Death Rope Page 10

  ‘It’s complicated,’ she told Ariadne the following morning. ‘And I’m not sure whether I should be doing anything.’

  ‘Careful what you admit to,’ Ariadne warned Geraldine in a stage whisper, ‘there’s an inspector listening.’

  Geraldine looked around and saw Ian Peterson standing behind her.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ he laughed. ‘So, what’s Geraldine plotting now?’

  Ariadne looked slightly surprised. Evidently she wasn’t aware that Geraldine and Ian had worked together years before, when she had been an inspector and he had been newly promoted to sergeant.

  ‘Geraldine’s always up to something,’ he added with a conspiratorial wink.

  ‘Do you two know each other, then?’

  ‘We used to work together, years ago,’ Geraldine replied.

  ‘I thought…’ Ariadne broke off. ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘So you were saying?’ Ian prompted Geraldine.

  As he spoke, Naomi came over and joined them. She often seemed to turn up when Ian was around. Geraldine wasn’t sure she wanted to share her concerns with so many of her colleagues, but there was no help for it. Briefly she explained Amanda’s suspicions.

  ‘He was found hanging, wasn’t he?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s the one. Anyway, I looked into it but I couldn’t find anything to suggest he’d been murdered.’

  ‘People don’t always advertise it beforehand when they’re planning to top themselves,’ Naomi said. ‘But I can’t believe you took it seriously, just because his sister said he didn’t kill himself.’

  Geraldine told them Mark had been making holiday plans and arranging a game of tennis with a colleague the night before he died.

  ‘There isn’t always a rational explanation when someone takes their own life,’ Naomi said firmly. She turned to Ian. ‘Are you going to the pub this evening?’

  That seemed to end the conversation and they all drifted back to their desks. Geraldine was ready for a break, when Ian came to find her. He looked tense as he told her the pathologist wanted to see them. Geraldine nodded, understanding Ian’s reluctance to attend an autopsy.

  ‘I’ll go,’ she replied, and he smiled his relief.

  Always happy to seize an excuse to leave her desk, Geraldine set out for the mortuary mystified as to why Jonah wanted to see her when no murder had been reported. Avril smiled when she arrived. Geraldine wasn’t sure it was actually a good thing that her face had so quickly become familiar to the anatomical pathology technician. Without stopping to chat, Geraldine put on a protective suit and went in to see Jonah who was standing beside the table, the corpse of a stout woman stretched out in front of him. Geraldine looked down at the body and drew in a sharp breath.

  ‘Her name –’ Jonah began.

  ‘I know who she is,’ Geraldine interrupted him. ‘Amanda Abbott. What happened to her?’

  Jonah’s smile faded. ‘This was called in as a hit and run.’

  ‘She was run over? What a terrible coincidence. Her brother committed suicide three weeks ago. And now this accident –’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because by the time this vehicle drove over her, she couldn’t have run anywhere.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I follow you,’ Geraldine replied, although she had an uncomfortable feeling she knew exactly what he meant.

  ‘She’d been dead for some hours by the time she was run over.’

  ‘So this was a murder set up to look like an accident?’

  ‘It’s looking that way.’

  Geraldine frowned. ‘Her brother’s death could have been a murder set up to look like suicide.’ She stared down at the body of the woman who had been so forceful and full of life. ‘How did she die?’

  ‘She was strangled.’ Jonah pointed to dark weals on the victim’s neck.

  ‘Could it have been an accident?’

  ‘No chance.’

  Geraldine nodded. She had expected that response. ‘What else can you tell me?’

  Jonah shrugged. ‘We found a few traces of some material on her neck and they’ve gone off for examination.’

  ‘How long has she been dead?’

  ‘She was killed yesterday, probably late afternoon, maybe around five or six o’clock. It’s difficult to be precise about the time of death because she was left outside overnight. The body was only brought in late this morning. It was spotted by a passing driver at the edge of the Tadcaster Road where it had been lying all night. I’ll let you have a detailed report when I’ve finished my examination. But in the meantime I wanted to alert you to the fact that we’re looking at a murder here.’

  ‘Is there anything else to go on?’

  He shook his head. ‘Just some mud and other detritus on the back of her clothes, where she’d been dragged along the ground. That might be able to tell us something. I’ll let you know if we discover anything. I know you’ve had your suspicions about her brother’s death, so I thought you’d be particularly interested in this one.’

  Geraldine thanked him. He was right. She most definitely was interested.

  An apparently baseless accusation had turned into a double murder case. Despite her better nature, she couldn’t help feeling excited. Not only had her instincts been proved right, but she had a complex case to work on.

  Driving through heavy traffic along the Tadcaster Road towards Leeds, Geraldine looked out for a white forensic tent. It was a pity no one had noticed the body sooner. As she drove along she wondered whether it could conceivably be coincidence, Amanda’s murder following so soon after Mark’s apparent suicide. Amanda’s death could have been a revenge killing, but it was more likely that she had threatened to expose her brother’s killer. Alternatively, a killer could be targeting Mark and Amanda’s family, for reasons so far unknown to the police.

  She pulled up just before the cordon that closed off one lane of the busy road. The clouds had cleared, allowing the sun to warm the air. Treading carefully along the common approach path, she pulled on her protective suit and entered the tent. A small team of white-suited scene of crime officers were busy scrutinising the ground, collecting samples and taking photographs. They worked in silence, absorbed in their search. One of them glanced up and greeted Geraldine.

  ‘Being exposed to the open air and the weather, everything’s deteriorated since the victim was killed,’ he said with a rueful shrug. ‘And unfortunately there was a heavy shower last night, which doesn’t help, although the ground had mostly dried out by the time we got here. And then to cap it all, the whole scene’s been contaminated by the idiot who found her trampling all around the body.’

  The scene of crime officer raised his eyebrows and whistled as Geraldine explained that the victim had been strangled, and run over after she was dead.

  ‘So this was set up to look like a road accident?’

  ‘Only whoever killed her didn’t do a very good job of covering up the murder.’

  ‘Yes, a bit clumsy, wasn’t it? We all realised there was something not right about the scene.’

  If this was the work of the same killer who had faked Mark’s suicide, he had done a far better job first time around. Either Amanda had been despatched by a different hand, or the killer had been in a hurry with her, perhaps because he had attacked her in an exposed place.

  ‘Was she killed here?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s difficult to say for sure, with so many footprints. But there’s no sign of a struggle where the body was found, or anywhere round about.’

  Geraldine nodded. ‘It’s unlikely she would have been strangled at the side of the road, where anyone could have driven past while she was being attacked. Was she brought here from the fields? There was mud on her clothes.’

  ‘Analysis of the soil on her clothes should be able to establish that.’

  ‘Have you managed to find out anything about her killer?’

  ‘We’ve got some partial footprint
s, quite distinct from those of the couple who found her. It’s not much, but it’s enough to establish that we’re probably looking for a man, maybe with size ten feet. There’s no evidence of another vehicle stopping here, or of anyone arriving on foot, so it appears she was brought here in the vehicle that ran over her.’

  ‘After she was dead.’

  ‘Yes. She was transported here in a van.’

  He gave Geraldine details of the tyres, which were quite common.

  ‘Not very helpful, I know,’ he added. ‘But there was quite a lot of debris on her clothes so we’ve sent various samples off for analysis.’

  ‘What kind of debris?’

  ‘Difficult to say really. There was mud, and bits of grit probably from the road here.’

  ‘I’m not sure mud’s going to tell us very much,’ Geraldine said, frowning.

  ‘You’d be surprised. They might find all sorts of traces, not just mud. They can identify minerals, microscopic traces of plant life, even animal waste, and – well, it’s incredible what they can detect.’

  Geraldine nodded. Her colleague was right. The evidence would not only confirm that Amanda had been dead when she had been brought to the roadside, it might help identify where she had been killed. Leaving him to his work, Geraldine went back outside. The scene of crime officers were examining every centimetre of the site, looking for potential evidence. She would only be in the way. Peeling off her protective outer clothing, she walked slowly back to her car. The body had been deposited beside a field in an open area, empty and bleak. Cars sped by, carrying anonymous drivers and passengers. Drawing level with the tent, traffic slowed down momentarily, the drivers’ curiosity aroused by the crime scene. Without knowing it, they were right to be puzzled. The crime scene was baffling.

  Back at the police station, Geraldine’s colleagues shared her suspicions.

  ‘It does make you question whether Mark’s death was suicide, don’t you think?’ Naomi asked, as they waited for Eileen to arrive and begin the formal briefing.

  Ian shrugged. ‘That’s what Geraldine’s been saying all along. I told you she’s usually right about these things. She has an uncanny instinct for the truth.’

  Geraldine smiled, momentarily buoyed up by his comment. ‘It was just a feeling I had,’ she said, dismissing the compliment. ‘It’s dangerous to be influenced by an unsubstantiated hunch.’

  Ian smiled at her. ‘True, but still, your random hunches do have a way of turning out to be right.’

  Although pleased by Ian’s praise, Geraldine hoped she would be proved wrong in this case and they wouldn’t be looking for a serial killer who might strike again at any moment.

  25

  ‘Now his sister’s been murdered,’ Eileen said, ‘we have to re-examine Mark’s suicide. We’ll keep an open mind on whether he was murdered or took his own life. But –’ she broke off and shook her head.

  Whispers of consternation rippled through the assembled team. No one wanted to be working on a double murder case.

  ‘And if someone’s killed twice, what’s to say there won’t be more victims?’ Naomi said, wide-eyed.

  ‘Let’s not start any pesky nonsense like that,’ Eileen barked. ‘We’ll have no talk of serial killers or mass murders here, please. So far we have one probable suicide and one murder.’

  There was a general murmur of consent, but Geraldine wondered how many of her colleagues were still in any doubt over whether Mark had been murdered. Meanwhile, there were several perplexing aspects to the circumstances surrounding Amanda’s death, and the subsequent dumping of her body on the Tadcaster Road. The fact that her feet were bare was puzzling. When a pair of women’s slippers was found not far from where her body was lying, the discovery hardly helped. Muddy and ripped, they were the right size for her and appeared to have been torn off her feet when her body had been run over.

  ‘But what was she doing out there in her nightie, dressing gown and slippers?’ Eileen asked. ‘It suggests she was killed at home, but there’s no sign of any struggle in her house. And if she went out willingly, why didn’t she put on her shoes?’

  After the briefing, tasks were allocated, and Geraldine drove to Amanda’s house where the forensic team were still out in force searching for any trace of the killer’s identity. With the road outside the house reopened for access, a small group of local residents had gathered on the pavement, curious to know what had happened. Cynically, Geraldine wondered whether any of them had shown as much interest in Amanda while she had been alive.

  ‘Don’t you people have homes to go to?’ a uniformed constable was grumbling at them with a good-natured grin.

  ‘Can someone please tell us what’s going on?’ a young man asked.

  ‘What’s happened to the woman who lives here?’ another voice chipped in.

  As she approached the house, Geraldine saw a blonde reporter with red lipstick and a red jumper, waving a Dictaphone in front of the police officer. Glancing round, the blonde woman recognised Geraldine and dashed towards her, blocking her way.

  ‘Is this another murder?’ the blonde woman demanded, her voice shrill with excitement.

  ‘I’m sorry. We don’t have any information for you yet.’

  Predictably, the reporter insisted that Geraldine tell her whatever the police knew. ‘The public have a right to know,’ she screeched. ‘You can’t stay silent on such an important matter.’

  ‘Yes,’ another woman chimed in, ‘we have a right to know.’

  ‘At the moment all we have is mere speculation,’ Geraldine replied, concealing her irritation with a smile. ‘As soon as we have any news worth reporting, we’ll hold a press conference. If you don’t want to wait along with everyone else, you can give your number to one of the constables. You know we work through the night, but I take it you’d be happy to be contacted at any time? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get on and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to obstruct us in our investigation.’

  ‘Can you confirm this is a murder investigation?’

  Without answering, Geraldine pushed her way past the strident blonde woman. The uniformed constable moved aside to let her through, and stepped smartly back into position before anyone could follow her. As she hurried up the path to the front door, Geraldine could hear the reporter demanding answers to her questions. Hardly significant in the context of what had occurred, attention from the media was still unwelcome, and this was just the beginning. Until the case was closed it was only going to get worse. At best the intrusion was merely an irritating distraction, but there was a risk of it turning public opinion against the investigating police team and deterring potential witnesses from coming forward.

  Ignoring the voices clamouring behind her, Geraldine hurriedly pulled on a white protective suit and plastic overshoes. Once she was inside, she stared around the hallway. Even with scene of crime officers photographing everything in sight, and checking and testing all the contents of the house including personal bric-a-brac, the police were no closer to wrapping the case up. In spite of scene of crime officers crawling all over the stairs and along the hall, the house looked tidy. Glancing around, Geraldine noticed a shoe matching the one that Moira had found on Amanda’s doorstep. So Amanda hadn’t been wearing them and lost one on her way out of the house. Geraldine frowned, wondering why one shoe would be inside the house and the other one outside, but such speculation could only get her so far. What they needed was more hard evidence. She changed her protective suit and overshoes before making her way out into the back garden where several white-suited scene of crime officers were busy examining the grass and shrubs, gathering samples, and taking photographs.

  After watching for a moment, she called out to the nearest officer and asked him what, if anything, had been discovered. He paused in his close scrutiny of a patch of grass and straightened up.

  ‘There’s nothing here to suggest a struggle.’

  ‘Have you found anything at all?’

  The scene of crime
officer shook his head. ‘So far as we’ve been able to tell, no one else has been in the house or garden recently.’

  Geraldine gazed around the garden, so lush and full of life, remembering the robust woman who had harangued her just a few days ago.

  ‘I wonder why she was killed,’ she said quietly. ‘And what one of her shoes was doing outside the house.’

  The scene of crime officer didn’t answer. He seemed to understand that she was talking to herself. In any case, his job was to establish what had been done, not to speculate about why it had happened. Geraldine gazed in silence at the carefully tended garden, wondering who would take care of it now that Amanda was dead.

  By the time Geraldine returned to the police station, everyone seemed to share the view that Mark’s suicide had been faked. If it had been the other way round, with a murder followed by a suicide, the second death might have been a distressed reaction to the first, but it hardly seemed likely that a suicide would prompt a murder. With Amanda’s murder calling into question whether Mark had really taken his own life, Eileen raised the possibility that a killer might be targeting the family. The procedure to exhume Mark’s body had already been set in motion.

  When both Ariadne and Naomi told her independently they had suspected all along that Mark’s suicide had been faked, Geraldine smiled to herself, and held back from asking why they hadn’t voiced their opinions earlier. Eileen was intimidating, and Naomi was clearly doing her best to impress the detective chief inspector. Geraldine wondered whether Ariadne might also be angling for promotion. Since her demotion Geraldine had no chance of advancing in her career and very little to lose by opposing her senior officer’s views. Observing her colleagues, she appreciated for the first time how wonderfully liberating it was to have fallen off the career ladder. She had never regarded herself as a maverick officer, but the prospect of acting without fear of the consequences to her professional reputation was exhilarating.