The path was quite overgrown after that. Rhododendron bushes lined it on either side, their tips virtually touching above his head, forming a kind of tunnel. Marty had the collar of his leather jacket turned up against the rain, although it was now little more than a light drizzle, and was walking with his head slightly bowed. Within the rhododendron tunnel water fell steadily from the glossy leaves of the big bushes and several icy droplets trickled down his neck, inside his shirt, causing him to shiver. His feet, shod in unsuitable leather-soled loafers, slipped occasionally on the path’s muddy surface. Once he nearly fell.
Straight ahead he could see a brighter light. That should be chalet ten, he reckoned, unless he had turned the wrong way in the dark. And he would be quite glad to be inside out of the cold and wet, there was no doubt about that, whatever might lie in store for him.
There was a rustling in the bushes to his left, which he registered to be moving closer to him, but automatically assumed it must be a cat out on a spot of nocturnal hunting. Marty didn’t have a nervous disposition nor a vivid imagination. It didn’t go with the territory really, for people in his line of work. And he never did find out what was causing the rustling noise.
Neither did Marty ever reach chalet ten.
The knife slid easily between his shoulder blades. It was driven straight into the soft fleshy core of his body, the point scoring a direct hit on his spinal cord.
The shock was total. The blow lethal. Marty did not even have time to scream. One searing flash of unspeakable agony. One tearing burst of pure white-hot pain. Then nothing.
He died virtually at once. And even had he lived he would have been of no use to the police who were to investigate his murder. The attack on Marty Morris was swift and efficient. Marty did not even see his assailant.
Seven
The investigating officer assigned to the murder of Marty Morris was Detective Chief Inspector Rose Piper of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. She arrived at the scene of the crime wearing a big black overcoat buttoned up around the neck. Only she knew what she was wearing underneath. Rose Piper had been at her husband Simon’s fortieth birthday party when she got the call. Nonetheless, she hadn’t wasted a moment getting to the Crescent Hotel.
Rose, young for her rank at only thirty-three, particularly young for a woman at that rank, was a career policewoman and she relished the idea of a juicy murder. Not for the first time, her marriage had to take second place, even on such a special night. She had merely told Simon she had to go to work, whispered a brief apology giving him little or no chance to reply, and slipped quickly away. She had been aware though, of his hurt angry stare following her as she left the restaurant, abandoning him to their friends.
But she certainly wasn’t going to allow anyone else to muscle in on a murder like this one. It had been given to her, and she wasn’t going to let it go. Rose was based at Southmead Police Station, conveniently placed for Southmead Hospital which housed the city mortuary, and Marty Morris had been murdered in Clifton, an area squarely in her Southmead patch. Rose was rather glad about that. In fact she could hardly wait to get stuck in. She had asked for a pair of Wellington boots to be ready at the scene but hadn’t even considered taking the time to change her clothes for more suitable apparel. She had just thanked God for the big black coat as she walked out into the street and over to the patrol car which had been sent to pick her up — not only did it completely cover the unsuitable party attire she was wearing underneath, it would also keep her warm and dry on a cold drizzly evening. She also thanked God that the bash, in the stylish private room at the back of Bristol’s fashionable San Carlo restaurant, hadn’t been going long enough for her to have had more than one drink and a few sips of a second before her mobile phone had called her into action.
She liked a drink when she had the chance, did Rose. She liked a good party. And she had been looking forward to this celebration with her husband as much as she knew he had. But nothing was more important to her than the chance to show what she was made of on a really big case. However it might seem to the public reading the newspapers, you still didn’t get a nice juicy murder all that often in the UK. Most of them, Rose was well aware, turned out to be boring domestics, and called for no real policing skills at all.
Rose had always secretly been sorry to have missed out on the Fred West affair which, as it had centred around Gloucester, a mere thirty miles from Bristol, had fallen into the domain of the Gloucestershire Constabulary. In Bristol alone there were six police stations, all with strictly defined territories, all with detectives of sufficient rank to be put in charge of a murder inquiry. You had to get lucky to land a juicy one, that was the way Rose saw it. There was nothing like solving a good murder to give your career a quick hoist up the ladder. And she wasn’t going to put herself in a position where it would be her own fault if she missed out on this one, that was for certain. So if that meant upsetting Simon, well, it wouldn’t be for the first time. He’d get over it. He always did. She could get around him. She always could.
Rose hunched her shoulders against the weather, shoved her hands deep into her pockets and made her way briskly along the path through the overgrown gardens of the Crescent Hotel towards the crime scene which was already cordoned off and brightly lit by portable floodlights. A duck-boarded route had been laid down away from the murder victim’s path, now part of the protected crime scene — but the drizzly rain continued and the boards were treacherous, particularly for a woman wearing absurdly high-heeled bright orange shoes. To her annoyance the boots she had requested had been forgotten and eventually the inevitable happened. Looking ahead at what awaited her instead of watching her step she slipped off the greasy wood and landed in a particularly unpleasant puddle — that was the end of her extravagant shoes, Rose suspected. She realised that the young uniformed police constable escorting her had noticed what she had done and was studying her closely waiting for a reaction. She gave none.
Rose was the most feminine looking of women, small, slight, fluffy blonde hair fairly obviously owing most of its colour to a good hairdresser, and lots of make-up. She also dressed like an extremely feminine woman and not like the usual conception of a policewoman at all. Certainly most people who might be confronted by her in the street, even if she was dressed for work and not for her social life, would never dream that she were a police officer, and definitely not a Detective Chief Inspector.
Rose Piper’s looks were very deceptive. She was about as tough and ruthlessly ambitious as they came. She was also clever.
She stopped outside the tent which had been constructed around the body of the murder victim, and stood silently for a moment studying the situation.
The SOCOs — scenes of crime officers — were already at work within the patch of ground now surrounded by a tape fence and were combing the cordoned-off area for evidence. It was down to Rose, as Senior Investigating Officer, to eventually decide the extent of the area to be sealed, but the SOCOs had got there first this time and they were an experienced bunch who knew well enough what had to be done. All wore white paper suits, overshoes and surgical gloves.
A similarly clad character, smaller and slighter than any of the others, crouched on the ground, bending over the body. Rose presumed at once that this was Dr Carmen Brown, even though the doctor had her back to the policewoman and the hood of her paper suit was pulled up over her head concealing her distinctive auburn hair. The stature and attitude of the Bristol-based Home Office pathologist, whose territory included the entire area policed by the Avon and Somerset Constabulary, made her virtually unmistakable.