Double Dealing (Detective Sergeant Catherine Bishop Series Book Two) (6 page)

16

She hadn’t heard Thomas come in, but he obviously had at some point as he was standing by her bed, wearing a t-shirt and some old jogging bottoms. Catherine rubbed bleary eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard your phone? The landline’s been ringing as well.’ He held up her mobile.

She reached a reluctant hand from under the duvet and rolled onto her stomach.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Thomas said with a shiver. ‘And the heating.’

She tucked her hair behind her ears and touched the phone’s screen.

  ‘Catherine Bishop.’

  ‘Hi Catherine, it’s Raj Dhirwan.’

A uniformed inspector calling her at home. It didn’t bode well.

  ‘Morning Raj, what’s up?’

‘I’m just going off duty, but I thought you’d want to know – we’ve had a call about a body.’

Catherine sat up, fully awake now.

  ‘A body? Where? Who is it?’

  ‘It’s female, that’s all I can tell you. You’d better get over here.’

Catherine thanked him and scrambled out of bed with one thought running through her mind: Lauren Cook.

  DI Knight was waiting in his car when Catherine arrived at the station. She hurried across the car park, her unfastened coat blown straight back by the icy wind like black wings. Knight called to her over the noise of the idling engine.

  ‘Catherine, there’s no point going inside. The DCI told me to wait out for you. Get in, we may as well travel together.’

She nodded, climbing into the car. Knight had the heater going full blast but still had a black woollen beanie hat pulled low over his ears.

  ‘Wasn’t the bloke we arrested for the cash point muggings wearing that when we brought him in?’ she asked, fastening her seatbelt.

He shook his head.

  ‘Found it in the lost property box.’

  ‘Just need a pair of tights over your face. So where are we going?’

Knight pulled out onto the main road.

  ‘Somewhere called Moon Pond? The DCI said you’d know where it is. Popular with courting couples, he said.’

  ‘Courting couples? Where did he wake up, the nineteen fifties?’

  ‘You know it then?’

  ‘Yeah, next left.’

  ‘Have you been there as part of a courting couple?’

  ‘Certainly not. Any fumbling and groping I did was somewhere a bit warmer than the back of a clapped-out old banger parked in a field of geese.’

Knight flicked the indicator on.

  ‘Geese?’ he queried.

  ‘I’m assuming. Carry straight on for a couple of miles. What do we know about her?’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Raj said the body is female, that’s why he phoned me.’

  ‘Because of Lauren Cook?’

  ‘It’s a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t have any details. It was called in at about six this morning.’

  ‘Who’d be out at Moon Pond at that time of day, especially at the end of November?’

  ‘I’m told the call came from a teenager who was parked up there last night with her boyfriend.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yes. He’s older than her and she didn’t want her parents to know about it. I don’t think they were sure about what they saw, but she’d been awake all night worrying about it and finally rang in.’

  ‘And some of our lucky uniforms went to see?’

  ‘Yep. PC Lawrence and PC Roberts.’

  ‘Good thing we didn’t stay out too late last night then.’

Knight hesitated, then asked, ‘Did you have a good time?’

  ‘Apart from Chris and Faye doing their Cilla Black act, you mean?’

  ‘Ellie seemed nice.’

  ‘I’m sure she is, but that doesn’t mean I fancy her or that she fancies me. It’s only a month since Claire died.’

  ‘I know. They had good intentions.’

  ‘I’d rather they didn’t bother,’ Catherine muttered, sounding like a spoilt brat even to her own ears. ‘It’s the next right.’

They were out in the countryside now, the trees bare and the verges thick with frost, the road little more than a track. Catherine peered through the windscreen.

  ‘It’s here somewhere . . . Here, left here.’

Knight slowed down and they turned into a gravelled area. There were a couple of small white vans parked close together and a squad car stood to one side. Knight pulled in beside it. As they crossed the car park, the tiny stones crunching beneath their shoes, PC Roberts appeared with a clipboard in her hand. The outer cordon had already been set up, the familiar ‘POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS’ tape moving in the breeze.

  ‘Good morning. She’s by the pond, that way. Mick Caffery’s just getting set up.’ She gestured with her thumb. Catherine took the clipboard from her and signed her name, then handed it to Knight.

  ‘Morning, Nat. Good thing you were on the mineral water last night then?’

Roberts shuddered.

  ‘I’ll say. She’s not a pretty sight, I’m afraid, poor woman.’

  ‘Is it Lauren Cook?’ Catherine’s voice was quiet. Her stomach, already tight, seemed to turn over and she swallowed.

  ‘You’d better see for yourself, Sarge. To be honest, I’m not sure who she is and I don’t think you will be, either. You can see her from the path, you won’t need to get near enough to worry about contaminating the scene.’

  ‘I thought the kids who called it in were in a car?’ Knight asked, rubbing gloved hands together.

  ‘The boyfriend got out for a pee and thought he saw a body. He couldn’t believe his eyes and got his girlfriend to go and have a look.’

Roberts stamped her feet, the chill of the frozen ground finding its way through to her toes despite the uniform boots and her thickest thermal socks.

  ‘That was considerate of him,’ Catherine commented.

  ‘Yeah, now they’ll both be having nightmares. They couldn’t tell if it was human or just a roll of carpet or a lump of wood. So they said.’ She shrugged. ‘It was dark, I suppose. Emily’s staying by the body, I’ll wait here. There are a couple of other paths leading to the pond but this is the only one with a car park. Mick says that because of the severe frost last night he’s not expecting to find footprints, so we might never know which path she was brought down, if she was killed somewhere else and the body was dumped here. We’ve cordone
d
off all the possible routes anyway.’

  After they had donned their white protective suits, shoe covers, face masks and gloves, Knight led the way down the narrow winding path towards the pond. Catherine followed close behind him, careful where she put her feet. Although the ground was frozen, it would have been easy to trip and fall over the many stones and pieces of tree branch that littered the ground. Caffery had placed footplates here and there and she took care to set her foot in the centre of each one.

  The path soon opened out into a clearing with the pond itself beyond it. It was about the size of an average swimming pool, the water greenish-grey and still. The grass around the edge was short and trampled, but longer grass grew around the far side. Several trees surrounded the pond, a large fallen branch lying half in, half out of the water. Constable Lawrence stood about ten metres away, her hands tucked under her armpits, her breath visible in the freezing air. Catherine couldn’t see the body. The stocky figure of Mick Caffery, easily recognisable despite the protective suit, stood a few metres away talking to three members of his team.

  ‘You okay, Emily?’ Catherine called as they approached.

Emily Lawrence looked up and nodded a greeting. They were silent as they moved closer, almost reverent. Emily realised she was blocking their view and stepped away.

  On the far bank, lying on her side, propped against the trunk of another fallen tree was the dead woman. She was naked, her skin mottled. Her long blonde hair, tangled with pond weed, tumbled over her shoulder, covering her breasts. Her stomach gaped, a terrible wound that looked like raw meat but colourless, anaemic. And her face . . . Catherine swallowed, fighting the almost irresistible urge to close her eyes. Knight took a shaky breath beside her and Catherine reached out a hand and rested it on his shoulder for a second, as much for her own comfort as for his. Emily Lawrence was pale too, biting the inside of her lips, but keeping her back straight and her chin up. Catherine wanted to go to her, to tell her that this was the worst she would ever see, even though it wouldn’t be true. She knew only too well that there was no limit to the horror people could inflict on each other.

  The woman’s face had been obliterated. The bones of her face were pulverised, the flesh a churned mess of blood and tissue.

17

‘I’ve asked them to set a tent up over her,’ Mick Caffery said. He nodded towards two members of his team who were leaving the area. A third had started taking photographs of the body. ‘I’m not hopeful of finding too much because of the conditions, but we’ll do our best.’

  ‘Do you think she was killed out here?’ Catherine asked, though she had a good idea what Mick would say. His eyes twinkled at her for a second above the face mask he still wore.

  ‘Do you, Sergeant?’

Catherine glanced over at the body again, before saying, ‘No.’

  ‘I’d be inclined to agree, but you know how it goes. We’ll need to wait for the pathologist. Is she on her way?’

  ‘I’ll call her now,’ Knight said, taking his phone from his pocket. ‘I’ll also request some uniforms so we can get a fingertip search started, okay, Mick?’

Caffery nodded, then carried on speaking as Knight moved away.

  ‘If she wasn’t killed here, she must have been dragged or carried. There’s no way a vehicle could have been brought near. I’ve already established that the widest path leading from the car park to the pond here should be our common approach path. There’s no way we could get our equipment down any other way, they’re barely big enough for one person.’

With a frown Catherine asked, ‘Doesn’t that mean that the same path is the most likely way of whoever dumped her here getting in though?’

  ‘It looks to me as if she’s been dead for a couple of days,’ Mick said. ‘If that’s so, we’ve no way of knowing yet when she was brought here. Any number of people could have walked down that path in the meantime. I’m not hopeful of finding much in the way of evidence out here, so it’s important that we preserve the body as best we can and hope the post-mortem gives us more clues. I’m fairly confident that the path we’re using wasn’t used by whoever brought her; there are few snapped branches and signs of trampling on another of the paths which leads from a side road. Maybe they didn’t want to leave their vehicle in the car park.’

Knight rejoined them. ‘Doctor Webber is on her way. I presume we’ll need to search the pond as well?’

Mick nodded. ‘We should do. Who knows what might be down there.’

‘I’ll update the DCI.’

As Knight stepped away again with his phone, Mick lowered his voice. ‘How are you getting on with him?’

Catherine frowned. ‘With DI Knight?’

  ‘He seems all right to me, but I’ve heard mutterings about him being a bit odd.’

  ‘I like him.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Mick glanced over to where the body lay, the tent now almost fully erected around it. ‘I better get back over there. I’ve a bad feeling about this one, Catherine. Her face . . .’

  ‘And her stomach.’

  ‘Well, I have an idea about that, but we’ll wait for the pathologist.’

Catherine watched him walk away. She had a bad feeling herself. Worse, she had no idea if the dead woman was Lauren Cook. The corpse’s battered face made comparisons with the photographs she’d seen of Lauren impossible. The hair was the same colour and looked to be a similar length, but they would need much more than that.

  As soon as Mark opened his eyes, he wrapped the duvet around himself, reached over to the other side of the bed for Lauren’s pillow and held it close. The scent of her perfume lingered on the pillowcase and he pressed it to his face, breathing it in. He could hear Celia’s voice; she and Geoff must be up already. They had insisted on staying the night, or at least Celia had. Geoff would no doubt rather have gone home to his own bed. It sounded as if they were in the kitchen, probably drinking some of the milky tea that they preferred and Mark hated. Celia had never asked how he liked his tea, or coffee, or anything else. It would never have occurred to her that other people might have different preferences to herself. Though she was generous in her own way, she wasn’t a considerate woman. He’d better get up; it wasn’t polite to leave them down there on their own, though it was what he felt like doing. At least he could be sure that the kitchen was spotlessly clean.

  ‘Did you sleep, Mark? I didn’t get a wink,’ Celia started bleating at him straight away. Mark didn’t think it wise to mention that Celia’s snoring had practically rattled the windows, so he just shook his head and went over to refill the kettle. Celia swooped on him.

  ‘You sit down, let me do that. I want to keep myself busy. Now, Geoff and I have been talking about what we can do.’

Mark silently corrected her:
You mean you’ve been telling Geoff what he’s going to do.

He sat at the small table in the corner of the kitchen, opposite his father-in-law. Geoff was drinking from Lauren’s favourite mug, which was oversized and decorated with a beach scene. They’d brought it back from a holiday they’d taken before they were married. Corfu, he thought. His hands clenched into fists beneath the tabletop. Mark wasn’t sure why Geoff using the cup was bothering him so much, but he wanted to rip it out of the other man’s hand. He didn’t, of course; Mark never lost control.

  Almost never.

  Celia set a mug of tea in front of him. Pale, weak and unappealing. He picked up the cup and sipped anyway.

  ‘I think we should go back to the police station today,’ Celia went on. ‘That Sergeant Bishop had no intention of helping us. Well, we’ll see about that. I’ll insist on seeing her boss if we’re not satisfied. Geoff will have to go out for his walk first, the doctor’s insisting he gets more exercise since he retired. At least three miles a day, isn’t it, love?’ Geoff nodded, winking at Mark as he did so. Mark gave Geoff a tiny smile. More like three pints a day. Celia bustled back over to the worktop. ‘I’ll do you some toast, Mark.’

Mark tuned her out. He didn’t want any toast, but it was pointless saying so. Celia had toast for breakfast, therefore so did everyone else. Geoff still hadn’t spoken.

  As Mark stood to take his plate to the sink, having managed to force most of the toast down his throat, there was a knock at the front door. Celia looked at him.

  ‘Do you want me to go?’ she demanded. Geoff sighed, lifting his gaze to the ceiling.

  ‘It’s their house, Celia, not ours. I’m sure Mark can manage.’

  ‘I’m only trying to help. He’s got enough on his mind,’ Celia tutted.

Mark ignored them both and turned away. He felt sick, his stomach lurching. It could be anyone, of course: someone wanting to read the gas meter, a delivery driver or lost motorist. It wouldn’t be though, he knew it.

  Sure enough, as he approached the front door he could see two hazy figures silhouetted through the privacy glass panel, one tall, one shorter. Dark clothes. He gulped and all at once seemed to be floating, not walking, down the hallway with his breath coming in uneven gasps. The door felt heavy when he pulled it open.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Cook. I wonder if we could come in?’

Mark knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help it. He gazed at them, his mouth working. Then he was aware of movement behind him and Geoff pushing him aside, his hands gentle.

  ‘Sergeant Bishop. Good morning.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Chantry. This is my colleague, Detective Constable Lancaster. Could we come in, please?’

Celia shouted from the kitchen. ‘Let them in, Geoff. I hope she’s got some good news for us.’

Geoff winced. ‘I’m sorry about my wife,’ he said in an undertone. ‘She’s very worried.’

Catherine inclined her head. ‘I understand.’

Celia also appeared in the hallway, the five of them cramped together uncomfortably. Mark recovered himself a little and suggested, ‘Shall we go into the living room?’ They all trooped after him and he waved a listless hand towards the three-piece suite. ‘Please sit down.’

Sergeant Bishop unbuttoned her woollen coat. Today’s suit was black, Mark saw, with a pale lilac shirt beneath it. He had no idea why he’d taken note of her clothes; he never usually saw such details. Lauren had moaned at him countless times for not noticing her new dress or haircut. He could hear the clock on the dresser ticking too, as if his senses were somehow heightened. The male police officer was silent. He took a small black notebook from his coat pocket and looked expectantly at Catherine Bishop, who shuffled forward a little.

  ‘Mr Cook, we’re here because there’s been a development.’ Her voice was formal, precise.

  ‘Have you found her?’ Celia demanded. Mark’s mouth was suddenly dry. He fought the urge to bolt from the room.

  ‘I’m afraid not. However,’ DS Bishop glanced at her colleague. ‘With your permission, Mr Cook, we’d like to take some items belonging to Lauren with us, so that we can carry out some tests.’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t mind, do you, Mark? Anything to find her,’ Celia butted in again.

  ‘It’s Mr Cook’s permission we need, Mrs Chantry.’ Catherine set her jaw, attempting to keep the bite from her tone. Celia’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘If you want me to shut up, Sergeant, just say so.’

DC Lancaster’s lips twitched, but he said nothing. Geoff Chantry exclaimed, ‘Celia!’

  ‘Take anything you like,’ Mark croaked. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘If it’s okay, I’ll need access to your bathroom and your wife’s clothes and other possessions. We’ll give you receipts for anything we take away, of course.’

  ‘Will I get them back? When Lauren comes home, she’ll need them.’ Mark’s voice disappeared and Geoff Chantry cleared his throat.

  ‘Can I just ask what’s changed, Sergeant Bishop? Yesterday, and we do understand why, but you said you couldn’t help us.’

Catherine hesitated, but only for a second. She hadn’t wanted them to know but better to hear it from her now than on the television later on.

  ‘I’m afraid that a body was discovered this morning.’

Celia gasped, one hand covering her mouth. Mark sat as if turned to stone, his hands on his knees, his mouth open, while Geoff stood and went to the window, staggering slightly. He gazed out onto the tiny front garden.

  ‘Do you think it’s Lauren?’ he asked.

Celia whispered, ‘No. No, it can’t be.’

  ‘At this stage, we just don’t know. I’m sorry.’ Catherine’s voice was gentle.

  ‘There she is, her picture’s on the wall, I’ve got hundreds more on my phone.’ Mark exploded. ‘How can you not know? Is it Lauren or not?’ He got up, strode across to the opposite wall, yanked down a wedding photo and shoved it under Catherine Bishop’s nose. ‘Here she is, look. Is it her? Tell me!’ She looked up at him, perfectly calm.

  ‘Mr Cook, please sit down.’

He paced restlessly. ‘You’ve eyes in your head, just tell me. Is my wife dead?’

Geoff Chantry said, ‘Mark, please. Let them do their job.’

Mark rounded on him. ‘Come on, Geoff, how hard can it be? Is it Lauren or isn’t it?’

Catherine was on her feet now. ‘Mr Cook, please sit down. If you’ll listen to me I’ll explain as much as I can. I’m sorry to say, there is a possibility that the woman we’ve found is Lauren. We need some of her possessions so that we can either confirm her identity, or rule the possibility out.’

Mark stumbled over to the armchair and sank into it. ‘You mean you can’t tell by looking? What sort of state is she in?’ His head span, and he knew he had to be careful.

Catherine shook her head as Celia began to sob.

  ‘Please, Mr Cook. The sooner you give me your permission, the sooner we can answer your questions.’

He slumped forward, his head in his hands. ‘I’ve already said, take anything you want.’

  ‘Thank you. It shouldn’t take long. Could you tell me if Lauren has any tattoos or other distinguishing marks please? And her blood group, if you know it?’

  ‘She doesn’t have tattoos, she doesn’t like them.’ Mark’s voice was almost a whisper. ‘No scars or anything like that. I don’t know her blood group.’

  ‘It’s A positive,’ Celia told them, her voice choked. Lancaster noted it down.

  ‘Thank you. I’m going to go upstairs now if that’s okay – I’ll just be a few minutes.’

Mark Cook gave a listless nod and Catherine turned away, just wanting to be out of there now. Lancaster followed her out of the room.

  Back in the hallway, Catherine closed her eyes for a second, running a hand across her mouth.

  ‘I’ll nip up to the bathroom and see if she’s left her toothbrush, or there might be a hairbrush,’ she whispered. ‘You stay here and make sure none of them leave the room.’

Lancaster nodded and Catherine turned to go up the stairs. She trod lightly, trying to make her presence as unobtrusive as possible. Marching into people’s lives and turning them upside down wasn’t part of the job she enjoyed, but it was unavoidable. They’d usually been turned upside down already.

  Slipping on a pair of blue nitrile gloves, she glanced around. Four doors opened off the landing. One was ajar and she poked her head around it. It was the bathroom, painted in a light blue with sparkling white tiles, very clean with a lemony scent slightly masking the stronger smell of bleach. She stepped over to the wash basin, also white and set into a wooden unit. Squatting down, she opened the cupboard doors. There was only one toothbrush, standing in a small glass - a green one. Catherine wrinkled her nose. It had to be Mark’s but she needed to be sure. She went to the top of the stairs and called, ‘Dave?’ Lancaster appeared. ‘Can you check with Mr Cook if this green toothbrush is his, please?’