Serpens’ phone rings. It’s not a shock, it’s been going all morning. He knows who it is and what they want. He pulls it from his pocket and hurls it into the river. Plosh. Makes him smile for the first time in days. He takes another jolt of booze and coughs. It must have gone down the wrong way. Nearly drowned himself. Drowned in Scotch, now that would be a fitting way to end it all, wouldn’t it?
Noisy children run past him. A red-faced young boy chases an older girl who’s teasing him. Life in the making. He gets groggily to his feet, watches them spin around a tree, giggle and head back to a tartan picnic blanket, where a woman is laying out cling-filmed sandwiches and cans of pop. Happiness. An alien world to him.
Serpens gulps more of the whisky. Pours it down his throat until it kicks back like water in a blocked drain. He drops the bottle to the balding grass, spreads his arms wide and falls like a felled tree into the fast flow of the Avon.
75
Under the brutal glare of the autopsy lights, Jake Timberland’s body looks even worse than Jimmy Dockery remembers it. What’s left of the fire-blackened and blast-damaged corpse has been opened up and the internal organs extracted and weighed.
Professor Lisa Hamilton reads the minds of the two detectives opposite her. ‘It wasn’t the fire or the explosion that killed him. The blast blew out some of the blaze in the van interior so there was enough viable tissue, organs and fluid left to establish that he’d been lying dead on his left side for about ten hours before his body was burned.’
Megan double-checks the time. ‘Ten hours?’
‘About that.’ Lisa explains her approximation. ‘After death, gravity takes over. Blood stops pumping from the heart and as it settles it marks the tissue.’ She gestures to the splayed corpse. ‘He was moved a long time after his heart had stopped beating. We know this because of the extent and position that the blood stained the skin. Somebody moved him from the position he’d originally been left in after death and laid him out in the Camper to make it look like he’d had an accident. Unfortunately, they dropped him on the wrong side, his right, with his back slightly raised. Entirely inconsistent with the evidence provided by post-mortem staining.’
She moves around the autopsy table and glides a hand over Jake’s grey torso. ‘The cause of death is a massive heart attack, brought on by a heavy single blow to the back of his skull with some form of improvised weapon. I found particles of soil and some pretty dense rock embedded in the bone.’
Jimmy paints the scene. ‘So, he’s hit on the back of the head outside somewhere, then shifted back into his van and laid out on the floor by the cooker. The offender sets the Camper on fire to make it look like our friend here had been on the booze, fallen over and caused the blaze.’
Lisa nods. ‘Almost. Remember, I said that there was postmortem staining on his left side because that’s how he’d been lying for ten hours.’
Megan understands her point. ‘What you’re saying is, whoever killed him spent those ten hours working out what to do. Eventually, they came up with the plan to put the Camper in the barn, move him around to look like he’d fallen and then torch everything.’
‘Exactly. Another thing: although forensics found two empty vodka bottles near the body, there were no traces of metabolised alcohol in his system. His blood showed only tiny amounts of ethanol but the liver was clean. This is entirely inconsistent with him consuming vast amounts of spirits.’ Jimmy is about to ask a question, but Lisa doesn’t let him. ‘Examination of lung tissue showed no evidence of smoke inhalation. No particles, no tissue damage. Nothing. He’d clearly stopped breathing before the fire had started.’
‘The whole scene was faked,’ concludes Megan. ‘Credit where it’s due, Jimmy, it’s exactly as you said it was.’
‘Really?’ says Lisa, expressing genuine shock.
‘Really,’ repeats Jimmy, proudly.
76
The Master keeps his phone call with Draco as short as possible. ‘Have you solved our operational problem?’
‘Unfortunately not. Our man wasn’t available.’
‘Uncontactable?’
‘I am afraid so. He isn’t on any of his numbers. I’ve left messages but he hasn’t returned them. And he phoned in sick at work.’
‘And do you think he is?’
‘No. I’ve been to his house and he’s not there. Nor is his vehicle.’
The Master tries to be positive. ‘He has been under stress lately. It could be that he felt the need to get away, clear his head. Would that fit his character?’
Draco is not sure. ‘It’s possible. I have people asking his friends where he might have gone. We’re also trying to get one of them to reach out to him. Perhaps he’ll return their calls.’
‘Good.’
Draco feels the need to reassure his leader. ‘We’ll find him.’
‘I am banking on you doing exactly that. Hold for a moment.’ He pauses while an assistant presents him with a file of documents for signature and in a hushed voice reminds him of his lunch appointment with a county judge. He waits until the assistant has left before picking up the conversation with Draco. ‘And on the other matter, I have a plan to give us some breathing space. Can you meet me?’
‘Of course. What time?’
The Master checks the calendar on his desk. ‘Three p.m.
I’ll have about an hour. Don’t be late.’
77
Megan and Jimmy park a mile from the burned-out barn. It’s in the middle of the largest area of chalky grassland in north-west Europe. A bleak and isolated table of endless land.
Down in a dip dotted with wild flowers they finally see the charred hulk, an ugly black wound on Salisbury Plain’s soft green skin. Megan points to tracks through the grass. Vehicle marks and footmarks heading to and from the barn. ‘Have we got lifts of any tyre prints?’
‘I think so.’
She scowls at him. ‘You’re a DS; you either know so or it isn’t so. Make sure we have them.’ They walk on a few steps and she sees he’s hurt by her sudden frostiness. She stops. With time and patience she knows he could become a good copper. ‘Look around Jimmy and you’ll hear the grass tell you stories, tales of who’s been coming and going.’ She leans close, so that his eyes are guided along her pointing finger. ‘Over there — those deep depressions are where the fire trucks came in.’ She swings him round and points again. ‘Over here — indentations from at least three different kinds of vehicles, much lighter ones than the first. I’d take a guess at some of these coming from our Camper and maybe two other vehicles.’
‘Why two others?’
She wishes she had a tape measure to help explain. ‘Look at the depth and the width of each track. This gives you the thickness of the tyres and indicates the length of the wheelbases. Do you see now that they’re different?’
He does. ‘So two cars. That would mean at least two people.’
‘Good. Get traffic to carry out a thorough inspection. SOCOs will have looked at the marks already but traffic are best at this type of thing.’ She squats down and gazes across the grooves in the long grass. ‘Question: why would these people be travelling separately rather than together?’
He looks up and down the tracks, then hazards a guess. ‘One guy stays in the barn minding the Camper and our deceased. The other one goes away to do something, maybe get the vodka, arrives later?’
‘Good.’ She gives him an impressed nod as she stands again. ‘Let’s go further. What does that tell you?’