Hell Hath No Fury (19 page)

She felt a tightening in her throat. The moment they saw the bulky black bin bag they'd be suspicious. And once they looked inside it that would be the end!

She drove faster anxious to put as many miles as possible between herself and Benbury before the police started to take action.

Her nerves felt raw. Her left eye was twitching so fast that she had to keep putting her hand over it. She'd planned Dennis Jackson's murder with such care and precision that she refused to believe it was all going to go wrong. She'd felt such elation when she'd turned into the driveway of the Willows and seen the dark-green Mercedes pulled up in front of the house, and known that Dennis Jackson was already there waiting for her.

She shook her head, like a dog coming out of the river, trying to clear the kaleidoscope of memories. The important thing now, she told herself, was to concentrate on the present. She must decide where she was going, and how she was going to dispose of the black plastic bag of incriminating evidence that was in the boot of her car before she was stopped by the police and interrogated.

‘C
alm down, Miss Lowe. If we are to catch the person who carried out this dreadful crime we need your help.' Ruth spoke in a low, soothing tone. ‘I want you to try and tell us exactly what happened.'

June Lowe's grey eyes were wide with fear as she looked from Inspector Morgan to Sergeant Hardcastle and back again.

‘I don't know what happened . . . I wasn't here . . . I found him like . . . like . . .'

‘And you say you found the front door open when you arrived?' queried Paddy.

‘Yes!' Her voice was barely a whisper.

‘Why were you here?'

‘I . . . I came to remind Mr Jackson that he had promised his wife he'd be home early.'

‘So you expected to find him here?'

‘I . . . I wasn't sure. I knew he'd come here earlier to show a client round—'

‘And the client's name?' interrupted Paddy.

June lifted her shapely shoulders in a hopeless shrug. ‘I can't remember. Metcalfe . . . or Maitland.' Her face brightened. ‘Yes, that was it. Maitland. Margaret Maitland.'

‘Would you know this woman if you saw her again?'

June Lowe shook her head. ‘She made the appointment over the phone . . . She didn't come into the office.'

‘So you haven't an address? You hadn't sent her details of the property?'

June shook her head.

‘So you knew Mr Jackson was coming here to show this woman around, and so you dropped in on your way home from work to remind him he was supposed to be home early.'

‘Yes. That's right.'

‘Couldn't you have phoned him?'

‘I did try to get him on his mobile! There isn't a phone connected in the house . . . It's been empty for quite some time.'

‘And you got no reply from his mobile,' repeated Paddy.

‘No. I tried more than once. And I phoned his home, but I couldn't get a reply from there either. Mrs Jackson must have gone out and forgotten to leave the answerphone on.'

‘So you came here to remind him about his promise to be home early, and you found the door was open.'

‘Not wide open. Just off the catch. As though someone hadn't closed it properly.'

‘And you thought Mr Jackson might still be inside.'

‘His car was in the drive so I thought that the client had left and he was locking up. Quite often they want to go outside and look around the garden so you have to open the back door, or the patio doors,' she explained.

‘So what did you do when you found the door ajar?'

‘I rang the bell, knocked on the door and then walked into the hallway and called out his name.'

‘And when there was no answer?'

‘I didn't know what to do. I knew he wouldn't have gone and left the front door open. He's a stickler about doors. He always gives them a shake after he's locked them to make quite sure they're secure. In the case of an unoccupied house we are responsible for its security once it's on our books, you see.'

‘Right. And then what happened?'

June Lowe's face crumpled, and she dabbed at her eyes with a screwed up tissue.

Ruth gently patted the girl's arm. ‘Try and tell us . . . in your own words,' she murmured.

‘Well, I went into the hall, as far as the stairs, and I called out his name again. Then I went into the kitchen . . .' She gulped and held a hand over her mouth as if she was about to be sick.

‘And that was where you found Mr Jackson . . . on the floor by the sink?'

June Lowe shuddered and nodded. ‘It was terrible,' she said, gulping.

‘Go on!'

‘He . . . he was lying stretched straight out . . . There was blood . . . blood on his face . . . and on . . . and on his clothes.' Her voice became a whisper. ‘His clothes . . . His shirt had been ripped open and . . . and . . .'

Unable to go on, she covered her face with her hands.

‘So what did you do then?' Paddy asked tersely.

June Lowe was crying so much that her words were unintelligible. Ruth signalled to him to wait until the girl had control of herself.

When her anguished sobbing had tapered down to mere sniffles, he repeated his question. ‘So what did you do then?'

‘I ran to my car and rang you,' said June Lowe.

‘Why did you do that? Surely you had your mobile in your handbag with you!'

Fresh tears welled up in her eyes and coursed down her cheeks. ‘I . . . I don't know. I knew I must get help . . . I wanted to get out of the house . . . away . . . away from his body.'

‘Don't worry about it,' Ruth reassured her. ‘Simply tell it as it happened. She flashed a warning signal at Paddy. His terse questions were not helping.

‘I stayed in my car until the police came,' June Lowe went on, looking at Ruth. ‘They brought me back to the house with them. Then the ambulance arrived, and more police . . . and . . . and then you came and started questioning me!' Her voice rose hysterically. ‘I've told you all I know. I want to go home. I don't know anything else. I don't know what happened. I've told you everything, and now can I go?'

Paddy shook his head. ‘There are still a lot more questions . . .'

‘Please . . . please not now!' June Lowe implored, clutching at his sleeve.

He shot a glance at Ruth, and she shook her head, an imperceptible warning that she thought the girl had been through enough for the moment.

‘Very well,' he said stiffly. ‘We'll send you home in a police car, but you will have to come to the station tomorrow for further questioning.'

She hesitated, shaking her head. ‘I have my own car . . .'

‘But you're in no fit condition to drive it,' he snapped.

‘Would it be possible for someone to drive me home, then? My mother wouldn't like it if I was brought home in a police car.'

‘There didn't seem to be much point in questioning her any further while she is so overwrought,' Ruth commented once Paddy had arranged for June Lowe to be taken home.

‘No. Probably not, ma'am,' he said coldly.

‘It's hardly likely she did it, or that she knows who was responsible.'

‘She was driving a red car though!' he pointed out smugly.

‘We're looking for a red Ford Escort and her car wasn't a Ford.'

‘Are we? One of the witnesses wasn't at all certain that it was an Escort – only that it was a red car.'

Ruth let it pass. She was more concerned with the forensic report. Although Dennis Jackson's murder bore a great many of the same hallmarks as the three previous murders, there were also several marked differences.

This time the murderer hadn't been content to merely disarrange the victim's clothes to simulate sexual interference but had gone a step further and actually carried out a serious mutilation of the man's genitals.

In addition, there were marks on his wrists and around his ankles that indicated they had been tied together with rope. There was also a massive bruise on the back of Dennis Jackson's head which did not conform with him having banged his head on the floor through a fall.

An hour later, the evidence they'd obtained was even more grisly.

‘As a rough reconstruction,' Paddy said, ‘I'd say that he was coshed on the head, then trussed up, with his hands tied together and fastened to something in the kitchen. His feet were also tied together and fastened to something else in the room, so that he was stretched out so straight that he'd be in agony. After that, I'm not sure. Obviously that was when his clothing was ripped and when . . . when he was mutilated. The most sadistic thing I've ever witnessed,' he added in a tone of utter distaste.

‘The work of a man . . . a husband who has been double crossed by Jackson,' mused Ruth.

‘No! Never!' Paddy looked almost offended. ‘A man wouldn't do anything as sadistic as that!'

‘If he was very much in love with his wife; if he wanted her back; if he hated the fellow's guts for breaking up his marriage,' listed Ruth.

‘Then he'd punch the fellow's head in, shoot him, even, but not stab him and mutilate him like that.'

Ruth studied him dispassionately. She had never seen Paddy so incensed. She'd thought of him as mild mannered, slow to rouse. Intelligent but not brilliant, pleasant but not complex. Which, she mused, was probably why he'd been passed over when it came to promotion.

‘So you're suggesting it was a woman who did this?'

Paddy stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘She would have to be either very strong or else so enraged that she had abnormal strength. In the normal way, all these men would be able to fight off a woman.'

‘Unless they were taken by surprise,' argued Ruth. ‘The first three were all concentrating on what they were doing when they were stabbed from behind.'

‘Dennis Jackson looks as though he was attacked from behind with a heavy blunt instrument . . .'

‘But we can't be sure if that was what killed him.'

‘True!' Paddy conceded reluctantly.

‘This murder differs in quite a number of ways from the others—'

‘That is what is so worrying,' interrupted Paddy. ‘If the killer coshed him from behind, then why stab him in the chest? Unless it was to make sure that it was linked to the others?'

Ruth looked thoughtful. ‘Yes, I suppose that is a possibility.'

‘In which case we have to consider this a copycat murder and not as the work of a serial killer.'

‘Unless he was only knocked unconscious and when he came round . . .' Her voice trailed off as she met Paddy's eyes.

The thought uppermost in both their minds was: had the man been stabbed to death before being mutilated?

If it had happened the other way round – that he had been mutilated first and then stabbed to death – then they were looking for a highly dangerous, sadistic psychopath.

‘Time of death appears to have been between four o' clock and six o'clock. We know that from the fact that Dennis Jackson left his office just before four to keep an appointment with a woman called Margaret Maitland—'

‘Mrs or miss?' interrupted Paddy.

‘We don't know. We could ask June Lowe.'

‘And when she's had time to calm down let's hope she can give us a more detailed description of the woman.'

‘She won't be able to do that. The woman phoned in.'

‘Then it might be worth checking with the people who live in the adjacent houses. Someone may have seen her arrive.

The houses in Englefield Drive were not only detached but all of them were very individual, and they all had long drives and ample gardens separating them from their neighbours. Many, like the Willows, had such high, dense hedges that it was almost impossible to see into each other's gardens.

Detective Inspector Ruth Morgan and Detective Sergeant Paddy Hardcastle obtained only one clue as the result of several interviews. The woman whose property adjoined the Willows on the right-hand side told them that a red car had pulled into the driveway just before four o'clock.

She had been in her garden and had been interested because only five minutes earlier she had seen Dennis Jackson's car arrive, and she thought the occupant of the red car might be a prospective new neighbour.

She'd still been in the garden an hour later when the red car drove away. She was unable to tell them whether or not it was a Ford Escort or if it had been a man or woman behind the wheel.

A teenage boy reported that he had seen a small red car, and he was pretty sure it was a Mini, turning into the Willows when he'd been delivering evening newspapers around six o'clock, shortly before the police arrived.

‘That was June Lowe's car, of course,' said Paddy with a sigh as he checked over his notes.

‘You don't suppose it was her car that was there earlier?'

‘I doubt it. According to what she told us, she was at the office until almost six o' clock, remember.' He frowned and shuffled the papers in front of him. ‘Not unless
she
did the murder!'

Ruth shook her head. ‘She was upset when we arrived, but she showed no evidence of having been in any way involved . . .'

‘She would have had time to go home, change her clothes, and then come back again.'

‘That would have taken tremendous nerve!'

‘Even so, we'd better send someone round to check out everything she was wearing, right down to her shoes, before she has time to dispose of any of them.'

‘And what was her connection with the other murders?'

Paddy shrugged. ‘Perhaps they're not connected. If we can solve one of them it will help to keep Superintendent Wilson off our backs.'

Ruth shook her head. ‘I think we are going round in circles, and not only that, I think we're on the wrong trail. It might be better if we went to see Mrs Jackson, to find out if she can throw some light on the matter.'