One Last Lesson Read online

  *

  Henderson walked back down the track towards Mike Ferris. He was big man in many ways; tall, only a couple of inches below the DI and he was six-two, well built and with a bit of a beer belly. His hair was short, revealing a boyish, handsome face, tanned and lightly lined but marred with numerous scratches and small scars.

  In contrast to the self-possessed and taciturn pathologist, Mike Ferris could talk for England. While he was prattling on, Henderson was watching him closely and assessing his suitability as a witness or a suspect. He was a keen student of criminal psychology and knew most of the theories, including one often billed as the ‘Morse Theory’ after the TV detective, Inspector Endeavour Morse, which suggested that the person reporting the crime was most likely the perpetrator. While not subscribing to this theory wholeheartedly, he recognised there were situations when it might apply, especially if the criminal was caught red-handed or was still hanging around afterwards, admiring all the fuss they had created.

  Ferris was an excellent witness as he could recall each stage of the discovery of the body in meticulous detail and poor Walters was having a hard job scribbling it all down in her notebook; but he also made a good suspect. He was big and powerful with large hands that looked as though they could easily wield a baseball bat or a hammer or whatever was used to batter that girl to death, and he was loud and aggressive, evident from the way he leaned forward to make a point or waved his big arms in the air to indicate the direction he had come. In addition to the fresh scratches on his face and hands, there were scratches, bruises and scabs on both hands and when he finally paused for breath, Henderson asked about them.

  ‘I’m a builder; see. The older bruises happened when we were smashing up old sinks in council houses in Crawley. See, the outfit I work for have a contract with Crawley Council to take out all the old fittings before the houses are renovated. The fucking brambles in the woods caused these new ones when I went in looking for the dog. Like I told you, I never knew there was no path, so I headed straight in about there,’ he said pointing at the bushes to their right, ‘and got bloody well scratched to bits for me trouble.’

  He leaned over and tapped Walters on the shoulder. ‘You coppers know all about first-aid, don’t you? Perhaps you could come around to my cottage later on and attend to my wounds. I promise I won’t scream.’

  Walters screwed her face up as she recoiled from his touch, eliciting a throaty laugh from the big man. It was a dirty laugh, more suited to a Saturday night in a busy pub than talking to two detectives about a young girl’s murder. Those nearby didn’t like it much either as it drew disapproving glances from the SOCO’s, coppers and ambulance crews and it took a considerable amount of self-restraint on Henderson’s part to desist from landing a fist into the big man’s ugly mug.

  THREE

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Walters said after she finished the last of several phone calls and texts to re-schedule her busy social life.

  Henderson said nothing as he guided the car onto the southbound carriageway of the M23, a dangerous prospect at the best of times. Drivers, frustrated by long delays on the M25, six or seven miles further north, put their foot down here as they still had a long way to go before they reached the coast.

  ‘I’m thinking that’s such a crap record they’re playing on the radio; why does every new artist think they need the services of a street-wise LA rapper to sex-up their song? In case you think me too frivolous, I’m also thinking there is one aspect of this case, which is different from the last two we’ve worked on.’

  ‘Why, because this one involves a young girl?’

  ‘That’s part of it certainly, but take into consideration the place where her body was found.’

  ‘What, a golf course? I suppose closing it down will piss off a lot of high-profile people. Maybe the Chief Constable plays there.’

  ‘That’s an interesting thought but I’m sure they’ll soon be back whacking their little white balls just as soon as we give them the all clear tomorrow or the day after.’

  ‘I’ve never fancied playing myself. Too expensive for starters.’

  ‘What I mean is, the scene back there has all the hallmarks of a cold-blooded killer. The last two cases we worked on, involved friends and the husband, people that knew the victim well. Someone has battered to death and sexually assaulted a beautiful young woman and dumped her naked body in the woods when he was finished with her. To me, that has all the markings of a cold, calculating murderer and doesn’t much sound like a random or opportunistic crime or a domestic dispute that’s suddenly gone wrong.’

  ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘What did you think of our witness?’

  ‘He’s just the sort of person I’d cross the road to avoid. Did you see the way he leered at me?’

  ‘Yeah, the fool, doesn’t he realise you know bugger-all about first aid? You’d probably kill him just by taking his blood pressure.’

  ‘Cheeky beggar.’

  ‘Do you think he did it?’

  ‘He’s big and ugly enough.’ She paused for a few moments. ‘The thing is, if it was him, why would he tell us where he dumped her body? In fact, why go to the bother of digging a big hole and covering her up? I mean, it just doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time, so we need to check him out. Why don’t you take that job on as you seem to have built up such a good rapport with the man?’

  ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, but take somebody with you, somebody big like Harry or Seb otherwise he might get the wrong idea. Don’t bring him down to the station though, go to his place and see how he lives. Find out if his work or social life brings him into contact with young women like our victim.’

  ‘I doubt it, as he says he’s a builder and his company are renovating old flats. There’s not many women in that game; period.’

  ‘We also need to trace his wife, the one he said cleared off to Scarborough, which is probably true as I’m sure that wasn’t her back there in the bushes. We need to know why she left; was he violent or was she running away from something he was involved with? Now, if it was him, it would be the easiest case I’ve ever dealt with since moving down south, but somehow I doubt it.’

  *

  Sussex House, the home of Sussex Police - Serious Crimes Unit, was a bland concrete block, adjacent to a small industrial estate and a large Asda supermarket in the east end of Brighton. The small-time cons of the town were more familiar with the city centre police station in John Street where they were taken when first apprehended, and next day, across the road for an appearance in the Magistrates’ Court. They only came to Sussex House if their thieving became violent, the flasher in the park decided to have a more personal relationship with his victim or an assailant graduated up the scale to GBH and murder.

  For the next few hours, Henderson worked non-stop. A Murder Enquiry Book was opened, a Holmes operator appointed, who was already banging data into the computer, senior officers were briefed about what was now known as Operation Jaguar, and several lines of enquiry were being mapped out by the skeleton team of officers already assembled, ready to hand over to the rest of the team when they joined the squad, early the following morning.

  The press briefing at five-thirty was exactly that, brief. Neither he nor his boss, Chief Inspector Steve Harris said much, other than the basic facts of the case - the body of a young woman was found on Mannings Heath golf course by a man walking his dog and enquiries were continuing. A few hacks had already interviewed Mike Ferris and were keen to ask questions about him, several referring to his large size, robust manner and the bruises on his hands and face. He tried to be as conciliatory as possible, despite his own misgivings, and made a point of thanking him for finding the body as he didn’t want them hounding him out of town or making him wary and driving him underground.

  In the three years he had been with Sussex Police, he had been trying hard to improve his relations
hip with journalists. His epiphany came when he was involved in a fatal shooting in Glasgow. He was an officer with Strathclyde Police at the time and working for an undercover unit with responsibility for keeping various drug gangs under surveillance and infiltrating the most active. In one raid, Sean Fagin, a Glasgow-born dealer in heroin and cocaine, pointed a gun at him and he had no option but to fire back. Fagin’s bullet grazed his shoulder giving him a flesh wound; Henderson’s bullet hit him between the eyes, killing him.

  The resultant hysterical publicity cost him his marriage and almost wrecked his job and health, as he hit the booze with an enthusiasm once only reserved for police work. Despite being exonerated by an internal enquiry, there was nothing left for him in Glasgow and so he transferred to Sussex Police. Now, his attitude was not, ‘what can they do for me,’ but ‘how can we work together to solve this’ and as a result, tried to be as open and candid as possible without compromising the investigation.

  It was a dangerous path to tread, but as time went on, it was gradually paying dividends with less speculative stories and fewer personal attacks on him, particularly about the Glasgow shooting or the time it was taking to solve a particular case. He was being coached by his girlfriend, Rachel Jones, a journalist with Brighton’s main local newspaper, The Argus on what he realised now was a subtle, black art. Although crime was not her area of expertise, she encouraged him to see the press as an ally, not as an adversary and gave him ideas on how to present his story better.

  The first meeting of the murder enquiry team included little more than he and CI Harris presented at the press conference. It was disappointing to learn, but not entirely unexpected, that the work of Hobbs and Young on house-to-house enquiries and CCTV cameras yielded nothing. The residents of the nearest village to the golf course, Mannings Heath went to bed early and slept like logs, as no one saw or heard the late arrival of a car or van near the golf course on Wednesday or Thursday night.

  The forlorn hope that a lone camera at the bottom of the road would reveal the make, colour and possibly the registration number of the killer’s vehicle was exposed as the mere flight of fancy it was, since the nearest one was located several miles away in Horsham town centre.

  With the meeting over, quiet contemplation was now called for, and he was about to go home and do precisely that with a glass or two of Glenmorangie while relaxing in the easy chair that was placed beside the large sash window in his flat for that very purpose. First, he needed to make a final check on the team and ensure they were all set up for what was going to be a busy couple of weeks ahead.

  They were now housed in the Murder Suite, a large area occupying most of the space on the second floor of Sussex House, sub-divided by moveable screens to accommodate several investigation teams, whose numbers could expand or shrink to mirror the progress or otherwise on a case.

  On the left, with windows running along one wall and overlooking the car park, were the twelve desks currently allocated to Operation Jaguar but he wouldn’t know if that would be enough until the middle of next week, when initial enquiries would be complete and then he would have a much better idea which lines of investigation were worth pursuing.

  He walked over and stood to gaze at the single whiteboard that was already starting to fill up with a range of tasks and how they would be manned. Later, when more definite leads were added, this board would be joined by several others to show connections between the victim and potential suspects and hopefully, sporting a mug shot of the person or persons wanted for this crime.

  It was day one, evening one to be more precise and with little concrete evidence to write-up, the board contained more questions than answers but he looked intently all the same, trying to memorise as much detail as he could so he could mull it over later. Questions such as; ‘identify victim’ and ‘finish and analyse house-to-house enquires’ stood out. He turned to the group of detectives and was about to tell them not to work too late, as he wanted them fresh in the morning, when his mobile rang.

  ‘Hello Angus, Bill Graham.’ DC Bill Graham was a member of Pat Davidson’s SOCO team, the guys he left searching the bushes at Mannings Heath many hours ago.

  ‘Hi Bill, how are you doing? You still up at the golf course?’

  ‘Nah, I came back to the office around six to check on a few things and to warm up. It’s bloody freezing up there especially when it got dark. Being the diligent sort, I took the prints of the victim but given her age, which Dr Singh put at eighteen or nineteen, I wasn’t hopeful of finding a match.’

  ‘I can feel you’re trying to tell me something Bill, but you’ll need to hurry up or I’ll miss my nightcap.’

  ‘Lady Luck was smiling on us, and no mistake as her prints are on the system. They were taken when she was arrested for a drunk and disorderly in November, following a rumpus at the taxi rank in East Street at three in the morning with a taxi driver who refused to take her and her mates. Her name is Sarah Robson and she’s a second-year Business Studies student at Lewes University.’

  FOUR

  He opened the door to the lecture theatre and almost immediately his ears were assailed by a cacophony of noise. Despite almost ten years in the job, that early morning shock to the senses never ceased to catch him out. In part, it was due to this modern intake of students who were much noisier than any previous generation with their mobile phones, laptops and mp3 players but also due to the amount of booze he downed the previous night, leaving him with a thumping headache and an aversion to anything bright or loud.

  The hubbub decreased a notch or two as Jon Lehman made his way to the lectern, and all but ceased by the time he dumped the large pile of folders and papers he was carrying, down with a loud thud. He turned to face their eager, fresh-faced expressions, slowly sipping water from a bottle that was rarely out of his possession.

  ‘Quiet please. Quiet please,’ Lehman said, his voice sounding croaky as it echoed around the large room, assisted greatly by a sensitive microphone and sophisticated sound system. While waiting for them to settle, he ran fingers through a mop of thick, black hair, a gesture he used to settle his nerves and noticed not for the first time, that his hands were trembling. He selected the relevant notes from the folder and placed them in front of him.

  ‘Ok people, better; thank you. Today, I am going to talk to you about a subject that is dear to my heart…and even dearer to my wallet that is, if you buy my latest book, Anatomy of UK Takeovers Since 1945.’ He paused as a mild titter wafted around the room, from those that were half-awake at least. ‘For the purposes of what we are going to be doing, you can also find it in Watson, chapters five and six. However take note, the greedy swine has pitched it at three quid more than mine and I would rather you bought a pint with that money than give it to him.

  Despite the gnawing pain behind his eyes, which intensified when he turned to look at the glaring screen behind him, he began to speak with authority and enthusiasm. Even though he readily acknowledged that he drank more than was good for him, there was no reason to change as he could always perform in front of his students and rarely missed a day’s work due to over-indulgence. Not that he wanted things to change anyway.

  Home was a twee, stone-fronted two-bedroom terrace house in a small road, off Lewes High Street that had been re-modelled into a modern show-home by his newly qualified interior decorator wife, Annabel. Three months before, it featured in a glossy three-page spread in Sussex Life, an up-market lifestyle magazine aimed at well-heeled homeowners. The house looked fabulous and drew envious comments from friends and colleagues but as someone who liked to relax after a hard day’s work with his feet on the coffee table and a couple of empty beer cans by his side, it could never be called home.

  It didn’t help to realise that his wife was morphing into one of the very women who inhabited the pages of such magazines, many of which were lying in strategic positions all over the house. He was sure it was her dream, nay her life’s ambition, to be photographed by one, standing inside her gle
aming kitchen, in front of a newly polished Aga or majestically lounging on a lawn seat with four glossy red setters at her feet, dressed like the guest of honour at the Sussex Hunt Ball and wearing more jewellery than Kate Winslett on Oscar night.

  If sex was good to middling in the early years of their six-year relationship, it was at hermit levels now and on the rare occasions she considered him worthy and allowed his grubby hands inside her pants, he rated the experience no higher than tedious. To a man that prided himself on his prowess between the sheets, or on the bathroom floor or the car bonnet come to that, and the size and staying power of his manhood, her coldness hurt him deeply.

  In the latest of their frequent arguments, she accused him of behaving like a pig and messing up her beautiful chocolate box of a house by leaving dirty clothes beside the laundry basket and bath towels on the floor. In truth, his will to resist was all but exhausted but he must have said something derogatory, as she hadn’t spoken to him since. If his home life was crappy, it was just as well he worked at a university, a place where he could eat, drink and screw, twenty-four hours a day if he was minded to.

  Returning to his office after delivering the lecture, his diary was clear until a tutor group at three and so continued to work on the manuscript of his latest book. He was the author of six successful academic textbooks and with a growing reputation for taking dry and difficult subjects, such as company mergers, the actions of oligopolies and the development of business strategy, and converting them into colourful, witty books which were easily digestible by the badly read and poorly informed modern student who possessed all the concentration levels of a gnat.

  If he was being honest, that was all he did as none of his books displayed more than a modicum of original thought. He would never admit to that in public, of course but to his consternation, rumblings of discontent were beginning to appear in the academic press. The nub of their criticism was that a growing number of celebrated authors were simply dressing up the emperor in new clothes and even though his name was never mentioned, he knew they were talking about him.