Primal Cut (15 page)

Garrod hesitated for a moment. He held a butterfly in his hands. First he would pull its wings off.

He turned right.

Bob Woollard rose at 6 a.m. the following morning. As was his habit, he ate two fried eggs and a hunk of ham for his breakfast. Since his wife’s departure four years previously, he always ate alone. At 7 a.m.
he toured the farm to make sure that all his employees were going about their tasks in the correct fashion. Then at 8 a.m. he unlocked the door to his cellar and fed his dogs. He kept their food out of sight inside the cellar itself. The animals barked furiously as he approached, sensing the arrival of their morning feed. He currently owned four fighting dogs: ‘Karl’, the huge Tosa that had destroyed George Norlington’s dog, and three American pit bulls: ‘Buster Boots’, ‘Pitt the Elder’ and ‘Pitt the Younger’. Woollard still smiled whenever he thought of the last two.

Buster Boots was his favourite: a powerful, experienced animal that had won him a small fortune over the years. Buster was so named as he had white patches around each of his feet. There were also small patches of white hair around the dog’s face and shoulders that contrasted starkly with his otherwise tan-coloured coat. The patches weren’t caused by old age. They were the sites of old wounds over which hair had eventually regrown. It was a tell-tale sign of an experienced fighting dog.

Woollard fed them on a consistent diet of dry food. This he kept in sacks in his cellar. He varied their diet very little. Despite their tough exterior, his pit bulls had sensitive stomachs. Besides, it paid to keep them lean and hungry. Fat dogs rarely won
fights. He slid their food trays through the feeding flap in the side of their steel cages. Although the animals were generally affectionate towards him, it was best to be wary with fighting dogs. After breakfast he would watch his stable lad Kev working the dogs on the ‘turntable’: a type of treadmill with a flat surface that moved under the dogs as they ran. It was an old-fashioned training device but Woollard preferred traditional methods.

He left the dogs to their breakfast and returned upstairs, locking the padlock on the cellar door behind him. The door itself was contained within a false cupboard. This rendered it invisible from inside the house. As he stepped out, Woollard replaced the false panel at the back of the cupboard. It was a cumbersome precaution but he was acutely aware of the laws against training and fighting dangerous dogs in the UK. He resolved to send Kev down immediately: the dogs got restless until they had been thoroughly exercised. As he left the main house again in search of his dog trainer, a police squad car and van drove into the courtyard of his farm. Woollard had been half-expecting this moment since the death of Lefty Shaw. He wondered if Gwynne had squealed on him: if so, the pit bulls might have a new toy to play with very soon.

DI Mike Bevan got out of the squad car and
headed directly for Woollard. Outwardly unperturbed, Woollard lit his first cigarette of the morning.

‘Mr Woollard?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’m DI Mike Bevan. We have a warrant for your arrest and one to search your premises.’

‘Why may I ask?’

‘We are investigating the murder of Lefty Shaw. He was an associate of yours.’

‘I knew him,’ Woollard nodded. ‘I had no reason to kill him though. He was a friend.’

‘I should warn you that anything you say will be recorded,’ Bevan said through a helpful smile.

‘You’re charging me then?’

‘No. We have information that Shaw was killed on these premises and moved elsewhere.’ Bevan handed over his paperwork. ‘That’s the search warrant.’

Woollard read it carefully. It seemed in order. He was not particularly nervous. The barn where Lefty Shaw had fought George Norlington had been thoroughly cleaned and rearranged. ‘OK. You boys go and look around.’

‘We’ll need to check the house as well,’ Bevan added, watching Woollard’s face carefully.

‘Go right ahead. There’s nothing of interest there though.’

Bevan waved to the Scene of Crime team and a few minutes later an intensive search of the farm’s outbuildings began. Marty Farrell called Bevan over to join him at the entrance to the main barn.

‘Mike, you reckon this is where the fight took place?’ Farrell asked.

‘Certain of it. I photographed a bunch of people coming in here,’ Bevan replied.

‘In which case,’ Farrell led Bevan inside the barn, ‘someone’s done a serious job on this place over the last couple of days.’

Bevan instantly saw what Farrell meant. The barn was packed full of animal feed sacks and agricultural equipment. There was hardly any exposed floor visible. There was no sign of a fighting ring.

‘Fuck.’ Bevan clenched his fist in fury. ‘That bastard knew we were coming. We’re too slow.’

Farrell tried to be positive. ‘Don’t despair. We might find something. Even if he’s cleaned the floor, we have chemicals that can reveal bloodstains.’

‘Problem is that the ring would almost certainly have been carpeted. It helps the dogs grip better.’

‘Look, we’ll clear this place and do a full SOC check on it. If he had a ring here he must have disposed of the wood and the carpet somewhere. Have a look around for waste sacks, a skip, the remains of a bonfire. Anything that looks like he
was trying to make some rapid disposals.’

Bevan nodded. Out in the courtyard, he could see Woollard puffing thoughtfully on a cigarette.

It took Farrell’s SOCO team almost an hour to shift the heavy feed sacks from the barn into the courtyard. Next they lifted the selection of heavy metal chains, harnesses and broken milking equipment, that Woollard’s men had helpfully deposited in the barn, onto white plastic sheets spread and secured in the yard. Powerful halogen lamps were fixed in the barn, powered by a portable petrol generator. Then, Farrell and two fellow SOCO officers, Regis and Rashid, began the painstaking task of checking the floor of the barn, inch by inch. It was uncomfortable work. Farrell felt sweat streaming down his back inside his protective plastic clothing. On the first run, they found nothing.

‘It’s too fucking dingy in here,’ Rashid said in irritation.

‘You’re right. Let’s get the other halo lamp in.’ Farrell called out to one of his team checking the grain sacks to bring in the third lamp. Once it had been fitted up, the third lamp made a huge difference eliminating some of the shadows that had hampered their progress.

‘Now we go back again,’ Farrell instructed his team, ‘anything remotely odd, you shout.’

Rashid and Regis sank to their knees again and started to repeat the process. After ten minutes, Regis called out.

‘What have you got?’ Farrell asked, joining him.

Regis shone his pocket torch onto a tiny lump in the concrete. ‘There. Can you see? There’s a dark spot of something on the side of this bump.’

Farrell looked at the tiny black mark. ‘OK, we’ll do a Kastle-Meyer test on it.’

Rashid withdrew a piece of filter paper from his kit bag and, returning to the centre of the barn, rubbed it gently against the minuscule stain that Regis had located. Satisfied that a small amount had been smeared onto his paper, Rashid returned to his bag. Using a pipette, he added a drop of alcohol followed by phenolphthalein, then finally hydrogen peroxide.

The stain turned pink.

‘Bingo,’ said Farrell quietly.

‘Looks promising,’ Rashid confirmed.

‘It’s good enough for me. Right, we spray this fucking place: the whole barn. Use orthotolidine. Keep it quiet. No one comes into the barn now except us. I want photographs of everything. Let’s go.’

Outside, Bevan skirted the perimeter of the farm buildings in search of the remains of Woollard’s fighting ring. To his immense frustration, he found
nothing. Maybe one of Farrell’s hawk-eyed SOCOs would have more success. Woollard had most probably transferred the carpet and any other material from the premises completely. Perhaps there were other ways to nail the guy. Bevan returned to the squad car in the courtyard; his leather documents pouch was on the front seat.

Woollard joined him, still smoking. ‘I told you there’s nothing here.’

‘We haven’t finished yet. We haven’t started on the house yet,’ Bevan added. ‘Actually, I wanted to ask you about the farmhouse. It’s seventeenth century isn’t it?’

‘You a historian now then?’ Woollard sniffed.

Bevan smiled and opened up a piece of A3 paper from his document case. ‘There you go,’ he said, ‘1640. These old buildings have all sorts of nooks and crannies. Turbulent times weren’t they? The civil war and all that. This area was Cromwell country, wasn’t it? Old houses like this had secret rooms. Priestholes, that kind of thing.’

Suspicious, Woollard looked more closely at the document in Bevan’s hand. ‘What’s that?’

‘This? When I found out that you lived in a historic building I did some checking. It’s listed.’

‘I could have told you that.’

‘At the town hall in Cambridge they keep records of all the listed buildings in the area. Some even
have plans. This document is a Victorian room plan of your farm. Apparently in 1863 the owner did some renovation work on the south wall. He had an architect do a plan of the whole house. This is a copy.’

Woollard said nothing.

‘Why don’t we go for a look around?’ Bevan asked. ‘Let’s start at the top and work down shall we?’

Marty Farrell waited impatiently for his team to finish spraying the floor and walls of the barn with re-agent. Eventually the call he had been waiting for came.

‘Marty,’ Regis shouted from the centre of the barn, ‘we’re done.’

Farrell stepped forward. ‘OK magic man, what have you got?’

‘Two patches. Here and here,’ Regis pointed.

Farrell saw them immediately. Othotolidine showed up old bloodstains in an ugly, luminous green: and there they were.

‘The left one looks like the remains of a spurt,’ he observed.

‘I agree,’ Regis said. ‘There are four spots – each about a half inch apart. If you look closely each spot is slightly above the preceding one.’

‘Conclusion?’ Farrell asked.

‘It’s from a wound on a living subject. Spurting means the heart was beating.’

‘It’s a small sample,’ Farrell mused, ‘only four spots.’

‘True but I’m thinking, if this floor was carpeted, maybe the carpet soaked up most of it. Chances are that if Woollard was fighting dogs on it, we’re not talking about his best Wilton here. I’m guessing there were holes in the carpet. There must have been tears in it. Blood spatter through a gap in the material is my best guess.’

‘What about the other one?’ Farrell pointed at the second glowing green area. It was roughly circular and about nine inches in diameter.

‘That’s pooling,’ Regis replied. ‘No sign of splashing though so the blood didn’t fall very far. Injured person – or dog I suppose – lying on the ground. Blood drips through hole in the carpet.’

‘How have they tried to clean it off?’ Farrell asked.

‘Cold water. Some disinfectant too maybe,’ Regis said. ‘I can probably be more specific given time. I’m not sure we’ll be able to tell whether the blood stains were caused by human or animal victims though.’

‘True. Let Leach see the photographs. He might have some ideas. We also have the fragment of dried blood that you found and Rashid tested.
We’ll be able to identify that.’

‘True enough,’ Regis nodded.

‘Nice job magic man,’ Farrell grinned.

‘Learned from the master, didn’t I?’

After a fruitless search of the upper floor of Woollard’s house, Bevan followed his room plan down to the main hall.

‘Where’s the entrance to your cellar?’

Woollard’s cigarette tip glowed orange. ‘Don’t know,’ he replied, ‘it’s sealed off I think. We don’t use it.’

‘We? I thought you were alone now, Bob?’ Bevan replied, hoping to provoke a response. He was unsuccessful.

‘Force of habit,’ Woollard said without expression.

Bevan looked closely at the room plan that he had photocopied at Cambridge Town Hall the previous afternoon. ‘According to this, the stairs to the cellar should come up into the hall. But there’s no sign of them.’

Woollard blew smoke up into the air. ‘That plan is old. It could be wrong.’

‘It’s been right so far.’ Woollard traced his finger along the two lines on the plan that represented the stairs to the cellar. As he did so, he tried to match sketched points of reference to features in the
house. Eventually his eyes came to rest on a large wooden cupboard near to the kitchen door.

‘What do you keep in there, Mr Woollard?’ he asked.

‘Nothing much, I was planning to get rid of it.’

Bevan opened the double doors of the cupboard. It had a wooden panel at the back. He pushed it hard and felt it clonk against a wooden surface behind it. Downstairs, directly underneath them in the cellar, Buster Boots heard the noise. In anticipation of his morning workout, he began to bark excitedly.

Hearing the noise, Bevan turned to Woollard, unable to resist smiling in triumph. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘why don’t you show me how to open this, Bob?’

Underwood stood before the assembled members of Leyton CID and the eight seconded uniformed officers that their Superintendent had assigned for the Bartholomew Garrod manhunt. Alison Dexter hovered at the back of the room. He wanted to impress. He was determined not to let her down. Her words had stung him. Underwood was resolved to use the pain constructively.

‘OK everyone. Settle down.’ He moved in front of the computerised white board that had been installed a month previously. It had cost the department four thousand pounds. Underwood was uncertain how to use it – his computer skills were not very sophisticated – but he was eager to show Dexter that he could change; grow even. He clicked on the remote handset and, to his immense relief, a photofit picture of Bartholomew Garrod appeared on the screen.

‘This is our suspect, Bartholomew Garrod. The older ones amongst you might remember him. Garrod and his brother Ray perpetrated a series of murders in East London in 1995. There was a lot of publicity about the case. One of the national newspapers, the
Mirror
, I think, christened the case the “Primal Cut” murders.’