Shattered: a gripping crime thriller Page 5

  Kailisa nodded.

  ‘And why hang up the keys? Why not just throw them away?’ Kate looked around again. ‘And where did they go after they’d left the keys? Unless they brought their own vehicle, but then how did they get the people in the car up here in the first place?’

  ‘It’s a conundrum, wrapped in a mystery,’ said a voice from behind her.

  Kate turned to see the tall, lean shape of Hollis silhouetted against the mid-morning sun.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked as Hollis stepped closer to the cordon tape and came more clearly into view. He was dressed in a dark T-shirt and jogging bottoms rather than his customary suit. His blond hair was damp, whether from sweat or a recent shower, Kate couldn’t tell, and his face was ruddier than normal.

  ‘I was at the gym. Day off for the overtime I did last weekend.’

  Kate grinned. She’d forgotten that he had booked time off. It was just like Hollis to drop everything at the slightest hint of an interesting case, even on his day off.

  ‘FOMO getting to you again?’ she teased.

  Hollis smiled back. ‘Fear of missing out? Something like that. Matt’s already given me the broad strokes. The thing with the keys is interesting. And the note. The wording is very similar to the Julia Sullivan case.’

  ‘I haven’t seen it,’ Kate said.

  ‘The wording’s almost identical. Hard not to think there’s a connection.’

  Typical Hollis. Of all her team, Dan loved the mystery, the slow unravelling of events that would lead them to a killer. She was about to respond when a shout from the direction of the car caught her attention – Kailisa had obviously authorised the removal of the bodies and she was needed. She trotted over, taking in the stretchers and body bags placed next to the car’s doors and the silence as the team awaited instruction.

  ‘The male first,’ the pathologist said. ‘Gently.’

  Kate watched as two of Kailisa’s team eased the body from the driver’s seat of the car, struggling with the tight space and the reluctance of the limbs to give up their hunched position as the rigor advanced. Finally, the body was zipped into a body bag and the men turned their attention to the female. Kate followed them round to the other side of the car and watched as they repeated the complex movements – the zipping of the second body bag adding a sense of finality to the operation.

  ‘Right, we’ll probably get to work on the first victim in the morning if you’d like to be present. You may be able to confirm identification before then but if not I will probably be able to help,’ Kailisa said. It was a courtesy rather than a genuine invitation – he knew that Kate would probably send Barratt or Hollis. ‘A vehicle recovery team should be here within the hour to take the car once the team have finished processing it in situ.’

  The removal of the bodies had caused a surge in activity around the vehicle as the forensics team checked the empty seats and footwells now they were unencumbered by the probable remains of Peter Houghton and his wife. Kate leaned closer to the passenger side, her attention caught by something odd.

  ‘Was the rear-view mirror like that when you opened the car?’ Kate asked, pointing to the unusual position. The mirror had been turned round so it would have reflected the passenger rather than the driver. There was also a crack running diagonally across the surface. Kate remembered the irritation she caused her ex-husband when she used the rear-view mirror to check her make-up while he was driving. It was as though the female had wanted to take one last look at herself even if the image had been distorted by the crack.

  Kailisa followed her gaze then summoned one of the men who’d removed the body.

  ‘Did you knock this mirror?’ His tone was faintly accusatory.

  The man’s face, framed by the tight elastic of his hood, coloured. ‘Don’t think so.’ He sounded uncertain. ‘We can check from the photographs.’ He trotted away and returned with a large digital camera clasped tightly in both hands. ‘It was like that when we opened the door,’ the man confirmed, showing the digital image to Kate on the camera’s display panel. The position of the mirror and the crack were clearly visible.

  Kate thanked him and walked back to the line of tape. If Kailisa was correct and the bodies were murder victims, then why would the female have checked her reflection? She couldn’t have if she’d already been dying. The killer must have turned the mirror. Had he or she knocked it reaching over for the keys and managed to crack it at the same time? It seemed unlikely but they didn’t know yet if somebody else had been in the car. Was it a message? Julia Sullivan had been murdered with a shard of mirror.

  ‘Who’s got the note?’ she shouted in the general direction of the SOCO team. One of the men jogged over, holding an evidence bag which he passed to Kate. She could make out the words through the clear plastic.

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

  This couldn’t be a coincidence – the wording was too similar. Whoever killed the Houghtons had also killed Julia Sullivan. Kate was sure of it.

  9

  ‘DVLA gives us a preliminary ID of the driver as Peter Houghton of Turton. It seems likely that the female is his wife Eleanor,’ Kate began, opening the briefing. She tapped the keypad of her laptop and an image appeared on the whiteboard.

  ‘This is Houghton and his wife at a recent function for leading local businessmen. A fundraiser for an MS charity. Apparently, Mrs Houghton’s sister died of the disease eight years ago. The photograph matches the physical characteristics of the two bodies but we’re still waiting for a positive ID. The couple lived alone and there is no known family at this stage.’

  Kate looked around the assembled group as they absorbed the information. Hollis had changed into a dark-grey suit although it was too warm for the jacket which was draped carefully across the back of his chair, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow with almost military precision. She noticed that Barratt had also managed to tidy himself up after being encased in a protective suit for most of the morning. Cooper was frowning at the screen as though trying to absorb every detail and O’Connor was stroking his scrubby, dark-red beard meditatively.

  ‘Is this Peter Houghton the haulage chap?’ O’Connor asked.

  Kate nodded. ‘South Yorkshire’s answer to Eddie Stobart.’

  ‘And a bit of a git, by all accounts,’ O’Connor continued with a grin. ‘When there was a move to widen the M18 he allowed the police access to his land near the site so they could forcibly remove protesters from the trees. He’s one of those climate-change deniers – doesn’t believe in renewables and has never even tried to update his fleet to make them more environmentally friendly.’

  Kate had already done a bit of research herself. Houghton was unpopular with his neighbours due to his drive to acquire as much land as possible in the small village. He’d even bid on land next to the nature reserve – against the RSPB – and won, preventing the expansion of the conservation area. He’d acquired planning permission for the land but, so far, he’d not started to build. Was there a possible motive there for his murder? There was certainly a similarity to Julia Sullivan. Both she and Houghton held unpopular opinions and weren’t afraid to voice them. Or, somebody might have objected to Houghton’s plans and wanted him out of the picture in the hope that the land could be saved from development. It was a bit of a stretch, though, given the similarities between the two notes.

  ‘What I don’t get,’ Sam said, ‘is why make it look like suicide when it obviously isn’t? Why not just kill them both? Staging something so elaborate takes time and effort and increases the risk of being caught in the act. Same with the Sullivan case, if we’re connecting them.’

  Kate moved the slideshow on to a photograph of the scene showing the position of the car relative to the television mast and the gated enclosure.

  ‘I think we have to assume that the area or the method meant something to the killer. Why would somebody go to the trouble of getting the couple up there – it’s
three miles from their home – and setting up this elaborate scene?’ Kate already had a couple of ideas, but she wanted to see if anybody on the team came to a similar conclusion.

  ‘It’s a message,’ O’Connor said. ‘The keys, the car, everything is meant to send a message.’

  Kate nodded, pleased. ‘And if we can understand the message, we might be able to work out who the killer is. Let’s look at the elements. There’s the car and the suicide paraphernalia.’

  ‘Could be a reference to Houghton’s lack of concern for the environment,’ Sam suggested. She was good at this kind of puzzle, despite her relative lack of experience, and often spotted patterns that were invisible to the rest of the team.

  ‘Go on,’ Kate prompted.

  ‘Well,’ Sam ran a hand through her shaggy blonde hair. ‘If he’s seen as an environmental vandal, there’s poetic justice in him being poisoned by exhaust fumes. Taking away the car keys might be a way of saying he can’t escape?’

  This last suggestion was more tentative and earned a wry twist of Barratt’s lips.

  ‘I don’t see it,’ he said. ‘The car thing, yes, but not the keys. Why not just take them away? Why display them? Whoever did this wanted the keys to be found to remove any doubt that this was suicide. They’re telling us that they’ve got away with murder.’

  Kate thought about both suggestions but neither felt quite right. She had no doubt that the keys were a message, but it was one that they didn’t understand fully. Yet.

  ‘What about the practicalities?’ Hollis asked, never overly comfortable with speculation and vagueness. ‘How did he or she get the Houghtons into the car? And who drove it up there? It’s the middle of June, it’s only dark for a few hours so the risk of being seen is fairly high. And then how did they get away? Unless the killer met them there in another vehicle.’

  Kate had anticipated this question. She flicked to a satellite image of the scene and zoomed out to show Turton in relation to the television mast.

  ‘The scene is just over three miles from the Houghtons’ home by road – ten minutes max. It’s less than two miles if you follow this footpath.’ She swapped to a section of OS map that corresponded to the satellite imagery and pointed to a green dotted line. ‘And then you can access this track which leads directly to the village and comes out opposite the Houghtons’ house.’

  Her colleagues stared at the screen, studying the map, obviously trying to work out the logistics of dumping Houghton’s car and getting back to the village without being seen.

  ‘If they left their own vehicle somewhere near the Houghtons’ house and then went back for it after setting up the supposed suicide, somebody would have noticed an unusual vehicle parked in the village – there’s only about a dozen houses. And there’s no public transport. They must have left their car up near the television mast and walked down to the village.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have left a car in the village. Looks like prime Neighbourhood Watch territory,’ O’Connor mumbled. ‘Probably curtain-twitchers on every corner.’

  ‘What if it was one of the neighbours?’ Barratt suggested. ‘Get yourself invited in for drinks, spike the old couple’s sherry, bundle them in the car after dark and then jog back to the village at first light. It looks like Julia Sullivan let her killer into the house; maybe it was somebody known to all three.’

  It was a possibility that Kate had considered but it was high risk. Anybody living near the Houghtons would be under the spotlight of suspicion as soon as the bodies had been found. If it was somebody local, surely they’d have left the car much further away to divert attention from themselves.

  ‘You don’t shit where you eat,’ O’Connor said. Cooper frowned her disapproval, but he continued regardless. ‘If you’re going to kill your next-door neighbour you don’t dump the body in your back garden and wait for it to be found. I can’t see it being anybody from the village.’

  Kate wouldn’t have expressed it in the same terms, but she shared O’Connor’s misgivings. Unless they were very lucky, Kate doubted that this was going to be the work of an irate neighbour as a result of a disagreement. How did that connect with Julia Sullivan? There was something deeper about the symbolism of the scene. She clicked through the photographs until she found one of the rear-view mirror.

  ‘This was a bit weird as well,’ she said. ‘The mirror was cracked and turned to face the passenger rather than the driver. I wondered if one of the tech crew had knocked it, but this image was taken before they moved anything. Given that Julia Sullivan was murdered with a sliver of mirror we have to consider the link.’

  ‘Could have happened when Houghton was placed in the driver’s seat,’ Barratt suggested. ‘An accident? I’ve turned mine round a few times when I’ve been cleaning the inside of the car. Maybe the killer was giving everything a wipe down before he left and knocked it out of place. Just a coincidence that there was a mirror in the Sullivan case?’

  ‘Was there anything else in the vehicle that was unusual?’ Cooper asked. ‘Anything to suggest how they really died?’

  ‘Kailisa couldn’t say what the real cause of death might have been. My guess would be drugs. Maybe an overdose of an opiate but we’ll have to wait and see. If they were poisoned or drugged, it’s unlikely it happened at the scene. How would somebody convince them to eat or drink something?’

  ‘Back to the poisoned sherry,’ O’Connor quipped.

  ‘If they were drugged at their home that suggests somebody with a degree of upper-body strength. The killer had to get them in the car and one body had to go in the back seat or the boot while he drove up to the dump site.’

  ‘Kailisa isn’t sure that they were dead when they were left in the car. His exact words were “dead or close to death”,’ Kate said. ‘It’s possible that the killer was able to get them both to walk at least part of the way to the vehicle before the drugs took full effect. If he put Houghton in the back, he’d have only had to move him out of the back door and in through the driver’s door. Hopefully there’ll be something on the body, bruising or scuffing, to give us a clue.’

  ‘If somebody drugged them in their home it suggests that the killer might be known to one or both of them,’ Barratt mused. ‘The house has a high wall round it and I’m fairly sure there’s a decent security system in place – maybe even automatic locking on the gate with an intercom for access.’

  It’s a good call, Kate thought. Few people, especially if they were vulnerable or elderly, would allow a stranger into a well-protected house. It was yet another similarity. There was no sign of forced entry at the Sullivan house – it appeared that the killer may have been known to all three victims.

  ‘Could have been an old friend or one of Houghton’s employees,’ Hollis said. ‘Even a family member that we don’t know about yet.’

  ‘So, we need to get digging,’ Kate said. ‘Jobs. Steve, you and Matt get yourselves over to Houghton Haulage – the depot’s just outside Thorpe on the Rotherham road. Find out who runs the business, who’s unhappy, who might be bearing a grudge. Sam – finances, personal and for the company. See who owed Houghton money and who he owed money to. And see if you can dig up any family members. And see if there’s anything connecting the Houghtons and Julia Sullivan. Dan, we’re going back to Turton to have a poke round the Houghtons’ house – the SOCOs should be there by now and I want to be there when they gain access. I haven’t been able to track down a key holder so I’ve authorised use of the battering ram. We might have a chat with the neighbours as well. If O’Connor’s right about the curtain-twitchers, then I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people who can tell us something about Mr and Mrs Houghton.’

  Kate watched as O’Connor and Barratt grabbed their jackets from the backs of chairs and headed for the door. Cooper remained seated, typing something onto the screen of her tablet – probably notes from the meeting.

  Hollis stood up and rolled down the sleeves of his shirt, buttoning them carefully before slipping on his suit jac
ket. ‘Hell of a day off,’ he said with a grin as he led the way to the stairs.

  10

  ‘Wow!’ Hollis said as they pulled in through the double gates and got their first look at the Houghtons’ bungalow. The brick-paved drive led to a gravelled parking area on one side of a deep-red front door which was flanked by mock-Corinthian pillars. The other half of the front garden was a rectangle of grass, recently mown with perfectly trimmed edges, but strangely dull as though the owners didn’t want the garden to detract from the splendour of the house.

  An unmarked van was parked next to a liveried police car, matching the one stationed on the road outside, indicating the presence of a forensics team and at least one uniformed police officer. Kate hoped to have a look around before the SOCOs caused too much disruption. She parked next to the police car and the driver got out as she was reaching into her pocket for her ID.

  ‘DI Fletcher, DS Hollis,’ Kate said. ‘Are you going to get us into the house?’

  The man nodded and opened the hatchback of the car to reveal an immaculately tidy boot space containing a black plastic case. He reached in, opened the case and removed the ‘enforcer’ otherwise known as the ‘big red key’ – a small but effective battering ram weighing sixteen kilos. The officer put on a helmet and thick gloves before hefting the object out of the boot and marching towards the front door.

  Kate reached into the boot of their pool car and removed packages of coveralls and shoe covers. ‘Here,’ she said, passing a pack to Hollis. ‘This is a crime scene until we know otherwise.’

  The uniformed officer waited until they’d donned the protective clothing and then swung at the door, fracturing the frame and causing the door to lean inwards.