One Last Lesson (16 page)

‘Where was I?’

‘You were heading into the bushes with the torch looking for a place
to pee.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. So I move deeper in the bushes so Jenny, that’s Mrs Holmes, still sitting in the car down there can’t see me
, and here I notice something strange catch the light, something white. So I like go over thinking its maybe a scarf or blanket or something, and then I lean in and take a closer look.’

He heard one of the
technicians shout, ‘ok to switch on!’ and seconds later their little group was brightly lit in a cold, white light enabling him to get a better look at his two witnesses. Franks was young, about twenty-five with a thin, weathered face which in combination with a long, narrow nose gave him a hungry, hawkish look. His hair was trendy, as were the leather jacket and trousers but Henderson suspected he was making the best of the iffy hand as even the best hairdresser and tailor in town couldn’t make him look more handsome.

Holmes was a few years older,
which Henderson estimated to be about mid-thirties with shoulder-length brown hair and a pretty, rounded face marred only by a thin, two-inch scar below her right eye. She was smartly dressed in a pink cardigan, grey pleated skirt and navy duffle coat and it was clear she had been enjoying the clubhouse hospitality as her breath reeked heavily of booze. In comparison to her gregarious companion, she was withdrawn and taciturn and had such a guilty expression on her face that Henderson thought she would make a better perpetrator than a witness.

‘Then, I see it’s a body and I, you know, I kinda back away in
shock. I ain’t never seen a dead body before, only in films and on the telly and that. I’m telling you, I was scared just in case the bloke that did it was still hanging around.’

‘Did you touch or move anything?’

‘What me? No, I touched nothing. I’ve seen enough of these cop shows on telly to know you don’t touch nothing otherwise the crime scene gets contaminated, right?’

‘Quite right Mr Franks. So what did you do then?’

‘I went straight back to the car and I must have been white as a sheet as she knew right away something was wrong, didn’t you love?’

‘T
oo true. He was babbling like an idiot and paler than I’ve ever seen him before. After he got his act together and told me what he saw, we phoned you lot.’

He turned to Walters. ‘Carol, take Mrs Holmes back to her car and I’ll walk up to the crime scene with Mr Franks and he can show me
where he walked. Thank you for your help Mrs Holmes.’

While Walters took Mrs Holmes by the arm and guided her back towards the car, Henderson and Franks made their way towards the wall of incident tape. Suddenly, he stopped walking and gripped the younger man’s arm.

‘Mr Franks, in situations like this when we find an unnamed girl in the middle of nowhere, my job is hard enough without people like you giving me the run-around.’

‘What d’ya mean? I’m telling the truth.’

‘No you’re not. Mrs Holmes was with you when you went into the bushes, wasn’t she? I could see it in her face.’ He leaned over and moved his face closer to his. ‘Wasn’t she?’

A
sly smile crossed his face. ‘It’s true! You coppers really can read people’s faces and tell if they’re lying, and all that, can’t you? Tell me how you do it, as I’m a big fan of ‘Lie To Me.’

‘It
wasn’t so hard, I assure you. Well was she?’

‘I didn’t want to say owt
but yeah she was. We come out here once a week for a bit of nookie and that. It’s what she likes, you know, the outdoor stuff. Is that what you wanna hear?’

‘If it’s the truth.’

‘It is. We both come up here and I was looking for a good place to put the blanket down when I saw the body, I swear that’s what happened.’

‘I believe you. So why did you lie to me before?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘Because she’s married but not to you?’

‘Got in it one, Mr Detective.’

‘So, I take it you never
made it to the bit where you put the blanket down, or did you spot the body afterwards?’

‘Give me a break
mate, that would put me off for life if I knew we was shagging beside a stiff… I mean a dead body. Nah, we were just about to put it there,’ he said pointing to a spot close by, ‘when I shone the torch around because like I heard a rabbit or something. Then I saw her. The rest of it is what we told you before. I never touched her, I swear. The bit about being spooked after I saw the body and all that was true as well. I was well scared, I’m telling you, we both were.’

The look of contrition on his face was enough for Henderson
. Franks was telling the truth and was now giving him a true picture of events. He asked him to repeat the story once again and when there was nothing more to tell, let him go but not before warning him they might need to speak to him again. He called over a constable to escort him down to where DS Walters and Mrs Holmes were, and then moved up the hill towards the crime scene.

The pathologist had been in situ for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes
, enough time perhaps for even Mrs Singh to draw some preliminary conclusions. He ducked under the incident tape and knelt down beside her. ‘Evening Doc.’

‘Good evening, Inspector Henderson.
I hope you know, I interrupted my monthly book club meeting to be here.’

‘
Your book club’s loss is our gain. From the quick look I took earlier, she looks depressingly similar to the girl in Mannings Heath, Sarah Robson.’

She
carried on working, her gloved hand feeling around the neck for broken bones. ‘I would be forced to agree with you. Death by what looks like a severe head wound, bruises on her face indicating a sustained assault, bruises and scratches on her stomach and legs indicating sexual assault and left naked with no evidence to help trace her or find her attacker. It is as close to Sarah Robson’s MO as you would hope to find.’ She looked round at him and for the first time, he saw softness in her eyes. ‘I’m bound to say Detective Inspector, I do think you now have a major problem on your hands.’

In the space of a few days, Henderson with assistance from his MSA, Eileen Hayes and the Senior Support Officer at Sussex House, Tony Monaghan a no-nonsense Belfast-boy with a wicked sense of humour and a serious body odour issue, scraped together enough desks, office space and the officers necessary to equip and staff up yet another major murder enquiry.

Despite
striking similarities between the two cases, they would be investigated by two separate teams, both under his direction, as even though they shared a strikingly similar MO, there was no definite evidence yet to point to the same killer and the spectre of a serial killer haunting the lanes, byways and golf courses of Sussex did not bear thinking about. In any case, it didn’t make much difference to the amount of work required as there still was a murder scene to analyse, a post-mortem to attend, a girl’s family to deal with once they discovered who she was and numerous forms, folders and procedures to complete, authorise and file, which were unique to each case.

At ten-
thirty, DS Walters walked into his office wearing a solemn face and her coat, his signal to get the hell out of there. No sooner had they edged out of the Sussex House car park, before a hand snaked across to the radio and changed the station from Radio 4 to Southern FM. Before he could object to the loss of Woman’s Hour, Rachel’s attempt to keep him in touch with his feminine side, whatever that might be, she turned to face him. ‘We got a lucky break when we identified Sarah Robson so quickly,’ she said. ‘Do you think the same thing will happen here?’

‘It’
s hard to say. From what I saw, she didn’t look homeless or uncared for, so I think it’s only a matter of time before somebody reports her missing.’

‘Hopefully,
but you read so many stories in the papers about all the single girls living alone in anonymous apartment blocks because of work, family or personal relationships that have broken down. You never know, we could be in for a long slog.’

‘Is this the part when I ooze sympathy for your sad and lonely existence in that cold and draughty flat of yours in Queens Park?’

‘God no, I love my little flat. It’s a sanctuary from all the mayhem that’s out there, I can tell you.’

At the junction of Crowhurst Road and Carden Avenue
they approached a queue of traffic waiting at the roundabout, and for a couple of minutes they were stuck behind a white van which looked badly in need of a wash just as much as his car did. He was staring blankly out of the side window, looking at nothing in particular and trying to think about even less, but the constant buzz in his brain wouldn’t allow it.

‘Let’s think the unthinkable,’ he said as they began to
inch forward. ‘After the P-M, have your lunch, that is if your stomach can stand it, and then take a picture of the girl over to Lewes University and show it to the registrar, or whoever deals with the student body and find out if she’s a student there. But listen, on no account show it to Jon Lehman or Alan Stark or broadcast the fact that we’re trying to identify a dead girl.’

She didn’t say much for a few minutes. ‘So you think this girl might be a student and by implication, might have appeared on
Lehman’s porno web site?’

‘
I didn’t say that and I don’t want it to be true as that would mean we have a serial killer on our hands but we would be remiss if we didn’t.’

‘It’ll ruffle a few feathers if anyone finds out. It could create panic.’

‘That’s why you need to be discrete and make up a story as to why you’re looking for her and not alert them to what we’re doing, but if you think mere rumours will upset them, just think what’ll happen if it turns out to be true.’

They were
now in the busiest section of the Lewes Road where a few years ago, blind and deaf town planners allowed the construction of a Sainsbury’s supermarket alongside a B&Q superstore, several petrol stations and numerous small shops and businesses and as a result, they crawled along in nose-to-tail traffic, something they did every time they came this way. Somewhere in the midst of this slow moving dance of metal and glass was the turn-off to the Brighton and Hove Mortuary and despite the nature of their visit, Henderson was pleased when it finally appeared just after Newmarket Road.

It was always a shock to drive through the entrance gates
and enter this oasis of serenity, full of flowers, grass, trees and twittering birds and leaving all thoughts of traffic jams, snarl-ups and exhaust fumes far behind but although greatly appreciated, it was largely ignored by the detectives as they steeled themselves for what was to come.

If Girabala Singh spoke little when she attended a crime scene, she was positively loquacious in her own domain, the bleak and scrubbed down walls of the mortuary room. In some respects, it was diffi
cult for her not to as she was recording her findings with a head microphone. To one side of the stainless steel table on which lay the body recovered from West Hove Golf Course, a small audience was standing close by and hanging on to her every word.

In addition to Henderson and Walters, it includ
ed the Crime Scene Manager, Pat Davison, the Coroner’s Officer, Davis Mason and mortuary assistant Sonya Feya. Moving slowly around the prostrate body and taking pictures to add to those already taken at the golf course, was Jamil Ahmed, forensic photographer from the Crime Scene Team. He was dressed sombrely in black shirt and trousers and his measured behaviour was a world-away from the brazen paparazzi that harassed actors, pop stars and errant footballers, a dose of which he occasionally received on the steps of a court building or while escorting a high-profile prisoner into custody.

Mrs Singh was working her way down from the top of the girl’s open skull.
One time, after attending an ear, nose and throat specialist for a broken nose, his father once remarked that it was a gruesome job to look in someone’s ear or nose all day long and wondered what sort of conversations it sparked at the dinner table or at a party. Obviously, he had never stood in this room or watched the plethora of CSI-style programmes on television which presented a watered-down version of this without the putrid smells or the grating noise of the bone-cutting saw that always made his teeth sit on edge, or else this would have made it to the top of his list.

As she worked, he was mentally ticking off the similarities
between her and Sarah Robson and how alike the two girls appeared: in height, build, hair, and drop-dead good looks. Her hair was short and dark, two rows of even, white teeth and a beautiful, attractive face, although it was hard reconciling the image he was constructing in his mind with the pale, lifeless cadaver in front of him.

There was something else which took a few seconds for him to spot. If he could ignore the bruises, the scratches, the bite marks and all the
other consequences of the attack, her skin was flawless with no tattoos or metal piercings, and coupled with larger than average boobs, slim waist, long legs and no pubic hair, she was ideal fodder for Lehman’s porn site. His face reddened; he needed a wall to kick or a Business Studies lecturer to punch.