Shadow of Death (9781476057248) Read online

  ‘I don’t suppose you can reverse the appointment and send us someone who will keep the team together?’

  ‘Only the Chief Constable can do that... Oh dear, if he does rescind DCI Marshall’s appointment he will be saying publicly that his deputy got it wrong, and there’s already bad blood... Well, never mind, I shouldn’t be telling you my little secrets.’

  ‘I’m happy to listen to your little secrets, Audrey.’

  ‘I’m a Confidential Personal Assistant not being very confidential, Inspector.’

  ‘Oh well, we’ll just have to grin and bear it until the Chief Constable comes back.’

  ‘I’ll send James a text to warn him what he’ll be returning to.’

  ‘Thanks, Audrey. Nice talking to you.’

  ‘And you, Inspector.’

  He ended the call. He felt happier knowing that the Chief Constable hadn’t deserted him, but in the short term it didn’t change anything. DCI Marshall had Richards, he was still in charge of rubbish, and Kowalski was still banished to traffic analysis.

  He rang Ray and told him what Audrey had said.

  ‘I can see light at the end of this long dark tunnel I’m in, Jed.’

  ‘Yeah, but we’re going to have put up with Marshall for a week until the Chief Constable gets back off holiday.’

  ‘Bloody inconsiderate of him, taking time off to go on holiday. He could have at least appointed the Chief’s successor before he went instead of leaving it to a flunky.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re moaning about. You’ll be out of it for a week. So, what’s traffic analysis like?’

  ‘Don’t ask. Watching grass grow comes to mind. Are we still meeting tonight?’

  ‘Yes, we’ll work out how we’re going to cope this week. And, of course, Angie will lay on a spread, a couple of beers...’

  ‘If I’m drinking, I’ll have to bring Jerry to drive, and...’

  ‘Bring the family, Ray. Digby always likes to play with the kids.’

  ‘A bit adventurous for a Monday night?’

  ‘You only live once.’

  ‘Well, better get back to counting cars. See you later.’

  ‘More coffee, Sir?’ a short plump waitress in a red and white uniform asked, holding a pot of coffee towards him.

  ‘Why not,’ he said and moved his mug across the table. If it were a toss up between another coffee and the landfill site, the coffee would win every time. He’d never been to a landfill site before, but he’d seen them on the television and wasn’t looking forward to the experience. He rang Angie and told her what had happened and that they’d have guests for the evening meal.

  So, they’d have to muddle through until the Chief Constable came back after two weeks of drinking Singapore Slings and soaking up the sun, but when he did return there was no guarantee that he’d reverse his deputy’s decision. If there was bad blood between them then he might decide that leaving things as they are would be a prudent course of inaction.

  He finished his coffee, visited the toilet, paid, and made his way out to the car park. It was ten twenty-five. He was late, but he didn’t care. No doubt Toadstone would be waiting there to inform him that he’d found nothing to help them find the mad axe-man.

  Easing the car back onto Middle Road he knew there was nothing more he could do about his current situation. He shunted his thoughts sideways to one of his other problems. Since visiting MI6 and finding out that they’d never heard of Sir Charles Lathbury, he’d done some checking and discovered that no one called Charles Lathbury had been awarded the Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE). It was fairly obvious now that either Alex Knight had lied to him, or Sir Charles Lathbury had lied to her. Either way, he had nothing new, and was nowhere nearer discovering who his parents were.

  He’d listened to the CD of his ramblings under hypnosis in Dr Marie Rafferty’s office a dozen times, and all he had to go on was a man with a moustache and a limp – not much at all, especially as it was nearly thirty years ago.

  Chapter Two

  He arrived at Bumble’s Green landfill site at ten to eleven. Before he could get out of the car, Stevie Wonder announced that Richards was ringing him.

  ‘Hello, Richards?’

  ‘I’m in the toilet,’ she whispered.

  ‘If you’re not feeling well, maybe you should go off sick?’

  ‘No, this is the only place I can ring without fatty Marshall seeing or hearing me. She’d want to know who I was ringing.’

  ‘So, what do you want?’

  ‘I thought I’d check in.’

  ‘Check in!’ He grunted. ‘You watch far too much television, Agent Richards.’

  ‘You don’t want to know what we’ve been doing, then?’

  ‘Do I need to know now, or can it wait until later?’

  ‘Well...’

  ‘If you keep ringing me you’re going to get caught, and then you’ll be no good as my mole.’

  The line went dead.

  He guessed that someone had either entered the toilets, or she had taken umbrage at what he’d said.

  Climbing out of the car, he was hit by the putrid smell and the deafening noise – both were overpowering. He anticipated someone giving him breathing apparatus, a hard hat, and ear defenders under health and safety guidelines, but nobody did. The smell of decomposition and putrefaction made him gag and the noise from seagulls, bulldozers, and waste carts- arriving, dropping off their loads and departing- combined to create a continuous cacophony. Toadstone was standing about a hundred yards away waving at him, but then he noticed the ruts, puddles of water and mud between the two of them. He opened his boot and swapped his shoes for the green wellies he kept for such occasions.

  Toadstone was standing at the edge of the landfill site looking down into a massive hole in the ground. Hundreds of seagulls hovered over the site, five bulldozers moved and flattened the waste as it was deposited into the hole, and in a small section to his right there were six men in blue police coveralls crawling over the garbage like rats.

  ‘Hello, Sir,’ Toadstone said, cupping a hand and shouting down his ear.

  Parish realised there was no way they were going to be able to hold an intelligent conversation surrounded by the smell and noise, and signalled for Toadstone to follow him back to his car.

  ‘Where’s your medal?’ he asked Toadstone when they were sitting in Parish’s car. The medal ceremony had taken place at Buckingham Palace on Saturday morning, followed by a Queen’s Garden Party in the afternoon. Toadstone had received the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery, and Angie was the 597th recipient of the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for standing between Chief Inspector Naylor – who had a gun – and Detective Inspector Parish.

  Toadstone grinned. ‘I’m not going to wear it to work.’

  ‘I think you should- let everyone know you’re a hero. So, how long have you been here?’

  ‘Since last night when the plastic bags were found.’

  ‘And you can still hear me?’

  He revealed ear defenders attached to the side pocket of his overalls. ‘These help.’

  ‘What about the smell?’

  ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘Rather you than me. So, we have three black bags of hands and feet; any heads or bodies yet?’

  He rummaged in a top pocket. ‘No, but I have this.’ He passed Parish a small piece of white card, approximately one inch by two inches in size, sealed in an evidence bag, which looked like half of a left luggage receipt. Besides the brown marks, which Parish didn’t even want to think about, there was writing in Cyrillic, a serrated edge, and a staple in the top left-hand corner with a sliver of black plastic snagged on the back of it.

  ‘Do we know what it says?’

  ‘There’s a Lithuanian immigrant driving one of the bulldozers. He said it’s either Russian or Romanian and says, “For Disposal”.

  Parish’s forehead creased up. ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘Attached to one
of the black plastic bags.’

  ‘Why doesn’t DCI Marshall or Dr Riley know about this?’

  ‘I thought I’d wait and give it to you.’

  ‘Very kind of you, Toadstone. Why?’

  ‘I met DCI Marshall last night and found her to be a thoroughly unpleasant woman, and Dr Riley isn’t much better.’

  ‘So that’s your excuse for throwing the procedures manual in the landfill site?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Okay, what do you think this card means?’

  ‘I think the hands and feet were transported here from either Russia or Romania by mistake.’

  ‘Mistake?’

  Toadstone took the white card back. ‘For Disposal: I’m quite sure it doesn’t mean transport them to England and dump them in a landfill site.’

  ‘Okay. Why does Dr Riley think the hands and feet were hacked from living people?’

  ‘Because they probably were. Don’t forget, we’re talking about Russia, Romania, or one of the other countries in that area. I wouldn’t say they’re backwards, but they’re certainly not as advanced as us.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Well, four possibilities spring to mind. They could be the result of medical procedures. I didn’t look closely at the hands or feet to see if there were any problems with them, but that’s one possibility. Second, they could be the result of torture...’

  Parish screwed up his face. ‘Torture?’

  ‘There’s been a lot of unrest in that area lately, and amputating hands and feet is a method of torture and also disables the enemy so that they can’t fight against you in the future.’

  ‘A bit medieval.’

  ‘Yes, but effective. And don’t forget that it’s used as a punishment under Shari’a law. There are a lot of Muslims around there, and the amputations could be the result of sentences being carried out.’

  ‘What you’re saying is that if these hands and feet are the result of criminal activity, it wasn’t in this country?’

  ‘No... Yes, I’m saying what you just said.’

  ‘And we’ll probably never know where the hands and feet came from, or why they were amputated.’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  He had a thought. ‘Maybe only the bag came from another country?’

  ‘Extremely unlikely.’

  ‘So, there’ve been no murders in this country, and as such no crime to investigate.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it, Inspector.’

  ‘Okay, so why haven’t you informed the DCI?’

  ‘Where’s Mary?’

  ‘With DCI Marshall. Why?’

  ‘I was called down to meet the new DCI, and I overheard her on the phone telling someone that no-one was bigger than the team, and that she was going to split you and Mary up.’

  He thought about what Toadstone had said. Who was this woman? It seemed as though the stupid cow was trying to destroy the old team and recreate a new one in her own image, and she was succeeding as well. Kowalski had been transferred, she was running the investigation, he and Ed had bit parts, and Richards had been effectively taken off him.

  ‘So you decided to withhold critical evidence from the senior investigating officer because you didn’t like her?’

  A look of concern crossed his face. ‘Yes Sir.’

  ‘Good job, Toadstone.’ A smile cracked Parish’s face. ‘Now we’ve got to decide what we’re going to do about it.’ He told Toadstone about the conversation he’d had with Audrey, the Chief Constable’s PA.

  ‘We’ve only got her for a week then?’

  ‘Well, that’s what I’m hoping, but the Chief Constable might decide to let things remain as they are so that he can have a quiet life.’

  ‘We’ll have to make sure he makes the right decision then, won’t we, Sir?’

  ‘Have you got something in mind?’

  He grinned, showing off his badly misshapen yellow teeth.

  Parish made a mental note to talk to him about them. If he ever had a hope of getting a date with Richards, then he needed to make himself more presentable.

  ‘No, I leave the ideas to you, but I’ve got a trunk.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk in riddles.’

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

  Toadstone climbed out of the car and Parish followed him.

  They walked to the edge of the landfill again. Toadstone stopped at a blue plastic tarpaulin that Parish hadn’t taken much notice of before. It was held down with metal pegs, and obviously covered something bulky. He squatted, removed one of the pegs, and lifted the tarpaulin to reveal a rusty old metal trunk about three feet long by two feet deep and two foot high. There were two hinged lockable hasps attached to the lid.

  ‘Was it locked?’

  ‘We cut two locks off and they’re in evidence bags inside.’

  Toadstone slowly lifted the lid as if he’d found the crown jewels, but instead there were pieces of a woman’s body stuffed inside like an unloved rag doll. ‘This is the real murder, Sir,’ Toadstone shouted up at him.

  Parish gave him the thumbs up and waved him back to the car. He wasn’t going to try and compete with churning bulldozers and screeching seagulls in an attempt to hold a conversation. When he looked back, Toadstone had made a detour to the plain white forensics van, but he eventually arrived at the car with a flask and two plastic mugs.

  ‘Coffee, Sir?’ he asked as he sat in the passenger seat and closed the door.

  ‘I didn’t know you could read minds, Toadstone?’

  ‘Just one of my many talents,’ he said, pouring coffee into the cup Parish was holding.

  ‘What about the body in the trunk then?’ Parish said after he’d taken a swig of the hot, treacle-like, but welcome liquid.

  ‘The police officers in blue coveralls you saw are looking for more black plastic bags, but three of my officers were down there as well. You probably didn’t see them because they were camouflaged in dirty white coveralls, but when they were examining the area around where the three bags of hands and feet were found, they discovered the trunk. At first we thought it was connected to the bags, but now we know it’s not.’

  ‘Let me guess, DCI Marshall hasn’t been informed that you’ve found a dismembered female body in a metal trunk?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about the officers searching for more bags?’

  ‘They don’t know about it either.’

  Parish shuffled round to stare at the Head of Forensics. ‘What do you hope to accomplish by all this subterfuge, Toadstone?’

  ‘To get rid of DCI Marshall.’

  ‘You’re risking your career, you know?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And mine, if I go along with whatever it is you’re doing.’

  ‘That’s your choice, Sir.’

  ‘Have you examined the woman or the trunk yet?’

  ‘Not yet, I was waiting for you.’

  ‘We won’t have Dr Riley on our side.’

  ‘I can do the post mortem.’

  ‘We’re stepping so far over the line, we’re in danger of falling into the landfill site.’

  ‘I know. I’ve never done anything like this before.’

  ‘Well, that’s not strictly true. There was the wire you arranged for me to trap CI Naylor, and you also shot Millhaven, and...’

  ‘This is different.’

  ‘Only in the details. What I’ve noticed about you, Toadstone, is that you have a knack of doing the right thing when you recognise an injustice.’

  ‘Are we doing the right thing?’

  ‘What would happen if we told the DCI about the white card and the body in the metal trunk?’

  Toadstone thought for a minute and then said, ‘She’d probably tell everyone how she found the critical piece of evidence herself, and that you were only able to solve the body in the trunk murder because of her exceptional skills as a DCI.’

  ‘And that would be an injustice, wouldn’t it?’

  �
��Most definitely.’

  ‘There you are then. Right, what are we going to do next?’

  ‘Well, my officers are checking that there aren’t any more trunks with dismembered corpses inside, but it’s been over three hours now and they’ve found nothing else so I’m thinking of calling them in.’

  ‘And the volunteer officers?’

  ‘They’re under your orders, Sir.’

  ‘How do I communicate with them?’

  ‘Well, you have to go down there.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘So, you’re going to do the necessary with the trunk and the body?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And we’re going to keep that little white card a secret between the two of us?’

  ‘That would be my suggestion. The more people who know, the more chance there is of us being found out.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly. Listen, we’re meeting tonight at six o’clock at my house for a strategy meeting, if you’re interested?’

  ‘I’ll be there, and thanks.’

  ‘Angie’s organising food.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You’ll have done an initial examination, taken some photographs, collected samples and so on by then?’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘I’m asking, because if we’re running a parallel investigation, we can’t co-opt an incident room in the station, so we’ll have to use the house.’

  ‘And you want me to bring photographs, the name and details of the victim, anything relevant concerning the metal trunk, and anything else I can lay my hands on.’

  ‘You’ll make someone a good partner one day, Toadstone.’

  ‘Very generous of you to say so, Sir.’

  ‘You’ve got whiteboards in forensics- any chance you can sign one out and bring it with you while we’re working on the case?’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Excellent. Anything I’ve missed?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Sir.’

  ‘Good. I’ll see you tonight. Oh, and while you’re down there telling your guys to finish, let my guys know to come up as well.’

  ‘I should have known you’d get me to do it.’

  ‘Not worth two of us going down when one can do the job, is it, Toadstone?’

  He closed his eyes and collected his thoughts while he waited for the volunteer officers to come up from the landfill. It was going to get very messy running two investigations simultaneously. The one advantage they had was that fatty Marshall would try and sideline him and Ed as much as possible, so they probably wouldn’t get a look in with the other case. He smiled, only the second time he’d had cause to smile this morning. Richards had got him calling the DCI fatty Marshall now! Kowalski was out of sight, out of mind, and should be able to make some inquiries – traffic analysis permitting – without being detected. Ed would have to make some progress on the other seven cases, and they could look at them tonight. He pulled out his phone and rang Ed.