A Murderous Mind Page 16

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, there was a bottle with two glasses on the coffee table in front of him and a front door key and a note.’

  ‘A note? Suicide?’

  ‘Security guard on the gate thought it looked wrong. He knew you’d been to see him, so he called it in. Fortunately, someone took notice. The glasses had been wiped clean but there was still a residue in the bottle. It’s been fast-tracked.’

  ‘And the note?’

  ‘Well that was another thing that raised eyebrows. It said “You should have stopped me.” And it wasn’t in Fincher’s handwriting.’

  ‘Should have stopped who?’

  ‘Well, that’s the question, isn’t it. Tess, some bastard’s playing games. That’s the way I read it. Caroline Towser is waiting to be picked up at her hotel and she’ll be going with you to take a look.’

  ‘This is being treated as a crime scene.’

  ‘As a possible crime scene. But my bet is—’

  So, Tess had collected the BIA and driven back the way she and Vin had travelled the day before.

  The security guard recognized Tess from the day before and told her that DS Denny was waiting for them at the professor’s bungalow.

  ‘Think you could live in a place like this?’ Tess asked.

  Caroline shrugged. ‘I suppose I could retire to it,’ she said. ‘Though probably not on the pension I’ll be getting by then. It’s a bit off the beaten track though, isn’t it? It’s what, five miles to the nearest village and ten or so to the closest town. What do they do for shopping?’

  ‘Get it delivered, I suppose. Though there’s a little shop on site, up by the clubhouse on the golf course.’

  ‘No, I mean shopping. Like at the end of a bad day and you need like shopping therapy.’

  Tess laughed. ‘I suppose they go and beat seven shades out of a golf ball.’

  ‘Nope. That wouldn’t do it for me.’

  They pulled up outside of Fincher’s bungalow. A young man with very black skin stood talking to the other security guard Tess remembered from her previous visit. They turned to greet the two women.

  ‘DS Denny. Ryan. I spoke to your boss on the phone.’

  Tess introduced herself and Caroline. ‘Do we know any more?’

  ‘Bottle tested positive for barbiturates. He could have overdosed but—’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘He had a visitor. Come along inside. Ben, here, it seems he was right to be suspicious. The body’s been taken but the rest of the scene is intact. CSI will be coming over later in the day.’

  ‘The scene’s not been handed off yet?’

  ‘No, our chain got broken, unfortunately. Ben called the paramedics. They declared death, it looked like a heart attack. Private ambulance was called and the Prof was taken to the morgue. Ben had noticed the scene looked odd and called it in, but as it didn’t look like a suspicious death from the outset, we were a little slow on the uptake. Ben told my boss that you’d been round making enquiries, he checked the system and he talked to … Field, is it? Right. So he sent me over. Ben had locked the door after the paramedics and ambulance had gone, so there’d been no further interruptions after that and the items on the coffee table are untouched, as far as we can ascertain, apart from the bottle. I photographed that in situ, bagged it and couriered it over to the lab. I’ve been on the advanced crime scene, preservation of evidence courses, so I should have done it right,’ he added. ‘Since then I’ve not been further than the living room door so—’

  ‘So we’ll stay in the hallway,’ Tess confirmed. ‘There was a note?’

  ‘Yes, left in place, weighted down by what looks like a front door key. It matches the emergency key they keep at the gatehouse but it’s not Professor Fincher’s. His is still hanging on the hook by the back door. The note says, “You should have stopped.”’

  ‘Not “stopped me”?’ That’s what Field had told her.

  ‘No. Just stopped. Nothing’s covered by the key, you can see the whole message.’

  Tess stood in the doorway and looked. The coffee table was set between the two chairs as it had been when they visited. It was small and square and looked like a flat pack. Two glass tumblers had been carefully set one on either side of the table. A single sheet of what looked like A4 printer paper lay in between the key placed carefully dead centre. She couldn’t read the words on the paper but she could see that they had been written about a quarter of the way down the page in a single line.

  ‘Where was the bottle?’

  ‘Beside the left-hand glass.’ He showed her the pictures he’d taken on his smart phone. Caroline looked over her shoulder and Tess moved out of the way so that she could see the room more easily.

  ‘A handwritten note?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘So, handwriting analysis.’

  ‘Will suggest similarities, if we get an exemplar,’ Caroline said. ‘It’s still considered far from an exact science. But it can be helpful.’

  The sound of a van pulling up drew DS Denny back outside.

  ‘CSI have arrived,’ he told them. ‘I’ll hand off, soon as you’re done.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Tess said.

  ‘It’s not as dramatic as the other scene.’

  ‘You think it’s the same killer?’

  Caroline shrugged. ‘I’m not in the business of speculation,’ she said. ‘But it’s one hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? And there’s something … I think it’s the precision of it, you know. It feels the same.’

  ‘I’d not have said that Leanne Bolter’s killing was precise,’ Tess argued. ‘It was just a bloody mess.’

  Caroline shook her head. ‘It was precise,’ she said. ‘The placing of the body, the deliberate, unhesitating action of the cuts. The sense of drama. It was precise.’

  The CSI were waiting and they returned to the front of the bungalow, releasing the scene.

  ‘So, what now?’

  ‘We drive back but I want to make a detour on the way and pick up Fincher’s notes. We’d have done it yesterday but we had a witness interview in the opposite direction and no time to loop back. His papers are lodged with a solicitor. Field’s cleared it with them for us to collect everything. Fortunately Fincher wrote us a letter of authority yesterday.’

  ‘He definitely didn’t come in by the front gate,’ Tess said. ‘The security guy reckons it’s possible to come over the wall and through the woods.’ She pointed in the opposite direction to the golf course.

  ‘I’ll need to take a look,’ Caroline told her. ‘I need to see the complete scene.’

  ‘Sure, but I’m not sure how we’ll figure out exactly where the killer came over. It’s a long perimeter wall and quite a big lump of woodland.’

  ‘A lump? Is that a technical term? Come on, we’ll need to take a look anyway. The probability is that the killer will do what most people do and have taken the path of least resistance. Chances are people walk in the woods regularly, there’ll be tracks that are easier to follow than others. He’ll have followed where other people have already led.’

  ‘All right. So where do we start? Oh, is that a map?’

  ‘Not really.’ Caroline opened the glossy brochure she was holding. ‘It’s a sales brochure. Ben gave it to me. But it’s got a sketch map of the site in the back, look. And it shows how the road curves round the wall, away from the main gate.’

  ‘So, if you didn’t want to be seen, you’d go over the wall about here,’ Tess pointed.

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Security cameras?’

  ‘Apparently not, only on the main gate and on the clubhouse and shop on the golf course. Apparently some of the house owners install their own and they can have them linked up to the gate for a fee. Fincher didn’t, unfortunately.’

  ‘So—’ Tess glanced about, trying to get her bearings – ‘we’re here, if we head off in that direction …’

  ‘Should have brought wellies,
’ Caroline observed ruefully.

  It took them ten minutes to get to the wall. The wood was still bare and open, leaves just starting to green the branches but not yet open and the ground was sodden for most of the way raising Tess’s hopes that there might be footprints close to the wall. Looking back, it was possible to get a view of Fincher’s bungalow and the two closest to it and the golf course clubhouse up on the rise beyond.

  ‘He’d be able to see the lights in the bungalow. And this time of year, there’s very little undergrowth, you could walk pretty much direct,’ Caroline said. ‘We just need to find where he came over the wall.’

  ‘And we need to go slowly,’ Tess said. ‘I don’t want to risk us disturbing a secondary scene.’

  Caroline nodded. ‘It would still have been pitch black out here,’ she said. ‘The moon was still new and it was pretty cloudy last night. Out here too, apparently.’

  ‘You think he’d have risked using a torch?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. People would have had their curtains closed and if he kept the torch pointed down and shielded it with his hand he could have kept a good view of where he was treading, kept the bungalow in view and headed for the lights in the window. It would probably have taken longer than the ten minutes it took us, but it would have been easy enough.’

  Tess nodded. The two women moved carefully now, looking down, trying to avoid the deepest mud and wettest grass. It was Tess that spotted the prints. ‘Look. There.’

  ‘Oh, my god. Yes.’

  On the ground close to the wall were two clear impressions. Deep and side by side as though someone had landed hard on both feet. Then tracks leading away and leading back just a few yards from the first.’

  ‘So he came over there and went back just a little ways up,’ Caroline said. ‘You got an evidence bag or something to cover them down with? You can bet your life it’s going to rain before the CSI get out here.’

  ‘Nothing big enough with me, but DS Denny is still on scene. I can see his car. He can get the call put through and he might have something in his kit. I think we should head back, go the way we came.’

  Caroline nodded. She took off the bright red scarf she was wearing and tied it to a tree. ‘Make it easier to spot,’ she said.

  Tess finished her call and then used her phone to take pictures of the footprints and surrounding aspects. ‘He’s sending two of the CSI over, I told him we’d be heading back. They’ll meet us at the edge of the wood and follow our path back through.’ She took a last look at the tracks. ‘Looks like you were right,’ she said. ‘He took a direct path. The footprints are headed straight towards the bungalow.’

  They turned and followed their own footprints back to the perimeter of the wood. Two CSIs arrived just as they did and Tess showed them the pictures she had taken and pointed to the red scarf on the birch tree. Then they headed back to Tess’s car.

  ‘Any insights?’ she asked after they had taken their leave and driven away.’

  Caroline laughed. ‘We don’t do insights. BIAs do comparisons and statistical probabilities. Everything we suggest or advise is based on empirical evidence from studies that are as scientific as we can make them. This isn’t Cracker anymore.’

  ‘You can’t tell me that you don’t wish it was sometimes,’ Tess teased her.

  ‘Oh, the maverick profiler who’s always right. It would be lovely. Make the job so much easier. As it is, it’s like being back at university. Everything we say has to be backed up by referencing some study or other or an earlier successful report or what our supervisor thinks and then we get the joy of yearly assessments.’

  She grinned at Tess. ‘So yes, it would be more fun, but it is better the way it is now. Hope I can prove that to you?’

  ‘I hope you can too,’ Tess said fervently.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘Doctor Hemingsby?’

  The man in green scrubs looked up from the charts he was scrutinizing. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sergeant Briggs. I wonder if I could have a word.’

  Hemingsby ticked off something on the chart and replaced it in the rack. ‘Come on in here,’ he said leading Alfie into a tiny closet of a room fitted out for tea making and dish washing. ‘Parents use this space if they’re staying overnight,’ Hemingsby explained. ‘And family waiting for their kids to come out of surgery.’ He grinned. ‘It’s hard to find a quiet spot.’

  ‘Dr Hemingsby, I believe you knew an Inspector Joe Jackson. In fact I believe you might have been involved in an enquiry he was leading—’

  ‘Rebecca Arnold.’ The smile had vanished now. Hemingsby nodded. ‘I knew Joe,’ he said. ‘I knew Rebecca’s family. My sister was a friend of hers.’

  ‘And you were a suspect in her murder,’ Alfie said flatly.

  For a moment, Hemingsby seemed to be considering that. ‘You’re here because of that student that’s been murdered,’ he said.

  ‘I am. You took a bit of tracking down.’

  ‘I don’t see why. I’ve been working here, in the same hospital for the past ten years.’

  ‘Because Inspector Jackson left very few clues as to who you were or where you might be found. The address you gave him was false. The interviews you did with him are missing. And because everyone that remembers that investigation says that he kept his suspicions about you very close to his chest.’

  Hemingsby nodded as though none of that was a surprise. ‘It wasn’t a false address,’ he said. ‘It was where I stayed while I was up here looking for a job.’ He paused as though considering his options. ‘I thought this was all over,’ he said. ‘I thought after Joe died all of this would be dead and buried.’

  ‘Like Rebecca Arnold was, you mean.’

  ‘An unfortunate turn of phrase. Sorry. But you know, that’s not the way I meant it. This isn’t what it looks like. It isn’t what it looked like then.’

  ‘So, maybe you’d like to come in and tell us how it was?’ Alfie said.

  When Tess got back she was told there’d been developments. ‘Nat Cooper and Alfie Briggs tracked down the suspects in the Rebecca Arnold murder. The butcher, Greening, he has a shop down the coast and a solid alibi for the night of the Leanne Bolter murder. Dilly Hughes is locked up at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. Robbery with violence, he’ll be out in another five years.

  ‘And Doctor Keith Hemingsby has come in to talk to us. Alfie found him at St Almas. He’s a paediatric surgeon, been there for the past decade. At St Luke’s as a houseman when Joe Jackson added him to the suspect list.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he has an alibi for the night of the Bolter murder. Was in surgery. An emergency call, so … he’s off the hook for that. And what he has to say about the original investigation is, shall we say, revealing.’

  Field led them down to the operations room from where they could see the interview on CCTV.

  Hemingsby had changed out of his scrubs. He was in company with Alfie Briggs and Nat Cooper and he looked a little anxious as most people, in Tess’s experience, did in a police interview room. It was clear, though, from both Alfie and Nat’s demeanour that this was more than a suspect being interviewed by two officers.

  ‘So, what’s going on,’ she asked.

  ‘Listen in, it’s getting interesting.’

  Puzzled, Tess took up position in the room adjoining the interview suite and watched as Hemingsby continued with his explanation.

  ‘So, there was me and Joe and a psychiatrist he’d dragged in to consult on the quiet and we were sitting in this pub in the middle of nowhere. The Red Lion as it was then out on the coast road.

  ‘Sounds like a bad joke put like that, I suppose, but Joe wanted to keep our meetings quiet and out of the way.’

  ‘How long had you known Joe Jackson?’

  Hemingsby paused. ‘Must have been about five years by that time. My mother was a civilian worker, transcribed interviews and that sort of thing and I’d got to know him through her. She’d got to know him because she was one mean
pool player and—’

  ‘Joe Jackson organized the inter-station tournaments,’ Alfie said.

  ‘So, it was one of those coincidental things. Joe got on well with my mother, and with my dad, and Joe came over from time to time. He was just part of the landscape, growing up, but the thing was, not many people knew that. Local officers knew my mum and anyone that played pool, but you know as well as I do, civilian staff and non-civilian staff don’t mix much at work and my mum had left by the time I got involved in Joe’s scheme.’ He paused, frowning. ‘Well I didn’t so much get involved as Joe involved me.’

  ‘He could be a persuasive bastard,’ Alfie observed.

  ‘He could be a bastard, full stop.’

  ‘You didn’t like him then. I’m surprised you—’

  ‘I didn’t volunteer for the role, Sergeant Briggs. I was conscripted. I wake up one morning and there’s a couple of policemen at my door inviting me to come to the station and tell them where I’d been on the night of the Rebecca Arnold murder. Didn’t even give me time to get properly dressed. I was scared to hell and my mother was frantic.’

  ‘I thought you were living in the B & B?’

  ‘No, not at that point. I moved out of home soon after. I’d been coerced into going along with Joe’s scheme but I didn’t want my parents taking any of the flack. They put it about that I wanted to be closer to the hospital and had moved away because of that and fortunately, not many of the neighbours had witnessed my supposed arrest that morning. Those that had were used to seeing coppers coming and going to my mum’s place and thought nothing of it.

  ‘So why go to the trouble. Why not just ask you on the QT?’

  ‘Because he wanted it to seem authentic. He wanted there to be a paper trail should anyone go looking. Look, I’ve lived with this thing for years now, been scared to death in case it all came up again. Joe promised he’d put it right, make sure there was nothing substantial in the paperwork.’