No Lovelier Death (7 page)

‘In Dad’s garden, you mean?’

‘Yeah. They’d have known from Rachel there was a pool next door. So they hop over the fence and stagger around and maybe one of them falls in and the other one gets him out, and then …’ He shrugged. ‘Fuck knows.’

‘So why all the drama?’

‘A body’s a body. Blokes in the Job take death seriously. It’s what they do.’

‘So maybe we’re not talking murder at all? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yeah, maybe we’re not. Just a bunch of kids trashing someone else’s house. What did Nelly say?’

‘She didn’t know. Not when I talked to her first thing.’

‘Fine. Just relax, then. It’s cushty. No way would Baz have done anything silly. He’ll be sitting it out until they can’t think of anything else to ask him. Then he’ll be home again.’

She nodded, unconvinced, then turned to find her youngest daughter standing in the kitchen doorway. Her tiny face was covered in the tangerine Post-its that Winter kept by the telephone. Each carried the logo of the Burj al-Arab hotel, one of the many trophies Winter had brought back from a thank-you trip to Dubai.

‘Guy did this, Mummy,’ she piped. ‘He’s always horrible to me.’

 

DCI Gail Parsons was back in Portsmouth by half past two. She’d rung ahead, asking Faraday to convene the first of the
Mandolin
management meetings for 14.45. She’d borrowed the Detective Superintendent’s office and wanted all the principals to attend. That, she emphasised, included the hard-pressed civvy ex-journo who headed Media Relations.

Faraday had done her bidding. It was strange seeing the DCI behind Martin Barrie’s desk. Parsons seemed to occupy it with an instinctive air of entitlement, as if she’d been storing her handbag beside the battered old chair for months. The forbidden tang of Barrie’s roll-ups still hung in the stale air, and Parsons had both windows open before the
Mandolin
team began to gather around the conference table at the other end of the office.

As brisk as ever, she kick-started the meeting with news from the post-mortem. Marie Mackenzie, she said, had found two bodies lying full-length beside her pool. One was Rachel Ault, the other Gareth Hughes. Rachel had stab wounds and was plainly dead. Marie had tried to revive Gareth, thinking he might be unconscious, but quickly realised he too was beyond help.

Hours later the attending pathologist examining Hughes had noted a number of facial injuries including a patterned stamp mark on his left cheek. There was blood on the paving stones beneath his head, with more blood beside Rachel’s body, and the pathologist had found evidence of an impact injury on the rear right-hand side of his scalp. In Jenny’s view, this might be consistent with a backwards fall.

‘Stamp mark?’ Jimmy Suttle wanted to know more.

Parsons was leafing through her notes. She produced a digital print taken last night at the poolside. Hughes had milky white skin and reddish gelled hair. He lay cheek down on the paving stones beside the swimming pool. His mouth hung open, revealing a line of crooked teeth, and blood was caked around an injury to his left eye. More blood pinked the whiteness of his T-shirt.

Faraday lingered for a moment over the image before passing it down the table. The stamp mark on the lad’s cheek was clearly visible, a windfall lead, but what caught Faraday’s attention was the hint of vulnerability, even surprise, in the still-open eyes. Whatever Gareth Hughes had been expecting from last night’s party, it certainly hadn’t included this.

Suttle briefly studied the stamp mark. The sole pattern suggested a trainer of some sort. In due course the imaging department at Netley would be supplying full albums of photographs but this one was high priority.

‘Nice one.’ He made himself a note. ‘I’ll action it.’

Parsons ran through the findings on Hughes at post-mortem. Periorbital haematoma around the left eye with areas of laceration to the inner eyebrow. Superficial scratches on his forehead. Bruising inside his mouth plus a single-line fracture running from the rear of his skull. That was pretty much it.

‘Any self-defence injuries?’ It was Proctor.

‘None that Jenny could find.’

‘That makes him unlucky, doesn’t it? Either it was over in seconds or he didn’t put up much of a fight.’

Parsons nodded in agreement. In the pathologist’s view a backward fall onto the paving stones could have been fatal.

‘So we’re looking at some kind of confrontation?’ Jimmy Suttle again.

‘I think that’s a safe assumption.’

Heads nodded around the table. Proctor asked about Rachel Ault. Eyes turned towards Parsons.

‘She was beside the pool as well, four metres from Hughes. She had injuries to her face and neck, and more bruising to her lower ribcage. Jenny found multiple stab wounds to her chest and abdomen. She had a major internal injury to the aorta. There was certainly enough blood loss to kill her. The size and depth of the entry wounds would suggest a ten-centimetre blade. We might be talking about a kitchen knife, a hunting knife, a switchblade, whatever.’

‘Nothing recovered?’ Faraday this time.

‘Not yet.’

Faraday turned to the other photo. The brightness of the flash on the camera had done her no favours, but Rachel Ault had been striking. Her face was bloodied but it spoke of a strength and purpose that had survived sudden death. She had a full mouth, her lips drawn back in what - to Faraday - looked like a gasp, and it was all too easy to imagine the scene by the swimming pool, the unimaginable strangeness of a knife driving into her flesh, the sudden flooding warmth as her belly filled with blood. He gazed at the photo a moment longer. Her eyes were open, a startling green.

‘Some of the blood by the pool is presumably hers?’ he asked.

‘Could be. We’re talking two locations by the poolside. The samples went off this morning. We’ll know for sure within a week or so.’

Faraday nodded, returning to the photo. Even now, after years on the Major Crime Team, he was always fascinated by the way that a lab analyst a hundred miles away could begin to coax a narrative from a few drops of blood.

Parsons hadn’t finished.

‘Jenny took body swabs at the poolside, and a fresh set before the PM began. She found semen in the girl’s vagina. More in her throat. She also mentioned a strong smell of alcohol.’

‘And the lad? He’d been drinking as well?’

‘The tox results won’t be back for weeks, and Jenny’s not prepared to chance her arm on an exact time of death, but the party had probably been going on a while by the time they died so it’s a reasonable assumption that he’d had a few. Probably more than a few.’

Faraday finally passed Rachel’s photo down the table. In his morning briefing he’d alerted interview teams to the importance of sightings of Rachel and Gareth. When had they last been clocked at the party? Who had they been with? What had they been up to?

Parsons had finished with the PM. The pathologist’s full report should be available within three weeks, she said, but now she wanted to concentrate on the interviews and statement-taking. She’d couldn’t remember a homicide with so many potential witnesses. In some ways it reminded her of the aftermath of a train crash or a terrorist incident: multiple points of view knotting into a single complex story.

‘Joe?’

Faraday glanced up, nodding. He’d had a brief phone conversation with one of the Crime Scene Investigators starting work on Ault’s house. In many ways the DCI’s image of a bomb attack was all too telling: blood and wreckage everywhere, almost beyond belief, and an aftermath that might stretch - for some - deep into the future. The picture of last night’s events, just now, was still chaotic. Facts first, he thought.

‘We’re dealing with ninety-four individuals,’ he began. ‘Most of them agreed to attend as witnesses. We’ve filled all fourteen custody centres within the force, plus eight more under the mutual aid arrangements. Interviews out-of-county are being handled by their own personnel. We’re obviously processing the rest.’

‘How are you prioritising?’ There was an edge of impatience in Parsons’s voice. Busy lady. Lots to do.

‘I drew up a matrix first thing. We need to winnow out the chaff. Anyone with obvious signs of injury or blood on their shoes or clothing goes to the top of the list. Likewise anyone with previous. Ideally, I’d have preferred to put the bad eggs in one basket but last night that was impossible. We batched them in the order they came out. That means the possibles and probables are pretty much dispersed. By now, most of the kids will have been released. Potential suspects we’ll bring back to the Bridewell.’

‘How many are we talking?’

Faraday glanced down at his notes. He’d been anticipating exactly this question.

‘Nineteen,’ he said carefully. ‘I’m assuming whoever had a hand in the killings probably legged it. But they would have had mates. And they’re the ones we’ll be talking to.’

‘Anyone top of the list?’

‘Not so far, not to my knowledge, but Jimmy and I won’t be looking at statements until this afternoon.’

Suttle nodded. It would be his job to comb every statement and begin to match one account against another. Parsons caught his eye.

‘You’ve got something to add?’

‘Only that I took a phone call from Thames Valley just before we kicked off. They’ve got a girl up in Reading. Samantha Muirhead. It turns out she was Rachel Ault’s best friend. She’s slightly older too. Lives out in the country. Agreed to be a DD.’

‘DD?’

‘Designated driver. Which means she was sober.’

‘And?’

‘She’s upset, obviously, but if we’re looking for a decent account the D/I up there thinks she’d be a good place to start.’

‘You want to re-interview her?’ Parsons was looking at Faraday.

‘Definitely.’

‘Is she happy to do that, Jimmy?’

‘According to the D/I, yes. Her parents are up there with her. They’re driving her down from Reading. I told him we’d have someone at the Bridewell.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘About now.’

He’d alerted the Custody Sergeant to expect them. Faraday shot him a look, said they’d talk to the girl together. The Thames Valley D/I had been right. At this stage in the game
Mandolin
needed an overview.

Parsons agreed. Already briefed by Faraday, she’d virtually dismissed Mackenzie as a prime suspect. Regretfully, there was every indication that he’d simply been playing the good neighbour. She gave Faraday a nod, asking him for more detail.

Scenes of Crime, he said, had found blood in Mackenzie’s kitchen. There’d been smears on the lip of a glass beside the sink, and there’d been more blood on a flannel and a towel in the upstairs bathroom, and on one of the pillows in the Mackenzies’ bedroom.

Challenged to explain these stains, Mackenzie had claimed the blood as his own. To be honest, he couldn’t remember going to the kitchen but he must have fancied a glass of water. Upstairs in the bathroom, still bleeding, he remembered mopping his face with a flannel. Marie kept Ibuprofen in the cabinet over the sink. He’d popped four of them before calling it a night.

Monitoring the interview from the adjoining suite, Faraday had phoned through to the scene and minutes later the CSI had re-confirmed Mackenzie’s story in every detail. Blood had tracked Mackenzie’s path to bed. Then, still leaking onto the pillow, he’d crashed out.

Mackenzie’s solicitor, said Faraday, was pushing hard for early release. Swabs from the bloodstains would be dispatched for analysis but full DNA results wouldn’t be back until the end of the week. Under these circumstances there was no point in holding him with a view to any kind of custody extension. His wife, Faraday added, had corroborated every element in her husband’s account.

Turning to Suttle, Parsons asked about mobiles. He said that sixty-seven had been seized last night, and another fourteen recovered from the house or the garden. Numbers had been tallied for billing purposes, and the lot had gone to the Comms Intelligence Unit at Netley for analysis. He was anticipating a wealth of images, including video, and in the shape of three seized digital cameras
Mandolin
was looking at another windfall.

Faraday, collecting his notes, briefly pondered this development. Suttle was right. Kids these days were obsessed by images and material retrieved from phones might well wrap up the investigation. Live by the mobe, he thought grimly, die by the mobe.

He glanced up to find Parsons on her feet. She wanted another conference late afternoon for a Scenes of Crime update ahead of the full squad meet. In the meantime she’d be briefing the duty Detective Superintendent. Was there anything else that couldn’t wait until five?

There was a brief silence, broken by D/S Glen Thatcher. His Outside Enquiry teams were already doing house-to-house calls the length of Sandown Road and beyond, hunting for any shred of evidence that might help with the bigger picture. He was looking at Parsons.

‘We’re getting a load of grief from the residents.’ He said, ‘Putting it bluntly, they think we were piss poor. Some of these people are well connected. Maybe you should pass the word, boss.’

The civvy in charge of Media Relations sat at the end of the table. She’d once been a reporter on BBC South. Parsons favoured her with a smile.

‘Yours, I think, Debbie. Maybe we should have some kind of strategy in place. Glad you could find time to attend.’

 

Nelly Tien’s call found Winter looking for his trousers. After Esme and the kids had departed he’d gone back to bed for a kip. Nelly sounded harassed.

‘Mr Mackenzie is about to be released from custody. He wants to know where you are.’

‘Gunwharf, love. The flat.’

‘Fine. I’ll drive him round.’

‘And Marie?’

‘She’s sitting beside me. She got out an hour ago.’

Nelly ended the call without saying goodbye, even more clipped than usual. Trouble, Winter thought, wondering whether he ought to sort out a fresh shirt.