staring earnestly at John.
Shit, two for the price of one
. She walked over and opened the car door. ‘Would you like to come back inside the church, it’s a bit warm to be cooped up in here.’
The woman nodded and got out of the car, making a beeline for John. Annie saw him grimace and she followed her over. ‘Actually if you give me a quick statement you can get off home now and if we need anything someone will be in touch.’ Annie had interrupted the woman’s interrogation and John threw her a look of thanks.
‘Oh are you sure, do you not want me to wait here with Father John, it’s no trouble, we can have a nice catch up.’
‘No it’s okay thank you, this is a crime scene and we need to keep it closed for some time, probably hours, so you will be better off going home.’
The woman told Annie what she knew which amounted to nothing and Annie wrote it all down. Then she escorted her to the end of the street. ‘Thank you.’ Annie watched her walk away, her head in the air and obviously put out that she had just been told to go home. Heading back to the church and John she felt sorry for him, he looked defeated and grief stricken.
‘Thank you Annie, I fear an interrogation from Hilary more than I fear God himself. Are you going to tell me what’s happening? Or do I have to wait?’
‘I’m sorry John but we don’t know an awful lot ourselves at the moment. All I can tell you is they have found a man’s body in the upstairs bedroom.’
His hand flew to his mouth and he shrank before her very eyes. ‘Do they know who he is, is it Ryan?’
‘They can’t say at the moment, the search team went in and only took a cursory look around. I’m sorry John but this is going to take a while for them to process, but as soon as they do know something they will come and talk to you. Is there anywhere you want to go, should I drive you back to Windermere?’
‘No thank you Annie, if there is a dead man inside my home and the only other person to live there is my nephew who no-one has spoken to for three days then I think it’s pretty clear who the dead man is.’
‘It does look that way but you never know, there’s a slim chance it could be someone different.’
Annie spotted the photographer from the local paper across the road and took hold of John’s elbow. ‘Come on; let’s get you inside the church away from prying eyes.’ It was thirty seconds too late though, the photographer had already taken a picture of the harrowed-looking priest, head bent in deep conversation with Annie. The picture would make the front page of the local paper tonight and the nationals the next day with the headlines ‘God’s House of Death’ in bold, black print.
Detective Inspector Dave Martin led the way up the steps to the house, closely followed by Will, both of them rustling loudly as they walked in matching white crime scene suits, face masks, boot covers, hoods pulled up and latex gloves. Will thought he was going to pass out he was so hot. As they stepped through the door to the house Will heard his boss dry heave into his face mask. Will did his best not to inhale but the smell was terrible and it filled the whole house. He wasn’t looking forward to meeting Ryan Trelmain if it was him. They went up the stairs, staying close to the wall, Will mirroring Dave’s footsteps so as not to trample everything. The less disturbance the more chance the CSI would find some evidence. He forgot and inhaled which made his eyes water. They went into the bedroom with the door open, Scott had told him all the bedroom doors had been closed and they had checked each room, shutting the doors as they left until they found the one with the body, which they had left ajar so they knew which one to go in. The room was stifling; Will looked at the radiator, it was turned up as high as it would go. He didn’t want to touch the dial in case there were fingerprints on it but he needed to locate the main central heating control and turn it off. The heat was unbearable, combined with the smell and the heat from outside, for the first time ever Will worried he might pass out and that was before he looked at the body in the bed. Steeling himself he looked over to the double bed. One side of the cover was thrown back over the body and he thought about Laura, it would have been the last place she slept. He surveyed the room taking his time; there was an almost empty bottle of water on the floor. At the foot of the bed were a crumpled pair of jeans and the white tee shirt that the man she left with had been wearing. Will felt uncomfortable, like a voyeur, he was seeing things about other people’s lives that he had no right to see.
Dave turned to him, ‘Shit for sugar, it looks like we’ve found our man and it looks like he was killed the same night as Laura judging by the state of decomp.’
Will stepped closer to the bed to take a close look at the man he’d spent the last three days searching for: the duvet covered his bottom half but his boss had lifted the top part back, exposing his chest. Due to the heat in the room and the temperature outside it had sped things up a lot, the chest and lower abdomen had inflated with gas and were tinged green with marbling all over. His eyes, which were open, were covered with a milky film and one eye was covered with bluebottle larvae as were his nose and mouth. Will looked at the huge butcher’s knife which was protruding from his chest, a trickle of blood had run down from the wound, not as much as he would have expected but the knife was buried to the hilt and the blood could be underneath his body or it could have bled internally, whatever it was Matt would be able to confirm at the post mortem. Will was surprised the killer had resorted to more extreme violence but the man on the bed was big, with lots of muscles. So he’d gone for a swift kill, what did this tell Will? That he had killed this way so there was less chance of a fight. Maybe he wasn’t scared of blood but just preferred not to kill that way. The heat and the putrid smell got too much and Will pointed towards the door. Dave nodded and this time it was Will who left first. When he finally made it out into the fresh air he ripped off his face mask, struggling for breath. He began to take deep breaths not caring who was watching because right now he was very close to losing it for the first time in eight years. A hand on his shoulder squeezed hard and he turned to look at his boss who once he’d pulled his mask down looked as green as Will felt. Matt arrived and Will nodded at him, ‘It’s bad.’
‘I’ll go in and do the preliminaries, and then you can get it processed.’
‘I’ll come back in with you.’ He snapped his mask back over his nose and followed him. He would be quite happy to never have to set foot in this house ever again but he felt responsible. He knew that Laura had been flirting in front of him to try and make him jealous and he’d stuck his head in his pint of lager, letting her leave with a total stranger, and now they were both dead.
***
Sean was off work but he had heard on the radio that the police had sealed off St Mary’s Road, the church and the presbytery because a body had been found inside. His normally calm exterior didn’t look so calm today, his stomach was rolling and he felt as if he was on a boat that was sailing across the choppiest of seas. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and had a dark stubble on his face, he had to keep reminding himself that he needed to keep it together, it was okay. They would take hours to process the scene, he had worn gloves the whole time so he hadn’t left any prints but still something was niggling away at him. He was pacing up and down his living room and needed to do something but he had no idea what, he might go and sit outside the hairdressers for a while and watch his next girl to keep his mind busy. He wanted to check out the next church but he didn’t know how good Will was, had he figured out that it was all the priest’s fault. If he had then he would more than likely have plain clothes officers watching the other two churches the priest sometimes worked from. He couldn’t risk it in daylight, it would be much better to go when it was dark.