Hot Blood (Bloodwords Book 1) (8 page)

Giving a chuckle, Radcliffe tipped his chair
back again onto all its legs, dropped his hands and started twirling a pencil.
An offer to exchange cases was nothing more than continual banter between them
and in reality, no matter how difficult, how perverse, neither would ever
relinquish a case until it had been solved or removed from above. ‘Didn’t you
secure it?’ he asked.

‘Secure what?’

‘The crime scene of course’ said Radcliffe.
‘Didn’t you secure the immediate surroundings and have CSI give it the once
over.’

‘Didn’t see the point. The doc said it was a
heart attack so that was me out. Bugger. I guess I need to get back out there
pronto.’

……….

Only a small board at the roadside gave any
indication that the track led to anything more than a field. A coppice could be
seen no more than 200
mtrs
from the road, but not the
ruined mansion it hid or the collection of buildings around the farmyard.
Parking next to a stone building at the end of the track, Davies felt that he
had stepped back at least a century into rural England or onto the set of some
period country TV programme. Pop Larkin came to mind. Ducks were swimming on a
pond to his right and peacocks were roaming free. Behind the pond, two stone
buildings had been converted into a photo studio and a café signed up as The
Hay Loft Tea Shop, while on the far side of the yard opposite him was an open
barn. To his left, housed in another stone building, was a farm produce shop,
beyond which he could see the copse, though even at such close range the ruined
building was still completely hidden, a gravel path disappearing into the copse
being the only indication that something might lie beyond.

A uniformed constable stood guarding the
entrance to the path, which had been closed off with police tape. Showing his
warrant card, Davies ducked under the tape and made his way towards the ruined
mansion, where Sergeant Debbie
Lescott
was already
talking to a man in a white overall, previously known as Scenes of Crime
Officers, or SOCOs, but more recently Crime Scene Investigators in line with
the advent of popular American TV programmes – oh, the power of TV. The
man turned to the approaching Davies. ‘Inspector, I wish you had closed this
area off and called us in yesterday when the body was found.’

‘We didn’t know that it was a murder scene then
son.’

‘Quite. Debbie has explained all that. But with
the scene having been unprotected for over a day, any number of people could
have been here so anything we turn up could be quite unrelated to your crime.
In any case, it’s hard enough getting shoe prints or other giveaway signs.
These trees are like a big umbrella over the whole place and the earth is dry
and springy anyway. I am going through the motions but I am wasting my time.
And we are short staffed as well.’

‘Point taken,’ Davies conceded, ‘We desperately
need a lead on this. Though, We don’t even know who the poor blighter is yet,
Anything might help, big or small.’

‘It’s a pity he wasn’t dumped further out, say
near where the path starts. The path itself is gravel but after the rain we had
a few days ago you’ve got to go through some mud and soft ground where the cars
have been parked so we might have got something from there.’

‘And don’t I know it’ responded Davies. ‘I
ruined a pair of decent shoes the first time I came – and look at me now
for God’s sake;
slutched
up again and mud all over my
suit.’

‘Well, you’ve been before so you should have
known to dress for the conditions.’ Turning to the sergeant he added, ‘Like
Debbie.’

He was right of course. The sergeant was, as
usual, kitted out immaculately in the appropriate clothes for the occasion. In
the office she had been wearing an immaculately laundered blouse tucked into
perfectly styled trousers with a knife-edge crease. The ensemble was tight
where it should be tight and loose where it should be loose, drawing attention
to her perfect figure. Her shoes had heels high enough to add to the elegant
image yet low enough to enable her to glide across the room. Yet not only had
she managed to beat him out to the old ruin, she had also found time to change
into outdoor gear. Her Rockport boots had a slight smear of tan coloured mud
along the welt, but other than that, her Timberland trousers and
Berghaus
all-weather jacket looked as though they could
have been lifted straight from the shop rail. How did she do that? Smart arse.

Turning to the sergeant he indicated the
remains of a small wall. ‘Were the couple on the other side of this wall?’

‘No. The path from the farmyard goes along
there so it’s a bit open for what they were doing if you see what I mean.’
Pointing to the adjacent wall that was a full storey high punctuated by what
had once been a multi panel mullioned window she added, ‘They were on that side
over there.’

‘They’d never have seen him then,’ replied
Davies. ‘The sills of the old window are chest high at least so if they were
down on the ground having it off there’s no way they could have seen anything
this side of the wall.’

‘That’s right,’ said the sergeant. ‘But
apparently they hadn’t got that far, they were still at the kissing and
cuddling stage. I’ve been over there and checked it out because she is about my
height, and from what they say the lad was actually leaning with his back
against the window so the girl would have been facing in. The ground is a
little higher the other side of the wall and since the lad had managed to get
her blouse and bra off, had our deceased friend still been alive he could
indeed have got an eyeful. The doc thought that that might have been what
triggered the heart attack.’

‘But it wasn’t was it?’ replied Davies. ‘Makes
you wish you were young again doesn’t it? OK. So our couple are stripping off
and having a quick grope on the other side of that window, while on this side,
deceased is in a heap in the fireplace. If you can call it a room that is. Mind
you, we had to walk the full length of the room and on this side there’s no
wall, it’s just a pile of rubble and the fireplace is on full view, so why
didn’t they see him when they arrived?’

‘Easy. They didn’t come that
wa
. If you go as far as the well and cross the big room
with the fancy fireplace you can get onto the other side of the window without
coming the way we did around the outside. Apparently, because they had heard
voices when they first came – remember that they went back to the tea
shop before returning - they took their time getting to the window by stopping
every few yards for a listen and a quick kiss.’

‘Spare me the details Debbie, I can imagine.
All the same, with the height of that window, if they were as keen as you say
they are then your couple are more likely to have dropped down to finish off
what they had started than pack up and shut up shop so to speak. You say that
they were in a bit of a state and I don’t think that that would just be from
finding the bloke – there was no blood, no mess and he just looked as
though he was sleeping rough – so what’s the betting that they saw more
than they’re letting on?’

Turning to the CSI, Davies asked, ‘Could he
have been killed somewhere else Mark?’

‘Could have. Or might not. Either way I suppose.’

Not exactly a helpful answer. And not what he
had wanted to hear. A civilian scene of crimes specialist highly trained by the
force, Mark was exceptionally observant and could usually ferret out little
clues that would point in a specific direction, if not actually close a case.
He didn’t usually sit on the fence.

Sensing Davies’ dismay, the CSI continued, ‘I
would at least have expected some marks on the path if he’d been dragged here
from the farmyard but there’s nothing. Yet if he’d been in a scuffle and died
here there should have been some tell tale indications in the earth in front of
the fireplace or where people have trodden the undergrowth down from the path
to the old doorway over there but there’s nothing here either. Despite this
being a ruin there are very few loose stones or boulders of any size, and none
at all in this area because the trustees tidied it up to make it safe a few
years ago, so if the doc’s right and he died from compressive asphyxia then
there’s nothing around that’s heavy enough to compress our man’s chest for long
enough to kill him. With no sign of any struggle either, for my money he must
have been killed elsewhere. In that case he would have been carried here or
there would be drag marks somewhere. But don’t take that as gospel – at
this stage it’s a ‘might have’ at most and only a guess.’

The CSI was not usually wrong and his
observations were more than welcome, but why couldn’t all this have happened
just a mile along the road? When the planners had pinched almost 15 miles of
Lancashire’s coastal plain south of the
Ribble
and
tacked it onto Liverpool, renaming the conglomeration Merseyside, everything
had been screwed up. Driving to work each day the country road meandered across
the border no less than three times and in bad weather, thanks to a lack of cooperation
between the authorities, the Lancashire sections could be free running while
Merseyside’s section remained snow-bound, resulting in a delay or detour of
almost an hour. Such
beaurocratic
stupidity still had
its benefits though. Ten years living in an up-market leafy suburb of Southport
and policing little more than a carnival procession or the annual air show beat
the socks off fighting thugs and villains. If only this unidentified murdered
dead body had been found one mile away on Lancashire’s patch, not only would
the problem have been somebody else’s responsibility, Lancashire’s pathologist
might have thought it a heart attack too.

……….

‘Right love, let’s not beat about the bush,
this is now a murder enquiry so we can’t pretend that you weren’t there
anymore.’ Davies was trying his stern yet fatherly approach. ‘What you tell
your mum is up to you but all I am interested in is the truth.’

‘But we told the sergeant what happened,’ said
the girl, looking scared.

‘We were having a walk in the woods when we saw
that bloke huddled in the fireplace of the old hall,’ added her boyfriend. ‘I
shouted to him and he didn’t answer so we went over to him and shook him.
That’s when we realised he were sick like. We didn’t know he were dead did we
Kate?’

Sat in the Hay Loft Tea Shop, Davies wasn’t
expecting much from the young couple unless they had actually seen more than
they had previously admitted. And so far they were getting nowhere.

‘Well I’ve heard it called some things before
but never a walk,’ replied the inspector. ‘From what the sergeant here tells
me, you were getting lots of exercise but not doing much walking.’ The couple
exchanged a guilty glance. The girl blushed. ‘Now lets get things straight. I
don’t think that what you told the sergeant is all that you know by any means.
And once there’s murder involved, then either withholding information or not
telling it as it was gets you into trouble. You need to tell me exactly what
happened – and I mean exactly – because if you don’t you’ll be
banged up in a cell in Albert Road nick. And it’ll be a cell each at that, so
there will be no exercise, free love, or whatever else you want to call it.

‘Whether your mum gets to know about how you
spend your time is the least of your worries love. So let’s start again at the
beginning with what really happened shall we? I want to know the time you
arrived here, whether you went straight to the woods or came here for a coffee
first, and I want to know exactly what you saw. And I mean exactly. I need to
know what you did and where. Exactly. You get that? There’s no place for
modesty in a murder investigation. Come on, spit it out, because if you don’t
I’ll have to drag it out.’

Lescott
raised her eyebrows. Though always a little
brusque, she thought that Davies was laying it on a bit too thick this time.
These were two young kids, not hardened criminals. They were scared witless
anyway.

Kate started to sob. ‘We didn’t do anything
inspector. Honest we didn’t,’ she said, tears running down her cheeks. ‘We just
kissed and had a cuddle, and then we . . . . .’

‘And then you what exactly?’

She looked him straight in the eye, opened her
mouth to reply then changed her mind. Her cheeks flushed red and the tears
turned into a flood as she sobbed.

‘Oh come on. Lay off can’t you?’ burst in the
lad in support. ‘It was Kate’s first time and it all got spoilt because of the
old geezer. We don’t know anything about it. We just found him. What don’t you
understand about that?’

‘Calm down son. We’ve got a job to do. And at
the moment, mine’s solving a crime. How much that involves you I don’t yet know
but you can take it from me that I don’t care two hoots about your sex life. Or
how many nicks you’ve got on your shooter.’

‘Really Inspector!’ The tide had turned and now
Kate was coming to her boyfriend’s aid. ‘We didn’t do anything wrong.’

‘Perhaps you didn’t love, but I need to know
what you saw, both before and after you did whatever you did. And if you heard
anything I need to know about that too. Now come on Kate, pull yourself together.
I am sure that you know something that you haven’t told us and you can bet your
life that we are not leaving until we find out what it is. Let’s start at the
beginning shall we?’