Shattered: a gripping crime thriller Page 4

  6

  Stretching her arms above her head, Kate groaned and looked at her watch. She’d spent nearly two hours researching the Church of the Right Hand and Julia Sullivan. She looked around at her flat, at what she’d been avoiding since she’d walked in, grabbed a beer and flopped on the sofa. There were boxes everywhere. Some were full and labelled, more were empty, gaping mouths waiting to swallow her possessions and spit them out somewhere else, in another life.

  She loved this flat, with its view across Town Field and its quirky corners and angles. It was a five-minute drive to Doncaster Central and there was an off-licence on the corner just 100 yards away. What more could she want? Maybe guaranteed parking – trying to find a space after 5pm was a nightmare. What she was feeling had little to do with the flat, if she was honest. It was more to do with Nick. They’d been seeing each other for over two years and moving in together was the next logical step – she’d taken marriage off the table early in their relationship, still bruised from her divorce from Garry – but there was still a sense of losing freedom. Kate loved Nick, there was no doubt about that, and they were well suited. Both career-minded – he’d been appointed senior consultant the previous year – and both at an age and a time in their lives when they wanted things to be easier, more straightforward.

  It had taken a while to admit to herself that the real issue was her age. Turning fifty had been a celebration but had also forced Kate to take stock and lurking among her plans and hopes was the dark spectre of retirement. She knew that there was no rush. She’d taken some time out when her son, Ben, was small so she had few years of her pension to make up – if that’s what she chose to do. But the job was getting more difficult, more complex and she didn’t want to be a burden to her younger team. She had considered going for promotion but that seemed to offer the promise of more paperwork, more media liaison and less time in the field so she’d come round to accepting that DI was to be the pinnacle of her career.

  And then there was the menopause. It had been creeping up for a couple of years, but she was now in full-blown hot sweat and insomnia territory. She knew her colleagues had noticed but not even Dan had been brave enough to comment when she opened windows or cranked up the air con in the car. She’d started to keep a spare blouse in her locker at work and a travel-size deodorant in her desk drawer, but she still felt caught out and thrown off guard by the hormonal changes.

  The house she’d bought with Nick was a compromise. He’d wanted an old property with a rich history and a rambling mess of a garden; Kate wanted modern and absolutely no work to be done. They’d looked at a former pub, a converted chapel – no outside space – and an old rectory, but if Nick had been hoping to infect her with his enthusiasm, she’d remained stubbornly immune. She was about to give up and agree to move in with him, even though she was increasingly convinced that wasn’t what he wanted either, when he texted her an address and a time. Kate hadn’t known whether to feel annoyed or intrigued but she’d gone along with Nick’s ploy and driven to a quiet lane in Austerfield near Bawtry – timing the journey so she could assess it as a commute.

  Twenty minutes after leaving work she was standing in front of a beautiful barn conversion on a big plot, surrounded on three sides by beech hedges. It was gorgeous. Kate didn’t regard herself as the sort of woman who was interested in interior decoration, but she couldn’t quite believe her reaction to the place. The interior was modern, but it retained some original features while avoiding the clichés of dusty beams and odd patches of bare stone. The main bedroom had views over open country beyond the hedges and a huge en-suite bathroom. The lounge was enormous with under-floor heating and a wood burner – two things Kate hadn’t known she’d needed until now. The kitchen wasn’t of much interest to Kate. She wasn’t a great cook, but Nick was excellent and tended to make most of their evening meals.

  Nick hadn’t met her at the house. He knew her well enough to allow her the space and time to get a feel for the place. Half an hour after arriving she’d texted a simple ‘Yes!’ and three weeks later they’d put down a deposit.

  Kate knew it was a positive move for them. It would be good for their relationship and living further from work would allow them some decompression time before arriving home. She just didn’t want to pack, and she didn’t like change.

  Pulling her laptop towards her, Kate went back to her research. The website for the Church of the Right Hand was very vague about the group’s aims and beliefs and there was little mention of them elsewhere on the net. She’d found a few references to them being founded in 2009 in the USA but searching on the names of the founders had yielded nothing of interest. It looked like the church was legitimate and had managed to keep out of the news.

  She typed the name of the church and ‘forums’ into the search bar to see if there were any discussions involving the members or the methods of the group and was excited to see Church of the Right Hand mentioned with a reference to a forum called ‘LiFlight’. Clicking on the link took her to a post on the third page of a discussion which appeared to be about unethical religious practices. A member called 2Tru had written about their experience of the Church of the Right Hand and their experience had obviously resonated with other former members.

  2Tru– They seemed so nice at first. I’d been on the street for a few months when they found me and took me in and they really helped me to get back on my feet. I found a job in a café and I got a bedsit and was ready to get back in touch with my family. That’s when I saw what they were really about. The pastor told me that if I wanted to stay in the group I needed to renounce my past and that included my mum and sister. It didn’t feel right but I went along with it because they’d been so kind.

  Bev87– That’s how they work. Same happened to me. I’d split up from my boyfriend and was in a bad place and they gave me a focus. But they tried to isolate me from my family and friends. I fell for it. I believed their bulls**t about what God wants and how only the pure go to heaven. Did they try to persuade you that white people are superior to everybody else?

  2Tru– I got a hint of that. My group were always going on about homosexuals and fornicators. They had me believing all sorts because I had nobody else to talk to.

  Bev87– Glad you’re safe now. Stay strong.

  2Tru– ThnX

  It wasn’t much, but it was disturbing. Cora had said that she met Julia in hospital. Had she preyed on the vulnerabilities of Julia after her accident? If she had a head injury, she may have been easy to manipulate and open to suggestion. While it didn’t give anybody from the Church of the Right Hand an obvious motive for murder it did imply that Julia’s views weren’t necessarily formed honestly, and the church had opened her up to online abuse and threats. Had she unwittingly become the spokesperson for some very suspect people?

  7

  Cain Powell’s phone died just as he rounded the corner of the lane heading up to the Beacon. One minute his feet had been pounding along to Florence and the Machine, the next, silence. It wasn’t just the lack of music that pissed him off: a dead battery meant no Strava app. No Strava meant no bragging rights that he’d done the Turton circuit in less than an hour. He slowed to a trot and then stopped completely, Velcro rasping as he tore the phone holder from his upper arm.

  ‘Shit!’ he swore, jabbing at the screen of his mobile as though he could poke it to life. ‘Bloody thing!’

  He peered through the mist, trying to work out how much further he had to go to reach the downhill section that signalled the easier return leg of the route. Probably less than a quarter of a mile – not worth turning back. The anticipation of impressing his friends over a pint in the Plough later made him think he might as well carry on even though running was a bit of a lonely occupation without music.

  ‘Sod it,’ he muttered, strapping the armband back on and setting off at a fast jog. The mist gave way to low cloud as he slogged his way up the hill towards the television mast on the site of a medieval beacon. As he got nearer
to the mast, he could only see the bottom half – the rest hidden by grey dampness. He hated running in the wet. It settled in his hair and made him sweat much more than on a dry, warm day, making him look like he was struggling and out of condition.

  There was a vehicle in the small parking area at the end of the lane with its engine running. Cain could feel the vibration before he actually heard anything, and the rear lights got brighter as he got closer. It was a popular spot due to its elevation and the expansive views across the River Don towards the Peak District but on a morning like this, Cain couldn’t see the point of parking up. Unless they were dogging. There had been a few complaints from locals that the area around the Beacon was being used for illicit sexual activity but usually at night, not at half past seven on a gloomy summer morning.

  Curious, Cain slowed a little as he drew level with the car. It was a Range Rover, dark blue, two years old. The inside seemed to be as foggy as the surrounding air, obscuring his view of the occupants. He stepped closer, puzzled. Had they opened the door and allowed the fog inside?

  Then he saw the plastic hose that had been taped to the exhaust and the duct tape across the back window where the end of the hose disappeared. This wasn’t sightseeing or dogging; this was suicide.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Cain whispered to himself as he wondered what to do.

  He walked slowly round the car, trying each of the doors in turn. All locked. He could break a window but there was nothing on the ground that would have the weight and heft to smash through the glass, just gravel and small stones. As he looked around, hoping for inspiration he noticed that there was something propped up against the windscreen – something white. A note.

  Please leave us alone. We’ve had a good life but it’s time to go.

  An instruction – or a plea?

  There wasn’t much he could do here, Cain decided. He’d have to go and get help. His phone was dead, but the nearest public phone box was close – just outside Turton – no more than five minutes at a fast jog.

  Swearing under his breath, Cain set off back the way he’d come, picking up pace until he was running flat out. Less than three minutes later a splash of red in the white mist was pulling him towards the phone box.

  8

  ‘Who’s he?’ Kate asked, nodding towards a largeish man in shorts and T-shirt, shivering despite the silver blanket he was wrapped in and the increasingly warm morning sun.

  Barratt flicked back a page in his notebook, squinting as he peered down at his own scrawled handwriting, the hood from the protective suit he was wearing flopping down over his balding head. ‘Cain Powell. He found the car, saw the note and ran to the phone box to call for help.’

  ‘Note?’ Nobody had mentioned a note to Kate when she’d got the call about two bodies in a car on Beacon Edge.

  ‘There’s a note propped up against the windscreen asking to be left alone.’

  Kate turned, taking in the car, the television mast and then the view which had been revealed as the early low cloud burned off. ‘Not a bad spot to end it all,’ she mused. ‘Bit rough on the jogger though.’

  ‘Except they didn’t want to end it all,’ Barratt said.

  Kate had guessed as much as soon as she’d been summoned to what appeared to be a straightforward suicide and she was keen to see what had got the pathologist so interested in the case. She suspected a link with Julia Sullivan.

  A taped cordon had been set up around the car using the fence and two small trees, the blue-and-white police tape fluttering in the light breeze that had helped to disperse the mist. Inside the cordon, white-clad figures were busy with brushes and other tools, collecting samples and recording everything using digital cameras. Kate could see the rear half of a small figure protruding from the passenger side, the upper half obviously busy with one of the bodies.

  She walked over to the tape and flashed her ID at a uniformed officer who was standing guard. He seemed to be desperately trying to avoid looking at the bodies in the car, his eyes drawn to the expansive view and occasionally flicking to the pool car that Kate had driven to the scene. There didn’t seem much point in his presence as the end of the lane had been blocked by a row of cones and another uniformed officer was stationed there to keep out nosey members of the public.

  ‘Can I speak to Doctor Kailisa?’ Kate asked. The man looked at her uncertainly before turning to the car.

  ‘I think he’s still working on the bodies,’ he mumbled, turning back to Kate. ‘I can’t disturb him if he’s busy.’

  Scared of the pathologist’s famed bad temper, Kate thought and smiled to herself. She’d been on the receiving end of Kailisa’s sharp tongue on many occasions and it wasn’t pleasant.

  ‘Okay,’ Kate said. ‘I’ll just have to ask him myself.’

  She grabbed a sealed packet of overalls and wriggled the thin protective suit over her clothes before snapping on a pair of shoe covers. The reluctant sentry raised the tape just far enough for her to duck underneath and she followed the line of step plates to the vehicle.

  ‘What’ve we got?’ she asked as Kailisa eased himself out of the car. ‘Any obvious signs that this isn’t a suicide?’

  ‘DI Fletcher,’ Kailisa said, turning to her, eyebrows raised above the surgical mask that covered the lower half of his face. ‘Good morning to you too.’

  Kate smiled. Kailisa wasn’t known for his politeness so she rarely bothered with pleasantries when they met at a crime scene.

  ‘Can you talk me through the scene?’

  Kailisa straightened up and pointed at the vehicle.

  ‘Dark-blue Range Rover. Two years old. Registered to a Peter Houghton. Two bodies in the two front seats. The male had a wallet in his pocket with a driving licence in the name Peter Houghton with an address in Turton. Female unknown but her age suggests that she’s likely to be his wife Eleanor.’

  ‘So why am I here?’

  Kailisa continued as though he hadn’t heard the question. ‘The engine of the car was running – fuel tank registers a quarter full. A length of hose had been attached to the exhaust pipe with duct tape and fed through one of the rear windows – the gap was sealed with more tape.’

  ‘So…?’

  Kailisa held up a gloved hand, palm towards Kate, preventing her from repeating her question. ‘We don’t know how long the car was running for, but the cabin was full of exhaust fumes – preliminary readings suggest high levels of carbon monoxide.’

  Kate waited. She knew the pathologist was methodical and wouldn’t be prevented from presenting the evidence in his own way and in his own time. Her interruption had been more instinctive than a serious attempt to divert him from his narrative.

  ‘However, close examination of both bodies suggests that they were dead, or close to death, when the tubing was inserted into the window. Carbon monoxide poisoning produces a particular red lividity and neither body has evidence of this. I’ve checked shoulders and legs where there was pressure contact with the seats but there is nothing to suggest carbon monoxide was the primary cause of death. Of course, post-mortem examination will be necessary to confirm this. Both bodies appear to be in the early stages of rigor mortis which suggests they have been dead for a few hours.’

  ‘Could they have taken something – pills, drugs – and used the exhaust as backup? Sort of a belt and braces job?’ Kate asked. ‘The presence of a note suggests that they didn’t want to be rescued so perhaps they made doubly sure.’

  Kailisa tilted his head on one side, studying Kate’s face intently until she looked away, uncomfortable with his scrutiny. She knew from experience that he was giving her time to dig a hole before he could give her a hefty shove into it.

  ‘That might make sense except for one other piece of evidence.’

  Now it was Kate’s turn to stare and wait. Kailisa turned and pointed to a yellow evidence marker about a hundred feet away next to one of the four metal posts driven into the concrete that formed the bottom of the television mast.

&n
bsp; ‘The car keys were found over there, hanging from a rivet in the metalwork.’

  ‘Could one of the car’s inhabitants have thrown them and they landed like that?’

  Kailisa shook his head. ‘Even if they’d stood at the fence it would have taken a huge effort and neither person looks like they had the upper-body strength. The odds of the keys landing on the rivet are vanishingly small.’

  Kate thought for a second, trying to picture the scene. ‘Could one of them have walked over to the tower and put the keys there for some reason? So there was no temptation to drive away.’ Even to Kate’s own ears, the explanation was thin.

  ‘The gate to the area around the mast is locked. I doubt either victim would have been able to climb over and the fence is too high, and secure – it’s been checked. There are no gaps in the perimeter.’

  ‘How did you find the keys?’

  ‘One of the SOCOs saw the sunlight catching something metal. He took a photograph and enlarged it on the screen of his camera. The area was thoroughly processed, the gate tested for fingerprints and shoe impressions and the ground carefully photographed. There were some impressions in the damp grass but no detail. Whoever left the keys didn’t walk on the track.’

  Kailisa pointed to the rough gravel track that led to the concrete base of the mast. ‘Even if they had, it’s unlikely that we would have recovered impressions. The ground is relatively dry apart from a light coating of damp from the drizzle earlier.’

  ‘So, somebody locked the car, climbed over the gate and went to hang the keys on the TV mast?’ Kate was thinking aloud, trying to make sense of the findings. ‘But the two people in the car wouldn’t have been locked in; all one of them would have had to do was open a door; the central locking wouldn’t prevent a door being opened from the inside.’