Bad Seed: a gripping serial killer thriller (DI Kate Fletcher Book 3)

  Bad Seed

  DI Kate Fletcher Book 3

  Heleyne Hammersley

  Copyright © 2019 Heleyne Hammersley

  The right of Heleyne Hammersley to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2019 by Blodhound Books

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

  Also By Heleyne Hammersley

  Forgotten

  Fracture

  DI Kate Fletcher Series

  Closer To Home ( Book1)

  Merciless ( Book 2)

  …in memory of Maggie Godwin.

  Chapter 1

  DI Kate Fletcher unbuttoned her jacket, breathing heavily in the humid air as she studied the scene in front of her. The body of a woman was lying on its back amid the lush vegetation which bounded much of Doncaster’s Town Fields like the hair around a monk’s tonsure. The body was surrounded by crime scene technicians who continued their work as Kate approached. She kept back beyond the blue and white crime scene tape and followed the step plates with her eyes, knowing that she wouldn’t be welcome to approach until she’d donned protective clothing.

  She could make out dark hair and pale limbs but little else from where she was standing. As the body had been dumped amongst nettles and cow parsley that were as high as Kate’s waist in full June growth.

  ‘What have we got?’ she asked the nearest overall-clad figure. He turned to face her and she recognised her colleague, DC Barratt. He took a couple of steps towards her and lowered the hood of his overalls, messing up his hair and revealing patches of pink scalp through the thinning strands.

  ‘Body of a woman. Looks like she’s about thirty or so. Undressed from the waist down so possible sexual assault, but obviously we won’t know until the test results are back.’

  ‘Cause of death?’ Kate asked.

  Barratt glanced round at the other people attending and then lowered his voice. ‘They haven’t been able to establish that yet but there’s a whacking great wound in her abdomen. They were just debating whether it was pre or post-mortem when you arrived. There’s also bruising round her neck and throat so strangulation’s another possibility.’

  Kate nodded and glanced again at the body. She was tempted to find a set of overalls and get a closer look but she didn’t want to undermine Barratt. She knew that there would be photographs and notes and she also knew that Barratt’s report would be fastidiously detailed.

  ‘Who found her?’

  Barratt gestured to a support van parked on the running track that went around the top section of the field. A man in sports clothes was sitting on the back step, nursing a cardboard cup of something that Kate hoped was hot and sweet. Another of her DCs, Hollis, was standing next to the van but he didn’t appear to be talking to the man.

  ‘Bloke over there with Hollis. He was setting up a football training session for a team of pre-teens. Does it at weekends and in the school holidays. Thankfully he found the body before the kids arrived.’

  Kate thanked Barratt and crossed the grass to the van where the man had stopped studying his drink and was looking up at her expectantly.

  ‘DI Fletcher,’ Kate introduced herself. ‘I understand that you found the body?’

  He nodded and stood up, holding out his hand, which Kate ignored. ‘Duncan Cawthorne.’

  ‘Okay, Duncan. I want you to tell me what happened this morning. My colleague, DC Hollis, will make notes if that’s all right with you?’

  Cawthorne watched as Hollis took a notebook and pencil from the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket. ‘I get down here early on a Sunday,’ he began. ‘Have a bit of a run and then set up for the kids.’

  Kate appraised him as she listened to his account of arriving at the car park, jogging for half an hour and then retrieving the cones and balls from his car so he could set up a course for ‘the kids’. He was probably in his early thirties, well built and tall. He was wearing baggy grey tracksuit bottoms and a zip-up red hoody with a Doncaster Rovers badge below the left shoulder. His hair was hidden under a tight-fitting grey beanie hat with DRFC emblazoned across the front. He’d obviously dressed for his role as a football coach. His broad face was clean-shaven and tanned – Kate suspected a sunbed or a spray considering the grey cloud that seemed to have enveloped Doncaster for much of the spring and early summer.

  ‘And then I saw her,’ Cawthorne was saying. ‘Just lying on her back in the bushes.’

  Kate glanced across to the police tape. It was a few hundred yards away from the neat row of miniature traffic cones that had been set up next to the running track. She looked at Hollis. He’d stopped making notes and was looking at where the body lay. He’d also spotted the anomaly.

  ‘Duncan,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t understand. You can’t see the body from where you’ve set up the cones and the running track is easily two hundred yards from the bushes. So why did you go over there?’

  This could be it. It wasn’t uncommon for the perpetrators of crimes to want to be involved in the investigation and Kate’s mind was wide open as far as Duncan Cawthorne was concerned.

  ‘I… er… I thought I could see something strange so I went over to check.’

  Hollis walked over to the furthest of the cones, his long legs covering the distance in a handful of strides. He made a show of shading his eyes with a hand peaked above his eyebrows while he looked in the direction of the forensics team.

  ‘I doubt I’d be able to see anything lying flat over there,’ he said. ‘And it’s not like her clothing was brightly coloured. You must have cracking eyesight.’

  Kate watched as Cawthorne coloured and looked down at his empty cup. Hollis loped back across the grass and shook his head at Kate to indicate that he wasn’t convinced by the man’s story but he didn’t want to challenge him until Kate had had a crack.

  ‘Duncan?’

  The man continued to stare at his cup.

  ‘Duncan. I’m fairly convinced that you couldn’t have seen the body from where you were. DC Hollis has almost perfect eyesight.’ Kate was improvising now, she had no idea about the quality of Hollis’s vision. ‘And he says that he wouldn’t have been able to see it. So shall we try again? You went over there for some reason, didn’t you?’

  Cawthorne looked up at her, his eyes narrowed with embarrassment. ‘I needed a pee. It’s quite a walk back to the loos in the car park and I wasn’t sure whether they’d be open anyway, so I thought I’d just go in the bushes. I saw the body after I’d finished. I was just, you know,’ he gestured to his lap, ‘making myself decent, when I saw one of her legs. I didn’t get very close – I swear. I just stepped back and rang 999. Then I waited by the track.’

  Hollis gave the other man one of his disarming grins. ‘We’ve all been there, mate. Got caught short. But if anybody had seen you, you’d be done for indecent exposure.’

  ‘I know. It was stupid,’ Cawthorne said.

  He looked back down at his cup. Kate raised her eyebrows questioningly to Hollis who wrinkled his nose and shook his head. Obviously, his gut was telling him that C
awthorne’s story was probably true but they would need to get a formal statement from him and a DNA sample, just in case his story wasn’t quite accurate and he had actually urinated much closer to the body than he’d admitted.

  Kate explained this to him carefully and he nodded his understanding, still red with embarrassment.

  ‘I didn’t kill her,’ he said, finally looking Kate in the eye. ‘I know you have to look at whoever found the body but this has nothing to do with me. I’ve never been in any trouble with the police before. I’ll do whatever you want.’

  He was in a tricky position. Anybody who has contact with kids has to be cleaner than clean these days. It would potentially cost Cawthorne his coaching job if he got into any trouble with the police.

  ‘As long as you co-operate,’ Kate said, ‘I can’t see any need for the details to become public knowledge. Get yourself over to Doncaster Central and sort out your statement. And leave DC Hollis your contact details before you go. Just in case.’

  She sighed as Hollis noted down Cawthorne’s details before the coach walked off in the direction of the car park. ‘How fantastic it must be to be a man. The whole bloody world’s your toilet.’

  Hollis tucked his notebook back into his pocket and smiled at her. ‘Penis envy? Should I buy you one of them Shewees? You know, so you can pee standing up.’

  ‘Don’t you dare! Some of us have some decorum.’

  ‘And some of us can pee anywhere.’

  Kate laughed. ‘I suppose it could have been worse. You don’t think he had anything to do with this?’

  Hollis shook his head. ‘Nope. He was far too shaken up and I’m fairly certain that his embarrassment was genuine. I think he’s just a bit of an idiot who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What did Barratt tell you?’

  Kate looked across to the main crime scene. There were fewer people there than there had been when she’d arrived, which she assumed meant that they were ready to remove the body.

  ‘Not much. Female. Half-naked. Large wound to the abdomen and bruising round her neck. No ID so far.’

  Hollis followed the direction of her eyes. ‘Could be a prostitute,’ he said. ‘The area around Town Fields is well known for it. It’s been quite mild the last few nights, maybe she’d decided to try her luck away from home.’

  ‘Could be,’ Kate agreed. ‘But I’m not sure her clothes looked right. She was quite well dressed and well nourished. I only caught a quick glimpse though. Barratt might be able to tell us more when they’re done.’

  As she spoke she saw two figures moving towards the crime-scene tape carrying a stretcher which bore a folded black body bag. A third lifted the blue and white barrier high above his head so that his colleagues could get under it without having to duck or bend.

  ‘Looks like they’re moving the body. Let’s see if we can grab Barratt.’

  She led the way back to the area of undergrowth where Barratt was removing his overalls, wriggling his shoulders as he lowered them to his waist. He looked up at her, his face grim. ‘Did you get anything from the football coach?’

  ‘Not much,’ Hollis said. ‘He came over to take a leak and spotted the body as he was finishing. He says he was well clear while he was peeing and only saw her afterwards.’

  Barratt nodded, running a hand through his hair in an attempt to smooth it down, but it was a hopeless task after it had been confined in the sweaty hood of his overalls. His hooked nose and deeply set eyes gave him a hawk-like appearance as he stooped to remove his shoe covers. ‘He’s probably telling the truth. The body wasn’t wet. Maybe a bit damp from the vegetation.’

  ‘So they think she’d been there all night?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Looks like it. According to her body temp she’s been dead between eight and fifteen hours. Hard to tell though. The PM will give a more exact time.’

  Kate laughed. ‘Ah, that’s why Kailisa isn’t here,’ she said, referring to the pathologist with whom she’d locked horns on two previous occasions. ‘He’s deputised you.’

  Barratt gave her a faint grin, obviously embarrassed by her joke.

  ‘Sorry. I just realised that I sounded exactly like him. Just repeating what I was told. I’m hardly an expert.’

  ‘I know,’ Kate said with a smile. Barratt was like a sponge; he soaked up details of cases and seemed to be able to remember everything that he heard. It was what made him such a valued member of her team. ‘So what did the SOCOs find?’

  ‘Not much. She’d been undressed from the waist down, but her clothes were left next to her. She was wearing decent gear. Not designer but not cheap. No handbag. No phone. No purse. Her hair looked recently styled – dark with reddish highlights. Her teeth were in good condition.’

  Kate read between the lines. This woman didn’t fit the usual profile of a prostitute or an addict in need of a fix. It sounded like she was somebody who would be missed. ‘What about the injuries?’ she asked. ‘You said there was a wound and some bruising?’

  ‘The bruising was consistent with manual strangulation,’ Barratt said, sounding as if he was on a witness stand in court. ‘Suspected hyoid fracture.’

  ‘What about the wound to the abdomen?’

  Barratt frowned, obviously trying to make sense of what he’d seen.

  ‘That was the weirdest thing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It looked like whoever killed her had performed a caesarean section after she died.’

  Chapter 2

  Kate rolled over and slapped at the alarm clock, desperate to stop the annoying bleep before it woke her up properly. She knocked it onto the floor, a plastic clatter and a mumbled curse, before realising that it wasn’t a cruel joke; it really was time to get up. The light seeping round the blackout blind told her that it was morning and the heavy arm across her midriff told her that she’d be better off if she stayed in bed.

  Shifting position, Kate eased herself up until she was sitting with her back against the headboard. The arm moved slightly and then tightened around her, its owner mumbling an incomprehensible syllable of complaint.

  ‘Nick?’

  Another mumble.

  ‘Nick. It’s time to get up.’

  The arm was removed as Nick Tsappis turned onto his back, his dark hair sticking out at odd angles and pillow marks carving tram lines down one olive-skinned cheek. ‘Remind me again why you have to get up at this ridiculous hour?’ he grumbled.

  ‘Because it takes me at least three hours to look fabulous in the morning.’

  ‘Only three,’ Nick teased.

  Kate gave him a light slap on the shoulder and reluctantly threw back the duvet. ‘I wish I could stay, you know that, but I’ve got to get to work.’

  Nick threw his arm around her and pulled the duvet back up to her waist. His other hand moved to her upper thigh. ‘Surely we’ve got time for a quickie?’

  Kate laughed. She’d been seeing Nick for nearly three months and still hadn’t quite accepted his seemingly insatiable appetite for her body. He was an oncologist at the Doncaster Royal Infirmary and she’d met him earlier in the year whilst investigating a case involving a cancer patient. It had taken four weeks for them to finally have dinner together and a further two weeks for them to fall into bed but, Kate had to admit, the wait had been worth it.

  ‘I’m sorry. I really have to get ready for work. I’ve got a tricky case to work on and it’s the PM today.’

  Nick’s hands stayed on her body. ‘Tricky how?’

  Kate sighed. She really wanted to tell him but she knew that to discuss details of an active case was totally unethical – even if Nick was a doctor.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You can’t tell me.’

  Kate’s brain stumbled over her last thought. Nick was a doctor. ‘I can’t tell you,’ Kate said. ‘But I can ask you a couple of questions that would help me.’

  His fingers tickled her thigh. ‘It’ll cost you.’

  ‘Okay. But you’ll have to submit an invoice and I’ll pay you later.’
>
  ‘Is that a promise?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Done,’ Nick said. ‘So what did you want to ask?’

  Kate took a deep breath. Her question wouldn’t compromise the investigation in any way and she could ask any other doctor but it seemed silly to squander an opportunity when she had one in her bed. ‘Do you know how to perform a caesarean section?’

  Nick’s hands moved quickly as he hoisted himself up into a sitting position. ‘Why do you ask? Please tell me you’re not pregnant.’

  Kate glanced at his face. He was half smiling but she could see that she’d unsettled him. ‘No. Of course not. Christ I’m practically menopausal.’ She stopped, suddenly aware of how unsexy that sounded. ‘Well… nearly… maybe. It’s not about me. I just need to ask a doctor. Any doctor.’

  ‘So I’m just convenient?’ Nick’s smile became more genuine, forming lines around his dark brown eyes.

  ‘Yes. Exactly. I need to keep a tame doctor on hand so I’ve been inviting you back to my flat on a regular basis in case you came in handy. And now you have.’

  ‘Very “handy”,’ he said, running a finger across her stomach.

  Kate pulled away trying not to allow herself to be distracted by the arousing contrast between Nick’s darker skin and her own paleness. She loved how they juxtaposed each other – not just in personality but physically. Where she was blonde, Nick was dark; where Kate was slim, Nick was sturdy and where she wasn’t especially short, Nick towered above most people he met.

  ‘Seriously. Would you know how to perform a C-section if you needed to?’

  Nick went quiet for a few seconds, frowning as though he was trying to remember something. ‘Probably. In an emergency. I learnt the theory in my second year of medicine and I’ve seen a couple done. I assisted on one when I was a junior doctor, but I’ve never made the cut myself.’