Two Wrongs (Detective Inspector Ross Reed Book 1)
Read Two Wrongs (Detective Inspector Ross Reed Book 1) Online
Authors: Nathan Sayer
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The crack of her skull was sickening and shocking. Bile rose up in his throat making him choke. As he struggled to control his breathing, his vision started to blur, making it hard to see the twitching body below him.
He dropped the weapon from his grasp and turned to check that no one had been watching. Through blurred vision he could just about make out his own car parked twenty metres away and not a lot else. He screwed his eyes tight trying to squeeze the moisture away so he could see what was going on. Using the back of his hand he smeared the tears from his eyes across his face and the insignificant breeze in the night air was magnified on the surface of his skin, cooling him just a little.
Turning back to the girl, he saw the last few flickers of life jerk from her body and was overwhelmed by the calmness that enveloped the scene. The plants were still and the drone of the nearby town was only slightly louder than the mosquitoes buzzing menacingly around his head. An accusing shrill from a nocturnal animal was the only significant noise. The air was thick and filled with the scent of freshly cut grass as it always seemed to be at this time of year. The smell always bought back memories from when he was a little boy; he used to play football with his friends at the sports field all day at the weekends and most evenings during the week too. They didn’t bother going home for any lunch, settling instead for an ice cold drink from the vending machine at the sports centre every couple of hours to keep their energy levels up. Back then, Peter the grounds man seemed to cut the grass all day-everyday on his mini tractor. Every year he had an ongoing battle with the persistent daisy growth that made for a summer long perfume of freshly cut grass.
Innocent memories were out of place right now. There was a dead girl lying at his feet and he had to act fast because although he was isolated from the main road and there wasn’t much traffic, it was entirely possible that someone could drive into the spot where he was. He looked down at the girl and for the first time he studied her lifeless body. She had taken up the recovery position, not that it would do her any good. Her hair had splayed across her face and he used a finger to pull it out of the way, tucking it gently behind her ear. If you ignored the sticky blood that had run down the back and side of her head she was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way but he hadn’t liked the way she had talked. Her foul mouth and prick tease demeanor had led to this. The guilt he felt was for her family and not so much for her.
His breathing was steady and the initial adrenaline rush had subsided. All he felt was a complete sense of nothingness. He was surprised at his own composure but, the truth was, murder and pain had been part of his life for so long now that it was almost the norm.
Although this hadn’t been planned, it was up to him to stage this to his requirements. He needed to hide the girl well enough so that the first person to stumble into this area didn’t find her. At some point he wanted her to be found but not straight away. A girl who had been missing for a while was worthy of more press than just a murdered girl; there would be appeals in newspapers and TV for her safe return, stirring the public’s desire to know what had happened. If she had run away, had she gone by herself or with a secret lover? Had her home life been so unbearable that she couldn’t take it anymore, forcing her to run away? Had she been kidnapped and raped? Was she alive at all? Once they knew that she wasn’t, the finger pointing would start. Was it the boyfriend, father, uncle or just a sick and twisted individual?
He knew the area he was in reasonably well, certainly well enough to know the usual tracks where the dog walkers and the joggers would be using in the morning. He just hoped there were no night dwellers away from the well-used tracks. He rolled the girl onto her back before grabbing her underneath her shoulder blades with his right arm and under the back of her knees with his left. As he heaved her up he had to juggle her around a little bit to balance her weight. The scent of her perfume mixed with an undertone of sweat caught his senses and it reminded him that she was human. Had she chosen the perfume after trawling through tester after tester? Or was it a gift from someone who thought she would like it? Either way it was a personal aroma. He couldn’t help but think that her musky, sweet sweat was also personal and individual.
With a quick check behind him he set off down one of the tracks. The ground was dry and dusty and he found himself thinking about footprints. Lots of people used the area and he was sure that within a day all his tracks would have been disturbed, covering all the evidence that he had ever been here. Long grass and overhanging trees became more frequent the further he went. The moon was bright enough for him to stay on course and recognise where he was. He didn’t want to travel too far because it would increase the chances of somebody spotting him or his car.
After a couple of minutes of following the track he stepped away from it and headed across a small patch of grassland towards a large ring of trees. At its centre was a dry, hollow bowl, it must have been ten metres deep at its lowest point and approximately thirty metres in diameter. The banks were steep and at the bottom, through broken moonlight, he could make out scattered rubbish. He knew there was a worn pathway where kids had ridden bikes down one side and back up the other but he wanted to avoid leaving his footprints in the dirt. The embankment was carpeted with brambles, broken tree branches and even a shopping trolley. He picked a relatively clear area and started to side step down. About half way down he felt his trousers being tugged back by the thorns of a bramble bush and he lost his footing, his body lurching forward. He instinctively pushed the girl away from him, freeing his hands, so he could break his own fall. He dropped to his hands and one knee, the other leg out straight, anchored to the barbs of the bramble and at the same time being pulled taut by the weight of his body. He looked up to see the strobe effect of the girls limbs flailing through the moonlight that was penetrating the shadows of the tree branches as she rolled down the hill.
Trying to contain the loss of control he was feeling, he shuffled his body up the hill a little so he could release his clothing. The fuzzy feeling of nettle stings took over his hands and he had to fiddle around longer than he would have hoped for. Once he was standing he checked to see the girl was still there; she hadn’t been reincarnated and nobody had run off with her. Feeling stupid, he fluffed up the plants he had fallen on and slowly descended towards her. She was looking up at him, eyes wide open, and he thought that the reflecting stars and moon that came from them made her look more alive than ever. She had settled next to the fallen trunk of a tree, her left arm was underneath her and had bent awkwardly up against it. Her skin was grubby and her hair that had been done so immaculately for her night out, now resembled a thrown down mop head.
Scanning the area for her penultimate resting place he spotted an area of thick bush that he could tuck her under. The plants that had grown there looked as though they had finally lost their battle with gravity and after having reached for the sun had given in to their own weight and flopped down towards the base of the pit, looking like a crashing wave made from foliage. He grappled with her body once again, brushing his hand across her breasts as he did so and nearly apologising out loud for the invasion before realising he had done worse to her already; he had smashed the life from her body. Treading carefully, he stepped over to the area he had chosen, trying hard to keep his footfalls to areas where he wouldn’t leave a good print. He was no forensic scientist but he knew better than most that you didn’t need to be a mastermind to get away with murder.
He laid her down so that her body was in line with the small opening that was created by the plants arcing over. He straightened his stiffening back before stepping over her body with one foot so that he was straddling her, then he bent over and lifted her at the waist just a little before trying to shunt her in. Her arms and legs dragged but her head was forced to one side as her flimsy neck gave way to the motion. Once he had got her so far he had to use her upper legs as a picking up point and when he could reach no further, he tried pushing on the soles of her feet but her knees wouldn’t stay ridged. It left him with the option of crawling in from the other side and dragging her in by her shoulders, which he reluctantly did.
Satisfied with his efforts so far, he set off back to his car. Not to leave but to get something. Now he was doing this he may as well do it properly. The night sky had darkened a little, making it difficult to track back the exact way he had come but he knew the general direction and the furthest he went astray was going down the right hand side of one of the sporadic bushes when he should have gone left. It didn’t matter too much as the tracks all intertwined with one another but generally led to the same place. He saw the back of his car slightly lit up.
Slightly lit up?
“Shit!” He stepped behind a bush and crouched down, trying to see where the source of light was coming from. The front of his car was facing towards the town and he knew that the road leading away from the back of it had no streetlights and no houses for at least a mile. It had to be a car but he couldn’t hear it. He shuffled from one hiding place to another trying to improve his scope of the parking area but he still couldn’t see it. Then he heard a voice. From in the distance, he thought he heard something like “Try it now.” A second later he heard a car engine coughing and spluttering before it sparked into life. After much revving, and loud cheers of triumph, he watched headlights rush past to complete their journey. Relieved, he jogged to his car and opened the boot. He couldn’t see what he wanted and yet he was sure it had been there. He flicked stuff around hoping to discover it but to no avail. Without what he was looking for his plan was useless. It was the link to all those years ago. One of the reasons he needed the body found. It was a calling card of sorts, if the police were intelligent enough to recognise it.
It was here somewhere. It just had to be. He shut the boot and went to the rear passenger seats. Not there either. Then the cloud that had been dulling the moonlight seemed to just evaporate, and there, peaking from underneath the driver’s seat he spotted it. He snatched at it, closed the car door and set off for the girl again.
He had one more thing to do.
“I won’t!” Detective Inspector Ross Reed shouted at his wife, knowing instantly he had overreacted.
He was still shaking his right foot, trying to ease the pain from his little toe, having just stubbed it on the bottom of the banister frame while he was on his way to the bedroom from the bathroom to get dressed. It was a journey he really should have mastered by now, having lived there for five years. All his wife, Kate, had asked of him was to try and not forget to put the green bin out when he left for work. A simple request that prompted him to bite her head off.
Rubbing at his throbbing toe, he was sure a banister was supposed to have a purpose, but surely any half decent sized adult that was falling, looking for it to save them from the perils below would be very disappointed. It was there for decoration purposes and such was the design; it fooled the subconscious mind that you could pass it without too much trouble. In truth, the hand carved spindles were just short of the true width that lay at the bottom. There were big square blocks of pine wood holding each spindle in place making each one look like some sort of miniature monument, imitating concrete blocks, which is exactly what they felt like to his passing toe.
Even without the throbbing consequences of the banister, he felt his reply would have been just as sharp. Work was consuming the majority of his day and sleep had been hard to come by. The stress of having been put in charge of his first big investigation at the age of 37 was starting to take its toll. He wasn’t exactly wet behind the ears, he had worked most variations of crime, but when the buck stops with you, doubts start to creep in with every decision, especially when someone’s life depends on it. There was a procedure for most of the work the police carried out but he still worried that he had missed something.
A girl had gone missing and it was up to him to find her. His attempts over the last couple of days had turned up nothing. He was tired, self-doubting and when he did finally come in through the front door, usually late at night, he carried his work with him; his laptop and case notes seeming every bit as heavy as the burden he was feeling.
As he heard the door slam shut he wished he had apologised to his wife before she had left the house to take Evie to school and he suddenly realised his daughter had not even bothered to shout goodbye. Kate had accepted the magnitude of the last few days with more ease than he had. Despite the fact that his absence from home had been a thorn in their entire relationship, she hadn’t mentioned it once. In fact, she had fetched him food and drinks at regular intervals and he had heard her encourage Evie ‘not to pester Dad’ on more than one occasion. Although she had meant well this had made him feel twice as bad and his heart sank at the thought that his own daughter felt that a simple goodbye would have been a nuisance to her father.
He made his way down the stairs feeling the soft new carpet under his feet. It had recently been fitted, although he couldn’t remember picking it or having any knowledge of its impending arrival. Yet when he had come home one night, stopping in the hallway looking down at the beige colour and wondering if he had entered the wrong house, Kate had shouted from the kitchen “It looks good, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, it matches the walls well. Good choice.” He replied, trying to hide his confusion.
Whilst gathering up the various files he’d bought home last night, the 24 hour news channel stole his attention, reporting that Carmella Chapman was still missing. The press had been speculating as to what had happened to her. She could have run away, been murdered, kidnapped, raped or a mixture of them all. In truth the media knew exactly what the police knew, which was next to nothing.
Three nights ago she had been out with friends at a Newmarket nightclub called Splitz. She had been given a lift home from someone she knew, Lee Gulliver. He had dropped her off at the end of her road and she hadn’t been seen again. First thing this morning, Reed and his team were having a review of the case. They would recite the facts which they knew and then throw ideas and theories at one another hoping to speculate what had happened. All this had been done before but there was no harm in trying again until they had some real evidence to work with, maybe a sighting or perhaps someone would come forward and reveal a secret boyfriend or shady past.
As of yet, it appeared Carmella had no known enemies, no problems at school or at home; none that anybody knew of anyway. She was described as a happy girl with an active lifestyle, she played hockey and was captain of the netball team. Good, consistent grades at school and she had lots of friends. This was good in a sense that no-one they knew of would want to see her hurt, but the chances that she had run away were slim. That left the possibility that a stranger might have taken her or lured her away. People don’t tend to do that with good intentions. As the number of days went by, any hopes of finding her unharmed faded and the pressure built.
With a stack of files under one arm, he flicked the TV off, gulped down the remainder of his cold coffee, kicked Rupert the female cat out the back door, struggled to put his shoes on with one hand because he stubbornly refused to put the files down to make the task easier, and then finally stepped out of the front door. He checked off the items in his pockets: Phone, wallet and car keys. Good.
After walking gingerly down the gravel driveway, ducking the stringy branches of the willow tree, he unlocked the car door, got in and wrestled his items past the steering wheel and put them on the passenger seat. He made himself comfortable and then fastened his seat belt. Now he sat for a moment anticipating what was to come. He raised his hand to the ignition, inserting the key with more care than was needed and hoped that the car was going to start. Something was wrong with it but he hadn’t had the time to visit a garage to see what it might be.
He screwed up his face a little as he turned the key. It started first time.
He reversed from his drive and made his way into Watton faster than he should have done before his car could change its mind and start spluttering. Once he was through the town he could keep a decent speed up all the way to Hingham. With every passing mile, Reed felt his confidence grow in the performance of his vehicle. The Wicklewood bends provided a good final workout so that Reed finally started to enjoy the solitude of the journey. On a normal day he would have taken in the Norfolk countryside between the towns and villages with pleasure; the vast open crop fields, the sporadic trees that lined their edges, the hedgerows that ran alongside the roads, which if you stuck your arm out of the window were close enough to touch. He loved the glimpses of Scoulton Mere through the trees and every time he passed it he promised himself he was going to walk round it one day. Then, just as he entered Wymondham, it seemed that he’d reached that zone from the house when you suddenly remembered something.
“The bloody bin.” He had already traveled too far to turn back without setting his whole day behind schedule. He hoped the bin man would make the short journey down his drive to the visible wheelie bin and bail him out of trouble. How far was too far? 5 metres? 10? His whole driveway was only 25 metres long. If the bin man didn’t push the boundaries of duty and get it for him, he would have to empty it into bags and take a trip to the dump, eating away into the precious time he did have off. His apology to Kate had just got longer; not only had he bitten her head off this morning, he had forgotten the very thing she had asked him to do.
The car parking spaces at the police station were assigned to rank, the higher up the food chain you were the closer to the building you got. As a Detective Inspector, Reed got a pretty good spot, about three rows back from the main doors. As childish as it was, he got a little satisfaction from parking there. When he turned the ignition off the car coughed and spluttered as if not wanting to stop for fear of not starting again. Reed’s satisfaction with his parking space waned quickly as heads appeared at the office windows to see what the commotion was. Reed pretended that the offending noise was from somewhere else, making a big show of looking for the culprit himself as he locked up, then gave a dramatic shrug and started walking away.
As he walked through the automatic doors of the police station he knew no breaking news was forthcoming or somebody would have called him. He was leading the investigation after all, but unfortunately so far he hadn’t led it very far.
He made his way up the stairs to the CID department on the second floor. The building was big and glamorous; it was only 7 years old and was the envy of many a force throughout the country. Everything you could ever need was here, and Reed still wasn’t sure if he had entered all of the departments on the site.
He entered conference room 1E, where they were basing the investigation. Every available space was filled with tables, chairs, computers and people doing various jobs. On one wall was a huge whiteboard with details of the investigation so far; maps, names, pictures, sketches and important snippets of information from various people’s statements had been stuck all over it.
Reed’s superior, DCI Edward Whitehead, was sat at the main desk at the head of the room just in front of the whiteboard reading through some papers. Reed had his own office but he had a desk here, too. He slowly padded down the corridor that was created by all the other tables and said “Morning” to a few people, trying to take his time, hoping Whitehead would up and leave. He didn’t. Reed stood the opposite side to which Whitehead was sitting and waited. Whitehead looked up, looked back down at the papers in his hand, shook his head in disapproval at something and then left without saying a word.
Whitehead was a tall, frail looking man with a long, sharp pointed nose. He had short grey hair which was combed back on top. Reed always thought that Whitehead’s eyes looked too small for his head. He reminded Reed of a weasel, and an angry one at that. He moved away with an assured walk and Reed resisted the urge to stick his tongue out.
Whitehead had been transferred to Norfolk when the new police headquarters had opened. He was headhunted from the Metropolitan Police in London where he had been in the force since he was 20 years old and now had thirty eight years’ experience behind him. He had been a Detective Chief Inspector for eleven of those.
He must have experienced every type of case at least twice over and had been appointed to show the sleepy Norfolk force how things were handled. There was no point in having a state of the art headquarters if the people inside it weren’t up to the job. DI Reed had a certain amount of respect for him professionally, but couldn’t help thinking that compared with his previous post in London, little old Norfolk was just a bit too quiet for him, making him permanently grumpy.
Reed put his files down on the desk. He checked to see that his boss was still walking away and when the coast was clear he picked up the folder that Whitehead had been reading and started to go through it himself. It was Lee Gulliver’s statement, the man who had given Carmella a lift home the night she went missing. Reed had read it a few times and had never felt the need to shake
his
head.
“Gather round.” Whitehead shouted, standing approximately about one metre behind Reed, making him physically jump. How had the old bastard got there so quick and unnoticed?
Reed let the meeting wash over him; there was nothing new to report so they just ran over some old ground. He was more concerned with Whitehead’s show of disapproval and wondered what his superior had seen in the statement that he had not. Pushing his self-doubt to one side, he decided it was time to go back to the boring tasks such as door to door inquiries, hoping to find one detail that had been left out- the one detail that could make a real difference. They would start near Carmella Chapman’s house and work outwards. It was uninspiring work but it had to be done. Residents could have been out the first time the police had knocked on their door; they might have remembered something since they last gave a statement, or they might mention something which seemed irrelevant at the time, but the more they considered it over time, it had seemed a little odd.
Reed walked outside the office with no particular destination in mind. He wanted to clear the meeting from his head. Every second that passed felt like another second of failure. The look on Whitehead’s face was one of contempt at the way the investigation was going. He had a look about him that suggested he could step in at any time, if he wanted, and solve the whole thing in a blink of an eye, delivering Carmella home safe and sound to her worried parents.
Reed stopped in an empty corridor and took the time to call Kate. After a few rings she picked up.
“Hi, it’s me. I forgot to put the bin out.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll just have to take it to the dump if they don’t take it.”
“Yeah, I will do. I’m sorry I snapped at you this morning.”
“Don’t worry about it, honestly it’s OK.”
“It’s not OK, I’m sorry.”
“Look, try to have a nice day and we’ll talk later. I’ve got to go. Bye.” Kate said cheerily before hanging up.
Reed felt a little better after apologising to her. Perhaps he would have a nice day.
He made his way back down the corridor acknowledging to himself that as he was so annoyed at Whitehead’s obvious show of disapproval, he was going to interview Lee Gulliver himself. He would take DC Plumridge with him, who had conducted the initial interview. The only interesting fact to come from that was that Gulliver hadn’t come forward to the police of his own accord. David Jones, another reveller who had been at the Splitz nightclub on the evening Carmella had gone missing, had called the police to tell them that she had left with Gulliver. Gulliver had explained that it was no secret and he was waiting for the police to contact him, not wanting to seem too desperate to clear his name. Reed wondered what it was that Gulliver might need to clear his name from. Up until now all they were investigating was a missing person.
