Scared to Live

16

Fry found a message waiting for her when she got back to the office. DS Fry, please see the DI. ASAP. Everything was ASAP around here.

DI Hitchens had strong hands, with clean, carefully trimmed fingernails. He placed them on his desk in his most serious manner. There was still no ring on his finger, though he’d lived with a nurse for a couple of years now, and they’d bought a home together in Dronfield Woodhouse. Fry wondered again about the white scar that crawled across the middle knuckles of his fingers. No one had ever mentioned him getting injured, or being involved in a fight. It looked intriguing. But then, it was probably just the result of something very boring — an accident with a potato peeler, or a hand caught in the blades of a lawn mower.

‘Diane,’ he said when she entered his office, ‘we’ve had a call from the Forensic Science Service.’

‘A result?’

‘Well, no. More of a complaint, actually.’

She sat down without waiting to be invited. ‘What’s the matter with them?’

‘Apparently, their fire investigation specialist, a Mr, er …’

‘Downie.’

‘Yes, that’s it. He seems to feel you didn’t get off on the right foot at Darwin Street. His boss gave me some stuff about co-operation and all pulling in the same direction. Do you know what he’s on about?’

‘Downie’s a bit of a pillock,’ said Fry.

Hitchens couldn’t help grinning. ‘Civilians, eh? Who let them into the equation?’

‘Right.’

‘Well, could you try to get on a bit better while you have to work with him? It would help relations all round.’

‘I can do that.’

‘Great. We’ve got to keep on side with our partners. It doesn’t do any good to get “unco-operative” on your record, I can tell you.’

Watching Hitchens, Fry guessed that he was starting to find the job of DI unsatisfactory. The hours were long, the responsibility more and more onerous. And he must be reflecting that the increase in pay from a DS wasn’t worth the hassle.

‘So how’s the fire enquiry going generally, Diane?’

‘The dog got a hit, as you know. And this morning the FSS confirmed the presence of accelerant — butane, just like the lighter fluid can the search team found. It’s a triple suspicious death, sir.’

‘Oh, brilliant.’ Hitchens spun anxiously in his chair. ‘Do you have any potential suspects?’

‘I favour the husband quite strongly. There’s no one else in the picture, so far as I can see. There’s a possibility of forced entry, but that could be a blind. The Mullens don’t seem like a family anyone would have a grudge against.’

‘So once you get a full report from the FSS, you’ll be looking to build a case against the husband?’

‘Unless he eliminates himself pretty quickly,’ said Fry. ‘And I’d be surprised if he manages to do that. I’m going to work on his alibi, and take a look at his relationship with his wife. I know there’s been at least one public row between them recently.’

‘After the meeting, we’ll brief the DCI together,’ said Hitchens. ‘I can tell you, Diane, he won’t be thrilled.’

The big news at West Street before the morning briefing was that two enquiry teams were being formed, and the Rose Shepherd shooting was to be a joint operation with A Division. At least the NCOF wasn’t getting in on the action.

‘A Division?’ said Murfin. ‘A for Alfreton, Arse End of the Universe? They’ll be down to two men and a dog, and not for the first time.’

‘There’ll be some monthly targets missed, that’s for sure,’ said Cooper.

‘Ah, well. Achieving a lot with a little,’ said Murfin cheerfully.

‘Gavin, just repeating the Chief Super’s catchphrase all the time doesn’t help.’

The conference room was packed for the meeting, with many officers pulled in from elsewhere to beef up the enquiry teams. Cooper saw Diane Fry come in and sit on the front row, with Wayne Abbott on one side of her and a CPS prosecutor on the other. From her body language, she seemed not to have noticed either of them. At one point, the lawyer leaned past her to speak to the crime-scene manager. Fry never even blinked, let alone took any part in their conversation. Cooper shook his head, perplexed. Fry’s ability to be alone in a crowded room never failed to amaze him.

‘First of all, we’ve had no luck tracing the Vauxhall Astra,’ said Hitchens when the briefing got under way. ‘Besides, it appears the Astra was never in the field behind the victim’s house anyway.’

A scatter of groans and mutterings followed this announcement, as a potential lead seemed to slip away.

‘Forensics tell us the tracks were made by something bigger than an Astra. More weight, wider tyres. And four-wheel drive.’

Murfin rolled his eyes towards the ceiling, and Cooper knew what he was thinking. At one time, someone would have made that assessment at a glance. But now, everyone was cautious. The tests had to be gone through, even if they took two days to reach the same conclusion.

‘We don’t have any reports of a vehicle like that, do we?’ said someone.

‘What sort of tyres?’ added another voice.

‘We’ll get a match on the tread,’ put in Abbott. ‘It just takes a bit more time.’

‘Back to the drawing board, then.’

Hitchens was trying not to let his shoulders slump. ‘We’re starting to get a picture of the victim’s movements on the afternoon before she died. We’re concentrating on two people that Rose Shepherd met in Matlock Bath. The descriptions from the waitress who served them are pretty vague, but we’ll ask her to have a go at some e-fits, and there’ll be more appeals in the media. Those two could be important — they’re the only people we know of who had contact with Miss Shepherd that day.’

He turned to the board, where photographs of the dead woman were displayed.

‘Meanwhile, the victim herself remains a mystery. What we’ve got here is a woman who kept herself to herself in an extreme way. She had as little contact with people in Foxlow as she could possibly manage, and we’ve found almost nothing of a personal nature in her house that could lead us to anyone who knew her. That’s got to be deliberate.’

‘You think so?’

‘I can’t believe that it’s accidental. We’ve gone through all her papers: bank statements, phone bills, any personal correspondence we can find — which isn’t much. We finally located a diary, but it’s only one of those little pocket-size appointment diaries. We’re checking all the entries in her address book. There’s always a possibility that some of the entries are coded or camouflaged in some way. Most of all, we need to trace anyone who ever dealt with Miss Shepherd, particularly if they visited Bain House and actually met her.’

‘We’re not likely to find a Christmas card list, I suppose?’

‘No such luck, sorry. Judging by her phone records, Miss Shepherd doesn’t seem to have had many friends — not unless they worked at the local garage or the GP’s surgery in Matlock. Those seem to be the places she phoned most often. Apart from that, there are just a couple of puzzlers …’

Hitchens paused, perhaps for dramatic effect.

‘Firstly, the victim’s phone records for the past three weeks show two calls to the same public phone box, which turns out to be in a rural location in Bonsall Dale. Obviously, if you’re going to phone someone in an isolated call box, it would have to be by prior arrangement.’

There was a bit of fidgeting around the room, but no one could suggest a reason why Rose Shepherd should have been ringing a call box. A random call, perhaps, hoping to make contact

with a complete stranger to talk to? Who could say?

‘Does 359 figure in the number of the call box?’ asked Cooper.

‘Good question. The answer is no. Secondly,’ said Hitchens, ‘there are a couple of diary entries which refer to someone with the initials SN. There was an entry in her address book too, but it had been crossed out.’

‘If we can still read the number …’

‘It’s another unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile.’

‘This woman is unnatural.’

‘Well, let’s not get downhearted. I’ve saved the good news for last. We do have a couple of possibilities, which will be prioritized today. Number one, there’s the victim’s GP. He’s away at the moment, but at least he should be able to confirm an ID when he gets back, and he might have some information for us, if he ever talked to Miss Shepherd properly. Number two, there’s the estate agent who handled the house sale. We found the name of the firm in the victim’s phone book — Windsor and Ellis. They’re checking their records to see who dealt with Miss Shepherd, and whether that person still works there. Presumably there would have been a solicitor involved, too, when she bought Bain House, though there’s no sign of any lawyers in the address book.’

‘The estate agents ought to be able to give us that, too.’

‘Right. And house-to-house is complete, but as usual we should treat the results with caution.’

‘We’ve done the whole village?’

‘Yes, all of it. And we’re still getting calls from the public in response to the media appeals. Almost everything we’ve got so far has been third hand and uncorroborated, unfortunately. Nevertheless, I’ve asked the incident-room staff to collate the information and hopefully eliminate anything that’s been made up on the spot by some eager citizen trying to be too helpful.’

‘What are we left with?’

‘Well, the consensus in Foxlow is that Rose Shepherd was a retired headmistress who had been working in Scotland but came down here to live after she inherited money from an elderly relative. Some say her father, others an uncle.’

‘That would explain the purchase of Bain House, but not her secretiveness.’

‘There’s more: the word in the village is that she kept her valuables in the house, in some kind of secret stash, and that she was terrified the house might be burgled. There have been a number of break-ins in this area.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘The last tidbit is that Rose Shepherd is said to have a boyfriend back in Scotland. She called him Douglas or Dougie, and he lives near Glasgow.’

‘Has Dougie ever been seen in Foxlow?’ asked Kessen.

‘Not so far as we know.’

‘Damn it. This means we’re going to have to ask for assistance from Strathclyde Police. If they can track down a Rose Shepherd who was a headmistress in their area, it might lead us to Dougie. I’ll ask them to get Taggart on the job.’

‘There’s more. The really good news is that we’ve found someone locally who had direct contact with Miss Shepherd.’

‘Hallelujah.’

‘It’s a chap by the name of Eric Grice, who seems to be some kind of handyman. He doesn’t live in Foxlow, but apparently he did occasional work at Bain House. So he’s actually spoken to the victim.’

‘Perhaps he can tell us why she hardly ever left the house.’

‘One suggestion is that she might have been suffering from agoraphobia. An irrational fear of open spaces.’

‘But she went into Matlock Bath, didn’t she?’ said Cooper.

‘Yes, and nobody reported her in any distress at being outdoors. We’ve spoken to her GP’s surgery, and she only ever consulted her doctor for insomnia. She seemed to be in good health otherwise, but she hadn’t been on his list for very long. Also, the surgery don’t have access to her previous medical records. Miss Shepherd told them she’d been living abroad …’ Hitchens paused. ‘Besides, whatever Rose Shepherd was afraid of, it wasn’t an irrational fear. The bullets that killed her were real enough.’

‘Do we have an update on the bullets?’ asked Kessen.

‘Well, they’ve gone to the lab,’ said Wayne Abbott. ‘The one removed from the wall of the bedroom was too badly damaged to be any use, but the two the pathologist recovered have their surface marks intact. The firearms examiner should be able to give us the make, model and calibre of the weapon, with a bit of luck. And if we manage to locate the weapon, we can match it up to the bullets with a fair degree of certainty.’

‘Can’t we run the bullets through the ballistics database?’

‘You mean IBIS? Well, we could — but what result would you be hoping for?’

‘A match that would help us identify the weapon, of course,’ said Kessen.

Abbott shook his head. ‘I think there might be a misunderstanding of what the database can do. You can only get an identification of a firearm if it’s been found somewhere and test fired in the lab. But this weapon is still out there, being used. It won’t be recorded in the database.’

‘But if the same firearm was used in an earlier incident where the bullets were found, could we establish a link?’

‘Perhaps. Provided details from the previous incident have been entered into the database.’

‘Ask them to try, then,’ said Kessen.

‘If you say so.’

‘What about the PM report, Paul?’

‘Pretty much what we expected. One bullet entered near the victim’s left eye and ricocheted around the brain for a bit before lodging behind the right ear. The other penetrated her left lung and was removed from a site close to her spine. A high-powered rifle can do a lot of damage to a human body.’

Hitchens pinned more photographs on the board. From the location of the bullet near the spine, ripples had spread out like a stone dropped in a pond, tearing flesh and crushing soft tissue. The body was almost all water, after all — and the energy of a bullet’s impact was converted into hydrostatic force, equivalent to the devastation of a tsunami.

‘So far, we can’t put anyone else at the scene,’ said the DI. ‘In fact, we don’t even have anyone to perform an official identification until her GP returns. According to the post-mortem report, the victim was medically incapable of conceiving, so there are no children in the picture. Right now, the nearest thing to a next of kin is her part-time handyman.’

After the briefing, Fry went with Hitchens to the DCI’s office to report her progress on the Darwin Street fire enquiry.

‘When he’s well enough, I want to take the husband back to the scene,’ she said, after she’d finished bringing her senior officers up to speed. ‘Today, if possible. As soon as he’s discharged from hospital.’

‘Why?’

‘For a start, I want to see how he reacts. His response to the deaths of his wife and children has been a bit difficult to judge so far, but that could be the sedatives they’re giving him at the hospital. Also, I haven’t told him any details of how the fire started. I’d like to see if he’s drawn to the seat of the fire, or if he lets slip something that he shouldn’t know. Alternatively, if he’s innocent, he might be able to point us to some item that doesn’t belong in the house, which might indicate an intruder or a visitor that we don’t know about.’

‘So you fancy the husband for this one, Diane?’

‘Yes, sir. The neighbours say there had been problems in the marriage. Mr Mullen even moved out for a while, though it’s not known where he went. And his alibi for the time the fire started is a bit suspect — it relies entirely on his best friend, a man by the name of Jed Skinner. I think I might be able to break that alibi down without too much trouble. But I need to do it before Mr Mullen is discharged from hospital, so they can’t get together and tighten up their story.’

Kessen looked at her report. ‘If Mr Mullen is telling the truth, there must be at least one other person who can substantiate his alibi — the taxi driver who brought him home.’

‘Admittedly, we haven’t traced the driver yet. But even if we do, there was plenty of time for Mr Mullen to start the fire, get clear of the area and catch a taxi back again, arriving when the blaze had taken hold. Then he could draw conspicuous attention to his arrival by doing his tragic hero act in full view of the neighbours. Not to mention the police and firefighters, who were bound to hold him back, so he wouldn’t have to be too much of a hero.’

‘What if he’d timed it wrong, and arrived before the fire crews?’

‘It was a small gamble. Perhaps he had trust in the emergency services. Or perhaps he had more faith in his neighbour spotting the smoke.’

‘OK, it’s possible.’

‘I’ve also taken possession of the clothes Mr Mullen was wearing on the night in question. With your permission, I’d like to get them to the lab.’

‘You’re hoping to find traces of accelerant on his clothing?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What about motive?’

‘If the marriage was in trouble, I’m thinking it might have come to a head recently. For example, if Mrs Mullen had told him he had to move out, or she was filing for divorce, he might have been upset about her taking the children away. It’s happened before.’

Kessen nodded. ‘The dog in the manger mentality: “If I can’t have the children, you’re not having them either.”’

‘Yes, sir. There’s one interesting fact from the FSS fire investigator, Quinton Downie. He says the fire wasn’t started in any of the logical places for a random arson attack. Rather, it began where the children’s toys were stored in the sitting room. Apparently, accelerant was poured over them, as well as on the carpet. That might prove to be significant. It makes the attack seem very personal.’

‘And it was carried out by someone who was able to get access to the house.’

‘Yes. I’m not convinced by the side window being forced. There are no signs of entry inside the room. It’s a kitchen window, and I’d expect to find marks on the window ledge or the work surfaces, but nothing’s been disturbed. The kitchen looks positively pristine.’

‘Footwear impressions outside?’

Fry shook her head. ‘Not after the firefighters had done their bit.’

The DCI looked thoughtful for a moment. But he wasn’t a man to take long over a decision.

‘OK. It sounds as though you’ve done all the right things, Diane. We’ll review the enquiry again as soon as you’ve got some forensic reports. I’ll be your SIO for now, so make sure you keep me up to date with any developments.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Are you certain the scene was closed down tight from the start, and every bit of potential evidence was preserved? I know you’ve had the FSS in. That was a good move.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Fry. ‘Everything by the book.’

‘Let’s hope your feeling about the husband is correct, then. If we have to eliminate him, it opens up a whole different ball game. A triple murder with no suspects is the last thing we need right now, Diane.’

‘What are you lot talking about?’ asked Fry when she came back into the CID room and saw Cooper and Murfin deep in conversation with the trainees.

‘Mergers,’ said Cooper.

‘Are you for or against — or do I even need to ask?’

‘Well, I was just saying that headquarters in Ripley is already pretty remote for a lot of people. Will it matter that much if we’re part of an East Midlands Constabulary? As long as local teams like ours aren’t broken up.’

‘I’m surprised, Ben. I thought you’d have been fighting for the status quo. In your case, it’s your heritage, almost.’

Cooper shrugged. ‘I know people think my dad was a real old-fashioned copper, the sort who would always stick to the old ways because he thought they were best. But he never resisted change if he thought it was an improvement. If he knew the problems we have now with serious and organized crime he’d support the idea of a new structure. I think he’d say that it would free us up to concentrate on local issues instead of being distracted by major enquiries all the time. And I feel the same.’

‘That scenario sounds pretty boring to me. If you’re down at this end of the structure, anyway.’

‘I don’t agree. Think of the advantages: changes to the rank structure, a shift towards specialization, an increase in non-sworn staff …’

‘I suppose so.’

Cooper looked at her, trying to digest what she’d said a moment ago. ‘Boring? Do you mean that?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘What will you do then, if serious crime is taken away from Edendale?’

Faced with the direct question, Fry hesitated, displaying that perennial reluctance to share her private thoughts with anyone. She waited until Murfin and the trainees had moved out of earshot.

‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about applying to SOCA,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the experience.’

‘They’d jump at you,’ said Cooper.

‘Do you think so?’

‘Yes. If you did that, though, it would be exactly what I said — breaking up the team. That’s what I wouldn’t want, Diane.’

She looked surprised. ‘Thanks.’

‘How close are you to making a decision?’

‘Not close. Not really. I’m just thinking about it. I’ll see how things go.’

Cooper paused before he spoke again. He always had to weigh up his words with Fry, because he hadn’t yet learned to predict her reaction.

‘Angie?’ he said tentatively.

‘What?’

‘I’m wondering if your sister comes into the decision. Is she the deciding factor whether you move away from Edendale or not?’

‘No, she isn’t.’

But as soon as Fry said it, she frowned and looked thoughtful. Cooper wondered if it just hadn’t occurred to her to look at it that way before.

‘Have you thought through the employment implications, though?’

‘Ben, thanks for your interest, but if I want to discuss my employment conditions, I’ll do it with my DI or Human Resources.’

‘Fine, fine.’

Cooper went back to his desk. Like everyone else, he was aware that SOCA had been recruiting. The problem was that officers who joined the new serious crimes agency would lose their unique status. Instead of being classified as constables of the crown, guaranteed a pension and not subject to being sacked, at SOCA they would become agents — ordinary employees. As a result, the agency was struggling to persuade police officers to join.

But he could see Fry going. Promotion possibilities for her were limited in Derbyshire. There were only three DIs in the division, and seven DSs who might hope to succeed them, let alone detectives in other divisions, and uniforms who might want to transfer on their way up the ladder.

‘So where are you off to this morning?’ asked Fry as Cooper put his jacket on to leave.

‘We’re talking to the estate agent who sold Bain House to Rose Shepherd.’

‘Right.’ She watched Hitchens come out of his office and nod to Cooper. ‘You’re with the DI himself, then?’

‘Somebody has to be,’ said Cooper.