The Kill (9 page)

‘I’ll have to go.’ Godley took out his phone and made a note. ‘What else?’

‘The car’s been recovered. It’s gone off for forensics to pull it apart.’ He meant that literally. The car would be stripped down to its chassis so every stray fibre, every hair, every drop of blood could be collected and analysed. That might lead us to the person who’d been in the car with Hammond, or when we found them we’d be able to prove it. Either way, it was a gift that we knew there was someone with him when he died.

‘Did you get to talk to the witnesses?’

‘Not yet. They’d gone home. I’ve got their contact details.’

‘Make it a priority,’ Godley said and started to turn away.

‘Hold on, you haven’t heard the best bit yet.’ Derwent was like a puppy waiting to be praised. ‘We found where the sniper was waiting.’

That got Godley’s attention. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah. The SOCOs have got it taped off at the moment but they should be finished soon.’

‘Anything useful at first glance?’

‘Nothing obvious. They think they’ll be able to estimate his height and weight though. They’re in there measuring broken twigs and indentations in the ground as I speak. I’ll show you later if you like but they don’t want too many people tramping around at the moment. They’ll be bringing in a dog to try and track the route the killer took. Not that it ever works. I guarantee you the dog will lead them to a rabbit hole.’

‘How did they find it?’

Derwent’s chest swelled, visibly. ‘I found it.’

‘How did you manage that?’ Godley asked.

‘It was before they moved the body. I went for a wander through the woods.’

Which explained the mud coating his trousers and his once-pristine shoes.

‘How did you know you’d found the right spot?’ I knew Derwent would be pleased to be asked to explain how clever he’d been but I genuinely wanted to know.

‘It was where I would have waited. Bit of height. Good field of vision. Plenty of growth around it so he was protected from view. They’ll get more information about the trajectory from the post-mortem, once they’ve got a line on the wound tracks so the SOCOs have the angle, but it’s the right place.’

‘When you say there was a good field of vision, did it matter where the car stopped?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. For accuracy. You don’t want to leave anything up to chance if you can avoid it. He’d have planned it out beforehand as much as possible – the distances, the angles, the wind speed.’

‘So whoever was driving knew where to stop. It was an ambush. A trap. And whoever was in the car planned it along with the shooter.’

‘Looks like it,’ Derwent said. ‘Which means that person knew she was acting as the bait. I can’t wait to meet her, if it is a her.’

‘She sounds like your type,’ I said, and got a glower for my trouble. Quickly, I went on, ‘They must have been here at least once before last night, then, to check it out. That might help. We can talk to the parks police – see if they came across a couple driving up this road or hacking through the undergrowth recently.’

‘It’s the sort of thing that’s worth a public appeal,’ Godley said. ‘I’ll mention it at the press conference. I think we should try to get this on
Crimewatch
as well. Thousands of people use this park every day. We need to try to reach as many of them as possible.’

‘Look for someone who was here after sunset. That might narrow it down.’ Derwent looked around. ‘He’d want to check the conditions at the time he was planning to do the shooting, not in the middle of the day. Place like this, it’s going to be different in the dark. He’d have needed a night sight because there’s fuck all street lighting around here, and that means he’s using a modern rifle, not an old one, so that might help us. He’d have been prepared. And a bloody good shot, incidentally, because it was seventy metres from where he was lying to the target.’

‘Do you think ex-military?’ Godley asked. ‘Should we talk to the army?’

‘Maybe.’ Derwent rubbed a hand over his head, considering it. Being ex-army himself, he was in a better position to know than most. ‘The thing is, ex-military doesn’t mean someone who was in the British army. We could be looking for someone who got experience as a sniper in the former Yugoslavia, or Syria, or in Africa. And you can’t rule out terrorism at the moment.’ Terrorism was Derwent’s pet subject. It was one of the few areas of policing that held his interest outside of homicide investigation.

‘Terrorism.’ Godley didn’t look convinced.

‘We’ve imported plenty of them and we’ve grown our own. I’m surprised we haven’t had a sniper attack before, to be honest. It’s one of the skills they’re teaching in the training camps in the Hindu Kush. They estimate hundreds of British Muslims have been through those camps in the last ten years. There’s no shortage of potential shooters.’

And if it was terrorism, the press were going to go insane. A police officer made a new kind of target, at least in Britain. The police in Northern Ireland and Afghanistan had known all about it for decades.

‘They’d still need to practise, wouldn’t they?’ I said. ‘I don’t imagine you can shoot a high-powered rifle in a suburban garden without the neighbours noticing. We could talk to the gun clubs around London.’

‘Not a bad idea.’ Derwent was nodding. I braced myself for a follow-up remark. He was never one to give a compliment without qualifying it. On this occasion, however, he let it stand. I found it more unsettling than being criticised, as I thought he probably knew.

‘All right. This is what I want you to do next.’ Godley was fiddling with his phone again. He sounded distracted. It wasn’t like him not to make eye contact with the people he was talking to, and Derwent’s eyebrows twitched together as he looked from the boss to me and back again. ‘Maeve, stay with Josh. I’ve got somewhere else to be so I’m not going to wait until the SOCOs release the crime scene.’

I was willing to bet Godley’s ‘somewhere else to be’ had something to do with the message he’d received. I hoped my face was safely neutral when he finally looked up.

‘I’ll do a press conference for the lunchtime news,’ Godley said. ‘I’ll start off by giving some general information on the shooting and appeal for witnesses. We don’t want to say too much at the moment about a possible terrorist connection, or anything else, so I’ll keep it brief.’

‘Makes sense,’ Derwent said. ‘No point in causing a panic.’

‘Don’t mention it to anyone else, either – not the SOCOs, not the local police, not the press.’

‘I wouldn’t.’ Derwent sounded hurt at the very suggestion.

‘I’m going to want to speak to everyone at six this evening in the office,’ Godley went on. ‘I’ll let Chris and the others know about that. In the meantime find out what you can about the shooter, the gun, the ammunition – anything that might help us to come up with some suspects. At the moment, we’ve got nothing apart from a dead policeman and some broken twigs. We’re not going to catch anyone with that.’

‘We’re just getting started,’ Derwent pointed out, not unreasonably.

‘I’m going to have the commissioner on the phone any minute to find out where we are with the investigation. I am not looking forward to telling him how little we know.’ The edge of irritation in Godley’s voice was sharp enough to draw blood. ‘If you can spare the time, please talk to the witnesses before our conference this evening.’

‘I was going to.’

‘Well, make sure it happens.’

‘All right, calm down.’ Derwent rocked back on his heels. ‘It’s not like you to let the pressure get to you, boss.’

‘The pressure is not getting to me. I’m asking you to do your job properly. That’s all.’

‘And you know I always do.’

Godley held Derwent’s gaze for a couple of seconds before he nodded and turned and strode away. He didn’t even say goodbye.

‘That went well,’ I observed.

‘Thanks for jumping in.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Oh, come on. Like you need me to stand up for you.’

‘Obviously not. I can look after myself.’

‘Then you didn’t need me to defend you,’ I said patiently.

Logic: not Derwent’s strong point. He ignored me, though. He was brooding over Godley.

‘What was his problem? He basically accused me of time-wasting. If anything, he’s been wasting
my
time. I’ve been hanging around here for hours waiting to do something useful. I haven’t even had a coffee.’

‘Poor you.’ I checked over my shoulder, seeing SOCOs in overalls bustling in and out of the woods like honeybees, every movement suggesting a strong sense of purpose. ‘They’re still working. Let’s go down the hill and see if we can find somewhere to have breakfast. I don’t know if there’s a cafe near here but there’ll be a fast-food van in the car park at the very least.’

‘Where’s the car park?’

I pointed. ‘Five minutes that way.’

‘You do have your uses.’ Derwent grinned at the expression on my face. ‘Too patronising?’

‘No more than usual.’

‘Over coffee,’ Derwent said, sliding off his jacket and hooking it over his shoulder, ‘you can explain to me what you did to piss the boss off.’

‘I told you, it was nothing to do with me.’

‘Yeah, and I don’t believe you.’

‘I can’t help that. It’s the truth.’

We walked down the hill in something approaching a companionable silence. The air was still and warming up nicely. It was a day for picnics in the park, not murder investigations. I should have been glad, I thought. More often than not outdoor crime scenes involved rain, or snow, or freezing winds. It was positively pleasant to be wandering through Richmond Park in the sunshine. If I could have forgotten that I was there because two teenagers had just lost their father, I’d have been happy.

We were getting close to the temporary barrier that blocked the road. One of the uniformed officers turned at the sound of our voices and leaned over it.

‘Are you with the MIT team?’

‘Yeah,’ Derwent said. ‘Why?’

‘There’s a young lady here who says she was here last night. She’s been waiting to talk to you.’ He pointed and I saw a slender dark-haired girl sitting on the grass verge, her arms hugging her knees. She was watching us and as we came towards her she jumped up.

‘Are you investigating that man’s death?’

‘Yeah. And you are?’ Derwent sounded even more hostile than usual. I knew why. We were always on our guard for tabloid journalists pretending to be involved in a case so they could get the inside story on an investigation. There were plenty of young and pretty reporters angling for a big break who could convince you that black was white if you gave them the chance.

‘I’m Megan O’Kane.’ She was pale, her expression worried. It was impossible to tell what she would look like when she was animated and happy.

‘What’s your address?’ Derwent demanded, flicking through his notebook.

‘Fifteen Sopworth Road, Richmond.’

Derwent paused to read something, then looked up. ‘You’re the one who found him.’

‘Yes. Well, I found the car. I didn’t really look inside once I saw he was …’

‘Dead.’

‘Yes.’

‘What are you doing here? We were going to come and see you later.’

‘I couldn’t stay at home.’ She shivered. ‘My flatmate is there and she keeps telling me we should go for brunch and have a few drinks and forget about what happened last night. I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t mean to come back here but I couldn’t think of anywhere better to be. I just wanted to know if you’d found out anything.’

‘We’re making enquiries,’ I said, which was the standard line but true. ‘Why were you here last night, Megan?’

‘Badger-watching. Well, it was supposed to be badger-watching. I didn’t actually see anything.’

‘Why were you doing that?’ Derwent sounded totally nonplussed.

‘Do you know Hugh Johnson? He’s on the television?’ She looked from me to Derwent, not seeing any dawning recognition. ‘
Animal Neighbourhood
?’

‘Oh, I know,’ I said. I half-recalled the presenter, who was too old to be as boyish as he tried to be. ‘“Look who you might meet at the bottom of your garden.” That kind of thing.’

‘Exactly. I met him in my local pub last week. He was asking the questions in a bonus round in the table quiz and my team won it. He sat with us afterwards and we got talking about our favourite animals. I said I loved badgers and he asked if I’d ever seen a real one. I hadn’t. He told me he knew where I would definitely see one and he said he’d show me and I was kind of flattered he was offering, so I said yes.’

Derwent was shaking his head. ‘It’s so easy if you’re on the telly, isn’t it?’

‘What’s easy?’ Megan frowned at him.

I cut in quickly so Derwent didn’t get a chance to explain what he’d meant. It would not have gone down well, I suspected. ‘What time did you get here?’

‘He picked me up at my flat and drove to the car park near here. I suppose it must have been half past ten when we got here. Then we walked over to the place where he said the badgers were likely to be.’ She pointed to the hillside behind her, to the left of the road where Hammond’s car had been parked. ‘That took another twenty minutes. Maybe longer.’

‘So would you say you were there at eleven p.m.?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Around then.’

‘And you were being pretty quiet, I assume.’

‘We couldn’t move. Couldn’t talk. Couldn’t eat or drink anything.’ She shivered. ‘I was freezing. I got bored after half an hour when nothing happened but I didn’t want be rude so I just stayed put.’

‘Did you see anything strange?’ I asked. ‘Or hear anything?’

‘Not until I heard the shots,’ Megan said. ‘There was nothing to hear. I was trying to stay awake so I was trying to find anything to distract myself from how sleepy and cold I was.’

‘Is it possible that you fell asleep?’ Derwent asked.

‘No.’ She didn’t sound sure, though, and I wasn’t surprised when she qualified it. ‘Not for more than a second or two, if that. And Hugh didn’t sleep at all. He didn’t seem to mind the cold or how late it was or how long it took for something to happen. I suppose he’s used to it. Anyway, he’d just seen a badger when we heard the shots, so we were both wide awake.’