Secret of the Dead (40 page)

The morning briefing was led by Detective Superintendent Leggate. She congratulated everyone on the previous evening’s success, and followed up by announcing that as of today she was running everything - SIO Michael Robshaw had been called across to the Force Headquarters in Sheffield to discuss his promotion and new role with the Assistant Chief Constable (Crime), and to organise a full press conference to hail the success of their investigation. She then moved on to the real purpose of the briefing - the collating and preservation of evidence against Ronnie Fisher. A search of the red Corsa had turned up several bags of clothing, shoes and trainers, and in Scott Riley’s wheelie-bin they had found a pair of woollen gloves, smelling strongly of petrol or other similar accelerant. With a wry smirk, she raised a laugh by adding that it had not been hard to persuade Scott that it would be in his best interest if he gave a statement outlining that he had seen Ronnie dump them.

She reminded everyone that woollen fibres had been found on Guy Armstrong’s petrol cap, at the homes of Jeffery Howson and Jodie Marie Jenkinson, and at The Barnwell Inn the site of Jodie’s murder.

“If these are the same gloves, then we’ve really got him bang to rights,” she said proudly, and after a slight pause, continued, “It doesn’t end there guys, I got another phone call late yesterday, forensics have come up trumps as well. The DNA sample, provided by Jessica, has helped us identify that the dried bloodstains in the kitchen belong to her mother, Lucy. It looks as though Lucy was murdered there. SOCO and the forensic team at the farmhouse are currently extending their examination into other rooms.” She broke, her eyes exploring the faces of the detectives. “We are almost there everyone. All we have to do now is find Lucy’s body.”

* * * * *

A solicitor from the firm of Grant, Harding and Wilkinson was representing Ronnie Fisher, and as Hunter stepped into the soundproof interview room he had already prepared his thoughts for a challenging interrogation, most likely a battle of wills between himself and a ‘pain in the arse’ defence solicitor.

Seeing the legal representative, Hunter took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. This one had an appearance even smoother than Peter Blake-Hall’s solicitor. He looked to be in his mid-fifties with a good head of neatly trimmed silver grey hair and wore a dark blue pinstriped suit, which appeared handmade. A white Oxford, button-down shirt was teamed with a dark blue monogrammed tie.

This man was no legal clerk, thought Hunter, as he dragged out one of the chairs opposite. His appearance shouted senior partner.

Hunter dropped his folder onto the table and lowered himself slowly into the chair.

Grace took the seat beside him, next to the tape recording machine.

Hunter made the introductions and flipped open his folder of notes.

“Mr James Harding.” The solicitor replied.

Guessed right.

Ronnie Fisher was silent. He half-sat, half-lazed on his seat, legs out straight, arms folded, his chin resting on his chest. He didn’t acknowledge them with even a glance.

Hunter couldn’t help but notice the ugly red graze across his forehead, and his badly swollen nose and mouth. He fought back the urge to smirk.

He waited for the tape machine to kick in and then cautioned Ronnie Fisher. “Do you understand what I have just said, Mr Fisher?”

Silence.

“I first want to talk to you about the attack on me last night, when you tried to stab me.”

Silence.

For almost forty-five minutes Hunter fired round after round of questions, firstly regarding the attack upon himself and then the stabbing of Mike Sampson. Ronnie Fisher refused to speak. Hunter would have preferred to have engaged in verbal combat, but he knew how it would look when it was put to a jury and he let out a satisfied sigh as he finished the last question.

As the first tape came to an end, Hunter closed his folder and half rose from his chair. Leaning across the table, using his arms as supports, he announced in a strong formal voice, “Ronnie Fisher, I am charging you with the attempted murder of Detective Constable Michael Sampson and the attempted murder of myself. Would you like to say anything about that?”

Ronnie Fisher raised his head and gave him a hate-filled stare.

* * * * *

The Task Force Specialist Search Team who were combing the woods for Lucy’s body had finished exploring the first marked-out grid section shortly before eleven am.

The nature of the work had been tedious and laborious and so when the call came for them to have a break, there was an almost unanimous sigh of relief.

Police Constable Craig Darrington was busting. For the past hour he had needed a piss, so when the shout went up he immediately scampered away from his group to a holly bush he had spotted earlier, just outside the search grid.

Quickly, he released the waist belt containing his equipment, and unzipped his coveralls, gasping with relief as the stream of urine left his aching bladder. At first he stared around him, checking no one could see what he was doing, but then, as his jet-stream of piss turned to a trickle he dropped his gaze to the ground, ready to zip himself back up and return to his team. For a brief moment he studied the area where he had urinated. The unusual undulation of a small section of the woodland floor caught his attention. His eyes drifted around the uneven oblong shape for a few seconds and that was when he spotted a discarded cigarette butt. For a further few seconds he studied the uneven surface and came to the decision that he needed to explore this, if only to satisfy his curiosity. He reached out for his metal ‘sniffer rod,’ which had been resting against the holly bush and set it atop the mound. With an almighty strike, he thrust it through the top layer of soil. He heard a muffled crack from beneath the earth and the most awful putrefying smell drifted out from the centre of the hollow pole. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled and then he yelled, “Sir, over here!”

* * * * *

Detective Inspector Scaife took the call from the Task Force Inspector and immediately informed Detective Superintendent Dawn Leggate of the search team’s discovery.

Hunter and Grace entered the office after their interview and the SIO met them.

“Drop what you’re doing. You two are coming with me,” she ordered. She filled them in as they headed downstairs to the exit. They piled into a spare car and raced up to the scene.

Hunter drove at break-neck speed. At one stage, coming out of a bend, close to the public entrance into the woods, he had to brake sharply to avoid hitting a photographer dashing from between the trees.

“It hasn’t taken the press long,” the Detective Superintendent said, as a posse of them swarmed towards their slowing car.

As Hunter weaved a course through, he saw a couple of uniformed officers were doing their level best to corral them back.

Hunter jockeyed the unmarked car between the ruts of a thin winding path for another few hundred yards, until he spotted a caravan of parked and marked Task Force vans and Scenes of Crime vehicles lining the narrow track. There, he stopped.

Quickly suiting themselves into protective coveralls, the three detectives left the car, and tramped the small distance, over damp and springy ground, to where a white tent had already been erected. Uniformed officers were putting the finishing touches to the setting up of a sterile perimeter using blue and white crime scene tape.

The team had worked fast, thought Hunter, as he ducked beneath the plastic tape and headed towards the forensic tent. Outside of it, two white-suited members of the Forensic Team were sifting loose soil onto a small pile.

Inside, three forensic specialists were on their knees, using hand trowels to scrape away lumps of soil. Duncan Wroe, clipboard in hand, was supervising things.

They had already removed a good couple of inches of topsoil.

Duncan levelled his gaze at the SIO. “You’ve already been updated ma’am?”

She nodded, “The task force Inspector rang the office half-an-hour ago. He said that they think they’ve found a body.”

“It’s certainly looking like that, unless someone’s buried their pet here.”

Another hour later, soil scraping resulted in a six-inch dip in the earth. The loose dirt had been emptied into plastic containers and carried outside to be sifted for evidence - a slow but necessary job.

Hunter was just checking the time on his watch - his stomach was telling him it was long past lunch-time, when he heard a rustling from the ground.

He glanced down, just as a member of the digging team pushed themselves back from the hole.

A young woman’s voice announced excitedly, “I’ve found something!”

* * * * *

It took the forensic team another two hours to fully unearth the remains of a body, wrapped inside semi-transparent extra strong plastic sheeting, the type used by builders.

It took another half-an-hour of careful handling before they loaded it into the private ambulance so that it could be safely transported to The Medico Legal Centre for a post-mortem.

* * * * *

Professor Lizzie McCormack had been called out to carry out the examination of the human remains, and by 3.30pm, she and her technician, together with Hunter, Detective Superintendent Leggate and SOCO supervisor Duncan Wroe, had all assembled inside the autopsy room at the Centre.

The pathologist sliced open the heavy duty plastic sheeting which contained the cadaver. As she worked, she talked; the in-built microphones picking up everything she said, relaying her words back to state-of-the-art digital voice recording machine.

Duncan Wroe was filming everything using his digital camera.

As he watched and listened, Hunter tensed. He had waited for this moment for so long. He hoped it was Lucy’s body.

Carefully, Lizzie peeled back the first membrane of semi-transparent sheeting. There was another layer beneath, and she cut through this and repeated the process. Slowly, the covering was pulled away and the body was revealed. Its flesh was gone and only a dirty brown skeleton remained. A stained and dirty, blue satin, knee-length nightdress covered the torso.

“Definitely female,” announced the Professor, in her soft Scottish burr. “And I think this goes a good way to help identify her.” She reached down and hooked a finger around a thin metal chain, which encircled the corpse’s neck, raising it slightly. It was a silver necklace with interlinked lettering. There was no mistaking what the lettering spelled  -‘Lucy.’

“Bingo,” said Dawn Leggate through gritted teeth.

Lizzie McCormack smiled. She rested the necklace back onto the bones and then moved a hand down towards the pelvic area, lifted her head and peered over the top of her spectacles. “And this definitely proves it!” She pointed into the pelvic area and drew a circle in the air. “This young lady was with child. Not full term, but there’s enough bone and cartilage to determine it was over the twenty-four weeks’ stage.” She pursed her lips. “And I can see straight away the cause of this young lady’s death.” She  moved her hand away from the pelvis, up towards the skeleton’s skull and pointed to the right temple.

Duncan Wroe leaned in with his camera.

Hunter stepped to one side to get better sight of what the Professor was pointing to. He got a good view over Duncan’s dipped shoulder. An irregular-shaped hole, the size of a two pence piece, had been smashed into the head.

“Fracture of the skull,” Lizzie continued, “And looking at the area of damage, and its position, that would have caused death within a few seconds, or at least would have rendered her immediately unconscious and she would have died within a very short period of time. A lot of force has caused that injury and the object would have had a sharp edge.”

“Like a knife, for instance?” Hunter said.

“Ooh no. Something far more substantial than that. A hammer is the more likely object.”

Hunter was just about to ask another question when the light-bulb went off inside his head. He hadn’t spotted its significance at first.

He said, “Got him!”

His eyes met those of the Detective Superintendent’.

“When Peter Blake-Hall made his original statement, the day he reported Lucy missing, he described her as going out wearing a yellow smock dress and a fawn cardigan. And the witness Lisa Aldridge, states in her statement that she saw Lucy being dragged into her husband’s car and the yellow dress stood out in her description of Lucy. If that’s the case, how do we account for this body here wearing a nightdress? The only way that could have happened is if she went home and got changed into it.”

Detective Superintendent Leggate nodded in agreement, “And that would fit in with why we found blood at the farmhouse and Jessica’s recollections from her nightmares. Peter dragged her into his car that night and brought her back home.”

“She got changed out of her clothes and into her nightie.”

Hunter and his SIO put their thoughts into words.

“And they had an argument over her meeting with Daniel Weaver. Remember, he had asked her to run away with him?”

They finished the last sentence together, “And that’s when he struck her and killed her!”

* * * * *

Turning away from the bar, clutching the round of drinks he had just bought, Hunter felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Are we friends?”

He met Detective Superintendent Dawn Leggate’s questioning look. “We were never enemies.”

She removed her hand. “No, but we didn’t get off to a good start did we? You’re in my team now and I just want to know that things between us are good for the future?”

“Things are good, boss.”

She smiled. “Good. I feel like a drink now.” She pointed to the three drinks he was holding. “I see you’ve got yours already.”

He laughed. “Not all for me boss. One’s for Barry Newstead and the other’s for Grace.”

“And I’ll stand the next round when those have gone. Everyone’s earned this. That was a good result, Hunter. Finding Lucy’s body was the icing on the cake.”