Chill Factor (6 page)

Murder doesn’t come stalking its victim at night,
skulking
from shadow to shadow, whispering unheard threats. It comes in the afternoon, with the sun casting shadows on the wall and the curtains blowing in the breeze. It comes from familiar hands, that once were loving.

The collared doves that live in next door’s apple tree were tuning up like a couple of novice viola players, and my
blackbird
was doing his scales prior to the morning concert. I got out of bed and staggered to the bathroom for a shower. I put on the clean clothes, brushed my hair and opened the
curtains
.

The sky was light, with Venus the palest speck on the horizon, not quite drained of its glow by the advancing sun. Above it was the disc of the moon, a duller blue than the sky, one edge dipped in cream. They hovered there like the last two reluctant guests to leave a party. I picked up the alarm clock and went downstairs to grab an hour’s rest on the
settee
.

The night tec’ was sitting at my desk when I arrived in the office, reading the morning paper. “Hi, Rodge, anything in about us?” I asked, slipping my jacket off.

“Morning, Charlie. No, not yet,” he replied, moving out of my chair.

“Pity. I was hoping they’d have it sorted for us.”

“You’ve had a busy night.”

“Oh, just two murders,” I replied. “Nothing special. And you?”

“Sex or money?”

“Sex. Sex all the way.”

We only have one detective on duty through the night, in case the uniformed boys come across anything that requires a CID presence. He slid a typed report across to me, saying: “Jamie Walker. He was out causing grief again but we’ve got some dabs – I had to borrow a SOCO from City because ours were otherwise engaged. Hopefully, we’ll pick him up today.”

“And as soon as we put him in front of the mags they’ll give him bail,” I said. “God, I could do without him.”

I told him to carry on looking after the stuff outside the murder enquiries, adding that we’d have them sorted as soon as the PM results came through to confirm what we already knew. He went home to breakfast with his wife, a nightshift staff nurse at the General, and I read his report. “Jamie Walker, aged fourteen, why do I hate you?” I said to myself as I slid it into the
Pending
tray.

The team, plus a few reinforcements from HQ CID, reassembled at eight in the small conference room and there were gasps of disbelief when Mr Wood told them about the developments. After his pep talk I split them into two groups and appointed two sets of control staff, as if the
murders
were separate enquiries, and sent the troops back out on to the streets. Priorities were the backgrounds of the three leading players and their relationships with each other. The neighbours would be given their opportunity to dish the dirt, so that might throw up something, and we needed the post-mortem results desperately. I told the Latham team to reconvene at three and the Silkstone team at four.

We could hold him in custody without charging him for twenty-four hours, and then ask for extensions, but we’re supposed to charge a prisoner as soon as is practicable. We decided to do him for a Section 18 assault, that’s GBH with
intent, purely as a holding charge, and let the CPS lawyers decide at their leisure whether to go for murder or manslaughter. He appeared in front of a magistrate that morning and our man explained the seriousness of the offence. It’s not necessary to present any evidence at this stage. The magistrate obligingly remanded Silkstone into our custody for seven days while we completed our enquiries. After that period he would appear again and
hopefully
be committed to appear before the crown court at sometime in the remote future. We booked his solicitor, Prendergast, for eleven a.m., when the fun would begin.

Dave and I made a return visit to Silkstone’s house at Mountain Meadows. The sun was shining after a shower as we turned into the development, and it looked good. Several of the gardens had weird trees with twisted branches and dangling fronds, like you see in Japanese watercolours, and pampas-grass was popular. There were two panda cars
outside
The Garth and blue “keep out” tape stretched across the driveway.

The PC in charge showed me the visitors’ book and entered our names in it. I saw that the undertakers had called at six a.m. to take the body away, and a reporter from the
Gazette
had been tipped off by a friendly neighbour. We stepped over the tape and walked down the drive.

It looked different in the daylight. Allowing for the Silkstones’ crap taste, it looked highly desirable. Everything they had was expensive, top of the range, and they had everything. We stood in the kitchen, where we’d stood with such different feelings a few hours earlier, and took it all in. The wind chime gave a single, hollow,
boing
but I reached up and disabled it before it could run through its repertoire. There were Toulouse-Lautrec prints on the walls and a rope of garlic hanging behind the door.

“Not bad,” Dave admitted. From him, that’s an Oscar.

I sniffed the garlic, then felt it. “Plastic,” I said. “No
wonder
it didn’t work.”

“Work?”

“It’s supposed to keep evil at bay.”

He looked at me without turning his head, and said: “Er, listen, Charlie. I wouldn’t put that in your report if I were you. One or two people have been saying things about you, recently…”

The sitting room was a surprise. With its two leather chesterfields and dark wood it looked more like a
gentlemen’s
club than a room in a suburban house. The fireplace was polished stone, complete with horse brasses, and a
photograph
of the householder took pride of place above it. A beaming Silkstone was standing next to a much taller and slightly embarrassed man who looked remarkably like Nigel Mansell, former World Formula 1 champion.

“He moves in fast company,” I remarked.

“Golf tournament,” Dave said, which was fairly obvious from the single gloves, silly trousers and the clubs they were leaning on. “Probably a charity do, or something.”

“Right. What do you think of the room?” The carpet was plain blue and vertical blinds covered the windows. There were no flowers or frills, no Capo di Monte shepherd boys –
Alleluia
for that small mercy – and not a single pot plant. The wallpaper was blue and cream stripes, edged in gold, on all four walls.

“It’s a bit austere,” Dave remarked, turning round in a circle. He paused, then said: “The wife wanted me to put one of them up.”

“One of what?”

He pointed. “A dildo rail.”

I said: “It’s called a dado rail,” not sure if I’d fallen into a trap.

“Is it? I’m sure she said dildo.”

“Maybe you misunderstood.”

“Sounds like it.”

“C’mon,” I told him. “Let’s go upstairs. That’s where the story of Tony and Margaret begins and ends.”

The path we’d pioneered the night before was designated with blue tape so we stayed with it, although it wasn’t
necessary
. In the bedroom little adhesive squares with green arrows on them indicated items of interest that were
invisible
to my eyes. They were scattered randomly over the carpet near the bed, and concentrated around the disturbed
surface
of the duvet. Dave bent down and examined the area.

“Doesn’t look like blood,” he announced, straightening up.

“Other bodily fluids,” I suggested. The SOCO had
probably
found spots and splashes by using an ultra violet lamp or Luminol spray.

Next door was the woman’s room, all done in pink and lace, with a dressing table crowded with the things some ladies need to apply before they can face the world. She wore Obsession perfume and Janet Reger undies. A wedding
photograph
, similar in style to the one in Latham’s room, stood on the dressing table but pushed to the back, behind all the jars and bottles and aerosols. It was lightly covered with powder either from her compact or left by the fingerprint experts. In it, Silkstone was wearing a morning suit and his wife a traditional white dress. They were a handsome couple and it was impossible to date this one, unlike Mr and Mrs Latham’s.

The husband had his own room. It was furnished in a mock tartan material that looked pretty good and the
bookcase
was filled with coffee-table manuals about cars. We had classic cars, the world’s fastest cars, the most expensive cars, Ferraris, Porsches, and so on. There were yearbooks about the Grands Prix going back about ten years and a collection of Pirelli and Michelin calendars for a similar period. They were all big glossy books, heavy on pictures, light on words.

I found his reading books on the bottom shelf. They were by people like Dale Carnegie and Mark McCormack, and had titles such as
How To Sell Crap To People Who Didn’t Know They Needed It;
and
What To Do With That Second
Million
. When this is over, I thought, I could do worse than read one or two of these. Or perhaps even write one.

There was a framed photograph of Silkstone on the wall behind the bed, and another of Nigel Mansell, autographed, on the facing wall. Silkstone was posing beside a Mark II Jaguar and looked about twenty. It was a snapshot, blown up to poster size, and was badly focused, but the numberplate was legible. He had a faint blond fuzz on his head, like a peach, which for a young bloke was seriously bald. Dave joined me as I was staring at it.

“Not as nice as your Jag,” he said.

“It’s not, is it.”

“Ever regret selling it?”

“Mmm, now and again.” I turned to face the other
picture
. “What do you reckon to that one?” I asked.

“It’s great. Our Daniel would love it.” Daniel was his son, a couple of years younger than daughter Sophie.

“Why Mansell? He’s not a gay icon, is he?”

“No, of course not. He’s a happily married man.”

“He has the moustache.”

“So has Saddam Hussein.”

“He
is
gay.”

“Yeah, as gay as a tree full of parrots. Listen,” Dave said. “Mansell was the greatest driver of his day, and lots of other days, because he was such a fierce competitor. He liked to win. At everything. That’s why people like Silkstone look up to him. He’s a winners’ icon, not a gay one.”

“Mmm, makes sense,” I agreed.

Dave looked at his watch, saying: “It’s time we were off.”

The friendly neighbourhood spy had informed his
contact
at the
Gazette
that I was on the scene, and a reporter was waiting for us as we emerged from The Garth. She had spiky red hair, a ring through her nose and a bullish manner.

“Are you the investigating officer?” she demanded.

“Yes,” I told her, resigning myself to making some sort of statement. “And just who are you?”

She rattled off one of those names that rhymes with itself, like Fay Day or Carrol Barrel, as if it were self-evident who she was and only a parochial fool like myself wouldn’t know. This woman was ambitious, going places, and a
small-town
murder meant nothing more to her than a by-line. Next week she’d either be applying for Kate Adie’s job or back on hospital radio. “And is the raid on this house
related
to the murder last evening at West Woods?” she asked.

News travels fast, I thought. I drew a big breath and launched myself into it: “We are investigating a suspicious death at a residence in the West Woods estate,” I told her, “and have arrested a person. Our enquiries have brought us here, where we have found the body of a woman. At this point in the investigation we are not looking for anybody else. Our press office will release further information as and when it becomes available.” I can reel out the cop-speak with the best of them, when I don’t want to say what I’m thinking.

She couldn’t believe her luck. “You mean there’s still a body in there?” she demanded, her eyes gleaming.

“No,” I said. “It was removed earlier this morning, for post-mortem examination. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

She produced a mobile phone – it was hanging on a thong around her neck – and called for a photographer,
House of Death
headlines buzzing through her head.

The PC on duty asked if I wanted the integrity of the scene maintaining and I said I did. We had a quick word with the house-to-house people, but they had no great
revelations
for us, and drove back to the nick.

On the way Dave said: “You’re not happy with this, are you?”

“Just playing safe, Dave,” I replied.

“What’s the problem?”

“No problem. According to Silkstone, Latham killed his wife so he killed Latham. Motive – revenge. Taking into
consideration
the balance of his mind, and all that, he’d be done for manslaughter and could be free in a year.”

“That’s true,” Dave said. “And if he was on remand for a year he could be released straight after the trial.”

“But what if,” I continued, “they were both in on it? What if they were both there when Mrs Silkstone died? That could mean a life sentence. This way, he’s put all the blame on Latham, who is in no position to defend himself.”

Dave thought about it, before saying: “You mean, they were having some sort of three-in-a-bed sex romp, and it all went wrong?”

I glanced sideways at him. “Do people do such things in Heckley?” I asked.

“Not to my knowledge,” he replied.

“Maybe they were over enthusiastic,” I suggested, “and she died. They invented some sort of story but Silkstone thought of a better one. He killed Latham and came to us.”

“It’s a possibility,” Dave agreed.

“Alternatively,” I began, exploring the possibilities, “
perhaps
Silkstone did them both, all alone and by himself. It’d be cheaper than a divorce.”

“And tidier,” Dave added.

“And possibly even profitable,” I suggested. “That’s something to look at.”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Dave cautioned. “Let’s wait for the DNA results.” He was silent for the rest of the way. As we turned into the car-park he said: “The bloke’s lost his wife, Charlie. Don’t forget that.”