Vanished

Chapter 5

The remains of the burnt-out greenhouse were taped off by an inner cordon which started around eight feet away from the blackened brickwork. Just inside this cordon, two men in blue boiler suits and face masks were exploring every inch of the scorched garden whilst waiting to be told by the fire brigade’s sub officer that it was safe to step inside the greenhouse walls, where a knee-deep mess of rubble, ash and water awaited them. On the back of their boiler suits was DRUG SQUAD in white lettering.

Jack and Anik stood just outside the inner cordon, wearing white paper suits and face masks complete with carbon filters and air vents to protect them from the stagnant air, still heavy with the smell of cannabis. The outer perimeter for this particular crime scene was further out than normal as an extra precaution, and the immediate neighbours had been temporarily evacuated.

A familiar voice came from behind Jack. ‘It’s a pro set-up.’ Mal Kaminski’s Polish accent immediately told Jack that this case was in good hands. Malomir had come to the Met less than a year ago. He’d learnt fast and quickly surpassed other, far more experienced members of his team. He was now invaluable in trying to keep a lid on the various London drugs gangs. As well as being the world’s self-proclaimed expert in inappropriate Polish sayings, he was also an encyclopaedia of drug-growing and local dealing knowledge. ‘Drainage, water pumps, heating lamps, infrareds; all top of the range. Looks like most of it was concealed in the glass apex under tarpaulins. This was done with care. Not like the temporary units we see in the lofts of gang houses: they’re makeshift, so they can be torn down, moved or disposed of in minutes. This was set up like a permanent business premises.’

Jack asked Mal to confirm the size of this cannabis farm. ‘We found the remains of approximately four hundred plants in pots, some pots stacked ready for the next crop, and some boxes already packed for distribution.’

For the life of him, Jack couldn’t imagine that Avril Jenkins was the mastermind behind such a huge drugs haul.

To Jack’s left, a paper-suited CSI was taking a footprint cast from the soil beneath the back garden wall, and another was taking fingerprints from the handle of Avril Jenkins’ wheelbarrow, which had been propped up against the brickwork, handles upwards, in a position that suggested it had been used as a ladder. Jack gave a heavy sigh, making the vents in his mask click as they allowed his excess breath to escape. Jack toyed with the idea of whispering quietly to the CSI, but the truth was that good gossip shot round the station like a dose of the clap so, instead he decided to own his mistake — loud and proud.

‘That will have my prints on it.’ Anik, the CSI and Mal all looked at Jack, waiting for clarification. ‘I moved the wheelbarrow when I was here interviewing Avril Jenkins.’

‘You interviewed the victim in this garden?’ Mal asked in a neutral tone, containing his amusement as best he could. ‘Next to a greenhouse containing four hundred cannabis plants?’

‘Seems that way.’ Jack quickly turned and headed for the house. He could hear their muffled sniggers as he walked away.

At the open back door, Jack added protective shoe covers to his outfit before entering. He could tell by the CSI’s evidence markers where they’d been and where they were heading — their meticulous, inch-by-inch route through the crime scene was carefully plotted to collect and preserve as much evidence as possible from the most likely path taken by the killer or killers. Jack stood still, assessing the area, before moving carefully forwards. He didn’t want to disturb or contaminate anything. The CSI taking prints from all the internal door handles, nodded him towards the stairs.

On the first floor, Jack paused sharply outside the master bedroom and Anik almost walked into the back of him. With reluctant steps, Jack moved inside the bedroom and paused again. To their right, the en suite was curtained off by plastic sheeting and, beyond that, paper-suited bodies milled around. Jack could just make out the body on the floor, framed in a pool of red. Anik looked impatient to get to the heart of the investigation, but Jack was in no rush to see Avril again. He told Anik to go ahead if he really wanted to.

The luxurious master bedroom was as eye-wateringly fussy, cluttered and eclectic as the rest of the house. The four-poster bed was made of solid oak and adorned with heavy embroidered drapes, like something from the 1700s. The carpet was deep blue and so thick that it twisted beneath Jack’s weight. The wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling wardrobe was modern, with mirrored sliding doors; but the rest of the bedroom furniture was antique or at least looked as though it was. The walls were scattered with artwork, from Lowry to Erte — although Jack had no idea if they were real or copies — and right in the middle of all that culture was a seventy-five-inch flatscreen TV. The bedside table was stacked high with modern design and décor magazines. Inside was a cut-glass whisky decanter and tumbler, a calculator, a landline phone and an intercom for the gate buzzer that he doubted even worked.

Jack slid open one of the large, mirrored wardrobe doors to reveal a vast collection of elegant clothes, expensive-looking shoes and furs. On a high shelf inside the wardrobe, were several wigs displayed on polystyrene heads.

Jack took his time to absorb everything. Whilst he was getting inside Avril’s complex mind, Anik had rushed to get to the monstrous spectacle that they knew was waiting beyond the makeshift plastic doorway into the bathroom. This was the main differences between the two of them: patience. Patience brought detail, which brought knowledge, which brought clarity. Anik would never learn to see clearly because he either moved too fast or didn’t move at all, depending on how excited a case made him feel.

Jack left the master bedroom and headed upstairs to the attic room which he knew once belonged to Adam Border. It was now even more sparse than the last time he’d seen it: the coat, jumper and suitcase had all gone, which was disturbing. Had Adam come back or had Avril thrown it all away? And if Adam had come back, was he their killer? Jack closed his eyes and recalled Avril’s prophetic words from their previous meeting. ‘You do know that stalkers invariably escalate to murder, don’t you?’

Jack couldn’t put it off any longer. He walked back downstairs and re-entered the master bedroom.

Anik now stood by the open sash window, trying to hold in his breakfast as he inhaled the heady mix of corpse secretions from indoors and cannabis smoke from outdoors. His greying skin was speckled with goosebumps from the cold and he was already deeply regretting his eagerness to see the murder scene. Jack gave him a nod, meaning, ‘You do what you need to. I’ve got this,’ and Anik grabbed the opportunity to scurry downstairs and put a decent distance between himself and the house.

Jack made his presence known to the paper-suited bodies assessing the crime scene behind the plastic sheeting, and all but one of them made way for him to enter. The CSI who remained by Jack’s side was Angelica Blenkinsopp; a woman with the most inappropriate given name Jack could imagine. Angel was from Northumberland, with a thick North-East accent and a sick sense of humour.

The blood pool on the floor had spread swiftly across the white-and-grey chequered tiles, until it had congealed, leaving little room for manoeuvre as Jack entered the en suite.

Avril Jenkins was not in one piece. As Angel described what she believed had happened, Jack pulled up his paper hood and secured his face mask, swallowing repeatedly to counteract the natural over-salivation that comes just before being sick. But it wasn’t the gruesomeness of what he was seeing that made him nauseous, it was the failure he felt in the pit of his stomach as he looked down at the naked body of the murdered woman who had insisted she was being stalked and who had asked Jack for help.

Angel got straight to the point. ‘Let’s start with the good news, ay Jacky. She died quick. One massive blow to the top of the skull killed her outright.’ Angel looked directly at the poker in the corner of the en suite. ‘It’s the right width and weight to have caused the wound, but I’ll confirm back at base, of course. The blood up the walls and on the ceiling is cast-off from swinging the weapon back and forth. Whoever was wielding it carried on hitting her around the head and face ten, twelve times at least.’ Angel looked at Jack’s eyes, which watered slightly. ‘Step out if you like. I’ll wait.’

‘I don’t need to step out, thanks, Angel. I knew her, that’s all.’

‘Right you are. So, they kill her — I say they speculatively for now, although I can’t see one person doing all this — then dismember her body. Exsanguination, as you can see, occurred where she fell. Never use white grout on floor tiles — I can’t even get the stain of cat shit out of my white grout, so there’ll be no saving these.’

Angel went on to explain that, during dismemberment, they used the joints as natural points of weakness. Her lower legs and one lower arm were in the bathtub, and her head was partly severed but still in place. Just. The rest of Avril was on the en suite floor.

‘Your killer or killers would have been covered in her blood, and I mean head to toe.’

Jack looked around the en suite. There were blood-soaked towels piled high at the non-tap end of the bathtub and a red watery stain ran from them to the plughole. Blood smears covered the walls and bath rim, where a vain attempt to clean up had been made. The CSI team would be here for days.

‘How did they get out?’ Jack asked. ‘I didn’t see any blood on the way up here. So, how did they get out through the house and leave no trace of what happened in here?’

Angel tapped Jack on the shoulder. ‘Well, Jacky, I’d wear one of these paper suits. Take it off before you leave the room, pop it into a plastic bag and Bob’s your auntie, £4.99 on Amazon.’

Anik was in the front garden, away from the stench of the greenhouse and the sight of the en suite slaughterhouse. He was instructing a couple of uniformed PCs to round up all CCTV from the area, including the one belonging to Mr Warton next door. Through the large bay window of the front drawing room, Anik could now see Jack rifling through the drawers of an oversized antique bureau.

Jack was looking for the red notebook he’d seen Avril with on the day she gave him Jessica Chi’s phone number. The scrappy list of stolen items she’d given him was written on a page torn from a notebook of that size, so Jack suspected that it was Avril’s go-to place for all of the things she wanted to remember. Perhaps she’d written something important in it. Jack moved from the drawing room, into the lounge, picking up Anik on his way through the hall. ‘She had a notebook. A5. Red. Help me look for it.’ In the lounge, Anik searched one side of the room and Jack searched the other.

Anik pulled his mask down and tucked it under his chin. ‘CSI have moved up into Adam Border’s old bedroom, till the greenhouse is safe for them to go into. And the body can be removed whenever.’ Jack was just about to have a go at him by pointing out that ‘the body’ was a person with a name, then quickly thought better of it. Every murder victim sometimes gets referred to as ‘the body’. Jack knew he only found it disrespectful today because of his own feelings of guilt.

Jack opened an ottoman that doubled as a footstool. Inside there were more brochures for various security systems. Again, Jack’s guilt rushed to the surface: he should have helped Avril choose the best system and he should have insisted that she get it installed right away. Why the hell hadn’t he? But Jack knew why: it was because he’d pre-judged her as an eccentric who was probably exaggerating or even lying. And because she was annoying, he’d just wanted to get out of her house.

Every drawer Jack searched was crammed with old receipts, mainly for food shopping or from the garden centre. From a cursory flick through, Jack could see that they supported the timeline suggested by the neighbour, Mr Warton: during the time Adam Border worked as Avril’s gardener, there was an abundance of garden centre purchases, but these stopped when he moved out. Also, her grocery receipts showed the moment she went from shopping for two people to shopping for one. Everything Jack found was rubbish that most people wouldn’t bother keeping; there was nothing remotely important, such as a passport, birth certificate or bank documents.

There was a knock on the open lounge door. ‘Give us another half hour...’ the sub officer had sweat streaks down his face from wearing his tight mask, ‘then the greenhouse is all yours. There’s no chance of the fire reigniting now, but we have to remove the remaining glass, ’cos that’s all at risk of falling. Your Drug Squad boys are eager to get inside too.’

Jack continued to search inside the house and Anik opted to search outside.

From one of the grocery purchases, where Avril had used contactless payment, Jack noticed that she’d mistakenly been given the merchant’s receipt which had her entire bank card details on it, rather than the customer copy which only displays the final four digits. He made a short call back to the squad room and set Morgan the task of trying to gain access to Avril’s finances. Jack was intrigued to know just how much money she’d been left by her husband. If she was loaded, as Jessica Chi suggested, then why was she taking the monumental risk of growing cannabis? Especially on such a large scale.

DC Morgan still spent his days sitting in the corner of the room, defying medical science. He injected insulin twice daily, ate enough calories to keep an elephant alive and existed on a blood glucose level of 25 millimoles per litre. He generally moved at the speed of a snail but give him a computer-based task and he was a blur. Morgan said that he’d get the correct permissions to dig into Avril’s bank accounts and get back to Jack as soon as he was in.

Jack moved methodically from room to room, searching for... he didn’t know what.

Avril’s kitchen was surprisingly new and high-tech, something he hadn’t really noticed on his previous visit, and her food tastes were as eclectic as her décor. She had herbs and spices he’d never heard of and ingredients he’d never tried and equipment he couldn’t work out the purpose of. He found himself smiling... Avril could be obnoxious, but at least she was an interesting woman.

Jack wasn’t expecting Ridley to attend the crime scene until the preliminary investigation had been done, especially not in light of his recent shift towards arm’s-length supervision, so it was a surprise when he appeared. ‘Raeburn wants me on the ground with this one. PR and marcomms have painted a worst-case scenario, and she wants to deliver something to the press before they invent their own headlines about police incompetence.’

Ridley and Jack walked together through the overgrown front garden. ‘Raeburn’s only concern is that we’ve done everything right up until this point. But I know that she’s also thinking that dismemberment could mean gangs.’ Jack shared his opinion that it was highly unlikely to be gang related. Ridley wasn’t reassured. ‘So, she’s a bloody drug-dealing pensioner who’s run rings round all of us then, is she?’ Ridley couldn’t hide the concern in his voice. ‘Or maybe she’s a frightened old woman who’s consistently cried “stalker” in fourteen official police statements, all of which we filed and did nothing about? Which one of those horrific options should I tell Raeburn to give to the press?’ Ridley sat down heavily on a low wall.

‘She was scared.’ Jack plucked a leaf from the tree above their heads and picked it apart as he spoke. ‘We didn’t know if it was real or imagined, but—’

‘I’d say we know now,’ Ridley interrupted.

‘Yes, sir, we do. But whilst figuring it out, Laura, Anik and I did everything right. We took the piss a bit behind closed doors, and we got frustrated with Avril for being an awkward and confusing person to deal with, but procedurally acted correctly. We followed every lead, considered every possibility. We just didn’t do it fast enough.’ Jack thought Ridley looked troubled and tired and, God forbid, he also looked apathetic. Ridley eventually broke his silence, instantly proving Jack’s assumptions wrong.

‘Sounds like she was crying out for help, in her own annoying way. So, probably not gangs. Right...’ Ridley paused for a moment to order his thoughts. ‘Jack, you stay here and work with Mal. I want you to be the one to process the greenhouse. Anik can come back to the station with me. I’ll get him and Laura to carry on tracing Adam Border. And I’m going to speak with Arnold Hutchinson, Avril’s family lawyer. He’s acted as liaison between her and some of the jewellers after she started reporting stuff going missing. One or two refused to deal with her directly, so he stepped in. Arnold knew her late husband too. I’ll see what light he might be able to shed on things.’ Ridley put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. He looked old. If he did have a new woman in his life, she was either wearing him out or dragging him down. Jack was now more certain than ever that Ridley was heading for retirement.

Jack had finally been allowed into the greenhouse around 4 p.m. and, since then, had been sifting through the debris with Mal. They’d been told that they had to confine themselves to the front half of the greenhouse, due to most of the debris falling towards the back. This had not yet been checked by CSI and it was their hope that whoever installed the vents, heaters and filter system might have left usable prints behind on items currently buried.

Mal had asked CSI to bag several stacks of plant pots which had melted together in groups of twelve. His hope was that one of them might have a branded label or barcode on the bottom which, due to being stacked, might have been protected from the flames. The rest of the greenhouse was an unsalvageable mess in terms of evidence. Mal confirmed that the plants themselves gave them nothing unique to go on. ‘There’s a metal shell from one of the heat lamps with forensics which could have prints, and I’ve written down the serial number. The water pump had a serial number too. You can get all of this stuff online or from garden centres but, once we know the shop, we might get lucky with CCTV.’ Jack asked Mal to keep in close contact as their separate investigations progressed. ‘I’ll call you every day, Jack, even if it’s just to say that there’s nothing to say. This looks like gangs to me, but you have doubts?’

A voice came from the back door. ‘Sir, she’s coming out.’ Jack acknowledged the uniformed officer with a wave before returning his attention to Mal.

‘No, I get it, Mal. The volume of drugs says gangs. And callous dismemberment says gangs. But the victim... where does she fit in? How does someone like Avril Jenkins get involved with gangs?’

Jack thanked Mal for his usual meticulous attention to detail and walked round the outside of the property to the front driveway where the black mortuary van was parked close to overhanging bushes, away from prying eyes. A trolley with a black body bag on it bumped down the three steps which led from the front door. Angel followed it out. Once outside, she removed her face mask.

‘I did a walk through, Jack, and you’re right about there being no visible blood drops anywhere else in the property. I think your killer or killers must have worn paper suits.’ Angel headed for her car. ‘Right, I’m knackered. I’m going before you ask me to do anything else. We processed the attic room like you asked — results from everything will start filtering through from tomorrow afternoon. Send me a priority running order if you’ve got one, otherwise I’ll start with the en suite and work my way out. ’Night, pet.’

Jack walked slowly down the driveway, surveying the vast, multi-faceted crime scene. Above a lowest part of the partitioning hedge, Bernard Warton was watching vehicles leaving. He looked deeply shocked and made no attempt to hold back the tears. ‘Find whoever did this, won’t you, Detective Warr? I know I said some horrible things about Avril, and I’m not going to be a hypocrite by taking any of them back, but I don’t think she did any harm.’ Warton managed a crooked smile, even though his lower lip was trembling. ‘She kept me on my toes. I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.’

‘I’ll find who did this, Mr Warton. And when I do, I’ll knock on your door. Then me and you can have a drink to Avril Jenkins.’ Warton nodded in tearful agreement, then disappeared below his immaculate hedge.

Jack looked back and watched the mortuary van doors slam shut. Avril had been her own worst enemy by being so challenging, defensive and untrusting. But she’d not always been like that. Mr Warton had known a better woman than the one Jack met. That was the woman Warton cried for now. And that was the woman Jack would get justice for.